Roman stood, picked up his staff, and spun it like a Shaolin monk bent on a rampage. Raphael squared his shoulders.

Men. Enough said.

Roman leaned forward. Wind swirled around his feet. The black volhv shot forward, as if his black boots had wings. Raphael stepped out of the way, letting Roman pass him, spun, jumped up, and kicked Roman between the shoulder blades.

The wizard flew into the wall, but didn’t hit it, because an invisible cushion of air stopped his fall. He dropped down to his feet and turned. “Hmm.”

Raphael had a frighteningly grim look on his face.

Roman’s lips moved. A cocoon of black threads slid from the ground in twisted streams, wrapping themselves around him, not quite touching.

Raphael lunged, shockingly fast.

The black threads snapped, binding around Raphael’s wrist. Roman leaned back and drove a crushing sidekick into the top of Raphael’s hip. It sounded like a sledgehammer pounding into a stud. I’d seen it before. It was a sambo kick, part of a personal defense martial art the Russians practiced. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.

Raphael grabbed the black threads and pulled. Roman strained, pulling back.

A small boy ran through the stone arch and headed for the two of them. I jumped off the bench, ran, and caught him.

“Hi!” he said.

I lifted him off the ground. My rebroken arm screamed a little and I shifted his weight to the other. “Hi.”

“They’re fighting!” the boy told me, pointing at the two men.

“Yes, they are. Where are your parents?”

A couple ran through the arch, a tall man and a dark-haired woman in her late thirties, followed by a teenage girl.

“Dylan!” The woman reached for the boy. “I’m so, so sorry. We just wanted to pay our respects to the alpha. We were told he would be here. We didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re trying to get admitted into Clan Bouda…”

I looked at her face, and recognition punched me in the gut.

Michelle.

Michelle Carver, who put a nail through my hand when I was five, because she thought it was funny to hear me scream. Michelle Carver, who pelted me with bricks, after Candy broke my legs. All I could do was crawl and Michelle chased me and threw bricks and rocks at my head. Michelle, who cheered while the bitch alpha beat my mother to a bloody pulp. Michelle “Hit her again, Candy!”

I had killed every last one of them. Every last one, except her. She had gone missing a couple of years before I came back and wiped that sadistic clan of bouda bitches off the face of the planet. I had tried to find her, but she had done a good job of covering her tracks.

Raphael let go of the threads. “Andrea?”

I was holding Michelle Carver’s child in my hands.

I let go of the boy. He slid to the ground.