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Alice was looking too hard at Graham to notice Bastian’s aerial approach, but she was quick to take advantage of the distraction to grab the gun from the guard holding her. She might not be much of a fighter, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to shoot anything with her weight hanging from his gun.
A bear, a panther, and a lynx stalked out of the darkness like the start of a bad joke, and she cried out in warning, “They have Beehag’s anti-shifting drugs!” She wasn’t sure if they would hear her bellow over the sound of the generator.
Shots—real shots—scattered off a wall somewhere nearby as one of the guards fired wildly in their direction.
“And real bullets, too, apparently!” Alice added in a panic. She fought harder to get the gun from the guard she was grappling, and it ripped free into her hands. She swung it at the guard like a club, missed and nearly unbalanced. The guard, with more honed reflexes, recovered first, and balled up a fist to hit her in the jaw.
Blinking stars of pain aside, Alice saw a charging deer of impossible size, followed by a pair of leopards, one silver and white, one gold and black. They didn’t pause to battle any of the guards or shifters in fighting gear who were starting to gather; their goal seemed to be to clear a path for a human figure who was running behind them. Big bears charged after her, one polar bear, one big grizzly, and they bowled over the event staff that briefly attempted to stop them.
Alice wondered if the human figure was Scarlet for a moment, but then she was in the light, and it was the mermaid, Saina, ducking and dashing for the sound system.
Bastian made another sweep over the ruins, flaming above the heads of the fleeing crowd and the members of Cyrus’ ring that were starting to muster a defense against the attack. Darts pinged off his hide and fell harmlessly to the ground below. The guard facing Alice was clearly having a crisis of loyalty, and at the massive dragon’s second pass, broke off and fled with the audience stampeding towards the dock.
Some of the shifter fighters were taking animal form, meeting this attack with teeth and claws of their own. Was it loyalty to the ring, Alice wondered, or just that they couldn’t resist a fight?
Then Saina had the microphone in her hand and the magic of her voice was falling over the crowd, calming them and settling a thrall over them. If they were running, they staggered to a stop. If they were fighting, they lowered their fists and paws, and stood in a daze.
Alice felt only the slightest hint of it. At first, she thought it was because she was protected from Saina’s magic by her dormant mate-bond. Then she realized that everyone in their immediate vicinity had shaken it off, Saina’s siren music half-drowned by the constant noise of the generator, and spread thin over a larger crowd than she usually dealt with. Cyrus was bending to pick up one of the rifles, aiming it at the battle that Graham was fighting with the guards that had been escorting him to the cage.
Alice didn’t know much about hitting, and she knew less about shooting, but she did know throwdowns, so that’s what she did, driving Cyrus to the ground from behind.
He snarled and fought, and Alice wrapped him tighter in her arms.
He headbutted her, smashing her nose.
“Foul!” Alice cried, tasting blood. She got her arm around both of his. “That would be a flagrant misconduct, asshole.”
“You still think this is a game, Alice?” Cyrus hissed, trying to squirm out of her grip.
Alice clamped her arms down tighter.