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I reached for my sword, and got a shock when it refused to come at my call.

Tia circled around and flattened me in the moment I stood there dumbstruck, her full weight bearing down as she drove her teeth at my throat. Smacking my head against stone was a sufficient wake-up call to get me in action again, though my brain was a static mess of bewilderment. Fighting, though, wasn’t necessarily a brainy thing to do. I grabbed two fistfuls of Tia’s ruff and kicked her in the belly, using leg strength to throw her over my head. I caught a glimpse of a magnificent aerial twist and she landed on her feet, facing me but still skidding backward from momentum. It gave me enough time to roll to my own feet and try again to call my sword to me.

I got a sensation of magnets interacting: magics rejecting each other, rebounding when they tried to meet. Then Tia had her feet under her again and was charging forward. I threw myself sideways, landing alarmingly near the bonfire. It was picking up serious heat, now that I noticed it: all the cave’s dampness had been sucked away and the close quarters were making air thin and dry. I doubted Tia had considered that when she chose the cavern as her magical roasting pit. Her captives were screaming and coughing, and frustration tore through me. Short of bringing down the ceiling, I didn’t know how to magically put a fire out, and any experimentation would give Tia more than enough opportunity to chew me into little bits. It had to be one crisis at a time, but I didn’t see how I was going to get everybody out of there alive, that way. Not without throwing myself wholesale into a magic whose topped-up, shiny new strength didn’t yet have any grasp on consequences or limitations.

Tia came at me again, and the time for debate ended. I whispered,Rattler, help?, and when Tia hit me, it was a coyote she rolled backward over the broad stone floor.

There wassomething to be said for the element of surprise. She had, perfectly reasonably, expected to smash into a six-foot-tall, hundred-and-sixty-five-pound woman. The same amount of coyote was a whole different mouthful, pretty much literally: her teeth snapped on where my throat should have been, but I’d changed shape so radically she caught air half a foot from my skull instead. Almost without losing momentum, she jumped away again, then spun back to gape at me, an expression as comical on a wolf as it was on a human. Then she fell back a few more steps, hackles rising warily.

Part of my brain—the part that was pure coyote, I imagined—informed me that wolves were bigger and stronger than coyotes. That they were a higher-apex predator, and that I shouldn’t mess with one. But that part didn’t take into account the magic at work with both of us. Tia was broader than I, musculature heavier and more compact. I was rangier, longer-legged and therefore theoretically faster. She no doubt had far more experience fighting in canine form, but I outweighed her any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Even my canine mind was starting to think it looked like a fair fight, and I could almost see Tia’s own wolf-brain calculating just what the hell its odds were against a coyote bigger than itself. Feeling confident, I took a step forward.

And tangled myself in my jeans. Tia’s lips pulled back from her teeth in a distinctly wolfish grin. She charged as I scrambled and kicked my way free of the pants. My sweater and T-shirt were a constrictive mess, but they were also a barrier: I crashed to the side and her teeth snagged in knitted cotton, tearing it but not me. She turned again, snarling, and this time I deliberately let her grab a mouthful of sweater, then used her ferocious, angry tugging to help me back out of it. The T-shirt loosened instantly, no longer as twisted around my body, and I chalked it up to good enough as I swung to face my opponent.

My vision erupted. Every flicker of movement suddenly caught my attention: Tia, minutely shifting her weight as she tried to decide whether to press the attack. That was fine. That was detail I wanted.

Flame darting in and out of existence wasnotdetail I wanted. Every lick that reached for the wicker man or the ceiling caught my attention, dragging it away from the imminent assault. Trickles of water I’d thought steamed away glittered at the cave’s top edges, tiny droplets forming beautiful, shining, distracting jewels. Terrified men scrabbled and reached out of the wicker man, trying to escape somehow; acting like prey animals, making me want to pounce and bite and tear. Bits of branch fell away inside the fire ring, their disintegration to charcoal and ash vivid and compelling. Smoke roiled up, fascinating in its curls.Everythingdemanded my full regard, and my brain shrieked, trying to process the overload of motion surrounding me.

I collapsed, paws over my eyes, and howled a miserable cry against stone. It echoed, rebounded and came back to me as the cries of frightened humans; as the snap and bite of flame in the air; as the hiss of steam and the drip of water. Tia’s breath, far too quiet for any reasonable chance at being heard, scraped at my ears with its harshness, and the clack of her claws against stone sounded like apocalyptic drums, pounding in the end of the world. And hersmell. Not human, not animal, but something in between. Not even like Morrison, whose scent leaped to my attention over the fire and smoke and steam. Somehow he had been one thing, man and man-scented, and now was the other, wolf and wolf-scented, but Tia was neither and both. Transforming would never change her scent: she would always smell half-wild, musky, carnivore, to a nose sensitive enough to catch it. I didn’t know how I’d missed it at the theater, it was so obvious to me now. Everything,everythingwas obvious, so obvious as to pound me down, a sensory overload I was totallyunprepared to deal with. Exploding the amulet, being bowled over by too-vivid Sight; those things had warned me about the price of untempered magic, but this was a thousand times worse. This was the world hammering into me, taking full advantage of the enhanced senses a coyote had over a human.

For one brief, horrifying moment I wondered just how badly I could have damaged the world around me if I’d tried an external magic rather than one as internal as shapeshifting, and then the world, in the form of Tia Carley’s lupine self, came up and laid the smacketh down.

I was already on the floor, flat as I could get, as if spreading myself thin might reduce the raging strength of sensory attack. She landed on me with a crunch, and to my eternal gratitude, it appeared my sense of touch hadn’t been blown beyond the edge of coping. Possibly being hit by a semi and then thrown into a wall had already pushed it beyond its ability to respond any further, but I didn’t care. At least there was one aspect of a too-loud, too-vivid, too-smelly world I wasn’t entirely inundated by. Heartened by that one small gift, I surged upward, shaking Tia off before she got her teeth into me. Teeth, ugh: I bet my sense of taste had been upgraded, too, and I gagged on the memory of the theater door handle.

The world seemed a little less overpowering once I was back on my feet. I shook myself, then let out what was meant to be a barbaric shout, something to expel excess energy from within me. It came out a series of tripping howls and yips, not very barbaric at all, though it was plenty wild, and to my huge relief, it did batter down some of the extreme-sports levels of attention I was paying to everything.

And like it had physical presence, it dampened some of the fire. Inside a breath or two, the air was cooler, smelling less of flame and smoke and more of terrified, unwashed humans. I sneezed, made a mental note to apologize to Morrison forlaughing at him when we’d walked through the stinky sections of Underground, and staggered in a clumsy line, trying to shake off the last of the blowout’s after-effects.

Clearly they’d only affected me. My head was still ringing when Tia slammed into me from the side, knocking us both into sooty but not-flaming firewood. I caught a glimpse of one of the caged men above me, his expression twisted with bewildered relief: whatever was going on, he wasn’t going to roast to death in the next three minutes, which made his life a whole lot better than it had been thirty seconds ago.

Which mademylife seem a whole lot better than it had thirty seconds ago. I twisted under Tia, got my teeth dangerously closer to her jaws, and then for the first time in my life, found myself in the middle of a dogfight.

I’d seen them, of course. Usually just brief spates, two animals suddenly making themselves a single roiling ball of teeth and claws and snarls. Nobody in their right mind wanted to get in the middle of that: it was obviously dangerous, and a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up.

From inside, a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up. I had no idea how to win this fight, but I didn’t have to: my coyote brain knew exactly what to do in a tussle with another dog. Tia moved one way; I was there to meet her. I jerked another direction; she was there to stop me. Claws and teeth flashed, striking scores. Fur flew, and the animalistic scent/taste of her blood settled in my teeth. We smashed into the wicker man’s foot, a fact I knew only because the guy inside it screamed.

Tia, infuriated, broke from me to go after him. I jumped after her, astonished at how far I could move in a single leap, and bore her to the ground with my superior weight. She flipped on her back before I could get my teeth into her neck, and we were at it again, muzzles in each other’s faces, canines slashing and trying to hit vulnerable territory.

Then as fast as we’d come together, we broke apart again, both of us circling and snarling, waiting for another moment to attack. My lungs burned with effort and every nerve in my body was ratcheted up as I slunk around, head lowered, ears back, teeth bared.

It felt fantastic. It felt brutal, ugly, dangerous,alive,and I didn’t know if it was the animal or the human in me that loved it. I feared it was the human: animals didn’t fight for fun, not like this. They fought for dominance or survival. I didn’t think they walked away from fights triumphant, not the way people did, and I didn’t know if the warrior’s path I was on meant if it was okay to revel in warfare while in animal form.

Tia came at me one last time, and it ceased to matter.

Chapter 29

Smoke and flame and blood: those were the scents in Tia’s fur and in the whole of the cavern. I had no time to look, but I thought the reprieve was over. Whatever my little magic overload had done, it hadn’t put all the fire out, and it was picking up speed again. I had to quit screwing around, for all that torn fur and blurred vision and general heaving and panting suggested I hadn’t been screwing around at all. Part of me screamed to finish it, to end the battle in as brutal and final a manner as necessary.

But I was a human in coyote’s clothing, and like it or not, Tia was at least partially human under her own lupine coat. Decent humans did not go around killing one another. But we weren’t exactly in the right physical forms to sit down and discuss the matter, and I seriously doubted Tia would shift back to her beautiful naked human self if I went that route. In her shoes—or paws—I’d just jump on me and rip my throat out. Which, as far as I could tell, pretty much left me with the option to do unto her before she did unto me.

I’d already shot somebody this week. I was not delighted with the prospect of causing grievous physical harm, by which Imeant almost certain death, to a second party inside forty-eight hours.

Knowing I would lose time and ground, knowing I would almost certainly regret it, I went within and whispered,Rattler? Raven? Guide me?

We ssstrike,Rattler replied instantly. He was a white streak against blackness in my mind, barely there, as if he, no more than I, hadn’t yet fully recovered from the blast at the theater. But he was confident in his response, which was more than I could claim.We hunt, we shift, we heal. Life is sssacred, shaman. Yours no lessss than othersss.Theirsssno lessss than othersss,and I knew he meant the men trapped in the wicker man above me.You did not ssstart this battle,he told me.There isss no shame in finishing it.

Good enough, from a predator. I repeatedRaven?,and my other guide soared out of darkness, power flexing with each beat of his wings.

It shed light on a field of war. There was nothing familiar about it, none of the tanks or guns or trenches from the past century or more of warfare. Instead, a few surviving horses picked their way across bloody, mashed-down grass, and whickered in distress at the bloody short swords and leather armor that lay on and around innumerable human bodies.