“That’s all right,” the taller one said. “We’re not customers.”

As the shorter one raised his weapon and fired, Stazia shifted her upper body to her smoke form. That shift could be done in moments.

But this time, she wasn’t quite fast enough.

* * *

* * *

Gunshot. Across the street. One shot.

The humans looked toward the bank.

That moment when the Knife looked away instead of watching him, Virgil shifted to his true form and ran. A bullet whizzed under his tail, but the Knife couldn’t see him, no longer had any idea of his size or his speed.

Blackstone and the other enemies shooting now at anything. Everything.

Virgil hit one of the men at full speed, knocking the enemy to the ground. He tore at the hand, the wrist. Tore at the face and throat. Then he leaped away as other enemies shot their own companions while trying to shoot him. But he was gone again, running, charging, slashing.

More enemies entered the square, shooting at everything. Blood and feathers on the ground as other terra indigene entered the fight. A Coyote screamed in pain.

He didn’t think about Tolya or Yuri. He didn’t think about Kane or the wolverine. Couldn’t. Too many enemies now, and he was fighting alone, separated from his pack.

But he would keep on fighting, keeping on killing, until the enemy took his last breath.

* * *

* * *

“They tricked me!” Abby cried. “They tricked me into telling them your name.”

Barb dropped the phone and ran to the front door, forgetting what her brother had told her about finding cover in dangerous situations—only thinking about helping a friend who was in trouble.

As she reached the screen door, she hesitated and saw the next few moments as a nightmarish montage.

Bang! Abby falling, a bloom of red spreading over the front of her dress.

Kane bursting through of the screen door of Maddie’s house so fast the man didn’t have time to turn and fire before the Wolf’s teeth closed on an arm and pulled the man down.

Bang! The gun went off as the man fell.

Kane savaging the man, closing his teeth on the man’s throat at the same time the man got his hand under the Wolf’s belly, and—

Bang! Bang!

Silence.

Silence and …

There was a hole in the screen door big enough to let in the flies. Why was there a hole in …

* * *

* * *

The moment he heard the gunshot, Tolya knew what would happen. What had to happen.

He and Yuri shifted to smoke and raced to the nearest tree a heartbeat before Parlan and the other men started shooting.

A Raven flew toward them. <Humans are hiding with the hor—>

A shot from the direction of the livery stable. The Raven fell.

Gunshots at the far end of the square, where Saul and Joshua had been keeping watch. More of the enemy must have slipped into town and would surround them.

He didn’t call to the other Sanguinati. Some of them wouldn’t answer, and he didn’t want to know. But he felt a hatred for humans that ran deeper and blacker than anything he’d ever felt before.

Staying close to the ground, he and Yuri raced across the street and wove through the low-growing plants that dotted the area between the stable and the blacksmith’s. Reaching the stable, they flowed around the building and over the sill of an open window in the back wall.

The two men with rifles who were using the stable doors for cover never realized the Sanguinati were there until Tolya and Yuri shifted to human form from the waist up and tore out the humans’ throats.

* * *

* * *

Scythe heard the first gunshot and abandoned the napkins she’d been folding—a useless human activity that Candice Caravelli had assured her would give the impression that she was occupied by a necessary task if someone should come into the saloon. After ordering Candice to go to her dressing room and stay there, Scythe had taken up a position at the end of the bar.

Now, underneath the sound of gunshots in the square, she heard the faint sound of a boot on the wooden floor, coming from the saloon’s rear exit.

Her hair turned solid black and coiled as she silently moved into position.

The gun and gun hand entered the main room first. Then the arm. Finally the rest of the man came into view—and he caught sight of her.

She looked him in the eyes and absorbed every drop of his life energy before he hit the floor.

Dead. Completely harvested. Still …

Remembering how it was done in frontier stories, Scythe stepped on his gun and moved it out of reach.

She was sated—a sensation she hadn’t enjoyed in a long time. It felt delicious, but … Maybe she was a little too sated? If more prey crossed her path, she wouldn’t be able to absorb enough life energy to do more than a little damage, and there were many enemies out there fighting with the Wolves and Sanguinati.

She looked at the gun. Six-shooter just like in the frontier stories. She pulled back the hammer, aimed at the already dead man, and fired.

The sound hurt her ears, but the action was simple enough.

As she moved to the front doors of the saloon, her black hair gained a few threads of red. She was too full to be instantly lethal if someone looked at her, but she could still take enough life energy to confuse her enemy—and the gun would do the rest.

* * *

* * *

Jana turned onto her street and hit the brakes as Kane burst through the door of Maddie’s house and attacked the armed man.

Bang!

Bang! Bang!

Throwing the gearshift into park, Jana scrambled out of the vehicle and used the car door for cover as she drew her own weapon and shouted, “Police!”

No sound. No movement. Nothing.

Abby was on the ground too, but Jana ran to Kane and the man, needing to disarm the assailant in case he was wounded but still alive.

Maybe her presence was perceived as a signal that it was all right to come out. Or maybe so little time had passed that people were just now shaking off fear-freeze. Either way, by the time she reached Kane and saw that the assailant had bled out from a torn throat, Hannah and Sarah Gott were running toward her, and Evan and Kenneth were rushing to check on Abby.

Holstering her own weapon, Jana touched the Wolf’s shoulder as she looked into unseeing eyes. “Kane?”

Already gone.

He went down in the line of duty. She wasn’t sure that would be any comfort to anyone—and it occurred to her that the first time she had to notify next of kin, she’d be telling Virgil that his brother was dead.

After pulling Kane off the man far enough to secure the weapon, she looked at Evan and Kenneth. “Abby?”

Evan shook his head.

Something wasn’t right. More than the three dead bodies. Something …

Rusty’s frantic barking finally got through to her. “Barb?” she shouted. “Barb!”

How many shots had been fired?

Jana ran to her own house, pulled open the screen door, and … “Barb!”

Arriving just behind Jana, Hannah pulled off her apron, swiftly folded it, and crouched beside Jana, saying, “Use this for the wound. It’s freshly washed.”

She pressed the fabric against the wound. “We have to get Barb to the doctor’s.” Except the medical building was on the town square, smack in the middle of the fight.

Evan rushed up. “We had a feeling, so Barb called the doctor just before all this … At least one of the doctors will be at the hospital today.”

The dead would have to wait. “Help me load her into my vehicle. We can’t wait for the ambulance.”

Evan and Kenneth carried Barb while Jana kept pressure on the wound as best she could.

“I’ll go with you,” Hannah said. “Sarah will take your pup and the bird to our house, and clean up …”

“Anything we can do?” Evan asked after he and Kenneth got Barb settled in the back with Hannah now applying pressure on the wound while Jana wiped her hands on her jeans, smearing them with blood before she got behind the wheel.

“Call the neighbors and make sure nobody else was hurt,” Jana said, putting the vehicle in drive. “And stay inside until this is over—unless you have to run.”

Then she put the vehicle in park again and stepped out shouting, “Air! Air, I need you to send a message!”

Air appeared. She looked at the Wolf in the street. “Virgil is fighting.”

“You don’t need to tell Virgil anything.” Jana pointed toward the Elder Hills. “Can you get a message to them?”

“Yes. But they are dealing with humans who are in their territory. They are not fighting inside the town boundaries.”

“You tell them …” Jana struggled to breathe past a sudden flood of anger at beings who ignored boundaries whenever it suited them but couldn’t be bothered now? “You tell them if they don’t want the rest of the Wolves to die, they’d better … ffffffuck the boundaries and get in the fight!”

She jumped in her vehicle and drove off.

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. Did she really say that? Well, the Elders wouldn’t know the F word, right? And what difference did it make if they did? They needed to stop sniffing their own tails and do something!

As she raced to the hospital, Jana realized Virgil wasn’t the only notification she would have to make that day. She’d have to tell Kelley about Abby. And as she drove, she prayed she wouldn’t have to send that kind of message to Lakeside police officer Michael Debany.

* * *

* * *

Their footsteps filled the street with an odd and terrible silence as they moved unseen toward the bodies, Wolfgard and human.

They hadn’t needed Air to deliver a message. They had been close enough to hear the howling of that … female … who dared to challenge Namid’s teeth and claws. They didn’t understand all the words, but they understood the tone.

The female didn’t want boundaries? Then there would be no boundaries. And the first human they would deal with …

The terrible one sniffed around the bodies and breathed in that female’s scent. They didn’t need to follow the trail of the metal box, so they would join the fight in the center of the Sanguinati and Wolfgard territory. Sooner or later that female would come to the watering hole—and he would find her.

* * *

* * *

“We’ve got company.” Tobias took his foot off the gas and tapped the brake.

“We don’t have time for this,” Jesse snapped. Then she saw what Tobias must have sensed moments before—the horse and rider in the middle of the road.

“We make time for him.” He stopped the truck and rolled down his window.

Yes, Jesse thought as she watched Fire and a brown horse with a storm-gray mane and tail move up alongside the truck.

Fire leaned down to look at both of them. “You don’t want to go to Bennett today.”

Jesse leaned across Tobias. “We have to. A fight is going to happen today.”