Breathing hard, practically wheezing, Joe stumbled across the rocks atop the hundred-foot bluffs of Topanga Canyon Park. He knew he wasn't going to make it.

It had looked easy enough. The division had received reports of what looked like Garou sign in Topanga Canyon, so his team had been ordered to check it out.

Now that he thought back on it, it had looked too easy. The caern area, if that's what it was, looked wide open during aerial survey, with no one around. So they'd driven up the road, then walked in with the silver-loaded automatics to give it a closer look.

Now he was the only one left alive.

Water. If he could find a stream and lose his scent in it, they might not be able to track him. There might still be a creek in the canyon below.

He ran along the canyon edge, praying to whatever god would listen to him that he wouldn't set his foot down in a crack in the earth or make a misstep and fall headlong into it.

He spotted a way down, a great crack in the ground that offered a less steep pathway through the cliff toward the bottom of the canyon. The ground within it was soft, sandy, full of rocks and other unseen obstacles, and the sand dragged at his feet, slowing him.

He plowed recklessly through it and down.

At last he fell a final three feet, managing to land on his boots, feeling the shock go all the way up into his hips. He was on the overgrown canyon floor.

At least two of them had died quickly. Tom had had his throat ripped out, Benny his neck broken, in the first few awful seconds of combat with the leaping black forms.

Ed hadn't been so lucky.

Two Furies shapeshifted, their forms flowing horribly until they resembled a cross between a woman and a giant wolf, each standing seven feet high. They'd held his arms while another extended one long claw and gutted Ed like a sardine, disembowelling him.

After they were finished with Ed, they turned to Joe.

Instead of killing him outright, the leader of the caern, a raven-haired beauty in human form, had come to a decision. Five "cubs" needed a Rite of Passage, she said.

They'd waited until dark, then set him loose, giving him half an hour's head start, before setting the youngsters after him.

The cubs were five teenage girls. Weeks or months ago, they'd been ordinary female teenagers, perhaps hanging out on the beach or in shopping malls -- human beings.

He wondered if they'd eaten the bodies of the rest of his team.

A long, low howl echoed through the canyon. He couldn't tell where it came from; the way the cry wavered, rising, then falling in pitch, too complex for a true wolf howl, defied location. It shuddered down the scale into silence.

There was something primal about that sound -- something that spoke to an ancient part of him that remembered huddling fearfully in a cave while creatures like these prowled outside.

His mind shrank away from visualizing their nightmare-black forms.

The Delirium, they called it -- the instinctive terror that prevented most humans from even seeing werewolves. Pentex First Team agents were supposed to be completely immune to it, to any human fear.

Maybe he wasn't. If he ever got out of this, he'd probably have nightmares about huge black she-wolves for the rest of his life.

He plowed his way through the pricking, rustling bushes toward the center of the canyon bottom. There was a gully there, where water flowed during the winter rains, but no creek -- only a few scattered ponds.

His throat closed, but his legs kept moving. He crossed the pathetic streambed, running across the other side, heading roughly downhill, toward the far-distant ocean.

From the edge of the canyon wall, fifty feet overhead, there were rustles. He couldn't help but look up. Black forms were silhoetted there against the moonlit sky, loping. He heard a burst of small yips, almost more like conversation than like animal noises. They sounded happy, excited.

A sob welled up from his throat as he ran hopelessly, despairingly.

There was a soft thud back under the slot, another heavy body landing on the soft earth of the canyon floor. Some death-wish forced him to glance back over his shoulder, to stop, to see the face of his pursuer.

White moonlight shone off the bare skin of the naked young woman. He had enough time to register large breasts, dark hair blown back behind her face, streaming down over her shoulders in shadowy strands.

"We're hunting you, Joe!" she called, laughing, spreading out her arms. Then her body began to Change as more forms leaped down to the canyon floor behind her.

He gasped, turned and ran again.

Rapid paw pads sounded right behind him.

Expecting at any moment to feel the impact of a heavy body on his back, or the pain of powerful jaws at the back of his neck, he was disappointed. The sounds of galloping veered off to one side, into the thick brush -- then ahead of him.

He halted, turning. Below the moonlit canyon walls, the brush-choked floor was in deep shadow. His stalker could be anywhere in front of him.

Then another great black form suddenly trotted directly in front of him, and his heart nearly stopped. It, too, had outdistanced him, but he hadn't heard it. Its shoulder came up to his belly.

Its tongue lolled out over its deadly fangs, a parody of mocking laughter. Then it glided back into the brush.

He ran again. He dodged away from a black shadow that turned out to be only a heap of rubble, another one that proved to be a dark clump of brush. He took the middle route, away from the threatening undergrowth on either side, across pale sandy earth.

The silver light of the rising moon poured down, reaching the bottom at last, but lighting only scattered bushes and boulders now. The sound of his footfalls and the pounding of his heart competed for volume. How far had he come? Half a mile more? A mile? Far enough?

He halted again, gasping, lungs aching horribly. He was nearly done.

Had he somehow outrun them? They were just teenagers -- probably not as fit or experienced as him.

The dark bushes were silent. A faint spark of hope flickered in his mind.

It died when a massive dark shadow stirred beside a mule-fat bush on his left. As he stared, frozen, it was suddenly before him, rearing onto its hind legs, huge as a grizzly. A bearlike arm slashed down in front of him, and there was a single sharp pain on his left cheek. The jaws grinned with white-fanged cruelty.

He whirled and fled back the way he'd come, blood trickling hotly down his burning cheek. He was making whimpering noises that had nothing to do with any human language.

Then two more forms were there, loping easily beside him, tongues lolling with enjoyment of the chase.

The one on the right darted her head forward, and suddenly his right hand was seized in jaws that crushed it like an eggshell in a white-hot burst of pain.

He shrieked and tried to lunge away. He used up his final burst of speed, his last bit of strength. It was useless; the three black forms bounded right beside and behind him. Teeth sank into his hip, tearing easily through the denim into the meat and muscle beneath, then yanking free to let him run some more.

His legs slowed, growing numb, as he began to sink into shock.

As he staggered past a clump of brush, another black form leaped from it, slamming into his legs. He fell like a poleaxed steer. The giant wolf leaped away, to be joined by yet another.

He rolled over, making it to all fours before he was struck again from a different angle, knocked rolling again. His left wrist exploded in fire as it was grabbed and smashed with a single immensely powerful bite.

The third time he was knocked down, he gave up, his mind going completely. He curled into a whimpering, muttering ball while the five black wolves crowded around him like an audience of devils, waiting.

When he looked up at them again, they moved in to finish the job.