Feeling eyes on me, I turned to see the milky orbs of the revenant staring at me from behind dark glasses. He was lucky it was twilight. With perpetually moist, salamander flesh, multiple joints, and the teeth of a demonic ferret, he'd have a harder time passing than Jaffer did. Some quarters said revenants were people returned from the dead. Nah. From a distance, a long distance, they did have the appearance of a corpse in the first stages of decomposition… a corpse with the speed and appetite of a trapdoor spider. But that aside, revenants had never been human.

I ignored him. Easy enough to do since he was downwind. It was less easy to watch as shambling men and women with ragged clothes and thousand-yard stares climbed onto the bus to be transported to their deaths. And fucking clever guy that I was, I couldn't think of a damn thing to do about it. Hands in pockets, acid burning the back of my throat, I counted twenty condemned souls filing past. Some had gray strands straggling from knit caps; others had black or brown hair. A few mumbled to themselves, several talked quietly with one another, and some remained stoically silent. One or two met my eyes with streetwise suspicion and wretched gratitude. The hot breath of the revenant was back on my neck, and his fingers felt like bare bone when they gripped my arm above the elbow as I nodded at the last of them, an old lady with one filmy-cataract-covered eye. She grinned with toothless cheer at me and went through the folding doors as I gave her a hand up.

Being torn to pieces would've been less painful.

"Aren't you a good little boy? A good little human." The revenant had a hard time twisting his thick tongue around the words, giving them a glottal grunt. The same slab of meat slathered the skin below my pony-tail. "A tasty human."

It was worth the painful bite I received when I ripped half his tongue out. The wolves only snickered as the revenant drooled and spit blood onto the asphalt, his eyes lurid with pain. I was expected to be loyal to Cerberus. I was not expected to roll over and offer my throat to some stinking lump of wet flesh wrapped in a concealing raincoat and baseball hat. Being seen as weak would get me killed only slightly slower than if I yelled at those people on the bus to run for their lives. "Here's your souvenir, bucko." I slapped the tongue against his chest. "Maybe you should've tasted my Auphe half instead of my human one." With that, I took my place on the bus and settled into the front seat as Fenrik slid behind the wheel. Wiping brownish black blood on my jeans, I then spread my hands and shrugged as pale blue eyes gave me a disapproving glare. I knew Fenrik couldn't have cared less about the revenant. I could've popped off the head and used it for a bowling ball and the wolf wouldn't have blinked. What he did care about was the homeless catching a glimpse of the moment and panicking. Of course, thanks to my infallible lack of luck, none of them had.

As my newly detongued pal climbed on after me, I opened my jacket to flash him a peek of my shiny new gun and raised an eyebrow. He bared rodent incisors at me, but kept trudging toward the back with bowed shoulders. He'd gotten off lightly and he knew it. The tongue would eventually regenerate; revenants could regrow almost any body part given the opportunity. He'd be running his mouth again in no time, and if that wasn't proof there was no justice in this world, I didn't know what was. I closed my jacket as the doors shut and the bus lurched into gear. As I stared blindly out of the fogged window, my mind raced in tight circles. I could all but feel the bruises as it bounced off the inner confines of my thick skull. Thick and useless. Come on, Nik, I thought grimly. If you're going to get these people out of this, there's no time like the present. And if you can't, I'll have to try, because George would never want this, could never be a part of it. And possible lack of soul aside, I couldn't be a part of it either. The fact that I'd probably die futilely without saving a one of them was just my misfortune, because I'd have to try.

The gears shifted again, diesel fumes belched into the air, and we rumbled our way down to hell, hitching a ride on the back of my good intentions. The buildings crawled by and I closed my eyes to them, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. I won't let it come to that, I promised George… and myself. This can't happen. It just can't.

And then suddenly, the tortured scream of metal came as the bus shuddered and yawed sideways like a drunken elephant. My head smacked against the window frame, giving me an instant headache, but I ignored it and jumped to my feet. Hanging on to the back of the seat, I managed to stay up as the floor rocked beneath me. There were cries of shock and surprise around me, and one worse-for-wear set of dentures went flying through the air to clip Fenrik behind one ear. He snarled but kept fighting with the large steering wheel, attempting to keep the white whale from tipping over. He was successful, just barely, until we careened to a jolting halt up against the curb.

For a moment it seemed like we would stay upright; then we went over. All the windows on the downside of the bus shattered at the impact, spraying glass upward. It was tempered and the one piece that grazed my jaw barely scratched the skin. There was no way to keep my feet as the bus tumbled over, but my natural grace, such as it was, kept me from falling face-first. Ass first was a different story. I looped an arm around the metal pole by the door and swung around, landing on my back as the bus hit and teetered on its side before stabilizing there. I blinked, feeling the grit of pulverized glass through my jacket. Inhaling an experimental breath, I took inventory and discovered I was in one piece, more or less. Turning my head carefully, I looked through the cracked windshield and saw what had caused the wreck.

We'd been rammed… by a garbage truck. The front of it was barely in view, but the shape was unmistakable. The engines of the hulking green metal monster growled, although the driver's seat was empty. Abandoned, a hit-and-run, but I did see something. It was gone so fast I might have imagined it, if I hadn't known better. A flicker of dark blond hair disappearing fast through clogged traffic and around a corner, was all the clue I needed. Within minutes there would be the telltale sounds of sirens, police and ambulance, and getting these people back to Cerberus would be a hopeless cause. Just like Niko had planned, and one helluva plan it was, considering he'd come up with it on the spur of the moment. Sitting up gingerly, I reached over and shook Fenrik's shoulder. He hadn't been wearing his seat belt—naughty, naughty—and was crumpled and bleeding against the door beside me. "Fen, on your paws. It's time to cut our losses."

Blue eyes rolling toward me, the bloody face twitched as he threw off the shock of the collision. Growling low in his throat from either pain or confusion, he pushed up to his knees and started crawling back toward the emergency exit. Flay, who'd been several seats behind me, was already kicking the rear door open with both feet. I followed in Fenrik's wake as the men and women in the bus started to come to their senses. Some began to shout for help, while others simply moaned. None, however, seemed fatally injured, and that put them heads and shoulders above where they'd been five minutes ago. I kept crawling and within seconds tumbled out onto the street, shortly followed by Jaffer, Mishka, Lijah, and that nameless, tongueless decomposing piece of shit.

A crowd was beginning to form in the deadlocked traffic and I winnowed my way through it with several well-placed elbows. Leaving the scene of the accident—in any other city it might have raised some protests. Leaving the scene with the overly hairy, the white-eyed, and the disturbingly slimy of skin—you'd think that would trigger something. At least one "Holy shit." But there was nothing but murmurs and the occasional whistle at the sight of the overturned bus. I wasn't all that surprised. Over the years I'd learned that people saw what they wanted to see. And what they didn't want to see, they absolutely refused to. I'd be wishing for a little of that blissful ignorance when we faced Cerberus with this news. The displeasure was bound to be nice and visual, painted in bloody scarlet strokes. Yeah, the shit was sure to hit the fan, but like those people on the bus I was still in much better shape than I had been. But unlike them I knew it, and I knew something else they didn't.