The office for Warren Loans was on the second floor, over a restaurant whose specialty was a mystery. I'm sure people who could read whatever language the sign was in would know, but the smell that drifted out wasn't very appetizing. I drew the smoke from my cigarette in through my nose as I passed, masking the scent as much as I could. If I expected to be coming back much, I'd probably have had to pick up cigar smoking for something stronger. I flicked the cig back into a puddle on the road as I turned into the little alcove with the Warren sign over it.

The stink was gone as soon as I stepped through the door. It was replaced by the tang of gold. I couldn't feel it, but I suspected that there was a fan lightly blowing air over a pile of coins and down the stairs. It was subtle, smart, and just a little underhanded. Normal folks would barely be able to smell it, probably wouldn't even notice they did unless they were looking for it. But they'd step through that door and get the feeling that there was money ahead. That worked for Warren; the more they were thinking of money, the more they'd borrow. And he'd collect more on the interest. I just counted my blessings that he wasn't blowing silver down at me.

The scent of gold was there in the waiting room, too, but it was mixed in with rubber from the fake potted plants and his secretary's barely-there patchouli perfume. The oak door to Warren?s office was closed, but I could see a trace of light on the carpet under it. Figuring he might be with a client, I crossed to the secretary's desk. She was pretending to be busy, but I could see the crossword puzzle she'd slid most of the way under some more professional looking papers.

"Mr. Warren in?"

She looked up, and I saw her gaze move past my eyes as she looked me over, then flicker back. I've gotten used to that reaction; some people in Rhy'Din are used to eyes that would stand out on Earth, but a lot of the plain-old-human population still take notice. "He's... out of the office at the moment. May I take a message, Mr...?"

I heard the hesitation, and I resisted the urge to just walk over to his office door and pull it open. "McTirin. Yeah, I can leave him a message." I tugged a small notebook out of my pocket, flipped it open, and glanced over it. I didn't need to, for what I would be telling her, but I've noticed people tend to take me more seriously if I pretend to be double-checking everything. "I found his wife. Mrs. Warren seems to have left of her own volition. If he wants to talk about it more, he knows where to find me."

When I mentioned Mrs. Warren, still looking down at my notebook, my peripheral vision caught the secretary stiffen. I lifted my gaze back to her, and she blinked. "Oh. If you hold on a moment, I may be able to-"

I heard feet moving on carpet a moment before she stopped talking and looked at the office door. I turned to look myself, as Warren opened the door. He had a faintly disheveled look about him: he'd either rushed or been distracted when he combed his hair, his suit was just a little wrinkled, and he hadn't shaved. My nose told me that he hadn't changed his clothing for a few days. "You said you found Vera?" There was a note of desperation in his voice.

I sighed. I knew he was going to want to know more, and I knew he wouldn't like what he heard. Habit kicked in, and my hand was on the back of my neck, rubbing at the muscle there, before I thought about it. I stopped, and slid it into my pocket instead. "Yeah. She wasn't kidnapped. She left because she wanted to."

He walked over, getting a bit closer than I'd have liked, and glared up at me. I repressed the urge to bare my teeth. That was the Wolf, and it wouldn't have been professional. I just loomed, which was easy enough, with my height. "Tell me where she is. Now."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure you really want to know, Mr. Warren. You told me that you just wanted to know if she'd been kidnapped or hurt." I turned toward the door to the stairs, and took one slow step.

He sputtered for a moment. I tried not to feel satisfied about that. "You want more money, is that it? Fine, I can-"

I held up a hand, palm forward, as I turned back around. "No. I just really think it might be best if you wait until she feels ready to come home. I think she will, eventually."

He smiled, probably like he did when convincing people that the interest rate was perfectly reasonable. "I assure you, Mr. McTirin, I'd like to know where my wife is. And I'd prefer not to wait."

I shook my head, but drew out my notebook again. "She's been turned by a vampire, Mr. Warren. It can be hard to control the hunger, especially at first, and she went somewhere to get some help." I'd already had the address of the Retreat written out, so I tore off the page and handed it over to him. "I think you should talk to her counselor before you talk to her. Good afternoon."

He gaped at me, though he took the piece of paper readily enough. He didn't seem about to demand more information, so I left. I didn't bother to stop myself from rubbing the nape of my neck as I went. Habits are hard to kick.

As soon as I got outside, I got a cigarette in my mouth and lit it. It's a filthy habit, I know, but I'm lucky enough to heal the damage quickly enough that it doesn't do much of anything, long term. I took a deep breath to cover the smell from the restaurant, and turned to walk down the street.

My heart lodged itself firmly in my throat as I saw a dead woman walking down the street toward me.

As I watched, the crowd parted, the scent of fear wafting along the sidewalk to me. A massive russet wolf padded past them, its attention on no one it passed unless they were nearly in its way, at which point it simply growled, a deep sound rumbling from its chest while eyes like mine, one brown and one blue, stared ahead and those near it took another step back. Its sharp teeth were bared, saliva dripping from its mouth, and its ears were erect, angling forward.

I'd never actually seen the Wolf before. There was a good reason for that: it didn't exist outside my body. It couldn't be here on the street, especially in bright daylight. Even if that was somehow me, from some parallel world, I didn't change any time but the night of the full moon. I stepped back, out of its way, as it stalked past. It didn't even spare me a glance. It just growled at someone else who had gotten too close, then picked up its pace to a jog.

I slumped against a building, staring at the ground without really seeing much of anything. My fingers started digging in my pocket for a cigarette on their own accord, while the Wolf in the back of my mind howled in rage, and something else. I've gotten good about controlling myself, not simply following instincts that were not wholly my own. Still, I could feel what the Wolf felt, in a primal level. As I lit my cigarette, I couldn't blame it. It had just sensed itself walking by, after all. It was only marginally smarter than an ordinary animal. My Wolf was savage, but not evil, per se. Something had changed it a while back, perhaps a year after I'd gotten to Rhy'Din. It was a dangerous animal, sure, but it usually didn't rage about unless there was a threat nearby, or it had just gone through the change. It stood to reason that the Wolf would consider a version of itself one hell of a threat. Having seen what it was capable of, I was inclined to agree. A thought occurred to me, and I stood stock straight, cigarette dropping from my lips.

Cripes. The wolf was going the same way as Anna.

I pushed away from the wall and turned to run after the wolf. It had a head start on me, and it was quick, but if I was lucky it wouldn't have been pushing itself to its full speed. I have long legs, and I've had to run enough that I knew the value of keeping in shape. When I push myself, I'm pretty fast, and I caught up to the wolf just as it was leaping at Anna. I whipped the knife from my belt, and I did something I very, very rarely do. I let the instincts of the Wolf in my mind take over.

The response from the wolf was instant. It wasn't the sort to chew its food or savor the taste, so when its jaws clamped shut, it intended to swallow the fingers it expected to still be there immediately. Instead, it swallowed silver. Its howl sounded very much like a human scream (disturbingly so, not the least because it sounded a good deal like my own voice), and it leapt off of me, running off to disappear around a corner. I didn't know what the end result of eating silver would be, since I'd never been stupid enough to try it myself, but I was sure it wouldn't be pleasant.

I closed my eyes. The cobbles under my back felt surprisingly comfortable, though there seemed to be a tender spot on the back of my head. I'd probably bounced my head off the ground when I went down, and a concussion would explain why I felt like it would be a good time for a nap. I wasn't touching silver any more, and the Wolf in my head lent its own soft growls to the argument I was trying to use to convince myself to stay awake. It wasn't that I was particularly worried about my injuries; like I said, I heal fast. I just didn't want to get robbed or killed while I was asleep on the road. There was something else that I wanted to stay awake for, but at the moment I couldn't quite get my mind around just what that was.

"Grem?" Oh, that's right. Anna. I felt her hair brush my cheek, and I forced my eyes open. The fuzziness of the hit to my head was fading fast. Anna had lost her glasses, and was kneeling on the ground next to my head. She was bent down over me, something between concern and surprise on her face. There was only a touch of the fear that had drawn the scream out of her a minute or so earlier. "Oh my God. What are you doing here?" She straightened up a little, giving me room to sit up, and looked around. "Um. Where ever this is... And what was with that wolf?"

I pushed myself up on my elbows. "Werewolf." I felt the back of my head, finding a small lump, tender. "And this is Rhy'Din." I sat up the rest of the way and sighed. Blood oozed from my arm, sluggishly, and I reached out to retrieve my knife from the cobblestones. "I liked this shirt." I was muttering to myself, as I twisted a bit, bringing that shoulder within her reach. "Mind pulling my sleeve up from my shoulder a bit?"

"You're hurt!" I couldn't blame her for not noticing. She had just gotten here, apparently, and that could be disorienting enough without being attacked by a beast out of nightmares. But she did what I asked, and I nicked the fabric with my blade before setting it down.

"Thanks." I grabbed my sleeve, fingers brushing hers in the process, and paused. My life had been shaped by what had happened to Anna, a lot, and coming into contact with her, in the flesh, reminded me of that. I pressed my lips together and pulled, hard. The cut was enough to weaken the cotton, and the sleeve came off with a tearing sound, sliding down over the marks left by the wolf's teeth. "It looks worse than it is." That was the truth. It would be a deceptively dangerous wound, vulnerable to infection on top of the danger of blood loss, on a normal person. I wasn't particularly worried about infection, though, and hadn't lost much blood so far.

Anna must have known what I was thinking, because she took the severed sleeve from me without another word, and set about bandaging the gashes with it. "Oh, God. You saved my life from that thing." I snorted at the irony before I had time to stop it from coming out, and she gave me a curious look before going back to tying off my sleeve. "Did you say it's a werewolf? Those things aren't real, right?"

"Bull****." Her voice was rough and angry, suddenly. I blinked and turned my gaze back to her, and suddenly wanted to crawl into a crack in the wall. Her eyes were blazing, and blood was spattered across her face and shirt, stark against pale flesh and white cotton. "You didn't see it attack me. It was you, Grem. You did this to me." As she said that, her fingers dug into her shirt, tearing the fabric as easily as if it was tissue paper. I could feel hot wetness welling in my eyes as she tore her shirt open, revealing an expanse of bare flesh which was rapidly welling with blood. I saw people looking toward us, staring, but that didn't matter to me.

My knees were weak, and I started sliding down the wall as I stared at her in horror. "Anna..." I lifted a shaking hand toward her, not even sure what it was that I intended to do. She slapped it away with a snarl, the movement accentuating the wounds which were starting to open into terrible gashes. Blood was beginning to pool around her feet. "God, Anna. I never wanted to... I know it's my fault, but..." My mouth couldn't keep up with my gibbering brain, and the Wolf snarling in the back of my mind didn't help. I stopped talking and wept, unable to tear my eyes away from the shade of the woman I destroyed.

"You're a monster, Grem. You killed me, and you're going to rot in Hell. Monster!" The tattered remains of her shirt fell to the ground to lie in her blood. I could see her ribs through the gashes on her chest, and even a bit of movement which I thought was probably her laboring heart. New gashes were opening, moving down over her stomach. "You thought you could run up and play the hero?" She was sneering at me, blood staining her teeth as he rose up through her throat. She grabbed my shirt, leaning over me. "You're no hero." Spite dripped from her words, as blood dripped from her lips. "You are a stain on this world, like all monsters. You're no better than any of them."

My gaze was locked on her stomach, where the gashes were gaping wide. The horrid smell wafting out of her guts turned my stomach, and I'm not sure how I managed to not be sick. When I could start to see her organs, I pressed my eyes tightly closed and cowered away, while the Wolf in my head raged and howled. She continued to rail at me, but it was nothing I hadn't thought myself. Nothing she hadn't said to me any number of times when I went to sleep and dreamed.

I wasn't in the right frame of mind to do much other than sit there against the wall and hope for the ground to open up under me. I felt cries of the Wolf in my head change in tone, and smelled wet fur under the rancid odor coming from Anna. A moment later, I heard a growl and the patter of rapid footsteps, steadily growing distant. I forced my eyes open, and saw the wolf staring after Anna's retreating form. As I stared, the wolf turned its head toward me, unmatched eyes narrowing while its ears flattened against its head.

I considered fighting it off, but knew it would be a losing battle. Besides, something seemed different about it; nothing I could put my finger on. The Wolf in my head whimpered. I could feel wetness on my cheeks, from my tears, but I didn't move to wipe them away while the wolf was watching me. Instead, I kept my hands at my sides and lifted my head, exposing my throat. My act of submission may have been what kept me alive; the wolf made a whuffing sound at me, then turned and stalked off.

I watched it go, mind racing. The Wolf in my head was quiet for the first time without silver in my hand since I'd left Warren's office, and the more rational side of my brain began to assert itself. There was no blood on the wolf's hind leg. My knife is ordinary steel, but even if the coin the wolf swallowed didn't wreak havoc on its rapid healing, there should have been at least some dried blood there. There wasn't. It wasn't the same wolf.