Since the moon had been waning for some time, it was a dark night. A long, black limousine stopped at a lamplit street corner, and out of it stepped Charlotte and a rough-looking man. She looked around and saw another limousine slowly coming down the street, then nodded to the car she had stepped out of, which then drove off. When the second limousine pulled up, she got in and sat across from the ruddy-faced, beady-eyed Cotton.
"Are you sure you weren't followed?" he asked.
"Of course," she said contemptuously.
"One can never be too sure. And the Fifth Street safehouse was raided. You know that?"
"Of course," she said again, with the same note of contempt.
Cotton waited expectantly for her to say something else, but when she did not, he burst out, "Well, what is Jolie doing about this?"
"Does she need to do anything about it?"
"As long as He is breathing down our necks--my neck!--she had better be."
Charlotte looked idly at her fingernails as if they were a more interesting subject than Cotton's complaints. "She handled Elsbietka, didn't she?"
"Yes," said Cotton coldly. "After I had lost half a dozen Wolves. And all that did was shift our problem from Elsbietka to Seneca."
"And if we take Seneca out of the picture, he will just be replaced by Marcos, or Aveline, or someone else. So what would you have Jolie do?"
"There is only one thing to do," said Cotton, who was getting even more red-faced than usual. "What we set out to do in the first place."
Charlotte regarded him at length, her expression filled with as much contempt as her voice had been. Finally she spoke, "Jolie and I have been wondering when you will finally step up and do something yourself. We've made most of the arrangements to elude pursuit, we took care of Elsbietka, we seem to be expected to take Him out, and what have you done?"
"I've put all my Wolves at your disposal. I've bankrolled everything she's asked without question...."
"Yes, and did you think that we were somehow employees of yours, hired to carry out a revolution on your behalf, while you hunkered down to collect the benefits at the end?"
Cotton's expression went from angry to actively hostile, and he looked at Charlotte's bodyguard in the seat beside her as if measuring how much trouble the Wolf would be if Cotton reached over and strangled her. But he said, "What does our would-be Wolf-Queen want?"
"Not to be Wolf-Queen," Charlotte said. "But she is thinking that since you are expecting her to take care of Aegidius on her own, the least you could do is work harder to keep Seneca, Marcos, and all the others from interfering with that."
"Seneca, Marcos, and all the others? She doesn't ask much, does she?"
"If you wish, she'll take them and you can take Him," Charlotte said sweetly. "I think we would also find that a satisfactory arrangement. I certainly would prefer it; I saw what happened to Alain and Hugh. I'd rather risk your mind than my own. But Jolie is willing to make Him our special project, if only you will keep the others off for long enough that we can make some headway."
Cotton was silent for a moment as he looked out the window. "Very well," he said. "But I do not have the resources to do it for long."
"We know," said Charlotte maliciously. "But it will not take more than a couple of weeks. He will be in for a surprise or two, if Jolie can only get room to breathe."
The limousine returned to the corner at which it had picked her up; she looked down the street to see her own car waiting about a block away, and stepped out. The limousine pulled away, and as it did so she waited for her car to pull up. When it did not, she and her bodyguard exchanged frowning glances and cautiously approached it. The engine was running, but the car was empty and the doors were locked. There was a rustle behind them.
As Cotton's limousine pulled away, he was swearing under his breath. "Jolie will have to be taken care of before long," said Cotton.
His driver looked at him in the rearview mirror. "Do you want me to put someone on it now, or do you want to wait?"
"Wait," said Cotton. "If she really can do something about the Wolf-King, it will be better to have him out of the way first; and if Giles or Seneca puts an end to her, we can step up with clean hands." Then, suddenly: "What the hell is happening?"
A car had turned in front of the limousine and stopped at a stop sign, where it refused to move, while a car from the cross street had turned in to block the other lane. The driver threw the limousine into reverse, but the way behind had already been blocked. Cotton swore, and swore again when Seneca stepped out of one of the cars behind them.
What happened next happened very quickly. Cotton threw open the door and at the same time, there was no Cotton, only a great wolf-shaped darkness racing out into the night. A slight fraction of a blink after that there was no Seneca, only another wolf-like bit of night, more sleak, chasing after the first. There was no transition, no process; just as in a dream there are no fluid changes, but things become other things at once, so here. And the Wolves, too, were not like shaggy beasts. Standing still, you would have sworn them a trick of the night shadows, a darkness that fooled the eye into thinking a wolf or dog was there; perhaps you have had such an experience while out at night. But the Wolves, unlike those tricks of night, were really there, and this could be seen as they moved: too quick to be animal, they were too living to be shadow. They were darker than the night around them, but with eyes like cold red fire, and they moved smoothly in a quiet blur of darkness.
It could hardly, then, been more than a second after the opening of the door that the Cotton-wolf had dashed acrossed the street into a small alleyway, with the Seneca-wolf right at its heels. Down the alley they went and up the next street. To the right across that street was a large warehouse parking lot surrounded by chain-link, and the Cotton-wolf suddenly swerved and, with a great and impossible leap, was over the fence and rushing across the parking lot. The Seneca-wolf followed immediately, but the leap had gained Cotton a few yards, and as they crossed the parking lot and reached the warehouses and the great piles of crates surrounding them, Seneca began to move more cautiously. This gained Cotton a few feet more. Thus it was that Cotton turned a corner and, when Seneca turned it as well, although just a split second later, he had vanished.
Or had apparently vanished. Seneca continued stalking. Except for a little yellow lamp above an exit door down the way there was no light; everything was blackness and mazey piles of crates and debris looming in the faint light like great towers. Through this labyrinth the Seneca-wolf continued the silent hunt, moving more slowly, with smooth motions like a panther in the jungle, swinging its sleak head this way and that. Somewhere in the darkness Cotton waited, measuring each step of the other as he waited to spring. And spring he did. But whether he had made some prior noise too slight for human ear to hear, or had waited too long, or was not swift enough, the Seneca-wolf was ready for it, and instead of a swift and silent kill for the Cotton-wolf, the two rolled over, knocking over one of the towers of crates with a great crash. Over and over they turned, and when they stopped, Seneca was on top with his jaws locked onto Cotton's throat. The Cotton-wolf struggled, but the grip held. Seneca let go, and in another flicker of time, there were only two ordinary men there, one standing and looking down at the other, who lay on the ground staring upward with a pale, still face. Seneca took a small gun out of his pocket, fired repeatedly into Cotton's chest, and then walked away.
The whole chase had taken only a few minutes.
Seneca rejoined the other Wolves, who had taken down Cotton's driver, and the cars in which they came dispersed. "To the mansion, Marcos," he told his driver; "we have good news to report."
They had hardly gone more than a few blocks, however, when Seneca suddenly said, "Stop the car!"
On the side of the street, all alone, an enigmatic smile on his face, stood Giles Scott.
Seneca opened the door for him. "Lovely evening, Sen," Giles said as he got in.
"You should not be out alone," Seneca replied sharply.
The dark eyes flashed at him with something like sarcastic amusement and then they closed, bringing the thick and almost feminine black lashes to rest against the pale cheeks. "Well?" he said. "
Cotton is no longer a problem," said Seneca.
"Good," Giles replied. "And Charlotte?"
Seneca, who was still looking at Giles with a sort of sharpness in his eye, shook his head slowly. "We think she was meeting him tonight, but we seem to have missed her entirely."
"Ah, well," said Giles quietly, no expression on his face. "We are still ahead."
"And what are you doing all the way out here in the middle of the night?"
"I came to join in the fun," said Giles, his eyes still closed. They opened suddenly with their usual disconcerting gaze, and there was a trace of a smile around his mouth. "It looks like your efficiency has robbed me of any chance to play. But it is still very good news."
The two said nothing again on the way home.
If it was good news for Giles, it was bad news for Jolie, but she learned nothing of it until the sun was rising and Charlotte came stumbling in. The blonde woman was in considerable pain.
"We were ambushed," she said. "Cotton is dead, and I barely escaped with my life."
"You've broken your arm."
"Oh, it was not I who broke it, I assure you," Charlotte replied. "But it is healing already. Jolie, we can't simply let them pick us off one by one. We need something substantial."
Jolie said nothing, lost in thought.
