"Come on; that's all bullshit. Urban legend."

"And the chicks," Animal went on, undeterred. "Prime babes. Not an ounce of fat on them, and that sexy wild-thing look. They only spread for Pack dogs."

If the conversation had sunk down to sex, then they weren't going to get more useful information—if you wanted to call the werewolf theory useful—out of the bikers.

"Let's do this." Atticus unslung the backpack and thumped it down on the table. "Show us the goods."

Animal reached under the table to pull out a black leather duffel bag. He unzipped it and lifted out resealable plastic bags, the contents shifting like invisible sand. Empty, the inside of the duffel bag glittered faintly from a dusting of the drug, meaning that the plastic bags were probably coated too. Atticus warned Ru off with a look and reluctantly examined the bags. The chiming in his ears had started the moment Animal opened the bag, releasing tainted air. As Atticus handled the bags, the chiming grew louder.

Ru unloaded the backpack, stacking up the bills. He gave Atticus one worried look and then kept his focus on the bikers. The bikers, in turn, thumbed through the stacks of twenties, examining the bills to see if they were real, and even checking for sequential numbers.

Animal produced a scale and they weighed out the bags. Normally Atticus would open the bags and check the contents—his system shrugged off most drugs—but there was no way he was going to do that now, not if he wanted to stay in control. As the drug burned through him, all his senses took on a sharpness,making irritating little cuts into his patience. It was like wading through sawgrass. He packed the plastic bags hurriedly into the backpack, trying to handle them as little as possible.

"We're going to want more," Ru said. "Double this. How soon can you get it?"

"More?" Animal looked to Daggit, who shrugged. "You'll have to give us a couple days."

"This is Monday. By Thursday?" Ru asked.

"Saturday," Daggit said.

"If the Pack are werewolves," Ru, seemingly causal, asked, "does it mean that pixies literally make this shit? Do you hold them upside down and shake hard?"

The bikers laughed, showing teeth yellow from cigarettes, filled with silver.

"Just about," Animal said. "The Temple are all fucking fairies."

Temple of New Reason? The religious cult that murdered Ukiah was their source? Suddenly Ukiah's hate of the drug became clear. The police reports, detailing out bodies being hacked apart with an axe and cremated, flashed into Atticus's all too perfect memory. He felt sudden dread; the bikers knew where Ukiah slept alone at the isolated beach house. "Did you talk to them after you left us?"

"That's none of your business," Daggit sneered. "The middleman stands in the middle, you don't go around him. Pack or not, you're not cutting us out."

Atticus lashed out, grabbed Daggit by the hair, and slammed his head face-first into the table. Everything littering the table leapt up, as if startled by the violence. The smell of blood blossomed into the room. "What did you tell them about us?"

Daggit tried to rise but Atticus kept him pinned, grinding his bleeding nose into the cigarette ashes. Daggit flailed for his pistol, and Atticus caught the hand by the wrist and jerked it up behind Daggit's back.

Ru snatched up the pistol and aimed it at Animal, who was starting to rise. "Easy, easy. Atty?"

It was more the awareness of Ru's exhale, the air warmed by his body and carrying his scent, than Ru's words that made Atticus realize it was the drug pushing him to act.

"What did you tell them?" Atticus managed a calmer tone.

"Fuck off!" Daggit cried. "I'm not telling you nothing about them."

"I didn't ask about them," Atticus said. "I want to know what you said about us! Now tell me, or I'll rip your arm off."

"Nothing! Not a goddamn thing."

Atticus could tell by the slight jump in the pulse under his fingertips that Daggit was lying. Clearly, though, he would have to pretend to believe him or beat the information out of him. He was already putting the whole setup at risk for what—a stranger he just met yesterday? A man who might be the coldest bastard on the planet?

Letting go of Daggit, he stepped back out of Daggit's reach as the big man surged to his feet. The room suddenly seemed claustrophobic, taken up by the angry biker, the seated Animal, and the table blocking the exit. There was some part of him, that punk kid he used to be, that wanted Daggit to come at him so he had an excuse to beat the snot out of him. An older, wiser self, nearly swamped under the drug's influence, knew that would be a bad thing. Guns were already in the mix, and Ru could easily be hurt.

"Daggit, he's Pack," Animal drawled, seemingly undisturbed by the violence or the gun that Ru held. "That's a losing hand. Just fold."

Daggit froze, hands clenched into massive fists, panting out breath tainted with beer, blood, and years of cigarette smoking. He glared at Atticus like he meant murder. Atticus stared back, ready and waiting to see how things played out. They stood statue-still for a minute, like samurai testing each other's will. Finally, Daggit wiped his bloody upper lip with the back of his hand and looked away.

Ru took it as a sign that danger was past. He thumbed the revolver's cylinder out and rejected the silver-tipped bullets; they rained onto the tabletop. "You don't want us to know about them. We don't want them to know about us. It seems fairly simple—mum's the word, all the way around."

Daggit grunted.

"We lost three men at Buffalo," Ru reminded Daggit as an explanation of Atticus's reaction. "You lost three too."

"Four." Daggit spat out blood and wiped his thumb over his lip. "No one's heard from Toback since; whoever hit the place took him."

"You sure he wasn't in on the hit?" Ru asked.

Daggit glanced to Animal and shook his head. "I don't know him that well. He's part of the Buffalo chapter."

"Big, stupid, and loyal as a dog," Animal said. "That was David Toback."

So the nomad Animal was the link between Buffalo and Boston.

"Did you tell the Temple about the Buffalo deal before it went down?" Atticus asked.

Animal thought a moment this time before shaking his head. "No. Core got really creepy in the spring, moving out to Buffalo and talking about the end of the world. Let's just say I don't drink around them—just in case they're in the middle of doing a Jonestown thing."

When members of the People's Temple staged a cult suicide with cyanide-laced grape Kool-Aid, not everyone had drunk willingly. It wasn't a good sign that the outlaw bikers—with their loose grip on normal—considered the Temple of New Reason unstable.

"So they're based in Buffalo now?" Atticus asked.

Animal eyed him warily and then shrugged. "They moved again. To Pennsylvania or Ohio. No forwarding address."

Ohio was where they killed Ukiah.

"When we do this again on Saturday, we're not doing it here," Atticus said firmly. "Do you know the Boston Harbor Hotel?"

"It's hard to miss," Animal said.

"Use the guest phone and ask for Steele. We'll meet you there Saturday, at eight o'clock."

Atticus slung the backpack over his shoulder, and they beat a hasty retreat then, the drugs weighing heavy on Atticus's back because of his hyperawareness of it.

Kyle started up the Explorer when they walked out of the bar and sat idling, waiting for them to reach the Jaguar.