The arafel spirit came racing back to him, darting into its glass sanctuary.  Aviad cupped his hands around the pendant, looking out across the dark courtyard.  With the ritual spell broken, he could hear the pop of an apparition.  Halfway across the cobblestones, a flash of electric white light and a horrible cry signaled the end of their direwolf ally.

Clearly, it was time to go.  The plan was to bolt if and when the spell was broken, before the Ministry team could signal for help and call in reinforcements.  Aviad looked over at Tawse, panic rising in his throat.  Just as his ally gave him the signal to retreat, there was another crack of apparition and the dog catcher appeared behind him.

Nope nope nope noooope.

The duel between Tawse and the Ministry agent was at such close quarters that there was nothing he could do to help without risking hitting the big Scottish wizard.  Far better to stick to the plan and run.  Tawse was a big boy; he could take care of himself.

Aviad fumbled in his pocket for the portkey.  Just as a burst of red light rushed towards him, his fingers closed around it.

The world jolted around him in a nauseating swirl, and with a sudden jerk, he vanished from sight.

The Scotsman growled loudly when the Dog Catcher's fist connected with his side, sending a searing pain coursing through his side from the battered stab wound.  He could feel the man's grappling weight immediately shift against him, felt his weight transfer though he couldn't anticipate what the action was for.  All he registered was an opening and, as he straightened up after the blow to his side, he took the opening the man's step offered and brought his knee up, swiftly, into Bagnold's space. 

The action left the Dog Catcher's intended leg open as a target and his large frame lurched to the side.  His shoulder hit the ground with a heavy thud.  There was a moment of delay as Cinaed tried to find his bearing after the impact and a moment that, he was sure, Bagnold would have taken full advantage of. 

But, in that moment, the long, low, pitiful cry of the remaining werewolf offered a fateful moment of distraction. 

The werewolf seemed to be just the diversion he needed.  From the ground, Cinaed lifted his wand and pointed it at the quaint food cafe that had served as the backdrop for Aviad's ritual.  "battuo inflammata," he called out as a rolling blast of fire sped across the plaza and bulldozed its way into the building. 

As a werewolf prowled its way into the clearing and the cafe erupted in flames, Cinaed quickly pushed himself to his feet.  With a loud crack, he turned on the spot and vanished.

Whatever it was that knocked itself around Lazarus's dry ribcage - ghost, Pentral, or banter - had rattled his skull. It took him more time than he had to swing his gaze to Cohen before the both he and the bearded giant saved their own skins. Lazarus's hand closed around the clean night air that Cohen's next had just occupied a second later.

He seemed to grow and shrink in a massive deep breath, a function for his heart's memory of calm more than a true necessity. He rolled his head on his shoulders, nostrils flared, and shook out his arms like a wet dog. So much excitement in a night, how was an old man to cope?

A sudden conflagration knocked him back along with a clatter of patio furniture. He darted away to a safe distance and saw the cafe was burning. His face fell, a thousand memories that didn't seem like his flashed behind his eyes, and a sound like a train grew between his ears. Living moments, oh, they don't come cheap. Once he'd be running in, now he ought be running out, so today he stood in the spot between coming and going for just long enough for a lifetime to pass by.

Humans could handle a fire, but it took the magic-touched living to cope with a werewolf. And she was stalking the lawn, similarly pulled and pushed at the edge of the fire light.

"She's there," he rasped to Blake and Bagnold. There wasn't time now. The burning cafe would bring the torches and pitchforks.

He'd lost his concentration just as Tawse drove his knee directly into Kurby's already aching side.  The werewolf hunter let out a strangled gasp, doubling over partway as the bigger wizard went down.  Pain shot through his side, making his vision go white.  Kurby gritted his teeth, trying to fight through it, but then Tawse shouted out a spell and he instinctively dropped to the ground.

A wave of fire exploded out from his opponent's wand -- but towards the Muggle cafe, not at him.  Before Kurby could react, could try to turn and jump on Tawse again or put a stop to any of this, the big Scottish wizard had turned on the spot and vanished with a loud crack.

Letting out a groan, the werewolf hunter dropped his head back to the ground, letting his forehead rest against the pavement.  He stayed still for a long moment, first to catch his breath again, and then for a few seconds longer so he could take stock of himself.

His right side ached.  It was an acute, disorienting pain that got worse when he tried to take a deep breath.  His left shoulder was hurting too, with a sharp, burning sensation that made him grit his teeth.  He felt exhausted.  His ears still buzzed like they were ringing, although whether the phantom sound was the result of his failed apparition at the start of this encounter or from the concussive spell that had been fired right by him, he couldn't have guessed.

He didn't want to move.  But then Lazarus's raspy warning cut across the square, and Kurby steeled himself.  There was still one more werewolf to deal with.

Slowly, gingerly, he lifted his head.  Swallowing, he scanned the courtyard for the other werewolf.  Red sparks gleamed in the sky overhead.  But with the fire of the engulfed cafe burning brightly behind him, it was harder to see into the darkness.

But then suddenly, he spotted it.  Snarling, the werewolf charged at Blake, bouncing off the Auror Trainee's shield spell.  Clenching his teeth, Kurby shoved himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the jolt of pain that shot through his right side.  He'd abandoned his silver chain to take down the direwolf.  But if he was going to have to deal with one more goddamned lycanthrope -- particularly one that he didn't want to kill, since for all he knew, it could have been a werewolf that Tawse had captured and turned loose -- then his best bet was to retrieve the chain first, and then figure out how the hell to safely subdue it.

There was a flash of movement, and a small, dark shape raced towards the werewolf, something silver gleaming in its wake.   The reddish-brown fox darted in front of the much larger wolf, ducking under its snapping jaws, and then sprinted around it again, making a tight circle around the canine.  As it ran, it left a thin silver thread trailing behind it, which it managed to wrap more and more around the wolf's legs with each repeating circle.

Before long, the werewolf had had enough.  It let out a loud snarl, attempting to twist around sharply so that it could lunge at the fox, but by then, its four legs were so tightly entangled in the silver twine that it stumbled.  The fox immediately dropped the remaining twine and raced back away, scampering well out of the werewolf's reach.

"Necto nassa!" Charlie Harris's voice called out shakily from the edge of the patio. 

The ball of silver twine immediately unraveled and stitched itself into something resembling a net.  With a wave of Harris's wand, the silver net settled over the snarling werewolf, wrapping around it and wrestling it to the ground.

The fox shifted, and then seemed to straighten to take on the human form of Tessa Fenneken.  Tossing her blonde hair back over her shoulder, she raised her wand and cast a Lumos Maxima spell overhead.  A bright ball of glowing light rose into the air, illuminating the small clearing.

"What happened?" Tessa asked, looking to Fauna as she started toward the momentarily subdued werewolf.  Catching sight of the Auror Trainee's posture, of the red blooming around the edges of her hand, she stopped short, her eyes bulging.  "Blake, did you get bit?"

The shield spell held for a few seconds, but when it fell, her thoughts churned slow and sluggish. Fauna kept her wand raised, trembling where she knelt, looking death in the face. The wolf's eyes flashed. It gave a shake of its head and crouched to charge at her again.

She felt nothing, she saw nothing else.

Then a streak of red darted at the werewolf. A small red dog and a silver thread. A fire roared nearby, sending waves of heat rolling across the pavement and warming her skin, yet she shivered, sweat running down her face. Her arm burned and bled. A cut in her neck burned and bled.

Fauna started to sink against the table, glancing around, heart racing, blood running but her thoughts too slow. Wolf caught? Tawse and the strange man - she glanced around wildly. Gone. Harris' voice shaky but there in the night. Bagnold struggling to stand, but there.

Death evaded. What should she do? Nothing was coming to kill her now.

Fauna let out a shuddering breath, glancing at her bleeding arm. She pointed her wand at the injury, about to cast the spell, if she could just remember the right word, the right pronunciation. It wouldn't close the wound but it would slow the blood flow. It was... important.

Tessa Fenneken appeared under a halo of light. The sun against the cold moon. Fauna blinked in confusion, her wand slipping in her slick hand.

"Bit?"

Staima! That was the spell. The spell that would stop the bleeding.

Had she...? No.

"T-Tawse," her teeth chattered. "Shot at us. And someone. Someone else and Tawse. Set this up. Used a..."

She trailed off. Shit, what had they used? A candle spell? Net spell? The cafe was burning and the real monsters were gone.

Bagnold's other pups arrived, fresh and sprightly, one of them a little orange fox. It did little to calm Lazarus, though, for the fire and the blood and the great ball of light was like a thousand guns going off all at once right in your hear over and over. It was time he left. And the math worked out: minus two villains and plus two cousins had the team at a strong net four.  Lazarus was happily spare, then.

The place was lit up like a baseball stadium now, no shreds of shadow for any comfort. He stalked across the pavement to Bagnold who looked like a frayed knot. Laz put his hand on his shoulder and said, "well, that was fun."

Then from his deep pockets, Lazarus produced what he'd taken from Poor Richard and dropped them into Kurby's possession: a pistol, a walkie-talkie, and a large ring of keys. If he had any worry at all that Bagnold and the kids couldn't handle themselves, then Lazarus might have lingered awkward and underfoot. But no, every tick that passed brought muggles and mages down on this thing and he wasn't about to be a vampire standing in the sun.

Or so he told himself. Truth might more truly be he was shook down to his boots and needed to clear his head and chest.

Laz clapped Bagnold once solidly on the shoulder and kept on walking until he reached the edge of the light, then he slipped away aa fuzzy brown bat.

Before he could move to apparate between the werewolf and Blake, the other two Capture Unit members burst onto the scene.  Fenneken and Harris worked quickly to get the wolf under control, although it wasn't quite subdued.

Lazarus found him next, clapping him on the shoulder and dumping a collection of Muggle instruments in his hands.  Kurby regarded them, momentarily baffled, as the vampire retreated to his smallest form and fled the scene.  The keys seemed the least harmless, so he slipped them into his pocket; the strange black box and the metal wand were tucked into his belt, freeing his hands so he could apparate.

There was a loud crack as the werewolf hunter apparated over to the fallen direwolf to free his silver chain, and then another as he vanished again, this time reappearing next to the werewolf that was struggling in Harris's net.  Kurby staggered slightly, but he quickly caught himself.  He snapped the chain like a whip to wrap it around the werewolf's neck, and then cracked it a second time.  The second jerk caused the silver links to snap in place like a stiff rod, giving him a tool to control the monster's head as it snarled and twisted, trying to fight its way free of the silver net.

Harris was struggling to keep the net on top of the werewolf using his wand, and Blake looked to be fading quickly.  With his own hands now occupied with the chain, that meant that Fenneken had the only wand free.  But she was now gawking at the Auror trainee.

"Send up green sparks and then get that damned thing locked down!" he snapped at his teammate, gritting his teeth as he yanked back on the chain to stop the werewolf from lunging at Harris.

Tessa stared wide-eyed at Blake, gaped at the faintly-smoking dead direwolf lying in the middle of the patio, oggled the fire burning behind them.  The loud pop of the apparition, followed by Bagnold's barked order, snapped her back out of it again.

Deal with the wolf first.  That was what was drilled into them.  Even when a teammate was injured, the most important thing was to make sure that the werewolf was subdued.  Otherwise, one injured teammate could quickly become several down, and there was no way for anyone to help.

Turning from Blake, she pointed her wand up at the dark sky.  A burst of green sparks shot upwards, intermingling with the red sparks already floating there in a strange sort of festive, holiday-colored light display.  Without a word, she dug into a pouch on her belt for what looked to be a set of long, curved silver staples, each about six inches in height. 

Balancing on her toes, she watched the werewolf to time its movements, and then darted forward with one of the staples in hand. She hooked it over an edge of the net, and then jammed the silver staple into the ground, anchoring the net in place at that point. 

With one edge locked down, Tessa backed up out of the werewolf's reach, and then raced forward to repeat the process again, slamming a second staple into place to lock down the net.  It didn't seem to matter what the silver attachment devices were jammed into; they slipped easily into the ground whether the substrate was made of rock or dirt, and it didn't matter what force was exerted upon them.

The werewolf seemed to be slowing its struggling, as if it were wearing itself out.  As Tessa prepared to dart forward to add a third staple, she caught sight of Bagnold, trying to twist his head to look back over his shoulder at the injured Auror trainee as he still held on to the chain.

"You still with us, Blake?" he called out to her.

Fauna glanced up at the sparks in the night sky. Red and green, green and red, unhappy Christmas, and what else? One muggle dead. Two wolves, one caught and one caught-caught. There could be more.

Secure the scene. The words floated in her head, and wavered and drifted away as she glanced down, dizzy.

Her arm burned. Her heart raced and her breath came quicker.

Staima. Staima! She'd meant to cast it earlier.

She pointed her wand at the cut on her arm. She directed her scattered thoughts to one purpose.

"Staima," she spoke, but it came out as a whisper. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she shivered and her stomach turned.

"Staima," she tried again, voice firmer, and a few sparkles settled over the wound. The blood continued to flow, but diverted to mostly stay within her arm as a ghastly thread of red.

Fauna slumped against the table, her head bowing. A small trickle of blood still ran freely down her neck.

Bagnold's voice called to her, muffled as smoke and distant to her ears. Did he need help?

"Bagnold?"

Fauna felt like she was shouting, but it came out as a breathless whisper. She thought about rising, she meant to, but couldn't even lift her head.

There was a hard, icy chill in the night all around them, but it was getting harder to ignore the burning in his shoulder or the stabbing pain that shot through his side every time he took a breath or moved too sharply.  Now that they’d fallen into a rhythm, at least Fenneken and Harris were working quickly, using the net and silver staples to lock the straggly-looking werewolf in place.

Blake was slumping on the ground, her reply so faint he could barely make it out.  Gritting his teeth, Kurby let the chain fall from the werewolf’s neck, freeing the beast from its coils so that he could turn towards her.

Pop.  The loud, unmistakeable sound of an apparition split the night, followed by another.  Crack!  Pop!

The werewolf hunter started to turn, his hand twitching towards his wand again.  He only stilled when he spotted the familiar matching red hair and red robes of Jonas Trevelyan, followed by fellow Aurors Dean Bailey and Alan Childs.

It felt like half a lifetime had passed since he’d watched Moira McBoid’s patronus give its dire warning, since he’d sent off word to Fenneken and quickly departed from Level Two with Harris in tow.  The werewolf hunter swallowed hard, steadying himself as the Aurors approached.  Somewhere else in the square, another crack of apparition signaled the arrival of a St. Mungo’s mediwitch. 

It was over.  Tawse and his ally were gone.  Lazarus had flitted away into the darkness for a second time.  Now all that remained in the cobblestone square were the smoking remains of the direwolf, the malnourished werewolf still struggling weakly in the silver net, the injured, fading Auror trainee, and a growing group of bewildered Ministry officials, who would quickly look to him for an explanation.  Up above it all, the cold, cold moon still shone silver and bright against a backdrop that was dark and clear, for now unburdened by any other hint of magic in the sky.