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This had never happened before. Nobody had ever gone into the woods and brought the bodies of the enemy out. The enemy was always invisible and invulnerable, watching and waiting. Now they were suddenly solid flesh. The residents of Penderton weren’t sure how to process it.
We reached them.
“I need full containment for seven bodies,” I told the leading medic. “Do you have loup cages?”
She blinked at me.
“Loup cages,” I repeated.
The medic’s brain restarted. “No loup cages, but we have cells. In the old prison.”
“That will work.” Magic was known to do all sorts of creative things to the dead bodies, but I’d never seen a shapeshifter survive decapitation. Even they had limits. Still, nobody ever regretted an abundance of caution when it came to magic’s ability to spawn weird crap.
“Lead the way,” Curran prompted.
“Follow me.” The medic strode down the street and we followed her, flanked by the EMTs and paramedics.
Heather, the wall guard captain, ran up to us.
“It will retaliate,” Curran told her. “Probably before the magic wave ends.”
“You might want to ease up on having your people walk the wall,” I added. “It will try to punish us, and the guards are an obvious target.”
Heather spun on her foot without a word and ran back the way she had come.
We walked down the street. People came out of their homes and businesses. They didn’t say anything. They just watched us go by with that same mix of excitement and apprehension on their faces.
The medic turned to look at us. “Can we help you in any way?”
“We’ll need food,” I said. “Meat. A lot of it. And we could use a coroner if you have one to help us examine the bodies. Our medmage has a broken left arm and regaining his dexterity will take some time.”
“My wife needs a medmage,” Curran said. “She will tell you that she is fine, and she doesn’t need help. She isn’t and she does.”
“You made your point,” I told him.
His eyes flashed gold. “I did. And I’m going to stand over you and watch you get treatment.”
As a married woman, I had learned that some fights weren’t worth fighting. “Your lack of trust is very disappointing.”
“I trust you with my life, not with yours,” my husband said.
I sat in a rocking chair on the top-floor balcony and sipped my iced tea. On my left, Owen rested on a blanket in the lotus pose. His eyes were closed. He said meditation helped him with the bison rage.
It was the golden hour, that magical sixty minutes before sunset when the light turned soft and warm, and the first hints of red and yellow tinted the sky. The world was beautiful, and the tree line at the end of the kill zone turned lovely enough to frame, the tall pines spreading their fluffy branches as if trying to hold on to sunlight.
We were overdue for the forest’s counterpunch. It would come. I had no doubt about it. The unseen force in the forest had ground Penderton under its heel for years, so long that it took compliance for granted. Now the town suddenly dared to fight back. It would try to stomp that resistance out, hard and fast, before hope took root.
I glanced at the closest tower. The guard hunkering down under that roof was a teenager. A boy, with short dark hair and glasses. Sixteen tops. On the surface it seemed like an easy enough way to keep teens employed: sit on the wall, watch the woods, ring the bell if you see anything. Except when the trouble started, they would be on the front line.
The door to my left swung open, and Troy padded out onto the balcony carrying a notebook and a small plastic cooler.
“Consort.”
“Did you escape?”
He nodded. “Went out the back door when I heard them coming.”
After the initial medical treatment was administered—Curran did stand over me while Nereda, the town’s leading medic, patched me up—Penderton delivered food by the truckload. Literally. Our crew ate and went to sleep.
Changing shape took a lot of energy. Most shapeshifters could do it once every twenty-four hours with no problems, but after the second shift, they’d need mandatory rest. Under siege like this, the shapeshifters would eat and sleep every chance they got to stave off the shifting fatigue.
Troy had stayed behind in the former prison to examine the bodies. About twenty minutes ago Mayor Gene, Ned, and the entire town council knocked on our door. They wanted to view the bodies and ask questions. Keelan and Curran went with the town delegation to the prison. I conveniently excused myself due to my injuries. I didn’t want to lie to the Penderton town council, and there were questions I didn’t want to answer, so avoiding community outreach seemed like the best strategy. I had a feeling Troy was in the same boat.
