Karim sat at the woman's table, nervously eyeing the bottle of wine he had been told not to touch again. His nerves were slowly calming down, all the while the woman who called herself Nayla continued to look over him with a stern eye, as though she were waiting for something of dire importance. Her gaze had a strange quality, almost as if he could tell this woman could her courage even if Satan himself tried to face her down.

"Well," Karim said uncertainly, "why do you want to know so much about this wolf creature that can't exist?"

"I have my reasons," Nayla said, "But I fail to see why I should divulge them to someone who continues to lie to me. You can not deceive me in this regard. And it's remarkably foolish to question that something much larger than you fell through my roof to make the hole in the ceiling I found you under."

"I, well, it's rather complicated," Karim stammered in his ever increasingly unsteady tone.

"Really now? Then please, continue. Or should I just come out and say that you're a werewolf? Would that make this conversation progress any faster?" Nayla asked confidently.

"Wha, what?" Karim said with a gaping jaw. He couldn't believe it, no matter how many warning signs he had noticed. That anyone would know he was a monster, when he had told no one of his condition, was a shock to him.

"You have nothing to fear from me just yet. Right now, all I want is to know precisely what happened last night. Once I know that much, you're free to finish the bottle of wine if you wish."

"I was chased out of a coffee house by a European woman... a corpse, that's all I could see of it," Karim said with a defeated tone and a shudder, "When I was cornered in an alley, the corpse woman, she became a demon. I, well, I lost control of my, ah, wolfen side out of fear. I changed into a werewolf as I was being lifted into the air by the demon. After the flying fiend dropped me, I passed out. But, but why do you want to know that?"

"As I said, I have my reasons," Nayla said, her expression softening from stern to contemplative. Inwardly, she began wondering what her comrades within the House of the Blessed Hunters, known as the Knights of the Holy Order in Europe, would have to say about this creature sitting before her. She suspected that it was her duty to grant the monster a merciful death. But despite her demeanor, she couldn't find it in herself to place a silver bullet, fired from the gun she had been carrying since she took the beggar into her home, in this pitiful creature's body. She opted to give the creature time for a last drink and confession before granting the monster the release of death.

Karim, oblivious to the hunter's nature and intentions, grabbed the bottle and began to drink from it. A heavy sigh escaped his lips after every drink, the weight of his own self pity only growing heavier with the alcohol rushing into his system. Nayla leaned back into her chair, figuring that the vagrant would be draining the entire bottle, and that she could wait. Karim was so caught up in his drinking that he overlooked his host entirely.

A chance glance out of the kitchen's window caught Karim's attention. In an alcohol induced haze, it took him a moment to figure out why the sight of the darkening streets was cause for alarm. Succumbing to panic, he left the bottle on the table, and scrambled to leave the house he had fallen into before dusk fell. This surprised Nayla, and she dashed out after him.

"I must leave, now!" Karim shouted as he frantically searched for the door. Had he bothered to turn around, he may have noticed that Nayla was quietly drawing a revolver. Fortunately for the vagrant he managed to find the door before the hunter's silver rounds pierced his flesh. Nayla cursed as she ran to the door, hoping to catch the beast before it disappeared, but by then, Karim had disappeared into the crowd.

Karim ran into the first alleyway he came across, weaving through the crowds as casually as possible. He had to get as far away from the city as he possibly could, lest he risk death, his or another bystander's. Had he not succumbed to the wolf's spirit last night, he might have remained in the city, but after being attacked by a demon and losing control, he was in no state to take foolish chances as he had been. As the urban maze grew ever less cramped, Karim raised his eyes to see the outline of the Giza pyramids, and opting to use the seemingly timeless monuments as a landmark for returning to the city from the desert. Assuming he chose to return to human civilization.

Nayla turned back into her house and wandered over to a basket full of perpetually dirty clothes, lifting it up. She shouted once to her children to behave themselves while she was out, before covering herself with a veil and leaving her home. Hauling the basket of laundry, she made a hurried journey down the streets. To the casual observer, she was just another woman running an errand. The fact that she was armed to the teeth with weapons strapped beneath her coverings and stored in the basket of dirty clothes was impossible to see by other pedestrians. Her path took her to the back door of a mosque not far from her home, the cover for Cario's House of the Blessed Hunter. She approached the iman's quarters, and rapped on his door.

"The hunt is on," was all she had to say to get the door opened.