If she'd had any idea what Greyback intended to do when she'd stepped into his office earlier, Evey wouldn't have asked about Walden at all. The same mantra was going through her mind, on repeat since she'd had an answer to her question:

Walden is alive. Walden is alive. Walden is alive. He has to be.

She was lying on the floor, panting hard. How long had they been at this? The pain from the wounds vanished after a few moments, whether Evey blacked out or not, but she was feeling cramped all over and exhausted from the ruthless torment her body was being put through. As she placed her hand on the carpet to push herself back to her feet, it exuded blood. The carpet was ruined, that was for sure. Her clothes, too.

She hadn't talked. Not yet, anyway. At times, she'd felt like giving up, but something had always held her back. She wasn't even certain why it mattered so much to keep Antonin's name a secret – Greyback would likely find out, sooner or later. Was it really worth all that pain?

But it was. Because Tony would have done the same for her, had the situation been reversed. Evey was acting out of sheer moral principle, like a lawful good character in any story – the very type of character she had always found ridiculous.

As Evey gingerly sat in the chair, waiting for the next wave of fresh agony, she realised that Greyback was gazing at her with what looked like wonder in his eyes. Thankfully, he hadn't done anything but tear her flesh apart, so far. That wasn't something Evey would normally be thankful for, but considering the alternative… She shuddered at the thought.

"Gottverdammt," Greyback muttered. He didn't look so good himself. He'd removed his shirt a while ago and thrown the shreds into the garbage can. His massive chest was bloody and, although the gashes he'd opened recently had disappeared, he was riddled with older scars. It seemed that his past had been as violent as his present was.

"Are you quite done?" Evey asked flatly, hoping that he wouldn't catch the faint tremor in her voice. "I'm hungry." She was more tired than hungry, but she was just speaking in useless defiance at this point. Anything to delay the next-

Greyback surprised her by bursting with sudden laughter. "You're unbelievable," he said, shaking his head. "Alright, let's call it a day," he added with a shrug. "But you do realise that I'll learn her name sooner or later, don't you? You can't protect her forever. You're suffering in vain, little girl."

Not entirely in vain, you twat, if you still believe that I'm withholding a woman's name. "And you can't keep butchering yourself like that, you fucking demented Nazi," she countered wearily. His face hardened, all trace of mirth vanished in an instant. Odd. Evey had been calling him names from the moment she'd set foot here, but never before had he reacted to it.

"Do you call Nazi everyone with a German accent, or am I receiving special treatment?" he asked in a low growl.

Evey was blushing in shame before she could stop herself. She had only used that term as an insult once in her life, when she was too young to comprehend it. She hadn't understood what it meant, then, but her parents had explained, after chiding her. They had always explained why something was forbidden, unhealthy, or otherwise advised against. She wasn't sure why she'd used it now. Perhaps it was the accent, she thought bashfully. But, to be fair, the man had just spent the better part of the morning torturing her. And he was demented, at least. "No, not everyone," she replied crisply, "only those with a murderous streak."

Slowly, Greyback raised his left arm and pointed to the tattoo that was inked on the inside of his upper forearm. He had several other tattoos, large and with no meaning that Evey could think of – the tasteless sort of tattoo that she despised. The one he was showing her now was different, however. It was very poorly executed, quite faded, and represented a number.

A six-digit number. That's impossible, Evey thought incredulously. He's too young.

He must have sensed that she recognised it for what it was. "You should never use that word lightly, little girl."

"But it doesn't make any sense!" she exclaimed. "You're…what…forty-five? Fifty? You can't have been in Auschwitz during the War. Even if you were, you were just a kid. I doubt that they bothered to tattoo the children," she said.

"No, indeed not. Most of the children were sent to the gas chambers. Unless they were twins," Greyback said with a sour twist of his mouth.

Twins? Oh, of course. Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, had operated at Auschwitz in the last years of the War. He was a…doctor, a researcher. He was said to have a particular interest in genetics applied to twins, among others, and Auschwitz provided him with plenty of human test subjects. "You…had a twin?" Evey asked uncertainly. Merlin, why was she pursuing the conversation? She didn't want to hear this.

"I had twin daughters," he replied softly.

Bloody hell. What had she gotten herself into? But… "How could you have had kids?" she said with a frown. "It doesn't add up."

"I was thirty-two when they brought us to the camp. I'm eighty-five now." That delivered as if he were commenting on the weather.

"What tosh," Evey scoffed. "Werewolves are not slow-ageing, and they're certainly not immortal."

"Neither are vampires," Greyback said crookedly.

And then the Knut finally dropped. How had she missed it? Of course he was not an ordinary werewolf. He hadn't even tried to hide it from her. Damn, it should have been obvious from the beginning. Burn me, he's some sort of Ancient.

"Well, I don't use that term," Greyback said, interrupting her train of thoughts. "For obvious reasons."

Evey hadn't realised that she'd spoken out loud. She tried to gather her wits. There were so many questions… But would he answer them? "What do you call yourself, then? An Elder, like in the children's books? That's what you are, isn't it? The werewolf equivalent of an Ancient."

He shook his head. "I don't use that word, either. None of us do. We rarely refer to ourselves as a collective, as a matter of fact. Although some of us decided that we should have nicknames, like the bloodsuckers." He didn't seem too happy about that.

"Greyback." She'd always assumed that 'Fenrir Greyback' had to be a made-up name, and she'd been right, clearly.

"Can you think of anything more ridiculous?" he demanded scornfully. "Honestly. I don't know what they were thinking."

"That's why you call yourself Fenrir."

"Much more fitting, wouldn't you say?"

Evey made a mental note to never call him Fenrir. "What's your real name, then?" In spite of everything, she was growing more curious by the minute.

Greyback waved the question aside. "That is irrelevant."

"I suppose it is," she conceded. "I take it that you didn't become a werewolf in Auschwitz. I know that they studied and experimented on werewolves there, at some point, but if you kept the appearance you had when you were turned…"

"I was turned later, yes. In the fifties. When the camp was liberated, my physique was not quite what it is now, as you can imagine. You seem to know an awful lot about concentration camps," he went on shrewdly. "Morbid fascination?"

"Duty of remembrance," Evey retorted. Greyback chuckled wryly. "Did you kill him?" she went on, undeterred.

He scowled. "You'll have to be more specific, Süße. I've killed many men."

"Mengele. He was responsible for the death of your daughters, right? You tracked him down, and you killed him."

Greyback was silent for a moment. "Yes," he admitted eventually. "How did you know?"

"Well, if I'd been turned into a werewolf with exceptional abilities, and I knew exactly who was responsible for my kids' death…that's what I would have done." She shrugged. "You had to know that he was somewhere in South America. It must have been easy enough for you to find him."

He shot her a very wolfish grin. "See, we're not so different, you and I," he said tauntingly. "I kept old Josef alive for forty-two days. Not sure what got him in the end," he went on dispassionately. "Septic shock caused by one of the untreated wounds, I suspect."

Evey held back a sneer. Didn't he realise that she was going to do the same thing to him, as soon as she found a way around the curse? "How many…Elders are there?" she asked, changing the subject once again. He hadn't provided a name for them, so she settled for the only one she had.

"Fourteen, including me."

She frowned slightly; she hadn't expected him to answer so readily. If it was true, there were as many Elders as there were Ancients. A mere coincidence? "And…who are they? Are they…historical figures, like the vampires?"

Greyback thought it over for a minute. "Yes, I suppose they are. But whereas the leeches became famous – or infamous – in their lifetime, many Wolves achieved recognition after being transformed. That is probably due to the fact that the Ancients have to die in order to become what they are, and we don't." It seemed that he'd capitalised the word Wolves when he'd spoken. Was that the term they used? It was a bit…lame.

"Who bit you?" Evey asked tentatively.

"Rasputin. They call him Goldeneyes." Well, they certainly didn't have the same rules of secrecy as the Ancients did. Or perhaps Greyback simply didn't care.

Then her mind did a double take. "Grigori Rasputin? The Russian mystic? He's a werewolf?"

"Ja. And, if you think I'm demented, you clearly haven't met him," he added with a bitter smile.

"Who else is there?" she continued. Unlike vampires, there weren't any 'famous' werewolves. They didn't have an equivalent to Dracula.

Greyback counted off his fingers. "Attila, Erik the Red, Blackbeard, Musashi, Cortés, Hunac Ceel, Ivan the Terrible, Bill the Conqueror…" He trailed off with a frown. "Bah, I don't know. I always forget a few. Doesn't matter. You get the idea."

Evey stored the names away carefully for later reflection. "Do you have…special abilities? Beyond the fact that you're immortal and can turn into a werewolf at any time, I mean."

Greyback laughed. "I can do everything a transformed werewolf can do, and more besides. But Wolves don't have any of these fancy abilities the Ancients have, if that's what you were asking. We can't control minds or turn invisible or whatever it is they do." That didn't seem to bother him. He clearly wouldn't trade being a werewolf for any 'fancy ability'.

"Did you kill Hitler?"

He raised an eyebrow at the unexpected question. "The coward committed suicide. Everyone knows that."

"Well, the history books don't mention you executing Mengele."

He chuckled softly. "True. But Hitler was dead before I was transformed," he pointed out.

"Right." What a bizarre conversation, Evey reflected. How much more would he let on about the Elders – or Wolves, as he called them? "You've bitten plenty of people. Does that mean you can turn as many people as you want?" Antonin, she knew, would only be allowed to transform one person into an Ancient, someone who had the 'spark'. He or she would be the next to receive the invisibility power. Then again, Greyback had already told her that there were only fourteen Wolves.

"I can make as many mortal werewolves as I want, but there'll be only one like me. We pass on the gift from one Wolf to the next." He cocked his head sideways, his now-grey eyes gazing at her intensely. They changed colour at night, she'd noticed, turning a warm honey gold. "What is it you think to do with all that information, girl? You smell so smug, as if you'd pried it all from my mind yourself, but what good will it do you?"

None, Evey suspected. But, admittedly, she was asking more out of curiosity than any real hope to make a difference when – if – she returned to the Order. She chose to ignore the remark, however. "It changes everything, of course," she said instead. "The fact that you are a Wolf must have something to do with the fact that I am…whatever I am. Had you ever tried to turn a woman before? Maybe it's a perfectly normal consequence, but you wouldn't know because you only bite men, since – theoretically – only they can become werewolves."

"Do you really believe I've never bitten a woman before? That none of us have?" He let out a derisive snigger. "It always ends up with the same expected result. Death. You're the odd one out, girl, not me, or even that Gottverdammt parasite of an Ancient that also bit you, apparently." Oh. Was that why he wanted to know who the Ancient was? "You were something special even before she or I bit you. As to what that is, exactly…it remains a mystery, for now," he said reluctantly.

"I wonder what your family would think of you, if they could see you today," Evey speculated idly.

Greyback looked confused by the abrupt change of topic. "What do you mean? I avenged them. They would have no reason to disapprove of me."

"You've murdered about as many innocent people as Mengele ever did. And you're immortal, so it won't stop there. The way I see it, you're just as bad as the Nazis ever were." That would most likely earn her a fresh round of lacerations, but she was past caring. If he'd hoped to appeal to her sympathy by victimising himself, he was a fool. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, wasn't that the saying? Of course, Evey was perfectly aware that she intended to act just as he had, in the name of what she liked to call justice. But it was different. She wouldn't merely be acting out of personal revenge. She would be doing humankind a favour by ridding the world of Greyback's malevolent presence. She would sacrifice a part of her soul, and possibly her own life – if she couldn't find a way around the bloody curse – to save lives. Yes, that made all the difference.