“We believe Varvara is destabilizing both her competition and the guilds that could oppose her while she takes control of Vancouver’s criminal underground and black market. We also believe she’ll attack the Crow and Hammer soon.”

“Then let’s find the sorceress!” Darren shouted from the back. “And stop her first!”

“Dark sorcerers do not advertise their location,” Tabitha retorted coldly. “Finding her will take too long, require too much manpower, and leave our guild unprotected.”

“Can we protect the guild?” Aaron asked, unusually grim. “It won’t take many of those golems to tear the place apart. They spit acid, breathe fire, and are almost impossible to destroy.”

“What do we know about golems?” Laetitia inquired to the room. “They’re dark magic, aren’t they?”

“Rare dark magic.” Andrew drummed his fingers on the table where he sat with Gwen and Bryce. “They’re difficult to make, from what I’ve heard, and aren’t as useful as they seem. They have limited intelligence and—”

“They have no intelligence,” Zak interrupted impatiently. “They perform basic sets of movements determined by simple stimuli. The better the sorcerer, the more complex the movements and the increased responsiveness to stimuli, but golems can’t think.”

Again, my guildmates eyed the stranger in their midst.

“What’s the best way to counter them?” Darius asked.

“Destroy the animation array. Failing that, let the golem chase you until it runs out of juice. They aren’t very fast.” He folded his arms. “Golems are rare because they’re so limited. They take weeks to charge, but once they start moving, they burn through their stored magic within ten minutes.”

“The golems that attacked MiraCo lasted longer than that,” Kai reminded him. “At least one was still going after half an hour.”

“And I told you then that it had to be a different golem.”

“The ones we knocked over at Odin’s Eye,” I said. “They were still kicking when I left, and it’d been about twenty-five minutes at that point. Didn’t you mention something about an alchemy component?”

“Alchemy?” Sin repeated, sitting at a table with Kaveri and Kier. “As part of a golem? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what I said,” Zak rumbled. “The liquid was probably blood, which makes even less sense. Golems use metallurgic ciphering fortified with astral conditioning, and blood alchemy has no overlap.”

“So it couldn’t be used to make the golems live longer?” I asked.

“They aren’t alive. And no, human blood doesn’t have any magical properties that could—”

He broke off, his green eyes losing focus. I blinked in confusion as he went completely still, staring at nothing.

Kaveri screamed.

Darkness burst through the ceiling as Zak launched away from the bar. Wings flaring wide, Lallakai swept down in a maelstrom of shadows. Her talons caught Zak’s shoulders, her green eyes glowing from amidst the inky flames that danced from her feathers.

The guild door flew open, crashing into the wall. Two men burst through, decked in combat gear, weapons in hand.

Lallakai’s wings closed around Zak. He and the eagle faded out of sight.

“Where is he?” one of the newcomers yelled.

Kaveri pointed at the staircase and shrieked, “That way!”

The saloon doors right behind me slammed and I almost jumped out of my skin. Two more combat mythics sprinted out of the kitchen and leaped over the bar like heavily armed gazelles, while the first two charged across the pub, shoving people out of their way. Everyone was shouting, on their feet, alarmed or angry—except for Darius, who looked mildly annoyed. Aaron was yelling something I couldn’t make out over the racket.

But we all heard a window shatter upstairs.

The second pair of mythics changed direction in mid-stride and sprinted for the front door. The first ones continued up the stairs, weapons gleaming.

I slapped my hands down on the bar, vaulted over it, and ran for the door too. Aaron and Ezra were a step behind me as I burst out into the rain—and red light flared so brightly I couldn’t see a damn thing.

My vision cleared, revealing four combat mythics positioned in the street. The two mythics who’d run upstairs jumped from the broken second-floor window. They landed in practiced rolls, sprang to their feet with weapons in hand, and took up positions in a triangle formation with the other four mythics—completing a team of six, which included Izzah and Mario.

The hydromage’s twin knives were drawn and she stood in front of Mario. His demon stood a yard in front of her, tall and lanky with a black mane running down its back and empty magma eyes.

Trapped in the center of their formation, Zak stood with Lallakai’s phantom wings arching off his back and yellow power coiling around his left arm. His hood was up, shadows hiding his face. He extended his right hand and summoned his scarlet saber. The colorful glow of his magic glinted off the wet pavement, joining the rippling reflections of the streetlamps and the glowing windows of the guild.

As rain poured down, quiet footsteps crunched on the concrete, drawing closer.

Shane Davila stopped beside Mario, safely behind Izzah and the hulking demon. He surveyed the druid and his terrifying shadow wings without emotion, then slid a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it.

Clearing his throat, he read in a loud, steady tone, “‘The rogue di-mythic dubbed “the Ghost,” also known as the Crystal Druid, trained by the Wolfsbane Druid, confirmed to wield sorcery, alchemy, and fae magic, has been charged with three hundred and twenty-six felonies under MPD law. Due to the severity and violence of his crimes, the Ghost has been deemed a public danger and his capture is classified as DOA—dead or alive.’”

Pocketing his paper, the bounty hunter lifted his small eyes to Zak. “Zakariya Andrii, do you surrender?”

“Shit,” Aaron whispered behind me—and his wasn’t the only voice murmuring beneath the patter of rain. Most of the Crow and Hammer was crowded on the sidewalk to watch the showdown, Old West style.

“Is that really the Ghost?” someone muttered fearfully. “What’s he doing here?”

“The Shane Davila is tagging a rogue at our guild!”

“I don’t believe it,” Kaveri breathed, half awed, half repulsed. “The Ghost and the Crystal Druid can’t be the same person …”

“Did Tori say she dated him?”

I winced.

Indigo magic swirled out from Zak’s feet. It snaked across the pavement in an expanding circle—and the earth rumbled warningly.

“I’ll give you one chance,” the druid rasped in a voice like black ice, “to walk away.”

“Six against one,” Mario growled. “I like our odds.”

“Do you?”

The air rippled—and five huge varg wolves appeared around him, their hackles raised and red eyes glowing as they bared their teeth at the mythics. Fear singed the air, palpable and intense.

As the Odin’s Eye mythics hesitated, Zak pulled on a handful of leather cords hanging around his neck. Four colorful crystals lifted out of his jacket. With the murmur of his voice, the first one lit—then the second—then the third.

“If you won’t move,” he said, dangerously quiet, “which of you should I go through?”

The swordsman behind Zak flicked his short blade.

Zak pivoted as a fireball shot from the sword’s tip. The yellow magic coiling over his arm flared outward into a shield and the flames burst harmlessly against it.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than that,” he said. The indigo magic snaking over the ground brightened and the earth rumbled again, the vibrations deepening.

A varg snarled, its teeth snapping at thin air. Zak turned again—and with his distraction, four combat mythics and Mario’s demon launched forward.

My vision went black.

I gasped in fright, throwing my arms out. As fearful cries rang out around us, my elbows thumped against Aaron and Ezra, still behind me. The vargs were snarling, people were shouting, then—

“Everyone stop!”

I sucked in a sharp breath, barely recognizing that voice. None of Darius’s usual humor touched the command in his tone.

The darkness slowly lifted, as though someone were sliding a dimmer switch for my vision. The revived streetlamps cast an orange glow over the Odin’s Eye team, who’d closed half the distance to Zak, their weapons mere feet from the vargs.

Zak was still in the middle of the street—and Darius stood beside him, one hand gripping the back of Zak’s neck, his hood pushed off. With his other hand, the GM held a shining silver dagger against Zak’s throat, the blade resting just under his chin.

I blindly grabbed Aaron’s and Ezra’s arms, my fingers digging in as I tried to remember how to breathe. Maybe it was my imagination, but as everyone stood frozen in the sudden return of light—or vision, or whatever the hell the luminamage had done to blind us—I could’ve sworn I saw Darius’s lips moving with fast, quiet words.

Zak’s eyes, bright with Lallakai’s power and burning with fury, flicked from the guild master to Shane.

“Now,” Darius said, cool as a cucumber as he held a dagger to the druid’s throat, “before damage is dealt and lives are lost, let’s have a little discussion.”

“Are you obstructing justice, Darius?” Shane asked, equally calm but nowhere near as cool. The total sum of his badassery couldn’t fill Darius’s left shoe. “That mythic is under arrest.”

“Of course, Shane, of course. But unless I am very mistaken, you do not intend to arrest this mythic. Nor do you intend to kill him.”

My eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

Shane wiped rain off his bald head with a gloved hand. “What makes you think that?”

“The Ghost is, by your standards, a rather small and local barracuda in a worldwide sea of sharks. Wouldn’t you agree his list of crimes is trivial compared to your usual quarry?”