Darryl grabbed the javelin Tad handed him and bolted past Adam and me. I let Adam go and rolled so I could see. The troll was down; the second pipe javelin had struck truer than the first, and the top third of the troll had turned an unhealthy gray color. Darryl, javelin held high, skidded to a stop when Joel, his whole body a bright flaming orange, leaped from the top of a car, over the cement divider, and landed on top of the troll. Darryl backed up until he was level with Tad, who had stopped next to me, as Joel attacked in a ferocious rage and a heat that I could feel from twenty feet away.

The troll didn’t move when Joel tore into it, gulping down the green-and-red flesh. The troll was unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell which, and it didn’t matter for long. Its flesh melted where the tibicena touched it, turning first black, then crumbling to gray ashes. The huge body was consumed by Joel’s heat in what could only have been a few minutes. The tibicena continued to eat, even when there was no meat left.

We didn’t move, none of us, but still, Joel looked up suddenly, his mouth full of ash. He glared at us, his eyes a hot, iridescent red.

I stood up, using the walking stick, which was under my hand though I’d left it a dozen yards away, for balance. I didn’t like being on the ground with a predator so near.

I cleared my throat. “Joel,” I said. My voice sounded oddly wobbly to me, and I hoped no one else heard it.

Joel’s lips curled back, displaying black teeth and a red, red tongue. The fringe of stone mane around his neck rippled as he shook his broad head in open threat, and it made a clattering noise, almost like wind chimes. He growled.

“Joel,” I said, reaching for Adam’s power. “Stop.”

I’d done this before, called upon my mate’s power of domination to make someone do something—or not do something. But this time, there was no surge of Alpha magic in my words. There were a lot of possible reasons for the failure: the fact that I’d never tried it with Adam unconscious came right to mind. Maybe he was too wounded to fuel my voice. But the reason didn’t matter, only the result. The tibicena took a step forward.