“Revenge?” I suggested. “For what we’re doing to them in The Woodlands?”

Shayla shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Obviously, they want revenge, but this is the most stupid way to attempt it possible. They know the power of our boundary… I can’t help but think they just want to get our attention.”

Well, they sure got that…

I spotted several dragons standing nearby, including Lethe, who was nearest to me, holding hands with his human wife, Elodie. He was the only ice dragon on the island; he’d come here on a visit some years ago, fallen in love with one of the human girls, and never left. Warm climates didn’t suit him well at all, but in The Shade it was just about tolerable for him due to the spell of night.

“Hey, Lethe,” I called to him. He turned to face me, his frigid eyes fixing on me. “Can you take me up there?” I requested.

He frowned, then looked to Shayla for permission.

“Why?” Shayla asked, grabbing my hand.

“I want to get high enough to talk to them,” I said. “Ask them why on earth they’re here.”

Shayla shrugged. “All right. Obviously, Lethe, make sure you stay within the boundary unless you want to get blown to smithereens.”

With a grunt of acquiescence, Lethe transformed into a blue, scaly ice dragon. I hurried onto his back before he launched into the sky. As another bomb dropped, I feared that I might actually go deaf. Once there was a span of relative quiet again, and Lethe and I had neared the helicopters, I roared up, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

That was pathetic. There was no way they could have heard me beneath those choppers.

“Lethe,” I said. “Can you please call up to them?”

Lethe’s entire body rumbled beneath me as he let out a mighty bellow. “WHAT DO YOU SEEK HERE?”

I was sure that must’ve gotten through to them, even amidst the noise of the choppers’ blades.

Then the door to the aircraft directly above us slid open and a man peered down, a brown-haired hunter I had never seen before.

Shayla followed Lethe’s and my lead and joined us in the air, along with several other witches and dragons.

The hunter held up an amplifier and boomed down, “You have something of ours!”

I exchanged glances with Shayla, and before anyone else could respond, I told Lethe to yell back, “We have nothing of yours!”

“You stole away a specimen of ours from The Woodlands!” the hunter shot back down. My breath hitched. Josh. “Give him up, if you want any semblance of peace restored to your island.”

Shayla manifested an amplifier of her own and yelled back, “We do not have any specimen here! The young man we found died on the journey back to Earth. Now shoo, before we set our dragons on you!”

The hunters dropped another bomb, wreaking more havoc on my eardrums. Ugh. They need to stop doing that.

“We know that you are lying,” the hunter yelled back down. “We have a tracker installed in him!”

Oh, my God. I stared at Shayla. “How did you miss that?” I whispered.

She was already cursing herself. “Dammit. I never thought to search him for a tracker. It was the last thing on my mind.”

The Shade’s barrier wouldn’t have allowed the device to communicate once within the island, but the hunters could have traced Josh’s journey leading up it.

“Whether we do or do not have him,” Lethe responded for us, “you have one minute to back off!”

“Know that he will die if you do not hand him over to us,” the hunter replied. “He will die if we do not continue with his treatments. If you want to spare his life, you will hand him back to us now.”

My blood ran cold. Die?

“They must be lying,” Lethe muttered.

It was extremely disconcerting to me that Shayla hadn’t replied yet. Her large, brown eyes were traced with doubt. I reached out for her arm and grabbed it, forcing her to look at me. “What are you thinking?” I demanded. “Do you think he could be telling the truth?”

She chewed nervously on her lower lip. “As I told you, I don’t know exactly what they did to him. If I knew, it would be more likely that I could find a cure… I can’t recognize for the life of me most of the traces in his blood. I can’t help but think this is merely a ruse to get us to hand him over—for whatever reason they want him so badly—but of course, I can’t say for certain that they’re lying.”

I drew in a sharp breath and gazed back up at the hunters. Handing Josh back to them felt like it would be certain death, surely. Either death, or some kind of prolonged miserable existence. How could we hand him back over?

I took the amplifier from Shayla and yelled, “What did you do to him?”

“Hand him over!” the hunter roared.

“Why? What treatments have you been giving him?”

No response.

Oh, God. My breathing coming hard and fast, I twisted to face Shayla again. I was so tempted to suggest that we immediately launch an attack on the IBSI and drive them away, but… that hunter’s guarantee of Josh’s death had arrested my mind. I couldn’t shake the biting doubt. What if it really were true? And who was I to make this kind of decision to ignore or accept his words? This wasn’t my life. This was Josh’s. It was only right that I talk to him about this… even though it killed me to lay this kind of stress on him—just when he had been showing some tiny signs of progress.