They got Jenny inside just in time. The doors closed behind them, and the nurses sprang into action, with wet wipes for her chin and chest and a wheelchair for her to lower herself into. She gripped Marlow’s hand so tight he couldn’tfeelhis fingers, never mind pull himself free.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. You were… fuck it, fuck me… so calm. If you have a sister, I will totally date her once my divorce comes through!”
She finally let go, and Marlow fell back as the nurse wheeled her away. Pippa followed along after a quick stumbled-over, “What she said.” Marlow rubbed his hand gingerly and flexed his fingers to be sure they still worked.
So much for a quiet night. The sound of his name made him look around, a second before he realized it wasn’t someone in the room. It came from the flat TV mounted on the wall. Annabeth stood on the pavement outside her mother’s house, hands knotted together in front of her and a slight deer-in-the-headlights look on her face as she stared at the camera.
“…Marlow saved my baby,” she said. “He could have shot me, and he didn’t. I don’t believe he’d shoot someone for no reason. He was kind to me.”
The TV flicked back to the studio, and the anchorman provided a potted history of… earlier that month. It felt like longer. Marlow felt his chest warm with quiet appreciation for Annabeth standing up for him. Then it went cold, brittle as old wood, as the image on the screen shifted to drone footage of the Old Town Market.
“In an update to the ongoing situation at the Old Town Market,” the anchor said solemnly over the footage, “the unexpected foci of wolf activity in this area has been tracked to deliberate vandalism, with a keg of goat blood thrown through a local shop window. In the confusion, Officer Jay Bennett has still not been contacted. Fears are growing that something—”
Marlow didn’t wait to hear the rest. He loped over to where the hack stood with one of the porters and put his hand on her shoulder.
“How much would it take to change my destination?” he asked. “Because I’ll pay it.”
Marlow couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the Old Town Market. It was a tourist trap, not somewhere the residents regularly went. There must have been a call down here at some point over the years, but his team hadn’t taken it.
He paused on the edge of the Night Shift cordon. In the dark, lit by the strobe of the patrol cars and back in his uniform, no one gave Marlow a second look. He’d always said that his eyes weren’tthatnoticeable, but nobody had listened. He eavesdropped discreetly on the argument between Captain Gil and a lieutenant. The lieutenant wanted to go in after Bennett, but Gil was reluctant.
“Public feeling is high enough,” she said, her voice grim with reality. “We can’t afford to kill twenty wolves just to save one Night Shift officer. That ‘thank you for your service’ shit, it used to be ‘thank you for your sacrifice.’ That’s what people expect of us.”
Marlow pulled the black neoprene gaiter up over his mouth and nose, tight and already claustrophobic as he tasted his own breath bounced back at him, and buckled his helmet. The back of his neck stung with imagined eyes on him as he ducked under the strung yellow tape and into the incident.
Torn banners flapped from shop fronts; ripped-down pennants, triangles of bright frayed material strung on thin rope, tangled in knotted tripwires in the narrow alleys. Blood splashed over the clay tiles, and disturbed birds shrieked furiously from windowsills and under the roofs.
A boar, heavy-shouldered and bristled, shrieked like an angry woman as it charged out of a side alley. Pastry crumbs covered its face, and there was blood on its tusks. It was followed by two others and a farrow of piglets on their heels.
Marlow backed up to give them space.
Someone had turned the city’s sties out onto the streets. Usually the stockmen turned out a couple of pigsa year. They did too much damage otherwise, and they sometimes survived the night. No one wanted to be the one who had to hunt down pissed-off pigs in the sewers and back alleys.
The last piglet charged across the broken tiles. Marlow waited a second—just in case—and then pushed himself into a lope.
Growls and snarls, the occasional squealing shriek of an enraged boar, bounced off the walls and glass windows. Despite that, it stillfeltquiet to Marlow. He was used to the crackle of the mic in his ear, the call and response of the rest of his squad as they moved through the space.
He was on his own, and it occurred to him that—grand gesture aside—he wasn’t sure he was actually going to be able to help Bennett. What could he do that a dozen other Night Shift TAC officers couldn’t?
All he had was that he knew Bennett. He’d dragged her out of the weeds before, and she’d done the same for him. He knew how she acted in the field and how she reacted when things went wrong. Most of all? He knew Franklin was involved.
Something snarled behind him—a wet, rough cough of a sound—and he spun around. A wolf crouched on the counter of the taco stall. Stippled gray-and-red fur stuck out in matted, sticky chunks around it, and the searchlights of the drones overhead caught reflections of green sparks in its eyes. Thick strings of bloody slobber dripped from its mouth and matted in the sparse fur on its chest.
It chewed the air, lips peeled back from its teeth as it worried at nothing, and hunched down, ready to spring.
There was something wrong with it.
Marlow touched the gun on his hip, but went for the baton instead. People already believed he was a cold-blooded murderer—no reason to give them more reason to think that. The weight of the baton settled comfortably into his hand, and he snapped it to the side to extend it to its full length.
“You could go for easier prey,” he said. “I saw piglets.”
The wolf ignored the offer and lunged at him. Marlow threw himself out of the way. He felt the claws catch in his hair but ignored the quick flick of hot pain as he hit the ground shoulder first. The wolf tripped over him and made a frustrated guttural noise as it caught itself. It spun around on the balls of its feet and stooped over him. Spit dripped on his face, thick and…
Why did it make his skin itch?
Marlow swung the baton in a short, vicious arc. It cracked into the wolf’s jaw and snapped it with an audible pop. Its eyes bulged, and a small choked whimper escaped it at the unexpected pain. It reared back. Marlow shifted his grip on the baton and drove the end up into the soft skin under the wolf’s broken jaw.
It gagged and recoiled as it clawed at its broken throat, raw stripes of flesh where it dug its claws in. Marlow scrambled to his feet and ran. He wasn’t there to clear the market, just to find Beckett. His feet pounded on the tiles as he wove in and out through the maze of stalls and small shops.
