“Harry?” Molly called from the lab. “Um. Do you have a fire extinguisher?”
“What!?”
“I mean, if I needed one!” she amended, her voice quavering. “Hypothetically speaking!”
“Hypothetically speaking?” I half shouted. “Molly! Did you set my lab on fire?!”
Andi, a distracted expression on her face, idly lifted my hand from her shoulder and slid my index finger between her lips, suckling gently. A pleasant flicker of lightning shot up my arm, and I felt it all the way to the bottoms of my feet.
“Oh, hey, ho-ho-ho! Hold on there,” I said, pulling my finger away. It came out of her mouth with another intriguing sensation and a soft popping sound. “Andi. Ahem. We really need to focus, here.”
Kirby let out a raw snarl and hit me with a right cross that sent me tumbling back across the room and into one of my bookshelves. I rebounded off it, fell on my ass, and sat there stunned for a second as copies of the Black Company novels fell from the shelf and bounced off my head.
I looked up to see Kirby seize Andi by the wrist and jerk her back behind him, placing his body between her and me in a gesture of raw possession. Then he balled up his hands into fists, snarled, and took a step toward me.
Mouse loomed up beside me then, two hundred pounds of shaggy grey muscle. He didn’t growl at Kirby, or so much as bare his teeth. He did, however, stand directly in Kirby’s path and face him without backing down.
Without blinking, Kirby’s body seemed to shimmer and flow, and suddenly a black wolf nearly Mouse’s size, but leaner and swifter looking, crouched across the apartment, white teeth bared, amber eyes glowing with rage.
Holy crap. Kirby was about half a second from losing it, and he had the skill and experience to cause some real mayhem. I mean, taking on an animal is one thing. Taking on an animal directed by a human intelligence with years of experience in battling the supernatural is a challenge at least an order of magnitude greater. If it came down to a fight, a real fight, between me and Kirby, I was sure I could beat him, but to do it I’d have to hit him fast and hard, without pulling any punches.
I was not at all confident that I could beat him without killing him.
“Kirby,” I said, trying to keep my voice as low and steady as I could. “Kirby, man, think about this for a minute. It’s Harry. Listen, man, this is Harry, and you’ve just blown your willpower check, like, completely. You need to take a deep breath and get some perspective here. You’re my friend, you’re under the influence, and I’m trying to help you.”
“Harry?” Molly called out, her voice higher-pitched than ever. “Acid doesn’t eat through concrete, right?”
I blinked at the trapdoor and screamed in frustration, “Hell’s bells, what are you doing down there?!”
Kirby took another pace forward, wolf eyes bright, jaws slavering, head held low and ready for a fight. Behind him, Andi was watching the whole thing with a wide-eyed look that mixed terror, lust, excitement, and rage in equal parts, her impressive chest heaving. Her hands and lower arms had already begun to slowly change, sprouting curling russet fur, her nails lengthening into dark claws. Her eyes traveled to me and her mouth dropped open, revealing fangs that were already beginning to grow.
Super. In a fight against Kirby, I was worried about him not surviving. Against Kirby and Andi, in these quarters, it would be me who was running against long odds.
But I try to be an optimist: At least things weren’t going to get any worse.
Above and behind me, a window broke.
A length of lead pipe, maybe a foot long, capped at both ends with plastic, landed on a rug five feet away from me. Cheap, Mardi Gras- style beads were wrapped around it.
A lit fuse sparked and fizzed at one end of the pipe.
It was maybe half an inch away from vanishing into the cap.
“But this is my day off!” I howled.
I know things looked bad. But I honestly think I could have handled it if Mister hadn’t picked that exact moment to leap down from his perch and go streaking across the room, acting upon some feline imperative unknown and unknowable to mere mortals.
Kirby, already on the edge of a feral frenzy, did what any canine would do—he let out a snarl and gave immediate chase.