“...that Simon has a girl and a puppy covered in puke. I wrote down instructions—what I would do if I had to deal with it. You can give it to him or not, but if I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t want to go very far with them in that condition.”

“Oh.” Jester looked at the paper. “Good point.”

“I told Vlad we would clean up Meg’s office and air it out, so that’s what we’re doing now.”

Merri Lee put the BOW in gear, did a five-point version of a three-point turn, and headed back to the Liaison’s Office.

Jester put the instructions in a small cloth bag that had wooden handles suitable to be held by teeth, stripped off his clothes, and shifted. Then he ran to the place where the Wolves were still pondering how to get Meg and Sam clean without anyone having to touch them.

•••

Rage became a scent in the wind, a taste in the water, a heat that rose from the earth. It rushed across Thaisia as fast as the news reports spilled out of radios and televisions.

Beneath the rage, these words shivered through the wild country: This is what it means to be human. This is what humans do.

To: Pater

All eyes are focused on the central part of Thaisia. Strike now and the human race will triumph on both sides of the Atlantik.

—NS

To: Erebus Sanguinati

It is not prudent to kill Nicholas Scratch at this time. He is too well protected, and striking at him now would make the humans in Toland vigilant to other kinds of attacks. However, I don’t believe he will stay in Thaisia once Namid’s teeth and claws respond to the deaths of hundreds of Wolfgard in the Midwest and Northwest regions. Ocean is rising in preparation for striking the East Coast of Thaisia, especially the cities that sent out the ships responsible for poisoning fish and killing some of the Sharkgard. The Sharkgard have guaranteed my safety from Ocean’s wrath if I remain near the Toland docks and tell them when Scratch sets sail for Cel-Romano.

—Stavros

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 38

Watersday, Juin 23

All the weapons and machines that had been built and tested in secret, and all the men who had been conscripted from all the nations that made up the Cel-Romano Alliance, headed for the borders that separated human land from the wild country.

When the airplanes flew overhead, carrying the weapons that would make this a swift war, the men who came from the big cities cheered at the metal promise of more land, more food, more space. But the men who had been conscripted from the villages that touched the wild country looked at the airplanes and whispered to their comrades, “You don’t know. You don’t know.”