When he accidentally wopped the Invisible Man in the back with a fanny pack, I was forced to push him aside.

"Bitch!" a woman with pink hair and a nose ring screamed, heading for me.

I was more than ready, but she was plucked away before she could hit me with her faux-Prada bag.

A half-dozen half-were bikers waded in, their chains chiming. I pulled the nightstick and found it as effective when poking as when striking sideways. My chain-wrapped fist was scuffing lots of biker leather as I dodged return blows, getting into the rhythm of something I'd never participated in before, a brawl. With these allies-and no deadly weapons out as yet-it was kind of invigorating.

Then I felt my arms pinned to my side by someone unseen and unwelcome and really strong behind me. We hadn't figured on vampires joining the fray.

I turned to snarl in that direction…and faced off a tattoo freak with a smear of black beard. He picked me up by the waist, spun me around behind him, and proceeded to stomp Haskell in the nuts. Or where what was left of them would be. Nice.

Quicksilver was nipping neatly at the thick ankles of the tourist couple while Holmes and Montalban were engaging the gathering crowd aching for a fight with quaint but effective fisticuffs. I dodged around my unsavory would-be rescuer to back up Holmes and Montalban, but was again grabbed and pinned, my back to his front. The whole scene was really beginning to look like The Three Stooges Meet the Monster Jamboree.

I couldn't enjoy the comic aspects in the custody of another mauling male. I twisted hard to take another look at my rescuer/meddler. He was a smoke-and-brimstone-streaked guy wearing Eau de NASCAR pit-stop cologne. Not attractive unless vintage auto exhaust turned you on.

I started to order him to back off, when he rubbed the back of one tatted forearm over his sooty brow, eyed me hard, and said "Whew. All this action gives me an adrenaline junkie itch. Let's go somewhere and fuck, babe."

Babe! Really offensive language always brought out my Our Lady of the Lake Convent School warrior maid.

I managed to slew around in the creep's grasp, fighting to pull far enough away to kick him in the nuthouse. Quicksilver was pushing between us, growling and snapping at the same target I coveted.

My attacker had snaked around, clutching me as close as a shield, and was once again behind me, holding me tight. Too close for Quicksilver to hurt him without taking a chunk out of me. I struggled, panting, at hearing my warrior dog whimper in sheer frustration.

"And you thought I couldn't disguise myself in the Sinkhole," the man whispered against my ear as my head thrashed to butt him under the jaw and get myself loose.

I stopped fighting. And was silent, hearing only my ragged breathing. And his. Fury became something quite the opposite, or maybe just in a different mode.

"Hell, Montoya," I whispered just as softly. "Why wouldn't I panic? That thing felt a foot long."

"I thought you were interested."

"So is Quick."

"You don't have a way to tell him to back off before I let you go and expose my crotch to his two-inch fangs?"

"Quick. Down."

The dog went to his stomach, still growling.

The eager-to-assist citizens and gang bangers were backing off, tamed by a first-class pummeling from some formidable CinSim superheroes. My friends held Haskell, but looked ready to rush my captor. I shook my head no. Violently. They looked carefully away, confused but aware that our new ally was more than friendly with me.

Ric rocked his pelvis into my backside until my pulses hummed like a vibrator, still whispering into my tingling ear. "Your place or mine? I think we have explanations, at least, to exchange."

"Yours," I whispered back. "We'll drop Quick off at the cottage."

"First," Ric said, "I have to secure the loose vermin. Wrathbone's might lose its hospitality license if we left this piece of shit crawling around."

While Haskell writhed, pinned facedown like a cockroach by Montalban and Holmes, I forced myself to bend down and lift up his black satin bowling club jacket. Tawdry taste. I found some shiny new cuffs on his belt, probably the ones he'd used on me. I bent down to wrench one hand behind his back as Holmes bent the other wrist at a painful angle and brought it around.

Haskell screamed curses when I snapped the cuffs shut. Sweet.

I rose, nodding at my gang of three CinSims, who looked disheveled but unbowed. The Invisible Man had hefted his wrappings and clothing over one arm, so I could tell where he was.

"We better split before we look like co-conspirators," Ric warned me.

He took my right arm in custody and this time Ricardo Montalban growled softly, not Quicksilver, who'd overcome the diesel smell to ID the man in Cheap Thug guise.

"Ricardo Montalban, meet Ric Montoya, my partner in crime-solving," I said quietly. "Ric, Mr. Holmes and, er, part of Dr. Griffin. We need to leave first."

Ric, eyeing the restless crowd, barely registered my famous associates.

"Gotta make this exit fast and in character for this dump," he told us all in a low voice. In a loud, blustery tone, Ric ordered everyone within hearing, "Better drop this cuffed crap topside for the street cops to find."

His booted toe prodded the struggling and cursing Haskell's side. "Meanwhile, I'll take up this troublemaker myself."

I was startled to feel a shiver of cold run down my left arm and to hear a metallic clink. My obliging body jewelry had morphed into a pair of handcuffs. One clasped my wrist like a bracelet, the other dangled open. Ric grabbed the open cuff and locked my wrists behind my back.

No one regarded us openly as we left, Ric shepherding me like a captive, Quicksilver shadowing us both like a bodyguard on a leash. Just another dicey situation in the Sinkhole with someone likely heading toward a nasty fate. Didn't matter who or what. Ric acted like an undercover cop but he might be crooked or an impersonator. Maybe one more unescorted human woman would not be leaving the Sinkhole alive.

Outside Wrathbone's, we paused in the soft white neon light of the sign while Quicksilver eyed Ric's hands on my wrists and growled the soft friendly warning he reserved for people I know.

"It's okay, Killer," Ric told him. "It has to look like I'm an undercover cop taking your roommate out of here to jail." Quick liked being addressed man to man, and relaxed.

"Did Nightwine tip you off about where I was going?" I asked.

"Got it first try. The Fat Man has a surprising paternal streak when it comes to you."

Nightwine was mostly protective of my commercial possibilities as a Lilith/Maggie stand-in, but Ric didn't know about Lilith yet and would want me off of Hector's premises if he knew about the man's scummy commercial interest in both Lilith and me.

"You know," I told Ric, "now that I've seen the Sinkhole, I've got a couple of new theories about who really maimed Haskell after you beat him up and left him for what passes as street-sweeper meat down here last time you visited incognito."

"Yeah?"

Passing people didn't even glance at us. I must have looked like a hooker chatting up a client with bondage tendencies. I nodded toward Quick, who was following every word we said like he could lip-read. He probably could.

"I had to lock Quick up at the cottage when Haskell charged in or the creep would have shot him. The dog goes out alone at night a lot. He could have trailed Haskell's scent to hell and back. He was not happy about being shut out of the action or what Haskell was doing to me."

Ric eyed Quick. "Possible."

"Or…Hector could have loosed a really nasty CinSim on Haskell."

"A paternal meddler, maybe, but I don't see Hector Nightwine as the Black Knight riding to the damsel's revenge after the fact."