Something was burning. Grass, his nose told him. Probably not all of the mage fire had politely extinguished itself after splattering uselessly against Reno or his children. He stole another quick glance at the sky—just in time to see one of the darting figures wink out. But this time the vanished spawn didn’t reappear.
That can’t be good, he thought, looking all around, both sky and ground, without seeing the missing spawn. Had it been one of the three enemies or one of the two allies who’d vanished? In their white robes they were hard to tell apart from the ground. He couldn’t—
Grandmother’s voice rang out. “They arrive!”
His heart leaped. The children. The children were coming through the gate. Toby, his heart sang, while his mind informed him that this meant that Grandmother had to move away from the gate. Which meant dropping the ward.
Things could get messy. If any of the magic being hurled overhead rained down on them—if the Fists outside the ward now realized it was gone—
And then it was.
First he heard a woman’s voice. Alice Báitóu, who’d gone to get the children. She said something in Chinese, then in English. “What is happening? The alarm is only halfway . . . oh. My.”
The Kanas were between him and the tower and he couldn’t see. And he had to. He sprinted quickly to get a view of the doorway that was also a gate.
Grandmother stood on one side of it, Alice on the other. Alice’s head was tilted up, her mouth agape as she stared up at Reno. A Fist appeared in the empty doorway carrying a box tucked under one arm and a tiny baby in the other. Noah. The next one toted a young boy—Diego—followed by a man carrying a large box, then one carrying a diaper bag and another baby—
“Ryder!” Cynna screamed, and shoved her way to that Fist. To her baby.
The last Fist stepped from nothing into this world. He carried Toby. A writhing, twisting Toby, his body bucking, caught in some invisible agony, his face frozen in a snarl . . .
Oh, God. Dear Lady. Rule knew what that snarl mean, that writhing body, and never mind that it should be impossible. He forgot the Fists, the dragon, the spawn, and raced for his son.
Who was undergoing First Change.
? ? ?
“SHIT!” Lily cried.
Something was wrong with Toby. Rule was racing toward him and Lily wanted to knock a couple people down and go to him, too, but the ward was down and the remaining Fists—maybe twenty of them—had just realized it. One of them barked out an order to the rest and they began trotting forward. And Cynna was out of the picture for now, having grabbed Ryder and fallen to her knees on the ground, crying, hugging her baby.
Grandmother shoved the last of Alice’s Fists out of the way and resumed her place, muttering words Lily couldn’t catch. A moment later the fire sprang up again in a perfect circle. Two Fists were crossing the burned grass at that instant. One jumped back; the other forward.
The ward slid back in place, but eleven more Fists were on this side of it now. And headed toward the tower.
Lily set her feet and held out her weapon in her best two-handed grip. But the men charging them wouldn’t know what she held. Wouldn’t respect what a gun can do. She was going to have to kill people to prove she could.
Alice stammered. “H-he isn’t . . . who is he?”
“He’s calling himself Reno.” Lily sighted on the man in the lead. The one smart enough to give orders. She squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in her hands. The man cried out, staggered, and fell. She wanted to scream at them all to stop, not to make her kill them. She sighted again. “He’s your great-grandmother.”
“He’s my . . . oh.” Then, sharply, “Stop that!”
“Can’t. Got to stop them.”
“Let me,” Alice said.
Out of the corner of her eye Lily saw Alice make a quick, precise gesture. She spoke a word once. Spoke it again and again, until the first five Fists had all collapsed to the ground in agony. Then, loudly, “Halt!”
To Lily’s amazement, they did. Several called out explanations. Tú’àn had ordered the nonmagical Fists into action, but not them. Their orders were unclear, but they knew Tú’àn wanted the old woman. Alice should step aside.
“You are mistaken,” Alice told them crisply. “Stay where you are while I sort out the situation.”
Her familiar authority stopped them even as it deepened their confusion. Without an officer or sergeant, they didn’t dare disobey one who’d often given them orders in the past. One who was dragon kin. But what if they were wrong? What if the Zhu Tú’àn expected them to capture the old woman without being specifically ordered to do so?
Rule reached Toby. Lily didn’t know what he intended to do. He was a wolf at the moment and couldn’t—shit and double shit!
Toby had vanished into the M?bius strip confusion of the Change.
“Get back!” Lily called out. “Everyone get away from the wolf.” By the time she’d finished the sentence, it was no longer accurate. “The wolves.”
Toby made a gorgeous wolf, most of him as black as his uncle’s wolf form, but with a silvery gray mask across his face, on the tips of his ears, and on his belly. He made a small wolf, however, not as tall as other lupi, and lean, almost skinny. His legs looked wobbly and too long for his body. He was an adolescent wolf? Lily wasn’t sure what teenage wolves looked like. She’d never seen one. The new wolves were kept sequestered at terra tradis. Which was where Toby would have been if they’d had any idea, any inkling, he was this close to First Change.
He stood on those four wobbly legs over the prostrate and terrified Fist who’d been carrying him, and his teeth were as big as an adult’s and bared in a snarl. He lunged for the man’s throat—
Rule body-slammed him, knocking him down. He yipped, startled, and fell at Grandmother’s feet. Rule moved to stand over him.
“Alice!” Cynna cried. “Tell your men to give me the children—or at least to get them away from the wolves.”
Lily grabbed Alice’s arm and pulled. “Come on. It is not safe to be near those wolves.”
Alice let herself be moved, but she frowned. “Aren’t they your wolves? And why are there two?”
“Rule’s okay. He’s in control. The other one is Toby, but Toby doesn’t know he’s Toby right now.” Lily stopped about ten feet from the wolves, keeping an eye on the milling Fists. Trusting Rule to keep an eye on Toby. “He just went through First Change. He’s really hungry and really dangerous. He needs food. Meat.”
“I do not have meat.”
“Can you get some? One of your men—can you send someone to get him some meat? A couple of chickens, maybe?”
Alice considered that briefly. “An excellent idea. My squad will go get meat.”
“All five?”
“When the Zhuren reclaim them, they will be a deficit, not an asset.” Alice spoke in Chinese to her squad leader, telling him to take the children over to the group of Kanas who were sitting farthest from the tower, where Cynna would take charge of them. Then all of them were to go get chickens and bring them here.