The voice on the radio predicted a snowstorm, and you are now glad that you took their advice and stayed home. Fat flakes tumble by your window, burying the cars and turning the street into a slushy mess.

Something has you on edge tonight, and even though it is well past the witching hour you are unable to sleep. Maybe it is the snow. Maybe it is the way that the landlord looked at you today, as if something was wrong with your face. Maybe it is how quiet things have been in your apartment tonight, and how you have not heard a sound from your next door neighbor.

This is Nimue's Bar.

Kaia receives the package exactly three days after Officer C appeared in her apartment. It is brown and unremarkable, tied shut with a neat piece of string. She picks it up in one hand and tests its weight. It's heavier than she expected. The tag on the package reads:

Dear Miss Sommers,

Please deliver this to 263 North Cinder Street at Midnight tonight. Someone will be there to receive the drop.

Have a wonderful night,

Officer C

Cinder Street. Now that is a problem. Cinder street isn't exactly located in the rough part of the Grotto (indeed, the rough part of the Grotto seems to move around entirely at random), but the place has a reputation of being less than friendly. Certainly not somewhere one should be taking a stroll at midnight.

Kaia checks her watch. She had begged Nimue for a night off tonight, claiming that she had a date to get ready for. Nimue was only too happy to oblige, promptly shooing her out the door and making Kaia promise to give her all the details later. Right now it is 11:25, giving her a little over half an hour to get across the city to Cinder street. She will have to hurry.

Seven flights of stairs later, Kaia is on the ground and moving. The wind has picked up since she walked home, and snow falls in tiny, ephemeral flakes. When they land on her skin, there is no body heat to melt them, and instead the flakes sit there, causing her body to sparkle in the orange light of the streetlamps. No one else is on the streets tonight; they are all inside, avoiding the cold, doing whatever it is that people with lives outside of work do together. She feels totally alone in the world. If she froze right now, fell asleep in the snow and then burned up when the sun rose, would anyone notice? Or would they just go on without her, oblivious that she had even existed in the first place?

#

Cinder street originally received its name from the events that supposedly took place there. The story went that it was the headquarters of a revolution against the Circle. One of the Circle was said to have appeared out of thin air and turned the entire street into a blazing inferno, and afterward nothing but cinders remained. Kaia is not sure that she believes this story. No one could ever seem to provide any details about the revolution that had taken place here, and it would be just like the Circle to spread rumors about something that had never happened.

Seeing the street challenges her skepticism. As opposed to the surrounding gray and red, the bricks hear are charcoal black, and the entire area smells faintly of ash. Unmarked doors in the side of the street are lit by burning lanterns instead of electric lamps, lighting the entire area in a flickering red.

Unlike the rest of the city this night, Cinder street is not deserted. Humanoid forms huddle in doorways and around burning trash cans. All of them exhibit some form of bestial features: Eyes on the sides of their heads, long frills on their necks, or manes of coarse hair. They look up as Kaia enters the alley, and she tries to draw herself up when so that she looks a bit taller. It's all right, she tells herself. They don't know what she is, which means they probably won't risk messing with her. In the Grotto, being anonymous is a form of protection. Too many muggers have tried to rob a normal-looking person, only for them to transform into some sort of wailing abomination the moment they felt threatened.

At last, she arrives at the door labeled 263. The wood is painted bright yellow, making it stand out from the blackened walls around it. A moment later, the door swings outward, and above her stands a lupine shifter with a crescent moon tattooed across his chest. Aiden, in his secondary form. Her heart leaps into her throat. Would he make the connection?

“Yes?” he growls, glaring at her through red eyes, in which there is no recognition.

Kaia realizes belatedly that Aiden does not remember her. It's a relief, but still as crushing as always. She thrusts the package toward him. “I was told to deliver this to you.” As she says it, the strangeness of the situation hits her. Why would the Circle want a package delivered to a group of their most vocal and violent opponents?

Aiden takes the package from her in a massive paw, then raises it to his face and sniffs it gingerly. He smiles, flashing his canines as he tucks the package into his pocket. “Come on inside,” he says, beckoning her with a clawed finger. Kaia looks around for some sort of excuse, but when none presents itself she reluctantly follows him inside. Aiden closes the door behind her, and leads her down a spacious hallway onto a balcony overlooking an enormous room, lit by floodlights tied to the ceiling with bungee cables and chains. Also tied to the ceiling are a seemingly random assortment of objects, including a refrigerator and a rusty engine block which look as if they could fall at any moment. Wordless music pounds from unseen speakers. All around the balcony are crowds of shifters, each displaying some sort of crescent moon on their bodies. At the bottom of the pit, two snarling shifters are locked in combat.

“What do you think?” Aiden yells at Kaia over the music. “I thought your employer might enjoy knowing what we've got going on here.” He tears open the package, revealing a smattering of expensive bills. Aiden expertly thumbs them between his fingers, grunting in approval.

Meanwhile, Kaia stares at the two circling shifters, each wearing a shape that is more beast than human. One of them, who sports the features of some sort of feline, is limping, blood dripping from a deep bite wound in his thigh. “It's awful,” she yells back. “How can you do this?”

Aiden laughs. “Did you know that the Circle's official reason for banning hybrid forms was that it makes us more violent?” On the floor of the room, the feline's opponent, some sort of canine shifter, feints forward, snapping at the feline's face. “They're full of crap. The real reason is because we don't blend. They want everyone to integrate, and they can't stand that us Shifters have our own communities, or the knowledge that we are the greatest of all extranormals. They think it undermines their power.” Down on the floor, the canine darts forward. The feline turns to run but is not fast enough, and the canine sinks his teeth into the back of the feline shifter's neck. “Hybridism doesn't make us more violent. The Circle does that just fine.”

The canine releases the feline, who collapses in a heap on the floor. As he does so, his face turns towards the balcony, and a chill runs through Kaia. It's Dirk. She didn't recognize him before because she's never seen him in full-on hybrid form. It would be comical, seeing the head of his cat form stacked on his human body, if not for the blood all over his neck and legs. His opponent raises his head towards Kaia and Aiden.

“A shame,” Aiden says to her, almost as an aside. “I saved his life as a kid, and I was the one to convince him to come back. He used to be one of our best, but he's gone soft. Soft and scared.” He raises a hand to his throat and draws a line across it with his finger. “This revolution don't have room for weakness.”

Kaia's brain does not catch up with her until she has already shoved her way through the crowd of shifters and hurled herself into the pit, landing hard amongst the rocks and broken bottles that litter the ground. The crowd of shifters go eerily silent, and one of them must be in charge of the speakers because the droning music dies a moment later. She shrugs her coat off and casts it to the side.

“What do you think you're doing?” Aiden calls down at her. He sounds more amused than anything else. “Is this your employer's idea of testing us? Seeing if we're worth of his aid?”

Kaia's knees are shaking, and she has to force her voice to come out of her mouth. “Let me fight. If I win, he goes free.” She jerks her head at Dirk's bleeding form. He has to be ok. He's one of the only two people who knows who she is. He's half of her entire world.

Several of the shifters laugh openly at her pronouncement, but Aiden does not. He considers her for several long moments, before addressing the canine shifter, who is looking rather perplexed by the whole ordeal. “You up for another round?”

The canine shifter turns toward Kaia. His body is covered in thick white fur, and his muzzle is stained red. “Of course. I think I can handle one girl.” Kaia privately agrees, but she can't back out now.

Aiden gestures, and the music cuts back in with a powerful enough drop that she feels it in her stomach. The items tied to the ceiling shudder, and the refrigerator chained to the rafters lists ominously to one side. “Then let's begin!” he roars, and the crowd echoes him, their screams blending with the music. The white-furred leaps forward with a snarl, and Kaia rolls to the side, close enough that she can feel the air ripple around him. She's too shell-shocked to respond with anything, and has to back up to get out of the way of his snapping jaws. Spittle splatters across her, soaking her shirt.

The corner of the room presses into the small of her back, and Lowe smiles with a mouthful of fangs. The crowd is openly laughing and jeering at her now, and the music is so loud that she can barely think. It dawns on Kaia that this is nothing like in Nimue's bar, where she can get by on theatrics and acting tough. She actually has to fight her way out of this. She jumps forward and hits the shifter as hard as she can with the heel of her palm. It's like hitting a sack of cement.

A moment later, Kaia is bodily flung back into the center of the ring, and claws rake across her side. It isn't anything close to the pain caused by the sunlight on her skin, but it hurts. She struggles to her feet, nearly slipping on a loose rock. The shifter advances slowly on her, feinting forward and back. He's playing with her. Desperately, Kaia snatches up the rock by her feet and casts it into the air as hard as she can. It flies far over Lowe, and he grins, shaking his head. “You're a terrible shot,” he snarls, before leaping at her.

He has barely left the ground when the refrigerator, previously dangling precariously from chains on the ceiling, tumbles down onto his legs with a deafening crash.

“I don't know,” Kaia gasps, feeling at her side. Her hand comes away a little bloody, but it's not as bad as she expected. “I think I'm pretty good, actually.” She knows that she is going to crash soon, she is going to emotionally fall apart and be unable to move. Not yet, though. There are still things to do. She grabs her coat and stumps over to where Dirk is, and slowly brushes a hand through his messy, gray beard. He shivers, and transforms in moments from injured shifter to injured cat. She scoops him up in her arms and wraps her coat around both of them. “Can we go now?” she yells at Aiden, over the white furred shifter's howling. She means it to come out defiant, but instead she just sounds tired.

Aiden spreads his arms wide, if possible grinning even more widely than before. “I never go back on my word. Besides, that was pretty impressive. If you were a shifter, I'd practically beg you to join us.” He crosses his arms and cocks his head. “What's your name, girl?”

Kaia sighs and tosses her hair, pulling Dirk closer to her chest. “It's K. Just K.” She makes her way through the crowd of shifters, who part around her, giving her looks that range from murderous to defferential. When she opens the door, the cold night air sweeps in, and snowflakes begins to gather on her face again. “Come on, Dirk. Let's go home.”