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Me and Annie woke up next morning to astonishing news I already knew.

The story of that top hat lab going up made the papers three states over in all directions. Shit, was it big news for a while. Started a fire up in the hills it took them twelve hours to put out. Wasn't much left to tell the tale when it was all over.

She had to get to work that morning, so there wasn't much time to discuss it. I got out of her mane and let her get ready.

But I came calling that evening. It was a Friday, and we'd kind of talked about spending the weekend together. I wondered what kind of weekend it was going to be now, with news like this hanging over it.

I had never explicitly planned for it... never even thought about it, really... but when I arrived at Anne Marie's house Friday night, she was happy. Not ecstatic or celebratory, but happy. Content might be a better word. Or consoled. Almost none of the weight of Chip's death was weighing her down that night. Her reason found voice in a few simple words. "I won't shed a tear for them boys. Not a one. They got what they deserved. Only wish it hadn't been so quick."

I wanted to tell her that I was the one who'd done it. That in protecting myself and mine, I'd gotten revenge for Chip. That it was no accident. It was deliberate. But I had no idea how she'd take that. If she'd welcome the news. If it would horrify her. If she'd ever look at me the same. If she'd maybe even feel compelled to take what she knew to Mitch, or Sandy. Gods only knew. Not to mention the likelihood I'd have to admit I'd drugged her to use her as my alibi. That probably wouldn't have gone over big no matter what else she thought, good or bad. And so, I kept my mouth shut. The notion that Chip got divine justice would have to suffice. She could never know that I was the instrument of somewhat more earthly justice for the boy we both loved.

I just took her mood and revelled in it. That was my reward. Like when deep in the night we stole out of her house naked like a couple of cubs at summer camp, into the forest out back and up into the hills. In the boughs of a sycamore, we howled at the moon.

I was smoothing my paws over her, spent in my lap, when I worked up the courage to share something else.

"Anne Marie, there's something I have to tell you about myself. Something you need to know if, y'know, we ever decide we're going to move forward together."

"Alright... what is it?"

I took a deep breath. "Well... the truth of the matter is that, uh... " I smiled, gamely. "That, uh... well, my mother is also my aunt, and my father's also my uncle."

It was a riddle, of course, and I saw her face scrunch all up in consternation. But she delighted me by quickly doing the math. "So... your mama and daddy are brother and sister...?"

I nodded. "Twins, in fact. It was a summer thing, I'm given to understand, when they were twelve. And I was their little Longnight present."

"When they were twelve? But... Ryan's more'n twelve years older than you."

"His parents aren't my parents, Annie. His younger brother and sister are."

"Oh..."

"Our brother Eddie. Well... Ry's brother. My uncle. My father." I laughed. "Confusing, isn't it? Him, and their sister Jane. My mother. So. Now you know."

She gave a little snort. "Maybe I'll get to meet them someday. You know my parents. You like 'em, right?"

"Yeah, sure. They're fine folks."

"They're also first cousins," she smiled, rocking her hips. Squeeeeeeezin' my cock inside her.

"Ohhh," I said, partly from the revelation, partly from what she was doing to me.

"So welcome to Rockfern," she chuckled, caressing my chest. "You ain't no kinda rare species 'round here. Near every family's got someone like you. That make you feel any better?"

"You make me feel lot better," I said, squeezing her hips. "I think I'm fallin' in love with you, Anne Marie Snowshiver."

"You think?" she sputtered. "You better do better than think, buster." She hammered my chest playfully.

"C'mon down here," I said. "Help me make up my mind."

She laid down on me, arms around my neck. We joined muzzles. I raised my knees up, dug in my ankles, and showed her I'd decided.

It's true that there was some part of me, up there in those hills, or lying in Annie's bed, that was waiting for someone to come around like in all them old police shows and say, "You nearly got away with it, Mango, except for oonnnneee little thing..." But no one did. We could glimpse news crews passing through out her window. Groups of people milling around in the streets talking things up. But no one took any notice of two lovebirds holed up together and making a whole world out of each other for a weekend. And it was still on my mind when I came padding home at twilight on Sunday night. Hadn't had a weekend like that in years. Maybe never.

I shut the door behind me. I had a sudden glimpse of a form, then a sudden cold spray in the face. Stung my eyes just a little.

I woke up feeling refreshed. Pleasant enough. Till I realized my bed was the open trunk of a car and my wake up call was the double barrels of a shotgun six inches from my face. And at the other end of it, glaring in the moonlight, was a ghost. A dead man. Or rather, a man supposed to be.

Shark Pinesummit, smiling at me with his every-which-way teeth.

"Howdy, Mangy," he said, soft and low.

"Howdy, Denny."

Keeping the gun trained on me, he reached around to his back pocket and brought out a familiar looking little can. It was the CP-104 I'd carelessly left in the medicine cabinet. "Handy stuff, this," he said. "Think I'll hang onto it."

I glanced around a little. I'd been dumped into his trunk on top of several bales, soft but firm. I knew the scent. Money. Loads of it.

"You done me a right good turn t'other night," he said. "Woulda taken me years to earn that much, just runnin' for Billy. Well, it's mine now. And he ain't complainin'."

"You're welcome, I guess."

My nose told me one other thing. He was drunk. It was on him like cheap perfume on a 14-year-old off to cotillion. I knew I had to work with that. It was all I had.

"I'd like you to do me one more favour before we say good night. C'mon, get on up outta there. Nice and slow, if you please. That's it, yeah."

My toes touched down on clammy earth. I looked around. Recognized it well enough. It was Bald Mountain Road. We were miles from nowhere. Well, that could only mean one thing. "What's the favour?"

"Need you to do some diggin'," he said, flashin' that paper shredder smile of his.

"Diggin' up more money?"

He shook his head. "Couple of graves."

If my mouth was dry as cotton, I was in danger of making the cotton of my pants good and wet. I was shaking. "Couple'a?"

"One for you. One for Priss."

My ears went back. I glanced into the trunk. Sure enough, there was a spade in there, along with three duffle bags full of money and a fourth half-full.

"It was Billy's idea," he said. "You'd just up and vanish one day. You and your little girl. Well, we ain't gotta wait for things to die down anymore, so... you vanish tonight. And then li'l Priss disappears on her way to school tomorrow. You vanish, then her... half the town already wonderin' if Ryan's really her daddy. Well, now they'll think they know. You grabbed her and lit out. Who knows why? Who cares? But your brother'll curse your name till the day he dies. Luanne. Deke. Yah whole fuckin' family."

"Denny, y'ain't gotta do this. You can just take the money and go."

"You'd talk. They'd go roamin', looking for the money drops, and when they didn't find them, they'd know someone took it. This way, you take what you know with you. 'Sides. I hate your guts, Fishkettle. Billy hated your guts. Greg hated your guts. You killed 'em. Even though you made me a millionaire, they were still my friends. So I figure I owe them this much before I go off and do me some high livin'."

He'd worked out a few things, but he was no deep thinker. He was on autopilot in some ways. Just following through with Billy's plan, like some kind of robot. What kind of virus could I shove into that program?

Sure, I knew. Same one I had that got Chip killed. Greed.

"Listen, Denny. What.... what if I told you where the rest of it was?"

He burped. His cheeks puffed with vomit he forced back down. "Rest of what?"

"The money. The stuff me and Chip took."

He wiped his arm along his mouth. "You motherfucker," he growled. "We knew you had something to do with it."

"Yeah, we did. Me and Chip. We been at it since last spring."

He narrowed his eyes. "No... There was only one drop missin'."

I gave him a surprised look. "That what they told you?"

I watched the seeds of doubt germinate in that piss-washed mind of his, springing from the manure of any doubts he'd ever had that Billy and Greg maybe weren't dealing fair with him.

I doubled down. "I ain't got to split it with Chip no more. How's about I split it with you? You just leave me enough to get by on, and you can have the rest."

"How much?"

"No idea." I turned and looked in his trunk. "How much is that?"

His eyes widened and he blinked. "You tellin' me you got that much?"

"No," I said. "But maybe half that much."

He thought about it. "Where is it?"

"You promise me, right here, that you won't hurt me and Priss, and you'll leave me just a little, and I'll take you to it. Tonight. Then you just go where you're gonna go, and do what you're gonna do."

He stared at me with four eyes; the two in his face and the two at the end of the shotgun. "If you're lyin' to me, God and Goddess won't save you from what I'll do."

"You know I ain't. How you think I got that machine in the garage?"

That seemed all the proof he needed.

"We got a deal?"

"Alright. Deal. Get in. You're gonna drive. And I'll have this trained on you all the way."

"Fair enough," I said. I shut the trunk and moved to the driver's side.

"You wait till I'm in!" he slurred, and slid in with the gun in his lap. "Alright, now. Nice and slow, Mango."

Mango. Well. That was an improvement over 'Mangy'. Almost like we were partners. But I knew we didn't really have a deal. He'd kill me the second he thought he knew where the money was. Maybe he'd follow through with Priss. Maybe he wouldn't. But I was as good as dead unless I came up with something first.

He'd had a bottle of whiskey riding shotgun and now it was in his paw. He took a belt from it. "So wherezit?" he demanded.

"Just a ways up this very road. Million places to hide. Most of what we took, we got along here." I started the car, lights off, and crept it forward in the moonlight.

"How'd you do it?" he asked. "Blow up the lab."

"How'd you get away?" I countered.

He reached into his shirt. Pulled a necklace out. "Charm of the Lady Anniah," he said. "Whenever them Quadrupeds boys came in, Billy always had one of us hang back, just in case. Lady Anniah came through for me when it really counted," he said, kissing the stone before tucking it back into his shirt. "Billy picked me that night. So here I am."

"And then you just vanished," I said, feigning admiration.

"That's right. I know an opportunity when I see one. Hid out in the woods last couple of days. Snuck around pickin' up the money. The rest of 'em don't need it no more. Figure it's mine by right. Inheritance, like. Last man standin'," he burbled.

"Damn, that's a piece of thinkin'."

"Yeah," he said. "Hey, how fuckin' far up this road you gonna take me?"

"As far as it takes," I said. "We didn't leave it stickin' out where just any ol' body was apt to find it."

"Well, hurry it up."

I was still shaking. He had that gun pointed at my guts the whole way. I knew that was no pleasant way to die. "Ain't too far now."

Sure enough, there it was. The dead end. Maybe in more ways than one. "This is it," I said, and killed the engine. I reached down and popped the trunk.

"You wait till I get out 'fore you open that door."

"Alright."

I was shaking. I was petrified. This was it. I had one chance, just one shot at making this work. And it didn't come down to how clever I was, or how prepared, or how well-trained. It came down to how lucky I was. More precisely, how drunk Shark was. How much liquid courage he'd needed to do what he had to do, and if it would be enough to enable me to do what I had to do instead.

"Okay. Get out. Take it easy, now."

I padded over to the trunk. "We got a deal, right?"

"You show me the money, and yeah, we got a deal."

I leaned into the trunk and picked up the spade. Steadied myself. It was now or never.

I turned. "It's just a couple steps into the woods. We kept it--" I jerked my head suddenly, like I'd seen something. "Shit!"

And without thinking, he bit. Turned to look.

I swung.

He knew, almost immediately, he'd fallen for the oldest trick on the playground. But the whiskey had slowed his reactions. Mental. Physical. He got the gun up and he fired. Missed me by half a yard.

I didn't miss him. The Lady Anniah withdrew her favour from him, and the flat of the spade caught him square in the face, seven or eight pounds of wide, flat steel connecting with mere flesh and bone at thirty or forty miles an hour. Remarkably efficient at driving the bridge of his snout an inch or more back into his brain.

Huge spray of blood. Gun went flying. So did a half dozen of those tortured teeth, liberated at last. He hit the ground swiping at where his nose should have been.

It was a nightmare.

I thought I'd been so brave the other night. A real man. But it was one thing to press a button and have the vague notion that somewhere half a mile away a handful of men were being efficiently and painlessly vapourized. It was quite another to swing a shovel and cave in the fresh face of a man, not much more than a boy, standing right in front of you. Listen to him gurgling as he fights for his last few breaths. There's murder, and then there's murder.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," I chanted, down on my knees, watching Dennis Pinesummit die. As if he could hear me. As if that made it alright.

He quit moving. Quit breathing. That awful spray of blood that went up each time ceased, mercifully, at last.

I threw up. All the over the place. I eased the gun away from him with my toes, further and further, as if he might rise up, the living dead, and take his revenge. Threw up again. I fought hard to regain my composure. It took a while. Lot longer than they show in the movies. I kept jerking to look at him, half certain he'd moved, come back from the 'dead' like he had a couple hours before.

But not this time. This time it was for real. He just laid there, sticky and smelling like iron. Already the flies were starting to find him.

It took me maybe half an hour to pull myself together. Till I could look at him long enough to do what I had to do, and put into effect the plan I'd hatched driving up here.

It was maybe the... No. No 'maybe'. It was the hardest thing I ever did in my entire life, picking up the corpse of this dead boy I'd killed, and stuffing him into the passenger seat of his prize vintage car. I used my cap to pick up his gun and tossed it into the trunk. I got in, drove his body up to the brink of the old collapsed bridge, and aimed the wheels. I wiped the steering wheel with my cap, rubbed my pads back and forth on the brake and accelerator to smear the prints, and shifted it into drive. The car started moving. I rolled out, just managing to clap the door shut, and I watched as it pitched over the end of the bridge, dropping seventy or eighty feet down into the gorge and taking Shark's corpse with it.

Breaking glass. Shearing of metal. Crumpling. Smell of gasoline.

I didn't look. There was no need.

I stood there in the moonlight next to a single duffle bag of Shark's money. That, and his spade. The rest was in the trunk with his gun. It would be months, maybe years, before anyone found Shark and his car. No one was looking for him, after all; as far as the world knew, he was already dead; blasted to bits a couple nights ago up on the ridge with the rest of them. And whenever he finally was found, maybe by some kids coming out here to fuck, well, wouldn't they have a story. The money, the gun, the whiskey bottle, bones full of blunt force trauma... they'd all have a tale to tell. A tale that would be all too obvious. A tale that would have nothing to do with me.

It was a long walk home. Along the way, I stashed that duffle bag in temporary keeping. Buried the spade next to it.

Inheritance, like. Last man standing.

It was coming up light by the time I got back to town, weary and footsore. But I was calm by then. In those long hours, I'd worked it all out in my head. I'd endured a creeping barrage on my innocence these past couple months. I'd gone from being the unwitting instrument of Chip's demise, to committing a cold-blooded multiple execution by remote, and ultimately to killing someone up close and personal, practically with my bare paws. Two young men on a battlefield. I'm the one who came home. Shark Pinesummit taught me something about myself all that rote training in the Freelands Guard never could. I knew who I was now. I knew what I was capable of. When push came to shove, I was a man like Ryan. A man like Oscar.

I wasn't proud. But I wasn't ashamed, either.

I skirted along the woods to the garage, keeping out of sight till I could lope in quietly. Got changed out of them blood-stained fatigues and showered. Put on some jeans and shirt and set out.

Luanne looked surprised to see me. "Mango? What are you doing here?"

"Uncle Nicky?" Priss smiled, peering out from behind her. Deke gaped at me, shouldering into his bookbag.

"Thought I'd walk my favourite niece and nephew to school today," I said.

"Well, sure. What's the occasion?"

I smiled. "I just want to show I appreciate what I've got."

"Hey, Uncle Nicky," Deke said, stepping out.

"Hey, tiger. C'mon, let's go. You can catch me up on what happened on Spider's Riddle last night."

Priss hopped out. "I'll tell it! He always gets it wrong."

"Do not." Tail lashing.

And a little mouth butter wouldn't melt in said, "Okay, you start, and I'll correct you when you mess up."

I crouched. I looked into those pretty orange eyes to convince myself it was all worth Shark Pinesummit's life.

Priss smiled at me and said, "I missed you this weekend, Uncle Nicky."

It was.

I gave her a little kiss and stood up. "C'mon, y'all, let's scoot." I patted them on the shoulders and led them off. I was humming inside.

But I kept my eyes open all the way.

Later on I took myself to Melba's for breakfast. She greeted the sight of my shirt with raised eyebrows.

"Don't get used to it," I purred.