Chapter 24

The airship docked at the edge of town, and my bounty hunters and I hurried to the burning building. What we found wasn't another case of backfiring magic; it was a case of fear. The street was filled with fighting people, all of them human.

I pulled aside one of the paranormal soldiers who was trying to regain order. "What happened here?"

"About half an hour ago, a fight broke out in that grocery store."

He pointed at the burning building, which the town's firefighters were trying to save. The angry mob wasn't making their job any easier. I cast a storm cloud over the building. It rumbled, then dumped water all over the fire, drowning the flames. The fire was out. That took care of one problem. And thanks to my bounty hunters—and a little help from my cat Angel—the paranormal soldiers had quelled the fighting crowd.

"What started the fight?" I asked the paranormal soldier beside me.

"Two men both wanted the same can of beans."

"This whole fight is over a can of beans? Why?"

"It was the last can of beans in town." A dark look shadowed his face.

"This isn't the first time something like this has happened, is it?"

"No. As soon as the Legion issued the order for all supernaturals to stop using their magic, the citizens of Pandemonium panicked and started buying up everything they could. It's been one fight after the other ever since."

"Why are they buying up everything?" Faith asked.

"Because without magic, witches can't brew potions or produce the gadgets that people use," Gypsy told her. "Though what magic has to do with a simple can of beans is anyone's guess."

"Fear is contagious. It knows no bounds," Calli said. "It ignores the bonds of friendship and camaraderie. It is resistant to reason and immune to logic. Fear is the destroyer of worlds. It is a plague on the very fibers of human civilization."

Jinx rolled his eyes. He'd never been very philosophical. Or poetic, for that matter.

"How big is your local sheriff's office?" I asked the paranormal soldier.

He looked upon the mass of handcuffed rioters and arsonists as his team led them away. "Not nearly big enough."

"This culture of fear is an ugly thing," I commented to Angel.

Then we turned and followed the procession of prisoners to jail.

* * *

We managedto squeeze the worst offenders into the tiny jail, but we were forced to let the others go due to the shortage of prison cells. Pandemonium wasn't prepared to handle the current situation. The world wasn't prepared to handle it.

News reports flashed across the television screen in the sheriff's office. Scenes of riots, fires, and destruction. We liked to believe humanity was so intelligent, so evolved, but there was little evidence of that in this video montage. Civilization was coming apart at the seams. Supernaturals turning against one another, and humans turning against them. Every so often, there was a tiny beacon of light in the dark. Like the story of a brave stranger taking a stand to protect a young supernatural girl that his neighbors tried to kill.

"Trying times like these bring out the worst in people and the best in people," Calli commented.

I just stood there and watched in horror. I had wished that the media would stop focusing on me. Well, I'd gotten my wish, but it hadn't turned out at all like I'd wanted. These scenes of hate and violence and humanity at its worst were so much more painful to watch than anything the reporters had ever said about me.

I didn't know how to fight this kind of thing. The enemy wasn't a monster this time; it was fear itself. An angry, explosive fear that drove people to do all kinds of unspeakable things. Watching it play out like this—it hurt in my heart. It hurt in my soul. I wanted to fix it now. I couldn't let it go on a moment longer.

But I had to do just that. I had to go. My only hope of healing humanity was to put an end to this terrible curse.

"Move out," I told my team of bounty hunters. "There's nothing more we can do here."

One of the paranormal soldiers had seen the shifters leave town and set out across the wilderness earlier this morning. We had to keep going. We had to follow that trail and chase the shifters down—and hope that something they'd seen during their time as the vampires' guards would help us end the curse.

* * *

We boarded the airship again.The paranormal soldier had seen the shifters head through the Black Forest, so that's the way we went. From above, the Black Forest was actually many small forests, each one dominated by a different variety of wild tree. I'd read that some of those tree varieties were actually monsters. I hadn't met many monster plants, but the ones I had encountered weren't any friendlier than the animal sort. We had to be prepared to fight.

"There." Calli pointed at one of the small forests below. "They're emerging."

I looked. There were four people: three men and a woman. Clearly all shifters. I knew that from the quick pace they maintained as they ran out of one forest, toward the next. I knew it from their stereotypical denim-and-leather shifter outfits. And I knew it from the crackle of anticipatory magic in the air around them.

I jumped up onto the deck's handrail. "The shifters are preparing to use their magic. I have to stop them before our only witnesses on Drummoyne's vampires become dead witnesses. Get everyone ready."

Then I dove for the ground. Magic sizzled across my back, and my wings flashed out to catch my fall. I flew straight at the shifters.

The monsters made it to them first. They weren't wolves or birds or even dinosaurs. The monsters were trees. The many small forests were on the move. They were converging on the four shifters from all sides.

"Wait! Don't use your magic, or it will kill you!" I shouted as monsters and shifters clashed.

The shifters didn't heed my warning.

One of them changed his body to blend into the ground, to hide himself from the monsters. His magic backfired. Rather than camouflaging his body, the spell cast him in a halo of bright light. The tree monsters honed in on his signal, attracted to the light. They trampled him to death.

The other two male shifters gaped in horror, then shifted themselves into bird-like creatures and flew away. They'd only been airborne for a few seconds when their wings vanished, and the two shifters fell to their deaths.

This didn't feel like a cold, dispassionate curse. It felt alive, and it had a cruel and vicious soul. The curse had allowed the shifters to lift off far enough from the ground that the fall would surely kill them.

The final shifter didn't try any spells. She just kept running.

A series of loud booms snapped my head around. The airship! Some of the trees had merged their bodies together to form a catapult and were launching rocks at my ship. Several of those rocks had punctured the airship's envelope. It was falling.

I shot toward it, using my telekinetic magic to cushion its fall. I'd once seen Nyx perform this trick, but she'd made it look a hell of a lot easier than it really was. My spell hardly seemed to slow its descent.

The ship was close to the ground. The bounty hunters jumped off, rolling as they hit the ground. Angel jumped too and landed softly on her padded paws.

"Resilient kitty," Gypsy commented as I set down beside them.

"Cats have nine lives," Calli said.

Gypsy winked at me. "Since she's Leda's cat, she's going to need a hell of a lot more than nine lives."

I crouched beside Angel and petted her once on the head. "You ok?"

She meowed in the affirmative.

"Doesn't anyone care if I'm ok? I think I twisted my ankle," Jinx complained.

"Stop complaining and start fighting," Calli told him. "This isn't over yet."

It sure wasn't. The tree monsters had disassembled their catapult and were now headed right for us.

"Those monsters lie between us and the last shifter." I drew my sword. "Help me cut a path through them."

"Should have brought my axe along," Sagittarius commented as we faced down the charging forest of trees.

We cut and slashed, ducked and dodged, making our way past the monsters until we reached the shifter.

She was already dead, trampled by the trees.

"She listened to me and did not use her magic." My voice shook. "I left her defenseless, and now she's dead."

"This isn't your fault, Leda," Calli told me. "The other shifters didn't listen to you and they died too."

The hopelessness of the situation didn't make me feel any better. Neither did the knowledge that the dead shifters had tortured the infected sirens to death. Gods and demons might have subscribed to the eye-for-an-eye philosophy, but I did not. Two wrongs never made a right. And I'd really needed to speak to those shifters.

"There are too many monsters," Calli said. "We have to run."

"Right."

I scanned the terrain. The tree monsters were everywhere—except one place. They were completely avoiding a nearby lake. Maybe they were afraid of water. A plant afraid of water? The idea was ridiculous. But, then again, so was the idea of tree monsters. The whole world didn't make much sense anymore.

"We're making a run for that lake," I told the bounty hunters. "I'll do my best to distract the trees while you escape."

That might have been the most ridiculous sentence I'd ever uttered, but not one of the snarky bounty hunters even tried to make a joke. It was a true testament to what deep shit we were all in right now.

I rose into the air, blasting the trees with every bit of magic I had. I bathed them in fire, covered them in ice, bombarded them with wind, and struck them with lightning. I summoned vines out of the ground to trip them. I shot them with enough concentrated telekinetic energy to peel the bark from their branches. I bombed them with destructive potions and powders. I glued them together with my shifting magic and tore them apart with my bare hands. I tapped them with my Fairy's Touch, infecting them with a tree disease that slowed their movements. And when I'd done all of that, I compelled the front line of trees to turn around and attack the others.

All my powers combined didn't take down the forest of hostile tree monsters, but it did slow them down enough to allow the bounty hunters to escape. As soon as they stood safely on the lake's shore, I flew over there to join them.

The tree monsters charged toward us—then suddenly stopped. There was something strange about this lake. Something that kept them out as surely as a Magitech barrier. I didn't know what had created this natural sanctuary, this oasis in the middle of the wilderness, and right now, I didn't really care. I was just grateful it existed. It had saved us.

The mad dash to the lake had left deep cuts on Gemini and Sagittarius. Gypsy was walking with a limp, but she tried to pretend that she wasn't hurt. Faith had bumped her head when she'd jumped from the airship, and it turned out Jinx's ankle wasn't just twisted; it was broken. Even Calli had a bruise on her head, and a few more I couldn't see, I bet.

Only Angel appeared unharmed. And it was no wonder. She wasn't only the size of a small cheetah; she could run as fast as a cheetah too. She'd made it to the shore long before anyone else. My friends were right about her. She was not a mundane house cat.

"What are you?" I asked, rubbing her under her chin.

If her responding meow held the answer to that question, I didn't understand it.

"There's a house over there," I told everyone, surprised by the discovery. Clearly, someone had used this place as a sanctuary before. "Let's go to it and check on everyone's injuries."

"Leda," Calli whispered to me as we walked. "Have you had a look at the monsters?"

"I don't need to. I can hear them." I frowned. "They're still there, waiting for us to leave."

"Something about this place is keeping the monsters at bay," Calli said. "We're safe for now."

I continued her thought. "But with the monsters surrounding us, we might never be able to leave."