A loud thunderclap shook the sky, followed by a meaty roar. The ground trembled and in the near distance, something uprooted trees, cracked their trunks like kindling. At the same moment, the Veil shattered and the true landscape was revealed—the wood was once again shrouded in milky fog. The stench of toadstools and cobwebs filled the copse and I knew that someone had just flown overhead. Thane. We each have our own masked scent, unique as a human fingerprint, and this was the scent my cousin wore. I squinted. I could see him now through the haze, a leathery silhouette, soaring above the trees. Something about his flight path, crooked and careening, said that he had been recently wounded.
But who had he been fighting?
I bristled. Wings spread wide, I thumped above the tree line. There, I saw Sage tumble into the distant treetops, her face bruised, her body bleeding. River crouched at her side, fists studded with bone, hands clasped together and ready to swing again.
And now, just a wingspan away from my sister, was the beast that is my cousin, Thane, ready and eager to join the fight.
I swooped through mist and shadow, wings spread, mouth open wide, long fangs and claws bared. I latched onto Thane with iron fists, stopped his flight, and then swung him around until he slammed against a sixty-foot pine. He snarled and spit, gnawed at my hands. Then together, we rolled and tumbled through the branches and trunks, smashed against an oak and then a white fir, shattering the trees and breaking branches, until needles fell from nearby trees in a dark green rain.
Finally, I grabbed Thane by the throat and tossed him into the creek, a good seventy feet below us.
Sage hovered above the tree line, one side of her beautiful face swollen and bleeding. It was evidence enough for me, though it wouldn’t hold up in court. Fortunately, I knew exactly what would.
My cousins had broken the rules, sure enough.
“I warned you, cousins,” I growled. “My invitation stated the rules, plain and clear—”
“We didn’t take a thing,” River cried when I approached, his country accent bleeding through. For all his pretending he was nothing but a scavenger and a pauper. “We never harmed any of your humans.”
“You were both trying to harvest before the Hunt, I heard you—”
Then Thane flew up to meet us. He coughed and spit, water soaking his clothes and hair. “He tells the truth, cousin. I swear it.”
Meanwhile, a foul stench rose from the forest floor, somewhere beneath us.
“On top of that, you dared to strike my sister?” I asked, my voice like thunder now. I kneed River in the gut, then slammed my fist across his brow.
“She called your werebeast down upon us with a spell,” River gasped. “We couldn’t defend ourselves—”
“I told you it wasn’t my beast!” Sage growled.
“Then how do you explain its silver eyes? Only your clan has that distinction and you know it—”
“We have no claims on that beast,” I said.
“Conjured up by one of your own enchantments, sure enough,” Thane said. He narrowed his eyes.
I spun and slammed a fist in his side to quiet him. My cousin had always been a troublemaker back home, most likely this was all his idea. The blow fell close to Thane’s left arm, causing him to curl over with a moan. At that same moment my sister lashed out at River, sliced talons, left ribbons of blood on his chest. River howled in pain and shrank away.
Sage and River parted, then hung in the air, panting, glaring at each other.
Again, closer now, the wind swept through branches, shimmered leaves, stirred an unclean stench of decaying human flesh. Somewhere nearby.
“You have broken the rules, I know it. The human woman you attacked may well have escaped, but there was another,” I said. “I can smell a carcass somewhere below us.”
I grabbed Thane’s left arm, surprised to discover a strange throbbing mash of broken bone and flesh in the midst of healing. When my hold tightened, he wailed and struggled to get away. In retaliation he swung a wild blow with his other arm.
He dug a fist into the hole in my side—into the wound that would never heal.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I bellowed, hot searing torment twisting through my gut. Still, I tightened my grip on him, forced him to withdraw his fist. I had to pretend that this blow had not injured me, couldn’t let either of them know that Thane had accidentally discovered my one weakness.
He watched me, a low hiss escaping from gritted teeth as he slowly pulled his knuckled hand away.
“I’ll endure no more of this! The Hunt is off! Take your party and leave Ticonderoga Falls.” I gripped Thane about the throat, threatened to press the life from him. “Immediately.”
“Nay. We will not leave,” he choked out. “You cannot make us—”
“You will leave, cousin. You and your clan,” I said as I tossed him into a lattice of evergreen boughs. “Or by Darkling law, you will be banished. You’ll never hunt again.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” River said, trembling. His gaze darted toward Thane, then back to me again.
“Aye, we would.” Sage flew closer until she hovered beside me. “Two votes is all it takes to have you and your entire clan banished from this earth. By court law, we cannot touch you until a full hour passes. But you must be gone by then, or I myself will sign the warrant against you.”
Thane met her stare evenly. “So be it, then.”