Grainer transferred the sword to his left hand and with his right took a pistol from his side holster and pointed it at Jake. I dropped to my knees and retched up bile. It was coming.

“Keep her covered, Morgan,” Grainer said. The Hunter by the cage retrained his gun on me. It had drifted a little during the beheading.

“I’m sorry, angel,” Jake said to me. “I was stupid.”

I couldn’t speak. We got a good gal on the inside. It didn’t have to be Hardass. There were other women at the white jail. But the ugliness of this moment spread backwards. I know you’re seeing your guy tonight . And me like an idiot weeping on my bunk. It didn’t have to be her. But there was the cynic’s version of Ockham’s razor: All things being equal the shittiest explanation’s the best.

“I’m so sorry,” Jake said.

“It’s not”—a cramp at which the reflex was to bend double, except I couldn’t, with the cuffs still attached to the cage—“your fault,” I managed to get out. “My fault. I’m sorry.” In spite of everything, Poulsom’s flesh, fear-soaked, piping hot, was a fat pulse in the confined space of the van. Morgan looked at me, smiling. “You ready to party?” he said.

Grainer looked at his watch. “Not long now, kids,” he said. “By the way, before you go, Jake, congratulations. I’m sure fatherhood would’ve suited you.”

Poulsom wriggled and roared.

“What?” Jake said—then dropped to one knee, shuddered, got down on all fours. Jammed his teeth together. His clothes started to tear at the seams. The hair was coming. Mine too.

“Yeah,” Grainer continued, “apparently the big side-effect of the antiviral. Seems your old lady’s nearly two months gone. Ask Poulsom. He’s over the moon about it, all set to go down in history as the man who changed werewolf reproduction forever. Except of course now he’s not going anywhere. Nowhere good, anyway.”

Jake looked up at me. My spine shifted. The shoulders of my blouse split. Movement in the top of my skull. The waistband of my skirt went. Seems your old lady’s nearly two months gone . It was impossible, and yet as soon as I’d heard the words it was like falling off a cliff. No smoking. No drinking. Ultrasounds. Harrods towels, television, reassurance. I thought of those Magic Eye pictures, the disturbing moment when three dimensions shiver out of two. It was impossible. But then until the antiviral so was surviving the bite.

“Talulla!” Jake called. He was more than halfway. His eyes were going. His clothes hung in shreds. Soon speech would be impossible.

Grainer, face empty of all expression, pointed the gun at Jake’s head. One of my ankle cuffs broke. The other was cutting its way into the swelling flesh. Jake convulsed. Somewhere far away my clothes were disintegrating and Poulsom was screaming into the duct tape. Fear around Morgan like a swarm of flies.

“Is it better to kill her in front of you?” Grainer said. “Or you in front of her? How about an impromptu Caesarian? Morgan’s pretty good with a knife.”

The van was packed with the heat of my transformation. In the blur of the final spasm I’d snapped the cable free of the cage. The left handcuff was gone. The right cut my flesh with a kind of fierce boredom. In spite of which joy filled me. My mouth was hot. Jake was still in the throes. Poulsom’s legs struggled to get him upright. His body heaved out its stink of fear and meat.

“Your lady’s ahead of you, Marlowe,” Grainer said. “She’s making you look like an amateur.”

Jake foetal as the details of claws and ear tips worked themselves out—then his long soft throat lifted as the last of the Changing resolved itself. He began to get to his feet.

“Good-bye, Jake,” Grainer said—then two things happened simultaneously.

My second ankle cuff snapped (a surge of blood, a lovely feeling of relief) and a silver javelin, travelling at speed, struck Grainer in the chest. He staggered back a pace, dropped the pistol and fell to his knees.

Morgan spun and fired a burst wildly, hit turf and trees, involuntarily took a step backwards. I threw myself at the bars.

The step backwards had brought him—just—close enough. At full stretch I got the collar of his jacket and his nape’s sweat-hot hair, yanked him, flailing, up against the cage, locked a hand around his throat, with the other ripped the automatic from his grasp, though I fumbled and it dropped to the ground. He twisted, but either by deep training or extraordinary will overrode the instinct to reach for the hand cutting off his air, instead freed a knife from a sheath in his belt and drove it into my forearm. The pain reflex opened my hand and he tore free, went down on one knee and reached for the gun.

When Jake leaped, his trajectory made an arc that framed Grainer for me in weird vividness. He was still on his knees, propped up by the javelin, arms hanging inert, eyes half-closed, a thickened gobbet of dark blood hanging from his open mouth. The image had the remote clarity of a religious icon. Then Jake descended, fell on Morgan with a draught of the evening’s moon-edged air and in a single swipe gashed him—a gesture with a sort of emphatic masculine grace—from throat to belly. The body unstrung, collapsed like a dropped puppet.

Jake wrapped his hands around the bars of the cage and braced himself to pull but I gave him through the confusion—his head was full on the upswelling joy of pregnant can’t be javelin love by love Cloquet can’t be but please please let her be —the image of Morgan’s palm, felt it emerge in him amid the chaos like a developing print and felt his own giant animal delight as he went to the Hunter’s corpse, ripped the arm from its socket, pressed the hand to the panel and received, like magic, the string of blips, the gasp, the open door.

We fell into an embrace. Speech had gone from both of us, but we didn’t need it, not now with the wolf melding us and our bodies free and the miracle ghost-flicker (or was I imagining it?) of new life in my womb. For a moment we held each other and everything but the purest certainty of shared nature, of common blood, of sameness dropped away. For a moment the world was perfect.

If I hadn’t closed my eyes.

Jake’s written all about if and then .

As it was, eyes closed in the bliss of feeling his warm arms around me and his heart beating against mine, I saw nothing, only felt the thud-twitch of impact and heard, what seemed such a long time after, the sound of a gunshot.