through his brain. Pain ripped into his left shoulder, accompanied by rank animal smell and guttural growling. Rough fur rasped his left ear.
Tom got palms on smooth concrete and thrust upward hard. Although whatever the hell was gnawing on him weighed as much as a big man, Tom’s superhuman strength snapped him upright. Reaching back with his right hand he grabbed a handful of coarse fur and muscle like wound steel wire. The jaws clamping his trapezius slackened. The beast squealed as Tom dug fingers in.
He found himself holding a huge black wolf by the scruff like a naughty puppy. It twisted in his grip, snarling, trying to bite. Bloody drool trailed from its jaws. Shreds of Tom’s muscle dangled from its teeth.
“ Fuck you.” Turning quickly, he flung the wolf up and away with all his ace strength. The creature shot up and hit one of the metal braces that made up the pyramidal roof. It howled as head and hindquarters shattered the tough glass-laminate panels on either side of the strut. Limp, the beast plummeted. What hit the floor with a sodden thump was a naked dude.
“Garou!” he heard somebody shout.
“I fucking hate shape-shifters,” Tom said.
SPHP types hustled screaming attendees out the door. Others aimed guns at him. He took flight and laughed as they ripped each other with full-auto bursts. A couple went down. Another staggered backward, screaming into the mouth of a leopard that was biting his face and raking his guts out onto his Armani shoes with black hind legs.
The Radical torched a couple more pigs, then touched down as their buddies booked. Even brave men weren’t eager to tangle with somebody who could fly, toss you like a Frisbee, and set your ass on fire. He swiveled his head, searching chaos for Noel. The sneaky little shit needed badly to be burning.
Bullets flew overhead. A woman screamed in agony, and flames splashed across a stone pillar.
The long drape of the tablecloth hid them. But there was an itch between Noel’s shoulder blades. The flatware and the mahogany table were not going to stop one of Tom Weathers’s plasma blasts.
And indeed a second table, about three feet to their right, blew to pieces. A long splinter flew into Siraj’s leg. The prince shrieked, grabbed his calf. His hands turned red as blood pumped between his fingers.
There was no time for first aid. The room reeked of smoke and blood. Noel was nearly deafened. The screams and shouts that filled the room seemed to be coming through cotton batting. Noel needed Lilith. Needed her now.
He put the fear in a little box and set it aside. He did the same with his thoughts of Niobe. Noel concentrated, and felt his body begin to shift. Then the table was flung over revealing them like bugs under a rock. China, crystal, and flatware ware clattered all around them.
It was one of the Leopard Men, grinning, enjoying the moment. The closest thing to hand was a fish fork. Noel snatched it up, rolled, and came to his feet. Only inches separated them. Noel could feel the man’s breath, warm and liquor-laden, on his face. He drove the small fork deep into the man’s eye, and gave it one final slap that left it lodged in his cerebral cortex.
Never gloat, he thought… and heeding his own advice he finished the transition to Lilith, grabbed the writhing Prince Siraj, and got the hell out of Paris.
The woman with Prince Siraj was pale as ice, with raven hair cascading down her back. Her eyes were silver. Lilith. Hot sweaty nights in Africa flashed through Tom’s memory.
All the time I was fucking her, she was fucking me. Well, now I’m going to fuck her up. Payback’s a bitch, bitch.
But no sooner had he seen her than she was gone, and Siraj with her. Tom roared and loosed a sunburst at the place where they’d been standing. The heat bubbled paint on the walls and made the lights explode. Connections clicked in place in his mind: The golden-eyed man-the silver-eyed woman-they’re both Matthews!
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” a voice said in a German accent you could spread mustard on.
Lohengrin. Tom whirled, and showed him teeth.
And suddenly the big guy was encased in plate armor that glowed a soft white. On his arm a shield, in his hand a broadsword, on his breastplate the Grail. A winged helmet covered his entire head.
“If it isn’t Heinrich Himmler’s wet dream,” said Tom. “Well, you’re broiled bratwurst now.” He raised his hand and gave the German a blast of flame. It hit the shining shield. And splashed.
Even Tom’s faster-than-normal speed wasn’t enough to get him fully clear of the whistling sword stroke as Lohengrin stepped forward. He winced as the glowing blade laid his left cheek open, and came back with a full- power palm-heel shot to the middle of the shield.
The knight flew back, bowling over aces, nat security, and Leopard Men in human and leopard form. Lohengrin hit a wall. The wall lost. He slumped down from a sort of vertical crater. Tom saw a leopard snatched off the floor and into the air by what looked suspiciously like a long, pink tongue. Fucking Buford, he thought. Then something erupted through the floor right beneath his feet, knocking him up and over. He hit hard on his ass, jarring his whole spine. A dark form hovered over Tom. Burrowing Owl. Those were wings, outspread now, though they didn’t flap. The Belgian ace folded them and dove helmet-first at Tom.
Tom rolled right. A grinding whine rattled his teeth in their sockets. Tiny cement bits stung his face. He threw up an arm to protect his eyes. When he dropped it the flying man had vanished. He’d left a hole drilled right into the dark cement of the Louvre entry floor. “How the hell did he do that?”
Lohengrin answered with his longsword. Tom rolled right. The blade bit into the cement for half its three-foot length. Tom rolled back, swinging his right foot across him in a fierce crescent kick. He caught the blade’s flat. He expected the blade to snap. Instead it ripped a big divot out of the cement as it snapped from the knight’s gauntleted hand. Then it vanished.
Neither surprised Tom enough to put him back. But the glowing fist-sized spiked ball whistling down toward his face did. He threw up an arm, managed to block the morningstar’s stubby handle. It didn’t stop the ball on its chain. It whipped around and slammed into the side of Tom’s head, just behind his left eye.
Once more superhuman reflexes saved him; he yanked his head sideways far enough to keep from having a spike driven into his brain. But the ghost steel bit painfully into his temple. He felt his left cheekbone break, shoot pain back through his brain like white lightning, tasted blood as a spike pierced his cheek.
Tom kicked. His sole caught the spectral tasset that protected the top of Lohengrin’s right thigh. The knight’s feet shot out from under him. His faceplate shattered cement beneath him as the morningstar disappeared.
Head pounding, Tom jumped to his feet. Lohengrin popped up just as quickly. A spike-backed battle-ax appeared in his hand. “Shit, where do you get those?” Tom asked, and loosed a sunbeam. It struck the center of Lohengrin’s breastplate. It seemed to shatter into a hundred backscatter shafts of blinding light. Tom heard screams as bystanders got scorched.
He launched an overhead right at Lohengrin. If he didn’t knock the knight into something hard enough to jelly his bones, he’d at least stun the fuck enough to finish him. But the German learned fast. Rather than blocking with his shield he swung it up like a tailgate. Its edge jammed painfully into Tom’s biceps, jamming the punch midflight. Its freight-train momentum still blasted Lohengrin back, skidding across the floor with a shriek of ghost-steel digging furrows in concrete. But he caught Tom a glancing shot under the arm with his ax.
Tom gasped and dropped to one knee. The blow had either busted several ribs or chopped them right through. And Lohengrin had kept both his feet and his grip on his weapon. His ice-blue eyes glaring over the top of his shield from behind narrow eye slits, he charged.
But Tom learned quick, too. He flung his left palm up toward the ghost steel-masked face. Lohengrin read the threat within the gesture. He tried to throw himself aside. He was almost fast enough to defeat Tom’s movement. But not faster than light. The sunbeam clipped the left side of the winged helmet, enveloping his eye slit. Tom saw hell-glare flare within.
When Lohengrin hit the floor and rolled onto his back he was once more a studly German dude in a suit, with arms outflung and the left side of his face a smoking mess.
Bugsy saw the room from ten thousand angles, each one of them moving, spinning, trying not to get killed. He’d lost too many wasps already. If too many more went down, he wouldn’t be able to re-form. Endgame. Over. Dead unless Cameo used some little tchotchke of his to haul him back out of the grave. He swirled around, going in for fast stings on the PPA Leopard Men, distracting the guys with just guns, and trying to stay clear of Tom Weathers.
