Shadows

CHAPTER 13

I LOOKED DOWN (NOW THAT I KNEW WHERE DOWN was again). There, of course, was my algebra book, although it was half-buried in . . . “What?” I said. Whatever it was, it looked a little like the compost heap in Mom’s garden and a little like the remains of a fire in a ’tronic factory. “Ex-chains,” I said, kneeling to pick up my algebra book. “Really ex.”

“Really ex,” agreed Val, standing up cautiously.

I looked at my book. I had only used three pages, but better than two-thirds of it was gone. The covers were still there, still saying Enhanced Algebra in big stupid letters, and there were some pages left inside, but not many. Val was right: we weren’t leaving the way I had come in.

Val knelt beside Paolo, who hadn’t stirred. “Do you have a torch?”

I set my algebra book down on a clean part of the floor and wiggled out of my knapsack, fending Mongo away from helpless-person-lying-on-floor-meant-to-be-licked while I fished for my flashlight. Val finished taking Paolo’s pulse and then gently peeled his eyelids back one after the other and shone the light in them, gave the flashlight back to me, and ran his hands lightly over Paolo’s skull. Then he rolled him over tenderly in what I recognized as the recovery position from the yearly-once-you-reach-high-school required first-aid class. I’d only ever done any of this stuff on my classmates and even with them cooperating wrestling someone else’s body into any position was difficult. I wondered if there had been a lot of unconscious people in Val’s life in Orzaskan since it didn’t seem to faze him at all. “I guess he hit his head when he fell,” said Val. “But what I can easily check is all normal.” I went around to the chair behind the desk. There was a cushion on the seat, and a jacket over the back of it.

Val slid the cushion under Paolo’s head and I knelt to put the jacket over him. One of the things they taught us in first aid is that unconscious people can sometimes hear you. I awkwardly patted Paolo’s shoulder and said, “It’s me, Maggie. I’m sorry you hurt your head. I hope you’re okay.” I looked up at the wall opposite the desk. There was no trace of the gateway my little origami figure had opened.

Then Val and Takahiro and I turned toward the door. “We can’t just leave,” I said, and Val laughed. “Indeed, I doubt it,” he said.

“No,” I said, glaring at him. “Not like that. Well, worse,” I added reluctantly. “We also have to rescue Arnie.”

“Arnie?”

“Jill’s mom’s partner. He owns Porter’s—the hardware store.”

“Ironmongery,” said Val thoughtfully. “He is here too?”

“Well,” I said uncomfortably. “I hope so. You were.”

“Ah,” said Val. He put his hand on the doorknob. I held my breath. He turned it.

The door opened. I let my breath out.

Hix was around my neck again, but the rest of the gruuaa skittered out in front of us, turned right, and raced down the corridor like some bizarre tide. The corridor was only dimly lit and the gruuaa might almost have been black water, their leading edge ragged like it was pouring over pebbles, and occasionally splashing up the walls like they were piers. Val, Takahiro the wolf and I followed, me holding Mongo’s collar with one hand and my much thinner algebra book (it still wouldn’t fit in my knapsack) in the other arm. We passed two doors on one side and one on the other, but the gruuaa were still on the trail, so we followed. At last they piled up in front of a fourth door.

We stopped too. “I will go first,” said Val quietly.

“You will not,” I said, annoyed. “The minute anyone sees you, they’ll know something has gone wrong.”

“I feel that a seventeen-year-old girl in torn and bloody jeans will be just as easily recognized as not a standard member of staff,” said Val.

The army probably wasn’t into denim blood chic, no. I let go of Mongo and put my hand on the door and threw it open, planning to do some kind of heroic first thing, but Takahiro beat me to it: he was through the door in a flash. There was a kind of grunt like the noise you make when the breath is knocked out of you and a sort of strangled scream, and someone, probably the screamer, said, “Gods’ holy engines. Gods’ exploding holy engines.”

I was through the door too before they’d finished saying it—a hundred-and-sixty-pound wolf is pretty worrying close up, and I didn’t want anyone doing anything radical. But Val nearly dislocated my shoulder when he grabbed me and jerked me back behind him—and Mongo got between most of our legs and we both almost fell down. Someone laughed.

“Arnie,” I said.

“Babe,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

It hadn’t been Arnie who screamed. He was the one who’d laughed. There was another man at another desk against another grey cement wall. This one was conscious, however. Conscious and standing up with his hands above his head like we were holding a gun on him. Sometimes I’m too dumb to live. I blurted out, “You’re the one with the gun.” I could see it on his belt, with a weeny little strap holding it in its holster.

“Oh, man,” he said. “I am so not going to shoot anyone.” But to my horror—and Val’s hands tightened, and Takahiro growled—the man lowered one hand and started fumbling with the strap. I hadn’t seen Taks crouch for the spring but I grabbed him anyway—Val’s hands on my shoulders meant I couldn’t reach very far, but I let go Mongo’s collar again and grabbed Taks’ tail and then I did see him stop crouching . . . at about the same moment as the man behind the desk got his gun free and laid it clumsily on the desk. It skidded a little way and stopped, barrel pointing back toward the man, who had both hands over his head again.

“All I wanted was a job,” said the man despairingly. He didn’t look much older than me. “And there aren’t many jobs around here, you know? And Paolo told me to try out for Watchguard, silverbugs are no big deal, and you spend most of your time walking little old ladies home anyway. Then there were all those silverbugs last summer, and suddenly we had the military crawling over us. . . . They’re reopening this place, Goat Creek, you know? They aren’t talking about it, but everyone knows they’re doing it.”

Not everyone, I thought. Bugsuck.

“I had two hours’ training about use of a sidearm, okay? It was between how to step on a silverbug and how to fill out a form that you’ve stepped on a silverbug. I didn’t join Watchguard to shoot people. I joined to walk little old ladies home.”

“Aren’t your arms getting tired?” I said.

He lowered them. “You’ll tell your wolf not to eat me, okay?” he said. “That is a wolf, isn’t it?”

“Er,” I said. “Yes.”

He nodded. “You ever been to that wolf rescue place, far side of West Turbine?”

Of course I had. It’s got critters. After Clare ended up with a bobcat I wanted her to diversify into wolves too.

“I tried to get a job there but they didn’t need anybody. Your wolf is really huge. I’ve never seen such a huge one. Hey,” he said. Mongo was doing his big-friendly-eyes-wagging-tail thing. Mongo wagged his tail harder, went down on his belly, and began to creep in the man’s direction. I could have called him back, but I didn’t. When Mongo got close enough the man sat down suddenly on the floor and Mongo, immediately ecstatic, sat up, and the man put his arms around him and buried his face in his fur. You so don’t do that with a strange dog, but Mongo’s tail had gone into blur mode and he had found a piece of the man to lick.

Val walked the few steps to the desk slowly but the man didn’t move. Val picked up the gun, clicked something, and a lot of bullets fell out into his hand. I wondered some more about what Val’s life had been like in Orzaskan.

This time I didn’t even have to open my algebra book: there was a page sticking out between the covers. I slid it the rest of the way out, set the book down, and started folding. The gruuaa came to help, pitter-patting over my hands, brushing against my face, and, I guess, billowing out into a quivering—I don’t know, maybe like the curtain at the back of the stage, only wigglier.

“Whoa,” said Arnie. “What is that? The shadows?”

“Gruuaa,” I said briefly.

“Of course,” said Arnie. “I knew that.”

Val gave a little snort of laughter. “They’re Oldworld creatures,” he said.

There was a tiny pause and Arnie said, “You’ll be Val.”

“Be quiet,” I said. “Please.”

This one went much faster, and the headache wasn’t nearly as bad. It was kind of funny in a not-ha-ha way that lock-picking gave me a worse headache than interdimensional travel. I held up another long spiky thing with a lot of legs and—this time—really almost managed not to think, What if it doesn’t work?, slapped it on the lock between Arnie’s wrists and—I hadn’t heard Val come up behind me, but he grabbed me again when I sagged. The sag wasn’t as bad this time either. And then Arnie was free, and there was more weird crumbly stuff on the ground that had been chains.

“Oh, wow,” said the man with his arms still around Mongo, but he had lifted his face and was watching us. “Oh, wow.”

“We must leave,” said Val, as if we’d dropped by for a cup of coffee. “What do you want to do?”

“Run away,” said the man immediately. “I suppose they’ll sue me or court-martial me or something. You couldn’t tie me up, could you? So it doesn’t look so much like . . . at least take the dreeping gun, will you?”

Arnie stood up and stretched. “Thanks, babe,” he said. “I didn’t know you were one of us.”

“Us?” I said.

“Honey, there are so many of us,” he said. “But I’ve never seen anyone do what you just did.”

“Us?” I said again.

“Why do you think I run a hardware store?” Arnie said. “It’s a good way to confuse the sweeps. You don’t think it’s all about cobeys, do you?”

“I—” I said. “Well, I did. But—hardware? I—er—I mean, the last few days, um, animals—”

“Yeah,” said Arnie. “Animals are good too. It kind of depends on what kind you are. Clare’s one of us. I should have guessed you were, since you’re there all the time.”

“I wasn’t one,” I said a little wildly. “Till about three days ago.” Years. Centuries. Eons.

“Poor babe,” he said. “It’s rough when you find out like that. Happened to me about your age too. My mom had tried to tell me it was going to, but I didn’t want to hear. But I’m the cold-iron end. Handling a lot of it every day also means I don’t blow up fancy technology so much, which is kind of a dead giveaway. You still don’t want me using your ’tronics.”

“Maybe I could come with you,” said the man sitting on the floor with his arms around my dog. Mongo had finished with one side of his face and was now working hard on the other side.

“If you’re a friend of Paolo’s,” I said, “you could see how he’s doing. He—er—fainted.”

“Oh, man, Paolo,” said the man. “Paolo’s like my best friend. Even if Watchguard was his idea. I walk his dog sometimes. I babysit his kids.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Jamal,” said the man. “Where’s Paolo?”

“We’ll show you,” I said. “We—er—we have to go out that way. I guess.”

“Good luck,” said Jamal. “If you can blow stuff up, the ’tronics for all the barrier stuff to get out of here are in the front office, on your way out.” He stood up, to Mongo’s sorrow. Mongo settled for nibbling delicately on his fingers. I was ready to intervene but apparently Jamal knew (crazy herding) dogs well enough to realize this was a sign of affection.

“Thanks,” I said.

“The office may be empty,” said Jamal. “There’s some kind of whiztizz out front. Bill just told me him and Benny were going to go take a look. You guys weren’t supposed to be here at all”—he nodded at Arnie and Val—“but there’ve been like three more cobeys open up on the deep line and they haven’t got the humanpower to cover everything. So they were blasting on with opening Goat Creek up because this was going to be the big central whatever, and they were sending in some kind of shielded truck to take you away but it got sent to one of the cobeys instead.” He shrugged.

I looked at him. He looked nervously back at me. “I know you had your hands over your head and everything,” I said. “I don’t think you were exactly bluffing. But why aren’t you more afraid of us? And why are you telling us how to get out?”

Jamal’s eyes slid away from mine. “Oh . . . well,” he said. “My mom . . .”

Arnie laughed. “I told you, babe. There are so many of us.”

I heard myself saying, “If there are so many of—if there are so many, why are only you and Val here?”

“Huh,” he said, and opened the door. Takahiro tactfully retreated behind me and Jamal went out first. “I’m worried about Clare,” Arnie said. “But most of us are pretty half-volt. Little ’uns. Not me, although I’m stiff as a seized brake. Not your stepdad. Not you. Not you either, whoever you are,” he added, looking at Takahiro.

We all followed Jamal out the door, including Mongo and the gruuaa flood, I for one feeling bewildered and rather silly. The corridor was still grey and empty. “There,” I said as we went past the room where Paolo was, and Jamal opened the door and went softly in. “Oh, man,” he said.

“I’ll lock you in, shall I?” said Val.

“Oh yeah, thanks,” said Jamal’s voice from behind the door.

Val’s hand lingered on the knob before he closed it. “If you need to get out,” he said, “the charm will break from your side.”

“Thanks,” said Jamal’s voice.

We went on. The gruuaa were still rolling on in front of us but as we went farther down the corridor it was like they were hitting some kind of shoal, and getting humped back toward us.

The corridor suddenly widened, and the ceiling got a lot farther away. From feeling like we were walking into an ambush I felt like we’d just walked out onto the open battlefield and the guys with the cannon and the air-to-rescue-party missiles would blow us away in a minute.

We were maybe all breathing a little hard as we approached a big open door on the left. The corridor was badly lit all along its length, but there was a lot of bright flickering light shining out through that door. It didn’t look friendly. Well, it wasn’t likely to be friendly, was it?

“Wait here,” said Arnie. “Let me scope it out. And I’ll leave Jamal’s gun under someone’s desk.”

I began to notice that there was some kind of confused noise going on—I thought outside the building. Some kind of whizztizz, Jamal had said. Maybe Jill and Casimir and the gruuaa had found a way to make my non-plan work after all. We were about twenty feet from the end of the corridor, which was barricaded by a gigantic pair of double doors, like they sometimes used this end of the corridor as a garage for their cobey-unit trucks. But I was mostly thinking about Jill and Casimir and Bella and Jonesie and the others. The sick feeling in my stomach, which had mostly gone away while we were talking to Jamal, was coming back, and had brought friends. Uggh.

The light flickered in a different pattern. There were some pinging and popping noises and the double doors cracked open. Not enough to let me squeeze out, let alone Val or Arnie, who was Val-width and a good head taller.

But the crack let the noise rush in. There was crashing like an army getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there was shouting like an army getting mad about getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there were revving engine noises like army trucks having trouble bashing their way through a lot of undergrowth—and there was one voice shouting all by itself like whoever it was was really mad at someone else for doing something stupid—like maybe getting locked out of their own compound?

And there was barking.

There was Bella’s deep bay, and Bella was not a barker. I’d heard her bark maybe once before—but the noise a wolfhound makes is pretty memorable. There was Jonesie’s no-nonsense not-completely-ex-fighting-dog bark and then Dov’s mess-with-me-at-your-peril warning bark. No, I thought. Don’t do it. Those guys have guns. The gruuaa can’t protect you from bullets. My sick feeling was getting a lot worse.

Val said, “Wait here,” and followed Arnie through the office door.

Mongo and Taks and I went to the front door and peered out cautiously. It was strangely hard to breathe; it was like there was a giant hand pressing against my chest. I had my own hand on Mongo’s collar. I wasn’t sure what the gruuaa who had been with us were doing; in the weak shifting light I couldn’t tell them from the real shadows. Maybe they were swirling out to join their friends in the field. I tried to look for the gruuaa-network thing that I’d hoped Jill and Casimir could use—but that had been when we’d been assuming the army guys we had to deal with were inside the buildings, not outside. It was just supposed to look weird. It wasn’t supposed to have to stop anybody.

Yes. There it was. It was all mixed up in the undergrowth that the army guys were having trouble with. And I was pretty sure there were more gruuaa weaving themselves into it now—the ones that had been with us, presumably. Somehow my stomach didn’t feel any better.

I jumped back as the doors jerked open a little farther, dragging Mongo with me. I was just thinking, It’s dark out there, and the corridor lights are really showing up that the door is opening—when the corridor lights went out. Then there was the mother and father of all BANGS and the office lights went out too—but at the same time an alarm went off, WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP, the loudest thing you ever heard, and a bunch of emergency lights burst on outside as the front doors ground slowly about three-quarters open.

We could get out. But so could the bad guys get in. Or see us trying to get out. And there were a lot of bad guys out there. There was certainly something going on besides picking up two prisoners. I could see three trucks branded with the cobey logo from where I had flattened myself against the corridor wall.

I couldn’t hear anything through the alarm, but I could see the two guys with rifles running toward us.

Then three things happened simultaneously. The guys with rifles stopped like they’d run into a wall of something like extra-strength plastic wrap—invisible in the murky twilight and slightly springy—and I found that I was breathing and blinking and moving more easily.

Not quite invisible. As I stared at it I could see spiky, too-many-leggy, wiggly, faintly sparkling shadows. But there were new . . . strands, like skinny wires, that the leggy-wiggly things seemed to be winding themselves into. Were these what Arnie and Val were doing in the office? I didn’t think the gruuaa alone would have that rubbery strength.

I took a deep breath . . .

. . . As a familiar furry shadow that turned mahogany-brown under the emergency lights leaped out from somewhere, raced toward us, and . . . sat down in the middle of the doorway between the three-quarters-open doors.

Majid stuck out a hind leg, examined it carefully, and began to wash.

The lights and siren began doing complicated dropping-out things. The alarm would miss a WOOP and then a light would go out. Then that light would come back on and another light would go out. The alarm would WOOP twice and miss again. Under other circumstances it might have been kind of interesting. Or it might just have made you crazy.

WOOP. Flash. Dazzle. WOOP.

It was hard to see through the plastic wrap. Everything looked kind of swimmy, like looking into a scummy pond. It was pretty manic back there though. In the silences I began to hear voices: “That’s—”

“—and all the dogs—”

“—monsters—”

“—damn cat—”

“—shelter—”

“Of course I’m gods’-engines sure!”

Jonesie gave one last sharp bark and subsided—I hoped that meant some human had told him to shut up. And that that meant that the critters and the humans—our critters and our humans—were okay and together. Except, of course, for the one enjoying the spotlight while he went on with his left hind leg.

Majid glanced back at me, as if he knew I was thinking about him. He did that a lot at the shelter. You’d think, Now what we particularly don’t need right now is Majid—and there he’d be. The shadows around him in the doorway moved. Some of them were gruuaa. Majid turned his attention to his right hind leg.

Val and Arnie were using him for some kind of focus. Now I could feel sharp little splinters of whatever-it-was glancing off him, sliding toward me.

If you didn’t know Majid, you might think he was only a cat.

Only a cat would have run away.

I hoped Casimir and Jill and the dogs were running away as hard as they could.

WOOP. BANG. WOOP. I thought they sounded like they were getting tired—the woops and bangs. Like when we got out of here—when—maybe the army guys wouldn’t be able to turn them back on again.

I’d’ve almost said that Majid was having trouble holding his leg up at that angle. A perfectly normal cat-washing-leg angle.

There were at least three different voices. Maybe four or five. I could hear them through the plastic wrap.

“—evil spirit!”

“Get real, it’s a cat. An unholy big cat.”

“—twice?”

“We don’t have evil spirits. This is Newworld, you moron.”

“Then what about those shadowy things? The ones that aren’t dogs.”

“They are dogs. They’re just—”

“—cobey. The rules change with a big one. You know there’s a fourth one over at—”

“—a fifth at Nofield—”

“Yeah, it’s why we’re so short-handed. Why they’re sending everyone who’s left here. But it’s still only—”

“—not. Where are Paolo and Jamal?”

“Five—when’s the last time we had five?”

“—this unit twenty years, never—”

“My dad said that Genecor didn’t get everyone—”

The plastic wrap caved so suddenly the guys with rifles all staggered forward. I could see the quality of the light change as whatever it was fell apart. The road seemed to have disappeared; there were saplings down all over the place, and brush—and three big army trucks parked at funny angles. But there were seven or eight guys with rifles now, facing us. No, ten. And one of them was shivering, and his eyes were so wide and crazy I could see them from where I was, hiding in the shadow behind the door.

The siren stopped.

About half the lights went out. Not the ones on the open doors. Not the ones shining on Majid.

I thought I saw a lot of shadows, spilled on the ground, racing outward. Some flung themselves into the suddenly flimsy-looking heaps of brush and scrub. Some of them shot off to the right, as if following someone. Some of them joggled and slithered back toward Majid and the door.

“—evil spirit if you like.” This was the shouting, authoritative voice I’d heard first. “I don’t dreeping care. We need to get back in there since Paolo and Jamal are too dumb to live. So go ahead and shoot it if it makes you happy. Or anything else you see. It’s just a couple of illegal magicians. We’d be doing ourselves a favor. If they’ve got out, then they’re dangerous, you know?”

What?

Several more riflemen came trotting forward. They were lined up now like a firing squad.

No way out.

The crazy guy’s rifle came down and pointed at Majid and the doors the fastest. . . .

But werewolf reflexes are a lot faster than human ones. Takahiro had already bounded forward and was in midair over Majid’s head, his silver-white fur shining like the moon in the lights, when several rifles fired. I should have dropped to the floor, but I’m not used to being shot at. I watched in horror as several bullets missed and caromed with tiny evil screaming noises against the corridor walls behind me—and then our Hounds of the Baskervilles unit burst out of somewhere and knocked several of the riflemen over. I’d never seen Bella snarl before. Jonesie bit someone and threw him down like a dog toy. It took me a minute to realize that they were draped with gruuaa—and that the soldiers couldn’t see them properly. Monsters. Shadowy things that weren’t dogs. I could barely see dark brown Dov, but I saw where he’d been when more soldiers behind the riflemen fell down, yelling and kicking. More confusion.

More bullets wheeeeeeeed gruesomely past me, and a few thudded into the walls—but at least two of them struck.

Not Majid. Not me. Takahiro. Majid bushed out his fur till he was as big as Dov and ran—and Val and Arnie picked me up, one under each armpit, and ran like fury. The Baskerville unit turned and flung themselves back into the fray—Mongo was beside me—no—he turned back—Mongo! But I saw—I thought I saw Mongo ram Takahiro as the next volley came past. That volley missed.

But there were too many of them, and some of them were looking at us. More riflemen were lining up. I just saw Takahiro stop and rear up on his hind legs, the blood pouring down his neck and chest, his eyes more dazzling-bright than the emergency lights, more beautiful than a dragon or a unicorn out of a fairy tale. I swear he got bigger and bigger till he was as tall as a tree, and his shining curved fangs were as long as swords, and then Val and Arnie were dragging me through grass and little saplings, and I realized I was hoarse with screaming Takahiro’s name.

We stumbled into Jill and Casimir—and the rest of the dogs. Jonesie was the last of the dogs to rejoin us: in the light there was something dark on his teeth—it might have been blood. Blood. So much blood. His white fur red-black with blood. When Arnie dropped my other arm, I felt Mongo’s head thrust itself under that hand, but I was still screaming. Val wrapped his arms around me and shoved my head down on his shoulder. “Listen to me,” he said into my ear. “Takahiro is a werewolf. He is not dead. He is not dead. He has covered for us long enough to let us run away. You must run, Maggie. Don’t waste what he’s done for us.”

Another shot rang out. I heard it slice through one of the little trees near us.

I screamed again because I couldn’t help it, but I also nodded, and Val let me go, and we ran, or anyway we stumbled. Val had taken my knapsack. Val and Arnie seemed to know which way we were going. There were still shots shrieking past us, but I almost didn’t notice. I followed Val blindly—he looked back for me every step or two, and sometimes I felt his hand under my arm again, but all I could see or think about was the blood on Takahiro’s chest. So much blood. So much blood . . . Vaguely I knew the story that ordinary bullets couldn’t kill a werewolf—Val should know, he knew real werewolves. Or would he have said that just to make me keep going? If Taks wasn’t dead, why wasn’t he catching up with us? We weren’t going that fast—there was a little part of my brain that wasn’t thinking about Takahiro, but about the bullets, the bullets that were still chasing us, faster than a werewolf, much faster than I could run, half-paralyzed with shock. . . . Even if the bullets didn’t kill him, they must hurt. So much blood . . .

Sssssss whump. Whump.

I don’t know how long we kept going till we stopped for a rest. I didn’t think I’d heard any bullets in a while. Jill was now the one hanging back with me, putting her hand under my arm when I staggered. I was exhausted, but Taks . . . where was Takahiro?

I’d dropped my algebra book when they shot Takahiro. It had saved my life and rescued Val and Arnie and I’d left it behind.

It hadn’t rescued Takahiro.

I think we didn’t exactly stop. I think I fell to my knees and couldn’t go any farther, and everyone else stopped too. I heard Val and Arnie talking in low voices: “. . . puzzled them for a while; I can make nav ’tronic go wrong easy as breathing, and your gruuaa are still on the job.”

“We’re still leaving a trail of magic the gruuaa can’t begin to abolish, nor the six dogs either and one large cat, and when Takahiro rejoins us it will be much, much worse.”

When Takahiro rejoins us. I took a deep breath.

“Takes an awful lot of critters to damp me, even when I haven’t just been taking out army headquarters,” said Arnie. “Not much we can do about it. Keep going. I can carry Mags a while. She’s not all that much bigger than when I used to give her and Jill piggyback rides.”

I wanted to protest this but I was too tired. Jill was crouched beside me with her arm around me. I think she was pretending we weren’t listening. I hadn’t noticed my face was wet with tears. I thought it had been that way for a while. Mongo was lying next to me with his head in my lap, worrying, wanting something to do to make me feel better. I took his head in my hands. “Mongo, my love,” I said. “If you ever, ever felt like taking the initiative in your life, now is the time. We need all the critters we can get.”

I stood up and took the Dog Commanding Posture. Mongo sat up eagerly. “Away,” I said, and threw my arm out in the go-get-those-balky-alpacas-at-the-bottom-of-their-field-now gesture. The one that said, and don’t let them give you any nonsense either. Alpacas are notorious for giving herding dogs nonsense.

Mongo disappeared. I looked at Jill. Jill looked at me and gave me a tiny worried smile.

We joined the others. “I can walk a while longer,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little tired.”

“You have every right to be extremely tired,” said Val. “But we must keep moving.”

“You start folding up, babe, you let me know,” said Arnie. “I bet I remember how to give a good piggyback ride.”

It was only a minute or two later when the first rabbit dashed across our path. Bella turned into a blur and snatched it out of the air, and brought it to me, unhurt, kicking like sixteen pistons, and obviously terrified out of its mind. I looked around for Val. “Say yalarinda orfuy la and then put your hand on its head,” he said.

“Uh—yar,” I said.

“Yalarinda orfuy la.”

I got it the second time. Bella was the most patient of dogs, but I didn’t want to try her too far. Reluctantly I reached out to touch the frantic bunny. It went limp. I took it from Bella. Its little heart was going five hundred beats a minute, but its ears were relaxed and it snuggled up against me like I was its favorite littermate. Fleas, I thought. “Good girrrrrrl,” I said. Bella was too dignified for mad tail-wagging, but she flattened her ears briefly. She caught the second rabbit too, and the third. We were up to five rabbits—Athena caught one of them, and we put the other three Baskervilles back on lead (Casimir having amazingly tucked the leads in his knapsack) rather to their disgust, but nothing was going to escape Jonesie’s jaws still breathing, and I didn’t know about the other two.

There was a pause after the fifth rabbit, and then the first sheep came hurtling through. Val shouted something—it was yalarinda again with something else—and then there was a second sheep, and a third.

And a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. At about that point I lost count.

“I can’t hold them long,” said Val, sounding pretty strained. “It’s not much more than a conjurer’s trick, what I’m doing. And I haven’t time to teach Maggie to contain something so large.”

“Where are they coming from?” said Arnie, sounding kind of amazed. “Are you calling them?”

“No,” said Val. “It’s Mongo, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, with a lump in my throat for my very fabulous dog. “I told him to—to herd what he could find toward me.”

Casimir said, “A mgdaga is resourceful, and has good friends.”

About six more sheep went streaming past us in a mob, but this time there was a black and white shadow racing parallel on their flank. He managed to turn them, but rather than dodging past us as you’d expect they plunged into the middle of us, possibly because there were a dozen or so sheep there already. Uproar. Between Val and Mongo nobody got knocked over, although I thought Jonesie was going to have a heart attack. You could see him thinking, I’d have order in ten seconds. Try me.

If I’d been a real shepherd, I would have been telling my heroic dog what to do now, but I didn’t have the faintest idea. He dropped in behind us, creeping along in classic style, as if he’d been watching the Teach Your Dog Herding videos with me—which he had, of course, but I hadn’t realized he’d been paying attention. Also, sheep-herding usually happens in a field in daylight, with sheep that know the drill, and this was patchy scrubland in the dark, with sheep that probably hadn’t seen a dog or a shepherd in a couple of generations.

When a sheep began to drift off to one side or another Mongo was on the job instantly. There was one especially large, especially raggedy one that didn’t like its present circumstances at all, despite Val’s conjurer’s trick, and kept trying to make a bolt for it. Mongo wasn’t having any of that, and I was afraid if I tried to tell him to let that one go we’d lose the rest of them—Mongo and I hadn’t practiced much but the basic bring them over there to here and stop.

Val managed to comb a handful of the rebel sheep’s wool loose with his fingers, trotting along beside it as it tried to get away from him. It stopped and stamped at Mongo, but Mongo eeled around behind it and it shot forward and bumped into another sheep. Baaaa, said the bumped-into sheep. Jill and Bella and Athena were now walking along one side of our weird herd, and Casimir with Jonesie, Dov and Eld on leads were on the other side. Arnie was leading, with four sleeping bunnies down his shirt: two in front and two behind. I doubted the shirt would recover. I was carrying the fifth, wrapped up in the hem of my Mongo-stretched T-shirt.

Val and I were bringing up the rear, Val so he could keep an eye on the sheep. I kept looking over my shoulder. I might have been looking for Mongo, but Mongo was more often to one side than behind us. I was looking for Takahiro.

Val was spinning the wool out roughly between his fingers in a long sort of whorl, longer, longer, longer, and then looping it around in a big circle. I could hear him muttering, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought there were some extra gruuaa draped over him—to the extent that I could see them in this light I thought most of them were clustered around Arnie. Val seemed to get what he wanted, and trotted after the devil sheep again—which was now trying to barge its way through the middle of the herd, like someone trying to jump the line. Val worked his way up beside it, pulled his loop over its head and let it fall around its neck.

It stopped barging. It dropped slowly to the back of the herd—Val was now walking with me at the rear again—and looked around, rather like someone who’s gone into a room and can’t remember why. It gave a forlorn little baaa, turned around, saw Val . . . and trotted happily toward him, clearly baaaing, Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you!

It sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. “I am sorry, you ugly creature,” he said. “I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.”

If it hadn’t been for Takahiro, I would have laughed.

There were no more bullets, no wicked little singing hums, and no sense of being followed.

And no Takahiro.

We walked on and on and on and on. I don’t know when Jill and Bella and Athena dropped back again to walk with me, and Val (and the devil sheep) went up ahead to walk with Arnie. The sheep (and Jonesie) had settled down, and Mongo was still on watch, and Casimir still had the other three dogs on leads. I don’t remember when or who told me that Val or Arnie or all the rest of them had decided that we couldn’t stop till we got past the fence around the Goat Creek camp, that while, thanks to Mongo, we weren’t leaving a blazing neon trail that said THIS WAY any more—and that thanks to Majid and the gruuaa Arnie thought they’d shut down most of the Goat Creek base’s ’tronics—Val and Arnie thought they could probably hide us long enough to get some sleep outside the compound, but not inside. I staggered on, thinking about Takahiro. I wanted to lie down and never move again. How many more times had they shot him as we ran away? Maybe bullets couldn’t kill a werewolf the way they could a human, but enough bullets would slow him down enough for them to . . .

Old stuff I hadn’t thought about in ages—stuff I hadn’t known I remembered—about Taks kept prodding me, sharply, like being stuck with pins. I remembered offering him a bite of my peanut butter sandwich—I’m not sure when, but it was pretty soon after I gave him the crane. He’d never had peanut butter before, and at first he thought I was playing a practical joke on him. (His mom had been pretty traditional. Lots of rice and tofu and adzuki beans.) But then I’d thought my first taste of wasabi was a really mean practical joke, although Taks had warned me to take only the littlest bit of little and a really big mouthful of rice. . . .

I remembered him and Jeremy and Gianni deciding when they were fourteen that Sworddaughter, everyone’s favorite TV series when we were all eleven and twelve, was only for babies who couldn’t see how old and pathetic it was. I’d been mad at him for months after that. I remembered him telling me that hating Mr. Denham was dumb—I had just failed another pre-algebra quiz. That’s because I’m dumb! I screamed at him, and ran away before he saw me burst into tears, because then I’d have to hate him too. I remembered winning first place in the summer reading challenge, the summer between ninth and tenth grades, and he was the only one of the people I thought were my friends who didn’t congratulate me, because he was in one of his moods. I’d been really proud of that award. I’d read twenty-three books over that summer, including some really long ones, like David Copperfield (good) and Anna Karenina (what a bunch of dead batteries).

I remembered him sitting at the table in our kitchen, wearing Val’s bathrobe and following me with his eyes.

I remembered kissing him. . . .

I was crying again. I seemed to be crying all the time. We’d been walking forever. I’d been crying forever. My head and my bones had ached forever.

Taks, where are you? You’d have caught up with us if you could.

A couple of times we paused for a handful each of chocolate and peanuts and a swallow of water. I didn’t know where any of it came from: maybe Val had made them out of mushrooms and dead leaves, like Cinderella’s godmother raids the vegetable patch for transportation. I love chocolate, but this chocolate tasted of nothing. I didn’t think anything would ever taste of anything again if Takahiro didn’t come back.

The fence, finally. It looked like any old stupid mean fence: plain chain link with a roll of barbed wire at the top. Not like the fence I’d stood staring at, clutching my algebra book, when Takahiro had kissed the top of my head, said, “Ganbatte,” and pretended to go with Jill and Casimir. A million years ago.

“I don’t suppose any of you thought to bring wire cutters?” said Arnie. Jill, Casimir, and I all shook our heads. Casimir was carrying my knapsack now: he’d managed to tie mine down over his somehow. It was the sort of plain practical thing I could never do, like I couldn’t do algebra. Casimir still moved like a panther too, even in the middle of the night on bad ground with army riflemen behind us, and a big lumpy heavy awkward bundle of knapsacks on his back.

I felt as if I was still carrying my knapsack, and it was full of bricks. I missed my algebra book.

I missed Takahiro worse.

“Hey,” said Arnie. “You still got those bullets?”

Val pulled them out of his pocket and held them out.

Arnie picked one up and looked at it. “You think you’re rusty, son,” he said to Val. “This may be gonna rain on the Fifth of July.” He closed his hands over it and blew, like you do before you roll dice, to make them lucky for you. Then he threw it at the fence, picked up the next bullet, blew, threw, picked up the next. . . . The bullets shone like bumblebees with the sun on them, black-and-gold-striped, even though it was full dark, and there were stars overhead and only a quarter moon. They buzzed rather like bumblebees too, and when they struck the fence, the wire they struck turned all gold. Arnie threw bullets till Val’s hand was empty, and when he was done there was a big almost-rectangle, about the size of a bedroom window, gleaming gold. He rubbed his hands on his pants and then stepped forward, hooked his fingers through some of the gold-edged holes, and pulled.

The whole golden panel fell out. “Ouch,” he said, and dropped it. “Hot.” It sizzled as it landed, and then turned black, like chain link that has been in a fire. He put his foot on the bottom edge of the hole in the fence and shoved it down a bit more so we could climb through easily. Val was moving among the sheep, touching them one after another, murmuring words . . . and they were trotting away. Mongo pressed up against me, watching. I curled my fingers through his collar, to make sure he understood that this was okay. The little broken cog that still hung there rubbed against my skin. It was good to be normal when you could. But sometimes you couldn’t afford normal. “You’re wonderful,” I said to him. I remembered him shoving Takahiro out of the way of one of the bullet storms. But Takahiro still hadn’t caught up with us.

Arnie knelt, and peeled up his shirt . . . and four sleepy bunnies tumbled out, thought about it a moment, righted themselves, and hopped away. Jill, who had taken bunny duty over from me, set down the fifth, and it hopped after the others. Mongo, visibly tired for perhaps the first time in his entire life, sat down with a gigantic sigh, his tongue hanging out. I meant to sit down, but I pretty much fell, and Mongo immediately curled up against me, and I put my arms around him. “The best dog in the universe,” I said, and he licked my face. (Mongo would never be too tired to lick someone’s face.) I wondered how Jamal and Paolo were.

I wondered where Takahiro was.

I woke up enough to climb through the fence—completely cold now, although the edges of the hole were crumbly, like burned string—and then Arnie was carrying me piggyback after all. Somebody’s belt was holding me loosely against him while he held my legs. I wanted to tell him to put me down, but I was too tired. I kept seeing a shining silver wolf with blood rivering down his body. “Taks,” I murmured. “Takahiro.”

“Hey, hon,” said Arnie. “Just a little farther.”

He let me down gently, finally, with my head on my knapsack as a pillow. Some pillow. I had pulled myself up on my elbows to see if there was something I could do about the fact that apparently someone had filled up my harmless knapsack with blunt knives and old broken bits of storm drain when Jill knelt beside me with a wet plastic bottle. “We only had one bottle of water,” she said. “This is Goat Creek, but the guys say it’s safe to drink.” I drank most of it, not having been aware of being thirsty. It made me aware that I was hungry, but I didn’t care. Nobody died of hunger on the first day anyway.

Takahiro . . .

I wasn’t going to be able to sleep with my head on pieces of broken drain. But here was Mongo, settling down against my chest, and someone else—Athena—at my back. I could hear everyone else making themselves as comfortable as they could.

Takahiro . . .

But I was warm now. And I was so tired even the jagged chunks of whatever weren’t going to keep me awake.

I don’t know how long I had slept when I sensed something looming over me. I didn’t have time to be frightened, because Mongo was awake, and I felt his tail thumping, and heard his little moan of welcome. Athena gave a squeak of surprise or courtesy, got up, and lay down again next to Mongo. And then something huge and warm and furry was lying down behind me. A head bent over me, and a tongue about the size of our kitchen table licked my face. I threw myself over on my other side to face him. “Takahiro.”

As I turned around I felt something falling over, away from the leg it had been leaning against. I sat up long enough to reach down and pick up my algebra book. I had a crick in my neck already that was so painful my head would probably never stand properly upright on the end of my neck again. The algebra book couldn’t possibly make it any worse. I put it under my knobbly knapsack and lay down again, facing Takahiro. Mongo laid his head in the little soft place between my last rib and my pelvis, and I wrapped an arm around as much of Taks’ ruff as I could reach. Sleeping with my boyfriend, I thought, and almost laughed. We’d only kissed for the first time yesterday.