“I'm going to call the police!" she shouted, lacking anything better to say.

One of the figures shook his head and smiled. All his teeth seemed to be far too pointy.

“That would be a very . . . terrible mistake," he hissed, his words escaping his mouth like dead air from a pharaoh's tomb. And then both of them headed towards her at an inhuman pace.

"No," one of them rasped.

"Finish it. I'll get the girl." The other one stopped and snarled some kind of response.

Jane was running blindly, but she knew that the man behind her would easily catch her. So she ducked behind a dumpster, reached down and grabbed a board from an abandoned shipping crate, raising it to shoulder level. She barely heard the footsteps, but she stepped out and swung with all her might at head level. The board impacted the man's . . . the thing's head, smashing its sunglasses and causing him to drop his knife. Then Jane saw those glowing red eyes, and she felt terror unlike anything she had ever experienced.

“Foolish mortal," the thing said. It punched her in the midsection, sending Jane flying fifteen feet through the air to crash into a wall. She fell to the ground like a crumpled wad of paper like trash.

Jane couldn't remember being in that much pain before. She knew her ribs were broken, and she could almost feel herself bleeding internally. Her face was cut in several places from her crash and her shoulder was dislocated. She was going to die. And strangely, she was almost tempted to thank her attacker. It would all be over soon.

Then, as her vision began to fade, she heard some horrible growling from all around her . . . from back towards the alley and from the direction of the street. She saw her attacker . . . saw him staring first in one direction and then another. He snarled and tried to locate his dropped weapon. Then a... dog . . . jumped on him from out of nowhere, but it was bigger than any dog Jane had ever seen. And it seemed strangely . . . bipedal. Then a second such animal impacted Jane's attacker, and she heard the man in the suit begin to scream. She saw two more such animals rush past her and head towards the alley. She hoped they got to that other dog in time.

Jane's thought was that maybe . . . just maybe . . . her life had made a difference in the end. As her eyes began to close, she saw a hairy, monstrous face staring down at her. No... wait... it was human after all. It was a very handsome young man.

This new man looked at someone or something off to one side.

“We need to get her back to the Den," he said shortly. Then Jane and the conscious world became strangers to each other.

"She seems to be waking up!" came a voice from the void. Jane wanted to open her eyes, but was afraid of what she'd see. But a dull throb in her ribs caused her to moan, which had tipped everyone off. But who was “everyone?”

There was a pause.

“Listen, we know you're awake, so you might as well stop faking." That voice was definitely a female.

“And Talia should know a thing or two about ‘faking’ it," came a male voice.

"Bite me."

"Not tonight. I have a headache."

Jane opened her eyes, expecting to see monsters. There was an annoyingly bright tungsten light directly overhead, and Jane was lying on a long metal table. A number of young men and women surrounded Jane, including the handsome young man she had seen briefly earlier.

“Where . . . am I?" she groaned, trying to sit up but quickly lying back down as the pain in her ribs became excruciating.

“Well, that's a bit of a long story." That was from a beautiful black girl, the owner of the first voice she had heard.

"I'm Talia, and these rogues are Michael, Mindy, Matthew and . . ."

"Two many 'M' names," Jane muttered. 'Damn,' she thought. ‘It's like an episode of Beverly Hills 90210.' This thought came when she noticed that everyone Talia pointed to was a highly attractive young person.

Talia smiled.