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I’d expected Gunner’s promised half dozen sword-wielding alphas, but cars kept pulling into the Walmart parking lot for the better part of an hour. Despite the danger of leaving them unattended, I rushed inside to buy bandannas and one other item. And when I came back out, thirty men and women milled around with wolves behind their eyes and swords belted at their hips.
They were wild and dangerous and I assumed the driver of the ride-share van I’d booked would refuse to allow us inside once he set eyes on us. Instead, he greeted us with a big grin and a thumbs up. “Nice costumes! Let me guess—Lord of the Rings?”
“Right,” I told him, glad he didn’t have the lie-sniffing abilities of a werewolf. “Exactly. We’re going to a house party....”
Someone behind me snickered. Someone else rumbled out a growl at an accidental invasion of his personal space. The air grew so electric it seemed as if fur would fly.
I glanced at Lupe, expecting her to take over. But she didn’t. Just shrugged and let the alphas be alphas. My heart was in my throat as I stuffed them into far too few seats, knowing full well that territorial werewolves only got ornerier in close proximity. By the time our driver returned his attention to the road and his music, their ire felt like ants running all over my skin.
A sword grated against its sheath and I spun, expecting battle to erupt right there in the cramped confines of the vehicle. But Lupe’s hand on my shoulder stopped me. The intensity of her gaze suggested it was better to leave the alphas alone.
“Ryder and Butch will meet us there,” she informed me.
I blinked, trying to focus despite the reek of fur so intense I could barely breathe. “Good. Great.”
Now someone was snarling. He wanted to open a window. Predictably, three other voices disagreed.
And I couldn’t help myself. Lupe was keeping out of the mess because it was suicide to dive in the middle of such powerful werewolves. But if they couldn’t ride together in a van without arguing, how were they going to unite long enough to vanquish the fae? And free Tank?
So I whirled, facing them directly. My gaze met alpha eyes, every single one amber with incipient wolf.
“Is there going to be a problem?” I bit out, imagining the alphas were teenagers. I straightened my spine and glared, pretending they’d forgotten to turn in their homework. Had made up some half-assed excuse about a nonexistent dog.
And, to my surprise, they responded just like Harper would have.
“No, ma’am.”
“You lead and we’ll follow.”
“We know what we’re here for.”
And while the electricity in the air didn’t lessen, every sword stayed in its sheathe for the remainder of the ride.
***
GRUMBLING FADED AS we disembarked from the van at the far end of Rowan’s driveway. Now the alphas were alert to pending battle, their wolves visible behind their eyes for a different reason. One sniffed the air and pointed toward the forest.
“There.”
Sure enough, McCallister shifters slid out from between tree trunks. All were men, the women apparently not being allowed out of the harem. There was still diversity though. Some were lupine. Some human. The latter boasted swords as menacing as our own.
But men and wolves all waited, standing in an unbroachable line for one long moment until Rowan emerged from their midst. His teeth were sharp as he scanned the alphas, even sharper when his gaze settled on me.
“This is private property. My territory is closed to your kin.”
The implication shook me. “My sister...” I started, the words torn out without my permission. My fingers slid to the cell phone in my pocket. Could Rowan have found Harper and...?
Now Lupe did step forward, speaking over me. “We’re here on Samhain Shifters business. As you know, that provides free passage anywhere we wish to go.”
Rowan didn’t even answer this time. Instead, he drew his sword.
Metal rasped against metal all around me. If I’d needed any additional proof that Rowan was in Marina’s pocket, here it was. In the past, Rowan’s offensives had tended toward fangs and fur.
Still, if his side was using swords, ours would also. I yanked out my weapon, wishing I’d found time to do more than learn two parries and a single attack. I’d hoped we wouldn’t be using our swords until fae materialized. I’d hoped...and I’d been wrong.
Because the time for speaking was apparently over. I opened my mouth to try to talk Rowan around....and our forces crashed together. Grunts, roars, and growls. A blow swung toward my midsection and I barely dodged.
We were outnumbered, but the alphas Gunner had assembled were masters. Better than Rowan’s underlings and ten times better than me.
I did my best to hold my spot in line anyway, but I almost dropped my sword the third time someone came at me with a berserker’s fury. “Behind me.” The gruff growl emerged from a female alpha sporting a red armband. Rather than waiting for me to comply, she grabbed me with her free arm and pushed me where she wanted me to go.
Then I was being pressed backwards over and over. Away from the fighting. Away from danger. I stumbled as my feet landed back on the road.
Stumbled...and took in two final allies arriving with dramatically disparate modes of transportation. Ryder’s was what I would have expected, actually, if I’d taken time to think about it. His legs gripped the broad barrel of a motorcycle, and he whooped as he swerved toward the enemy line then back in my direction.
Butch, in contrast, appeared atop what at first appeared to be the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen, in real life or on television. It gleamed. Purple, blue, and black, the colors intermingling from hooves to nostrils.
But, no, it wasn’t a horse. An enormous silver horn emerged from its forehead.
“A unicorn,” I breathed. Then I blinked and Butch was walking toward me, stride hitching as his injury slowed him. Maybe I’d imagined the unicorn? Regardless, I wasn’t the only one who noted Butch’s struggle to walk.
“Here.” Ryder was gruff as he patted the back of his idling motorcycle. “My hog can take two. He glanced at me. “Three, I guess. You’re skinny.”
I struggled onto the far back, behind both Ryder and Butch. Then, before the former could steer us to the frontlines, I provided alternative instructions. “We have to find the node.”
“To your left,” Butch murmured, voice quiet. His body, before mine, was bowed.
Ryder’s wasn’t. He was ready for any adventure. Revving the engine, he roared so loud my ears rung. Then we were off.
***
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN exhilarating, riding a motorcycle to the rescue. Instead, all I could think about was Tank. Where was he? He would have found a way to join this battle if he was in control of his own movements. Was he even still alive?
Shaking my head against my own thoughts, I refocused. Marina. I was here to find the node and the woman who’d been toying with us. I was here to protect werewolves Tank cared about from the dangers of fae invasion.
To that end, I clutched Butch’s waist, steadying him as much as hanging on while we skirted the margins of the battle. The directions he gave us, though, didn’t let us steer clear of the fighting entirely. Then Rowan’s forces swung out to meet us, slowing our forward progress. It wasn’t long before the motorcycle stalled.
“Crap,” Ryder growled, kicking the ignition then revving the engine. “Hang on. This is going to get rough.”
“Wait,” I countered, something off to our right catching my attention. It was one of the alphas Gunner had assembled greeting an enemy as if he was an ally. “Nice sword, Clifford,” the alpha called to the advancing man whose raised sword was ready to skewer him. “Do they need me out front?”
But that wasn’t Clifford. Not that I knew who Clifford was. But I knew this guy was one of Rowan’s underlings. I recognized him by his long, curly hair and his extreme lankiness. This was the shifter who Lupe had ordered to change her lock.
I slithered down off the side of the motorcycle and dove between the two shifters. By chance, the situation suited one of my two practiced parries and I managed to catch our enemy’s sword before it skewered my ally’s gut.
Still, the reverberation juddered up my shoulder. My fingers buzzed painfully. The chances of me halting a second blow were zero.
Then Ryder was there, driving between us with all the finesse of a stampeding bull. “What the fuck?” He roared. “Dude’s got a red bandanna.”
Not-Clifford had no red bandanna. He was dressed in jeans and a hoody, nothing tied around his arm at all.
But he grinned at Ryder’s words, breaking away from my so-called defense and swirling back toward his compatriots. Now he knew what we were using to recognize each other....
“Glamour,” I explained tersely. “Get the bandannas off everyone. Figure out an alternative marker. And don’t trust what you see!”
Ryder, to my dismay, didn’t move. “I can do that,” he growled, “or I can drive you to the node.”
Not both. Obviously.
I closed my eyes for one split second, understanding at last why Lupe always looked vaguely dyspeptic. It made my stomach ache to guess the proper course of action. To send friends into danger without me.
But there was only one solution. Ryder was the obvious choice to brute force our allies into understanding the danger of this new glamour. And...
“We’re close enough so I can walk,” Butch agreed before I even had to state my case. Joining me on the ground, he swayed only a little. I steadied him with a surreptitious hand around his elbow.
“Go,” I told Ryder, the emptiness in my stomach lessening. And he went. Roared back into the battle, stopping at intervals to fire off short verbal bursts at our allies.
Convinced he’d get the job done, I turned away. Back to the darkness beyond the battlefield. Back to the one ally I had left. “We’re close?”
Butch nodded, all the while walking a curving path that started large then spiraled inward. Minutes later, he stopped in what appeared to be an empty patch of lawn.
“It’s here,” he murmured, prodding at the soil with one boot toe.
“You’re sure?”
I’d expected a fairy ring of mushrooms. An earthen burial mound. Something to suggest this wasn’t just a patch of lawn no different than the others.
I’d also expected Marina. But she was absent, her presence only visible in the glamour that continued to trip up our allies.
“I’m certain,” Butch confirmed.
The confusion on our side was worsening, I noted. For a minute or two, ditching our armbands might have helped us. But our enemies seemed to have caught on to that already. In the distance, I saw one of my own allies turn away from Rowan as if expecting a friend to guard his back.
This time, I was too distant to warn him. Could only watch in horror as the nameless alpha was mown down.
The fae trickiness would all end at sunset, however, and the light was already dimming. Sunset would mean Marina’s friends coming through the node, but there were enough of us left to stop them. We’d stop the fae and break whatever hold Marina had over Rowan....
The sun dipped below the horizon. Swords clanged all around me.
Nothing happened at the portal site.