Darv came up the stairs, Corb fighting to walk ahead of him, with his still-bound hands and feet. It made for a rather awkward bunny hop move that he had to do up eighteen steps. I couldn’t have bunny hopped up two of them. Darv made a motion at Sarge’s body, as if he were massaging the air, and a coil of what could only be magic, blue and red lines, whipped out from his fingers and then spooled out and around the werewolf’s body, lifting him just above the grass, still face down. “I’ll take them both. They’ll be at the fort. You won’t have to worry about them any longer.”

Corb struggled, his eyes suddenly wide with what could only be fear. “No! Not the fort! Darv, not the fort!”

Darv dragged the two men toward a large black van I hadn’t noticed. He shoved them in the back while Corb continued to freak out (I could hear him yelling even after the doors were shut), then reversed over several graves and drove away.

Tom and Eammon stood on either side of me. “Sarge put the others out with a spell that wasn’t one of Tom’s, so he’d bought it from someone else,” Eammon said. “Smelled heavily like fish, so I assumed again it was Crash and his pet. Sarge no doubt did it so the trainees wouldn’t tell us it was him and Corb that knocked them out.”

“Not Crash then after all?” I asked. I wanted to quip about what you get when you make assumptions, but I managed to keep it to myself. I’d save that one for later.

“Oh, he’d come by too, earlier,” Eammon grumbled. “But he did nothing but just throw a fit, and then he left. I thought it was him when the fighting started. Assumed.”

“Why would they set me up like that? To make you angry with me?” That made little sense, at least to me. “And then there’s Joe.”

“He’s missing too,” Tom said, and I shook my head.

“Joe was working with Corb,” Eammon said. “He’d be here if he weren’t dead.”

I glanced at Eammon, thinking it through. “Joe was out watching Eric when I got there, and then he shot at Eric as I was trying to get him away from the demon who’d appeared. The demon took exception and I think it ate Joe.” That was my gut instinct anyway. My guess.

Eammon’s mouth dropped open and he spluttered. “You survived a demon?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” I said, irritation flowing through me and out my mouth along with the words.

Eammon held up both hands in mock surrender. “Not because of what you’re thinking. One of us, fully trained and comfortable in the shadows, would struggle with a demon. Joe getting eaten is less surprising than you surviving.”