CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Atticus ran like a fox before the hounds. The chase went through the quiet treed lawns and stately old brick buildings of MIT's campus, and out onto its busy main street. He was used to dashing through cars and crowds—although usually running aftersomeone rather than from—but the principle was the same. The trick was making eye contact with drivers and other pedestrians and convincing them with a hard stare to keep the hell out of your way.

He'd just made the opposite side of the street when a bullet struck him high in the left shoulder. He stumbled and fell, the window above him shattering as a second bullet missed him. He hit the sidewalk in an explosion of pain that threatened to black him out. A bullet kissed the sidewalk beside his cheek and ricocheted off in a whine. Another tugged at him as it plowed through the leather of his jacket. He rolled and fumbled out his pistol. He hated to use a gun in an urban situation, but he had no choice.

He scrambled to his knees, braced himself, and aimed down on the shooter, who was nearly on top of him. His first bullet took the shooter square in the chest, sprawling the man backward onto the sidewalk with a meaty, lifeless thump. Recoil sent a shock of fresh pain through Atticus. Gritting his teeth, he aimed at the second man. His pistol kicked pain through him as he fired, the first bullet only grazing the man's shoulder. Unlike a normal human, the man—no, creature—didn't even flinch, coming straight at him as if pain and death didn't matter. Atticus squeezed off two more shots, nailing his attacker this time.

His SIG Sauer had a magazine of twelve bullets plus one in the chamber. As he lined up the axe man, he counted the bullets down. Nine. Eight. Seven.

Six bullets left, he thought as he lurched to his feet, ears ringing. Three down, but would they stay down? There were rats forming in the pooling blood from the first, and he sensed the body knitting together heart muscle at stunning speed.

The other two—Parity and the woman—were closing. He could wait and shoot them, but then what? He'd be out of bullets and the first man would be healed. He needed breathing room and more of a plan.

He ran east, along the busy street. Behind him he sensed the first dead man come to life and start after him.

A human Atticus could outrun, even if he was hurt. Wounded, against these creatures so like himself, he could sense the gap between them quickly closing. There was the Jag, though, parked close by; if he could get to it, he'd be home free.

Bullets whined past him, striking storefront windows, marking his trail with fractured flowers of destruction in the safety glass.

He was running past a red-trimmed building when a bullet caught him in the leg. He stumbled out of his full run, and the female Ontongard tackled him through a window. They dropped down a stairwell beyond. Atticus hit worn tile a story and a half below, the female on top of him, a smothering blanket of hate in human form.

They were on a subway station platform, and the handful of people waiting were startled by their sudden, violent appearance. An outbound train had just pulled in, its doors clattering open. From the dark tunnel of the inbound line came the ominous roar of an incoming train.

Not good.

The gunman and axe man he'd shot, the ones who should still be dead, dropped down to land lightly beside him.

Atticus lashed out at the woman, slamming her off him and coming up in sweeping kick to take out the axe man. He couldn't reach the gunman in time.

This is going to hurt.

Suddenly Rennie Shaw was between him and the gunman, wearing a black leather jacket with the picture of a snarling dog and the words "Dog Warrior." The gun thundered, booming in the enclosed space. The bullet punched through Shaw, exiting out of his back in a fist-sized hole. Blood splattered Atticus and crawled, gathering together into a tiny mote of snarling anger.

The female punched Atticus hard in his wounded shoulder, distracting him from the sentient blood. He caught her arm and broke it as he swung her into the axe man. Humans would have fumbled, but the two dodged each other with choreographed ease. The female grasped Atticus's arm, her bones already knitting, and held him as the axe man swung back his axe. Behind them the inbound train thundered into the station.

With a snarl, Hellena Gobeyn dropped from street level to the axe man's feet, picked him up, and flung him into the path of the oncoming train. The man vanished under the bright steel wheels with a bloom of blood scent. A moment later, rats swarmed out up out of the pit.

Another Ontongard and a wave of Dog Warriors rolled down the stairs, already locked in battle. The subway platform became a mass of snarling, struggling bodies.

The door-closing chime sounded on the outbound train and Atticus found himself suddenly hauled up and thrust into the subway train.

"Go!" Rennie Shaw barked, producing a sawed-off shotgun from under his duster like in a magic trick. He turned, firing at one of the Ontongard in a roar of sound and a cloud of gunsmoke.

Then the door closed and the train pulled away from the carnage.

Atticus grabbed a pole to keep from falling. His phone vibrated. He pulled it out to discover he'd missed two calls already.

"Steele."

"Where are you?" Ru cried through the phone. "Cambridge looks like a war zone! What the hell happened?"

"I'm on a subway train." Atticus turned to ask the other passengers the train's destination and found that they had crowded to either end of the car, as far away from him as they could. "Where are we going?"

"C-C-Central is the next station, "the nearest of the passengers stuttered, "then Harvard, and . . . oh, God, I don't remember."

"Porter, Davis, Alewife," someone behind Atticus said, but when he turned, he couldn't tell who. Everyone had big doe eyes of fear.

The train pulled into Central, and when the doors opened the passengers bolted, throwing frightened glances back to see if he was getting off too. He didn't have the heart to follow them; he couldn't stand them looking at him like he was a monster. The door-closing chime sounded. The doors closed and the train pulled out of the station.

"Atty?" Ru's voice pulled his attention back to the phone.

"I'm on a train going to Alewife." Atticus sighed and sat down in the now empty car. "Come get me there."

"Okay."

He hung up and sagged back in the seat. What the hell was that? Zheng had warned him, but with quiet, reasonable words. She had left out that they would recognize him from a distance and how profound their hate for the Pack ran. Why? Weren't they the same race? What the hell was that all about?

***

Usually Ru bandaging him up was a soothing activity, but Atticus found his mind racing over the last few days, the little scraps of information that he'd pieced into an imperfect patchwork quilt of knowledge. He was finding gaping holes in his knowledge. He wasn't even sure which theory to believe about himself: werewolf, angel, demon, or alien? Who did he trust to tell him the truth? Agent Zheng? The Pack?

"You know," he said to break the silence of his own thinking, "Batman was just a nutcase."

"Hmm?"

"No, here he was, stinking rich, huge house, no need to do any work at all, and what does he do? Get a wife? Adopt some needy kids whom he doesn't bend to his own vigilante lifestyle? No. He sulks around at night, breaking the law, ruining crime scenes, and destroying any chance of building a criminal suit against any of these lowlifes. No wonder the badly run insane asylum was full—by the time he stomped through a case, the only thing you could legally do with these criminals was commit them and then lose the paperwork."