Chapter 11

Ulrich jolted upright in bed, startling William, and wondered what had woken him up. The entire gang – well, all but Yumi – was there, staring at him in surprise, but their voices had been droning through his subconscious for a while with no real dramatic change in volume or tone.

Where's Yumi?

"Are you all right, Ulrich?" Jeremy asked.

Ulrich glared questioningly at Jeremy. "I'm fine…what woke me up?"

"Dog whistle?" William asked. He'd fallen onto Odd's bed.

"Kiwi didn't notice," Odd pointed out, nodding at the sleeping dog.

Ulrich lifted a sardonic eyebrow at a bruise that was showing through Odd's hair. "Who gave you the extra purple?" he asked.

"Yumi."

"Ah…" The question ran through Ulrich's head again, and this time he asked it. "Where is Yumi?"

Aelita straightened up from her crouch over Jeremy's laptop. "She had to get home; did she ever tell you about that vampire Elder visiting?"

"Yes…" And that, he suspected, was what was bothering him. Why it was bothering him, and why it should suddenly wake him up now, he wasn't sure. "When did she leave?"

"About an hour ago," Jeremy answered, checking his watch. "Why?"

"Call her."

"Why?"

"Just…" Ulrich's voice trailed off in a frustrated growl. The truth was: he didn't know why. Somehow, he was sure that something was wrong, but he didn't know what and he didn't know how he knew.

Aelita considered Ulrich for a long moment. Then she pulled out her cell phone and started dialing.

"How are you doing, anyway?" Jeremy asked after a minute. "Yumi wasn't particularly specific about what would happen to you after she bit you."

Ulrich rubbed his neck. "I don't…think I feel any different…"

Aelita pocketed her cell phone. "Yumi's not answering her phone. It's ringing, so it's definitely on; anybody else think that she would have turned it off if she was doing something with her family?"

Jeremy nodded. "Something's wrong."

"Well, let's go then!" Ulrich exclaimed. He jumped off the bed – and nearly collapsed. Only Odd's timely intervention kept him from hitting the floor.

"Ulrich, you can barely walk!" William protested. "I don't care how fast you think you can bounce back, you still haven't had enough time!"

Odd turned as best he could and grinned at Aelita. "He doesn't know Ulrich very well yet, does he?"

Aelita giggled and shook her head as she edged around them to open the door.

"Ulrich's not going to let a little thing like anemia slow him down," Jeremy told William. "Once he'd gotten banged up trying to drive a Xana-controlled bulldozer; he insisted on being virtualized the instant he regained consciousness."

William shook his head in disbelief. "Werewolves."


Jim was too close to the boiler room for anyone's comfort, so they started out onto the grounds. They had almost reached the manhole cover when…

"RAWWOOOOOOOOOO!"

A long, earsplitting soprano howl tore through the night.

Ulrich hit the ground before his shocked senses took in that Odd had dropped him; a quick glance to the side revealed that Odd was writhing in pain with both hands clasped firmly over his ears. Aelita had fallen on her face and covered her head with her arms in a similar futile attempt to block the noise. Jeremy's hands were over his ears, but he almost seemed more interested in the fact that his glasses had shattered.

"What is that?" William shouted, also with his ears covered.

Somehow Ulrich managed to shift into a form that was mostly wolf, although he retained enough of his human shape to keep his own hands pressed over his ears, and he tilted his head up and gave his agony voice in a howl of his own.

The other howl stopped. Then it picked up again, not quite as loud but still terribly off-key, and almost seemed to have a word carried on it.

Ulrich blinked in astonishment and lowered his hands. Was that…my name?

Aelita sat up. "Is that another werewolf?"

"Would another werewolf really sound like that?" Odd asked, carefully uncovering his ears.

A black wolf tore out of the trees, morphing into Yumi as she slammed on the brakes.

Caught completely by surprise, Ulrich's mouth took off on its own before he could think to even resume full human form. "You howl like a hyena with a sore throat!"

"Save the howling lessons for later," Yumi told him as she flung the manhole cover aside, panic all too evident in her voice and her scent. "We have to get to the factory now! I don't know if Elder Mandy's Xana-possessed or just my family, but…"

"A vampire Elder is under Xana's control?" Jeremy interrupted, staring at Yumi in horror.

"That's it, we're dead, it's I Am Legend all over again," William said in a strange voice: it was like he felt so scared that running away screaming wasn't even an option.

"Shut up, William," Aelita growled. "How much time do we have, Yumi?"

Yumi grabbed Jeremy and Aelita, dragging them to the manhole. "Figure on none. Oh, and if anyone's willing to chance untried blood magic, I think I can supply you guys with temporary Protection Marks. They won't last for long against Elder Mandy at full power, but if she doesn't know you have them she might not bother using all her magic."

"I thought you said we couldn't count on extra time," William said as he climbed down after the three.

"We can't; but I can move fast enough to Mark all of you on the way, and I don't need to see to draw this one. Ulrich, there's no time to shift back, just come on!"

Ulrich dropped down and started running, completely ignoring his skateboard, while everyone else started following as fast as their wheels could propel them.


Ulrich waited at the top of the other ladder, ready to help the others up. Predictably, Yumi got there first: like Ulrich, she'd dispensed with the need of a skateboard in favor of her natural speed.

Yumi levered herself out of the sewers on bloodstained claws. "Everybody's Marked," she told him, "Even William, although he put up a fuss about it at first. I think he'd rather I bit him myself than let Elder Mandy put any Mark on him."

"Do you think there'll be any trouble with these things?" Ulrich growled, holding his hand out for the first person to reach the ladder.

"Nah, they'll disappear by sunrise. Hey, what do you think will happen if I virtualize like this?"

Ulrich eyed Yumi curiously; at some point on the way, her skin had turned deathly white and her face bore strong resemblance to a bat's…although Ulrich doubted that even the vampire bat looked quite that vicious. Her blood-red eyes glittered at him in the darkness.

"Don't know," he replied as he hauled Aelita up, the back of her neck bleeding from the design that had been scratched there by vampire claws. "But if you're really going in like that, I'll go in like this," and he favored both girls with a lupine grin, "Just to see what happens."