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Lucienne slid her whip from around her wrist and pitched it in the air.

The uncoiled whip stretched to seven feet, hissing, but didn’t even have the chance to draw second blood.

The beast at the forefront bellied up amid the sickening sound of its neck snapping.

Cam the giant tossed its corpse aside. The last two mutts collapsed with a yelp ten yards before they reached Lucienne.

Vladimir’s Armatix killed one of them. Orlando’s rifle gunned down the other.

Lucienne turned to the king and queen with a blank expression. “Are you ready to conduct business now? Or do you have more variety?”

Vladimir trained his gun on the king, aiming for the space between his eyes. “You won’t get the chance again, dick!” His finger tightened on the trigger, ready to pull.

“Don’t shoot!” the queen called, then urged her husband. “King Henry!”

The king raised a finger in the air and called to his army. “Enough!” He frantically waved off his guards, and they dropped back again, carrying their leader’s body with them.

Ignoring the tension, Lucienne let her fingers dance on the touch-screen keyboard. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

A streaming video appeared on the screen—clips from war documentaries and violent movies with high-fidelity sound. She turned the screen toward the king and the queen.

“Moving pictures on glass?” the queen asked in puzzlement.

“These are real wars and real deaths on this glass,” Lucienne said.

The king and queen stared at the screen—air strikes, dismembered human bodies piled up, buildings collapsing into ruins. Fire and smoke and bones.

The king turned his ashen face away, not at all shocked by the images, but full of fear that his kingdom, too, would be reduced to ashes. The queen, who had less stomach for blood and gore, doubled over and vomited.

Lucienne glanced at Vladimir with a rueful smile.

She was trained to be a shark. “Be a predator, never prey,” Jed often told her.

But she was the shark that always worked to make bloodshed the last resort.

Vladimir gazed at her with approval before fixing his hard stare on the guards.

“Sun Tzu once said, ‘The best victory is to win without fighting, without spilling blood,’” he said.

Lucienne squeezed his hand in appreciation before turning to the king. “We’re the good guys. If the bad guys come, innocent blood will spill on your lovely streets.” She called to the screen, “Miss Wen?”

Ziyi’s animated eyes lined with heavy blue mascara replaced the graphic pictures on the screen. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she greeted. Lucienne almost rolled her eyes. Ziyi must have heard Orlando calling her that in front of the natives.

“Mr. King, Miss Wen is going to employ a Sky Eye to watch you from space. Show Mr. King where he is.”

An image of the king and his queen looking lost on the temple’s marble stairs replaced Ziyi’s glossy red lips on the screen. To highlight the effect, the satellite camera zoomed in and portrayed a close-up of the king’s twitching mustache.

“The glass mirror is going to suck our souls!” the queen cried.

“It has no interest in your souls,” Lucienne said.

Awe-struck, the king looked up at the heavens to find the Sky Eye.

“It sees you, but you can’t see it,” Lucienne talked into the screen. “Thank you, Miss Wen. I can take over from here.” And the screen faded to blackness.

“I must show you one last thing, Mr. King.” Lucienne clicked an icon and brought to life a video of military parades—hundreds of thousands of soldiers marching behind massive tanks. “Imagine all of them swarming Nirvana like millions of locusts,” she sighed .

The king clenched his teeth, his voice choked in fear. “They mustn’t come! The gods built this kingdom for their chosen people. Our ancestors had the land—”

“The bad guys don’t care. They can't be reasoned with. They can't be bargained with. They don’t feel pity, remorse, or fear,” Lucienne interrupted.

“But as long as my people are safe in Nirvana, Miss Wen won’t inform the rest of the world of your land.

” She straightened her shoulders and looked into the king’s eyes with a piercing gaze.

“I advise you to let your people know it’d be a horrible idea to attack us in any way—sneak up on us, ambush us, cut our throats while we sleep, or poison us with food and drink. If we don’t survive, you don’t.”

The king flinched. He exchanged words with his queen in their local tongue. “How long will you stay in my kingdom?” the king asked Lucienne venomously.

“Until we find the sacred token missing from Hell Gate and return it to the gods, so the climate will return to normal.” Lucienne’s keen eyes locked onto the king and queen, trying one more time to read their minds and see if they knew anything about the Eye of Time.

“Whoever committed such an unholy crime shall be punished to death!” the king said.

“Father, Ashburn the Extra is the one who committed such a crime.” Prince Felix stepped forward. “He must have stolen the token—the god’s magic box. So the gods’ light went out.” He gestured at the blacked out town with indignation.

“We’ll catch whoever took the magic box,” Lucienne said. “We must now bid you and your people goodnight. We’ll be back.”

The king and queen looked sullen, and the crowd remained hostile but silent.

Lucienne and Vladimir shared a look. They’d gained the access to Nirvana. Vladimir gestured for the men to withdraw.

BL7 shot into the sky like a black arrow. In a few seconds, it vanished from the sight of the islanders.