The next morning, loud knocking on the door scared Cara half to death. Even Reuben looked startled, lunging awake.

“Wake up!” Eddy’s voice yelled. “Adrianna’s here!”

“Fuck!” Reuben screamed, jumping out of the bed.

He’d slept in his clothes in preparation of such an event. Cara had thought it was silly when he’d gone to sleep like that, but she promised herself she wouldn’t doubt him again as she hurried towards the front door trying to tug on the jeans Eddy had given her.

Adrianna was standing on the street in front of the house with a sour expression on her face. She looked like she’d been through hell since they’d seen her last. A large purple bruise had formed on her skin where Cara had shot her.

“Reuben,” she called. “Come out and give yourself up. Bring your little plaything, too. I’ve got two pairs of handcuffs right here. It’ll be nice and easy. I won’t hurt you or anything.”

“You don’t need to do this,” Reuben called.

She wiggled her fingers mockingly in a wave.

“Hey, Reubs. No, I don’t need to do it. I’m doing it for the money and because your little bitch shot me.”

Eddy yelled at her, “Get off my property immediately! I have rights.”

She was unimpressed.

“Call the cops. Or, better yet, sue me.”

Cara was starting to wish she’d remembered to grab her handgun, but it was too late. She couldn’t just say pause and run up to the room to get it.

“Ezekiel is a monster! You’re working for a psycho!” Cara screamed.

Reuben stepped in front of her protectively. “Cara, she doesn’t care. It’s all about the money.”

Adrianna reached behind her back and pulled out her whip, which crackled loudly as the strange blue energy formed around it. Her tattoo lit up with it.

“Hard way, huh? It’s always the hard way.”

Eddy fired a gun. Adrianna, unaffected, kept walking straight through the path of bullets leading to the house. The bullets pinged off a shield that pulsed into existence.

“Oh, disappointed?” she asked. “Sorry. I don’t make mistakes twice.”

Reuben stepped up.

“Don’t do this, Adrianna!”

“Enough with the pleading,” she said. With one crack of her whip, she sliced Eddy’s gun in two. Cara was sure she could have easily lopped Eddy’s hand off instead.

She was toying with them. She knew Reuben couldn’t shift in the daylight, and Eddy appeared to be just a man. Did he have enchanted blood? Maybe, but he didn’t appear to have any powers. So their defense was two humans that were small in stature and one werewolf that couldn’t shift against a powerful assassin that obviously knew what she was doing. Not good. Not good at all.

Reuben slammed the door shut, and they dashed towards the back of the house.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eddy snapped.

“Can’t fight her here,” Reuben told him as he pulled open the back doors. “She’s got way too much power and I can’t shift!”

“Seriously?” Adrianna shouted. “Are you seriously running? What happened to you, Reubs? You used to have a pair.”

She dashed after them, and Reuben finally realized they weren’t going to outrun her anytime soon. If he was by himself, he probably could have stayed out of her reach, but he wasn’t alone. He had Eddy and Cara with him.

Still in human form, he charged the assassin. She looked startled as he managed to tackle her to the ground. Her back slammed into the coffee table, which shattered into a million splinters under their weight. She kicked him off and swung the whip at him. He barely managed to scamper out of the way before it cleaved a white-hot hole in the concrete floor.

“That’s better,” she laughed. “Here I thought you’d gone soft!”

Eddy pulled open the desk drawer of a corner workstation and pulled out another gun. Cara supposed that old habits didn’t die easily – once a mercenary, always a mercenary. Whether he still practiced or not, it didn’t surprise Cara that Eddy still had at least a couple guns stashed around the house.

He fired a round of shots at Adrianna. She threw up a hand and immediately the bullets deflected away. The invisible shield was connected to her hand like a normal shield… except it was invisible. Cara wasn’t sure what she could do with that information, but she knew she had to try something. Reuben was trying to avoid her deadly whip that kept almost taking his head off. Judging by what it had done to the floor and furniture and everything else it touched, it’d slice him up like paper.

Cara’s heart was thumping in her chest. She couldn’t just let him get mauled in front of her! She decided – in what was one of the bravest and stupidest things she had ever done – to actually charge Adrianna. Before her brain could interfere, she started running towards her.

Adrianna didn’t even see her coming.

Cara planted her shoulder in Adrianna’s leg where she had shot her during the hotel confrontation. Adrianna let out a strangled yelp in what was the first sign of real human emotion that Cara had seen so far. Her leg buckled and she tumbled to the ground. She was back up with her whip a moment later, lashing out at Cara. She managed to scramble away, but the sparkling whip caught her hair. A lock fell to the ground, steaming hot.

“Bitch!” Adrianna yelled, trying to get to her feet. Her leg gave out for a second before she managed to secure her footing. Eddy was behind her in a moment, jerking the whip out of her hand. She twirled like an MMA fighter and slammed her heel into his jaw. He tumbled over the couch.

Before anyone could move, Adrianna had a combat knife in her hands. She held it like a trained professional.

Reuben, Cara, and Eddy all stepped back. Reuben was holding Adrianna’s whip. It was still sparking, but less than when she was holding it.

“Adrianna,” Reuben urged, “You can’t win! We have your whip. You’re unarmed and outnumbered. Give up now.”

Cara had to give it to Adrianna—she didn’t give up easy. She was still standing there with a determined expression, knife in hand.

“Reuben, we used to have so much fun together. What happened?” Adrianna looked at Cara with mock sympathy and laughed. “Oh, did your little girlfriend not know that?”

“Seriously, Reuben? Have you fucked every woman you’ve ever come into contact with? First Ezekiel’s sister and now her?” Cara asked.

Reuben looked at Cara, “What? No. I mean, yes… but, no. I don’t sleep with every woman.”

“Oh, look! I’ve created a lover’s quarrel!” Adrianna teased.

Reuben reared back the whip and struck it at her. She threw up her invisible shield, which deflected the whip that sent sparks flying.

“Give up, Adrianna!” Reuben snarled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t give up on jobs,” she told him vehemently.

Her leg wasn’t working quite right. She was leaning on the other one, but Cara had no doubt that Adrianna could kick her butt with one leg, while blindfolded, and while tied up.

Reuben didn’t give up so easy. “Adrianna, you owe me.”

She spun the knife across her knuckles before catching it again. It didn’t do anything, but it looked cool as hell.

“Don’t,” she warned.

“I saved your life, Adrianna.”

“I told you not to go there!”

She grabbed the knife’s hilt and threw it straight at Cara.

Cara tried to dodge the attack, but it caught her in the side. The blade sank deep into her body, ice cold. She thought it’d hurt, but it didn’t at first. She just stared down at it, not really registering what had happened. She was vaguely aware of Reuben flickering into his werewolf form, dropping the whip, and jumping onto Adrianna.

Cara stepped back. She put her hands around the hilt and started to pull it out.

“No!” Eddy was beside her in a moment. “Don’t touch it!”

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God. Oh, God. I…my…”

She could hear Reuben and Adrianna yelling at each other, pandemonium breaking out. She thought about sitting down before the pain started in her side.

Eddy kept giving her advice, but she wasn’t quite registering it. Everything was happening in slow motion, and she had a hard time making sense of Eddy’s words.

“You’re going into shock,” she heard him say. “Pay attention to my voice!”

Cara watched as Adrianna punched Reuben in the face, which only made him angrier. His form shifted into a werewolf again. He was only able to hold his werewolf form for about ten seconds at a time, but in those seconds, Reuben could do a lot of damage. He grabbed Adrianna’s throat and dragged her to the swimming pool, dunking her head underwater. Adrianna had been unarmed at some point. Cara wasn’t sure when, but she couldn’t focus because the pain from her stab wound was starting to kick in.

“Wait!” she heard herself say. Adrianna’s legs were flailing as she tried to break free, but Reuben was entirely too strong in his werewolf form. There was no way she could break free.

“Don’t kill her,” managed Cara.

“You need to be quiet and stop exerting yourself,” Eddy said. “Just listen to me. Focus on me. You’ve been badly injured. I know how to treat wounds like this. You’re just going to need to trust me.”

Cara saw Adrianna’s legs go limp. Her hands rolled to her sides listlessly into the pool. Reuben wasn’t done. He kept holding her underwater for twenty more seconds before tossing her back towards the house. Her limp frame busted through the glass door. She didn’t move again.

Cara tried to stay conscious, but her world quickly became blurry and darkness closed in from all sides.

“No!” Eddy yelled. “Stay with me! Stay with—”

And with that, her world went dark.