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bruise.
    It was enough to drive a man mad.
    “Jack, hold!” Archelaus ran across the room toward the snarling tiger far faster than his age seemed to allow. “We need one of them alive to talk.”
    It was a futile attempt. Jack never even hesitated as he leapt up and bit down on the shoulder and neck of the final ape still attempting to fight. The tiger shook the ape in his mouth in a grim parody of a house cat with a rat, and then he hurled the dead ape across the room and roared; whether in triumph or defiance, Alaric was unsure.
    “Damn it, Jack,” Quinn said, but her voice was filled with exhaustion, not anger. “What if they were shifters? They must have been. It would have helped if we could have coaxed one of the monkeys back to human shape long enough to tell us what is going on here.”
    Jack bared his fangs in Quinn’s general direction but didn’t return to human form to argue with her, unfortunately. He might never again regain human form. But that was another problem, for another time.
    The floor was covered with the bloody shapes of the current problem.
    “They’re definitely shape-shifters, but they invaded the sanctuary,” Archelaus said. His face was drawn and pale, as though he’d aged a hundred years in an hour.
    “The
sanctuary
,” he repeated. “We have had agreement here with the shifters and vampires alike for more than a century. What possibly could have caused them to break it?”
    “What were those?” Quinn asked, shoving her guns into their hidden holsters under her shapeless shirt. “I’ve never seen apes that looked like that, outside of a horror movie.”
    “They were a grossly distorted version of a Japanese macaque. The real thing has the same brownish fur and red face but runs about twenty-five pounds,” Archelaus said. He was breathing hard, and Alaric sent a silent, questing tendril of magic to discern the extent of his injury, if any.
    Archelaus raised an eyebrow, and Alaric realized he’d been caught. “I’m just old, Alaric. Nothing you can do about that, unless you’ve suddenly learned how to turn back time.”
    “I’m feeling rather old myself, Wise One,” Noriko said, finally emerging from behind her shield, which she let disperse slowly. The woman’s face was as pale as a snow-dusted grave. “I never had to deal with attacking apes in the portal. I must apologize for my cowardice. All of you fought the attackers, but I have no weapons, nor do I have knowledge of how to do battle.”
    Alaric shook his head. “No one expected you to fight. You did well to protect yourself so we did not need to expend resources to defend you.”
    Noriko bowed.
“Arigato gozaimasu.”
    Quinn abruptly sat down on the floor next to Jack and started laughing. “Don’t make me get my flying monkeys,” she said, shaking her head.
    Everyone stared blankly at her, except Jack, who tilted his shaggy head, his tongue lolling out, as if sharing an inside joke.
    Quinn looked up and saw them all looking puzzled. “Never mind. It’s
The
Wizard of Oz
. It’s—never mind. So, what now? Attack by flying monkeys doesn’t strike me as a random act. Who’s after you, Archelaus? Or do they know we’re here, and it’s an attack against me or Alaric? Or even Jack? Plenty of targets to choose from in this room.”
    Noriko collapsed down on a bench. “I thought the opportunity to be mortal again would be a precious gift. Instead, I find I desperately miss the power to be anywhere I want to be and nearly omniscient. What can I see—where can I go—trapped in this body?”
    “Welcome to my life,” Quinn said, with only a trace of bitterness. “I’m surrounded by vampires, Atlantean warriors, and powerful shape-shifters, and all I’ve got is a gun or two and whatever street smarts I’ve picked up over the years. It’s like fighting the Spartan army armed with a toothpick.”
    “I would challenge the Spartan army for you, Quinn,” Alaric said quietly. “You don’t always have