I woke up to the near-simultaneous sounds of a quietly closing door and the less subdued beeping of the alarm clock. Spitting out a mouthful of bedspread, I silenced the squealing box on the bedside table with a slap. I rolled out of bed and trudged to the door to check the hall, but Niko was already gone. As he'd said… the wind. He'd stayed to watch over me while I slept, and I vaguely remembered the occasional touch to my shoulder that had brought me out of nightmares into blissfully empty sleep. He'd also left a present for me on the table beside the clock. Hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and a happily informative note telling me to clean my gangrenous arm before he was forced to chop it off. Brotherly love, the original sweet-and-sour dish.

I did as I was told. Contrary I might be, but truthfully the wounds were reddened and puffy. And the last thing I needed was for an infection to slow me down while I was in the midst of the dog pound. First I showered and took care of my arm, and then I made my way back to the warehouse for my first day on the job. I couldn't say that I was exactly showered with camaraderie when I stepped through the doors, but a beery burp and perfunctory growl instead of sincere ones let me know I was one of the gang. A handful of murderous lupines, and I had their acceptance. I didn't want it, but I needed it. I needed it badly.

What I didn't need, however, was the foul and stinking breath ruffling the hair at my nape, but it was there all the same.

"Do ya mind?" I snapped. "I'm half-human, and I need the oxygen, okay? Your funky stench isn't quite satisfying the lungs." It was a revenant. If you could say one thing about Cerberus, it was that he was down and dirty committed to the equal-opportunity concept. A revenant… Jesus. Forget their pleasing and well-rounded personalities for the moment; their stink alone could clear a city block. Eat the dead, smell like the dead; it was a logic that couldn't be escaped. Not that they were above a warm meal once in a while. Dead was just a preference.

There was a hiss like an angrily deflating balloon, but the heat retreated from the back of my neck. I felt the iron stiffness of my spine relax slightly. The situation was tense enough; it didn't need poisonous gas emanating from this shithead's filthy pores to make it worse. Cerberus had personally given us our marching orders for the night. It had been in the office again, but this time he was alone… except for his meal. The succubus was nowhere to be seen, which was too bad. Whether she would know any deep, dark secrets such as where Cerberus kept his jewelry box was questionable. The head honchos didn't strike me as the types to spill the post-coital beans, but who knew? One thing I did know was that Goodfellow would be better qualified to find out. At the end of that exchange, if anyone were sucked dry of their life force, I'd bet my first Kin paycheck that it wouldn't be Robin. A dirty job, he'd say, is the very best kind.

My dirty job, a much less enjoyable one, was watching Cerberus eat. Wolves liked to eat, big surprise, almost as much as they liked mating and killing. They gave a new twist to the old adage: If you can't eat it or screw it, you may as well kill it. Fine as far as it went, but wolves were of a mind to do at least two at once… if not all three. The whole species wasn't psychotically bloodthirsty, not entirely. But as I watched a liver ripped from a gaping wound and shredded under bloodstained fangs, I found that truth hard to hold on to.

Cerberus hadn't completely changed to wolf form, which was too bad. That might not have been as disturbing. The hands had thickened and gnarled, sprouting claws and a fine downy coat of black hair. Teeth had elongated to fangs as thick as my thumb and half again as long. The two skulls had flattened into wicked wedges with overgrown jaws, low foreheads, and moist flaring nostrils. Otherwise, the mostly hairless faces and ferociously intelligent eyes still looked human. The body itself was nude and faintly sheened with the same misting of black hair found on the hands. The nudity was a combination of a wolf's natural lack of shame and a convenient way to avoid ruining the expensive suit folded off to one side. Cerberus wasn't what you'd consider a tidy eater. As the body crouched over its dinner, blood splattered onto its broad chest. Still, if it weren't for the hands and faces, it would be possible to take them for men… hairy men, but just men. Yeah, let's revisit disturbing. Disturbing just wasn't doing the job in the description department. It was a night-and-day contrast to my morning meeting with the wolves. Cerberus had been all business then… coldly powerful and deadly, yes, but restrained. Now… now the savagery was so matter-of-fact, so casual, that you knew ripping apart a still-warm body was nothing more than supper, mundane as a tuna fish sandwich was to me.

"I have business for you," the head on the right spoke, the words dropping like stones from bloodstained lips.

That wasn't news. It was why we'd been called into the principal's office, to get the details. But when the one on the left gave us those details, I wished I'd stayed in the hostel and played count-the-cockroach. I'd known it might be bad. Hell, I was the last one to wallow in delusions of optimism, but I hadn't realized how grisly it could be. Would be. Swallowing the bile that burned bonfire hot in my throat, I exited the office with my partners in crime. Behind me the sounds of feeding resumed. There was one poor son of a bitch who should never have signed his donor card.

And that's how I ended up outside a homeless shelter picking out people to die.

I was also wondering fairly frantically what Niko was going to do about it. A hard, painful grip on my injured arm ended my wondering for the moment. "Choose. Lazy," Flay hissed in my ear. "Lazy… work." If he was overheard, and with the wolf ears around us he would be, it would look as if Flay was only giving a slacker a boot in the ass. A slacker was better than a spy any day of the week. I jerked my arm out of his grip and did as ordered. I chose. Randomly. I couldn't look at the people and I didn't… only pointed at them and then the bus. The others, on the other hand, were selecting by size, wanting the plumpest of prize pigs. We'd brought a bus for the livestock; it was dingy white, beat-up, and old, but scrupulously clean. The story was that we were a charitable medical organization busing a lucky group of the homeless to a new free clinic in Brooklyn where they would be given a physical. The ones that were sick would be promptly treated, also at no charge, and all provided with a nutritious box dinner. Yeah, it was a load of crap, but it would work. It was working.

Where this busload of people would end up, I wasn't precisely sure. It was in Brooklyn, Snowball had said, but it sure as hell wasn't at a clinic. Being sold for food was probably what lay in their future. To whom? Anyone. Everyone. Offhand, I couldn't think of too many monsters that didn't eat humans. Cerberus had driven that home earlier. Usually monsters caught their own, but you had to hand it to the Kin and my new boss. Sometimes you liked a full-on, dress-for-it dinner and sometimes you liked to pop something in the microwave, quick and easy. And now, for a price, they had your quick and easy right here. Don't feel like leaving the house to bag supper? Why should you? You've got a homeless Popsicle neatly folded in your freezer.

Despite myself, I did a quick scan of the general area, looking over the street and ugly, run-down buildings. Nothing. Niko had been right; I didn't see him. Although I knew he was there and knew it without a doubt, I still wished I could see him, calm and confident. Planwise, I was coming up empty. I couldn't make a move without giving myself away, and if I gave up myself, I gave up George.