I had no time to check if he was in one piece. I reversed the blade and thrust it deep between her ribs. Sarrat slid into her flesh with a satisfying hiss, its blade smoking. I twisted sharply to the right. Blood gushed from the wound around the blade.

The monster screamed, her fury shaking the brush.

I pulled my saber free.

The monster whipped around, the skin on her throat hanging like a punctured balloon, and snapped her teeth, trying to bite me in half. I danced back, behind the tree. She followed, crawling up the side of the oak with sickening quickness, her teeth snapping like a bear trap closing. I backpedaled through the brush, trying not to trip on the forest floor. If her insides matched a human’s, I’d sliced her liver and cut the hepatic vein or artery, likely both. If I ran her around enough, she would bleed out.

Ascanio burst out of the woods, speeding up toward us.

The old lady grabbed at me. I sliced at her fingers. She kept coming, oblivious to pain, her face an ugly mask. She was hurting, but killing me was all that mattered.

Ascanio tore into her side, but she ignored him, her gaze fastened on me. I sliced again and again. A moment too slow and she’d grip me into her clawed fist. Strike, strike, strike. This was too much fun.

Derek landed onto Jene’s back and thrust a young tree through her. The old lady thrashed, like a pinned bug. Derek ripped into her from above, while Ascanio tore at her from the side.

I ducked in as she thrashed. Her arm passed over me, clawed fingers stretched, and I sliced the inside of her biceps and moved back. One arm down. One to go. Patience is a virtue . . .

With a howl, Holland burst from the brush, charged past me, and buried his blade in her neck. She tried to jerk away but the stake held her fast. He hacked at her neck like she was a tree, his sword rising and falling in swift frenzy. Her head sagged to the side, lolled, hanging for a moment by a thread of skin and muscle, then fell and rolled clear. The body crashed into the brush, blood pouring from the stump.

Okay. That’s one way to do it.

Holland stared at me, his eyes wild, his body dripping slime and blood.

“You’re okay,” I told him. “You’re cool. Everything is okay.”

“I quit.”

“You’re okay. It’s shock.”

“No. I’m done.” He waved his sword at me. “She swallowed me! I was inside her!”

Ascanio cracked up, showing way too many hyena teeth. I gave him the look of death and he clamped his mouth shut.

“I quit!” Holland threw his sword down.

“Okay,” Derek said.

“Look, be reasonable,” Ascanio said. “We’ve all been there. One time there was this hungry wendigo . . .”

“Redundant,” Derek said.

Ascanio rolled his eyes. “The point is, weird shit happened. Weird shit happens a lot. It’s traumatic. Look, she rolled onto me. You don’t even want to know what gross things were pressed against my face.”

Holland’s face jerked.

“Too soon,” Derek said. “The man says he quits, let him quit. Here, I’ll carry your sword for you.”

“What are you doing?” Ascanio said. “He’s clearly in shock. Beau assigned him to babysit us. We are difficult to babysit, so Beau must have a lot of respect for the deputy, which in turn means Deputy Holland is good at his job.”

“So?” Derek asked.

The magic wave hit, flooding us. The two shapeshifters paused for a moment, acknowledging it, and kept going.

Ascanio shook his furry head. “His entire identity is probably wrapped up in being a deputy. You can’t let one incident destroy his sense of self. He needs to be talked off this cliff.”

Holland stared at the werewolf, then at the bouda.

Ascanio’s mother, Martina, was one of the Pack’s counselors. I had no idea he’d picked up that much from her.

“You’re not doing a good job of it,” Derek said.

“I’d be doing a lot better if you’d stop helping him take the plunge.”

I felt a tendril of magic reaching through the woods, delicate, hesitant, searching for something, probing. The magic brushed me and withdrew with elastic quickness.

Hello, there. And who would you be?

“Derek, shut up for a second.” Ascanio turned to Holland. “Deputy Holland, weird awful crap happened to us today. Because you endured it, that weird awful crap won’t be happening to anyone else. Nobody will get eaten. You swore an oath, you upheld your oath. That was a noble thing.”

“I don’t care,” Holland said.

I studied the woods across the river. Where are you . . . ?

“It doesn’t matter.” Derek picked up the old woman’s head by the hair and hoisted it up. It was nearly four feet high from chin to the hairline. “Let’s talk about this later. We need to take the head to Beau before it starts to smell.”

“Why?” Ascanio said.

“She was part of the community,” I said without turning. “We need to show proof that we had no choice but to kill her.”

A woman stepped out of the woods on the other side of the river, a gauzy dark purple scarf wrapped around her head, hiding the bottom half of her face. She pulled it off slowly, so it hung from her shoulder. About my size and my age, with dark eyes and dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. She wore black pants, soft black boots, and a black coat trimmed with purple and split in the center to allow for quick movement. A black leather gorget shielded her neck, extending into a chest plate of supple black leather that covered her left breast. The chest plate wouldn’t stop a sword thrust. It wasn’t meant to. It existed to provide her just enough protection so that if she miscalculated by half an inch when she avoided a cut, the graze of the opponent’s blade wouldn’t draw blood. A katana hung from her belt.