“You still with me?”

  She blinked. He’d removed the eyeglass thing and extracted a selection of weapons and tools from his coat.

  “Yeah.” Clare cleared her throat. “Anyway, the point is if whoever hired them is willing to pay good money, since top predators aren’t cheap, they’ll make sure we’re dead. They don’t care who they work with as long as they get paid.”

  Anselm knelt in front of his weapons. “Thanks for the history lesson. Do they have a point?”

  “What?”

  “They eat people. Does that change anything about how they fight, or is it a bunch of crap?” He picked up a pistol that looked unlike any she’d ever seen before. “Studies have been conducted, but they don’t have the knowledge you do. Do you know if they’re any more dangerous than regular werewolves?”

  Clare shook her head. “Not that I can tell. They died the same as the others when I saw them fight.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat and tapped a few markers on his pistol. The barrel was almost as long as her forearm, though not half as long as his. Bits of tech protruded from all sides. It looked official, clean, and well-maintained. An adjudicator badge was inscribed into the handle. “Silver bullets should do the trick, in that case.”

  “Seriously? You have silver bullets?” Clare raised an eyebrow. “Who the hell has access to silver these days?”

  “The Agency, for one thing, but the bullets aren’t made of silver. That’d be ridiculous.” Anselm scowled. “Silver is heavy and deforms too much, which means it’ll eventually clog the barrel of any weapon and cause a massive, dangerous backfire. These have silver shards in the center that will spread out with the bullet when it tears into its target. It’ll prevent them from healing and poison them over time.”

  Many other bullet types fit inside the weapon, she realized. They could be cycled through with a flick of his thumb or summoned by voice command as needed. Adjudicator pistols were famous for their versatility and for being entirely unnecessary. It wasn’t like the people up there needed weapons made to take down a small army.

  Any lingering doubts about whether he was really an adjudicator vanished. Unlike the badges, their weapons couldn’t be faked or stolen. Nobody was sure what happened to people who tried. The stories ranged from pistols that wouldn’t work if they didn’t ID the proper handler to blowing up in the face of any thief who tried to use them.

  She’d stay as far from that weapon as she could get.

  “Okay, tell me what you think.” He cleared his throat and attached a few smaller devices to his right wrist after inspecting his hand cannon. “If we’re lucky, we can pop the two closest Maneaters before they close on us. After that, we should be able to keep the others down with suppressing fire. Long enough for you to run over, hot-wire one of those rigs, and make our escape. Maybe to that town we flew over when we crashed.”

  Clare narrowed her eyes. “Why are you asking me?”

  “We’re still on the ground. You’re the expert. You make the calls. I’m only offering a suggestion.”

  “It’s better than what I have, which is nothing.”

  An impossibly loud, inhuman noise from the abandoned shuttle cockpit interrupted the conversation. They peeked over the rocks. One of the Maneaters had turned up her nose to sniff the air for their scent. The wind had all but covered their tracks through the sandy desert, but the scent would be alive and well in the nose of a werewolf.

  More alarming was the Amazon tearing her clothes off. Across the distance, they heard the bones crack as they broke. The woman’s body snapped and reformed, turning itself into something larger, wolf-like. Monstrous.

  She’d caught their scent.

  “What the hell is it doing?” Anselm checked his pistol one last time. “How is it changing so quickly?”

  “Weres like the Maneaters always keep themselves on the edge, which means they’re in a constant state of psychotic berserker. When she caught our scent, she wasn’t able to control herself. She’s going on the hunt.”

  It didn’t take long for the other Amazons to catch up and start ripping at their clothes. The first one was halfway to her wolf form with an elongated jaw sporting row after row of fangs. Her legs grew longer and bent backward like a dog’s, forcing her onto all fours, while her fingers sported talons that could disembowel a bear.

  At that moment, the transformation stopped. She shuddered, stumbled onto the ground, and kicked up a small cloud of dust as the sound of a gunshot echoed through the desert.

  Anselm stood on top of the rock, holding his cannon in one hand. An impressive shot, all things considered, with the help of that eye device he’d stuck back on.

  “Time’s up.” He didn’t show any enthusiasm for his great shot. “We need to get moving before the others join the party.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fighting werewolves. Something he’d never thought would happen in his life. Then again, it was one of those days. He never thought he would crash-land a sky car, either. Werewolves were a problem for the ground people. As an adjudicator, he never should have been down here.

  It didn’t look like the Maneaters would respond to talk. They’d likely been hired by the enemies who wanted them dead. For the most part, werewolves could control their changes. People talked about how it was difficult during the full moon, but he’d never read anything to support that claim.

  The point remained. The weres had picked up their scent and immediately reverted to their violent sides. Either they’d been hired to kill anyone who survived, or they intended to kill them anyway.

  The legal definition didn’t matter now. His weapon kicked comfortably in his hand, and the werewolf slumped to the ground. No exit wound, which meant the silver payload had been deposited in the creature’s head. If she wasn’t dead already, the poison seeping through her veins would kill her the moment it reached the heart.

  Hell, that much silver could kill a human, even if they weren’t allergic.

  The remaining creatures were already turning. His training kicked in. He’d never done anything like this, but the simulators were a proven method to instill reflexes and instincts.

  He could attest to how that training kicked in now. Adrenaline surged through his body, but he didn’t feel a hint of panic. He saw the world through the lens of the visor he’d fitted to both his eyes.

  “Can you drive any of those vehicles?” His voice had no right sounding so calm. Anselm felt like he was outside of his body, watching it perform exactly as it had been instructed over thousands of hours of training.

  “The…uh…”

  “The cars. Can you drive them?”

  “Yeah.” She flicked something near her calves on, and he heard the whine of electromagnets being activated.

  “I’ll cover you. Get to the car. If it doesn’t look like I’ll make it in time, drive away. Understood?”

  “Anselm—”

  “Understood?”

  She gritted her teeth but didn’t answer. He knew she disliked being the mission objective. Her survival meant a whole lot of other people surviving. Simple math. He wasn’t worth a whole hell of a lot with large numbers in the equation.

  He didn’t care if she liked it. She would survive. As long as she was needed up top, she would make it there. His thoughts on the matter were irrelevant. Orders stood.

  When two werewolves broke toward them, he raised his weapon. If he had a rifle attachment, they would have been dead in seconds. He wasn’t the best shot, but they were less than a hundred and fifty yards away. He could make that in his sleep.

  A rifle would have been too big to bring along, though. The pistol was all he had.

  “Smoke!” he shouted and shot one of the three grenades fitted to the weapon. It flared toward the weres. Between them and Clare, as it turned out. She peeled off to the left. Those whines involved a coil system, and she took off like a rocket, kicking up clouds of dust, sand, and rocks.

  That was serious tech. The only people he knew with access to such body improvements were the Special Forces. People trained and dropped to the ground to deal with fangs and furries on the regular, although they were sent down knowing if they fucked up, they would be left there. As far as he’d read into their briefs, only three Wraiths had ever been left behind. Two were confirmed dead and their suits recovered. The sole survivor had set himself up as a warlord out in Vladivostok, propped up by his tech and his combat skills. He wouldn’t have sold the suit he wore.

  Which meant someone had sold the designs for the suits, or Clare had come up with them herself. He wouldn’t have believed the latter option possible before meeting her.

  The smoke filled the desert, but it wouldn’t last long. Winds would whip in and expose them again. For the moment, he had the advantage. The weres had amazing senses of hearing, smell, and vision, yet the smoke grenade neutralized all three. His vision shifted to heat, giving him a clear view of the creatures’ locations in the cloud.

  They slowed and tried to pick up where he and Clare were. They’d hear her better, on the move with those coils accelerating her motion. All markers told him the werewolves would prioritize a threat first. Clare was running, which would trigger their hunter instinct, but their human intelligence told them to hunt him down first. They could chase the bunny to their hearts’ content once he was dead.

  They ignored the runner and turned toward his scent. Not much could keep a were from sniffing him out, but he could do plenty to slow them. The smoke was one part. Keeping his heartbeat low and level was another. He dropped to one knee when a were spotted him. He couldn’t do anything to stop them from hearing a gunshot, and he couldn’t afford to miss a single shot. Not at this distance.

  Two creatures had completed their transformations. The third was close. He needed to eliminate them quickly, or even the silver wouldn’t be fast enough to kill them before he was torn to pieces.

  Likely eaten, too, if their name held any meaning.

  One saw him. Or heard him or smelled him. Didn’t matter. She bunched up and surged toward him.

  Two rounds. The first one found the creature’s chest. The second hit her throat, and she stumbled forward.

  Anselm was already on the move. No time to confirm the kill. Clare was halfway to a vehicle. Thankfully, the werewolves were too wrapped up in the fight. They didn’t care. Plenty of them swarmed, enough to fill those cars up. He couldn’t hold them all off.

  The last one was on the move. She’d heard his shots and sprinted at him through the smoke.

  “Flash!”

  He pointed the weapon at the sky and fired the flashbang a second before turning his visuals off.

  The explosive rippled across him like a wave. He couldn’t see it, but it set every nerve attached to his skin on fire. His ears rang, and he felt numb from the shockwave, but he could see.

  Those effects would be magnified a hundredfold on his enemies. It wouldn’t last long, but it was an edge.

  “Silver!”

  The pistol in his hand thunked pleasantly, and he picked his third target off with a shot to the head. She’d been staggered by the flash and didn’t move until he fired a shot at her head. Then she only slumped forward. The smoke cleared, and the entire pack turned their attention to him.

  He couldn’t kill or stun that many. They would swarm him in seconds. He hoped Clare would understand that saving him was out of the question. She could drive a rig back to safety and out of sight. A clever woman like her would know how to stay alive in this situation. She would survive until another adjudicator was sent to help. Hopefully, one with experience on the ground who’d know what to expect.

  It felt like he watched the situation from above his body. His mind seemed to work separately from his body, which opened fire on the weres rushing him. He’d never experienced a fight this way, but it was an interesting mental state to be in. He would have preferred to have control over what he was doing. As it stood, his body did everything necessary to survive.

  Better. Faster, too. Two werewolves stumbled to the ground, their skull wounds pumping silver through their bodies. A shot to the heart or through the neck would do the same, but the headshot was preferred. It was the best way to stop a transformed were. Not necessarily kill it, but the damn thing would be stunned long enough for the silver to do its magic.

  It wasn’t literal magic, of course. Then again, nobody could explain why weres had such violent reactions to silver. The creatures weren’t lining up to have it tested on them, either.

  He flicked an empty magazine from his firearm and slapped in another one before the werewolves reached him. He jumped back as a jaw snapped shut in the spot where his neck had been a second before. The werewolf paid for the attack with half her head when a scattershot round claimed it.

  Weres could survive a lot, but not most of their brain being turned to mush.

  He turned and felt the pistol kick once more, but the round didn’t stop a were when she hit him across the midsection. Maybe it prevented her claws and teeth from connecting, but the strike drove him toward the ground.

  He slipped out the small, wrist-mounted blade on his right wrist and opened her carotid before they were down. No silver in that. Still, blood poured from the gash with no sign of a werewolf’s usual healing properties.

  Anselm’s armor protected him from damage, but his body wasn’t in the best shape. Aches and pains blared like warning alarms on a failing sky car, and he pushed the werewolf’s bleeding body away.

  Three more werewolves were on him. He had no chance of beating them. He could take a few of them down, but they’d rip his throat open in seconds.

  He fired on the first one when she lunged. The creature wasn’t stopped. He felt claws digging into his armor, trying to find the flesh underneath.

  The other two hadn’t joined the fight. They didn’t need to, but he didn’t think weres understood the concept of overkill. Especially not in their current state. Anselm heard himself screaming through his ringing ears.

  Suddenly, there was nothing there for him to stab.

  He tried a few more times. Nothing. A thick, sticky substance clung to his face and body, but no enemies remained.

  He blinked a few times. Clare waited nearby. Whatever rig she’d grabbed had kicked up a thick cloud of dust and sand in its wake.

  It looked like she’d run over the first two who’d attacked and used the particle gun she’d constructed to turn the third into the sludge that coated him now.

  “Doing okay over there?” Clare shouted as she pressed her boot into the head of a were under the rig. It was moving, which meant it was alive and would be a threat in a few minutes. The coils whined, and something in her boots punched out, splattering the were’s skull into the sand.

  “Never better.” Anselm spat out the stuff in his mouth. He didn’t want to think about what covered him or the sand coating that would clump it.

  The third were was dead before Clare turned to him. “Are you going to lie around all day, or are we getting out of here?”

  It was probably not the best time to remind her she should have been trying to keep herself alive, that he didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. That lecture was best saved for later. Right now, he was only human and all too glad she’d returned to save his sorry ass.

  He lurched to his feet and stumbled a few steps to the rig. The remaining monsters hadn’t closed in on them yet, but they would be hot on their heels soon. He climbed into the passenger side while Clare jumped into the driver’s seat and got them moving again.

  They drove at a speed he hoped was too fast for the weres to detect them. He gathered the strength to clean off the sticky clumps covering his body.

  “You look like shit,” Clare noted.

  He nodded. “Feel it, too.” The sensation of being parted from his body had long since passed, and he sensed every ache and pain the adrenaline had spared him.

  She turned to him and laughed. “Sorry, I was trying to lift your spirits. I saw how you fought. That was fucking impressive. Never seen anything like it from a human.”

  He shrugged. “For all their faults, the Agency prepares their adjudicators for a fight. It was mostly the pistol, though.”

  Anselm noticed he still held the pistol in one hand and his wrist blade in the other with vise-like grips as if he was waiting for the opportunity to use them again.

  “Is this the first time you’ve been in combat?” Clare asked. “Like proper going-to-kill-you combat?”

  He hesitated. He’d been in fistfights. A suspect had tried to shoot him once. Aside from that, he’d never drawn his sidearm with the intent to use it outside of practice and training. He nodded slowly as he slotted his weapons into place.

  “Held your own there. Training helps, but nothing prepares you for the first real life-or-death fight.”

  “Sims do.”

  “Right.” Clare rolled her eyes. “They do, but it’s not the same.”

  She was right. He’d probably done better against the werewolves than he’d ever done in the training sims, but it was miserable. Sickening. He wanted to throw up and piss himself at the same time.

  Probably best not to do it in the rig, though.

  “You were damn impressive yourself.” Anselm cleared his throat. “I’m going to ignore how you managed to build electromagnetic coils unlike anything that should exist on the ground. I’ll even ignore the question of how the fuck you built a particle gun. That’s experimental up in the sky cities. They need buildings to house the power required to make something like that work. You’ve got it mounted on your wrist.”

  Clare shrugged. “I don’t know. Found techie pieces in old books, and they talked to me. Took me a while to get the parts together. It only fires one shot, then I need to switch the batteries and the particle round out. Got maybe five shots left before I have to scrounge for them again. I never thought I’d use it, but now I have twice in two days.”