She must have had them waiting for that moment. Had the Woman in White entered the building with the intent to go on the warpath, or was she simply so paranoid that she had her bodyguards ready to spring into action just when she was going to a party? And why was she there in the first place, and with so little effort made to blend in?

    Regardless, there was no time to wonder. They didn’t give us time to wonder. Within a second of the Woman in White’s announcement, the wolves leapt into action, smashing through windows all around the ballroom and dropping to the floor. I couldn’t get an exact count, but there seemed to be upwards of fifteen of them in total, more than enough to overwhelm even my strength with a tide of claws and teeth.

    The wolves cut fearsome figures, hunched humanoids with extended jaws and layers of matted fur, clad in the filthy patchwork remnants of working-class garb. Upon seeing this women nearest to the windows panicked, most of them doing the sensible thing and running for their lives, while a few more daring sorts drew weapons. I expected the wolves to go on the warpath, tearing and biting their way through the crowd. Instead they quickly disarmed anyone who resisted before moving on, leaving them bruised but alive.

    Which meant that the wolves were intelligent enough to know that Laura was their real target. She was in danger. I immediately drew the pistol I had concealed in my pocket, then realized it would be to little avail: even if the wolves were vulnerable to bullets, there were three of them for every bullet I had. My thoughts went into overdrive, and suddenly I was happy to have discovered that jar in Dr. Tersine’s lab.

    There was a woman standing near me, one of the tall, pale women who made up the Society’s security. She had a straight-bladed sword at her hip, but hadn’t even drawn it yet, instead content to stand there nervously and watch. I needed that sword. Before she even noticed my presence, I had dashed over to her side and torn the blade out of its scabbard.

    “Promise I’ll return it!” I shouted as I charged into the action.

    My attention was divided, eyes on every part of the ballroom at once. The wolves were closing in from every direction, slowly tightening the noose around Laura, still in the center of the dance floor. The Woman in White was retreating to the door. Laura remained frozen in place, looking this way and that, caught between her desire to pursue and her terror at the wolves. I also noticed, somewhere off in the growing panic, Lady Alonhall and Anna. Alonhall was all seriousness, drawing two small sickle-shaped blades, moving to place herself between Anna and any danger. I got the feeling that she was going to be able to handle herself. 

    Which left me with a question. The Woman in White was involved with all of this, somehow. I had already suspected it, but the fact that she had decided to make an appearance at the Society tonight only cemented that hunch. If I caught up to her and took her down, there was a chance that I could have ended it all that evening. But Laura would get eaten by wolves.

    I stopped where I was, raising up the front of my shirt with one hand, just enough to expose a couple of inches of flesh. This blade was narrower than what I was used to. That made it slightly easier to plunge it into my stomach, coating the steel with a thin layer of my magnetic blood. My EV field extended into my blood on the blade, the connection buzzing to life.

    “Laura!” I shouted. “Need an extra pair of hands?”

    My voice broke her out of her hesitation, and Laura turned away from the approaching wolves and toward me, mouth open, totally dumbfounded.

    “Shortcake? Is that a sword?”

    “Hell yes it is!”

    “Where did you get it?”

    “Stole it.”

    Laura blinked. “Well, that shows initiative, if nothing else. Do you know how to use it?”

    “Do I know how to use it?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Yes, I know how to use a goddamn sword. Better than you, probably.”

    “I sincerely doubt that. I’m the—”

    “Champion of the University Dueling Club for three years running, I know.”

    “—University dueling club champion for three years running.”

    We both paused for a few seconds, as though the accidental echoing had just happened in the middle of dinner, not a few seconds before a fight. It felt incredibly stupid, and I think we both realized that at the same instant. Lives were on the line.

    “Damn you,” Laura muttered.

    “Whatever." I turned to face a cluster of wolves coming in from my left. Laura’s blade wasn’t going to be able to hurt them, I realized, not when they could regenerate better than I could.

    “Right. We do this back-to-back,” she said. “Cover each other’s weak spots.”

    I shook my head. “I’ve fought these things before. They heal pretty much instantly. I know how to take them down, but anything you can do is going to be temporary.”

    “Well then, tell me how to get rid of them!”

    “Can’t,” I said. “We move together. You defend, I counter.”

    She looked down at me with the same expression as when I’d first told her about the death of Maria Faith, that deep scan, trying to read whether I was trustworthy or not. We locked eyes for just a moment. I needed her to believe me, in spite of everything, telling her with my eyes that I just wanted for us to get out of this alive.

    Laura turned away, raised her sword into a fighting stance, and whispered something that only I could hear. “I’d better be able to trust you, Emma.”

    The wolves, presumably used to being totally immune to injury, attacked without restraint. Their claws were long but not particularly sharp, but made up for it with incredible strength and speed, sweeping massive arcs in the air, multiple times per second. With their hunched postures and extended jaws, they had an extra weapon that regular humans lacked: teeth. They could lunge several feet almost before one’s eye could follow it, snapping their jaws shut with enough force to produce an audible pop. I did not want to know what they would do if they closed on a limb.

    When the first couple of wolves hit us, I expected Laura to go down in an instant. She didn’t have my abilities, my superhuman fitness and speed. What she did have was a lifetime of skill. The first wolf to lunge at her easily snatched the initiative, teeth showing as it snarled in bestial rage, but Laura reacted with perfect poise. She worked back with a half-step, the steel of her blade whirling, and stopped the charge dead with a series of lightning thrusts. The wolf staggered, confused and off-balance even as its wounds began to heal.

    Suddenly I understood that the bragging had not been without reason. Laura had not even fully completed her first defense when the second wolf attacked, at a slight angle to the first, this one swiping down with a claw. The thin curve of her saber didn’t even stop moving after intercepting the first wolf, instead moving fluidly into a second strike. With a single flick of her wrist, she batted the wolf’s hand aside with the flat of her blade, using its own momentum against it, then twisted, redirecting the same momentum into a counter-slash. 

    For almost a full second, I was the one whose reflexes failed her, as my shock at Laura’s sheer display of skill overwhelmed me. She was the best swordswoman I’d ever seen, better than Rook, better than Alonhall, better than Lady Halflance herself! She hardly had to put any effort into parries that deflected wolves fighting with all their strength, her body moving only the absolute minimum necessary to accomplish her goal at any given moment. At the same time, her sword was never in the same place two moments in a row, never giving up the momentum, always exactly where it needed to be to do the most damage to her foe.

    Then that beautiful second ended, and I remembered that all of her skill would be for nothing when the wolves healed. So I went in. Laura had on her side absolute economy of movement and years of practice. Me? I had speed, strength, and a recklessness born of near-invincibility. When I regained my senses, one of the wolves was on the back foot, still reeling from a strike taken just a moment earlier. I took the opportunity to charge, the blood-stained smallsword held close to my chest. It turned—I wasn’t exactly subtle—and tried to raise its arms in a block. I went low, easy at my size, and ran it through the stomach, dodging out of the way of its clumsy swipe as I yanked the blade out, before finishing it with a powerful tip slash across the shoulder. It tried to fight for a second longer, but lurched as it realized that the wound was not going to heal. My EV had won out. The wolf collapsed.

    “About time!” Laura chuckled. “I thought I was on my own.”

    “Shut up and sword!” I said, just as another group of wolves attacked, these ones at an oblique angle.

    We made a good team, Laura and I. She wove a web of steel, defending and harrying our enemies with relentless skill and agility. Every one of the wolves was quickly covered in small cuts and wounds, constantly healing and reeling before that nearly-invisible saber. If she was the web, then I was the venomous bite. Any slight opening that Laura was able to create, I followed through on, moving fast enough that not even the wolves could catch up with me except by luck, slashing open arteries and severing tendons, pushing the integrity of my sword to the absolute limit.

    There were times when one or the other of us would be overwhelmed, usually because the wolves had managed a flanking maneuver, where we would be grabbed or grappled or pinned down. That was when we fought dirty. I remember, very distinctly, a wolf grabbing me by the arms, biting down on my shoulder (she missed my neck only because I was struggling), only for Laura to slam the hilt of her saber into its skull until it fell to the ground. 

    Later, one of the wolves I thought I’d brought down was able to get back up, grabbing Laura by the leg and pulling her to the ground. I moved instantly, first ramming my shoulder into the wolf directly in front of me to distract it for the critical moment. Then I reversed the smallsword, leafing my fingers together in order to hold that tiny hilt in both hands. With a single stroke, I rammed the blade into the back of the wolf’s neck, forcing the vertebrae open, striking so forcefully that I almost couldn’t stop myself, and ended up nicking Laura’s chest.

    The wolves arrived in several waves, two or three at a time, and there were many occasions where a wolf that I thought I’d put down would rise again, fighting on in spite of her grievous and unhealed wounds. In the heat of the moment, adrenaline causing time to slow down, my mind focusing on the individual micro-movements of the strike and counter, it seemed to go on endlessly, wave after wave for hours. But in reality, it must not have lasted more than two minutes before it was down to just the two of us and the last few wolves.

    My mind and attention began to wander, now that I could let my mind wander for a second without being faced with immediate death. The dance floor around us was still in a state of absolute chaos, people clearing out as quickly as possible, supporting the wounded, directing the crowds in order to prevent a trample. The Society’s guards, meanwhile, had decided to take a wait-and-see approach. They stood at a distance and watched us, swords sheathed, ignoring the stampeding crowds, waiting for some sort of sign or threshold. Knowing what I do about cops, maybe they were waiting for us to go down and weaken the wolves before moving in.

    But there was another person watching the struggle. I’d thought that the Woman in White had fled the scene the moment after summoning her wolves, but she must have wanted to see where this was going, because she’d only retreated as far as one of the side doors. Fleeing party guests flowed around her like floodwaters around a boulder, and her eyes were locked on me. She had discarded the reikverratr mask, replacing it with a thin veil, making her face a vague brown shape with two bright points for eyes.

    “Laura!” I said, warding off one of the wolves with a series of powerful thrusts. “She’s still here!”

    She was briefly confused by what I’d said, until a quick gesture with my off-hand guided her eyes in the direction of where the Woman in White stood. “Shortcake, I may love revenge, but I hate getting mauled by wolves.”

    “I know,” I said. One of the wolves, bleeding heavily from where my sword had slashed it in the midriff, rose from the ground and lunged. I ducked out of the way. “But I need to catch her. This is my chance.”

    I dodged out of the way of two more swipes from the wolf’s claws, and prepared to counterattack. Before I could, there was a soft pop, and a spurt of blood emerged from the creature’s temple, followed shortly after by another one from the upper spine. It collapsed.

    “Don’t worry about your date, Emma,” Alonhall said.

    I’d almost forgotten she was in the room, which was a mistake. Her weapons, a pair of short and sharply hooked blades designed for concealment, weren’t as spectacular as a sword, but she used them expertly. There was also a small pistol tucked into her belt.

    “Where’s Anna?”

    “She’s safe. Emma darling, I’d love to chat, but you need to get the reikverratr. I’ll deal with the wolves.”

    “But you can’t…” I briefly twirled my sword.

    “Dismemberment, right? They can’t heal from severed parts.” Alonhall raised her knives in a sort of intimidating shrug.

    I glanced over at the Woman in White. She hadn’t moved. This really was my chance. I gave Alonhall a swift nod before I ran, as Alonhall moved in to cover Laura’s blind spots.

    One wolf peeled off and tried to follow me, but she didn’t even last a second. My previous experience with the Woman in White told me that she wasn’t going to be easy to chase, but I also knew that I held the advantage in maneuverability. I flitted between the clumps of people still trying to escape, using them as camouflage. When I finally got too close to hide any longer, I broke out into a sprint, the sort of sprint that could cross a football field in under ten seconds.

    The Woman in White saw me, and she didn’t flee. She didn’t even flinch, instead just fixing her eyes on me, as though my direct attack on her was more of a bemusement than anything else. I stopped right in front of her, waiting for some reaction.

    “Well?” I said. “Are you going to run? Fight? What the hell are you doing?”

    “Observing,” she said. That strange, distorted voice, with a faint Jaleran accent, sent a shiver down my spine. “You are quite exceptional, even by the standards of other Alraune. If you and the archaeologist were going to insist upon preventing me from my business here, then at least I have learned something.”

    “Business here? What business?”

    “I am fully capable of keeping secrets, you know,” she said.

    “Of course. Well in that case… I’m going to bring you down, and see what Alonhall can do. I hear she’s good at interrogation.”

    “Try it.”

    So I did. I lunged forward with the sword, expecting her to dodge backward, knocking herself off-balance. If I could stall her until the others arrived, I stood a chance. Or I could tire her out and wrestle her to the ground myself.

    None of those things happened, because the Woman in White did not dodge, retreat, or otherwise act as if my sword-thrust fazed her at all. Instead, she moved her hand, faster than I could follow, and took the tip of my blade directly in the palm of her hand. The sword stopped dead, not piercing deeper than her gloves, her arm and hand as solid as a statue before my attack. The impact made a soft, almost inaudible, tink.

    “Storm-child. Sleep now, like death.”

    I retreated a step. “No, no, you do not get to fucking do that again! I swear, if you pull the same bullshit—”

SaffronDragon

Wow, the Woman in White is really getting a chance to show off her skills in this one. How the heck is Emma supposed to defeat her if all she has to do is say the magic words and--