"This must be my lucky day. I'm finding beautiful women everywhere."

"Come off it, Max," Tanya said with a smile as she and Brooke walked out of the front doors of Saks Fifth Avenue and onto the sun dappled, wide sidewalks of Fifth Avenue. Even for an early spring day, the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street was heavily occupied with people making their way home from work in the midtown financial district or fitting in some late afternoon shopping. Already weighted down with two bags of her own from the pricey department store, Brooke hurried to keep up with Tanya as her Shadow Lord guide for the day met up with Max at the corner.

"Again she spurns me," Max said, taking Tanya's bag from her and turning to Brooke. "Looks like you two did a little shopping today, at any rate. Anything for me?"

"Just our eternal gratitude for coming to pick us up," Tanya replied as Max took Brooke's purchases from her. "You're so sweet, Max. How did you ever manage to fall in with that boss of yours?"

"Just dumb luck," Max said, finally turning to Brooke and relieving her of her packages. "And how are you today, Miss Farron? I hope Tanya here didn't make things too terrible for you."

"No, no, not at all," Brooke replied, quickly being won over by the young man's charming smile. "She even paid for my things."

"She never does that for me," Max said, acting hurt by his comrade's apparent show of favoritism. "I'm wounded, Tanya. To think that you treat a total stranger better than you treat me. And after everything I've done for you."

"I think you'll survive, Max," Tanya said, humoring the younger Shadow Lord. "Have you brought the car around, or do we have to walk?"

"This is what I have to put up with," Max said, turning to Brooke with a sigh of resignation. Brooke giggled a little at Max's display, prompting the Shadow Lord to continue. "She's always bossing me around, telling me what to do, and she's never happy. Between her and Alex, I'd think I was nothing more than a slave."

"I'll tell the boss you said that," Tanya commented, her voice betraying her amusement with Max's complaints. Brooke could not help but laugh as well.

"No one ever takes my side," Max groaned, shaking his head in mock dejection.

"I'll take your side, Max," Brooke offered, patting the Shadow Lord on the shoulder. Max looked up, ready to offer another lighthearted comment, but the young man's sharp hazel eyes instantly focused on something behind her.

He was in action before the girl could question him. Brooke was thrown out of the way as Max knocked her over with the shopping bags, crashing to the pavement with a yelp of pain as she twisted her wrist beneath her. The girl tried to clamber back to her feet, but Tanya grabbed her already injured wrist and dragged her back into the façade of Saks as Max dropped and rolled to the curb of Fifth Avenue. Above the sudden cries of surprise and fear from the crowd, Brooke heard four gunshots and the sharp cracks as the bullets ricocheted off the pavement where she had been standing a moment earlier.

"Get her out of here!" Max shouted, drawing a pair of handguns from beneath his black overcoat. Tanya dragged Brooke to her feet and started racing north along Fifth Avenue. Brooke struggled to look back over her shoulder, praying that Max would be right behind them, but the younger Shadow Lord had disappeared into the startled crowd.

"What about Max?" the girl asked, turning to her escort. Tanya never even looked over her shoulder for her friend.

"If he's half as good as he thinks he is, he'll find the bastard that just tried to shoot you, kill him before the guy has a chance to react, get us coffee at the nearest Starbuck's, and meet us at Alex's office," Tanya explained. "Right now, our priority is keeping you alive until we find out why they want you dead."

____________________________________________________

He had felt the shot coming more than he had seen it. Max's ability to sense danger bordered on the supernatural, and this time it had served him well. Quickly the Shadow Lord threaded through the panicked crowds of Fifth Avenue, calling upon his gifts to cloak him from sight even as he ducked into the cover afforded by the masses of frightened pedestrians. Although the Blur of the Milky Eye did not confer true invisibility, Max would only need a slight edge in the chaotic throngs on the street. As he circled back through the masses, the Shadow Lord continuously scanned the people around him, searching for anyone that might have a weapon of some sort.

Quick movement and an almost imperceptible flash of light caught Max's eye to his left. Another man, dressed in a heavy brown trenchcoat and wide brimmed hat over his jet black hair was pushing his way north through the crowds, looking for all the world like a character out of a pulp detective novel from the fifties. As the man strode quickly up the street, the flash of light came again from a long, silvery knife held in his left hand, while he carried a revolver at the ready in his right. Although he carried the weapons in plain sight, no one responded to the assassin in their midst, and Max could only conclude that the man was making use of the same gift that he had invoked to hide in the crowds.

The assassin turned suddenly, stopping in the middle of Fiftieth Street and turning abruptly in Max's direction. The young Shadow Lord moved quickly, trying to duck into the cover of the crowds once more before he could be seen, but the assassin's icy eyes homed in on his pursuer's location. For a long second the two men locked gazes, but then the assassin smiled slightly.

Don't fuck with me, boy.

"Shit," Max snapped, keeping his voice low. The man had not opened his mouth or spoken any words, but his warning had shot clearly through the Shadow Lord's mind. The Shadow Lord tensed, expecting an imminent attack, but the assassin started north again, ignoring Max in his pursuit of Brooke. Max hesitated for only a moment before he rushed after the receding form, sprinting across the street to the front of Saint Patrick's Cathedral and scanning the people once again for signs of the vanished assassin.

He felt the tip of the silver dagger at his back a heartbeat later.

"Now what did I tell you, boy?"

"Sorry, Trent," Max stated. "But you know how the boss gets when I don't do my job."

"Oh yeah, how is Alex these days?" the assassin inquired, keeping the dagger at Max's spine. "Tell him the offer still stands. We'd love to have him playing on our side."

"I don't think he'll take the offer," Max said. Two NYPD cruisers screeched to a halt in front of Saks, but Max and Trent seemingly remained invisible to the rest of the people on the street.

"What about you then, boy?" Trent inquired. "I have to admit, I didn't think you'd pick me out of the crowd before I could shoot the girl."

"Sorry, no deal there, either," the Shadow Lord replied. "I thought you wanted the girl alive."

"No! God, no!" Trent exclaimed, sounding almost amused with the younger Shadow Lord. "You think we're that crazy? Stay out of my way, Maxie. Or I swear to Vorus that I'll put you down like the little boy that you are."

"What is it about her that you don't like?" Max asked. He waited for a long moment, but there was no answer from the man behind him. "Trent?"

Max turned around, but by the time he did so, the assassin had disappeared again into the crowds. After another second of peering through the crowds in vain for his opponent, the Shadow Lord finally hurried up Fifth Avenue in an attempt to catch up with Tanya and Brooke.

____________________________________________________

"Is he ready yet?"

"These things take time," Callow commented, sitting back on Bickle's torn and burnt couch. The immensely overweight, greasy man stuffed a hand into his stained black jeans as he stared at the blank television screen. "I mean, you know how many fifteen year olds are in this city?"

"No," Spook said from his position on the floor in front of a crumbling rack of videotapes. The painfully thin, ebon skinned man turned back to Callow with a look of curiosity. "How many are there?"

"Fucked if I know," Callow stated indifferently. Xavier sighed in disgust from his p[position by the window.

"Sun's going down, and he still hasn't figured out how to even find her," Xavier growled out. "Nigel's gonna kill us!"

"He's not gonna kill us," Callow said in a thoroughly bored tone. "I mean, if he killed us, who would he have to do things like find this little girl that you're so desperate to get your paws on?"

"Have we seen this one?" Spook inquired, tossing a videotape over the stark white afro that crowned his head. Callow caught the tape before it hit him in the face, and examined it for a long moment.

"Sweaty Sumo Sorority," the fat man read from the cover. "This, my friend, sounds like a winner."

"Bickle's got some fucked up shit in his library," Spook commented as he stood up from the rack.

"Yeah, but he doesn't have a fucking thing in his fridge," Callow observed. "Christ, I'm starving."

"Can't you do anything but eat?" Xavier asked irritably, looking back to Callow.

"Yeah," Callow replied. "I can whip your pussy little ass. But I'd prefer something to eat."

"Throw the tape on, man," Spook said impatiently, sitting down at the base of the couch.

"You're up," Callow pointed out, tossing the cassette back to his far smaller companion. Spook rolled his eyes in disgust, then reached forward to put the tape into the VCR. Just before he could press the play button, Bickle nearly shot through the door from his bedroom.

"Dude, I so totally got her!" the Black Spiral exclaimed in a bout of euphoria. Spook leapt to his feet and dropped back into a fighting crouch, refusing to relax even after he saw the source of the distraction. Callow simply yawned.

"That's terrific," the fat Black Spiral stated sarcastically. "Can you order me a pizza or two now?"

"Where is she?" Xavier demanded anxiously.

"She's with Karamov!" Bickle replied excitedly.

"Oh, good," Callow grumbled. "Maybe he'll order us pizza."

"Fuck!" Xavier shouted, slamming his fist into the wall. "God fucking damnit, Bickle! I could have told you that!"

"How about having him find us a pizza place now?" Callow inquired idly from the couch.

"Shut the fuck up!" Xavier snapped, diverting his attention from Bickle for only a fraction of a second. "Don't you have a location? Like, is she in his office?"

"Yes, that's exactly where she is!" Bickle exclaimed, elated. He suddenly realized what he was saying, and his euphoria rapidly began to fade into depression. "Shit, man, how are we gonna get her out of there?"

"We could always ask Karamov for her," Callow suggested. "And a large pizza with onions, sausage, and extra cheese."

"Shut the fuck up!" Xavier ordered a second time. Callow shrugged, and pulled a phone out of his pocket.

"We sneak in, we take her, we sneak out," Spook said, as though the answer had been obvious.

"Thanks, Spook," Xavier said. "Ever the tactician. And how exactly do we sneak into Karamov's office?"

"Shit, Mortiss'll probably be there," Bickle said, his depression quickly shifting to panic. "Oh, shit, he'll rip my fucking head off and shit down my throat! We can't go there, Xavier! We can't! I don't wanna die until the end of the world!"

"Guys, I'm on the phone," Callow said. "A little respect, please?"

"I don't care about your fucking pizza, Callow!" Xavier snapped. Callow shrugged, then diverted his attention to the phone.

"Yeah, is this Mister Karamov?" the fat Black Spiral inquired. Xavier and Bickle both turned to their packmate in shock.

"I coulda told you he'd do that," Spook informed the other two.

"Yeah, we're looking for this girl, and I was told you have her," Callow began. "So, we're gonna swing by in a couple of minutes. You think you could have her out front for us? And maybe a large pizza with-"

"Give me that!" Xavier exclaimed, grabbing the phone out of Callow's hand before he could finish his request. The pack leader looked at the phone for a moment, then quickly raised it to his lips. "Prank call! Prank call!"

"Oh, that'll make him think it wasn't us," Spook commented derisively as Xavier hung up the phone. The pack leader ignored his subordinate as he frantically smashed the phone to pieces against the wall.

"You owe me a new phone," Callow pointed out.

"I take it we're not heading over in twenty minutes?" Spook inquired with a look of genuine curiosity. Xavier glared at his packmate for a long moment, then stormed out of the apartment.

____________________________________________________

"That had to be Callow," Max said, hanging up Alexei's office telephone.

"Xavier must have gathered his pack up," Alexei decided, turning back to the windows of his office. The lights of the Queensboro Bridge began to wink on, lightning the skeletal framework above the East River. "They seem to really want her."

"And Trent wants her dead," Max added.

"An order from Venizio, no doubt," Alexei guessed. "That puts the street thugs at odds with the corporate wolves in Pentex, all over one fifteen year old girl."

"What the hell is it about her?" Max asked, following the philodox's line of sight to the eastern skyline.

"We need to find out," Alexei answered. "If Venizio thinks that the girl is a threat, there's a possibility that she may be useful to us. But the question arises in what Xavier wants with her. If she was just any fifteen year old, Xavier would probably have forgotten her and moved on to his next underage conquest. Something about this girl is important enough to put the Black Spirals at odds with each other. At the very least, we might be able to exploit the internal strife and use the girl to start a shooting war between the two packs. Did your contact at the Records Office have anything at all that might prove useful?"

"Not in the least," Max answered. "Vincent Farron is an employee at Sun Bank, but no one worth mentioning. He used to work for a Sabbat and Pentex joint venture in Lower Manhattan, but when both sides finally stopped trusting each other and the thing went down in flames, he just moved on without incident. The guy doesn't take bribes, doesn't deal with any vital accounts, and doesn't have any kind of criminal record. He's your typical boring banker."

"What about the rest of the family?" Alex inquired, finally turning back to his subordinate. Max shrugged.

"Nothing there, either," the younger Shadow Lord answered. "Anne Farron is a real estate agent, showing off condos on the Upper West Side. Pretty small time, no real big deals made or broken in her career. She has no ties to anyone worth mentioning. Vincent has two brothers, and Anne one brother. None of them do anything even remotely interesting, and only one even lives in the city."

"Which one is that?" Alex asked, setting his drink down on his desk and glancing through some legal documents.

"James Farron," Max replied. "He lives in Astoria, and is the sales manager of a Home Depot out there."

"Really moving up in the world," Alexei commented with a bit of a smirk.

"So the family's a dead end, or so it seems," Max said. "So now what do we do?"

"I think that tomorrow, we'll take a little trip over to Tribeca and see what Xavier has to say about the whole matter," Alexei stated with an imperceptible smirk.

"And what about her?" Max inquired, nodding to the slightly open doors. Just visible on the other side, Brooke was sitting on the edge of one of the desks with a cup of coffee as Tanya made idle discussion.

"Jack will be in tomorrow morning," Alexei informed his younger companion. "He and Tanya will take Brooke over to Bay Ridge. Matt Narducci owes me a favor for getting him off of those drug possession charges. The time has come to collect. Maybe he can pick something up in her aura, or at least tell us if she's kinfolk."

"As long as he's not high," Max grumbled.

"The price of dealing with young Glass Walkers," Alexei commented. "Oh. Get your rifle. Just in case Xavier does decide to show up tonight."

"You think he will?" Max asked skeptically.

"Probably not," Alexei replied. "But if he does, put a bullet through his head."