Christine ducked out of the way as the pigeon came through the open window. It came in for a perfect landing on one of the perches and put out its leg expectantly. A faint smile came to Christine's lips as she removed the capsule and opened it. The tiny seals on the message immediately chased that smile away. She picked up the PA microphone and said, "Message for the High Priest, of yellow importance. High Priest to the aviary, please." She put the handset back on its stand. Scooping some birdseed into her hand, she proffered it to the messenger. It hopped down onto her palm and pecked at the food. For a while, both the bird and the woman were strangely content.

A small noise disturbed the serenity. She looked up to see a blond teenager enter the room. Alex was a tall boy, but he carried himself with a perpetual slouch. He regarded her with calm, almost colorless eyes. "You called for me, Christine?"

She nodded and handed him the message. "Shit," he snarled even before opening it. "The Delle'Torre crest and the Bronx Society seal. Not only is one of the Cinque Famiglias involved, so's the whole organization. And the five-point crown means they cc'd the Disciples on it too. That's never a good sign." He cracked open the tightly rolled scrap of paper and translated the pictorial shorthand on the paper into words. "'To the High Priest of the Lady and the leader of the Disciples of St. Sue: Two days ago, a woman sought refuge in the North House. She matches a woman missing for several weeks. She-' damn it, I can't tell if he means 'can't' communicate or 'won't' communicate- 'with us. Please send the Priest of the Mad and a Disciple who was close to her.' And the signet at the bottom is Don Giuseppe's. If the head of the family is getting personally involved..."

"That's bad news," she agreed noncommittally. "But you're a smart guy. You knew that already."

"Good thing he asked for me."

"Oh, no, no, no, you can't mean... Alex, don't do it. You're a blond, they'll kill you as quickly as any of Kakista kai Kallista's servants. At least take a Hunter with you as protection! Don't go up there alone, please!"

"Don Giuseppe asked for me, did he not? Me and no other follower of the Lady, unless Emily's choice also wears the medallion. Anyone else would be at the risk you fear for me. But I go to do the Lady's work. She will protect me. And if She doesn't, this will." Alex put a hand to the hilt of the knife he wore at his belt. Before Christine could say a word, he had turned and departed for his suite at the other end of the top floor. There, he donned the formal vestments given to him only a few short months ago. The immaculate white silk robe, each sleeve striped with the colors of the Lady's other aspects, hooded for his protection as a blond, made him look more mature than his fifteen years. Not even the mild acne on his forehead and nose, a plague he'd been fighting unsuccessfully, could take away from that effect. The shimmering white of the robe created an interesting contrast with the black jeans and long-sleeved shirt he had chosen to wear that day. He checked to make sure that his belt was fully loaded with the symbols of the Lady's worship: a reaper's scythe, a siren's poison, a hunter's gun, a historian's noose, a zookeeper's knife, a saboteur's mask, the lighter that represented Lady Liberty's torch. Once he was sure he had the complete arsenal, he descended the staircase that wound its way through the center of the building to end up on street level.

Christine barred his way out. "Now? By Our Lady, Alex, can't you wait and think this over? You're going to the Bronx alone! That's not healthy for any New Yorker, let alone a blond."

"Someone needs me, Christine. I have to go to her. Stop fucking worrying about me, okay? I know what I'm doing. Besides, I bet Emily and Barry already figured out who they're sending. I'll bet she's waiting at 72nd Street station right now. I need to join her." Christine reluctantly stepped aside, her brown eyes suspiciously bright and moist, and she watched him until he disappeared into the ground. Only then did she shut herself back into the windowless building.

Alex had to transfer at 72nd Street for the 2 train to the Bronx; the North House, an outpost of the Bronx Society, and the direct responsibility of the Delle'Torre family, was located a few blocks from the last station on the 2 line. Most people kept their distance from him, unnerved by the white robe. But one young woman sat down on the bench next to him, and did the same thing when the 2 train came in. Dark-haired and tan-skinned, she wore a faded UConn t-shirt over navy blue sweatpants and brandless sneakers; a golden Star of David obscured part of the Husky design. "You're the priest Don Giuseppe sent for." It had the wording of a question, but not the intonation.

"Alex Sloan, a tus ordenes, mija," he said with a smile, happily ignoring the fact that she was a good ten years older than he was.

"I'm Danielle. Emily figured I'd have the best shot at getting through to her. But her style lacks a certain finesse- she rolled me out of bed and barely gave me time to put my shoes on! Truth be told, I'm a little scared about this. I've never had to deal with the Bronx Society before, so I don't know what they're like. But Emily told me that Don Giuseppe is the head of the family, so if he's taken a personal interest..."

"That's why I'm here. Do you know know why they call me the Priest of the Mad?"

"You preach on the bad side of Brooklyn, where no one else is stupid enough to go."

"I reach those who no one else can reach, the ones that life fucked up the ass and left with the bill. I can see what no one else sees about them, why they've become the way they are; I can hear their voices and the voices inside their heads. Their pain draws me to them and I can't not go. The Lady has blessed me with eyes to see and ears to hear; all she asks in return is that I actually fucking use them, unlike most people. It seems like a fair deal." Danielle looked askance at him, one eyebrow raised in disbelief. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. "Tell me about the burden of guilt on your shoulders, the lines around your eyes, the man's voice under your words. Why do you go out of your way to prove yourself? Who the fuck do you need to validate? Or are you just at war with yourself? Guess what: we all have it out with our personal demons every single fucking day, and there's nothing that can keep that battle from starting again and again and again. No one's word is good enough. No faith is strong enough, except maybe faith in your own abilities, and half of that comes from external belief. If you rely on someone else to build your self-worth, you're going to break when they do."

She stared at him with wide brown eyes. One finger traced the lines of the Star of David. "'An old man dies, a young girl lives.' My father recognized what was happening, but he couldn't convince my mother to uproot the family business, and he couldn't leave her behind. He pulled a few strings through family and got me a scholarship to an elite high school in Queens. I didn't want to go, because I didn't see the point. I was a kid, I was blind. I screamed at him for hours. He finally convinced me with eight quiet words." She looked down at her necklace and whispered something that might have been an apology. Voice broken and thick with unshed tears, she whispered, "He said, 'For God's sake, Dani, leave this Godforsaken hellhole.' He was always so careful not to break the Fourth Commandment- any of them really, but especially not that one. When he said... what he said, I knew something was horribly wrong. I knew I had to get away, so I took the scholarship. I was safe in New York when all my heroes started going blonde and loving Jesus. I couldn't believe I almost hadn't left home. I don't want to know what's going on there now."

Alex took her hand. "You have to live for yourself, no one else, not your memories, not your past."

"What the hell do you think I'm doing as a Disciple of St. Sue?" she shot back. "Save the psychoanalysis for the one who really needs it!"

"At least you know I know what I'm doing," he pointed out with a smile. She flipped him off and sat in sullen silence for three stops. At Central Park North, he tapped her shoulder. "What can you tell me about her?"

"We called her Scarlet. Not that we didn't know her real name, but she wanted to remember why she joined the Disciples in the first place, and every good ass-kicker needs a nom de guerre- just ask the Amazons. She's as stubborn as a mule. She's got a chip on her shoulder the size of a redwood. She doesn't trust easily. Her temper and her patience both depend on her overall mood. She withdraws into herself when she's hurt- she doesn't let anyone know what's going on, she just throws up a very convincing front. She's loyal and protective of younger friends. She's a great teacher, has a knack for getting her point across. She's tough. Real tough. She doesn't talk much about her background, but it's common knowledge that she came from the wrong side of the tracks. If something's broken her, it's bad news."

"Thank you. That's good to know. It's handy to know what I'm dealing with." There was another long silence.

At East Tremont, she turned to him and said, "I'll kill you if you fuck this up."

At Pelham Parkway, he replied, "You won't have to."

"I really will. I'll cut your fingers off and shove them down your throat. I'll slice off your nuts and shove them up your ass. Whatever whoever did to her, I'll do to you."

"Save the posturing, Danielle. You won't have to," he repeated. "If I don't fuck this up, you won't have to fuck me up. If I do fuck this up, Lady forfend, nothing you can do is worse than what I would do to myself. I hate to fail."

She didn't seem completely satisfied by this, but it calmed her. They got off at the last stop and walked a few blocks north. "There! That's the Bronx Society seal, and the other panel has the Delle'Torre crest. That's gotta be the North House." He rapped on the door.

"Who is it?" a bored voice asked.

"Don Giuseppe sent for us," Danielle replied evenly. "I have the message that Emily received at the Refuge, and I can damn well vouch for this being the Priest of the Mad. Open the door already."

The door swung slowly open, propelled by a slab of muscle in a well-tailored suit. He looked them up and down, then shouted back, "Kike from the Disciples and queer priest are here!"

Danielle bristled at the use of the slur. Alex took it in stride. A minute or so later, a rather ordinary-looking man with graying hair and a businesslike mien entered the room. The two arrivals watched him carefuly, no one wanting to make a move. Alex finally said, "I don't kiss rings, so if that's what you're waiting for, you can go fuck yourself instead of that blonde whose company we had to pull you from. She's cheating on you, you know. There's cologne mixed with her perfume, and it's not yours."

Don Giuseppe allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. "So, you *are* as good as they say you are. Come. The woman you have come to see is waiting in another room. I must warn you, what was done to her was extremely unpleasant. Even some of my men were disgusted when they first saw her. I hope you are not of delicate stomachs, but are sensitive enough to treat her well."

"That's why we're here. Can you show us to her already?" Danielle's impatience seemed to amuse the don, and he led the pair down a well-kept, if rather sterile, hallway. As they walked, she turned to Alex. "We going to flip a coin or something to decide who goes first?"

"You ought to. You know her better. From everything you told me about her, she'd be more willing to talk to a friend than a stranger."

"I don't know if I'd call myself a friend. A student, maybe. I guess I'm the closest thing she has, unless you count Shimmy or Anna, and she never opened up to them the way she did to me." They stopped in front of the door, and Alex gestured for Danielle to take the lead as Don Giuseppe opened the door. She stepped into the room. "Hey, what's the haps? What did they-" Danielle might have spent the rest of the day making small talk, were it not for the blood-curdling shriek that interrupted her. "Whoa! Whoa, Scarlet, it's just me! What are you- by all that's holy! What did they do to you? Don't!" She fled the room as if something were at her heels and slammed the door behind her. Fixing her glare on Don Giuseppe, she ground out, "There is a LOT you didn't bother telling us."

"Did the message not say that she could not communicate? I was so sure that Vittorio put that in."

"The symbol wasn't clear," Alex replied. "How bad is it, Dani?"

"I'm not sure she's all there anymore! She took one look at me and freaked out. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she let out this scream, the kind of scream you make when you don't want to open your mouth, that went all the way down to my heels. And her hands... ai ya, her *hands*, Alex, her quick, skillful hands, they destroyed her hands!" She started crying, and Alex stroked her hair gently. She showed no signs of calming any time soon, barely noticing when Alex foisted her off on the don. He rolled up his sleeves, though the gesture lost all meaning when his sleeves were big enough to hide small birds and fell back down around his wrists approximately a second later, and remembered that if worse came to worst, he had three weapons and one final bit of mercy he could offer. Once he made sure that the door guard hadn't accidentally disarmed him, he worked up his nerve and opened the door to Scarlet's room.

"Hey. Hey, you in here?" A huddled pile under a shawl in the corner by the window seemed to be alive, so he went over to it. "I don't bite, honest, Treesha's been spreading rumors about me at the Refuge again, hasn't she?" No answer. He gently put a hand on what looked like her shoulder, and she shuddered violently, keening in pain. "Shit, I'm sorry bout that. I didn't know. We none of us know, you wanna tell me what happened?"

The shawl slipped down slightly to reveal the agonized face of a black woman in her late thirties. Three words were delicately inscribed on her forehead: 'Speak no evil'. She looked down, tears forming at the corners of her eyes, as her face twisted in frustration. She bit her lip in indecision, hard enough to draw a bead of blood. "Hey, now, don't do that! Doesn't it hurt?"

At his words, the corners of her mouth pulled up in the slightest, tightest most sarcastic smile known to man. Her gaze not leaving his, she opened her mouth. Where her tongue was supposed to be, there was nothing but empty space and the barely-visible sight of a raw, half-healed wound. He flinched. "By the Lady! How did they do that? That's a stupid question to ask, unless you can write it out... Dani said your hands were wrecked, but..."

This time her smile was even more darkly amused as she raised her arms to him. Where her hands had been, there were now lumps of meat barely recognizable as anything that was supposed to be part of a human body. Small spurs of bone projected from the shapeless masses of bruised and battered flesh, outlined by scars that also ran into each other at what Alex had to assume had been the bases of her fingers. A few inflamed dots seemed to mark needle pinpricks. Alex had seen a lot of things in his young life that would faze people twice his age, but even he was horrified and nauseated by what had been done to Scarlet. "Why?" he asked quietly, steeling himself not to look away from her, no matter how sharply the knives in her pooled-shadow eyes cut him with her pain. "I know you can't tell me, but someone's got to ask the question..."

She watched him cautiously, then jerked the baggy sleeve off her right arm. There was a raw, inflamed wound there, too, roughly shield-shaped, very shallow. The colors burned in his sight, the scar left on her soul searing its way into his mind. He could "see" other such marks on her now along her arms and legs, wounds that were physically superficial and emotionally crippling. "Tattoos, right? They tried to strip your soul away while they had their way with you, huh? How many of those bastards are there out there?" She pounded what was left of her hand against the wall six times. When he asked for confirmation of the number of thumps, she nodded. "How many male?" She pounded the wall once, so hard that there was a very slight indent in the paint job. "Not too fond of him, huh? Did he rape you? Creeps like that usually do." She shook her head hesitantly, keeping her gaze locked on his. "Do you not want to admit that you were raped?" She shook her head faster. "So you were raped?" At this she nodded. "But if the man didn't- oh. One of the women?" She nodded hesitantly, then pounded the wall twice. "Two of them? Sounds kind of interesting." While she could no longer flip him off, the Italian version of the gesture required only two working arms. "At least you can still communicate that much. Look, I'm fifteen years old, for the Lady's sake. Don't make me feel guilty for having hormones."

That coaxed something resembling a smile out of her. Alex took advantage of the improved mood to take a road map out of the inner pockets of his robe. Showing most of the New York metropolitan area, it was a useful tool for figuring out a general location. "Can you point out where you were when they kidnapped you?" He handed her a pencil. She gripped it in her teeth, studied the map, then made a small scrawl on the northern border of Van Cortlandt Park. A line trailed north from that, losing steam where she lost track of where she had been taken. "Stop me when I hit the best unit of telling how long you've been gone: hours, days, weeks- OW, please don't hit me again. So it was weeks. How many of them, and for the Lady's sake, use the fuckin' table." She pounded the table three times. "Three weeks. They had you for three weeks and did all this to you? I wish you could tell me why- you aren't someone who makes enemies like that. You've got better things to do with your life."

She mouthed something that he could almost, but not quite, make out. "I can't tell what you're trying to say, come closer," he asked. She rolled her eyes, but leaned in closer to him, and it was then that he saw the wide red ribbon around her neck. "You carry steel, stone, and silk?" he asked in a low voice. She nodded and pulled her shirt aside only far enough to show the design of a five-point crown over the torch that symbolized the Lady. "By the Lady! It's bad enough they dared touch a Disciple, but one under the Lady's protection? What kind of savages would touch a true New Yorker?"

The tears rolled down her face as she mouthed one word over and over again, trying her hardest to make him understand. Finally, he understood what she was trying to say. An unasked-for image of Danielle flickered through his mind, her Star of David outlining part of the Husky design on her shirt- and all the pieces fell into place. "Fifteen years and more, and they still wanted revenge?" Scarlet nodded. Gently, Alex put the shawl back over her shoulders. "Dani's not one of them, you know. She just didn't know that that shirt would-" She clumsily put her hand to her lips to indicate that he should stop rambling. "Okay, okay, I get it. But here's the important question: are you ready to go home yet?"

The head-shaking was so vehement, he was sure that something had come loose in her brain, some little bit of gray matter that even now was swimming around free. "The real wounds will never heal, you know that as well as I do- that's why I know it. They'll welcome you home no matter what physical shape you're in, though I can't blame you for wanting to stay out of sight until the scars fade." He sighed and met her gaze. "Don't kick my ass for saying this, but you might be better off losing the ex-hands. Prosthetics might actually be useful. You could give me that finger you're dying to give me right now. Besides, those bitch-bastards did their best to make sure that the wounds festered; it'll be healthier if you get the lumps cut off."

Once again, the traditional Italian gesture served Scarlet well. Alex flipped her the bird right back and watched her smile. "I have to go now. I'll tell them to send you in lunch- uh, they might have to do that feeding-you-by-someone-else's-hand thing. It's not pretty, but it's better than having to shove your face into a bowl. Be careful. Take care of yourself. All those other cliches. I'll come back if I can."

She stared at him with her head tilted quizzically, but she couldn't think of a way to communicate her question to him before he was gone out the door in a swirl of white robes and incandescent rage. Danielle and Don Giuseppe were waiting outside the door. By now the teartracks had faded away, but he could still see their shimmer at the corners of her eyes. He passed them without a word, focused so tightly on his quest that he almost missed Danielle's soft question. "Alex, where are you going?"

He turned to her and regarded her with eyes now tinted the pale, pale blue of winter ice. "To deal with some wild dogs," he replied, his voice low and gravelly with controlled fury. Without letting her ask any more questions, he stalked down the hallway and out of the North House. He looked up and down the street and hailed a livery cab. "Take me along this road until I ask you to stop," he ordered sharply, handing the driver the map and pointing along Scarlet's line. The driver would have protested, but he recognized the robes of a priest of the Lady, even before Alex undid the first few buttons of his shirt to reveal his medallion. They traveled in silence broken only by the staticky interludes of the dispatcher's radio. Finally, they reached a point where Alex would have to go on foot. "Thanks," he said, pressing a hundred-dollar bill into the driver's hand and got out of the car before the driver could protest.

There was something unnerving about the sparse woods, with their stunted trees and parched soil. It looked like a war zone, or worse, the end of the world. The silence was complete: no birds sang, no squirrels chittered, no branches or leaves cracked under his feet. He had strayed far enough from the highway that he could no longer hear the gasp and roar of car engines, or the deep tones of a truck's airhorn. He could easily believe that he was the last living being on the planet. He was versed enough in cliches to have one hand on the butt of his pistol so that he could draw in a hurry if need be; silence this profound that lasted for this long could only mean trouble, and he intended to be ready for it when it came.

Part of him wondered if he should have taken Christine's advice and traveled with a Hunter, one of those who followed the Lady of the Snares; they were known for their woodscraft and lack of tolerance for anything that might be evil. Another part suggested that he should turn back, head back to the city, take this mission on when he was better armed and better prepared, think things through instead of charging in blindly. But the memory of Scarlet holding up what was left of her hands, of the angry wounds that burned against her flesh, of the single word she had mouthed in warning, reminded him that this sin could not go unpunished a second longer. His faith would carry him through, and if the Lady could not protect him, he would rely on the weapons that represented her.

He had no idea how far he had walked, or precisely where he was going, only that he was still on the trail. He could taste the sickness and decay in the air, smell pervasive rot, feel all the horror and fear that led him in a wavering line that nevertheless guided him on his way. His steps were sure, his path was true, and he was sure that he was in the right.

A sudden noise alerted him to someone else's presence. He couldn't be quite sure what the noise was, only that it had existed. It resolved into a low cackle, a cruelly satisfied sound that conjured up such horrifying images that all Alex could do was draw himself in and shudder with fear. "What have you done?" he asked. "By the Lady, what have you done?"

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a lie for a lie, a sin for a sin. We do to them what we know they did. It's not fair otherwise." The speaker materialized out of the shadows, a brown-haired woman who wore a filthy, tattered red suit as if it were royal robes. She had a cruel smile on her face and a chemical stink hovered around her in an invisible cloud. Once, she might have been pretty, but her face was twisted with hatred and madness.

"And how does that allow you to attack and abuse a sworn rebel? There was no blood on her hands. She was always free!" He tried to keep his temper in check, but it was harder than he had thought it would be, knowing that he faced one of those who had tortured Scarlet. The scene played out in his vivid imagination, sharp needles pumping poison into delicate muscles, Scarlet screaming as her wounds flared up again, a mockingly joyful song rising above the mayhem.

"That was an old score- you wouldn't understand, it was before your time. She deserved what we gave her. No one speaks ill of the old man and gets away with it." The lady in red's gaze flickered for a moment to a point over Alex's shoulder. He turned, but by the time he recognized the danger, the dark one already had him caught.

"Go ahead. Make me kill you. I haven't gotten any in ages, I deserve to have some fun." Her voice right next to his ear was breathy and girly, not what he had expected.

"Nice shoes," he managed to get out.

"Nice of you to notice. I got them off the last idiot who came through this way." The tone of her voice was enough to shut him up, and she turned her attention to the lady in red. "So can I?"

"Take him back to the lair. The old man is going to want to know about this, and it's not as if you can't have your fun there." The lady in red turned and walked away. The dark beauty sighed theatrically and dragged Alex behind her as she followed her friend. Alex hoped that his lack of a struggle was interpreted as being afraid for his life, not as his true intent of being brought to their lair so that he could confront the whole pack.

After a few minutes, they arrived in a clearing. A campfire burned in the center of it, and its light illuminated two nude figures curled together on the grass. Alex couldn't help but stare, since they were rather attractive women, even if they were likely old enough to be his mother. One of them noticed him noticing her and arched her back so as to flaunt her considerable assets. "Like what you see? Hope so- it might be the last thing you ever see, so stare while ya can."

"You flirting with a guy? Should I start checking your hair for blonde streaks next?" the other woman asked, her voice sharp with a New York accent.

"I'm not flirtin', I'm tauntin'. There's a difference, querida mía." She punctuated her words with a kiss, and that settled the matter.

"You didn't mention we were having company for dinner." Alex looked up at the sound of a new voice, this one belonging to a surprisingly spry old man whose blue eyes raked Alex with a long look. "Where'd you get this one?"

"He was stupid enough to be out in the woods by himself. If I didn't know better, I'd think he wanted to find us." The lady in red grinned at this, but the smile ran away from her face when Alex nodded.

"I came to find out why," he said, as simply as he could, hoping that he could get his point across with those few words.

"Because they have it coming."

"Even Scarlet?"

"Who the hell is Scarlet?"

"The one all of you silenced and destroyed."

"Oh, her." One of the lovers waved a dismissive hand. "She wasn't even any good. She's not worth getting worked up over. Besides, you know what she did to the old man- no one gets away with that kind of talk. We only repaid her in kind."

"You have a strange definition of kind," Alex muttered just loudly enough to be heard.

"If that's all you came here to talk about, you threw your life away for nothing," the old man said. "Where do you get off coming in here and telling us what to do, anyway? What gives you the right?"

Alex straightened, trying to get his vestments to fall a bit more neatly. "I'm a servant of the Lady. I do Her work and protect Her people. Where do you get off destroying people, anyway? What gives you the right?"

"Ohhhh, sounds like they turned her into a god while we were away," the lady in red commented. "Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it does."

"What makes you think she wasn't already there?" the old man asked rhetorically.

"By the Lady! You think I serve Kakista kai Kallista, foulest and most fair? That's insulting! Worse, it's slander. You did more for her than I ever would dream. You still serve her, much as you try to deny it. The stink of her clings to you like rot."

That threw them all into a fury. The dark one tightened her grip on the handle of the sledgehammer and lifted the head off the ground a few inches. The lady in red reached into her suit jacket, trying to decide which of her poisons and drugs she should use on the boy who dared speak to them so. The lovers rose as one, teeth bared and nails extended, ready to tear him apart. The old man tilted his head, all of what kindliness and good humor he had had now gone, and smiled cruelly. "50, tear him in half," he commanded, and a sixth figure detached itself from the shadows. Alex shuddered at the wave of cold hatred that emanated from the tall woman, the only thing that escaped from the cocoon of silence surrounding her. To look at her was to be assured that death itself had entered the scene. She cracked her knuckles and took a few steps forward.

The little voice of common sense that had suggested to Alex that he didn't have to do this the second he left the North House unhelpfully spoke up a little louder now, but he ignored it. Instead, he did what any person of faith would have done in similar circumstances: he prayed. In his case, he prayed to the Lady, indicating that if she were as fond of him as he'd been led to believe by the gifts he had been born with, she should really intercede here and keep him from dying in one of several extremely painful ways.

"Hey, quit playing favorites!" the dark one protested. 50 stopped in her tracks at the sound of the complaint. "I'm right here. Come on, let me bash his head in."

"For what he's said, he deserves to die slow, and you know I'm the best at that. I can keep him screaming for hours. Or if you want him to suffer quietly, I can make sure he won't be able to say a word. Give me the word and I'll do it however you want." The lady in red's face was alight with twisted joy at the thought of torture.

"Don't we get to tease him a little? We don't get too many guys up here, and it's so much fun to get them all excited over what they can't have before they get killed," the New Yorker said, her voice eager, almost childlike in its enthusiasm.

"One of you guys can have him when we're done, we're not greedy like that," the other agreed.

"But after you two have your way, they don't even notice if I split their heads open! They enjoy what you do to them, no matter how much they complain about it or say that it's sinful. You only want what you can't have. Don't you think I know about that?" The dark one spoke with bitterness hundreds of years in the making, passed down through the generations, and they were all reminded of what set her apart from them.

Alex was grateful for the squabbling; it gave him time to think of how he could make his escape. As far as he could see, there were only two paths through the woods, and both of them were blocked. His robes precluded running directly into the woods; spindly and half-grown as they were, the tree branches would still snag him, and something told him that if he tried and failed to escape, they wouldn't bother fighting over who was going to have the privilege of killing him. He might be able to fight his way out, but that was a last resort. As sick and as twisted as these people were, and as much horror as they had inflicted, he could not bring himself to take their lives. He served the Lady, and before all else, she was the Lady of Peace. Death for death was not her way.

There was something else as well, something that would have seemed crazy to anyone else. He wasn't sure that he even should leave. There was still more to learn about them and why they did such twisted deeds. A little voice in his head was urging him to demand answers, or at least use his powers of observation to see if he could figure them out. He was uniquely qualified for this task; after all, he was the Priest of the Mad, and these six were most certainly mad, or at least that was the word that the rest of the world would use. If he didn't return with the answers, either because he had shirked his task or he had died trying, no one would ever understand. Even if the answer was simply in their madness, someone had to ascertain it. So he bowed his head and prayed for help, for guidance, for protection.

As the prayer escaped his lips, a warm, comfortable strength filled him. His posture straightened from its habitual slouch; as he drew himself up to his full six-two height, the hood attached to his robe fell all the way back, revealing his corn-blond hair. In the firelight, his eyes had a pale green hue to them. "Well, isn't this nice? Everyone's fighting over who gets to fuck up the blond. Could you assholes *be* any more Channel 1?"

One of the lovers snarled at him and pounced, ready to slice him to bits, starting with some of his more vital bits. She quickly realized three things: first, the knife was no longer in her hand; second, there was a large obstacle between her and the boy; third, the large obstacle was 50 with the knife in her right hand and her left arm thrown out in front of the boy. "Oh, I see how it is. I guess you never do get to have any fun. I guess you can have him. Hope you leave something for us."

The tall, silent woman rolled her eyes in answer, then seized Alex by the arm and dragged him away from the pack. Once they were alone, he gasped, "Thanks for-" The prick of the knife point distracted him. He looked down to see her holding the blade uncomfortably close and disturbingly low. He tilted his head back, looked her in the eye, and laughed. "If this is what you wanted to happen, you would have left the knife in her hand and stood aside while she had her way. No, you had your reasons for stepping in to save some kid you never saw before in your life, and somehow I don't think it was out of the goodness of your heart. Do I remind you of someone you used to know? Someone you cared about? Maybe someone you... loved?" Sharply, the knife drew blood. "Okay, maybe that was uncalled-for. I take it back. But the point remains that you saw something in me that was worth saving, and I doubt I'll ever be able to fully tell you how much that meant to me."

She half-shrugged, her left shoulder jerking up and down once. A faint smile pulled her lips up at the corners. He watched her carefully, taking in the subtle play of expressions on her face, interpreting them with unusual intuition. "There's nothing more pathetic than a writer without words," he said, and she nodded vigorous agreement. "I know you weren't always like this. I don't think this is who you really are. At the very least, it isn't what you were meant to be. You were always a wolf, I know that much, and I can wrap my mind around the concept of 'once a Husky, always a Husky'. But how did it come to this? When did pride turn to madness? When did you people lose your fucking minds, if you'll excuse my language?"

She shrugged, a full-body shrug with her hands spread wide this time as if to say 'what're you going to do?' He had to admit that was an improvement, mostly because it involved the knife not being in position to give him an extreme circumcision. "I want to help you, if I can. Or is it already too late?"

She regarded him for a long time, and for a moment it seemed that there were tears in her eyes, some last fragment of human emotion that had escaped the ruthless programming. The moment passed, and again her face was an impassive mask, again the knife was pressed against his flesh. He sighed. "That's what I was afraid of. I didn't want to believe it, because who the hell wants to believe it? But when I saw what you did to her... she was one of my own, damn it! Didn't you see the medallion she was wearing? The crowned torch? Those were made just for the Disciples of St. Sue, and I know exactly how many there are and who wears them!" He tossed his head with a sudden twitch, a nervous gesture that looked strikingly like something a woman would do to get long hair out of her face. "When she put that medallion on, she became my responsibility. I was supposed to protect her, and I failed. *You* made me fail, all for the sake of the old man's pride!"

A raised eyebrow and yet another indifferent shrug were all he got from her. "I hate this feeling of talking to a wall. What did I ever do in my life to deserve this? I'd say don't answer that, but you can't anyway."

That infuriated her enough to make her slash at him. He caught the blow along his arm; the knife cut mercilessly through his sleeve, through the stripes of purple, cobalt, emerald green, and sky blue, until it stopped short at the blue-green once called seafoam. Red stained the pure white of his robe, but he seemed indifferent to the pain. "At least you still remember what that color meant to you. I'll remember that." He met her eyes again and held her gaze. "I'm still looking for your children, and not just because of you. I know you want to find them so you can take them out of this world, because you think you have the right because you brought them into the world. Understand this, though: if I find them before you do, they will come under my protection and be in my care. And so help me, if you try to come after them while they are under my protection and in my care, I will show you no mercy. I will give you no quarter. No matter who you were, no matter what kind of person you might have been back in the day, I will not allow you near those children. I would kill you with my bare hands first. They have the right to make their own choices, and while I'll push them as hard as I can away from the blonde bitch who killed their parents, I can't force them to believe anything. Have I made myself clear?"

She seemed stunned, her eyes wide, her mouth open just slightly. She pointed a trembling finger at him, shaking it repeatedly, demanding an answer of some sort. "You're wondering where I get off saying that, right? I'm a New Yorker. Everyone knows who I am, and everyone knows that I would have the right to step in like that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I don't have time for any more of this bullshit." He stepped away, carefully not turning his back on her, and disappeared into the woods. She stared after him with a pensive expression on her face before putting the matter from her mind and returning to the pack. They might be angry that she had let the boy go, but there would always be more prey, prey that didn't sass back at them, prey that didn't bring back hints of long-lost memories.

As soon as Alex could be sure that he was out of the pack's sight and hearing, he took off running. His robe snagged on a tree branch, which at least confirmed his earlier hunch that he wouldn't have been able to use that as an escape route from the lair. Since he had time and space, he stripped off the robe and bundled it under his arm, ripping off the bit that had been torn in order to bandage the wound in his arm. He was genuinely worried that the scent of blood in the air might attract the Lone Wolves' attention on a more basic and primal level than sight or sound. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, the fight or flight instinct going full tilt on option #2.

He wasn't sure how long it took him to get to the highway, because that would have required paying close attention to something that didn't involve running for his life, and he was really worried about that. When he saw open sky and the black road before him, a feeling of relief and gratitude washed over him. He had made his escape; even if they somehow tracked him here, this was more his element than theirs, and he had better chances of survival. A quick look at the road signs allowed him to orient himself, and he started walking south at a more sedate pace. He could finally sort out his thoughts and impressions from his visit to the lair.

He had faced down evil before, both the obvious kind that lived and thrived outside the city's borders and the subtle kind that destroyed from the inside out, but he had never encountered anything like this. Their deeds were heinous enough to chill his blood- visions of Scarlet's torture would almost certainly haunt his nightmares for weeks to come- but what eluded his comprehension was how anyone could enjoy it, revel in it, take such pleasure in such pain. They didn't seem completely human, if only in the way they regarded people as not worthy of humane treatment. They were worse than wolves: they were what humans thought wolves were. They were savage and feral and merciless.

Almost merciless. He had to remind himself of that. If they were all completely merciless, he would be dead or worse right now. 50 had saved him. She had had him in her grasp and let him go. He doubted that she was consciously aware of why, or even that she would do it a second time if the situation came up again. But it was enough to make him wonder, and to think about the obvious love between the two women who had lain naked together, and the affection in the group's wrangling.

In some ways, that made it worse. If they had been completely hateful, unable to stand each other, only fixated on death and destruction, he would be able to write them off as lost to the darkness, eternally bound to Kakista kai Kallista. He would be able to kill them, or be comfortable in the thought that someone surely would. He knew his limits, and trying to save someone who had no humanity left was a futile task. But the flashes of human emotions that he had seen from them showed that they still had the capability; they chose not to use it. In his eyes, that was even worse, but it also left him with a moral quandary. What they did was beyond forgiveness and tolerance, but he doubted that anything short of the total defeat of evil would give them cause to stop. But they were human, and something within him rebelled at the thought of murder. The reapers might think that death was the only true peace, but Alex did not.

He could not allow them to continue doing what they did, and yet he could see no way to simply convince them that they couldn't, but he could not countenance their deaths. The complex dilemma kept his mind busy for several miles as he walked. What could he do to prevent any further atrocities?

He was so lost in thought when he reached the Bronx border that it took a gun to his head for him to realize that someone was trying to get his attention. "Holy shit, kid, what happened to you?" the border guard asked.

"Ran into some fuckers," Alex replied. "You got any vodka in that booth of yours? I need a stiff drink, and I need it right the fuck now."

The guard went into the booth and brought out a bottle of vodka and a glass. Alex ignored the glass, opting instead to take a couple of deep swigs straight from the bottle. "Aren't you a little young for that?" the guard asked.

"Priest of the Lady," Alex said before taking another gulp of vodka and passing the bottle back to the guard, who nodded in understanding.

"Anything else I can do for you?"

"How far to the subway?"

"Seein' a kid like you beat all to hell? There'd probably be a riot. Kid, you get on the train, even the Gray Lady would do a double-take. My brother's got a cab he parks 'round here. Anywhere you need to go, you got a lift, just say the word."

Alex capitulated, grateful that his status gave him so much privilege. "I need to get back to the Temple at 65th and Broadway."

"A'right then. Lemme page my brother." The guard took a keypad out of his pocket and dialed the number. A few minutes later, a cab roared up to the booth, driven by a dark-haired man with a joint hanging out of his mouth. "Carlo! Grazie!"

"The things I do for you, Giancomo," Carlo grumbled good-naturedly. He popped the door open and Alex climbed in. Once he saw the blond in his rearview mirror, he opened his mouth to make a remark similar to his brother's, but Alex raised a weary hand, and he decided to drop the matter. The cassette deck installed in lieu of the CD player/radio played a medley of Italian love songs as they sped through the Bronx and down Broadway. At 65th Street, Alex got out his wallet. Carlo waved it off. When Alex started getting insistent that he pay the fare on the meter, Carlo got out of the car, dragged Alex onto the sidewalk, climbed back into the car, and drove off.

As Alex tried to get his bearings back, Christine came flying out of the building. "Thank the Lady you're alive! That Disciple you were with at the North House- Danielle?- came down and told us what you were planning to do- Alex, what were you thinking?" She caught sight of him out of his robe, the bloodstained strip of fabric around his arm, and the haunted look in his eyes, and that was enough to stop her in mid-rant. "By the Lady, what happened to you? You poor thing, come back inside. Paloma can patch you up. It'll be okay, Alex, it'll be okay." Making sure that she didn't press against his wound, she took him into a hug, stroking his hair and murmuring comforting if meaningless noises. Sometimes they both forgot that he was only fifteen, and it wasn't pretty when reality reminded them of it.

"I have seen true evil," he whispered as they passed through the doorway. "They do evil not because they believe it to be good, but because they feel it is their right. They reveled in it, Chrissy. They torture and they rape and they kill, and they laugh and sing while they're doing it. There is love in them, compassion, loyalty, honesty, but they ignore those qualities or warp them into something that makes no sense. What I have seen- we can't allow that to happen to anyone else, Christine. No one deserves that, not even if the foulest and most fair was given flesh and put in their midst."

"So send the reapers. If these people are as sick as you say they are, the reapers should have no problem disposing of them. Justice is the Reaper's way."

"If it were that easy, you think I'd be fucking agonizing over it? As much as they have wronged, they have been wronged. There were flashes when I thought they saw what I see, even if so often they seemed to be the blindest of the blind. They aren't completely given over to darkness, even if in their own way they do worse evil than any I've ever seen before. Some of the reapers might well join with them, and the last thing we need is a schism that involves unbalanced people with sharp objects." Alex sighed heavily.

"You always had a knack for making simple things into puzzles," Christine said with a small mirthless laugh. "If you can't talk sense into them and you can't put them out of the picture, how can you do anything about the situation?"

"Westchester and the northern Bronx are forbidden territory for any who wear the medallion. And no one is to aid and/or abet these... people." Alex shook his head. "I know, I know, all that's doing is cutting us off from the problem, not solving it. But my first duty is to the Lady's people, so I have to protect them before I worry about anyone else. If we can't stop them completely, we can at least make sure they have fewer potential victims. Revenge won't get us anything, so we're going to have to stress that on the street. I don't want anyone going up there and thinking that they can face these people down, because they can't. Anyone who follows the Lady doesn't have tht kind of savagery and hatred in their soul, at least not that they can spare from Kakista kai Kallista. How should I phrase it? What would be the best way to tell people that putting a hurting on the people who tortured Scarlet would be a bad idea?"

"Tell people that putting a hurting on the people who tortured Scarlet would be a bad idea," Christine replied immediately. "Now that that's answered, hold still so Paloma can take care of you."

Alex relaxed and let Paloma minister to him. Thoughts were whirling through his head faster than he could sort them out, ideas about what should be done and what could be done and who could or should do it. He did not want to be responsible for any deaths or mutilations, no matter whose hand they were at, but he knew in his heart that this tenuous equilibrium couldn't last. Someone was going to go too far, if they hadn't already, and there would be a clash. His newfound knowledge might well be the tipping point one way or the other, depending on if he revealed it or not and to whom he revealed it. But could he take a side so easily without then being responsible for what occurred? There seemed to be no way out of the dilemma.

"There, all patched up. Please be more careful. You're nuestro hijo, sabes? We've all put too much time into you for you to get yourself killed." The little round woman with gray curls patted his shoulder and left the room. Christine looked at him, but when she caught his 'leave me alone' vibes, she followed Paloma out of the room. He turned his chair around to face the mirror and stared at his reflection for a long time.

"Lady, help me find an answer," he prayed. In the mirror, his reflection bowed its head and stared at the tabletop- and at the keypad there, the transmission-only device that would allow him to page, text-message, or even e-mail anyone he needed to. Shlowly, he reached for it, then pulled his hand back. He reached for it again, and again pulled back.

And for a third time he reached for it, and this time he did not stop.