Wolf and Raven

If As Beast You Don't Succeed
I

When you come right down to it, there's no easy way to tell the woman you intend to marry that you're a werewolf. If I'd been a hit-man for the mob or had worked clean-up for yakuza enforcers or had even been a poacher out in the Tir, I could have told her straight out. I would have taken Lynn's hand in mine and said, "Look, there's something you should know about me. I've done some bad things in my life, but that's all ended now."

That would have been easy. The confession, some tears, some hugging, some kissing, and an "I'll marry you, Wolf," would have all followed one after the other. Not that I'd gone this route before, but I knew it would have worked. Women seem to find honesty seductive- probably because there's so damned little of it in the courting process. Besides, I had it so bad for Lynn I couldn't let myself even think about her rejecting me.

But that was in the case where I confessed being a mass murderer or something just as bad. Being a werewolf, on the other hand, was much worse1.

1Pretty much every pundit who ever posted an opinion to the altweird-folks.shapeshifter news groups has noted that there are no such things as werewolves. And Raven had told me that I'm really just blessed by the Wolf spirit-so blessed that a chunk of it is subletting a portion of my cerebral cortex. Ftae. But if you ask anyone on the street what they call someone who becomes a wolf under the full moon, "someone blessed by the Wolf spirit" isn't the answer you'll get

Lynn would try to understand, and I knew that for her a try was as good as doing. Her parents would be decidedly more difficult to sway. In an instant I saw Lynn's parents inviting me to dinner and the effect my little revelation might have. "That's nice, dear," Blanche In-gold would say politely. "Does that mean we shouldn't use the good silver?"

Phil would have a use for the silver and probably wouldn't have that difficult a time finding the bullet molds or a gunsmith to do the trick for him. I liked Phil, and he liked me, but he'd still be at the door with a gun to keep me away from Lynn. I couldn't blame him, really. No man wants to think about having to paper-train his grandchildren.

My telecom beeped, rescuing me from the nihilistic and depressing spiral my thoughts had spun into over the last two hours. I swore when I saw it was only a piece of email from Raven. I'd have wanted him to stay on-line so we could discuss the message I'd sent him earlier. I decrypted his message by hitting two keys and read it as the words scrolled up the screen.

Wolf,

Kid Stealth, Tom Electric, Tark, and I are taking Valerie Valkyrie and heading up to Oak Harbor to probe a bit more deeply into Mr. Sampson's background. Uncertain when we will return. I would heartily encourage you continue to see Lynn Ingold as we would not want another attempt to abduct her.

We will discuss the matter of your message upon my return. I am glad you are happy, my friend.

— Raven

As I read the message I found myself of two minds, the two at war with each other. I was a bit piqued that Raven hadn't asked me to go with him on the investigation. I am, after all, his longest surviving aide and I've got talents that all the cybernetics built into Kid Stealth and Tom Electric combined can't equal. More important, I'd brought the Sampson matter to his attention in the first place. The Halloweeners, a street gang that controlled what had once been my old neighborhood, were never much of a threat to anyone beside themselves. This proved especially true after the Night of Fire a couple of years ago when the Weenies had been taken down, hard. It took them over a year to get back up to strength and then they had to fight to reclaim their turf.

That fight had been going poorly, which was no great surprise because Charles the Red was still in charge of the Weenies. Then this huge guy, with long blond hair and arrogance dense enough to stop bullets, showed up and started giving orders. Chuckles accepted his demotion graciously and, after getting out of the hospital, started backing Mr. Sampson in his effort to retake Weenie turf.

I'd never been on good terms with the Halloweeners, and Charles the Red thought of me as the person responsible for destroying the gang. I knew that wasn't the whole truth, but letting Charles imagine it was kept him away from the others who'd broken the Weenies. I had Raven backing me, which meant Charles growled a lot, but didn't bite.

Then Sampson showed up and the Weenies started being a lot more aggressive. Raven decided to see what he could do to discourage them, and thus had begun the investigation of Mr. Sampson. Apparently something had turned up to link Sampson to Oak Harbor and I was glad Raven was following up on the lead. Still, getting left behind made me feel like I was being punished when I hadn't done anything.

I stopped for a second.Wolf, sending Raven that message this morning can hardly be considered nothing.

The message had said that I'd decided to ask Lynn to marry me and, for that reason, I felt I had to sever my connections with Raven and his crew.

I smiled as I reread Doc's suggestion that I continue to see Lynn. Short of having me trussed up and hauled down to the southwestern deserts that had spawned him, Raven knew he couldn't have kept me away from her. It pleased me to see that he took real joy in seeing that I'd found the happiness he denied himself.

The alarm on the telecom went off, and I realized I was going to be late if I didn't get moving. With the stroke of one button, I zapped the message, then retreated to my bedroom. I stood there, staring at the clothes hanging in my closet, and shook my head in dismay. If haute couture ever discovers kevlar, I'll be doing turns on Paris runways. But though I was amply supplied for playing the well-heeled soldier of fortune, I had virtually nothing to wear that could be described asnormal.

I shook my head again.That's because you ARE a soldier of fortune, Wolfgang Kies. For the past eight years you 've worked with Raven in his battle to keep the chaos of the Awakening from swallowing up what's left of humanity. You and the others have helped hold the line that keeps normal people safe from magical monsters and technological monstrosities. There's nothing wrong with being a warrior, and your clothes have allowed you to survive dressing for the part…

I finally settled on a pair of jeans Lynn had cajoled me into buying on our last outing-so I'd have some that had more fabric than holes, she said. The gray t-shirt I selected had two advantages: it was clean and it was woven of kevlar. Though I didn't expect trouble, I'd not become Raven's longest-living aide by being completely stupid. Lastly I chose my black leather jacket to wear over it, even though it had a red and black raven patch on the left shoulder.

Having solved that problem, I hit the shower for a quick, somewhat bracing scrub-down. I had a devil of a time trying to wash my back and actually gave up after not too much effort. As long as I was going to be confessing things to Lynn, I figured I could add in needing help with that little job and see if she'd offer assistance.

Thattactichad worked before. I toweled myself dry and found myself standing before the mirror, doing the obligatory, Double-X chro-mosomally challenged person's flexing and posturing. I'm not as tall as some men, but taller than most. I have a lean, muscular build that had prompted a few folks- the aforementioned Charles the Red being one-to think of me as easy pickings until we tangled. Brown hair covered my torso front and back, yet it couldn't hide the myriad scars that crisscrossed my flesh. Each one reminded me of some adventure I'd had with Dr. Raven-and even a few from before I hooked up with him.

A fairly recent scar, a puckered, pink dot with a line bisecting it right beneath my left nipple, stood out because the chest hair around it hadn't fully grown back in yet. I'd gotten that scar from a bullet shot at me by a big-time hunter who wanted to bag a human. She'd gone from hunter to hunted-if one can say that maggots actively hunt-and her compatriots curtailed their poaching of human targets in one of my most recent adventures with Raven.

Scars. They meant I'd survived. No one could say that I hadn't given better than I got in all these adventures, but something inside of me was weary of it all.

There'll come a point when you don't live long enough to scar.

I forcibly turned my mind away from maudlin thoughts. I dressed quickly and headed out of the apartment. At the door I hesitated and almost tucked the Beretta Viper2in my waistband, but I knew Lynn would hate it. Not wanting to give her any reason to be even slightly displeased with me, I left the gun on the foyer table and went out into the cool autumn afternoon air.

I set off at a leisurely pace and tried to keep my mind clear of any matters vexing or bothersome, but that wasn't as simple as it might seem. I tried to think of Lynn…

Despite the vaunted opinions of some, carrying even an old gun like the Viper 14 is better than going unarmed. which was easy-but my thoughts quickly veered off into the vortex from which Raven's message had diverted me.

"Maybe I could ease into it… The next time we go shopping I'll just pick up some dog biscuits or flea and tick shampoo…" I laughed aloud at that thought, but a sinister thought followed close behind.

Dr. Raven knew my secret-he'd helped me conquer the darker, savage, wolf side of myself before I could cause too much damage. Through Raven I learned of the Wolf spirit dwelling within me and because of Raven I was able to use the wolf's strength and speed as other warriors used cybernetics to enhance their abilities in combat. In enabling me to gain control, Raven had very definitely saved my life, sanity, and soul.

Valerie Valkyrie, Raven's newest aide, knew nothing of my affliction, nor did Tom Electric or Plutarch Grao-grim, even though the three of us had worked together for the last several years. Kid Stealth probably did have some idea that there was something special about me from the time when he was stalking Raven's crew, but he'd never mentioned it. Jimmy Mackelroy had a vague idea about me beingdifferent, but I knew his secret, so we were even and, even more in his favor, he wasn't really inquisitive about my peculiarities.

The others who had learned the truth about me were the real reason I wanted to find a way to leave Lynn in the dark. The Silicon Wasp, Robin Carter, and Mr. Stilts were all members of Doc's entourage who'd known my secret. Each one had taken the secret to his grave, and there were simsense starlets whose careers had lasted longer than my friends did once they knew. I knew it was only coincidence, but learning that secret seemed about as safe as drinking a plutonium cocktail. Though I should have taken heart in the fact that Raven had survived the longest of all, somehow I harbored the fear that knowing the truth had killed the others.

As much as I wanted to share my secret with Lynn, as much as I wanted to share my life with her, I didn't want to add any more pain to her life. I'd sooner have shot myself than cause her any hurt. And, of course, being male and in love meant I knew there was a solution to the problem somewhere. All I had to do was find it and use it to keep Lynn safe.

I'd met Lynn through my association with Dr. Raven. Etienne La Plante, one of the larger pieces floating to the top of the cesspool that is Seattle's underworld, fancies himself a commodities broker. Whereas legitimate folks are content to deal in grain, simsense chips, or other such staples, La Plante goes in for more exotic merchandise. Arms trading and narcotics are his bread and vegemite, but he makes his profit moving bodies through white slavery rings. Pretty women, or men, for that matter, can fetch a premium in the penthouses of the corporate towers around the world.

La Plante's henchmen-orks with brains smaller than your average lug nut-had kidnapped Lynn to provide La Plante with merchandise to soothe the ruffled sensibilities of an angry client. After Kid Stealth had discovered La Plante had something special going down so, he and I and his buddies, the Redwings, hit an old resort complex called The Rock. We ran into something a bit nastier than we'd expected, but Doc Raven showed up in time to prevent Stealth and me from adding our names to the list of deceased aides.

After we rescued Lynn, Raven and I took her back to the apartment she shared with her parents in the Fuchi tower. She was still pretty out of it because of the drugs La Plante had used to sedate her, but Raven pronounced her fit and said all she needed was lots of sleep. I volunteered to stay in case of any more trouble-to the relief of her parents-and spent most of the next thirty-six hours holding Lynn to keep the nightmares away while she slept.

All in all that wasn't incredibly different from similar things I'd done for other victims of Seattle crime. It sounds smug to say that I'd gotten used to people being grateful and looking to me as some sort of savior, but it's true. You have to get used to it because the connection always ends. There's always another person with a problem, or another mystery that needs solving. I'd been through the same thing dozens of times before.

Only this time it was different. This time it involved Lynn and involved me getting involved with Lynn.

I looked up and found myself at the corner of the small strip mall the Fuchi folks had put into the ground floor of Employee Tower Number One. I winked at the two woman greeters stationed on either side of the door, then hurried across the crowded lobby to the small bakery that employs the whole Ingold family. I waved at Phil as he poured kaf for a couple at one of the rear tables, then caught his daughter as she threw herself into my arms. I hugged her tight and kissed her, then set her down and stared at her, scarcely believing she was truly there and really did care for me.

Lynn wore her burnished copper hair pulled back in a ponytail that hung all the way to her shoulder blades. The top of her head came up to my nose. The scent of her perfume brought back pleasant memories of intimate moments that threatened to make me blush. Her broad smile and pert nose accentuated the lively twinkle of her green eyes, and the sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks made her seem happier yet.

She wore jeans and a red-checked shirt with complementary kerchief that meant she was going to try to talk me into going to a neo-Western dance club. After the Ghost Dances had killed so many people and prompted others to go native, things concerning America's Wild West had been downplayed. Time breeds a certain amount of contempt, and this neo-Western club called itself "Oklahoma." Everything had been styled after an ancient musical, which meant the men wore shirts made of tablecloths from Italian restaurants and every other vidiot packed a six-gun with a low-grade laser triggered by revolver blanks.

Blanche came out from the back of the shop and smiled when she saw me. She and Phil both looked happy and content and perhaps a bit proud that their only daughter was seeing someone from Dr. Raven's band of heroes-mind you, that's not as good as someone from the corporate boardrooms, but it beats most of the gillettes running around the streets. Their occupation had made both of them plump as gingerbread people, but I've always distrusted anorexic cooks anyway. They'd invested the last twenty-five years in their daughter, and their love for her showed plainly on their faces.

I shook Phil's hand as he came over. His grip, a bit dry from the flour coating it, was strong nonetheless. "Afternoon, Mr. Ingold, Mrs. Ingold. How are you?"

Phil mumbled something I didn't quite catch as Blanche distracted me. Staring at her daughter as only a mother can when trying to remind her to do something, Blanche's gaze flitted to me, then back to Lynn. I frowned. "What's going on?"

Lynn glared at her mother as only a daughter can do, then looked up at me and sighed. "My parents are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary next week and they wanted to make sure I invited you to the party,which I would have done a bit later. They also want you to extend the invitation to Dr. Raven and your compatriots."

Blanche unconsciously clasped her hands together in an attitude of prayer and crushed them to her ample bosom. "That Dr. Raven, such a nice, ah, man."

I suppressed a laugh. Raven is a rare commodity-a Native American elf who's physically big enough to bench press the tower. He's also devilishly handsome- a fact that had not been lost on Blanche Ingold or many of the other women he's met. That was one of the reasons I'd studiously avoided having Lynn renew her acquaintance with him.

Phil looked over at his wife and sighed. "I hope you get that Kid Stealth to come. I've still not thanked him for saving my little girl."

I felt the shiver run through Lynn. Her father put it down to memories of her ordeal, but I knew it came at the mention of the Kid's name. Lynn's very much a pacifist, and Stealth, well, I think he considers violence some sort of performance art. His openings are a splash, and only close after the coroner uses a lot of sutures.

I gave Lynn a reassuring squeeze, then addressed her parents. "I'll see what I can do. Raven and the others are out of town for a while. I hope they'll be back in time for your party. We'll let you know if they can make it."

Lynn's father laughed. "They can come even if they don't call ahead-Blanche, she always makes too much food for parties. I can remember a time…"

Lynn slapped me playfully on the stomach. "That's our cue to leave." She kissed her father on the cheek, then grabbed a jeans jacket and brown paper bag from her mother. She kissed Blanche and made her promise not to wait up.

Blanche gave her an extra little hug, then let her go. "Be careful. I worry even though I know you're in good hands."

I slipped my left arm around Lynn's slender waist and guided her through the lobby. "I take it from your outfit you want to go to that saloon you like?"

She gave me an impish smile. "You're not much of a detective for all the work you've done with Dr. Raven."

I shrugged easily. "He just keeps me around for heavy lifting and comforting damsels in distress." I narrowed my eyes and tried to figure out what nefarious plan she had brewing in her mind. "If there's a mystery here, I can't solve it. Don't tell me you've been hired by the Yamaguchi-gumi to square dance me to death!"

Lynn shivered eloquently. "You know, my love, that / know how much you hate Oklahoma." She glanced back over her shoulder at her parents. "However,they don't know that. I thought perhaps we might catch a bite to eat, then just retire to your place…"

"Well, my back does need washing…"

"My specialty."

"Maybeyou think so…" Lynn blushed and smacked me playfully on the arm.

The awkwardness of her sharing living quarters with her parents had been dealt with before through similar subterfuges. Because her parents had been employed by Fuchi for all of their adult lives, they got a sizable apartment in the employee tower, and it came with cleaning services and child care that made it possible for employees to devote themselves fully to serving the company. The Bakery and other company shops provided anything and everything else the employees might need, and children were encouraged to remain at home-especially if they decided to work for the company as Lynn had.

For a moment my mind drifted back to my younger days on the streets. Born in a tenement with no state or corporate official there to register me, I started early in life as a shadowrunner. No official records existed of Wolfgang Kies, which meant I was free of harassment by the city unless I attracted their attention. It also meant I could never integrate myself with numbered society-like the Fuchi folks-because I didn't officially exist. Whereas legitimate and tracked citizens had a myriad of safety nets built into the system to keep them alive, shadowrunners had to slip through the cracks.

Heading down to pier 59 and the Aquarium park with my arm around a beautiful woman, I looked at the city in an entirely new way. Sure, it was the same, dreary gray sinkhole of concrete. Yeah, street toughs with more chrome than your average kitchen still lurked on street corners and in shadows. They still had the hollow, haunted look of despair in their eyes that they would die with-and that I had worn until not so long ago- but it just didn't seem to matter to me anymore.

Shadowrunning is fine when your life is a dead end, but when you can see a future, it just seems like a childish game.

The Wolf spirit inside me spoke in a harsh whisper.A warrior who views war as a game is a warrior who will not see death when it comes for him.

We reached the park and walked to the benches beyond the area where the local wireheads had jacked into the public access systems. Those with datajacks installed, like Lynn or Valerie Valkyrie, just plugged themselves directly into the game tables. Others rented electrode rigs from a ramshackle kiosk to do the same.

Two kids were playing some variant of chess in which holographic pieces battled each other-they attracted a small crowd that cheered when a piece died a particularly grisly death. Others did their own things, oblivious to spectators. One guy who wore his purple hair in a spiked mohawk with piglet curls fore and aft seemed familiar, but I couldn't place him immediately. He amused himself by projecting images of city officials and hapless sheep into diagrams from an on-line edition of theKama Sutra. I recognized what he was doing as I had once similarly amused myself on summer days of my misspent youth.

Lynn sat on the bench and opened her bag. She took out an old crust of bread and broke it into small bits. She tossed them out in a haphazard pattern at first. Then, as birds congregated she sowed her crumbs in a way that kept the bigger birds back from where the smaller ones came to feed. She gave me a hunk of bread and frowned disapprovingly as I tossed a large piece halfway between two monster blackbirds.

"Wolf! You're supposed to break it up into smaller portions!" Her pronouncement came as if it were one of the laws of the universe that I'd missed somewhere in my meager schooling.

"You want to run that by me again, with the help files active this time?"

She rested her hands in her lap, which prompted one bold sparrow to light on her knee and pick at the crust she was still holding. She laughed, then composed her face and turned to lecture me. "You have to use small bits because, as my mother taught me, birds that fly away with your food in their mouths take your prayers to heaven with them." She nodded once as if that answer explained everything, then started scattering crumbs again.

I opened my mouth to ask a question, then stopped. Over the years I'd been with Dr. Raven I'd had the gaps in my knowledge of the world filled in, for the most part. Ever since the Awakening-when magic again appeared in the world-the God Lynn and her family worshipped had lost lots of ground. Still, with all the things I'd seen in Raven's company, and even though I seriously doubted her God existed at all, I couldn't discount the possibility she was right. Weirder things had happened.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I just can't resist watching two dinosaurs fighting over bread."

Lynn rolled her eyes to heaven and tossed a little novena to a wren. "You're not going to try to convince me that birds were once dinosaurs again, are you?"

I quick-scattered a rosary's worth of crumbs in a wide arc, then brushed my hands clean on my thighs. "I double-checked all that stuff I mentioned last time. Deinonychus is the name of the dinosaur that had a wrist joint that looks the same as the wing joint in the Archeopteryx, and the Archeopteryx has feathers and wings, hence is seen as the first bird. See, dinosaurs and proto-birds had this common ancestor in the Jurassic period…"

She frowned. "Why would I remember deinonychus as a word?"

I shrugged. "It was a particularly bloodthirsty carnosaur. It ran fast and had this nasty, sickle-shaped claw on each of its feet that it used to disembowel…" As I hooked my right hand over to represent the claw, I saw her pale just a bit, and suddenly I realized why she knew the word.

I reached out and hugged her to me. "I'm sorry. Forgive me."

She kissed the side of my neck. "Nothing to forgive- you didn't mean it."

But I did it anyway.Lynn had first heard the word deinonychus when I clarified why Kid Stealth ran with such an odd gait. During her rescue she'd seen only glimpses of him and never got a good look at his titanium legs. She'd actually seen more than she knew, and put the weirdness down to the dope in her system. When I explained how Stealth had chosen legs styled after those of a deinonychus, she asked me to stop, but she still dreamed of him for the next couple of nights.

She pulled away from me and set about feeding the dinosaurs again. Her smile returned and she passed me another piece of bread, but I shook my head. "Lynn, there's something I have to tell you about me." I faltered. After seeing how she reacted to the mention of Kid Stealth or anything that might remind her of violence, there seemed no easy way to tell her about the true Wolfgang Kies.

She brushed her hands off and cupped my jaw in them. "Wolf, I know you've been forced to do things you're not proud of. I know you've killed people and things while working for Dr. Raven, but I also know you did that to help others, like me. I cannot and will not let that drive a wedge between us-that's a decision I made the first time I agreed to go out with you."

She pressed her fingertips to my lips to stop me from saying anything. "I know you, perhaps better than you know yourself. I know you're a good man, a strong man, and I know I love you. There is nothing you could say that would change that or make me think any less of you."

I sat there stunned for a moment or two as I realized the true depth of her feelings for me. Somehow I'd assumed there was no way she could feel the same way about me as I felt about her, but that proved to be a fallacy that exploded with the greatest of ease. Still, she didn't know about my lunar mood swings, and that revelation would sorely test the strength of her convictions.

I started to speak, but something caught my attention above and beyond Lynn's head. Two hollow-eyed kids came around the corner of the trode kiosk, then ducked back when they saw me. Alarm bells immediately went off in my head because even though they'd washed off most of the jack o' lantern makeup the Hallo-weeners affected, their jackets were black and orange- Halloweener colors.

"Are you done feeding the birds?"

Lynn immediately caught the concern in my voice. "What is it?"

I looked around and saw more potential Weenies loitering in the background. "Gangers. I don't like it."

She sighed with exasperation to cover her nervousness. "Wolf, thisis a public park. They have the right to use it."

I nodded. "True enough, but this just doesn't feel right."

Again she tried to play it light. "I think you just want to get me back to your place…"

I stood and held my hand out to help her up. "No denying that. Why don't you scatter the rest of the bread in one huge papal audience, and let's get out of here. We'll keep it natural, as if nothing's wrong…"

"Wolf, you're scaring me." She crushed the bag, then up-ended it and let the crumbs spill out. "Let's go, if we must."

The fear in her voice gave way to anger. I knew it wasn't directed at me exactly, and I immediately focused my reaction to it on the Weenies who had started to follow us. At the same time I wanted to kick myself for having left my Viper behind3. The situation that appeared to be shaping up was not one in which I wanted to be unarmed.

The Wolf spirit's voice echoed through my head.You need not be weaponless, Longtooth. Embrace me and I will deal with your enemies.

"No!"

Lynn looked back at me. "What?" Despite her fear, I saw her concern for me reflected in her green eyes.

See, I wasn't kidding, was I?

I shook my head. "Nothing important." I glanced at the forest of gray buildings at the landward end of the pier. "I'm not sure if we're being followed or not, but there's a quick way for us to find out."

She hesitated for only a second. "Lead on."

I guided her toward the crosswalk as if nothing unusual was happening at all. The Weenies stayed with us, but lurked at the back of the crowd gathering to cross the street. I worked us toward the curb, then pulled her into the street. "Run!"

The irate honking of horns and the squeal of brakes drowned out any shouting from the other pedestrians as we dashed into traffic. Lynn let her fear run riot and the adrenaline made her nimble and oh so quick. She cut around the front of a Ford Americar and between two Honda minivans while I vaulted a silver Porsche Mako. The driver shook his fist at me through the windscreen, then went white as a bullet shattered the safety glass.

The next two silenced shots went high, but I saw them hit the Sumitomo Bank building. Adrenaline lending wings to my feet, I caught up with Lynn and grabbed her right hand in my left. Without warning I stopped and swung her around into the alley behind the bank, then I paused and made yet another in a long line of mistakes. I turned back to see who was pursuing us.

The lead grunge snapped two shots off with his silenced Ingram Mk. 22 before another Mako-this one white and sporting a dorsal fin telephone antenna-took him like its namesake would take a swimmer on an Australian beach. The lower portions of his legs whipping around like nylons on a clothesline, the ganger bounced from the hood to windscreen, then up over the top of the car. I'm not sure where the antenna caught him, but it looked crimson to me as the car continued through the intersection.

One of the two bullets peppered me with concrete shards and lead splatter as it hit the wall near my head. The other one hit me square in the ribs and spun me back into the alley. I ricocheted off the opposite wall, then sprawled unceremoniously on stinking bags of garbage.

Lynn dropped to her knees and reached out to me, then her hands recoiled in horror to cover her mouth as she saw the bullet hole in my jacket. "Oh, God, you're shot!" The blood drained from her face and I sensed she wanted to run, but refused to give in to her panic. "I have to get help…"

I held a hand up as my body once again let me breathe. "Wait… I'm battered but not bloodied." Gingerly I opened my coat and the.45 caliber slid across my t-shirt and to the ground. "See, no blood, no foul."

It heartened me to see the relief in her eyes. I saw no reason to mention that the bullet had broken at least one of my ribs and mat if the Weenies got any closer with their guns, my t-shirt wouldn't stop their evil intentions, much less another bullet.

I took her hands in mine and gave them a squeeze. "Go further along the alley. Duck down behind that big dumpster there. I'll be along in a second. There's something I have to do."

"I don't want to leave you here all…"

"Just a second, babe, then I'll be with you. Trust me."

As she headed back down the alley, I worked past the pain and reached inside myself. Deep in my heart I touched the Wolf spirit. The Old One hauled himself up into a sitting position and looked at me disapprovingly. The red rebuke in his eyes found allies in the scarlet shadows rippling over his black form.

Even before the Old One had a chance to speak, I cut him off. "I need your strength and your speed and your senses, and I need them now! I have no time to debate you. Now!" Without waiting for his acquiescence, I pulled myself out of the self-imposed trance and smiled as the world reordered itself in accordance with my new perspective.

Despite the fetid garbage surrounding me, I could still smell the lingering trace of Lynn's perfume and the fear it helped mask. I heard the sounds she made as she ducked to safety, and the sounds of the rats in the dump-ster behind which she hid. More important, though, I heard the asthmatic wheezing of a Weenie running toward where he'd seen me fall.

In an instant-the broken rib a twinge of pain to be ignored-I was on my feet and had flattened myself against the opposite wall of the alley. The acrid scent of gunsmoke burned into my nostrils as the silenced snout of another Ingram Mk. 22 poked around the corner. Without hesitation I grabbed the gun and yanked, pulling the startled Weenie into the shadowed byway. I tore the gun free of his feeble grasp, then smashed its blocky butt against his head. He collapsed without so much as a moan.

Following him came a gillette who'd learned to move almost silently. My first warning of his presence came when the forty-centimeter-long claws built into his right hand telescoped out with a click, then whistled as he swung them at me. His cut came waist-high and should have sliced my belly open, but I'd already begun to twist away from him before his attack began. The trio of polished steel blades shredded the right flank of my jacket and razored through the t-shirt and some flesh, but they didn't get enough to put me down.

Before he could turn his wrist around and try to backhand me with the blades, my right hand locked on his hand. I bent his hand inward toward his own chest. Anticipating my move, he retracted the claws and relaxed in preparation for using some esoteric martial art to turn my attack against me. That's why it surprised him when I jammed his fist against his own chest, then smacked the gun in my left hand against his funny bone.

The blow numbed his forearm and released the claws.

I stepped over his dying body and out onto the street again. The half-dozen gangers and razorboys racing down the sidewalk collided abruptly as their lead elements tried to stop. I stroked the Ingram's trigger twice, sending two three-shot bursts in their direction. Fortunately for them, and whoever does the workman's compensation filing for the Halloweeners, a heavy-set ork up front absorbed most of the damage. One bullet lanced sparks from a gillette's left-arm assembly and another folded an ork over as it drove his navel out through his spine, but otherwise it left the band unscathed.

Four out of at least ten down, and me with a half-empty clip and busted barrel staves in my chest. Why the hell don't these things ever happen to Kid Stealth?

I ducked back into the alley and looped the machine pistol over my shoulder by its strap. I grabbed both of the men I'd downed and dragged them to the dumpster. Lynn's eyes grew wide enough to fall out of her head, and I suddenly realized that with the silencer on the gun and the way I dealt with the first two people, she had no idea any fighting had taken place.

I dropped to one knee and brought the Ingram to hand again. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Lynn, believe me I am." I nodded toward the bodies. "I need you to go through the razorboy's pockets and get whatever he has-guns, knives, bullets, anything. I'll do the kid. It's our only chance at survival."

She reached out to touch the ragged furrows cut in my coat. "You're hurt."

"Not as bad as I will be if they get you because of trying to kill me." I started to pat the Weenie down, then liberated the spare Ingram clips in the thigh pockets of his khaki fatigues. "Charles the Red or Mr. Sampson somehow learned that Raven and the others were out of town. They decided to make a move against me. Chuckles has been planning this for some time."

"How do you know that?" Lynn said as she pulled wires and datacords from the dead man's pocket and stuffed them into her own.

I whirled around and pointed the Mk. 22's snout at the alley mouth. A short burst blasted a grunge back over a parked car. "This won't do." I stood and twisted the dumpster so it blocked the alley, then answered her question by pointing at the razorboy and his purple-spiked coiffure.

"He was one of the ones in the park when we arrived. He was jacked into one of the public tables. It's my fault: We've been too predictable-always going to the park before we go elsewhere. He just let the others know we had arrived and the gears started grinding."

Suddenly I felt the alley walls close in on me like a trap. I lunged forward and covered Lynn's body with my own. The bullets sprayed down through the space where I'd just been crouching and, somehow, missed my splayed-out legs.

As spent cartridges tinkled down in a brass rain, I rolled over onto my back and burned the rest of the Mac's clip. Bullets traced a line up the alley wall and through the street samurai who'd taken the high ground. He pitched back out of sight, his body looking like a pinata filled with cherry Jell-O, and I reloaded the gun without thinking.

Lying there on my back gave me a unique view of the world. From beneath the dumpster I saw a truck turn into the alley. Its tires squealed and smoked as it fought for traction in the garbage choking the alley mouth. As it picked up speed and the obscenities being shouted by its occupants fought over the roar of the engine, I realized the Weenies meant to use the dumpster to smear us into a thin, bloody paste.

Off to my left I saw a sewer grating lurking like a grime-smeared island in the midst of an oily patch of waste water. I leaped to it and single-handedly ripped the grating free. "Lynn, over here, now! Get down in here."

Tears streaking her face, she crossed to the hole and started her descent. The slimy, rusty rungs made the climb difficult, but she moved as quickly as she could. My enhanced olfactory senses sampled the sewer miasma with the relish of a wine connoisseur sipping Sterno. The stink gave me ample reason not to follow her, but the gangers in the truck allowed me no alternative. "Drop, just drop!" I yelled as I thrust my legs down into the hole. I let myself slip into the darkness as the truck slammed into the dumpster with a horrendous clang. My left hand grabbed the top rung and my head slipped beneath street level as the dumpster's leading edge guillotined its way above me. I felt a grinding in my shoulder and a jolt of pain as my handhold stopped the drop short, but I was too intent on other things to worry about injuries at that very moment.

I shoved the Ingram back up toward street level and tightened down on the trigger. Like a bandsaw cutting wood, the bullets ripped along the truck's midline. Just behind the cab, the slugs lanced through the gas tank. Almost instantly the acrid scent of gasoline filled my nose and I let go of the ladder's top rung.

The truck exploded before I completed the five-meter drop to the river of sewage below. I saw a tremendous flash, then felt the thunderous detonation shudder through my chest. The scream of metal twisting out of shape as the flaming truck cartwheeled through the narrow alley sounded like a banshee death-wail and was made yet more haunting by the acoustics of the subterranean sewer tunnels.

I hit water and the bottom one after the other. Fire sparked in my right flank as the water gnawed into the claw wounds. Water hissed as it touched the gun's silencer and evaporated into steam. Gathering my feet beneath me I hauled myself to the surface and stood in the waist-deep river of sludge. As quickly as possible I moved upstream. By doing that I rejoined Lynn and avoided the flaming liquid dripping down in long burning rivulets through the hole above.

I slipped my left arm around her shoulders and tried not to react as she wrapped her arms around my middle and hugged. I failed and she recoiled. Her hands came away bloody. She stared at the black stains on her palms, for the burning gasoline's light was too feeble to give the blood its true color.

She looked up at me as if her world was folding in on itself. "You're bleeding. This water… You need a doctor."

I forced a confident smile onto my lips. "You have that straight. I need Dr. Raven."

She gave me a puzzled look. "But you said he'd left Seattle for a while."

"True, but Raven keeps tabs on things through the Matrix. That's why he took Valerie Valkyrie with them." I frowned. "Unless we get to a place where we can use a deck, we're up a creek without a sewage treatment plant in sight."

For the first time since we left the park, Lynn smiled. She plucked a short datacord from her pocket and I recalled having seen her strip it off the gillette I killed. "Get me to a junction box or public telecom access jack and from there I'm in." She pulled her hair back away from her left ear and snapped the cord into the datajack implanted there. "You've got the access codes-I'm not going to have to cut any ice, am I?"

I hesitated. The access codes and link numbers for Dr. Raven's private commnet were secrets I ranked right up there with knowledge of my particular brand of lunacy. They were the most precious secrets Raven had because if they fell into the wrong hands-read the Halloweeners, Mr. Sampson, or the legion of Raven's other enemies-it would be possible to uncover a whole string of Raven's safehouses and resources. Sure, Raven is far too intelligent to keep all of his secrets on-line anywhere, but any information gleaned could jeopardize operations I knew nothing about.

Furthermore-and far more important to me personally-giving those codes to Lynn would be bringing her into a world I wanted to save her from. I wanted to shield her from the danger I accepted as one of Doc Raven's aides. By giving her the codes I would increase her risk. It wouldn't matter to someone like Mr. Sampson that anything she knew would become obsolete the moment Raven replaced the codes-she would become a target for getting at Raven. She looked up at me and I saw she'd done some hard thinking. "Wolf, if we don't reach Raven, what are our chances of survival?"

I took a deep breath-as deep as my broken ribs would allow anyway-then pursed my lips. "Without contact of any sort, Raven would get suspicious after twenty-four hours, but he probably wouldn't return until after forty-eight or even seventy-two hours." I sighed wearily. "I could hold out that long-hell, with a quick trip to my doss I could even carry the war back to the Weenies."

She looked down at the torpid river swirling around our legs. "Do the odds change when you have me in tow?"

"Somewhat, yeah." Slinging the gun over my shoulder, I cupped her jaw in my hands and kissed her. "I'd take you back to the tower…"

"But they're probably anticipating that, and it would only put my parents in jeopardy."

"My thoughts exactly." I didn't add that we had no way of knowing how long they'd been watching us or how much they knew about where I was likely to go. "I'm sorry I've put you in this danger. If there was any other way…"

Lynn pressed a finger to my lips. "If you were anyone or anything else, Wolfgang Kies, I'd never have gotten to know you. Never regret or deny what you are. It's what I love about you."

I kissed her again. "Well, then, let's find a telecom box and get to work."

Finding a phone junction box was actually easier than I'd imagined, and I immediately ripped it open. The wires inside looked like so much rainbow spaghetti to me, but Lynn recognized things right away. She smiled and snugged the datacord into a slot. In a hushed whisper I gave Lynn the link number I'd been assigned and the access codes, including the one that disabled the pattern checker. I had to do that to verify that I wasn't using the codes or the computer would see an input pattern totally out of sync with my previous access and would sever the connection.

Lynn winked at me. "Don't worry, lover. No one will get those codes out of me. I promise."

"I know," I said, but she was already gone. The smile remained on her face, but her eyes got a glassy look as she jacked in. Her eyes REMed and then I watched her grin broaden, which had to mean she'd gotten into Raven's system. For the next minute she looked utterly enraptured, then her eyes blinked and she returned to the land of flesh and blood.

She stared at me with incredible joy flashing in her eyes. "When I used your codes and gave the system the override, I heard Raven's voice say, 'That's not necessary, Ms. Ingold.' He had a pattern check already built into the system for me! The man's unbelievable!"

I suppressed a smirk. "Yeah, that's putting it mildly."

"I left a message telling him that the Halloweeners were after you and me. I also said you thought you could hold out for seventy-two hours, but any help would be appreciated."

I nodded. "Good. That will get him back, or he'll cut someone loose to help us."

Obviously pleased with herself, and the fact that Raven had gone to the trouble of building a pattern file on her-from data undoubtedly stolen by Valerie from the Fuchi system-she unplugged the datacord and tucked it away in a pocket. "What do we do now?"

I pointed further on down the tunnel. "We'll head toward my apartment, but we'll wait until dark before we go up to street level. At my place I can get weapons and some more suitable clothing for both of us. We'll let your folks know we're going to ground, then we lose ourselves."

Lynn frowned. "Isn't it possible they know where you live and might be waiting for us?"

I nodded. "That's why we wait until dark. We'll scan the situation and walk away if anything is weird." "Sounds like a plan."

"That it is." I smiled and started splashing my way deeper into the tunnel.

Lynn took my hand. "I think we make a good team- one too good to split up."

"I agree, kid." I gave her hand a squeeze. "The only way we'll part company is over my dead body."