PART 1:

"The Ends Justify The Means--- That's Martinelli," Wolfe says to me, jabbing a fat and fur-laden finger my way as the military transport SUV bumps along the cobblestones of Old Boston.

"Machiavelli, pretty sure," I think, but don't say. Wolfe's in charge, and this is my first day with Zeta-Team. I'm a professional, after all. I want to make a good impression.

"Machiavelli, idiot," Ssu says in her strange di-tonal voice. One is the voice of a woman in her late-thirties. The other is the scratchy, deep tone of the Assyrian Mystic she shares a winged form with.

I shudder.

I can't help it.

I'm only human. Literally. And in this crowd, that's a novelty.

Wolfe makes a sort of complaining sound as the SUV goes over a rock or under a pothole-- I'm not sure which. Either way it makes us all jostle up, and he slams his head against the car door.

How did I get here?

But of course I know how I got here.

Competency.

It's a curse, really. Not literal, like the man-creature to my right, Markus. But a curse nonetheless.

My station here as the only pure-human member of Zeta is a jarringly short story. One moment I was getting my Master's in International Affairs, looking around at CIA desk-jobs, or non-combat field jobs.

Then there's a physics defying eclipse, and bodies are ripping out of graves. The world turns on its head. It's funny-- I actually did end up using my Master's degree. They framed it for me in a glass frame, and I shattered it over my ex's head, then stabbed him in the brain with one of the shards.

Thanks, Harvard.

Harvard.

I've been on this road before, I realize. It's not so far from the downtown bars I went to with friends a handful of times.

Next to me, Wolfe cups his hands over his snout-like mouth and huffs into them. Even in the SUV it's freezing, and his breath fogs in the air between the cracks in his black furred claws.

"Of all people to be cold, surely you're in no place to complain," Markus says in an English nobles accent so strong I thought it was reserved for Americans playing Jane Austen characters in movies.

"Do you get cold, Markus?" Ssu asks, cocking her head and blinking. It's then I notice her eyes are dual-pupiled, like a goat's.

Another shudder.

None of the rest of our four-person team notice.

"No, I do not," Markus says.

"So really," Wolfe says, "Of all people it's you who shouldn't complain."

Wolfe glances out the bulletproof windows of the SUV. The dead are outside in their droves. A small following gathers behind the vehicle. We're closing in.

There's a necromancer at Boston Library, and it's Zeta team's job to take him out.

"What was I saying?" Wolfe asks, looking around.

"The Ends Justify the Means," I prompt.

"Ah, right," he says. "The thing to remember is that we won't eat you, William. You're part of the team now."

"But you eat people," I say softly. "Innocents."

"If they aren't innocents, they do not sustain us," Markus says, in a voice that seems to be weighed with the same regret as mine.

"The Ends Justify the Means," Wolfe repeated.

"Right," Ssu says. "The famous Martinelli quote."

"Machiavelli," Wolfe says distractedly, glancing out the window.

These idiots are going to get me killed, or eat me. Those are my options.

I'm not impressed, I will admit. I start to sweat.

Zeta-team is supposed to be one of the best. How---

"It's from the Prince," Wolfe says, causing all three of us to look at him. He smiles. "It's from the Prince. But the quote often ignores the context that the Prince itself was not meant to be the guidebook for the conniving it's seen as today. And though he wrote it to alleviate his political exile from Florence, the barest critical eye will reveal Machiavelli's contempt for the suggestions he's now so famous for writing the literal book on."

I stared at Wolfe.

Ssu shook her head.

Markus even huffed out a laugh.

But Wolfe wasn't smiling. His eyes pulled away from the glass window as the SUV rolled to a stop.

"Let's go," he said, and stood.