The birds shuffled forward as one, bobbing their heads, clucking and snapping aggressively, but no one came too close to him.

“Lance?” I said, announcing my presence as I approached him cautiously, Kaci still clinging to my left hand. “What are you doing? You can’t get down. You have nowhere to go.”

He didn’t answer, nor did he turn, and I was virtually certain he had no idea what his next move would be. He was flying by the seat of his proverbial pants, and since he couldn’t literally fly, there was no good way for this standoff to end.

Lance was five feet from the porch now, and Wren struggled in earnest. Her face was scarlet, her cries punctuated with the occasional squawk and highpitched avian cry.

“Lance, put her down. You wouldn’t hurt a child. What happened with Finn was…like an accident.” I chose my words carefully, afraid that if I took his side to talk him into letting the girl go, the fifty thunderbirds at my back would take me at my word. They didn’t seem to understand the art of manipulation. “But you’re not a baby-killer. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do this.”

He stiffened, and the child squealed when his arm tightened around her waist. “I’m not going to live at all.”

“She’s just a baby!” Kaci cried, and I glanced at her in surprise. “How can you kill her? No matter what else you’ve done, you don’t hurt babies. Only monsters kill kids.”

I squeezed her hand, as horrified as she was. What had happened to Parker’s little brother? Did Malone corrupt everyone he came into contact with? Or could Lance truly be scared out of his mind? Could mere fear turn an ordinary—if spineless—man into a monster?

Lance stepped through the open doorway and onto the ledge. Kaci and I followed, and she let go of my hand to press her back to the front wall, unwilling to go near the edge.

Four thunderbirds followed us out—including Brynn, Cade and Coyt—and dozens more peered through the doorway and the huge windows, their talons scratching against the floor.

I held my breath as Lance stepped toward the edge, and finally, a foot from the end of the porch, he turned and addressed the three male thunderbirds who’d come out with us. “Take me down. Take me down and swear to let me go, and I’ll give back the baby. I swear.”

That time the birds didn’t have to confer. It was Brynn who answered, reaching toward her child with now-human arms. “You will not leave our territory alive, and if you kill my daughter, you will watch us eat parts of your body for days. Your death will be so slow and painful you will beg for the end long before it comes.”

Lance gaped at her, eyes glazing over in shock, shoulders slumped beneath the weight of the inevitable. Then, before I could process the sudden, insane upturn of the corners of his mouth, he stepped backward and off the porch, still holding the child.