Everything hurts when I wake up, but I do wake up.

I'm on a beach, facing the water, about ten feet from the incoming surf. The sand beneath my naked human body is a little irritating, but I'm covered in a blanket. It's the warmest and safest I've felt in a good long while.

The voices are disorienting, and so is the orange glow, outshining the moonlight.

I lift my head. Not far behind me, there's a massive bonfire and a crowd of people. Faces are long, eyes are shellshocked, voices are low, but there's the occasional smile or blip of laughter. They may be missing friends or loved ones or regretting their life choices right about now, but they're here and alive. They somehow survived the worst air catastrophe of the twenty-third century, and there's some gratitude and goodwill that didn't quite drown or burn off.

Makes me wonder how we got here. Weren't we miles away from land? And how on earth did I survive that fall?

It didn't make any sense to me at the time, but what I know, what I've heard, and what I remember are starting to click together. When a shapeshifter transforms, there's an instant in time where you don't exist. It must have been enough to curb the momentum.

I'd never attempted something like this in a life-or-death situation, and it didn't come to mind in the moments that would have been my last.

The voice told me to do it.

Was it Sultry? She was probably the only one who knew I was falling. I bet she even pulled the lever. In that split-second she had to decide my fate, she knew how to exploit this oddity, something that isn't even well known among my own kind, and she pulled it off like a pro, despite the chaos she was undoubtedly facing up top. I didn't drown while I was unconscious, either. She must have saved me twice.

Why, I wonder. We had a decent conversation, and I gave her a boost, but she's a vampire. They'd typically throw a whole school bus of children off a bridge just for the chance of surviving a minute longer.

What did I do to deserve this? I'm a shifter screw-up who was going to kill thousands of people just to rid the earth of one man. True, it wasn't my bomb that went off. At least I don't think it was. I suppose there were other plots in progress, some more successful than others. Sultry is the perfect example. Still, I had every intention, and isn't it the thought that counts?

I suppose I could ask her. She's stepping out of the water right now, with a few more survivors in tow. She sets them in front of the fire and wipes their memories. I can tell by the way they stop gushing over her.

On her way over to me, she wrings out her hair and secures it in a tight bun with one of her blades.

When we make eye contact, she gives me a nod and picks up a stick. She starts scrolling numbers into the wet sand.

"What's that for?" I ask.

"GPS coordinates for a safehouse. Seems you might need one?"

I sit up and drag the blanket over my shoulders. "Why are you helping me?"

"I like you, Larc. You remind me of someone I once knew, and he was in a predicament like yours. We both were."

Ah, an old lover. Must have been before she was turned. Attraction between our kind is rare, and long-term mutual attraction is practically unheard of. She's not like other vampires, though, and she clearly has a soft spot for my kind. I am still here after all.

"It would be wise of you to use it. . ." She throws the stick aside.

I don't bother to get up and look. "But?"

Her last statement was just a little too leading.

"I'm presenting an alternative. . ."

We both turn toward the buzz of an approaching hovercraft. It makes a sharp U-turn in front of the fire. I'd like to say, we're all saved, but I see how ostentatious it is, and I recognize the symbol on the cockpit. That ugly squiggle can be found on every pill.

"You work for me," she divulges. "The mayor won't be pleased, and the pay will be shit for a while, but . . . it'll come with a few perks."

The hovercraft comes to a landing on the beach on the other side of the fire. Kozlov's security team begins to disembark with their assault weapons in hand.

If life were fair, he'd have gone down with his Carnevale, but the world is not that lucky.

Sultry doesn't need to go into any detail. I'd work for food, the pleasure of her company, or just the hope that people like Kozlov will get what they have coming to them.

"When do we start?"

She smears away the numbers with her foot, and somewhere deep inside my head, she says now. And without the need to think, I know what to do. I become a wolf for her, whiz by, and she mounts my back like she's done this a million times before.

WC: 881
TWC: 4918