Niko and I were in the lead, having just traded off with Delilah and Promise ten minutes ago. The four other wolves were strung out loosely behind their silver-haired Alpha, and Robin was pulling rear guard.

Six inches. I kept thinking it, but it bore repeating. I was so close to the revenant that I could see the poreless stretch of pallid skin stretched across bone. I could see that behind the thick coating of white that covered their eyes was a fine tracery of purple veins, the size of a stream of spider silk, and that the lips had no lines in them. Lastly, I saw that every tooth in every yellowed grin was flecked with dried blood like speckling on a quail's egg.

Such a short distance, and it let me see more detail than I wanted. It also let me jam the Glock in the belly of the revenant before me and blow his spine in half. Six inches … six miserable inches, it isn't the space you want between you and a hungry foe, but at least you don't have to aim. Unfortunately, the same was true for them. They passed over us in a wave. No specific attacks on individuals—tidal waves don't do that. They just take you the hell down. Drowning in the ocean's version of a sucker punch wouldn't be pleasant; drowning in tainted tunnel water and moistly putrid flesh wasn't any better.

I lost the flashlight. I lost the Glock too, but that was purposeful. I let it go and went for my blades. One was the serrated knife, a mercenary magazine special, and the other a kukri. Niko had shown me how to be effective with the minimachete. Now I was ready to give the same lesson to a revenant or ten. I came up from the water, the thrashing bodies, and ripped through everything solid around me. Everyone in our temporary quasi team was experienced enough to give everyone else their room. Personal space, it's yours—kill at will.

It wasn't easy getting back up to air—air to breathe, air to slash metal through. It was a process of clawing and stabbing and biting. If you wanted to give a label to something that already had the perfect one: Survive. Process. Method. Survival. When I surged upward, I was spitting out something other than water. They weren't dead, they weren't decomposing, but damned if they didn't taste as if they were.

I kept both hands in motion, doing my best to clear the area around me. The serrated knife took out one throat; the kukri did the same but with a cleaner slice. All around was…what? The dimmest flickering of illumination from flashlights dropped underwater, a horde of white-eyed zombie wannabes, five giant wolves leaping and sending shredded intestines spilling through the air, a soaked and bloody puck and human with sword and axe, a vampire ripping an entire head from a revenant's shoulders. What did you call that?

Hell. You called it hell, because chaos was far too pretty a word.

And where the fuck was our boggle?

"Travelers."

Once again, they said it as one. And, I was sorry to note, that with repetition, it did not get any less freaky. It was still wrong and unnatural, even for a revenant.

Delilah catapulted over my head as I dodged one revenant's rush and permanently ended another's ability to move at all. I recognized her as she was the only white wolf among the minipack. The silver-blond fur was a startling glow as she soared over. Her brother Flay managed about three-fourths wolf when he changed. He could run on all fours but could walk on two as well. Delilah, as far as I could see, went all the way. Wolf through and through and big as hell. When she landed, she did what Promise had done. She removed a head, but she did it using her jaws. And then she did another and another and another. The other wolves, one with the remains of a hooded sweatshirt still tangled around his neck, were cutting their own swath, and doing the job we paid them for. All except one. Whether he was a shade slower, slightly less agile, the reason didn't matter. What did was that he got caught. Several sharp-nailed hands managed to fasten on to him, and even more mouths bit through brownish fur to flesh and didn't let go.

When he disappeared under the water, he didn't come back up. I tried to make my way over in his direction and I saw Nik do the same. It was too late. The wolf was gone. Despite that, we were holding our own. We weren't kicking ass and taking names, but we were alive, most of us, and right now that was good enough for me.

Sawney had an entirely different idea of what was good, and he brought that idea with him. Carried it along as he slithered along the wall and up on the ceiling over our heads. The knotted hair hung down over the black emptiness of his face, but the amused red shimmer of his eyes gave away his mood easily.

"Heads up!" I called to the others.

"Traveler."

The word came from only Sawney this time with just the faintest echoing murmur from his choir. "Traveler with the frenzied taste. Madness and cream and butter."

"Cream and butter, my ass" I said flatly. Auphe and insanity, maybe that went as hand in hand as it did with Sawney, but I damn sure didn't want to hear about it. "You bastard."

Over the snarls of wolves, the splashing of water, and the thudding of metal chopping through flesh, he shouldn't have heard me. My voice didn't have the carrying properties his did and I hadn't shouted it, but it didn't matter. He heard.

"Yes, traveler, cream and butter." There was a tone of lazy contentment, as if he wasn't hungry at the moment, not for an entire meal, but a casual taste would be all right. He wouldn't be above that, not a connoisseur like him. Whether he would've tried for it or not, I didn't find out, as another connoisseur, one of gems and metal, finally showed up.

She came through the wall. Brittle tile shattered as concrete shook, shook again, cracked, and there she was in all her glory. And right then, that was a helluva lot of glory inmy eyes. Grace as well, no matter that she'd ended up in the wrong tunnel. She flowed through the large hole and up the wall, spiking her claws nearly half a foot deep through the tile to propel herself along with more speed than I would've thought possible for her bulk.

There are moments in life to savor and cherish, to keep and warmly recall at a later date. The flare of surprise in Sawney's scarlet eyes was one of them. Seeing that smug bastard caught off guard for once— yeah, it was the goods. It was the shit. The absolute shit.

I flipped a revenant over my shoulder, pinned it with a knee in its back, and started to take his head. It took some doing sawing underwater, even with the commando knife, but the ones whose throats I'd slashed were slowly staggering back up their feet. They weren't in prime fighting condition, but they were moving, they were in the way, and there was no time for that inconvenience. When, with water up to my collarbones, I jerked my attention up from the writhing revenant beneath me, I saw Boggle lunge and cover Sawney altogether. The shine of his scythe and crazy smile vanished under the ripple of scales and surging flesh.

Maybe we were going to luck out. Maybe it was going to be that easy. She would rip Sawney to pieces and we would bathe in a rain of his blood. Maybe I'd even catch a drop on my tongue like a snowflake. See what he tasted like.

Finally, I felt the spinal discs separate under my knife, and the parting of a remarkably tough spinal cord; then I was standing with my eyes still on the boggle. She was moving. The claws of her hands and feet were embedded in the ceiling, keeping her aloft, but her head was whipping back and forth. The movement was too quick for me to see him in her mouth, but I knew he was there. The only thing that would've made this any better was if the boggle had been wearing the pearl and diamond tiara that had been included in Promise's payment. That would've been the cherry on the goddamn sundae.