building, and did a Jackie Chan up the side. I was really happy to see him moving because I'd recognized him on the way down.
"Tad!" I hadn't intended to yell or run, but I was doing both.
Asil paced me, but we split up as we reached the apartment building. He went in the same way Tad had and I, not blessed with supernatural strength, had to run up the stairs instead.
I ran up those steps as fast as I've ever run. The door opened, and Jesse and Gabriel spilled onto the stairs with various Sandovals clinging, pushing, and sobbing. I counted and came up one short - no Sylvia - even as I slid over the guardrail to stand on the outside of the bars on the edge of the stairs to let the youngsters by.
"Your mom?" I said, as they passed.
"At work," Gabriel said.
I tossed him the keys to Marsilia's car. "Take the car, it's over by the garbage bins three buildings that way." I pointed appropriately. "Get to Kyle's house but don't speed. You have a body in the trunk and no child car seats."
"Body?" said the oldest of Gabriel's sisters. If I weren't clinging to the stairway while there was a lot of noise coming from above where someone who might as well have been my little brother had gotten tossed through a wall just a few seconds ago, I could have remembered her name. Right now I could barely remember my own.
They were tough, those Sandoval kids. They'd be okay with a body in the trunk of the car.
"Bad guy," I said. "Tried to kill me and got taken out by my backup."
"Cool," said one of the littler ones - Sissy.
They hadn't paused in their downward trek, and once on solid ground, Gabriel rearranged everyone so the littles were carried. Jesse took advantage of the lull to mouth, "Dad?" at me.
"He's alive," I told her. "But that's all I know. Get out of here."
And then I rolled back over the railing and up the last set of stairs and headed into the apartment - only then remembering that I'd left my gun in Marsilia's car. I stripped out of my clothes and let my coyote out.
In the distance, I could hear sirens. The police department wasn't too far from here, and there was no way anyone could have ignored the noise coming from Sylvia's apartment.
As human, I stood no chance against something that could throw Tad through a wall. As a coyote, I was definitely outmatched - but I could be distracting, and I was just that much faster on four legs than on two. Fast enough to outrun most werewolves, anyway.
I skulked into the living room - the only room I'd been in before. On top of the scent of the Sandoval family I could smell werewolf, Tad, and ... something fae. The fae smell mostly like the old philosopher's division of the world to me - earth, air, fire, water - with the addition of green growing things. Ariana smelled like forest, and so did this fae.
The noise was coming from a room farther into the apartment. Someone screamed, and I couldn't tell who it was. I set caution aside and bolted down the narrow hallway and into the master bedroom at the end.
The dead woman's partner was nightmare hideous. His head was misshapen and too large for his body. One large eye, emerald green and liquid, stared off to the side, while the other was only half as large and solid black. Two odd lumps that looked like nascent antlers emerged from his temples. His nose was two slits above a mouth too large for his face and filled with uneven, spade-shaped, yellow teeth. A black tongue flicked out and across his nose slits as he fought.
For all his horribleness, he wasn't more than four feet tall. His body was slender, almost delicate-looking, with wrists smaller than mine, in human shape. His outsized, four-fingered hands gripped a sword made of some sort of black metal that was nearly as tall as he.
Asil had a baseball bat and was using it like a katana - turn and turn and never let the bastard get a good hard strike on your weapon. The Japanese had had lousy steel and had learned to compensate. Tad had a pair of kitchen knives and was keeping the fae from getting into a good rhythm with them - unhappily, it was interfering with Asil, too.
The fae fought well. Like