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Ailsa stared. She was fast when she fought, but these women were even faster.

Nails like tiny steel daggers sliced through flesh.

There were many of them too, cutting into the crowd.

As one of them ducked a slashing blade before grabbing the warrior’s wrist and twisting it with fearsome strength, the hem of her robe flew up, revealing a pair of cloven feet.

Ailsa stopped breathing.

A flood of women had poured out of the gloaming.

Not women. Bavaan.

Ailsa watched them, transfixed.

Darkness nearly swallowed the world now, although these faeries almost seemed to glow in the murk.

The warriors fought back, but one by one, the bavaan brought them down.

Staggering as exhaustion finally hit her, Ailsa moved to Kayla’s side.

Her mentor’s arm snaked around her waist.

Fern appeared then, joining Ailsa and Kayla. Her fingers clenched hard around the hilt of her slender sword, yet she’d lowered it. Ailsa cast a glance over the huntress, marking her blood-splattered face and ripped leathers. Blood trickled down her temple from a cut to her forehead.

All three of them were bleeding and drained as they stood together, watching the fight play out.

No warriors came near them now. None had the chance.

Each one fell before they were even a couple of yards distant.

Fern wore a grim expression as she watched the bavaan finish off the last of them, while Kayla looked as if she might be sick.

Ailsa should have been cowed by the sight, yet once she looked away from Fern and Kayla, focusing on the fight once more, she couldn’t tear her attention from the faeries.

Something inside her leaned toward them.

Snarling intruded then.

Blinking, Ailsa forced herself to look away from the bavaan. She swiveled to where Fern and Kayla now watched Darach, still in his clag-doo form. He crouched over the body of a warrior he’d just brought down a few yards away.

The snarling slid into the wet sound of feeding as he ripped into the corpse.

Kayla choked out an oath, and Fern murmured something under her breath.

Ailsa stilled. It was a brutal sight, yet she saw the desperate confusion beneath the frenzy.

This wasn’t Darach.

It was the beast.

The fight and the violence had allowed it to take over. It now had him completely in its thrall.

Ailsa’s fingers flexed around the blade she still gripped. She couldn’t let this continue. It was time to bring him back.

“Darach!” Her voice cut through the grunts, cries, and shouts still ringing around them.

The clag-doo’s long body tensed, its ears pricking.