Peter was down on one knee, looking around… curiously. Jose had grabbed Monica and thrown her to the floor, pitching his body over hers protectively and swearing in English and Spanish.
Ellen’s head turned, to where Adrienne sprawled backward a yard away from two great battling animal forms.
“Alive!” she heard the Shadowspawn woman say. “Alive, Dmitri!”
Ellen pulled the lead foil tube out of her obi, took a deep breath and whipped it down on Adrienne’s half-bare sandaled foot with all the strength of a forehand smash. The Shadowspawn doubled over with a-literally-inhuman screech as the hypodermic within slammed through bone and tendon, pumping its load of silver-solution and radioactive waste into her tissues.
“Hey, bitch, I’m not your bitch anymore!” Ellen shrieked, in an abandonment of rage. “And fuck your fancy lingerie and stupid sadistic head games! ”
Adrienne’s head came down, her teeth bared in a killing lunge. The flask of hot Honj?z?-shu sake in Ellen’s other hand splashed out and took her full in the eyes; she went over backward in a flailing heap, the barest instant before another of the heavy.338 bullets cracked through the space her head had occupied.
Adrian-smilodon’s forepaws gripped the flagstones and flung him upward despite the weight on his back, the taste of blood and pain in his mouth, the whirling in his head. He turned as it left him in a blur almost as fast as the double strike of his talons; flesh and hair ripped as one scored across the gorilla’s belly. It screamed and rolled backwards, wrenched a board loose from the table and took stance-kendo modified for the giant ape’s form. Behind it Adrienne shrieked in mingled pain and rage herself, sprattling in the confining silk lengths of her kimono.
“Adrian! ”
The voice cut through his rage, and he stopped the strike that would have disemboweled her.
“Adrian, the soldiers are coming. We have to go. I got the hypo into her. Go, go!”
Her weight landed on his back. He launched himself forward in the same instant, high above the gorilla’s strike. His foreclaws caught at the wooden beams of the shrine’s roof, then his hind-legs sank into the wood and launched him forward. Ellen clung desperately, and the night rushed by them.
Harvey Ledbetter let the sniper rifle drop on its bipod, patting it affectionately.
“Said I’d go for Hajime if you gave him up,” he chuckled softly.
“Didn’t say nothin’ to your little friend Michiko about not killing you next if I got the chance, did I?”
He rose and stepped through the camouflage screen and onto the edge of the steep almost-cliff. A ripple went down his spine, the Power speaking, and ancient human fear; a night-walker was coming.
The smilodon was staggering as it approached, and Ellen Tarnowski slipped to the ground, struggling out of the remnants of her kimono.
“Th-th-that was wild,” she wheezed, and then astonished him by grinning.
“You and Adrian may pull it off yet,” he said, as the great cat slipped past.
Adrian had a hand to his jaw as he walked out of the cave in his birth-body; the other held his Glock. His fatigue-clad form moved with a slight stiffness, three days of inaction telling even on one so fit.
“I still feel as if I have broken a tooth,” he said; then he looked at Ellen and smiled a long slow smile. “It feels good. You were magnificent, and I love you utterly!”
“Hey, the feeling’s mutual, Big Cat Guy-”
“Let’s go,” Harvey said. “Save the mushy stuff for later.”
“The rifle?” Adrian asked, all business.
“Leave it, too heavy. Monster Truck gun here will do; she’s my main squeeze anyway. The Hummer’s still two miles thataway and we ain’t clear yet. Vamoose!”
“This is the weapon,” the T?kairin retainer said.
“Yep,” Dale Shadowblade said, handling it gingerly.
Even with protective gloves the silver was painful, and the glyphs were a menace. Though not to a user who pointed it at a Shadowspawn with ill intent.
Crack.
The flash strobed through the night, a dazzling T-shape from the muzzle-brake and the muzzle itself. The bullet punched the T?kairin in the center of his black-clad body and hurled it backward in the wake of fragments of heart and lungs and spine, and Dale worked the bolt to chamber another.
Click. Click-click-click-click.
The assault rifles of Captain Bates’ squad misfired as one, all aimed at the second T?kairin.
“Pretty impressive Wreaking.” Dale nodded, grinning.
Crack.
This time he had the leisure for a head-shot, and the back of the other Shadowspawn’s head struck the rock wall of the cliff as the bullet peeenned off into the darkness.
Bates was sweating as Dale closed his eyes and concentrated.
“Don’t worry,” the Apache Shadowspawn said easily, wiping off the weapon before he set it down again. “Looks like those Brotherhood terrorists killed another couple were-Japs and made their escape. How fucking tragic. Still, we tried, hey?”
“Gun it, ol’ buddy,” Harvey said.
He grinned like a shark. Adrian’s smile matched his. Ellen looked between them with a slight frown.
“Sorry, Ellie,” Adrian said. “We were reliving old times.”
He put the heavy vehicle in gear and stamped on the gas pedal; the wheels spun, and they began to lurch faster and faster down the rough forest track.
“Ah… don’t you need the headlights?” she asked.
“No, in fact,” Adrian said.
He could still feel the lance of pain in his upper jaw, where the equivalent of the sabertooth’s canine was. His laugh was joyous nonetheless.
“Next stop, Amalfi.”
“Yeah,” Harvey said, as Ellen smiled back at him. “And then, Tiflis.”
EPILOGUE
Adrian sat in the deep stone windowsill, barefoot and naked to the waist in his loose cotton pants, a cigarette in the hand that rested on his raised right knee. Ellen leaned back against the pillows and the headboard of the bed, watching his face as he looked down from the alberghetto towards the Mediterranean, squinting a little into the setting sun. The summer day was cooling towards evening, and there was a slight smell of lemon from the grove around the inn; more distantly the town-scents, and underneath it all pine and sea.
I could look at him forever, she thought.
He turned his head and looked at her. “And how are you feeling, Mrs. Br?z??”
She writhed deliberately in the tumbled sheets. “Sore. Tired. Otherwise fine. You go back to your deep thoughts. You look prettier than Rodin’s Thinker in that position anyway.”
“I was not thinking… just enjoying being alive. It is not a sensation I had much of, until we met.”
Sleep came easily; there was plenty of time for a nap before they wandered down into the city for dinner. Her eyelids drooped.
Hallo, ch?rie, a voice said, and gold-flecked eyes looked at her. Have you missed me?
Ellen darted upright, gasping, feeling the sweat sheen on her face. It was darker, and the last of Adrian’s cigarette made a red coal-star in the night as he turned.
“Ellie?” he said.
She put her hand to her head as the images slid away into a confused jumble. “I-I think I had a bad dream. About… you know. I… it’s gone.”
