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My hearing was coming back in my left ear, because I could hear screaming, distantly, as if they weren’t all standing right next to me. My right ear was still a buzzing silence. I yelled, “Fire, we need to set her on fire!” I must have yelled it too loud because they all looked at me. I yelled, “Burn her!”

Olaf took off running back down the corridor. Seeing him run away actually distracted me enough that I jumped when the guns started firing again. I turned back to the action, and found the body up and moving again. The face had grown back, but the chest was a gaping wound. Her lungs had to be gone, but she moved; she jumped at me in one of those long arcs that made her body a golden smear of light. I fired at that blur until my gun clicked empty. I dropped the empty gun and went for a blade, and knew I’d never make it.

A second blur was in front of me, and we were crashing back into the wall, hard enough that I saw stars before I realized that the second blur was Claudia. She’d thrown her body in the way, and was slugging it out hand to claw. She must have been out of ammo, too. Those claws sliced up her chest, and she went into a defensive crouch, protecting herself as well as she could. The tiger screamed, or roared at us, and then turned and ran the other way. It was almost funny, because for a breath we all just stood there. Then almost as a mass we ran after her. My stomach didn’t so much hurt as twinge, as if the muscles weren’t working quite right. It made me stumble, then I found my feet, and I ran. If I could run, I couldn’t be that hurt, right? I could feel blood flowing down the front of me, soaking into my jeans. If Soledad got out, she might move the vamps, or warn someone, or set up an ambush. We had to stop her, had to. But we couldn’t run like the shapeshifters ran. Remus and the others passed Edward and me as if we were standing still.

They bayed her at the double glass doors. They bayed her within sight of the parking lot, in sight of freedom. Remus was cut up now, too. They formed a circle around her, double thick in front of the doors. She crouched in the center of that circle, snarling at them. She was all gold and white, and even after everything I could still see that she was beautiful. Graceful in that way that the cat lycanthropes seemed to be. Her tail twitched, tight and angry.

Edward popped a fresh magazine home. He pulled the slide back and put one in the chamber. The sound echoed around the circle. Not everyone had more clips; some, like me, were out, but enough of them did that it was eerie and businesslike.

Soledad snarled with her tiger fangs. “My death will not stop the Harlequin from killing you. My mistress’s death will not protect you from the wild hunt that is coming.”

“You didn’t give us a black mask,” I said.

Her orange-yellow eyes turned to me. She made a noise that was between a growl and a purr. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “You will die.”

“The vampire council is all about rules, Soledad. It’s against your own laws to kill us when you’ve only given us white masks, something about fair play and all that.”

I wasn’t great at reading even people I knew in animal form, but I thought she looked afraid. “If you kill us, the rest of them will hunt you down, Anita. It is against vampire law to slay the Harlequin.”

“I’m not killing you as Jean-Claude’s vampire servant. I’m killing you and your mistress as a federal marshal and a legal vampire executioner.”

“I know your laws, Anita. You have no warrant for us.”

“I have two warrants for two vampires that look a damned sight like your Mercia and your mistress.”

Again there was that flinching through her alien eyes. I was just getting better at reading furry faces. Bully for me.

“The warrants list names of church members,” Soledad purred.

“But the warrant is worded sort of vaguely. It states that I can kill the vampire responsible for the death of the victim, and that I can, at