Sydney Pleasant walked briskly along the soft, leaf-covered shoulder that edged Stoneybrook Lane. He wore blue sweatpants with a grey stripe down the side of each leg, a grey muscle shirt and a zipper-front sweatjacket to match the pants. His shoes were heavy-treaded walking sneakers. He had sweatbands at each wrist and around his forehead. Slung around his waist was a grey fanny pack, stuffed with several heavy items. Though it fit him well, Sydney had contempt for the outfit and all that it represented. 'The sportwear of the modern posh class,' he called it, though he was sure that the posh class themselves would be unaware of how much a uniform such exercise clothing was and how obvious they were while wearing it. He was pretty sure that the most characteristic of them wouldn't even realize that they were the modern posh class.

Wankers.

Sydney had spent what he considered a ridiculous amount on the ensemble he now wore. That is, if its only purpose was to absorb his sweat as he power-walked through the oak-lined streets of this pleasantly well-to-do neighborhood, it would have been ridiculous. Since it served a much more important purpose, he had accepted the necessity of the expense, even while bridling at how easy it was for the modern posh to stroll into the marketplace, lay down a credit card, and pay the cost of the sport wear - plus credit card interest! - for their entire family. He could imagine one of them hesitating before the clerk rang up the purchase, and calling out to his family, "Wait - don't we need contrasting colors for alternate days? Quick, pick up duplicates of everything in red!" then turning to the next person in line and waving them forward. "Go ahead, we have a few more selections to make." Sydney was certain it happened every day. The entire prospect made him sick.

Every few minutes or so, as he walked along the curving residential street, a car would speed past Sydney. Every time one did, Sydney would nod and raise a hand with two fingers extended in a sort of a parody of a scout salute. This made him look friendly, and made it seem that he fit into the whole neighborhood scene, but more importantly, his raised hand and bowed head obscured his face. Let any of the passing drivers testify that they had seen a man power-walking while dressed in fashion sweats. He could imagine the police response to that.

"You mean, one of your neighbors?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see his face?"

"But he was dressed in fashion sweats?"

"Oh, yes. Fanny pack. Matching jacket."

"But were they good ones?"

"The best! Top of the line. I was considering a set like it for myself."

"So he was one of your neighbors, then. Fine. Sorry to bother you."

And with that, any official consideration of the mysterious neighborhood jogger would wash away. But when he considered the prospect rationally, he had to admit that none of these furious speedsters passing by would ever be questioned - or, if they were, would never recall seeing anyone. He could be dressed in a fully-feathered chicken suit or gleaming full plate armor, it wouldn't matter. All he would be to these frantic drivers would be another roadside point to get past, as quickly as possible. They drove their 'Pursuits of Excellence,' their 'Pinnacles of Engineering' and their 'Ultimate Driving Machines' with breathless desperation, putting kilometers beneath their floorboards as though each klick were a step on their stairway to Heaven. Sydney was convinced they were propelling themselves headlong toward Hell. Sydney thought that he might be able to arrest some of them following their meandering path and send them on a more direct course, removing the irritation of them from the lives of rest of the world while helping them reach their goal more efficiently.

At least, this was his fervent hope.

For today, at least, he felt confident in his faith, because he had a specific goal, a particular target, a chosen subject (or, more precisely, set of subjects) that would plummet to Hell quite nicely, once removed from their restrictive mortal coils. Family of three: Arrogant father, vain mother, clueless daughter. All full of themselves and certain of their divine right to rule the world in which they lived. More modern posh pissant bits of aristocratic trash.

Sydney stopped his walk and grabbed one foot to stretch his thigh. He listened to his heartbeat, timed his breathing. Too fast, too wild. He concentrated, invoking the discipline that had allowed him to survive for as long as he had in the place where he lived, a cheerless slum of London, as far from the lush beauty of this "Storybook" Lane as could be imagined. He forced himself to remain composed. In control. Efficient. He felt his will exert its power over his flesh, slowing his breathing, calming his heart. He grabbed his other foot, stretched his opposite thigh. No cars passed. No other joggers were in sight. No one had seen him. He was alone. Good.

There would be items to harvest from his targets' home once he had sucked the life from it. The tremendous wealth represented by the house itself would have to be abandoned, unfortunately. His actions within that edifice this night would be lIke eating an oyster and gaining its pearl, only to leave the gross shell behind. The sad fact in this case was that the "shell" might as well have been solid gold, and would be passed on to some other undeserving, pathetic shower of cunts... But that could not be helped. There would be some profit, and some fun, some rare excitement and a bit of revenge on the world for being the way it was. It was hard to imagine much better than that.

Sydney loitered a bit, watching and listening. On his own street at home, he couldn't have gone more than a few seconds without traffic passing by, even in the coldest hour of the middle of the night. Here, he could have lain in the road for a kip without worry. His was the only human life outside of the magnificent homes behind their thick fences and their tall oaks.

He stepped between two of the oak trees and was over the fence behind them in the space of two breaths. Easy.

Sydney crossed to the house and slipped around the left side, watching the windows for evidence of motion. None in the front rooms. On to the bedrooms. There! The young princess of the house, with her music collection. He crept close to the window. Magazine spread open on the bed, various recordings scattered about. Mother's voice, calling. The daughter's whining reply, its thin tone cutting through the double-paned insulating windows. Mother again. The girl stalking out of her room, then back in, slapping the light switch to return the room to its evening dimness, then stalking back out again - hesitating - then slamming her door before stomping down the hallway. Dinner hour for the posh. Perfect.

As he waited, making sure that the girl would not return to the room immediately, Sydney tapped his fanny pack to reassure himself of the presence of three crucial items: duct tape, gag, knife. He smiled and slid open the window.

Graham Penzey, master of the house, stretched and yawned, automatically running his hand over his belly as he did so. He was a little flabbier than he had been in his prime, but he could hardly be called fat. Dinners such as that night's didn't help, perhaps. Good marbling on his fine steak, plenty of butter, bottle of wine, generous dessert. Still, to Hell with the food police. A good meal every night was part of what he worked for. He looked across the room to where his wife sat on the couch, staring at telly. He tried to gauge her mood. They would probably not be making love that night, he thought. Elizabeth was wearing her 'not interested' face. When faced with that expression, anything he suggested would be met with a shrug, a sneer and a dismissal. Especially if he suggested they go upstairs together. Intimacy had been particularly lacking of late between the two of them - and not just sex, but any kind of togetherness, any kind of shared... anything.

Part of the problem was their daughter. TIff was becoming a right brat, and irritating as that was, neither he nor Elizabeth really wanted to do anything about it. The girl was still their best weapon against one another, and it was certain that any discipline offered by one parent would be condemned as child abuse by the other, then countered with attention and indulgence which would, in effect, 'spoil' the child. Tiffany seemed to be very much aware of this situation, and perfectly willing to use it to her advantage. The results were becoming hard to live with.

That very evening, Tiffany had come to dinner as though the family's nightly feast were a punishment. And once she had sloped off to her room after dessert, they hadn't heard a peep from her - at least not from her voice, nothing involving clear communication. For a while she had sounded as though she were throwing her furniture around, though. Graham had almost gone back to speak with the girl. It was one thing to throw around her ridiculous magazines, her musical recordings, her stuffed toys - what harm could a flung teddy bear do? But if she were planning to graduate to tossing about her desk and chair, well, that would have to stop this minute. But it did stop, of a sudden, just before Graham would had been forced to assert his parental authority. He would never admit to anyone how relieved he was by that reprieve.

One more glance at Elizabeth, another pang of frustration. He turned toward his office/library. "I'm going to do some work."

"Mmm."

"I may be at it a while," he added, not that his wife would care, but simply to irritate her, to interrupt whatever dialog the telly offered.

"Mmm."

Graham walked down the short hallway to his private refuge within his home, his workplace in which he could shut himself away if he felt like it. He entered the room and stopped one step beyond the doorway, simply appreciating this place which was his own. Heavy draperies over the wide window. Lamps made specifically to shed the mellow glow that was best for reading. Books, one of his most serious vices, crammed onto the shelves two and three deep until they were practically falling off the edges. Graham didn't really feel like working. He thought about what books he had recently acquired, and whether there was a volume anywhere among these stacks that he hadn't already read twice or more.

And then something very curious happened. Cold entered his back and pierced him to his core. A pure, elemental cold like nothing he had ever felt from wind or ice passed through his skin, brought a sensation of freezing to his belly, and pushed him forward. He twisted as he fell and landed on his side, facing the library doorway. For a confused instant, he thought he saw his own shadow fleeing from him.

Was this death? Was this the sensation the body sent to inform the life within that it was time to go? Had he seen his own shadow depart, or was that a metaphor his unconscious mind had provided to let him know he was dying? If this was death, would some part of him go on? Would he be welcomed into Heaven, though he had not believed in it since he was twelve? Might he go to Hell, which he had feared all his life, imagining the tortures that would be so easy for the powers of darkness, once they had him? Would he hover about the scene as a ghost? He knew there were no such things as ghosts, but as he lay there helplessly, the idea of his psychic essence floating around as a glowing phantom seemed to make so much sense that it was hard to dismiss out of hand.

Elizabeth's voice: "What are you doing in there?" Graham couldn't tell if the question was directed at him or at his daughter. The annoyance with which his wife most frequently spoke to either of them was the same. Graham tried to draw breath to reply. He could not. He forced some air into his lungs, very slowly. It hurt. He wanted to scream. He would have needed much more breath to do so. It would have hurt too badly. He held the precious air in his lungs and kept silent.

Elizabeth's voice sounded again. This time, she was not annoyed. She was furious - and frightened. Incoherent demands tumbled out of her mouth as she interrupted herself over and over. "What the Hell are... Who do you... Don't You Dare Do... Bastard! Graham! Graham! Fuck! You God-Damned..."

The sound of hand hitting face, hard. Elizabeth's voice stopped. Graham tried to rise. Pain stopped him. The cold was spreading within his belly. He had an idea of what was happening, now. He had been stabbed. Knocked to the floor as a blade entered him and cut him inside. He could feel the bleeding. The fleeing shadow had been the man who had stabbed him. And now Elizabeth was with the shadow-man. Not shouting any more. That was not good.

He looked up to see someone in the library doorway. No doubt the shadow-man. He was holding a knife in one hand, and Elizabeth's hands above her head with his other. There was something silvery around Elizabeth's wrists. Stupid-looking. Out of place. Tape? Elizabeth was on her knees with a trickle of red running down the side of her neck. "Blood?" Graham gasped.

"I nicked her ear to let her know I was serious. It's nothing, posh man. Less than a piercing for one of her dainty little earrings. But it could get serious. I could cut her throat with this." He brandished the knife, twisting it so it would catch the light. Had the room been more brightly lighted, the blade would likely have sparkled. It looked highly polished, and very sharp.

The shadow-man put his knife blade beneath Elizabeth's blouse and pulled upward, tearing through a shoulder seam, licking his lips and staring hard at the skin revealed beneath the cut he had made.

The knife went back down, and the shadow-man seemed to be thinking over whether to cut more cloth, or to cut Elizabeth herself. He jerked suddenly, dropped his knife and let go of the bindings around Elizabeth's wrists as, behind the heavy draperies, the library's window exploded.

The sweat-suited assailant took a step backward as the draperies reached into the room as though blown by hurricane winds. Out from the thrashing cloth flew a shape, as dark and powerful as if the very concept of weight had taken on flesh. The thing of darkness crashed into the shadow-man, driving him to the ground.

Graham gasped, then grimaced in pain. With his eyes clenched tightly in agony, he heard sounds - wet, slurping noises as of pigs feeding. Then Elizabeth screamed. Graham's eyes opened wide and he saw his wife scrabbling backward, pushing with her heels, sliding on her butt. The black shape was gone. The shadow-man lay on the floor, twitching, his throat gone, his head nearly severed from his shoulders.

Graham saw his wife look at him, saw her eyes go wide, heard her sobbing his name. Then she was biting at the tape around her wrists. She found an edge, made a tear, pulled, struggled, twisted her wrists against one another and shrieked in frustration. There was a sound from the living room, very faint. Three telephone tones, all the same. 999.

"There's another one in the house," Graham whispered, closing his eyes and preparing to sleep for a long, long time.

"I don't think so," his wife said angrily, accompanied by the sound of tearing tape. Another sound made no sense for a moment, then Graham realized that someone had pulled a drapery down from its runner. A moment later, he could feel a heavy pad being pressed into his back. The pressure caused him pain, but he wasn't about to protest. For one thing, it would hurt too much. For another, he thought he might be bleeding to death. Pressing on his wound might slow that process by a little bit, at least. And he thought he had heard someone calling for help. Help would be nice.

Graham drifted off into dreams.

The next morning two of London's more sensational tabloids carried the same story, though from very different perspectives. One's headline read "Super Dog Saves Family of Three." The other's read "Satanic Hound's Feast of Evil." The second story did explain that the 'Evil' in the feast was a home invader who had assaulted an entire family before having his throat torn out. And the first story did admit that the 'Super Dog' killed a man and ran away before anyone got a good look at it. But those editorial niceties hardly mattered. No one who read the accounts in those papers believed either story, anyway.

...with, perhaps, one exception.

At ten minutes of eight o'clock of the morning on which those tabloids were put out for sale, a tall, regal-looking man dressed in a severe but exquisitely tailored black suit approached the newsstand operated by Stuart "Slug" Thurdy. Slug prided himself on his knack for knowing what any given customer would likely purchase, even if he were completely unfamiliar with that individual. Slug had the dark-suited man pegged for a copy of the Financial Times, at least, and possibly one of the newspapers that boasted good international coverage. He offered a quiet 'Good Morning' as the man stopped in front of the stand, but there was no response.

'Fine,' Slug thought. 'Some people don't care for the mornings, much.' He cut open another bundle of the Times and let the man shop.

It took a little longer than Slug had expected. The man scanned every newspaper headline, lifting the corners of several editions to check the headlines under the fold. Finally, he nodded once and chose the two sensational offerings. He paid for his purchases, tucked the lurid papers under his arm and strode away toward the railway station. Slug watched him leave, wondering what had motivated the man's unexpected choices. A mere score of steps away, the man turned away from the street and disappeared into an alleyway.

'Hadn't thought he'd do that,' Slug mused. 'Doesn't look like the type to want to get his clothes dirty.'

There was a dull, booming sound from the alley. 'Too late for him to save on dry cleaning, then,' Slug laughed to himself. 'Sounds like he fell over a dustbin.'

Remus Lupin stood under the flow of hot water from the mineral-stained showerhead and stared unseeingly at the dull grey tiles of the shower stall. He ran the tips of his fingers down his right side, searching for the source of the nagging irritant in the skin above his lowest rib. He touched the sharp splinter, winced slightly, then very carefully drew out the shard of glass. He absently placed it on the high windowsill next to several others he had removed from the same general area, then turned to allow the shower spray to wash over the wound. As his skin reddened from the temperature, only a tiny drop of blood seeped from the cut. Remus continued to search for the rest of the glass shards he could feel in his side.

"Three more to go," he murmured, then almost immediately repeated himself, more insistently this time, as though to keep someone else from interrupting him. "Three more to go."

Remus shuddered as a name flashed across his mind for the hundredth time since he had stepped into the shower. Sydney Pleasant. Remus felt as though he could practically hear someone saying the name; could nearly see letters spelling it out. Sydney Pleasant. Remus felt sick to his stomach just thinking of the name, and even worse thinking of what had happened that night.

"Three more to go," Remus said again, in an effort to silence his own inner voice, to turn off the slide show playing before his mind's eye. It did him no good.

He told himself there was nothing more to worry about. Sydney Pleasant would hurt no one ever again. No one else would suffer from Sydney's sadistic urges. No more lives would be lost to Sydney's unpredictable rages or bloodthirsty lust. Sydney would never rape again, would never hurt and kill and steal and destroy and leave families weeping. Sydney would do none of those things because Remus had put his jaws around Sydney's throat and had used his supernatural strength to sever the vital conduits for blood and air that allowed Sydney's body to continue to function. Remus' lip curled at a vicious thought: Sydney had died as he had lived, creating fear and destroying things. The gushing of blood from his severed arteries had terrified two people while ruining their carpet.

Remus threw up, letting the shower wash away what little was produced. He had not eaten that night. He had certainly made it a point not to feast on the flesh of Sydney Pleasant. But the mere thought of his teeth sinking into Sydney's throat disgusted him. Not because of the act of biting. Not because he had used his Wolf form to kill a man. Not because of the fact that he had hunted Sydney, following his scent far from the London neighborhood they shared. It was Sydney himself - not just what the man did, but what he was - that produced such revulsion in Remus.

Sydney was, to all appearances, a normal human being. He was not cursed. He had not been bitten by a supernatural creature. He had not been forced to transform himself into a monster. He was not a slave to the implacable Lunar cycle. And yet, Sydney chose to give himself to the Beast... not just once every twenty-eight days, but every day of his life. He planned his crimes. He savored his excesses. He had made his bestial existence his identity, the mark of pride that set him apart from other men. Remus trembled as he thought of anyone choosing to surrender himself to the Beast, giving up a human life for an endless round of blinding rage and destructive gluttony.

Remus ran his hands over his sides, sluicing water away from the reddened skin. His hot water was already beginning to run colder, but he thought that he had gotten the worst of the glass slivers out, anyway. He turned the shower off, reaching out to twist the handles harder as the showerhead continued to drip. As the dripping slowed to the point at which experience indicated it would - probably... eventually - stop, he slapped aside the brittle, old plastic curtain, rattling the wire rings from which it hung. With water still running off of him, he stepped out onto the faded linoleum.

Remus looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Heavy condensation turned his image into an unfocused, glowing mass. "Appropriate," he mumbled, thinking, 'neither one thing nor the other. Not wizard, not angel. Not - at least - until I'm done with this; finished with what I have to do in London. Then I'll go back and help the Cub. I'll be a wizard in a way I never had the chance to be so long as I was cursed with the Wolf. I'll be a good pack elder to Harry. I'll build a life. It's not far out of my reach, now. Only three more to go.'

There were three sharp raps on his front door. A voice drifted in, "Mister Lupin? Mister Lupin, are you there?"

Remus sighed and pushed the thought of Sydney Pleasant out of his mind. The voice calling to him was that of his neighbor, Chelsea Landover. Fortyish and divorced, Chelsea was invariably pleasant, and had that golden quality in a neighbor: her flat was always quiet. There were only two drawbacks to having the next flat over from hers: Remus had unclogged a drain for her a few weeks previously, and now the woman thought of him as her personal hero of domestic repairs; and she had never twigged that Remus was not interested in becoming romantically involved with her. As a result, there was an awkward one-sided flirtation in which Chelsea seemed convinced that all she needed to do was to overcome Remus' inexplicable shyness. He wrapped his towel around his waist and went to answer the door.

"Ms. Landover." Remus called his greeting as he began to turn the doorknob, before his guest could see him at all.

Her reply sparkled with playful cheer. "Please, call me...oh. Oh." Her eyes first focused on his chest, then darted swiftly to his bare legs and bare arms before coming to rest on the towel.

"What can I do for you?" Remus asked smoothly, covering Chelsea's sudden speechlessness.

"Um. Well. It's my flat. The wall socket. It's gone dead."

Remus put a hand against the door frame and leaned casually, eliciting a soft intake of breath from his visitor. "Couldn't you call the Manager?" Remus' tone was gentle, but firm. He was clearly not interested in doing electrical repairs in his neighbor's flat.

"He seems to be on holiday. Again," Chelsea replied, pursing her lips in annoyance to let Remus know that, far from travelling on a vacation trip, the manager assigned to their block of rental flats was once again too drunk to come to his door or answer a ring.

"You do have room light...?"

"Oh. In the bedroom. The kitchen. The bath. There are the overheads. But in the living room there was only the lamp, and without that it's dark... and the telly won't go on."

Remus made what he hoped would be an acceptable counteroffer. He had no intention of delving into the wiring behind Ms. Landover's walls. "I'll bring over an extension cord so that we can plug your lamp and television into a socket that does have power. But first I'll take a look at the circuit boxes. You may have just tripped a breaker."

Chelsea's eyes had finally reached Remus' face after a long tour of inspection. She was about to offer her thanks, but started backward slightly as she saw his expression. "Are you all right?"

Remus smiled slowly, firmly resisting the urge to reply, 'No, I'm not. I just tore out the throat of a multiple murderer-rapist with my teeth. He's the third such beastly character to die that way in the past several weeks. And worst of all, there are three more just like him still at large that I intend to kill in order to keep a promise I made to myself. Once that task is complete, I will go back to my proper home among the magic-using population of Britain.'

Instead, he gave his neighbor a severely edited version of one aspect of the truth. "I broke a glass. I cut myself."

Chelsea's gaze darted quickly to each of Remus' hands, then briefly dipped to consider his feet before zigzagging across the great deal of exposed skin available to her view. Puzzled, she asked, "Cut yourself?" Her eyes were drawn back to Remus' towel. With a horrified expression, she asked, "Do you need... help?"

"Oh, no," Remus replied blandly. "I've done as much as I can do. It bled horribly, of course." As Chelsea's wide eyes met his he gave her a slow wink. "You know how some cuts are," he smiled. "I guess now all that's left is to wait to see if anything... falls off."

Chelsea stared open-mouthed, unable to formulate any response to that.

"So let me get dressed, and I'll be over soon. Good bye." Remus gently closed the door. 'Good,' he thought. 'I can tell her I emasculated myself in a dish-washing accident, and - just perhaps - she'll decide I'm not worth further pursuit.'

He tossed his towel back toward the bathroom and went to find some clothes, even as another name pressed itself into his awareness with the same insistence as the name Sydney Pleasant had haunted him for the past few days.

Kevin Talbot.

'Oh, yes. Kevin. Not quite the animal Sydney was, but a murderous bastard none the less. I do wonder what Kevin has gotten up to these days. It should be easy enough to find out. Kevin's trail is usually pretty hard to miss.'

Remus wished he could give himself some respite from his compulsive pursuit of those men he had selected for destruction when he had last lived here; when he had been under the curse of the Wolf, and unable to avoid committing mayhem every twenty-eight nights. Then, he had considered it his most serious responsibility to choose victims who deserved to be visited by the Beast. He had planned ahead, keeping a list of the 'deserving' that stretched at least six months into the future. Now, he had returned to his long-time home in order to complete the work he had planned for himself. He had come back because the very existence of people like Sydney Pleasant offended him deeply. Now that his slavery to the lunar cycle had been broken, he wished he could approach his quest coolly, rationally. But he knew that, whatever distraction he tried to employ, his mind would return inevitably to his fixation on the hunt. The only way he could free himself now was to complete the task he had taken on, remove from the world those men who were undeserving of the privilege of continued existence within it.

Three more to go.