"Get her out of the country. Keep her on ice for a while until this batch is done-we were gonna move to a different location, anyway. Then whatever she knows don't matter."

It's a plausible enough story, but I don't believe it for a second. Mr. Wolfioso is a professional criminal, one who crosses swords with the federal authorities all the time; violating my protected status doesn't mean anything more to him than breaking any other federal law. He's feeding Pete just enough misinformation to keep him quiet, but once he's got me out of here- "Bullshit," I say loudly. "C'mon, you really think he's going to go to all that time and trouble? He'll be on his phone to the nearest yakuza blood farm the minute after he locks me in his trunk."

Pete glances from me to his employer and back again. He knows I'm telling the truth, but he doesn't want to. He wants to sink back into his nice warm web of rationalizations, the one where he's just making a little money under the table by bending a few rules. All his boss has to do is feed him a few more sugar-coated lies-lies Pete will swallow as fast as he can choke them down-and the status will return to quo.

But that doesn't happen.

The Gray Wolf's face hardens. Maybe Pete's phone call interrupted something important; maybe he just had a big deal go sour. Maybe someone higher up the food chain is squeezing him, or previous encounters have left him with a grudge against human beings. It doesn't matter. What matter is that he holds my life in his hands, he doesn't give a damn what Pete thinks, and I've just pissed him off.

"You goddamn slice of lunch meat," he growls. He stalks forward and grabs me by the arm, which is pinned behind my back by the ropes. He hoists me one-handed into the air as easily as a man picking up a sandwich. My own weight threatens to dislocate my shoulder, and I yell in pain.

"Hey!" Pete says, taking a step forward.

His boss ignores him, taking me through the open door and onto a small landing overlooking the main floor of the warehouse. For a second I think he's going to throw me down the stairs or over the railing, but he doesn't. He just shoves me forward and says, "Take a look, girlie. Take a long, hard look, and tell me what you see."

What I see is an illegal lem production facility, what's called a gravel pit. Pens full of goats and pigs, all of them oddly quiet. Crude ritual altars made of wooden tables, crusted with dried blood. A gigantic yellow-brown pile of sand in one corner, almost reaching the roof. Racks full of empty golem skins made of thick, transparent plastic, like the ghosts of blow-up dolls waiting to be filled with breath and life. And trundling along with wheelbarrows and shovels, brooms and buckets, are quite a few of the finished product.

The Gray Wolf doesn't wait for my answer. "What you see is an efficient operation. Nice, tidy, profitable. Runs like clockwork-in fact, I could run it twenty-four/seven, except for one little problem: I don't got enough activators. Like your new friend, the one who's so concerned about you."

And now Pete steps out to join us. "Take it easy. You don't have to-"

"I think I do. And I think what you need is a little dose of reality." He points at the lems. "See, what you're looking at is a significant investment of time, effort, and money. But it didn't come easy, oh, no. I got all kinds of things to worry about: supply chains, distribution, production deadlines. I got lots of people I have to keep happy, and even more I got to keep quiet. It's a juggling act."

And suddenly he lifts me, chair and all, over the railing. The concrete floor is a good thirty feet below me.

"Don't!" Pete says.

"Sometimes," the Gray Wolf says, "it's all I can do to keep all those different things in the air. And you, Mr. Peter Damien-or would you prefer Doctor Damien?-are one of those things. An important thing, one I don't wanna drop ... but I can only do so much, y'know? Sometimes, with so many things goin' up and down, I gotta make a decision. I gotta let something go, so I can keep everything else moving."

"Please," I say. I want to be brave, I want to be tough, but my voice betrays me.

"Killing her doesn't-you can't-"

"Oh, I can. It solves all kinds of problems. But I won't, and you know why?"

When he answers, his voice is dull. "No, I don't."

The Gray Wolf chuckles. He knows a lie when he hears it. "Because you didn't bargain. You didn't say, if you kill her, I'll quit. That tells me a lot, right there. It tells me you understand things, and where you fit in. It tells me you know where the line is, and not to push me past it. That's good. That'll keep you alive."

I swallow, and try to keep the quaver out of my voice. "What-what are you going to do with me?"

"You?" He laughs, pulls his arm back, and sets the chair down on the landing. "You got lucky, kid. Normally, I'd just make you disappear. But that would upset my activator here, and I want to keep him happy. So-today only-you get a pass."

"I-I'm free to go?"

He smiles. "Not just yet. We're going to have a little talk in my car, first. Then you can go." He turns to Pete. "That okay with you?"

Peter Damien-soon to be Doctor Peter Damien, then Doctor Peter Adams-blinks. His face is pale. The lie his boss is offering is as thin and fragile as tissue paper, but he wants to believe. Believing means he isn't condemning me to a horrible death. Believing means he doesn't work for a monster. Believing means he still has a soul.

"Yes," he says faintly. "That's fine."

"No," I say, as the Gray Wolf carries me down the stairs, still bound to the chair. "No! He's lying! He's lying!"

"She's pretty upset," the Gray Wolf says. He's got me slung over his back one-handed, like a jacket. I can see Pete's pale face in the shadows of the landing above, slowly receding as we descend. "I'll keep her restrained until we get outside. Don't worry, she'll calm down."

Pete doesn't say anything. He just stares.

We make it down to the floor. The lems stare at me with curious eyes, then quickly look away.

"No!" I scream. "No, you can't let him do this! He'll kill me! He'll kill me!"

"Ssshh," the Gray Wolf says. "Everything's fine. Everything's going to be okay."

"He won't let me go! He told me your real name, you bastard!"

And then he drags me through the door and out into the alley.

That's where the memory ends.

EIGHTEEN.

Now that I've done this a few times, I come back to myself fairly quickly. My eyes snap open and I check to see if the rest of the plan is working.

Athena Shaker lies in the middle of the floor, wrapped in chains; her eyelids flutter as her own consciousness returns. Charlie stands over her, his arms crossed, looking pensive. I turn my head to the side and see Doctor Pete, already awake but looking groggy. But is it really him?

"What was-what was that?" Athena says. "I thought you were going to ... what's going on?"

I shake my head, trying to clear the last of the muzziness out of it. "What's going on is the old switcheroo, Athena. I took a chance that the alpha werewolf wouldn't be able to resist discovering the identity of the master vampire, and you went for it. We both got sucked into the memory sequence, and Charlie wrapped you in a few dozen feet of tow-chain while you were drooling on the carpet. Didn't want you to wolf out and gut us as soon as you woke up and discovered you'd been suckered."

She glares at me from the floor. "You're making a mistake. I'm not-"

"You are. But you know who isn't? This guy." I aim a thumb beside me. "Sometimes a good old-fashioned lie works just as well as an illusion spell. We used Terrance to fake you out and throw you off balance. It's the kind of thing he's good at."

Terrance-or maybe someone else-gives me a look of consternation. "Jace? Damn, this is messed up...."

"Let me clarify things for you," I say. "Doctor Pete was shacked up with the alpha werewolf, who was using him to infect the townspeople with her own blood via phony innoculations. She may look like a petite redhead, but that's more illusion magic; you just can't trust appearances in this town. I even briefly considered that she might be a he, but the local transvestite is the wrong shade-the alpha wolf is not only tall, she's black. Her real name is Catherine Shaka, AKA the African Queen."

She doesn't bother to deny it. "I knew he smelled wrong," she growls. "I should have killed all three of you the second you walked through the door."

"The woman I knew wouldn't do that," I say. "Not without a good reason, anyway. After Longinus snatched you, he must have tampered with your memory. What do you remember?"

"I had returned to my homeland, traveling in secret, to meet with a shaman who said he could return my throne to me. He told me of you, and what you had done to my people, and where you were hiding. Then he brought me here." Her tone is savage. "This place of evil will be redeemed through your suffering. My bloodline will spread throughout the population, giving birth to a world of foot soldiers. Then we will return to my country to reclaim it."

I sigh. More wrongheaded, hate-filled propaganda-but this time, it hasn't been pumped into the brain of some hapless alternate-world civilian. This is the genuine article, a royal woman warrior I've fought alongside-and she is not someone I want as an enemy. Even without the ability to turn into a nine-foot-tall hairy monster, the African Queen is a legendary heroine, one whose fighting prowess, battlefield experience, and skill with a bow make her lethal at any distance.

"You've been brainwashed," I tell her bluntly. "With powerful sorcery that's slowly eroding. You're one of the most single-minded people I've ever met; if anyone can beat a spell into submission through sheer willpower, it's you-"

"Excuse the hell outta me," Terrance interrupts, "but I'm still a little confused. I seem to remember something about being in a jail cell, but there was this little blonde in there with me. Only I also remember being in a cell-a different cell-all by myself. And then there's her." He points to Shaka's bound body and shakes his head. "I kind of remember being with her, you know? And giving shots to people. Was that me?"

I study him carefully. "On Thropirelem, Azura's a damn fine illusionist herself. She used her abilities to infiltrate the federal prison where you were locked up, then convinced you to help us. That is, she convinced Tair to help us." What I don't tell him is that because more than one mind was involved, there's a possibility that either persona could surface, or parts of both-leading to a confusing mix of memories in Terrance's head.

He frowns at me. "I ... I don't think my name is Tair. That doesn't feel right."

I grin. "Maybe not," I say. "And that's fine by me."

I turn back to Shaka. "How about you, Catherine? You feel any more like yourself, or do you still think I'm the Antichrist?"

Her response is to bare her teeth, which are a lot longer and sharper than they were a minute ago. Her auburn hair darkens, and coarse, jet-black fur sprouts from every inch of her skin as her frame reshapes and contorts. Her eyes glow bright yellow; her fingernails lengthen and curve into razored weapons. She's hoping to burst her bonds through brute, physical-law-defying force as her mass increases and her body expands.

All I can do is stare. I have one of those moments of sudden clarity brought on by intense emotion-in this case, terror-as the real, true horror of what Ahaseurus planned for me becomes evident. The snarling monster straining at her chains in front of me is exactly one-half of a pitiless equation, the other half being her vampire equivalent. Together, they spell the inevitable, bloody demise of every human being sharing this particular version of Earth; those who aren't turned into creatures like this will become food, slaves, or both.

And all of it will be my fault.

The chains hold. She howls and writhes and bucks, but we keep well away from both claws and jaws. I try to communicate with her using thrope sign language-it's how beings with a muzzle for a mouth communicate-but she doesn't seem to understand me. In the end, we grab a dangling length of chain and drag her into the garage, where the trunk of her late-model sedan is just big enough to cram her into. It's like wrestling a grizzly with rabies-I may be immune to scratches, but one bite and it's Full-Moon City, final stop on the Fur-Ball Express.

She keeps hammering away on the inside of the trunk, but I'm not too worried; as long as the chains hold she's not going anywhere. One monster down, two to go.

"Pretty worked up, isn't she?" Terrance says.

"It's this place," I say. "Or maybe this world. Pires and thropes aren't the same, here. They're-more basic, somehow. Wilder. Less evolved, maybe-"

"Nah," says Charlie. He's inspecting a row of tools on the garage wall. "That ain't it. You don't want to say it, but you know exactly which word to use."

"Primitive?"

"Evil." He picks up a pair of gardening shears and studies the cutting edges critically. "I can feel it, and so can you. They ain't like the pires and thropes back home-these are bad-to-the-bone killers. I don't know why, and I don't much care. They get in our way, they gotta go down and never get back up."

I want to argue. I want to tell him that these are-or were-ordinary people, before Longinus got ahold of them. Maybe some of them could have made better choices in the religion department, but none of them asked to be turned into bloodthirsty creatures of the night.

But I don't say a thing ... because he's right. I could hear it in Zhang's hungry whisper drifting out of the shadows; I could see it in Isamu's cruel eyes. Even Neil, with his soft-spoken musings on the tortures he planned to inflict, practically radiated it: evil. The real thing, fully self-aware and predatory, utterly without mercy and deriving immense satisfaction from the suffering of others. An implacable, elemental force, indulging in destruction for destruction's sake.

"Yeah, okay," I say wearily. "They're the bad guys. No problem. Never mind that some of them look like people I care about, or remember chatting with in a supermarket line, or maybe even got naked with. Nope. Just line 'em up and I'll take 'em down...."

We troop out of the garage and back into the house. We make it as far as the kitchen, then collapse into chairs around the table. Terrance has been pretty quiet up until now, no doubt trying to sort out the conflicting things his brain is telling him. I haven't had a chance to ask him about the memory he relived, and even with all the other craziness he's been thrown into, it must be eating at him.

"Hey," I say. "You all right?"

He doesn't look at me when he answers. "Getting there. I know what we have to do next."

"Oh?"

"Go after the Gallowsman. He's the key to all this."

That's more coherent than I was expecting, but good news; it means Terrance is adapting. "You think?"

"Yeah. I-Terrance, I mean-was just screwing with you when he told you that story, but you're the one the Gallowsman is focusing on."

Interesting; he seems to have the memories of Terrance, Tair, and Doctor Pete, or some combination thereof. "I thought it was supposed to possess the body of a suicide and then target the ones who made the victim's life miserable."

"That's what Terrance said, yeah. Because that's what he was told to say."

"By whom?"

"Whom do you think? His father. Mayor Leo knows all about the cult, though he isn't a member. That means he took orders from the real town leader-Longinus."

"More smoke and mirrors," Charlie grunts.

"So what's the actual story?" I ask.

Terrance frowns. "The Gallowsman is some kind of bad luck and despair vacuum. Sucks it up and hands it over to a specific target-in this case, you."

I nod. "That much we know. And with me primed by your little urban legend, presumably I was eventually supposed to go out to the woods to off myself in the hopes of a little postmortem payback."

It's Charlie's turn to frown. "But you aren't supposed to die-just suffer, right?"

"Sure. Which means any attempt to kill myself wouldn't work-Ahaseurus wouldn't leave an obvious escape clause like that in place. It's just another way to demoralize me; after all, once you've tried to kill yourself and failed, you've pretty much hit bottom."

Unless, you know, you're then responsible for the slaughter of your entire race. That might just depress you a touch.

"Terrance doesn't know a lot about the cult, but one of his friends does," Terrance says. "Zev. He's the one who told Terrance about the tunnels."

Zev? Now the name sounds familiar, in that double-resonance sort of way that means I must have known him before Ahaseurus stuck me here. "So why does the local bad boy's sidekick know more about the town's secret history than the mayor's son?"

Terrance shrugs. "Same reason everything happens around here, probably; something to do with you, and screwing with your head. But there are two facts I am sure of. The first is that the Gallowsman is at the center of this, magically speaking. Eliminate him, and all the spells woven through this place fall apart."

"And the second?"

"That Zev's loyal to Terrance, and he's the only one in town who knows about the tunnels but isn't a member of the cult. If I ask him to help, he will."

I study Terrance's face. What he's saying rings true, but at this point I suspect everyone and everything. "What's the first thing you gave me when we met?"

He looks blank for a second, then smiles. "Oh. A mug of Urthbone tea, to help with your Reality Dislocation Trauma. You wanted coffee, but I insisted you drink the tea first."

I sigh in relief. Doctor Pete seems to be the one in charge of the brain. "Okay. Well, we should either go after the Gallowsman or the master vampire, and at least we know where the Gallowsman is likely to be-plus, we have someone to play tour guide. If you think Zev will go for that."

"Oh, I think he will. In fact, I won't take no for an answer."

"Then let's pay him a visit," I say, getting to my feet. "And, Doctor Pete? Welcome to the party."

He hesitates, then gives me a smile in return.

"Terrific," Charlie mutters as we head for the door. "For once, I was hoping we'd get the ruthless killer instead of the medic. I just hope we don't need him...."