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Graham’s guards had been expecting a fight. They weren’t expecting a dragon, or Saina’s siren magic, or the ragtag team of animals that had shown up, but Graham’s advantage of surprise didn’t last long.
It was three against one, and they were wearing light armor and carrying weapons; one of them still had a gun, and two of them had nightsticks.
One of those sticks came crashing into his broken rib, and another struck his leg, hoping, no doubt, to disable him. Graham pivoted on the other leg and punched one of them in the throat, ducking a nightstick and coming up under the guard’s arm at the elbow with his shoulder. The third guard hung back with the gun, trying to find an opening to shoot.
Graham didn’t have to think about what he was doing; he simply acted.
Instinct and muscle memory took over, and he merely was: dodging blows, looking for openings, trying to keep someone between himself and the man with the gun. He wasn’t Grant, and he wasn’t Graham, he was just intuition and adrenaline.
Patience paid off; he was able to knock one of the guards into the other and use the ensuing moment of confusion to bring all his weight down onto onto the other one’s wrist, thinking with an unexpected jolt of humor about his advice to Alice as it cracked beneath his assault. The guard howled, and was out of the fight cradling his arm long enough for him to grab the other and spin, using the man’s weight to build enough momentum to hurl him at the guard with the gun.
As they both struggled to keep their balance, Graham wrested the nightstick from the guard with the broken wrist and flew into them, knocking one out with a blow to the head and turning to face the other, just as a black panther materialized from the darkness and tackled him from behind.
Shots cracked out and the sound of Saina’s lilting song suddenly went quiet as the generator failed with a sputter and a spray of sparks and all of the lights and sound equipment died.
The people who had been under her thrall shook themselves out, and, nearly as one, they turned to flee down the island for the dock. The guard with the broken wrist joined the flight through the sudden darkness, and the guard under the panther cried out for mercy.
The panther shifted into Wrench and exchanged an amused nod with Graham.
“Thanks,” Graham said briefly, looking around for a new opponent.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight; apparently his lion’s advantages were not all lost with his ability to reach his animal.
“Alice!” Graham cried, sprinting to where she was crouching. Her face was covered in blood, and Cyrus, pinned beneath her, was snarling and struggling.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “He’d be thrown out for poor sportsmanship if this were a real match. But I can’t let him up until I have something to do with him.” She grunted as Cyrus got a lucky elbow in her side, and adjusted her grip on him.
“I have something to do with him,” Graham growled, and he stepped on Cyrus’ protesting head while Alice carefully let go of him, bending to pull the man to his feet when she was free.
“You going to hurt me?” Cyrus challenged, anger and defeat in his beady eyes.
Graham was more aware of Alice’s gaze than he was Cyrus’.
She wouldn’t blame him for extracting justice.
But Graham didn’t want to.
Of all the people he hated, as much as he desired revenge, here he was with every opportunity to give Cyrus back some small portion of the pain he’d lived with for ten years... and all he wanted was to be done with it.
He had wanted to step into the cage and fight a doomed battle at a disadvantage more than he wanted to inflict pain on this hateful, beaten man.
“No,” Graham growled. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He frogmarched the man to the dark cage where the Irish elk and the bears had herded most of the guards and fighters who hadn’t fled with the audience to the docks below. Some of them were staggering in a daze that Graham recognized as Gizelle’s handiwork, and he wasn’t surprised to see her tiny gazelle shape darting at Conall’s heels.
Graham thrust Cyrus into the cage, not exactly gently, but not with the force that he could have. Someone had dragged in the guard he had knocked unconscious.
“You’re not worth it,” he said disdainfully as Cyrus stumbled into one of his unamused guards.
In the silence following the destruction of the generators, they could hear the distant sound of the boats starting to pull away from the docks below.
Neal, naked and grinning wolfishly, had an armful of chains and locks gathered from equipment boxes around the makeshift arena. “Is this all of them?” he asked.
Graham shrugged.
Tony, in tiger form, came circling around from the back of the cage and shifted back to human. “I checked the perimeter and didn’t see any stragglers. These are the only ones that weren’t smart enough to run for the boats.”
Neal set to work securing the cage.
Bastian was back in human form, and he was supporting a very wobbly-looking Saina. “What did you do to them?” he asked anxiously. “Are you alright?”
She had a shallow scratch on her forehead; Bastian frowned and reached for his first aid kit.
“I made them feel guilty,” Saina said, with a certain amount of tired satisfaction, letting him fuss over her as she sank to a seat on a fallen speaker. “I reminded them that they were part of something terrible and made them feel bad about it. It probably won’t last long—that’s a lot more people than I usually try something so complicated with. I doubt it will last long enough for any of them to turn themselves in or rat out the ring; they’ll likely forget about the whole thing by the time they get to the mainland.”
She hissed as Bastian cleaned her cut.
“Are you hurt?” Graham asked Alice. There was an alarming amount of blood on her face, but it didn’t appear to be flowing.
“Nah,” Alice said dismissively. “I got a bloody nose and I might chew on the left side until I can shift again and heal up, but nothing that needs stitches.” She gave him a suspicious look. “I’m more worried about you,” she said softly, for his ears only. “They...”
“I’m fine,” Graham said briefly. “Broken rib, maybe.” He drew in a deep breath. Definitely a broken rib.
Alice made a little noise of anger and helplessness. “You should have Bastian bind that up.”
“Darla’s hurt,” Breck said, coming out of the darkness with his arm around his mate, saving Graham having to argue about his rib.
“No more hurt than you are,” Darla protested. “He got tagged with one of the darts and neither of us can shift now.”
They had matching injuries, long slices on their arms. The runes circling their left wrists were gleaming slightly, reflecting the moonlight. Graham suspected that neither of them would have sought medical help for themselves, but Bastian solemnly cleaned the wounds for each of them and declared that they would probably heal with a shift or two once the drug wore off.
“Told you to stay back,” Wrench said, frowning and folding his arms. If he’d taken any injury, it wasn’t obvious on his scar- and tattoo- marked body.
Gizelle bounded into the space and shifted from gazelle to human in one swift leap. “I helped!” she declared cheerfully.
Conall, who had tossed a number of opponents easily aside in his Irish elk shape, gathered her into his arms. “I told you to stay back, too.”
Alice gave Graham a sideways look. “You going to tell me that I should have stayed back, too?” she asked for his ears only.
Graham snorted, and his side protested keenly. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said gruffly.
“Let’s see that rib,” Bastian said to him without leaving room for argument once he had finished with Darla and Breck. Dragon ears must be as keen as a lion’s.
“Great outfit,” Breck observed as Graham reluctantly took off the purple satin robe. “Gold lamé suits you! You should add more to your wardrobe, m’lord.”
Darla pinched him and said, “Ouch!” as she hurt herself as well.
“So, you’re the King of the Jungle.” Neal smirked as Bastian dug into his first aid kit.
“Don’t they realize that lions don’t even usually live in the jungle?” Tony asked drolly.
“King of the Savannah doesn’t have quite the same ring,” Bastian observed thoughtfully, unwinding a roll of cloth.
“Besides,” Alice pointed out, “this lion lives in a jungle.”
At one time, not so long ago, Graham could have imagined nothing worse than facing the staff with the truth of his past. Now, he gave a gruff laugh that turned to a hiss of pain as Bastian tied off the binding around his chest. Alice’s hand in his tightened.
“You’re going to have some good bruises,” Bastian observed, his look suggesting that he guessed some of the other, less-obvious injuries Graham had taken. “Hope that Beehag’s drug wears off soon, because shifting will do more for you than I can.”
Tex had been guarding the van, and he greeted them with a grizzly growl from the darkness. Everyone dressed swiftly and piled in.
The Jeep still had the keys in it, to Alice’s comic relief. “Can you imagine what Scarlet would have done to me if I’d lost her keys?” she said, clutching her chest dramatically.
Scarlet.
Graham knew what he had to do.