We move carefully, Mister Pettus and I, making sure not to get our feet tangled in the mass of roots and ferns. We stop and check every other step of the way so we won’t find ourselves trapped in some pitfall hidden under dense forest growth.

He’s telling me the story of grandpa Lucius and my great-grandmother Finn and I don’t notice how we’ve moved along the outskirts of the forest until we find ourselves at the other end of the scrapheap at the end of town, looking down over the chain-link fence that rings the heaps of garbage stretching out all the way to the edge of the horizon. Even in the chill November afternoon, the stench is overpowering.

“Couldn’t we have picked another way around?” I ask, pinching my nose shut. Mister Pettus shrugs.

“We could, but then what sort of stealthy entrance would that be?” Mister Pettus says. He leads me down across a hidden path that winds all the way into the dump. “No, what you need now, Finn, is a lair. A place to sit and to wait and to plan. Preparation time is of the essence, always.”

“You are serious, aren’t you? You want me to go after Gunda and her pack?” I say, choking on the stench of rotting hulks made out of toilet paper, dancing across jagged shards of rusted metal peppering the ground.

“Well, yes, just not like this. Undetermined. Unequipped. Unprepared.” Mister Pettus says, matter-of-factly. “Mister Nomura means well and he has steel, God bless him, but he cannot provide you with what you will need to do what you must.”

“What makes you think you can?”

“A lifetime of surviving in the underbelly of the world. Forty years of prancing about in the backstage of history. I’ve been baptized in the waters of strangeness, Finn. I’ve nearly drowned in crazy.” Mister Pettus says. When he looks at me there’s this glint in his eye, the kind Dad had. Mom used to call them ‘lazer eyes’ because they shot out and rebounded in your skull with sheer intensity, made you think your brain was gonna boil and your hair catch on fire. “Mister Nomura is too rooted in the normal, in the real. He comes up with practical banal solutions to fight an enemy that is by nature moon-mad and senseless. And this line of thinking is what is going to get you-and him- killed. This way, please.”

Mister Pettus stops dead in his tracks and bends down, reaching into a seemingly random patch of dirt. He shoves discarded beer cans away, pulls a patchwork quilted cover. It takes a few seconds before he reveals a reinforced steel trapdoor in the ground. Ancient rusted hinges as Mister Pettus pries it open. Below us a concrete well stretches down, a spiral staircase winding ten meters deep into the earth. Halogen lightbulbs flicker into life, illuminating the way.

“What is this?” I ask, blinking in disbelief.

“That’s an HRA. It stands for ‘Human Restoration Ark’. There’s a total of eight in the entire world, created with the express purpose of allowing survivors of a nuclear holocaust rebuild human civilization. This is HRA-2.” Mister Pettus says, as he begins to descened the staircase.

“But why would they put something like that here? Why not Washington or New York or…I don’t know! Any other place!”

“Because none of these places are of particular extranormal interest. Come on down now, this blast door operates on a time lock and you don’t want to get caught in it, there’s a girl.” Mister Pettus tells me, as he watches me descend. “It was a different time, the Cold War. People in power wasted outrageous amounts of money in investing on madcap schemes. You know that the government was actually funding a project that would create a herd of nuclear powered lizards? Or that the Soviets had sunk a ludicrous amount of rubles in the reverse engineering of war-machines described in Hindu religious texts? And don’t get me started on the Chinese and that doomed little attempt of theirs to create superhuman…hold on dear, we’re here.”

“How come none of this is mentioned in any historical texts? I mean, people would know about something like this, wouldn’t they?” I say, as Mister Pettus struggles to enter the codes in the archaic locking mechanism of the vault door. “Even if no-one in Orsonville saw the Army digging a huge hole in the ground, wouldn’t someone at least have gotten a photo of all those giant lizards?”

“Yes, strange how that never happened.” Mister Pettus mumbles as the vault door rattles and groans. Hidden hydraulic systems grunt like rheumatic giants, prying the steel door open. Lights turn on inside, revealing the drab grey walls and the thick blue wall-to-wall carpeting that makes up the main corridor of the HRA. Fluorescenet markers light up, showing the exact position of the rooms in the Bunker. To the left, the utility rooms: kitchens and control rooms and security. To the right, winding deep into the bunker, the living quarters, the recreation rooms, the school and the library.

“Made to withstand the combined power of twenty atom bombs! Shielding capable of keeping out the deadly radiation that would end the world, all of it powered by hidden geothermal generators set up under Orsonville! This, Finn, this was to be the nest for the new breed of humanity!” Mister Pettus says, before reaching out and picking a brochure from the entrance. The colors are faded and I’m having some trouble to make out the fine print, but it seems to be in good order. SO YOU’RE MANKIND’S LAST HOPE, the pamphlet reads.

“It says here that this place is zombie-proof.” I say as I leaf through the outrageous claims on the brochure. Mister Pettus takes me by the hand, shows me around.

“Yes, ma’am!” he tells me in his best imitation of a Southern drawl “this here place’s water-proof, fire-proof, zombie-proof, Martian-proof, plague and meteor-proof, but most importantly fully Russkie-proof! Come on in and settle down for a thousand years, breeding the generation of humans that will reclaim the blasted wasteland that will be the surface world! Come one, come all!” he rambles, as he tapdances across the corridors and past the utility rooms.

“So what am I doing here?” I ask as Mister Pettus leads me across the bunker, dancing around the storage, past the pristine clean gymnasium and into a small, cramped little lab.

“Here? Here, you’ll be transformed, made ready! You will be armed, like Perseus to destroy your inhuman enemy!” he says and from the corner of my eye I can see the neatly folded square of silk. I run my hands over it. It’s coarse and covered in hairs just like a woolen sweater except it’s lighter than air. I turn it in my hands and I can see that it’s the top half of a skin-tight uniform. It makes a strange, hissing noise as it unfolds.

“That’s what you were making, isn’t it? With the spider silk?” I ask, running my thumbs over the fabric. It tickles against my skin.

“Orsonville Death’s Head silk. Strongest thread in creation. Can stop a bullet right cold and it weighs about as much as your shadow.”

I try it on, stretch it over me. It seems to be around my size. “Mind if I try it?”. Mister Pettus nods, points me outside so I can change. The spider silk tickles my skin at first, but the sensation soon subsides. It takes a few moments before I realize that it fits me so well that I can no longer tell where my skin ends and it begins.

“Why didn’t you show me this? Bef-” I’m about to say as I step into the lab, just as I get stuck in the belly by something blunt and heavy. The spider-silk armor stops the worst of it, but the blow still knocks me back. I end up sprawled on the floor with Mister Pettus cackling over me, a sledgehammer in hand. “What the…what the hell?” I gasp.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…I always wanted to do that, you know? We’d test the equipment ourselves, back in my day. The R&D team made us put them on and then threw us right into the fire. Sometimes Literally. They’d made me a fireproof tuxedo, once. I had to spend fifteen minutes inside a furnace in that cramped, dark place while they cranked up the heat. But I always loved the bludgeon tests.” Mister Pettus offers his hand, pulls me up. “You didn’t break anything? Good. Now for the localized impact test.”

“The what?” I barely have time to say as Mister Pettus turns the sledgehammer around, a barbed spearhead at the other end adorned with a vicious hook halfway across its length. He stabs at my chest, right at the center of the shirt. I hold my breath as I wait for it to penetrate, except it doesn’t. The tip bends slightly, just before Mister Pettus pulls away and brings the hook down on my shoulder, rakes it down across my torso. “I didn’t feel anything.” I grin at him, just as he twists the weapon’s shaft, causing it to extend and whacks me with it just over my belly.

“So far, so good.” He mumbles, as he collapses the weapon and hands it over to me. “And here’s the Four-Pronged Fighting Staff (patent pending).” I test it, check its balance. It is clumsy and unwieldy when compacted but its center of mass changes thanks to ball-bearings placed inside the shaft for each function. I try a few swings with each of the weapons myself.

“You picked these weapons because of the Helfwir, didn’t you?” I ask him. Mister Pettus shrugs.

“What makes you say that?”

“No swords, no fancy stuff. Just functionality. A hammer to crash a carapace or break bone. Spear, to keep the enemy at a distance. Hooks for incapacitation. It’s so strange, holding a weapon like that. I can’t help but feel like we could have used that back home. You really have a knack for building things, Mister Pettus.”

“I always fancied myself as a tinkerer. Never had much of a head for engineering.” Mister Pettus tells me, as he makes his way to the rows on rows of vats, vials, Bunsen burners and hot plates and carefully stacked glass phials filled with every manner of base chemical. “If you ask me, I always leaned toward chemistry. Specifically, metallurgy. My father was a jeweler, see. It broke his heart, the day I gave up on the family business so I could save the world…”

And with that, Mister Pettus grasps a set of tongs, dips them into a tank of simmering silver. He shows me what he’s made, fresh out of the overn, glistening with a mirror-like sheen.

“A bat! You did it, you made a bat!”

“Grade 3 hollow-make military-quality titanium with nickel-free plating.” Mister Pettus says, swinging the bat in his hands “Light as a feather, but it packs a wallop worse than a Pablona bull on bad day!”

He tosses me the bat and I grasp it in mid-air, swing it. I can barely feel its weight in my hand. I have to stop myself halfway through the swing so it won’t fly off my hand. “How did you even know that we…?”

“Mister Nomura asked me personally. Bought me a sushi platter, just for the information. He might be tight-lipped, but he isn’t any good with social subtlety. I was going to use it to try and get on your good side, originally.”

“You were going to bribe me with a baseball bat?” I grin at him. Mister Pettus blushes like a schoolboy.

“I was going to throw this in too, for good measure.” He grunts, as he bends under the bench and shuffles around, producing a strongbox with a pair of boots inside. He cracks them together and the soles give off a solid, metallic clanging noise. “Though to be honest, these were solely Hideo’s idea.”

He hands me the boots. Combat variety, the kind Dad used to wear, with thick shoelaces and extra insulation layers. They fit around my legs snuggly. I stomp down on the floor and the clanging sound comes again.

“Try clicking your heels together.” Mister Pettus says with a smile. When I do it, 3 centimeters of pure steel shoot out from the soles. The sudden change in height nearly makes me lose my balance. “All-terrain infiltration footwear, patent-pending. These babies can go right up a sheer wall, if you keep going up at a steady jog.”

“You made those? For me?” I ask him as I click my heels back and try them against the wall. The hooks sink into the plaster. The soles fix to the surface.

“No, we were considering changing the sizes, if need be. As it happens, you have the same shoe size as the one they were originally made for.”

“You’re talking about Mister Nomura’s daughter, aren’t you? The girl that lived here before him.”

“No, not his daughter. Mister Nomura never fathered a child. Mimi was…” Mister Pettus stops, clears his throat. “I think it’s best if you asked him.”

I nod, try the boots. After five minutes of trial and error, I manage to take a few steps up the wall before I nearly crash to the floor on my back. Mister Pettus watches silently as I try my new toys.

“What are you getting out of all this?” I ask him, as I’m testing the Fighting Staff. “You know that if I mess this up then you’re in danger, right? The pack will come after you for sure.”

“Then I guess you shouldn’t mess up. There are monsters about and you’re a Wanderer. What was that motto that your grandfather always went on about?”

“Take back the night.” I say, without thinking. I realize how much I sound like Dad. It scares me, the ease with which I fell into my part, how comforting all of this seems. “I am going to need a few more things before I’m ready.”

“Anything.”

***

For three days, we stalk the Orsonville forests, searching for the most wicked, poisonous herbs on our hands and knees. Like witches, we boil them under the half-moon, extract their concentrated poison into potent doses. We make powders and oils, juices and diluted venoms.

“Eye of newt and skin of lizard…” Mister Pettus sings, as he lingers over his warlock’s cauldron.

***

Mister Pettus mutters as he places the vials of silver nitrate inside the combat bag, makes sure that the rest of the gear is set up neatly: spider-silk thread and hook ‘just in case’, a can full of pure myristicin oil extracted from nutmegs ‘spray it in their eyes’, caltrops made out of jagged pieces of rusted metal ‘waste not want not’, an extra pair of socks ‘because you never have enough of those’. On a bandolier strapped on my chest, I begin to set up my emergency-use equipment:

Silver-plated darts, laced with grape extract. Not much against a normal human being, but the juice is toxic to wolves. White baneberry juice, four vials. Maybe I’ll get lucky and make one of them swallow it. Should be more than enough to blind one of them. Knives, silver-plated. Serrated edges, dipped in belladonna extract. Won’t kill a werewolf, but it will turn their every waking moment into a nightmare. Brass knuckles, in case I am cornered. Come with a vial of horse-chestnut powder. Get a hit in with these and they’ll be down on the floor in a second, paralyzed.

I spend a good thirty minutes sifting through the assortment of ancient gas-masks, looking for one that is just right. Most of them look ridiculous, with filters blocking my field of vision. Finally, I settle for an M-17 gas mask. I make sure to remove the air filtration system, wiping away any leftover dust that might clog my nostrils or go down my throat if I have to actually run for my life. It’s not the faceless half-mask of the Helfwir, but it will have to do.

Over that, I put on a military-surplus raincoat. I cut the thing down to size so it’s down to my waist. It’s pockmarked in places with the interior insulation ripped, but it will have to do. To muffle the sound of the combat boots, I strap silicone padding that I scavenge from an old pair of slippers that were probably going to be worn by the bunker’s future generations. They don’t do much but with a bit of practice I manage to get the noise down to a bare minimum.

“You look like trouble.” Mister Pettus says when he sees me. I sneak a glance at myself in a mirror: faceless and silent, the Fighting Staff and baseball bat crossed at my back. When night falls, I’ll be a monster just like them.

“They won’t even know what hit them.”

We wait until nightfall. I know where they get together, Gunda’s pack. But I can’t afford to go head-on against them either. With or without armor, they could tear me to ribbons in the blink of an eye. When I fought Lisa, I did it on her own terms. I nearly died, because I was a fool and I put too much faith in my abilities.

This time, I will fight like a Helfwir is supposed to: dirty.

I leave the Orsonville dump as soon as night falls, keeping low as I jog across the piles of scrap. I see the night watchman struggling with a jumble of wires and old car parts, mumbling to himself as he welds an old toaster with a pair of sockets fixed in the front like grotesque eyes on a plain wire frame.

From there, I head northwest, up toward Anton’s house and the rat-thing nest. I head for the Marsh Place, to do a little bit of productive terrorism. Might as well put the fear of me in them, one little bit at a time.

By the time I’ve reached the Marsh place, I can see them gathered: a ring of boys, hooting and calling out, most of them halfway through their shift. In the middle, there’s Billy and another boy from sixth grade. He’s tall for his age. They stomp their feet on the ground and snarl at each other. They flex their muscles and snarl at each other. It’s a guy thing, apparently. Mom always told me it has something to do with validating masculinity, all this sweating and biting and kicking and punching. Odd, that. No sign of Gunda tonight, as far as I can see. Makes my job just a tiny bit easier. I move around the ring, looking for anyone that might be apart from the rest of the pack that would make for easier pickings. And there, just in the corner, a boy; he’s nursing his wounds even as they are knitting. Perhaps one of the challengers that got himself a little too roughed up for his own good.

I climb up a fir tree and jump over to the next. I mess up the landing. The rest of the pack is too caught up with their games to notice, but the boy can tell that something’s wrong. He crawls over to the tree on all fours. He’s still agitated by his transformation. That’s good. It means he’ll get careless.

I drop down on him, making sure I land right on his back. He’s flattened. My hands move up to the back of his head, grasp his hair and mash his face against the ground, to muffle his snarls. I put on the brass knuckles and crack him one on the side of the head. He’s out of it, but he won’t die. I’m done with killing. The horse-chestnut powder peppers his wound. He struggles for a while and finally goes limp as it enters his bloodstream. He’s going to be sore and scared when he wakes up.

The next one moves away from the ring to relieve himself. I throw the dart in his direction, get him in the neck. The grape juice goes right into his system. The silver plating causes his neck to swell, clenching his windpipe shut. He falls on the ground, his lips moving uselessly. I retrieve the dart and head for the next one.

I take down two of them with a single blow from the knuckles, another in the back of the knee. The last one I clamp my hand over his mouth and drag him down, spilling the baneberry juice in his mouth. I wrap my legs around his head and choke him until he’s almost out of air then force-feed him the liquid. He swallows out of reflex. His eyes go wide and he shivers. When I let him go, he starts screaming:

“I can’t see! I can’t see!”

Billy notices me, too late. The other boy is on his knees, battered and bloodied. Only now does he realize I’ve picked off the rest of them, left them shivering or paralyzed on the ground. He is fully transformed and bestial, his claws and teeth coated in blood, nostrils flaring and teeth bared, still riding the battle-high. That means he’s dangerous.

“I thought…we told you…to leave…” he growls. He’s struggling to stay mad, stay on edge but I’ve got him spooked. I keep my eyes on him, run my fingers over the bandolier. I grasp the knife handle, pull it out of its sheath. “She will…kill you…”

Billy starts to circle me. I keep him in my line of sight, brandishing the knife. The way I hold it, it’s so he can’t see the glint of the blade, he won’t know I’m armed. Billy’s taller than me by almost a meter in this form, his body a mass of wiry muscle. He’s on edge. One mistake and he’ll sink those teeth into my neck and that will be the end of it.

“You’re in…too deep…Finn. You should have…run…” he snarls and I know he’s getting careless, he’s losing it. He can’t read me, so he makes a feint to see if I will bite. I dig my heels into the ground, freeze. He messes up the next feint, leaves himself wide open. “One swipe…all it takes…” he says. I struggle not to blink. He might be clumsy and full of air, but he’s still better than me in every way that counts. I need him to be mad.

“Are you going to keep wasting my time, little man?” I tell him and Billy crosses the distance between us in a heartbeat. I fall to my knees. His giant frame brushes against the top of my head, knocks my mask halfway off my face. The straps dig into my eyes, nearly blinding me. I stab up at him, nick him. The advantage is gone. I roll away just as he slashes at me, ripping at the raincoat. His claws graze against the spider-silk armor but fail to penetrate.

I throw the mask down on the ground. When I turn to face Billy, he’s licking at his open wound. He gets the belladonna in his system faster than I expected. Thank God for pointless machismo, I guess.

“Think…your little…butter knife…can hurt me?” he wheezes and comes at me again. I side-step and aim for his thigh, get another cut across his back. To get the belladonna poison in there I dig the serrated edges into the wound and drag down. The pain is driving him crazy.

“I’ll…tear you…to pieces…” he growls and his eyes are going wide already. His metabolism is processing the poison faster than a regular human. Not long before the nightmares begin. I draw another knife, brandish both of them. This time, I charge him. Billy takes a step back at the last second. My knives cut through empty air. Billy’s elbow smashes against my belly, knocks the wind from out of me. I crawl, struggling to breathe. He grasps my hair, tugs my head back. “You shouldn’t…have come here…” he whispers in my ear. I can feel the tip of his talon pushing against my jugular.

And then something rumbles and hisses in the distance. There’s a brief flash of flame, as the Marsh House goes up in flames. Billy takes a second to look at it and that’s when the belladonna finally reaches his brain. He lets out a keening, animal noise as the nightmares flood in and consume him.

“I can’t…I can’t…” he starts to whimper and suddenly he’s screaming, staring at something just behind me that isn’t there. He raises his arms to protect himself but all he can do is plead with the empty air “No, dad, no!”

Billy falls to the ground, his form shifting back to the naked teenager, halfway to beast again. He curls himself into a ball and shudders “No! Not the glass again! Not the glass, dad!”

He screams like a crippled dog. He keeps calling out his father’s name, crying into the night:

“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!”

I’m turning to check on the flaming wreck that’s the Marsh House when I realize that the battered, bloody kid in the center of the ring is gone, running out into the woods running like a bat out of hell. I catch a glimpse of him as he turns around to see if I’m pursuing and I know that there’s no way I’ll catch up, not if he gathers his wits long enough to shift and bound away on four legs.

I sprint after him, overcoat flapping in the chill night air. He’s taller than me so he can cover more distance but his injuries are dragging him down. He swerves away, zig-zagging through the trees. I push against a tree-trunk for leverage and land on him, my boots slamming against the small of his back. He yelps exactly like a beaten dog. Thrashing down on the ground, he kicks at me but he’s too scared to think straight. I twist one arm against his back, press my knees against his legs and pin him down. Now all it will take is just a crack on the head to knock him unconscious and then…

The boy thrashes under me, grasps at something in the dark. He flings a handful of pine needles and dirt into my eyes and mouth. In the time it takes me to wipe most of it off my face his muscles ripple and bulge, a new set of bones explode across his ribcage. The boy shifts into his werewolf form, tosses me away like a ragdoll. I smash against the back of a tree trunk and watch him as he weighs his options before finally bolting, four legs carrying him into the night with blinding speed. Smart move.

I toss one of the darts his way, blindly. There’s no way I can get to him now, not before he’s had a chance to tell Gunda. Which means that they’ll move in for a swift, terrible retaliation and then…

Oh God I think to myself. They’re going to come after them. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I run as fast as my legs will take me, through the woods and over a fenced little backyard garden. Porch lights go off and an alarm blares out into the night. A rugged old daschund barks at me, struggling against his chain. I don’t stop until I am way past out of breath, until my lungs feel like they are on fire. Betty is too far away from where I am and I can’t afford to go back to Anton. I can call him, soon as I get to GoodSushi. Ask him to haul his behind in there, roll down the shutters and then…

Then I’m going to trap them in a siege and take out the bad guys on my own. Because I am an idiot.

“Damn it!” I hiss under my breath as I stumble down along Ellison Street, walk-crawl for a good five meters and then break into a slow jog and again into a run. My vision goes blurry. My muscles ache. Everything smells like old sweat and fear. I miss the turn into Echison and only realize it as I hear Mister Nomura calling out to me:

“Finn! Where the hell are you going?”

I turn back and run up to him, panting and frantic. My knees buckle down but he grabs me at the last second. “What happened to you? Where were you gone all day? Why are you dressed like that?”

“They’re coming. Mister Nomura, they’re coming and it’s my fault but I got a few of them, got them right good, Mister Pettus helped me but one of them got away and I don’t know what to do we need to go inside, go inside, we need to hole up!”

“Shhh, take a breath now. Easy now, easy…” he reassures me as he drags me across the street and into the entrance. I flop down on the floor, my legs already going numb. Mister Nomura starts rolling down the shutters.

“No, no don’t! Anton and Betty, we need to tell them they’re going to be all alone and Gunda knows where they live and…” I bite my lips, fighting back tears “They’re going to kill them! They’re going to kill them because of me!”

“Who’s dying?” I hear Betty’s voice from the corner of the room. She’s right there, sitting on a table next to Anton, both of them staring at me, with my pockmarked overcoat, looking exhausted and ridiculous, my combat bag on my shoulders. It plops on the floor as I stumble toward them and hold them close. Betty smells of mothballs. Anton’s covered in ashes. They hug me back, confused.

“Shutters down. Going to make sure the rest of the place is secure and then you need to tell us just what you got us into.” Mister Nomura grumbles as he heads upstairs. It’s only when I finally sit down that I notice the state of them: Betty looks tired, disheveled. Anton looks crazy, his face covered in ash. His nose is all red and puffy and bent the wrong way.

“What happened to you guys?”

“Well after you stormed out of school, we went out looking for you. We didn’t really know where else to go since you had vanished, so Anton almost got into a fight with Gunda’s Gunners.”

“I held my own pretty well.”

“They mopped the floor with him, so Anton got really mad and he decided to torch the old Marsh place. Thankfully, Gunda was gone and some of the pack were outside, doing who knows what. Anton nearly got himself killed, so I had to drag him here and convince Mister Nomura to wait for you, just in case.”

“Your friends are monumentally foolish. But so are you.” Mister Nomura says as he comes down the stairs. “First floor is sealed off and our escape route is open, just in case.”

“We have an escape route?” Anton asks. “I thought this place was a death trap.”

“Technically, it is. For the werewolves. Now, while we wait for them to come to us, why don’t you tell us what you got yourself into, Finn?” Mister Nomura says and I tell them everything. They listen in carefully, count down the werewolves lost against the numbers in the pack.

“How many does that leave us with?” Betty asks.

“About eight of them, all told. That brings us down to a two-to-one. Maybe we can make it through this, as long as they haven’t replaced their old alpha.” Anton says.

“Billy’s father? What happened to him?” I ask.

“Gunda took him out of the head of the pack. She challenged him to a fight the night we went to them. Apparently he was going down with a fever, but I don’t know what a werewolf could possibly catch.”

“My guess is salmonella.” Mister Nomura says, giving me a dirty look. It makes me want to curl up into a ball and die. “Alright, you two: on your feet and out the escape hatch.”

“There’s no way we’re running! We can’t leave Finn alone!” Betty says. Mister Nomura purses his lips.

“So you can fight, little lady? You think you can take those things? From what Finn told me, you didn’t even help her last time, only cowered in a corner and cried your eyes out. Think you could take two of them head on?”

“No, not head on.” Betty says, blushing. “But I am good at fixing things. And I know you’ve been working with silver, trying to make knives and all that…gear. I could make something that would slow Gunda and her werewolves down just long enough to give you an advantage.”

Mister Nomura eyes Betty down but she doesn’t bat an eye. She clenches her teeth, looks up at him and goes “Well?”

“If you slip up, we could all die.”

“Then I guess I won’t.” She grins back and they head downstairs, into Mister Nomura’s lab. Anton looks over at me, worried.

“Are you okay? Were you hurt?”

“My pride, I guess. That last one, he was a tricky little runt.”

“But you took them down, didn’t you? All six of them?”

“Swooped down into the night like a ninja.” I tell him and the next moment, Anton’s kissing me. Big old movie moment kiss too, the kind that makes you wish real life came with a score of trilling violins. I try to pull away at first, but I don’t really want to so I kiss him right back. He tastes like soot and licorice. When we break away, I’m shivering all over.

“You wanna go out, after all this is over?”

“I’d love to.”

Mister Nomura claps his hands twice and we stand at attention. There’s no way we could know how long he’s been there but judging by Betty’s flushed expression, I can say it’s been long enough. She’s carrying a large cardboard box in her arms, filled to the brim with all manner of junk.

“Whatcha making there, Betty? Death ray?” Anton says.

“Next best thing.” Betty lets him know and gets down to work. The minute trickles by and I try to follow Betty, her hands a blur as she puts together jumbled rusted meshes of wiring that she plugs into electrical sockets, setting up copper wire filaments across the doors and windows. I try to help wherever I can but it all looks beyond me.

“Betty, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course I am, silly! I’m setting up some fragmentation charges!”

“Oh, okay.” I nod, trying not to look too stupid.

“Kind of like grenades, you know? When they blow up, they explode into a million pieces and it’s those things that kill you, when you get down to it. I wanted to use silver with those but we don’t have nowhere near enough. So I just used whatever was lying around. I hope it will do…” Betty says and stops halfway through rigging the frame of my bedroom window. “I know I am a useless scaredy cat, but I’ll do what I can for you guys. At least I’m going to give you some time to get out of here.”

“You’re not useless, Betty. You’re a genius.”

“And you’re my best friend.” Betty tells me, ruffling my hair. “So please, promise me you won’t get killed.”

“No one dies tonight, Betty. Not as long as I’ve got breath in my body.” I say and it’s only then that I realize exactly how utterly cheesy I sound; Betty seems to know it too but she nods all the same.

“I know.” She tells me. “We all know.”

I head back downstairs. Anton and Mister Nomura have just finished setting up the traps behind the shutters. A car battery is pumping electricity into the metal mesh through a lattice of copper wire. A rudimentary trap, composed from cutlery pilfered from the kitchens is set alongside them.

“Looks painful. Think it will stop them?”

“Only one way to find out.” Anton says.

Mister Nomura gives Anton three pairs of silver-plated knives. He straps one of his own sushi knives on his back while he arms himself. We have nothing to protect ourselves when the werewolves close in; nothing but thick insulated jackets that we put on. They aren’t anywhere near as good as the spider-silk shirt but they might lessen the damage some. Betty won’t have any of it.

“At least take a knife.” I plead with her. “Just to make sure.”

“I don’t even know how to use it. I could end up just stabbing myself.” She jokes and her lips quivers at that. She still takes it when I press it against her hand, holds it as far out of her reach as she can.

“Now we wait.” Mister Nomura says.

That is the worst part.

***

Seconds trickle down like honey, thick and viscous. To keep myself from going insane, I close my eyes and try to control my breathing, fight down the terror bubbling up inside me. Lisa’s eyes flash behind my eyelids, but only briefly. Old fear flutters into my nostrils, sets me on edge. A century passes.

When I look up again, it’s barely 5 minutes past midnight. I grind my teeth to hold back a scream. We used to go on stakeouts like this with Dad: once, in Prague, we spent two hours in the pouring rain hidden in the parapets of Saint Vitus waiting for our quarry to leave her sanctuary so we could get the drop on her. The pitter-patter of the rain on the marble, the rain soaking through our clothes and into our skins is enough to drive you mad. When I would get too jittery, Dad would make me recite the Helfwir oath. I do it now, under my breath.

What is a Helfwir? Make-believe Dad asks me, his voice echoing in the empty chambers of my mind.

“The hunter in the night. Stalker of the things that Dwell In The Fringes.”

Outside, something thumps into the pavement. Long talons rake across the asphalt. There’s the sound of glass smashing. A car alarm blares into the night. My heart thumps in my chest like a jackhammer.

“They’re here.” Betty says from the upstairs corridor.

What is the Helfwir’s purpose? Make-believe Dad barks out into my mind like a drill seargeant, snapping me back into reality.

“To preserve the night. To drive the deathless into the light. To reveal the shifter, pull back the witch’s veil, bleed the demon of its power.” I say, louder than I anticipated. Anton and Mister Nomura look at me for a moment, gauging to see if I’ve lost it. I stand up on my feet, slide the titanium baseball bat from its sheath.

Outside, the pack is closing in on the shutters.

“I told you…what would happen…little girl…” Gunda snarls. It’s a deep and guttural thing, her voice. Primal, even. If the Big Bad Wolf was married, that’s what his wife would sound like.

What defines the Helfwir? Make-believe Dad says, slowly fading away as my fear subsides. He is nothing but a voice now, a presence in the backroom of my brain, dispersing my fear as if it’s nothing more than a puff of smoke.

“The purity of her purpose. The iron in her blood. The steel in her heart and the lead in her belly.” I say, slightly louder. Our eyes are trained on the shutters, the forms lurking outside.

“We…will kill you…last…” Gunda snarls. “Then we’ll see…if there’s any lead…in your belly.”

When does the Helfwir’s duty end? The voice is little more than a whisper now. I say the words and I know that I don’t care what happens tonight. I know that I will destroy Gunda and her pack even if it kills me.

“In death. Of the body or the spirit.”

No sooner have the words left my lips than the first of the pack, a careless werewolf brave throws itself against the shutters with force. The metal creaks as it takes in the brunt of the impact. The werewolf howls as the current zaps it. It takes a step back, stumbles and then charges again. Perhaps they’re dumber than I thought, or maybe they are putting too much stock in their healing ability. Either way, it makes things easier for us.

Not by much, though.

When it throws itself against the shutters, the metal whines and parts. The werewolf slashes and grazes itself against the opening even against the current’s surge. Its fur catches fire and but it just keeps going, tearing the shutters apart. I move in and crack it across the head with the bat. Once, twice, three times. Its teeth go flying and it slumps down on the shutters. Its weight is enough to drag them down. It’s battered and bloodied but it broke through our defenses just the same.

Gunda and her pack move in immediately. I count four of them. One is missing. Before I have the chance to make a quick scan and see where it could have gone, another steps in, bounding over the shutters. I retreat, shouting “Down!” as I go.

The second the werewolf’s paws snap the copper wire, all hell breaks loose. Betty’s trap goes off. Shards of nails and cutlery and slivers of silver from Mister Nomura’s stash fly into the air and embed themselves in the werewolf’s body. It snarls in disbelief. Mister Nomura jumps out from cover and slashes at its tendons, sending it sprawling before we begin our retreat.

“Get…them!” Gunda barks at the rest of her pack, visibly scared as they realize that we brought down two of them in seconds. The alpha brandishes her talons, bares her teeth and they come flying in. The first one goes for me, aiming wildly. It claws and slashes at the empty air as I ram the baseball bat against its gut. Switching my grip, I hold the handle with both hands and strike twice at the werewolf’s ribs and arm. It breaks through the bones and singes the werewolf’s hide. The werewolf bites at me, teeth sinking into the spider silk and twists. Its massive weight pulls me down. I let it drag me down on the hardwood floor but raise my legs as I go, pushing the boots up against its chest to push it off me the next second. It rips my overcoat away in strips with its teeth so I bring the bat’s handle down on its neck, collapse its windpipe.

Anton goes flying next to me over the dining room, the counter and into the kitchen. The werewolf that tossed him away like a ragdoll walk-crawls toward the counter with mister Nomura on its back. Knife handles are sticking out from its shoulder and back, halfway embedded in its flesh. It struggles even as it bleeds from a hundred different wounds.

By the time I’ve turned around, Gunda has covered the distance between us and is towering over me. I jab at her with the bat but she gets me in the chin with the flat of her palm. I go flying.

Somewhere above, the first floor shakes. Plaster comes down on us like rain. Guess that’s where the last one went. One of the tables crashes into splinters under me.

“No more…games…” I hear Gunda snarl and she’s on top of me again, slashing at my chest. The clothing rips away. Talons brush against the spider-silk and fray it. Gunda tries to sink her teeth into my neck. Turning at the last second, I manage to put my shoulder in the way, the padding blocking her. She tugs at in and throws me around like a chewtoy. I try to swing with the bat, but it flies away from my hand. She slams me against the wall, again and again.

“I will…eat your eyes…first…” she snarls. I try to find something, anything that I can use. The fighting staff is tangled in my combat bag. My knives spill down on the floor. My fingers are shaking and I drop the darts. By pure luck, my fingers slip into the brass knuckles. I curl myself up into a ball so she can’t see it. Gunda picks me up by the collar, raises me to eye level.

“You will…savor the pain…much more…” she opens her mouth wide enough to fit my entire face in and that’s when I sock her in the chest. Something gives way inside. Gunda lets out a gargling sound, spits blood. I hit her once more right between the eyes. Gunda screams in pain.

“Not so tough are you?” I say as I grasp her ears, tug her head back. I’m about to bring my knuckles down into her muzzle, reduce her face into a red mess when Betty screams:

“He’s up there! Watch out!”

Betty comes tumbling down the steps. She looks pale, terrified. It takes me a second to realize that her arm is missing. The werewolf that comes down the steps and pins her under his massive frame is holding it between his teeth, spits it out.

Gunda’s talons shoot up and get me right in the chest, push through the spider silk shirt. They penetrate into the skin, graze the flesh. She holds me up in the air like a trophy.

“Sloppy…” she mocks and her hand closes in around my hand, grasps my skull. I feel her fingers clench and there’s this horrible pressure all over me, this terrible sensation and the sound that my teeth make as they are pushed together and I know that I’m going to die oh God I’m going to die…

Mister Nomura staggers out of the kitchen, long red gashes like tattos on his chest. The werewolf keeps tearing Betty apart. Someone’s screaming from the kitchen.

“Yeeessss…” Gunda snarls and her muscles ripple as she is about to crack my skull open like an egg. She’s so engrossed with her victory that she doesn’t even register the stream of fire that washes over her until it’s too late. “What?” she screams and lets me drop, rolling down on the floor. The flame keeps dousing her, a steady stream of something viscous that clings to her skin, peels it apart in layers.

“Hope I’m not too late…” Mister Pettus says, stepping out of the cloud of noxious smoke that wafts up from Gunda’s struggling, burning form. He’s dressed in a frayed old tuxedo with a very odd, silvery gun in his hand that looks like it sprang out from some old science fiction flick.

The werewolf that was tearing Betty apart starts to move. Mister Pettus flicks a dial in his gun, shoots a stream of a strange blue foam that coats the beast. The foam hardens, trapping the werewolf in a solid hard cocoon against the wall.

“Anton! Anton’s in there and he’s…” I mutter, shooting up on my feet. I move over Mister Nomura’s collapsed form, try not to think of Betty. Inside the kitchen, Anton is standing over the last werewolf’s body, struggling against the bulk of the refridgerator that it’s trapped under.

“I couldn’t make him stay down. Had to improvise.” he cracks me a smile and I just want to punch him right in that stupid grin of his but I just can’t. My knees go weak and I slump down on the floor, doing my best not to just burst out crying.

I give the last werewolf a taste of the darts. Paralysis should do for now. When we get back in the dining room, Mister Pettus is tying Gunda up with a length of something that looks thin enough to be dental floss which he produces from his wristwatch. Gunda stuggles against it, uselessly.

“My last kilometer of steel ribbon. Might as well use that thing. You won’t believe what I had to go through just to find any of the old gadgets that still worked. Half the bloody things have expired! 100-year guarantee, feh!”

Mister Nomura is sitting at the stairs, bent over the place where Betty was. My heart flutters at the sight. I step closer. The least I can do is take care of her, tell Adam the bad news, hope that he doesn’t just snap my neck for getting his daughter killed.

“Mister Nomura? It’s okay…” I tell him, placing my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” Betty’s voice comes from the foot of the stairs and I jump, terrifed. She’s there, her head and torso and arms strewn all about. She bites her lip when she sees the look on my face. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she pleads as she waits for me to stop screaming, then Anton and then, finally, Mister Pettus.

“Good Lord!” he yells “It’s a homunculus! A real, live homunculus!”

“What? She’s a what?” Anton says, gasping for air.

“An alchemically created man! Well, woman in this case…” Mister Pettus says, clapping his hands, amazed. “I thought there weren’t any left!”

“Wait, so Betty isn’t human?” Anton says, trying to blink away confusion.

“She is human.” I tell Anton. “It’s just that she…wasn’t born. Not like us, anyway.” it’s so strange, how easily their terror and confusion has snapped me back to reality. “Betty, are you in pain?”

“No, I think the worst of it’s over. But I might have to…you know…” she struggles, looking for the right word. “Need a ride home.”

From her own little corner, Gunda starts laughing. It’s a crackling, raspy sound. She coughs up ashes and blood, rolls on the floor. “You pathetic…little creatures…” she says, flexing her muscles against the ribbon, wincing as it bites into her flesh. “A half-girl…a boy and two…old men…”

“So? We kicked your ass, didn’t we?” Anton says. Gunda beats her legs against the floor, struggling to get up.

“You think…I came here…alone?” she spits. “You think…the alpha…wouldn’t bring…her entire pack…to bear?”

From the shadows outside GoodSushi, they slink into the light. Boys and girls from the school, children that I hadn’t seen before. A dozen werewolves hiding in plain sight, rolling in. Gunda shifts, her bestial form receding to that of a blonde, blue-eyed girl. “Orsonville will be our new capital, when we drown the world in blood. I called everyone, to make sure. The Wild Hunt.”

The steel ribbon falls from her body. Her skin peels away, revealing smooth, silken layers underneath. The Alpha barks and her pack fall to their knees, begin to shift en masse.

“Amuse me.” She snarls. I pick Betty up and we run.