Kinked

overboard to swim after him.

It didn’t matter that everything he had said made sense, or that she had agreed with him. He was going to call all the attention to himself, and that meant he would take some damage. That also meant he was taking a serious risk, and she hated leaving him.

Hated it.

The current ran deep and fast as it swung her around the end of the island. She looked down the length of that side. Holy gods and fuck, water broke in white swirls of foam against broken rocks along the coast. There was no place to land the boat.

Then, because she was who she was, she looked up. The broken rocks rose up to a sheer cliff face.

And none of it should matter in the slightest.

She should be able to change into the harpy and fly over every inch of that cursed shore. She screamed out her outrage and pain, silently, hands clapped over her mouth.

Then she pulled her souvenir out of her hair and tied her arrows securely into their quiver. With it slung on her back along with her unstrung longbow, she flung herself out of the boat and tore through the water, swimming hard toward land.

The water helped by picking her up and flinging her against the rocks. She landed against one partially submerged boulder with a force that knocked the breath out of her, and she twisted and shapeshifted all in one desperate move, clawing at the granite to find some kind of hold before the treacherous, foaming maelstrom pulled her back out to sea.

Struggling to kneel on the slippery boulder, she lunged at the cliff face and clung to it, talons digging into the jagged, crumbling rock as she fought to catch her breath. Her entire right side had absorbed the impact. Bones were bruised, and they throbbed with a fiery pain. Tomorrow she would be black all over.

Face tilted up to her goal, she began to climb. If there wasn’t a fracture in the rock for her to slip her talons into, she made one, driving her hands and feet at the cliff to gouge out enough of a hollow to hold her weight. Climbing was grueling, exhausting work, and her aching wings hung heavily at her back like a ragged parachute, weighing her down.

She was halfway up the cliff when Power flared, and the witch screamed in the distance. Another time she might have savored the sound, but now fear gripped her. She wasn’t far enough up the cliff, wasn’t close enough to the battle. She redoubled her efforts, heart pounding when she felt Power flare again. She recognized Quentin’s signature.

Then Power flared with a different signature.

The witch had found him, and engaged.

Panic drove her through the rest of the climb, and she didn’t pause when she reached the top. Shapeshifting to be rid of her wings, she raced blindly along the edge of a massive, ancient stone building, around a corner and over what must have once been a manicured lawn but was now overgrown with weeds and neglect.

She found a path and took it, even as she reached over her shoulder for the unstrung longbow. A blast of light and Power flared ahead from the direction of the beach. It lit the ground ahead of her as if hell’s light poured out from a crack in the earth.

Precious seconds flew away as she stopped to brace the bow on one foot and strained to bend the strong, seasoned wood so that she could attach the bowstring. Then she hurtled along the path to the edge of a bluff and looked over a scene that could have been birthed from her worst nightmares.

Quentin and Galya stood several feet away from each other. The witch appeared unscathed.

The light came from Quentin.

An area along his wide chest, one shoulder, his neck and the side of his face blazed with some kind of spell that shone like a beacon in the night. What she could see of his expression was agonized, and his Power flared spasmodically as he struggled to counteract the attack spell. Dark forms writhed along his legs and arms as the shadow wolves gripped him with black teeth.

Oh gods.

She looked at the witch, who stood with her hands on her hips and watched Quentin burn, and she had never hated anybody as much as she did this woman.

Even though the witch’s spell still worked on Quentin, his Power surged. The blast knocked all the shadow wolves away. He flung a hand toward the witch, piercing the air with a deadly missile of Power. The sleek, elegant spell shot toward the witch, who deflected it effortlessly with a twist of her wrist.

Aryal whipped out an arrow from the sodden quiver and notched it, and sighted down the longbow until she was sure she had the perfect shot. Then she loosed it. Despite its speed, her harpy sight could track the arrow’s flight.

Magic flared again, and the arrow curved away from the witch. Galya looked over her shoulder, up the cliff and straight at Aryal, her expression filled with surprise, then contempt.

Beyond the witch, blazing in light and blackness, Quentin fell to his knees.

The spongy finger in Aryal’s head pointed to a new placard.

Lose-lose.

She went to a place inside of herself where she had never been before, a place that even she recognized was insane.

That’s okay.

She nodded. Shook her head. Nodded. She turned and jogged away.

When she reached the tree line, she pulled her short sword, turned around again and ran at the bluff, pushing as hard as she could to hit her maximum speed. As she reached the edge of land, she lunged into the air, shapeshifted and spread out her maimed, half-healed wings.

Searing pain ripped through her.

She couldn’t fly, and she couldn’t glide, but she could work on directing her descent. So that’s what she did.

That’s okay, bitch.

Repel this.

Galya had turned back to Quentin for one critical moment. The harpy smiled as she plummeted down, her body listing crookedly. When all was said and done, her life might come down to this: she was just broken enough to fall in exactly the right way.

When the witch caught sight of her, Galya had no time to cast another spell. There was one bittersweet moment when Galya’s expression flared with astonishment and the beginning of fear. She opened her mouth to scream.

Aryal slammed into Galya, driving her into the sand. They landed badly in a tangle.

Things snapped inside of her, explosions of more searing pain in the ruins of her internal landscape. Her breath came in on a high thin whine.

Blackness surrounded her as shadow wolves attacked. Even more pain flared as the first one sank its teeth into her shoulder. She shrieked and convulsed into a shapeshift, reverting to her human form that wore the Elven armor just in time before the others arrived. Some hung by their teeth off the Elven armor. A few burrowed in between the plates, looking to chew through the armor’s fastenings.

None of it mattered as her attention narrowed to accomplishing one thing. The only way to stop her now would be to kill her.

Galya moaned as she tried weakly to pull herself out from underneath Aryal’s body. Clearly the witch was hurt, but she wasn’t hurt badly enough, as she gathered her Power to throw another spell.

Aryal punched her in the face. The witch’s gathering Power splintered. Bone crunched as the witch’s head rocked back, and blood spurted from her mouth and nose. It felt so necessary, Aryal punched her again. Vaguely she realized that crazypants had taken charge of the fight.

The two blows alone might have killed the human, but the shadow wolves still swirled around her, and crazypants was determined to be thorough. She saw her short sword lying tilted in the sand a few feet away, along with her abandoned bow. She crawled to the sword and grabbed it. Something was wrong with her hand. It wouldn’t close around the hilt properly. It was almost too difficult to crawl back to the witch’s sprawled body, but she managed it.

The largest shadow wolf lunged desperately at her arm as she raised the sword, but the Elven armor held