The young ginger-haired girl, their IT person, screamed when Mr. Finney shot the shifter in the back of the leg with the silver bullet. With a quiet grunt, he dropped to one knee, leaving the little block of clay-looking C4 right where he’d stuck it to the wall.

“Frank!” the older woman shouted, rushing to his side. “Are you okay?”

He tried to shove her off, to whip around with the carbine rifle hanging at his side.

Finney, though, was too fast for him. He already had the barrel of his pistol shifted. “No, no,” he said, flashing him a cruel, cold grin. “Let’s not go that route, shall we? Unless, of course, you want to find out if silver works on normal humans, too? Because I assure you it most certainly does.”

The shifter, all dressed up in his nighttime insurgent gear, with his camouflage makeup and his packs full of ammo and explosives, eyed the barrel of Finney’s pistol, and where it was pointed: his young female comrade.

Finney had come upon them at the back of the compound when he was on his way to the carriage house. It was quite the surprise, to be honest, but not quite as surprising as the little something he gave the shifter.

“Now drop the rifle.”

Grudgingly, the big shifter stripped the rifle strap from his shoulder and tossed the whole thing on the ground in front of him.

“Excellent. Your pistol, too, of course. Can’t have you going and getting any bright ideas.”

“Fuck you, man,” the shifter replied, his Texas twang so thick and heavy it would take a Bowie knife to cut through it. But, despite his words, he still reached down and pulled his pistol from his hip holster, tossing it on the grass in front of him. “Fuck all y’all.”

“Tough, tough talk coming from a shifter with a few grams of silver stuck in his leg. So they sent you in alone, did they, to rescue your little friends? That leaves, what, four others? Two at the wall, two inside the building to get your women? Do I have the count right?”

“Look, man, you want me? You got me right here. Got a bullet in my leg, so you know I ain’t going nowhere. How ‘bout you just let these two women go?”

“These two?” Finney asked, smiling a little. “Why would I do that?”

“Ain’t got nothing to do with this, man. Whatever you want from us, I know Gen and Lacy can’t give it to you. Only reason you took ‘em is because you think it gives you some kind of bargaining chip. Well, here you go, man. Here I am. You ain’t necessarily in need of one now.”

Poor man. So short-sighted. Mr. Finney turned his dire attentions to the two human women, the grandmother and granddaughter. “Now,” he said, “as much as I wish it weren’t the case, you two are clearly of some importance to my superior. And I want to know just what exactly that is.”

Both women exchanged looks, a befuddled expression on the older of the two.

Older. It was always a phrase Mr. Finney had hated throughout the years, if only because it carried with it the connotation of aging and death —of a term limit set on human existence. Not that he had to worry about that, of course. But, still, the whole implication had always rubbed him the wrong way.

He received no response from either of the women.

But, no, there was something there, something that the older woman was hiding. She did know something, and Finney could see it. The question, though, was what?

“That won’t do,” Finney said, abruptly turning the sleek automatic in his hand on the shifter soldier who’d been helping them escape. “When I ask a question–” he aimed the gun at his good leg and pulled the trigger, “–I expect an answer!”

Both women screamed as the man cursed in pain and fell backwards against the wall, his hands going to the new wound in his leg. The younger one went to him immediately and began to strip off her hoodie to apply it to the gunshot. “You fucking psycho! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The shifter’s face contorted in pain, beads of sweat rolling down his painted face.

Finney turned his attention to the grandmother.

She frowned deeply, the wrinkles in her face looking to him like deep etchings scraped into ancient stone.

“No?” he asked. “Is that not enough?” He raised the barrel and pointed it at the girl’s back as she began to apply pressure to the shifter’s wounded legs.

The older woman followed the trajectory on the barrel. “You wouldn’t dare,” she whispered.

“Whatever would make you say that?” he asked, smiling broadly. When he spoke again, his voice had a note of confidence that wasn’t there before. “Clearly, I’m a sadistic, twisted, soulless creature who quite frankly doesn’t care about human dignity or lives. In fact, the only thing I care about right now is what you know about my superior. If you’re unwilling or unable to tell me that, I care less about your lives than I do a mayfly’s.”

Silence. Continued stony silence, as obstructionist as a pile of masonry piled into a wall.

“Fine,” Mr. Finney said, raising the gun a little. “Your lives are forfeit. Might as well start with your granddaughter, of course.” He went to pull the trigger.

“Wait!” the woman shouted, stepping forward a little with her hands extended. “Okay, all right. You win, all right? I’ll tell you what I know about your boss. Okay?”

He lowered the gun. “Good. Now start. We don’t have much time.”

And so Gen began to tell him the tale of Jasper Davis, of the immortal man she’d once been madly in love with.