She kicked at my stomach. I saw it coming and tensed, and her foot smashed against the shield of muscle. The blow knocked me backward. It felt like someone had slapped my gut with a burning hot iron. I grunted and straightened, and Hibla raised her sword. She was good and fast. But I was better.

“I’ll kill you and bring your head to Hugh,” Hibla ground out.

Not in your wildest dreams. “You’re good, but not my level of good. If you trained all your life, you still wouldn’t be good enough, because I really want to kill you. You murdered Aunt B. She was my friend.”

Hibla attacked. I blocked and sliced across her chest from left to right. She whipped about, thrusting, and I sliced her arm, severing the muscle and tendon. Hibla screamed.

“You didn’t have the decency to face her or to give her a quick death.”

I reversed the blade and stabbed her in the stomach. Hibla gurgled blood.

“She died in agony. I cared for her.”

Her leather armor was in my way, so I cut a piece of it off and tossed it aside.

“This won’t be quick. This will be painful for you. But if you ask me now, I’ll end this fast.”

“I’ll rip your heart out and eat it while you die.” She stabbed at me. Her sword grazed my side.

“Cute.” I drove her back across the walkway, slicing bloody chunks of leather off her. “I want you to understand me.”

I thrust. She moved to block but missed, and I slid the blade of my saber against her inner thigh, cutting through her femoral vein.

Her sword grazed my side and I drove Sarrat’s pommel into her face, gouging her left eye. The eyeball burst and the white of Hibla’s eye slipped onto her cheek. She stumbled and I pulled her dagger out of its sheath on her belt. Oh look, I have two blades now. The better to hurt you with.

“This isn’t vengeance.”

She shuddered and dropped her sword. Flesh spiraled up her bone. She was trying to shift. I lunged forward and sliced across her midsection, one, two, three. Her flesh smoked. Hibla’s top half careened.

“This is punishment.”

They said you couldn’t bleed a shapeshifter to death. They didn’t say anything about cutting her apart.

She lunged at me, a huge hulking monstrosity with her claws out. I ducked between them and slid Slayer through the bottom of her chin up into her deformed muzzle. Talons raked me, but I didn’t care. I plunged Hibla’s dagger into her lower abdomen, jerked it out, and broke free. She roared, baring her teeth. I swung my saber and sank into a smooth easy rhythm. The world narrowed to my blade and my target in front of it. A cut. Hibla’s hand slid off. Another cut. Another piece of flesh. She backed away, and I followed her, relentless, precise, paying her back for Aunt B, who would never see her grandchildren; for Andrea and Raphael, who had to watch her die; for Andrea’s unborn baby, who would never know his or her grandmother; for my fucked-up nightmares . . .