I couldn’t feel exactly where the bullet had hit. I started to think that maybe it had missed after all, and I was just imagining the feeling in my chest like I’d been hit by a car full of hammers, but after a second I saw blood staining my shirt. She’d shot from the hip, and managed to put it straight through my heart. Anyone else would have been dead on the spot. For me, it still hurt like an absolute motherfucker.

My ears were fucked too, everything sounded like the volume had been turned way down, but I still managed to make out the sound of two more gunshots in quick succession. The others had already turned a corner, so there was a wall between them and her, but she wasn’t aiming at me, so who else would she have been shooting?

I dropped the rest of the way to the floor, letting my head tilt back as I did, and saw two bullet holes straight through the wall, lined up to where the others would have been standing. I breathed a small, really painful sigh of relief when I saw there was a fierce white light shining through both those holes. Luke could be painfully slow when it came to talking with people, but when it came to danger, he had instincts like nobody else. No way would a bullet have got through a wall he put up.

A split second later, the whole building descended into chaos. Whatever illusion Charity had been using, it wasn’t stopping the cops from realising one of their own was opening fire, so they all jumped into action to back her up. Some of them fired in the same general direction, in the hopes that would solve whatever the problem was, others were taking cover and yelling.

Fuck this hurt. I’d never been shot before, and I wasn’t enjoying it very much. Two out of five stars at most, and only because I was a very generous reviewer. Worse, I knew that while my body could handle a bit of shrapnel, having an entire bullet inside my heart would severely screw with my ability to heal. I clamped my teeth down hard and plunged two fingers into the wound, ripping my chest open further, until I managed to find the bullet. Which also meant my fingers were inside my heart, and I could feel it frantically beating, which was really fucking disturbing in its own way.

One sharp yank later and I had the bullet out, or enough of it that the wound could start to close itself. I’d lost a lot of blood by digging it out, but the edge came off the pain straight away, and I could feel my thoughts clearing up. Genevieve didn’t look like she’d noticed I was still alive, she was focused on Luke and Charity. There were bullets flying everywhere, but as long as Luke kept reinforcing the shield he’d thrown up, they would be fine, and as long as nobody had really tragic aim I’d be fine too, being on the ground and all. This was a situation I could use to my advantage, if I could find some sort of opening.

A cop shouted something. It was hard to hear anything over the gunfire, but the message seemed to spread through the ranks. One by one, they all turned towards Genevieve, looked horrified, and then turned around to shoot at her instead of us. Charity. She must have changed her illusion. That was one way to deal with the problem.

Or it should have been.

The first shots were aimed badly, and went past Genevieve. That gave her enough time to realise what was happening, and she started to somehow dance through the bullets, dodging every shot without even making it look hard. Worse, but she’d been standing in the middle of the group, so every shot that missed her hit another cop instead. She barely had to bother shooting back at all. In a matter of seconds, the whole squad was down, and Genevieve was skipping - literally - over a pile of bodies. Unfortunately for her, one of those bodies was mine.

I grabbed her ankle while she was in mid-skip and slammed it downwards, smashing her foot into the floor with enough force to shatter bones. She yelped in surprise, but somehow her foot slipped out of my grip during the impact. Still, she was already on the ground, and I’d had a second to get back up to my feet.

I lunged at her again, but she was fast; she fired twice before I had a chance to close the distance. I’d rotated my body so she wouldn’t get another shot at my heart, but she did hit my shoulder square on with both bullets, which was enough to make me stumble back and give her time to spring to her feet. The one I’d grabbed was badly mangled, shoe torn off and blood and bits of bone showing through, but that didn’t seem to bother her much.

Fuck me. I couldn’t get close to her, not like this. She had to take a second to reload, but I couldn’t do anything with that time, she was too fast for me to lay a hand on her like this. And whatever the hell Luke was doing back there, apparently he was too busy with it to throw up a shield around me. Just because I could regenerate didn’t mean I liked getting shot. I had to come up with a better plan than running at her again. Running away? No, I’d be an easy target. But if I wanted to fight, I needed to be able to do it from a distance, in a way she wouldn’t expect.

She had an open door behind her and a second floor balcony over her head, the stairs leading up to that balcony to her right and a wide open space on her left. All the space in the world to dodge. I was in the wide open half of the room, of course. There was a giant TV on a heavy-looking stand, good projectile but I wasn’t going to get to it. An L-shaped couch facing the TV, it wasn’t aerodynamic enough to use as a weapon but I might be able to hide behind it. But there was no way I could get there in time.

Then half the room went black, and I didn’t hesitate. Three running steps and a dive, and I was behind the couch. Another one of Charity’s signature tricks. Those simple, unconvincing lights and sounds she could make wouldn’t trick anybody, but project an illusion of a big black box over someone’s general location and it didn’t matter whether they knew it was fake, they still wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Normally she’d be a whole lot more precise about it, but she couldn’t actually see into this room without maybe getting shot so I’d forgive her just this once.

I still needed a plan. Genevieve had stopped shooting, her half of the room was blacked out and I had some kind of cover, so I wasn’t in too much danger right now, but I couldn’t see her either. I could smell that hideous perfume to get a rough idea of where she was, but smell wasn’t precise enough to fight by unless she decided to stand totally still while I sniffed around for her. I was just about to come up with something incredibly ingenious when words appeared in the air just in front of my face, bright red and flashing.

STALL HER.

I was a team player, I could do that. I shouted, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Oooooooh.” There was an excited shiver in her voice. “I do love a good villainous monologue. But don’t the bad guys always lose when they do that?”

“Are you the bad guy?”

“From your perspective, I’d imagine I am. I would like to assure you none of this is personal, though. There are things bigger than either of us.”

“Oh, great! I’d hate for a flower-scented psycho to kill me for personal reasons.”

“Psycho? Come on now, there’s no need for that.”

“We’re standing in the middle of a pile of bodies that you and your friend put here, and you’re worried about rude words? Mr Serial Killer is your friend, right? You didn’t just have an itchy trigger finger?”

“Just because things are tense right now doesn’t mean you need to resort to name-calling. Being a lady is about showing decorum in all circumstances, especially in the midst of unpleasant situations like this.”

I heard a set of gunshots from inside the darkness, more than I could count, and one of them hit me right in the ribs. Talking might have bought time, but it also let her figure out exactly where I was hiding. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Biiiiiiiiiiiiiitch.”

I ran out of air before I could draw the word out as long as I wanted to. That hit in the ribs might have actually been a hit in the lungs. Or, fuck, maybe it was both. I couldn’t tell if I’d been hit more than once, there was just pain spread across my everywhere.

“If that’s all you have to say for yourself, then -”

The darkness vanished just in time for me to see a spear of light burst through base of the stairs beside Genevieve, and hit her square in the ribs too. Maybe there was some justice in the world after all. It didn’t pierce her skin, but it hit with enough force to toss her through the air and smash her into the far wall. If that was all I’d been buying time for then I might have been a teensy bit pissed the hell off, but apparently Luke and Charity had been hard at work calculating some snooker-style trick shot. After it hit her, the light curved upwards, winding its way through every support that was holding up the balcony above and knocking them out. The entire section of the house caved in, with Genevieve beneath it.

Somehow she managed to bounce right off the wall she’d been smashed into and land on her feet. The balcony’s collapse was gradual at first, a few bits and pieces falling, then that disturbance leading more to follow, then everything else. As those first few planks and tiles began to fall, she jumped upwards, using the debris as midair stepping stones in complete defiance of every law of physics so she could run straight up through the air and reach the second floor. With one last leap off a falling handrail, she landed securely on a still-intact section of second floor hallway.

She looked down at me, rubbing her side where the light had hit her. It was hard to make out, but it seemed like it had partially caved in her ribs. “That was close! And ow ow ow this really stings. I can see why you don’t like getting shot!”

Fuck it. Fuck all of this, fuck her, and fuck aerodynamics. If she didn’t have to respect the laws of physics, then neither should I. I slid both arms under the couch and launched it in her direction with all my strength.

It didn’t work out like I’d wanted. Even though I was really angry, it still flew through the air much like a great big L-shaped couch, not even getting close to hitting her, and the force of the throw broke it in half before it got anywhere near her. But it did succeed at one thing, which was giving me a chance to move. Whether it blocked her view or just distracted her, she didn’t shoot as I ran towards the collapsed section of the house. And while I couldn’t bounce off falling objects like I was in a cheesy martial arts movie, I could jump a lot better than most people. One small jump got me on top of the half of the couch that had landed closest to Genevieve, then the second got me right up in her face.

She squealed, fell over backwards before I could quite manage to lay a hand on her, then spun around in midair and managed to hit the ground running. She moved down the hallway fast, way too fast for someone as messed up as her, but running fast was mostly a matter of strength, and I had a whole lot more of that than she did. She dodged as I closed in on her, but I still managed to clip her arm, and heard a satisfying crack. She got a little bit of distance as I recovered from the swing, though, and used that to slip through one of the doorways on the right hand side of the hall.

I was pissed, but I wasn’t stupid. If I followed her through that door, I was going to catch a dozen bullets to the face, and there was a limit to how much I could regenerate. But if I didn’t follow her, she might start taking potshots again. I could run. The others were stuck downstairs now, so running to join up with them would be the smart option. But fuck that.

Of all the things Genevieve had done that day, there was one decision that stood out from the rest, one utterly braindead move that I could use against her to destroy her. I couldn’t see her, I could barely hear a thing after all those gunshots, and I didn’t know anything about the layout of the room she’d ducked into. It was the perfect spot for an ambush. Except for one thing.

She’d worn that awful fucking perfume.

I charged straight at the wall, barrelling through it without slowing down, and let myself fall on top of her, along with half the wall. She’d been pressed up against it, standing totally still while waiting for me to fall into her trap, so she had no chance to dodge. And while I hadn’t been able to specifically smell where each of her limbs was, I had a decent idea of how she’d be standing, so I was able to use that moment of surprise to pin her gun arm under my knee. Before she even knew what was happening, her arm was trapped pointing away from me, I had a hand around her neck, and she had a chunk of plaster across both of her legs.

I hissed in her ear. “Seems to me you really like talking. How about you start now. Tell me something interesting enough that I’ll want to spare your life.”

She made some strangled noises.

“Oh, I’m sorry, having trouble breathing? Here, let me help.” I loosened my grip on her neck just the tiniest amount.

“One… thing… to… tell… you…”

I loosened my grip a teensy bit more, and felt her take a deep breath.

“That was really cool.”

She shifted her hand a fraction of an inch and fired her gun again. It was pointed well away from me, but somehow the bullet managed to ricochet off a trophy that rested on a cabinet, then off the ceiling light, and came straight down into the back of my neck, wedging itself in my spine. This time I didn’t feel any pain at all.

I managed to move my arm just enough to shove her face down into the carpeted floor, though I might not have even had enough strength to break her nose after that. Then everything went dark.

The first thing I saw was Luke’s face. Then I saw a second, smaller Luke staring at me. Different room. Bed? No. Table? Maybe.

“Mmmghhm lalsdot alkmsdaio gablglalj?” I asked.

“She’s awake!” I couldn’t tell which Luke said that.

“Wannnnnnna. Wanna go back to sleep.”

“It’s okay, you can. Sleep all you want.”

Sleep all I want? I was giddy. Normally sleep was so hard, but now it felt as easy as doing something really easy! Like all I had to do was

It had been a long time since I slept without dreaming. A long time since I woke up purely because I’d had enough sleep. Whatever the reason for it, it felt nice.

I didn’t need to open my eyes to know where I was. I could feel Ed on his perch nearby, and all the familiar smells of home surrounded me, along with a few chemical scents I figured were from whatever medicine people had been able to buy at the store. I almost never had to go to the hospital, but on the other hand, I couldn’t if I did need to. Medical degrees didn’t include a course on how to treat werewolves, which was a thingo. Whatsamacallit. Hate crime.

Ed swooped down the moment I woke up, landing on the pillow beside me and carefully preening my hair for me. I returned the favour, using my one good arm to stroke his feathers, and he squawked softly.

“Hey,” I whispered. Grace was sitting at my desk, typing away on her laptop from the sound of things. Stress radiated from her in sour waves. She tried so hard to never let anybody see that, but she couldn’t hide from the nose. The nose knows. I had to suppress a giggle. Definitely not recovered yet, that hadn’t even been slightly funny.

“You’re okay. Thank goodness. Luke explained what happened.” Her voice was tight, every word carefully chosen and measured. She slowly got up from my chair and sat down on the bed beside me. It was a small bed, not big enough for two human-shaped people, barely even big enough for one at that, but I still appreciated having her there.

“Takes more than a few little gunshots to keep me down. Pew pew pew.”

She didn’t seem to appreciate my fingerguns. “A few? You were shot twelve times, Alex. If Luke hadn’t managed to convince his aunt to help you, you would have died.”

“What? Naaahhh. It was like, six.”

“Twelve. I saw them. They had to cut them out of you.”

I was sure that wasn’t right, but I wasn’t loopy enough to argue. Or to point out that I’d pulled one out myself, so that actually made a nice round thirteen.

“Wait, aunt?” My mind skidded to a halt, then backed up over those last few sentences. “They were the ones who hated werewolves, right? Must’ve taken some convincing.” Which meant the smaller Luke was probably his cousin.

“Indeed. Which is yet another reason why we need to stick together. Next time you decide to run off on some insane mission, you tell me about it. At the very least, I could have fortified your regeneration so you wouldn’t end up like this.”

There were practical problems with that idea, but again, not loopy enough. So instead I just nodded empathetically. Wait, no, emphasisingly. No, hang on. Emphatically. There we go.

“Yeah. Sorry. Shouldn’t have made you miss out on all the fun. Did Luke tell you the businessman became a pirate too in the end?”

She laid a hand on my shoulder, very gently. I still felt a little twinge of pain. I’d never been hurt badly enough to still feel it after this long, not that I was sure how long it had been.

“Shh. You’re okay. Focus on resting. Do you need anything? I made soup, if you want some.”

“Mmph. No thanks. Oh, but, important question. Did they get her?”

“No. They chased her off, then focused on saving you. Otherwise I would have ended them both by now.”

“Kay. Can you just stay here for a while?”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to.