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PROLOGUE: GAIN ONE, LOSE ONE

They were close. So close.

Tearloch could hear Minkin pleading with her heartless captor, stalling for time, trusting her friends could rescue her before it was too late. Apparently, her gift of mental manipulation wasn't working on the old sorcerer Iphocles, and in that maze of alleys, it was impossible to tell which direction her voice was coming from!

Tearloch tapped Hux on the shoulder and waved him off. They had to separate if they were going to find her. Their other friends were working their way in from the south of Cutthroat Quarter. But their plan to pin their quarry between them was not working.

"Just leave me," Minkin pleaded louder. "I'll tell them you're long gone. They'll give up the chase. Just go. Save yourself."

Her voice came from behind! Tearloch backtracked.

Iphocles chuckled . "I can feel ye in my brain. An impressive talent. Far too handy to leave by the side of the road, my dear. But don't worry about me. I will flee, as ye suggest, but first, I'll have to take yer head."

From the left!

Tearloch turned, but the small alcove was empty.

"No! Wait. You can have my power. I can give it to you. I can surrender it ? —"

"I've gathered enough of them to know it doesn't work that way. But I give ye credit for trying ? —"

Tearloch retreated, turned right, and found Huxor had homed in on the same spot. Together, they jumped through the opening and turned, swords high. Tearloch yelled with every bit of breath he had in him. Together with Huxor’s roar, they should deafen anyone in the alley.

Minkin was on her knees, her blue robes soiled, her shoulders hunched. The sorcerer’s staff of gnarled wood lay discarded beside her. His sword hovered above her neck. Another few seconds and they'd have been too late.

Behind Iphocles, Sweetie, Dower, and Bain entered the rectangular space on silent feet and encircled the old man, who sensed them only after they were in position.

The need for shouting was over. Hux took a step forward. "All we want is the woman."

Iphocles' eyes narrowed and he smiled. "Ye lie. And it's not just my blood you're wanting, is it, Huxor?"

Hux smiled back. Even from the side, Tearloch realized what that smile meant.

"Don't do it," he warned his friend quietly. "That power will poison your soul, as it has his. Would you really change places with that...that...creature?"

"’Course not." Hux retreated a step, but his disturbing smile remained.

“Let her go,” Sweetie demanded, “and we will deal with you mercifully.”

“It is you who will need mercy,” the old man snarled, then lifted his chin in their friend’s direction. Sweetie yelped and dropped his blade. Pain contorted his face as first one, then another pointed horn emerged from the side of his skull. His brow widened to accommodate the weight as the horns stretched and curled, each reaching a foot and a half out from his head. He was turning into a bull!

Tearloch lunged forward to place the edge of his sword at the fiend’s neck. “Change him back!”

Iphocles lowered his weapon to rest it against the skin of Minkin's neck, and Tearloch hesitated. If he killed the old man now, Sweetie was doomed to remain an abomination.

"Flee,” the villain taunted quietly. “Take yer bull-man and go or I won't be the only one to bleed.” He tilted the blade back and forth, the reflection of the sky flashed along the edge. “Sharp as can be. It’ll slice through her like water."

"Bain! Now!" Hux shouted.

Iphocles turned to face the others. Tearloch knocked the blade away from Minkin's neck, then had to duck fast to keep Hux's blade from removing his own head along with the old man's.

“No,” he shouted, but it was too late. Now, the spell couldn’t be uncast!

Minkin realized it too and ran into Sweetie’s arms. Distracted by the new weight on his head, their tall friend held her loosely while he wagged his monstrous head back and forth, as if he expected the horns to fall off.

Huxor studied the severed head where it lay, his expression triumphant. None of the deep wrinkles had eased in death. The weathered face paled to match its scars as the blood drained away, puddling beneath the full but scraggly white beard. The sunken eyes remained open as if to warn that, even in death, this malevolent old sorcerer shouldn’t be underestimated.

“You fool! What about Sweetie?” Tearloch pointed to where Bain and Dower, Hux’s brothers, were trying to calm the disfigured man.

“Don’t worry,” Hux said. “I will fix him.”

A gray mist rose from the pile of rags that hid Iphocles’ ancient bones. It concentrated itself into a writhing snake and inched its way off the ground as if anxious to leave the decrepit body behind.

Tearloch tried to hold Huxor back, but it was no use. As his friend shrugged out of his grasp and reached out for the mist, Tearloch realized this had been Hux’s plan all along. He’d always been susceptible to the lure of power. And now that he was this close, he couldn’t let it go.

So Tearloch stopped fighting. After all, if Hux survived the transfer, he might be able to undo the curse on Sweetie.

Should he lose one friend to save another? Of course not. But it was Hux’s will that was in charge now, not Tearloch’s. Even back when they’d accepted the commission to hunt down Iphocles, it had been Huxor who had tipped the scales and convinced them to take the job—a service to Hestia, he’d called it.

And now, they’d very nearly lost Minkin, and Sweetie might be deformed for life. So, it was only right that Huxor undo the wrong his ambition had wrought.

The snake of mist fought back, trying to rip itself out of Hux’s grasping hands, giving Tearloch a small dose of hope. But the mist, like Tearloch, had underestimated his oldest friend, who fought just as ferociously to hold fast. At one point, the gray stuff had nearly gotten away, all but a small tail of the stuff caught between Hux’s fingers. But then it stopped, hovered mid-air, and turned to look down into its opponent’s face. And whatever it saw there, whatever it read there…it liked.

It pulled that last little tail up into itself, moved over Huxor’s head, and dove like a thirsty man into a pool of clear, clean water.

Too late, Bain and Dower realized what was happening and arrived at their older brother’s side just as the mist chose its new host. They held his arms, supporting him while he, like Sweetie, grew accustomed to his new incarnation. But unlike Sweetie, Huxor’s countenance changed.

His eyes sank deeper into his skull while his cheek bones rose, removing most of what had made the man handsome. While they watched, rune-shaped scars etched themselves into the skin of his forehead and the backs of his hands. It had to be painful! But the man gave away nothing.

His hair and beard grew by degrees, as if the mist inside him were stretching its fingers. Under the growing resemblance of the dead sorcerer, only half of Huxor remained. He still had the dark of his hair, his brawn, and his height.

Tearloch prayed more of his friend lingered on the inside. He hurried to Sweetie, to move him into Huxor’s line of sight. “Quick now, Hux. Reverse the spell and then we’ll worry about what comes next.”

Huxor grinned at Sweetie. “Not so pompous now, are ye?”

Ye? Already, he sounded like Iphocles!

Tearloch waved to get the man’s attention. “Huxor! Not now. Make Sweetie whole and he’ll be indebted for the rest of his life. You know he will. Then we will get you back.”

The man blinked. He looked at his brothers in turn, then lifted an imperious brow in a silent order to release him, which they did, reluctantly. They could barely stand to look at him without pity leaking from their eyes. The handsome trio was down to two.

Hux shrugged his shoulders and held out his arms, as if testing the fit of his clothes. His size hadn’t changed.

He turned in a circle. “Give me room. Give me room. Let me think how to reverse the spell.” His old face seemed to shift just beneath the surface of his skin as he walked around the perimeter of the alley, again and again, while the rest of us stood waiting in the center with the old man’s body at our feet.

Hux came around to the head again, but this time, instead of stepping around it, he picked it up, tossed it in the air, and laughed. “Do something with this, will you?”

Blood rained from the bloody neck, and we dove in different directions to avoid it. The head hit the ground with a dull thud, face down. It didn’t move.

When we looked up, Huxor was gone.