Delilah-I knew I didn’t know her inside out either. She was a different species. She was a killer, although she claimed not to kill humans because it wasn’t enough of a challenge. She was a career criminal and enjoyed it. But she also liked me, gifted me with pretty fucking amazing sex, and treated me as nothing particularly special. When those in the preternatural world who could tell what fathered you were either terrified of you or wanted to kill you, and then someone came along who treated you as just a guy, nothing out of the ordinary, it was… good. It was damn good.

I closed the cell after she disconnected wordlessly after my explanation. This though-this wasn’t good at all. If she was going to try to kill me, I wished she’d do it already. That I could handle. This sucked. This made me want to kill someone. Hell, this wasn’t a new feeling for me-just a new feeling for me with Delilah. And the feeling lasted well into the next moment, although it shifted to someone specific, because he was back.

The goddamn Plague of the World.

“The sun has fallen; the moon will soon be a cradle for newborn babes rocked to gentle sleep.”

He was sitting between Niko and Robin this time, up front, on the old bench seat. There was room enough for a hide-covered skeleton. I saw the line of the pointed jaw in the dark as the head turned to look from one side; then from the other; then the glimpse of a marbleized eye as Suyolak shifted his gaze back to Rafferty specifically. “But not all babes, my carnivorous friend, yes? Not all babes.”

There was more than Catcher’s snarl this time. There was his, his cousin’s, the yowl of Salome, and my own incoherent growl. If only I knew where he was, if only I’d seen it, I’d have traveled there in a heartbeat despite what Niko thought about gates. But I hadn’t, and I couldn’t go where I didn’t know the way. It didn’t stop me from lunging at the image, my hands passing through where his neck would’ve been under all those tangled hanks of hair. The bone-gleam of a grin was there and gone as he disappeared, popping out of existence like a soap bubble… like a magic trick. When you wanted to strangle someone, magic tricks weren’t what you wanted to see.

The snarling beside me continued, from human and wolf throats. I wasn’t the only one feeling frustrated. “Monogamy, the Plague, and killer babies,” Robin said blackly as Salome tried to crawl up the inside of his shirt. “This is officially the worst road trip in history.”

“It’s not your fault, Rafferty,” Niko said, ignoring the puck and addressing what needed to be said. That’s what he had always done for me. Now he did it for our ally. “It’s far easier to destroy than rebuild. There’s nothing you could’ve done and we know that. And Suyolak knows it as well. He’s pushing your buttons. Don’t let him.”

The healer snapped his mouth shut on the next snarl and turned to look out the window at passing lights… the night… or nothing. Any of those would’ve been better than looking at the inside of his own head. I could see that blood-splattered nursery in IMAX fucking vibrancy on the inside of mine, and I could’ve done without it. And I wasn’t the one whose specialty was doing something about things like that. I was more like Suyolak. Killing was about all I was good at; killing and being a smart-ass. Neither of those should’ve done any good in that baby’s room, but the only good Rafferty had been able to do was the same, which had to make him feel like utter shit.

He wasn’t alone. We had known there would be civilian deaths and accepted it. There was nothing else we could do about it and stopping to try to help would only make things worse and give Suyolak more power over us. We hadn’t gone faster because we had to meet up with Rafferty. There was nothing we could do and nothing we had done-not one damn thing. We all felt like shit.

And there was still nothing we could do… except this time go faster.

I was running. I loved to run. All my life, I’d loved it.

“Catcher, wake up.”

Through the grass and into the trees, under a sky bluer than those of the best hundred summer vacations combined.

Running and running, trying to catch something, but I didn’t know what. It felt like something already gone, but it didn’t keep me from chasing behind it. Running and running…

“Catcher, you’re having a dream.” A hand thumped my ribs and I jerked awake with a snap and a snarl. A familiar scent was there, but it was surrounded by thousands of unfamiliar ones-unfamiliar smells, things, and shapes. Where? Who? My panic peaked sharply… what was… who was…

It had happened before. It had. I closed my eyes against the confusion and the unknown. I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. Hard. Hard? Right before the word lost its meaning, before I lost meaning, it all came back. It felt like a muscle cramp that unbunches and finally loosens, but in my brain. I’d stood on the edge, but this time I hadn’t fallen.

My name is Catcher.

I hadn’t fallen. No, not this time-but lots of times before.

My name is Catcher, and I am fine. Just fine.

I exhaled harshly in a hacking morning cough that sprayed saliva, opened my eyes, and smacked Rafferty in the head with a saucer-sized paw. Then I yawned elaborately to show I was still tired. There was nothing wrong with me, so let me dream already.

He knew better. I wished I could’ve fooled him, but I couldn’t, not a healer and not my cousin. It wasn’t like the good old days when I’d once swiped his wallet and his keys, taken his Mustang, and traded it in for one of those Volkswagen Rabbits from the eighties. We looked enough alike that I could pass for his license photo when I signed over the pink slip. He’d given serious thought to killing me and did kick my butt Wolf-to-Wolf, but to see a Wolf driving around in a Rabbit, it was worth it. Was it ever worth it. Our local pack laughed its collective furry butt off at the sight for weeks.

I pulled more than a few good ones on him back then. I’d thought he was too serious. I’d thought it was my job to lighten him up, to show him what a ride life could be. It turned out I had. Only he’d been the one who was right. Life was serious and not a ride anyone could count on. You could get a bullet train rush of speed and an amusement park picture at the end with your hair on end or you could get a rickety wooden roller coaster that crumbled, spilling you into the river far below. There was no way you knew what you’d get when you bought the ticket. It was the luck of the draw.

“You’re moping. Stop moping and eat your damn fries.” Rafferty shoved a bag of fresh, hot, salty-as-the-sea fries under my nose and I brightened. Okay, maybe the ride wasn’t perfect and I was on the downhill slide into the end of it, but going up that roller coaster hill had been great. Family, friends, college, good movies, better food, lots of sex, and running under the skies of every season as human and wolf. I’d had a good life, and it still had high points: family, movies, my head out of the car window grinning in the wind, and fries. Who didn’t love fries? I stuck my muzzle in the white paper bag and went to work on about half a pound of them.

So I had a little hiccup of the brain this morning, and it was morning-after ten if McDonald’s was serving fries, which meant late morning but still morning. I could tell by the smell of the air, the color of the sky, the position of the sun when I peered out the window, and I could also read the digital clock of the bank across the street from where we were parked. I grinned to myself in satisfaction. Just a hiccup and I’d plenty of those. I was still here, all of me, and that’s what counted.

When I did go… if I did go, Rafferty had firmly amended before telling me with a reluctance he’d never shown any other of his patients, it would be one big hiccup. I’d go wolf in thought, as I had many times before, but that time… the last time, I’d never come back to Catcher again. No Flowers for Algernon for me. No gradual loss of intellect or changing bit by bit until my mind wasn’t mine anymore. No, the hiccups would get closer and closer together, as they had, and when it happened, it would be all at once. I’d never know I was going; never know I was gone. I tried to be philosophical about it. After all, chances were I’d be a happy wolf. I was a happy werewolf. I simply wouldn’t be me anymore-not the Catcher me, but a simpler version of me, maybe. I hoped.