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Then the north fence exploded.

I say exploded like it was a boom, but it wasn't. What it sounded like was somebody dropping a hundred feet of iron chain into a bathtub. Then the two wolves Alex had sent that way started screaming.

A wolf can scream. I didn't know that before that night, and I'll be hearing it for the rest of my life in my nightmares.

Half the yard ran at it. That's shifters for you. No meetings, no plan, just a wall of muscle going toward the noise, ready to tear whatever it was limb from limb. I got four steps before Alex's arm came across my chest like an overstretched seatbelt.

"Wait."

"They're dying out there…"

"Wait, Hazel." His snarl sounded more animal than male, stopping any argument I could've had.

That's when the east fence exploded.

Same sound. Hundred yards off, opposite side of the property, twenty seconds later.

The wolves who'd gone north were halfway there. Now they had to come back across open grass with the floodlight on them, strung out in a line, every single one of them out in the middle of nothing.

I have never seen the pack look small before.

I looked up at Alex but he wasn't watching them. He was watching the tree line, and his jaw had gone tight enough to crack a tooth. That's when I got scared.

"They're counting us," he said to no one in particular.

"They're what?"

"North first. We sent people north. Then east, while we're committed." His mismatched eyes went over his own yard like he was reading off a page. "They're not trying to get in. Not yet. They're seeing how many of us there are and how fast we move."

All the hairs on my arms stood at attention.

I was getting nauseous from dread. That is not how demons work. I have been up to my elbows in demons for two years now, and the one universal truth about them is that they are a bar fight with teeth. They swarm. They shriek. They come at you all at once from whatever direction they happen to be facing, because whatever used to organize them went missing three years ago and apparently nobody's managed to elect a replacement.

Something on the property had a strategy.

"South," River said.

I turned. "What?"

"South fence. Next." He was watching the dark past the barn, and the gold behind his eyes had gone bright enough to see from three feet off. "North, east, south. Then whatever's actually coming comes up the middle while everybody's standing at the edges."

Alex didn't ask him how he knew.

He threw his head back and let out a short flat bark that cracked off the front of the house. Every wolf on that land stopped dead and came back.

Ten seconds later the south fence blew apart. Nobody was there to meet it.

"At the house!" Alex was already moving. "Tight ring. Nobody chases anything."

We got twenty seconds.

Long enough to back up the gravel. Long enough for Sissily to reach me and grab a fistful of my sleeve. Long enough for the wolves to form a rough crescent across the front of the porch with their backs to the lit windows.

Long enough for the whole property to go quiet.

"Hazel." My best friend's voice had gone very small. "I have a very bad feeling."

"You always have a bad feeling."