“Then let’s move,” Angela said. “All of us, together. If we reach them before the army does, maybe we can end this before it’s really begun.”

Vince nodded, and Dastion wielded his pike.

Angela was the first of them to rise and follow the route Mallian and the other Kin had so recently taken. The valley came alive to the sound of motors and helicopters. Lights flashed through darkness.

From somewhere ahead of them she heard a deep, ground-shaking roar of triumph.

* * *

Mallian’s throat hurts but he continues to shout.

“Go!” he commands. “Kill them! Let them see you. No hiding, no scampering in the dark. Be yourselves, and then kill them all!”

From around him come growls, howls and shouts as Kin launch themselves through the darkness and towards the lights closing in on them. Thorn the pixie dashes away into the shadows, ready to commit his own acts of violent mischief. The harpy that brought several Kin here, making fast, silent trips through the night carrying them in her clawed feet, launches herself up towards the stars. A gremlin runs, a smoke-ghost flows, a leprechaun scampers and a chupacabra sprints, and all of them have their blood up. All of them share his blood and his desire to live in the open once again, triumphant and in control.

This is everything he has ever wanted.

Grace is beside him, small and shivering. Power radiates from her like a constrained sun, and he concentrates, dips in, touches that power and uses it to exert his control over the two infected Kin. The third has gone and not come back, its body lying not too far away, and he suspects the humans and the fairy girl are also back in the valley, come to cause him trouble. He is not concerned. He will finish what he began with Vince and crush him into the ground. He will pull Angela in two in front of her niece. And the girl Sammi will fall under his command. First, Grace will be controlling her and then, when this first battle is over, he will cast a similar glamour to make her his own.

He is prepared to launch the fairy at the forces coming for them, but he’s going to hold her back for a while. First, he wants his Kin comrades to blood themselves, redden their hands, sink their teeth into flesh to ignite their taste for humanity.

Then, when he’s prepared himself mentally and is ready for the concentration and effort required, he will unleash Grace.

There is not a future he can see where he is not triumphant.

Mallian shouts again, and he hears his voice go up against the echoes of engines and man-made things, and win.

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