A/N : I know, I know, how on earth did 30-some assassin Wolves find their way into Robin Goodfellow's apartment without getting seen/heard/smelled/sensed? It might've been more realistic, but where's the fun in that?

Anyway, this chapter is quite a bit longer than the last. Enjoy :)

. . .

"Wolves! She sent Wolves to assassinate me! Drooling, half-witted, one-balled Wolves!" That was Goodfellow – yeah I know, surprise, surprise –who had the gall to be offended over the shrieking roar of steel and battle. I personally did not think thirty Wolves with ultra resistance to anything in the category of gut-ripping-wounds was very offending. In fact, I didn't know where the hell Promise had managed to dig up so much brawn in so little time. She had her own personal bodyguards, sure, but not this many – and I didn't recognize a single one.

"Shut up, Loman," I growled, slicing one Wolf across the ear with my knife as I shoved the barrel of my gun under the chin of another and fired. About half had morphed into true wolf form – at least as far as I could tell – the others were trapped about halfway between fur and skin, cursing and growling with strained, half-human vocal chords.

Alright. Way too many bad guys here. And not one of them had managed to die on us yet. "Robin!" I yelled, backed into his living room by about 2,000 pounds of pure muscle. "Do something!"

"In case you haven't noticed –" he retorted acidly, sword whipping about like a flag as it fended off weapons twice its size. The puck could fight, there was no arguing. I just didn't know if he could win.

Damn, this was going to be tough, just the two of us. We needed Niko and Promise's help here –those two could fight like –

Shit.

That thought came too fast for me to stop it, targeted straight for my gut. And I actually stopped fighting for half a second – a whole damn half a second and Niko would ride my ass till doomsday if he'd been around to witness it. Because half a second may as well have been minutes. Suddenly I was on my back on the floor, knife gone, and gun lost to the snapping, slobbering jaws of a 300-pound mutt with fingers. And about the same second I reached into my waistband for another knife, he spat the gun out and went for my left hand. I screamed as pain spiraled up my arm into my shoulder, and I just knew he must've taken fingers with him. I plummeted my knife into the back of his neck, releasing a hot flow of blood, and dragged my ruined scarlet appendage from slack, twitching jaws. Then I fought. No time to nurse my wounds. Cursing with the pain, I managed to get another knife into my left hand and fought with that one too.

After a few minutes I risked a glance over at Robin, just in time to see him make a classic beheading with a sweep of his iron blade. There were bodies lying around him too – a good sign. I'd only killed one or two, but I'd put quite a few down for the count, even if they weren't dead. Now I was engaged in a one-on-one with a female wolf, a bizarre-looking woman with tufts of hair sprouting around round brown eyes and crooked, pointed incisors. I stuck a knife into her belly and then slammed her back against the wall. "How do you know the vampire?" I growled.

She answered in the way of razor-sharp nails clawing at my eyes, and I batted her off, turning once to ward off another Wolf. "Where did she find you?"I whirled back on her and yelled in her face, pressing my blade against her cheek.

"The Elysium," she chortled raggedly. "The Nottinger woman … the Elysium …"

I stared at her. "What the hell is the Elys–" I was interrupted by a lamp that came soaring through the air to crash against my skull. The she-wolf bolted as I collapsed onto the floor in a rain of broken glass. I opened my eyes just in time to see a flash of copper teeth and bloody gums – and then Goodfellow's sword blade plummeting through the back of the throat.

The Wolf fell over me with a mighty whuff of flesh-scented breath and bled all over my clothes. I shoved him off of me and glanced around. There were bodies, but not enough. "Where are the others?" I asked.

"Ran for it," said Robin, shoving his sword irritably into one prostrate, groaning Wolf's back. Then he whipped out his blade, whirled on me, and thumped it sharply against my chest. "Caliban Leandros, you are paying for every single item in these two rooms that so much as smells of Wolf blood."

"Me? What the hell did I do?"

"Too much, Caliban. Far too much. Let's take it from the top – the incident with the robe. No, actually, let's take it from the very top – the incident with the fork," he seethed, flashing me a look of molten contempt.

I brushed past him. "Well, crap, Loman, I was an amnesia victim – what can I say?"

"I had to dispose of 37 mummified cats!"

"Save it. We have to get to Promise's," I said.

He stopped whining and eyed my soggy red appearance.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Skata, Cal."

"Well I know you're not going to lend me any of your clothes," I said, hastily throwing in, "not that I'd wear them."

He raised his eyebrow but fortunately failed to comment. "At least bandage your hand. And put your jacket on – it'll hide some of the blood."

I used his bathroom to swiftly treat and bandage my hand, or most of it – as I needed mobility in order to fight – and shrugged into my jacket. Then I restocked up on weapons – sticking guns and knives just about wherever I could fit them as Goodfellow changed in the other room and loudly grieved the untimely passing of his favorite lamp.

"And I expect you'll want me to pay the taxi driver as well?" he asked caustically, strutting back into the room in a new set of dazzling clothes and his sword hanging at his waist.

I walked up to him, laid a hand on his arm and said with dark mischief, "Robin, you know I'd rather die than make you do something like that."

His eyes narrowed suspiciously at my hand on his arm. I waited patiently until realization hit him, and gave him only about half a second to sputter indignantly before it was too late. I gated, ripping a hole through Robin's living room and into Promise's.

I could smell her perfume before I could feel her floor underneath my feet. And it was dark. Great. I'd sort of been privately hoping Nik and Promise had enjoyed a late, long dinner.

Goodfellow was not too far from heaving himself now, and I'll bet he would have – intentionally, all over my shoes, just to spite me – but that would be running the risk of ruining his own clothes, a concept which was epically beyond him. However, it was not beyond him to be so furious as to try and decapitate me with his sword. "Hey,"I hissed, ducking. "Shut up."

Unfortunately, Robin wasn't in a very obliging mood. His sword came at me again, and this time I had to block it with my knife, causing a reverberating clash of steel to rip through the silence. We froze, glaring at each other, as a door opened somewhere down the hall.

I pulled a Glock from my belt and, knife clamped in my other hand, silently moved to the edge of the room and looked down the hall. My head was throbbing with the aftermath of the gate, and I could feel hot trickles of blood leaving my ears and nose, but at the moment I was just focused on Promise.

We both saw each other at the same time, only my gun was already out and waiting. Promise had nothing. She had only the cool ripple of silk and strings of pearls that were the same smooth ivory of her skin. She was beautiful, and for a moment I could feel Niko's love for her as if it were my own. And damn, how he loved her. I couldn't kill her. I just couldn't.

But that didn't mean I wasn't pissed as hell. "Promise," I acknowledged her, mouth curling into some distorted smile.

"Cal," she said softly, that mildly perturbed look in her eyes. "I didn't expect you."

I stepped closer, set the cold gun barrel against her white forehead, and whispered, "Did you really think you were going to get away from me?"

And then I saw the fear – a fast flicker of it in her eyes, as she clenched her hands into fists. "It's too late, Caliban."

"No, it isn't. There are ways," I said, tilting my head in Robin's direction.

Promise caught sight of him and her voice became cold and clipped, "Goodfellow, you ignorant fool. You can do nothing."

She gave me such a damn fright I almost did kill her, but then I heard a voice from down the hall, calling, "Promise?"

"Robin, take over here," I said, and only removed the gun when the cold steel of Robin's sword was resting across Promise's throat. Then I was gone, down the dark hall and turning the corner into Promise's lavish bedroom. It wasn't smart, there were better tactics, yada yada, he was my damn brother and I had to see him.

He was standing in front of the bed, shirtless, eyes widening when I came into view. For one pathetic moment I thought he recognized me, and in a sense I was right … but in his mind, I was just a mindless lunatic who had accosted him earlier that night.

"You," he whispered, icy and contemptuous. "Where is Promise?"

He was freezing my blood. I'd mentally geared myself up for this. I'd been completely and totally ready – and yet I wasn't. I should've been barking orders with my gun up and aimed, but all I could do was stand there and wait like an idiot for him to just wake up. And I wasn't crazy as hell about pointing a gun at him either. "Nik," I said, crumbling under his gaze, feeling grief and fury but mostly just disbelief. "Really?"

He had his katana in hand in a less than a second and was face to face with me. "Where. Is. Promise."

"She's still here," I said, flinching as he looked at me, because hell, he was supposed to be remembering now! It wasn't supposed to matter who had hypnotized him … when Niko looked at me he was supposed to damn it know.

No such luck.

He grabbed me by the coat and slammed me against the wall, which wreaked hellish havoc on my head. For a moment the room went black, and the next thing I knew his sword was pressed against my throat. "What are you doing in her home? What do you want with her?"

Well, this certainly was not supposed to be happening. Why the hell did I let him so close with the damn sword?

And then Robin yelled "CAL?" from the next room, which distracted Niko long enough for me to get my knife in between me and his katana, but not long enough for me to avoid getting slashed messily across the arm. I ground my teeth against the pain and fought him.

Meanwhile I was trying desperately to get my thoughts together. I'd thought Niko had forgotten everything – how then did he still know how to fight?

Speaking of, things were not going too well. I'd lost my gun, all my reflexes were a mess, and my left arm was practically in tatters. For a minute I thought he was just going to kill me and that would be that … but then Promise's voice called out from the next room, "Niko!"

And he was gone. Disappeared down the hall into the next room like I didn't even exist. And I don't much like being ignored. I reached the living room just in time to see Niko and Robin have at it, and Promise make a run for it past me, calling for her bodyguards who were mostly likely posted somewhere outside her apartment.

I chased her down the hall, lunged for her and tackled her to the ground. Not very gentlemanly of me, but I'd grieve over that later. She tried to fight me, baring her fangs in the darkness and looking every bit the evil vampire she'd always denied being, but I was the one with the weapon. In a minute I had her pressed against the floor, my knife rested against her throat. "Why?" I demanded. I actually sounded more regretful than pissed, because – hell, I'd liked Promise. "All this time. Why?"

I expected a cool, composed reply, but tonight was just turning out to be full of surprises. She was furious and hysterical and crying out in a ripped voice, "I was lonely! I am tired of living alone!" This was a Promise I didn't know, and I'm not sorry to say I didn't feel a twinge of pity for her.

"I would destroy you now, Promise," I said.

"Like I've destroyed you?" she croaked, violet eyes daring me to slice her throat.

I ignored her, and continued, "But I'm going to let Niko do it." Then I rose to my feet and ran back toward the other room. I'd been hoping we could get out of here without my having to make a second gate, but to hell with that plan – we had to leave. And I had to think of a location very, very quickly.

I heard the door to Promise's apartment bang open and the pounding of footsteps flow down the hall. Promise's Wolves. I was out of here.

But Goodfellow and Niko were still fighting, and I'd be damned if I moved within range of those swords. So I yanked a second gun from my belt and screamed, "Drop your sword or I'll shoot her!"

Nik's head swung around. He didn't drop his sword, but Robin swiftly disarmed him, so it was a win-win situation. Taking advantage of the second-long standstill, I lunged for them, grabbed Robin's arm and Niko's shoulder and made a gate around us, and we were gone.