I threw my hands straight up—and to be honest, a little bit of my lunch—while Will knocked the stunned gun girl off him, did some sort of barrel roll, and pinned her. He yanked the gun out of her hand and shoved it in his back waistband.
“Let’s none of us try to kill each other for about thirty seconds, okay?”
The woman writhed underneath Will, but she slowly stilled.
“What do you want?” she spat.
I pulled the ziplock bag of bullets out of my pocket and rushed over, shaking it in front of her. “We’re looking for the person who made these.”
Her eyes sliced down to the bag and then held mine. “You’ll have to let me up. I can’t get a look at them.”
Will looked at me and then at her. “How do I know you’re not going to try to kill us again?”
“You have the gun. How do I know you’re not going to try to kill me?”
Will handed me the gun. “Go put this up.” And then, to her, “I’m going to let you up now. We just want some answers. No trouble.”
“Are you Xian?” I asked.
“No.” The woman rose up on her elbows. “You already met Xian, out there. I’m her sister, Feng. Why do you want to know about these bullets?”
“Do you recognize them?” I pushed the bag into Feng’s hand.
“Maybe.”
I sighed. “Look, we’re not cops. We’re not after you or looking to cause any trouble. Someone shot at me with these bullets. They shot at me and my friends.”
“So?”
I took the bag back and pushed one of the bullets out. “So these are silver bullets. Silver bullets are only used to kill very specific things.”
Feng said nothing, but everything was held in her stare.
“They kill werewolves,” I said.
Feng’s eyebrows rose. “Who did you say you were, again?”
Will helped Feng up.
“I’m Sophie, and this is Will. We’ve ... we’ve been having some problems, and we need to know where someone would get bullets like these.”
Feng cocked her head, seemingly not understanding. “Why did you come here? To me?”
I glanced around the dismal cave of a workshop and determined that the likelihood of Feng placing an ad in the
“Dixon Andrade.” It wasn’t a complete lie.
Feng shook her head. “Dixon, huh?” But she seemed pacified and almost smiled. “Okay. So what do you want?”
“Do you know where to get the bullets?”
Feng sat down, kicked her booted feet up, and popped a handful of nuts into her mouth. “I know who makes them.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “You do?”
Feng smiled. “Yeah. Me.” She opened the toolbox on the table and plucked out a silver bullet and set it on the table next to the one I brought in. She examined mine from all sides; then sat back, satisfied. “I made this one in the spring.”
“How do you know?”
“Is it some sort of Underworldy voodoo thing?” Will wanted to know.
Feng looked confused, then spun the bullet. A tiny Chinese symbol was carved on the blunt end. “All of our bullets are marked with a seasonal sign.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment for an instrument of death,” Will said, smiling nervously.
“
“It’s kind of a family business.”
I felt like someone had let all the air out of the room.
Feng’s cheery smile swirled in front of my eyes. Will slid a chair underneath me, just as my legs went wobbly.
“You’re werewolf hunters?” I asked breathlessly.
Feng beamed with something that looked shockingly like pride.
“There’s barely a dog left in the city, thanks to my family.” Feng gestured to the large, painted family crest behind her. The surname
On a daily basis the Underworld Detection Agency processed at least a dozen vampires coming or going, a good handful of zombies (more, lately), plus a smattering of all other matter of demon. But werewolves were rare.
Now I knew why.
“My family has been here for over a hundred years. We were sent to America—San Francisco, particularly—to deal with hordes of dogs out here.”
“Werewolves,” I said, meaning to correct her; but Feng just nodded, as if I was asking just to make sure.
“We’ve been tracking and hunting for thousands of years.”
“And the bullets?”
“They’re specific to what we do.” Feng tapped the bullet. “The silver cuts through the fur and pierces the flesh—the only thing that will. Our bullets explode inside and launch an elephant-sized amount of tranquilizing poison. The dog just lies there until they bleed out.”
I was horrified, completely forgetting to hide it, until Will came up behind me and began massaging my clenched shoulders. He nuzzled my hair; his lips brushing my ear.
“Stay calm,” he whispered. And then, to Feng, “She’s just a bit jumpy, this one. Doesn’t like anything with fur. Had to toss her UGG boots in the rubbish bin. That was a terrible Christmas, wasn’t it, love?”
“So, do you have a werewolf problem?” Feng wanted to know.
“No, actually it was just a curiosity.”
I swallowed down the bile that lodged in the back of my throat. “Do you sell the bullets?”
“Yeah. Not too often, though. Occasionally people get worked up and start buying if there are dog sightings. Or we get an onslaught of buyers anytime a werewolf movie or
“Can you tell us who bought this bullet?”
Feng’s lips turned down. “Look, I’m really not in the business of advertising my client list.”
“There’s a whole list?” My voice was a hoarse whisper, betraying my discomfort.
“So, do you want to buy or what?”
“Yes. Yes, of course we do.” Will’s voice sounded a million miles away as my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
I squinted in the sunlight when we left Feng’s lair. Will clutched a paper bag full of werewolf-killing bullets; I stumbled with a numbness which started in my feet and went up to every follicle on my head.
“They’re werewolf hunters, Will.”
He took my hand and pulled me across the street. “I know that, love.”
“Do you think they had something to do with Sampson?” I asked.
“One crisis at a time.” Will hailed a cab and stuffed me in it, sliding in behind me.
I let out something halfway between a chuckle and a gasp. “One crisis at a time.”
“And we aren’t even a step closer to solving this one.”
“Well, actually ...” I unbuttoned my sweater and slid out the rubber-banded, handwritten wad of receipts that I filched from Feng’s countertop while she showed Will her selection of bullets.
Will stiffened; surprise registering all over his body. “You stole them?”
“I don’t suppose I could get away with saying I’m borrowing them, huh? Besides, the woman choked me. She
