Admittedly, I could have landed on my ass a little more gracefully but there's really only one way to fall out of a second story window in the dead of night. No part of it involves grace.

I hit the ground hand, a sharp jab of pain up from my tail bone. It knocked the wind out of me in one gasp. My malaika rolled a bit away into the grass as up in the shattered remain of the window, Ash snickered. It was emphasized by the rattle wheeze of a sixteen wheeler roaring past on the freeway just across from the marshland at my back. I squinted up and found him, a shadow in the bullseye of the shattered glass, his head covered by a duck hunter hat.

"Smart ass," I muttered, hauling myself to my feet. I grabbed up my malaika and waved my arm at him. "Don't stand there watching me! Follow him!"

"On it." The mic in my ear crackled with Shank's voice. He was breathing hard, running on foot in human form up the winding staircase inside the abandoned factory I'd just been hurtled out of backwards. His footsteps were hallow, metallic thuds through the small earbud. "Keep Ash with you. You know he's still rusty with the change."

"He needs the practice," I sighed. "Nat, sights?"

"Roof's clear, he's gotta still be inside."

"I said I was on it," Shanks barked. "Meaning, I'm on him."

"Kinky." I could hear Nat grin.

"Remember who the alpha is here, Nathalie," Shanks huffed. "Show a little respect."

"Remember who your alpha is, Robert."

"Guys, not on the community channel," I rolled my eyes. "Besides, Ash is too young to hear this stuff."

Ash growled at me from the window.

Technically speaking, our job in North Dakota wasn't to track down a rogue wolfen who'd developed a certain... taste for humans. We'd been out there for almost a month and because nobody in the right mind wanted to be out in North Dakota, we were the only team the main Schola had out here to do it's dirty work. It wasn't so bad, really. A nice distraction from the real work, a good test run for Ash, but hell, did I hate being thrown out of windows by rageful wolves on sterroids.

I tasted wax and oranges and backed up into the tall grasses to get a better view of the back of the building. Four low, wide stories, sixteen windows each, with three smoke stacks at the far side. When this place was operational, it must have been a real sludge pot, churning black smoke into the air by the minute. The windows were shattered here and there like missing teeth and the beige grasses had started to clink to the base of the building, a drab, beige concrete. Dried vines climbed up the exterior and a fat orange moon hung in the sky- a mid January hunter's moon. Appropriate.

With the taste of wax oranges came the distinct tang of cold, like blood. I felt the aspect wash over me, warming a flush to my cheeks, which I tucked down into my scarf. Suddenly I could hear farther, Shanks' pounding footsteps on the stairs and his breath in my ear, Nat swearing. Ash mumbling to himself.

And the wolfen, snarling mad, working his up towards the roof.

"Nat, he's coming your way," I warned.

I saw a figure up on the roof move slightly in the shadows and knew it was her. She pumped the barrel of her rifle, the sound accompanied by three deep growls in my ear. I rolled my eyes, sliding my malaika into the holster on my back.

Wolves, they all have to be heard.

Sizing up the outer wall, I heard the ghost of Christophe in my mind, warning me, "Dru. Leave it to them. Play your part."

Well, what Christophe didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Coming up," I told them.

"What?" They all said at once- in Ash's case, a shout right through the window.

So maybe I hadn't had a graceful exit. My ass would be hurting at least until tomorrow. But that didn't mean I couldn't have a graceful entry.

I backed up some more, heels sinking into black mud, and eyed a rusted exhaust pipe running along the outside of the building. The aspect brightened, tightened, my fangs scraped along my chapped lower lip. I really had to get to a target, because your girl needed chapstick, lip balm, something. Pit stops just weren't cutting it anymore for the essentials. I pictured Dad scoffing at me, "Going soft of me dru-girl." And maybe he was right.

I grinned and took a running start right at the wall, the world whipping past me. Crystalline, far off city lights became a sequence of streaks in the corner of my eye.

"Ash?" Shanks called through the earbud. "Sights?"

"She's climbing," Ash said, his voice still raw, still unused to words. I passed him, a wide pale face blinking at me. A slow smile crept across his face and he leaned out the window, craning his neck back. "Fast."

Faster, faster, I heard Chris grilling me. Three years post-Bloom and the Aspect was like breathing. Better than breathing, as weird and unfamiliar as it was. My scalp tingled, not from the cold or my itchy wool hat. I felt my nails harden, tearing into the metal of the pipe as I climbed.

I burst up onto the roof just as the wolfen did, a massive, snarling, dark thing. His eyes were red, spit dripped from his teeth. Clumps of fur were either missing or matted down with something I preferred not to think about.

Nat leveled the gun on him, her own smooth fur climbing across her skin, inching out of the sleeve of her jacket across her hands, up her neck. I landed on the balls of my feet between her and the wolfen, knees crouched.

"Shit, Dru-"

The wolfen and I weighed each other up. For a brief moment I felt a sharp bite of fear. A reflex, from the past. A name surfacing up, clawing at my heart. Was he Broken? Broken and mad or just... bad?

Shanks burst out of the same door that the wolfen had moments ago, rapidly shifting. He fell to four paws and led out a howl that ratcheted up through the ground into my bones. The wolfen flinched and made the mistake of turning towards Shanks, hackles rising. He heard the grind of my boot on the gravel flooring and spun. We launched at each other only to be caught in mid air, tangling fur and hair, tooth and blood.

Anyway, I'm Dru Anderson. Been a while.