a deep breath and get some perspective here. You're my friend, you're under the influence, and I'm trying to help you.'
'Harry?' Molly called out, her voice higher-pitched than ever. 'Acid doesn't eat through concrete, right?'
I blinked at the trapdoor and screamed in frustration, 'Hell's bells, what are you doing down there?!'
Kirby took another pace forward, wolf eyes bright, jaws slavering, head held low and ready for a fight. Behind him, Andi was watching the whole thing with a wide-eyed look that mixed terror, lust, excitement, and rage in equal parts, her impressive chest heaving. Her hands and lower arms had already begun to slowly change, sprouting curling russet fur, her nails lengthening into dark claws. Her eyes traveled to me and her mouth dropped open, revealing fangs that were already beginning to grow.
Super. In a fight against Kirby, I was worried about him not surviving. Against Kirby and Andi, in these quarters, it would be me who was running against long odds.
But I try to be an optimist: At least things weren't going to get any worse.
Above and behind me, a window broke.
A length of lead pipe, maybe a foot long, capped at both ends with plastic, landed on a rug five feet away from me. Cheap, Mardi Gras- style beads were wrapped around it.
A lit fuse sparked and fizzed at one end of the pipe.
It was maybe half an inch away from vanishing into the cap.
'But this is my day off!' I howled.
I know things looked bad. But I honestly think I could have handled it if Mister hadn't picked that exact moment to leap down from his perch and go streaking across the room, acting upon some feline imperative unknown and unknowable to mere mortals.
Kirby, already on the edge of a feral frenzy, did what any canine would do-he let out a snarl and gave immediate chase.
Mouse let out a sudden bellow of rage-for crying out loud, he hadn't gotten that worked up over me being in danger-and launched himself after Kirby. Andi, upon seeing Mouse in pursuit of her fellow werewolf, shifted entirely to her own wolf shape and flung herself after Mouse.
Mister rocketed around my tiny apartment, with several hundred pounds of furious canine in pursuit. Kirby bounded over and around furniture almost as nimbly as Mister. Mouse didn't bother with nimble. He simply plowed through whatever was in the way, smashing my coffee table and one easy chair, knocking over another bookcase, and churning the throw rugs on the floor into hummocks of fabric and fiber.
I leapt for the pipe bomb and picked it up, only to have my legs scythed out from beneath me by Kirby as he went by. Mouse accidently slammed a paw bearing his full weight down onto me as he rumbled past in pursuit, and got me right where the damn dog always gets a man. There was none of that delayed-reaction component to the pain, either. My testicles began reporting the damage instantly, loudly, and in nauseating intensity.
I had no time for pain. I lunged for the pipe bomb and nearly wet my pants as another explosion shook the floor-only this one was followed an instant later by an absolute flood of bright green smoke that billowed up from the lab.
I grabbed the pipe bomb and tried to pluck out the fuse, but it vanished into the cap and beyond the reach of my fingers. In a panic, I scrabbled across the floor to the door and ripped it open with terrified strength. I hauled back to throw the thing out and-
There was a sharp burst of sound.
My hand exploded into pins and needles.
I fell limply to the floor, my head falling in such a way as to bring my gaze over to where my hand had been clutching the pipe bomb a few seconds before and-
And I was still holding it now, unharmed. Heavy jets of scarlet and purple smoke were billowing wildly from both ends of the pipe, scented heavily with a familiar odor.
Smoke bombs.
The freaking thing had been loaded with something remarkably similar to Fourth of July smoke bombs, the kind kids play with. Bemused, I tugged one plastic cap off, and several little expended canisters fell out along with a note: The next time you interfere with me, more than smoke will interfere with you.
More than smoke will interfere with you?
Who talks like that?
Mouse roared, snapping my focus back to the here and now, as he pounced onto Kirby's back, smashing the werewolf to the floor by dint of sheer mass. Mister, sensing his opening, shot out the front door with a yowl of disapproval and vanished into the outdoors, seeking a safer environment, like maybe traffic.
Andi leapt onto Mouse's back, fangs ripping, but my dog held fast to Kirby-buying me a couple of precious seconds. I seized a bit of chalk from the basket by the door and, choking on smoke, ran in a circle around the embattled trio, drawing a line of chalk on the concrete floor. Then I willed the circle closed, and the magical construct snapped into existence, a silent and invisible field of energy that, among other things, completely severed the connection between the psychic parasites in the Nevernever and the werewolves whaling on my dog.
The fight stopped abruptly. Kirby and Andi both blinked their eyes several times and hurriedly removed their fangs from Mouse's hide. A few seconds later, they shimmered and resumed their human forms.
'Don't move!' I snapped at them, infuriated to no end. 'Any of you! Don't break the circle or you'll go nuts again! Sit! Stay!'
That last was for Mouse.
Mostly.
I couldn't see what Molly had done to my lab, but the fumes down there were cloying and obviously dangerous. I hauled myself over to the trapdoor.
Molly hadn't made it up the folding staircase and just lay sprawled semiconscious against it. I had to grab her and haul her up the stairs. She was undressed from the waist up. I spotted her shirt and bra on the floor near the worktable, both of them riddled with acid-burned holes.
I got her laid out on her back, elevated her feet on a stray cushion from the smashed easy chair, and checked her breathing. It didn't take long, because she wasn't, though she did still have a faint pulse. I started rescue breathing for her-which is a lot more demanding than people think. Especially when the air is still thick with the smell of God only knows what chemical combinations.
I finally got her to cough, and my racing heartbeat subsided a little as she began breathing again, raggedly, and opened her eyes.
I sat up slowly, breathing hard, and found Anastasia Luccio standing in the open doorway to my apartment, her arms folded over her chest, one eyebrow arched.
Anastasia was a pretty girl-not glamorously lovely, but believably, genuinely pleasant to look at, with a fantastic smile and killer dimples. She looked like someone in her twenties, for reasons too complex to go into right now, but she was an older woman. A much older woman.
And there I was, apparently sitting up from kissing a topless girl, with a naked couple a few feet away, and the air thick with a pall of smoke and the smell of noxious fumes. For crying out loud, my apartment looked like the set of some kind of bizarre porno.
'Um,' I said, and swallowed. 'This isn't what it might appear to be.'
Anastasia just stared at me. I knew it had been a long time since she'd opened up to anyone. It might not take much to make her close herself off again.
She shook her head, very slowly, and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes deepened along with her dimples. Then she burst out into a hearty belly laugh. 'Madre di Dio, Harry. I cannot for the life of me imagine what it does appear to be.'
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. 'You aren't upset?'
'By the time you get to be my age,' she replied, 'you've either worked out your insecurities, or they're there to stay. Besides, I simply must know how this happened.'
I shook my head and then smiled at her. 'I… My friends needed help.'
She looked back and forth between the Alphas and Molly. 'And still do,' she said, nodding sharply. She came in and, as the only one actually wearing shoes, began picking up pieces of fallen glass from the broken window, literally rolling up her sleeves as she went. 'Shall we?' IT TOOK MOST of the day to get Molly to the hospital, gather the materials needed to fumigate Kirby's and Andi's auras, and actually perform the work to get the job
