And then there's Alaister, the man she loved and let go because no normal man wants a girlfriend who hangs out with creatures from his nightmares. The man who re-enters her life at a party the night a young woman is savagely murdered. The man who has a few secrets of his own.

But nothing--and no one--will unbalance Andromeda Pendragon...

About, oh, five months ago, she'd stayed at a Super 8 in New York--Batavia, she thought it was, right off the New York Expressway. After dinner, she'd stopped at a gas station, filled up and bought a six-pack of Heineken, mostly because she thought it was neat to buy beer at a gas station. She was halfway through her second bottle, watching nothing much on TV and keeping half an eye on her car, when she remembered something from a John Sanford novel.

Brilliant, she thought, practically untraceable. So, she saved the bottles, wiped them down, resisted the temptation to keep just one because they were such a pretty green, and etched them. She etched them as deeply as she could, unsure how strong the glass was; but in the end, it was just like Mr. Sanford had that silly woman do--up and down, around and around, until the bottles looked like they were in nets. Well, when you squinted, anyway.

She'd kept them in the trunk of her car, and now they would finally come into use.

She sat with four of them lined up in a neat row at her feet. She watched the activity below, the deceptively human forms laughing and joking with each other as they bedded down for the night in their cabins. Calls of goodnight and pleasant dreams echoed down the valley and up to her.

Helena looked at the sky. Tomorrow would be a full moon. She should wait, just to be sure. No. Tomorrow they would also be at full power. She knew she was right; her instincts, the little primeval part of her at the base of her spine, recognized these things for what they were, and urged her to run.

She waited a bit as silence settled around the camp. Her rear end began to get numb with cold, and she kept twitching. After awhile, she uncorked the kerosene and filled the bottles, then put in the wicks. She had waited to do this, fearing the things below would smell the fuel on the wind.

One-by-one, she lit and threw the bottles. They arched in the air, and it was right pretty, the way the fire made them look like falling emeralds. She aimed well, and they shattered across both roofs.

Grabbing her bag, she turned, ran up the hill, climbed a tree she had selected earlier and took up her rifle. Now, she thought, if the police, or any other kind of thing investigated this, they'd start with the beer distributors and bars in the area. They'd never get a lead on her, because she'd bought her last beer several hundred miles and a couple of states away.

And, she made a mental note, she wasn't going to buy any more, not for awhile.

She checked the sight again on her rifle, using the telescope to keep watch. There were screams, now, and they were finally beginning to run out of the cabins. She aimed, took a deep breath, and went to work.