The wolf charged through the trees, just beyond the tiny clearing where Alcuard was making his stand with Lito. His body still bore the wounds left by werewolf's mighty jaws, and his confidence was deeply shaken by the narrowness of his survival.

And now Isabella was asking him to act as bait in a plan she wasn't sharing. As much as Alcuard was enjoying the rush of excitement over a battle he might not be able to win, it also was not a fight in which he wished to handcuff himself.

"She wants me to stand here and wait? You're sure?"

"Sounds like it," Lito Cardego replied, a dozen feet away. "Just hold your position. She has a plan of some kind."

Lito turned away. "He's in position. But I'd like to know what the hell you're up to."

The wolf skidded to a stop just at the edge of the trees and stared with malevolence and barely restrained rage. The werewolf looked to Lito, and the glare was tinged with wariness, and even respect. He looked up at Isabella in the dropship, and the caution was replaced by irritation.

And then the wolf looked at Alcuard, and he knew the monster meant to kill him.

"Got what?" Lito bellowed irritably, his finger resting on his ear. "What the hell is your plan, you vapid floozy?"

The wolf howled. The sound was a battle cry, as terrifying as hearing the screams of a thousand men about to charge across a field. Alcuard grit his teeth as the wolf leaned forward. He braced himself as the beast's paws ripped up grass and dirt as it surged forward. And he forced himself to hold his position.

The wolf devoured the space in heartbeats, rushing forward with the relentless power of a locomotive, charging with fangs gleaming in the harsh glare of Isabella's searchlight, rushing onward until it leapt into the air.

And in a swish of inky blackness, disappeared.

Alcuard stopped, stunned by his own confusion. And in that silence, he heard a distant yelping sound, like an unhappy dog watching someone else eat a steak. The noise was interrupted rather abruptly by a loud splash.

"Portal," Lito muttered to himself. Alcuard turned to Luca's father just in time to see him strike his forehead with his palm, hard enough to make the older warrior stagger. "Ow, motherfucker, I hit hard," Lito said, and he rubbed at his temples.

"What just happened?" Alcuard asked, as confused as he ever remembered being.

"Portal," Lito replied as if it were an explanation. He turned away and put his finger to his ear. "Love of my life, would you be willing to bring three lawn chairs and the blood transfusion kit down to the beach?"

There was a pause in the conversation where Lito nodded his head. "Yeah, that last smack you heard was me facepalming. Cannot believe I never thought of that."

There was another, shorter pause. "Meet you at the beach, love."

Lito turned to Alcuard and gestured with his thumb down the hill. "Come on. Seems our work night's finished."

"What do you mean?" Alcuard asked, the stupefying aspect of his confusion fading. His own ignorance was beginning to be slightly irksome, and his host appeared to be reluctant to explain much of anything.

"No point in telling you. It'll ruin the joke," Lito said as he stared marching down the hill.

Alcuard follows, through the dense forest, through the luminous moonlight. He follows a man who only minutes ago had been tense, alert, almost set alight with the thrilling horror of fighting death. To see Lito Cadego now strolling through the woods as if there were nothing in the dangerous left in the world was uniquely disquieting.

In a few minutes, they reached the beach. In the water, Alcuard could see the werewolf swimming towards them. The wolf was still a massive and menacing shape, its rage still as palpable as it had been before, but for the first time, Alcuard could see the wolf wasn't charging forward.

It was fleeing.

Just before it reached the beach, music began to thunder in the still night. It was strangely familiar, classical music, that seemed to build louder and louder. It crescendoed just as the dropship's searchlight illumined Luca, and the wolf paddled faster to try and escape the water.

Just as it reached the beach, a black shape swept through the air, and the werewolf vanished.

In the distance, there was an indignant yelp, and a splash so loud it sounded like someone had dropped a boulder into the lake.

Lito howled in laughter, doubling over and falling into the sand.

"Did she just-" Alcuard began to say.

"Yep."

"With a-"

"Yep."

"She just portalled a werewolf into the middle of a lake," Alcuard said quietly.

"Yep," Lito managed to gasp between gales of laughter. "Did you hear that whine he made when he fell back in?"

"I did," Alcuard said, and to his own surprise he smiled. Then giggled. And finally the humour pushed its way out of his chest, and he started laughing. The hilarity hit him in the stomach, knocked his knees out from under him, and he fell to the sand.

Alcuard couldn't say how long he laughed, or how long he lay in the sand, but eventually, a hand reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, still giggling, to see Anna holding out her hand to help him up.

"What's so funny?" Anna Cardego asked. Even as he extended her hand to help Alcuard up, she wasn't looking at him. Instead, her gaze was turned away, staring at Lito still lying in the sand.

"Our son," Lito gasped, as he managed to sit. "Portal. Middle of the lake."

"Oh?" Anna asked. She had a lawn chair in her other hand, Alcuard hadn't noticed it before. She unfolded it and sat down, leaning forward in her chair with her hands under her chin and a grin so wide her head might have been able to detach like a South Park Canadian.

"Wait for it," Lito said, and he staggered up to his feet. He stepped past Alcuard, to a little red wagon that rested in the sand nearby. He took out a lawn chair and a small canvas bag and carried both over beside Anna.

"Alcuard, grab a chair and have a seat," Anna said, waving with her left hand.

Alcuard took the last chair from the wagon, and set it down at Anna's left. As he settled in, his eye caught the shimmer of shifting water in the distance, and he squinted to watch the werewolf climb out of the water onto the beach again.

Luca stopped just long enough to shake the water out of his fur, but that pause proved to be a terrible mistake. Because over the dropship's loudspeakers, Isabella screamed out "surprise," just as the wormhole swung through the space the wolf had occupied.

Alcuard turned to the middle of the lake, where there was another indignant yelp and a terrific splash.

The laugh that pushed itself past Anna's lips was so powerful it pushed the back of her chair over, sending her tumbling back into the sand. "Oh my, was that?"

"Yep. Our son being hoisted by his own portard," Lito said with a cheeky grin.

"Portard?" Alcuard asked.

"You know. Hoisted by your own petard. Shakespeare. Hamlet."

"But portard?" Alcuard asked.

"It's a portal pun," Lito said.

"Darling, you are all I cherish in this world. But I will leave you if you try and make a career of standup comedy," Anna said.

"It would be warranted," Lito conceded. Alcuard was surprised to see Lito had an iv in his left forearm. He followed the tubing it connected to, and found that past a small machine there was a pint glass resting in the sand, with a bit of dark red liquid in the bottom.

"That isn't necessary," Alcuard said, holding out his hands. "I am well fed."

"I disagree." Lito shook his head slowly and pointed out into the lake. "There are very few things that are genuinely necessary. Expressing your gratitude is one of them."

"Stop when you're about halfway," Anna said. "I'll spare the rest."

"Really, you are too kind," Alcuard said.

"Not at all. You put yourself in danger to not only help save our son but to keep him from doing something he would never forgive himself for," Anna said, as Lito took the iv out of his arm and handed the contraption over.

Alcuard nodded, accepting it. He turned his gaze back to the water, where Luca was attempting, yet again, to swim to shore. The wolf paddled rapidly, determinedly, for another minute before it reached the beach, and tried to bolt into the trees.

But Isabella was too quick for him. With another flash of swirling darkness, the wolf was dumped out of the portal and back into the lake.

They laughed again, stopping only when Anna handed him a glass full of blood. He took it from her gratefully, leaned back, and set the glass beneath his nose to breathe in the smell.

"I can't remember the last time someone's blood smelled this good," Alcuard said. He smiled happily and leaned back in his chair, not willing to drink it yet.

Anna turned to Lito and held out her hand. "Beer me."

Lito opened the pouch at his belt, reached inside, and drew out a pair of glass bottles. He opened the caps and handed one over to Anna.

Anna turned back to Alcuard. "Salut," she said, and she tapped his glass gentle with the bottom of her bottle.

"To the easiest full moon we've ever had," Lito said, and he raised his beer into the air. "And to Luca finally making some real goddam friends."

Alcuard raised his own glass in the air. "To a better world than the one I left," he said.

He let himself sip the blood in his glass and closed his eyes. It tasted like the warmth of a hearth-fire, of comfort and joy, of hard decisions made for love, of sweat and toil done for reasons worthy of the pain. In this cup was a taste he could never have found in the world he had left behind.

In this cup was proof of the value of what he had done.

Alcuard drank deeply and rejoiced.