Construct.

Giselle’s laughter approached madness. Now who was the crazy one? Dream continued to scream at her, the words losing any meaning now.

Then, just as she thought death might take her, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a new shape enter the room. She blinked hard. Dream wasn’t banging her against the wall anymore. Just screaming. Raging. Her hand squeezing. The shape came into focus as it moved closer.

Giselle’s heart lurched.

Ursula.

Still nude. So beautiful. So tall in those ridiculous platform heels. The jut of her mouth so insolent. In that moment Giselle felt a rush of love and desire. It was all still there, the purity of all she’d felt for the girl over these months. It hadn’t really faded at all. And seeing the fright and concern in her lover’s eyes only intensified the feeling.

Ursula locked eyes with her and Giselle saw the same depth of emotion within her.

It was a beautiful, aching, glorious moment.

And it passed in a nanosecond.

Ursula screamed and came running toward her, ridiculous big heels clomping on the marble floor.

And the young girl with the black-as-night hair-Marcy-rose up and strode purposefully forward, a real gun, a gleaming, nickel-plated 9mm pistol, in her hands now. She aimed the barrel point blank at Ursula’s face and fired once. The bullet hit her between the eyes. An explosion of red bloomed behind her head even as her body flew backward. Giselle squealed anguish and tried to flex her power one last time, reached down deep inside herself and tried to kickstart the core of that power. But it was unreachable. Something was in the way. Still she kept reaching, kept straining…

Dream grinned and said, “No.”

Giselle’s vision blurred again. “Kill me. Please. Finish it…”

Dream laughed. “No.” She increased the pressure around Giselle’s neck, reducing her air passage to perhaps the width of a straw. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

Of course not.

Giselle’s fading gaze went to the trembling soldiers. No smugness on their faces now. Just terror. Disbelief.

Helplessness. Trembling hands unable to wield their weapons. Giselle wasn’t sure they’d choose to use them if they could.

And there, just inside the archway, good old Schreck. As afraid as the rest of them, but with a hint of a smirk playing at the edges of his mouth. She had another insight then. Another bit of truth she’d been too stupid and arrogant to discern. He was the traitor. The Order of the Dragon plant alluded to by Gwendolyn in her last moments. And he must have seen the recognition in her fading vision, because now he was baring his teeth. Cackling, the jackal exposed at last.

Giselle sucked more blood from her torn lip into her mouth.

Called out one last time.

Azaroth…why have you forsaken me?

And this time she received a response.

Disembodied, mocking laughter that boomed in her head like thunder.

Thunder that rolled on and on as the world faded away at last.

The caravan departed Camp Whiskey at the break of dawn, six vans and two Jeeps packed with weaponry and ammunition, carrying some two dozen passengers down a winding, snow-encrusted mountain path. They traveled all through the day and the whole of the night that followed, arriving somewhere in the approximate center of Wyoming at dawn of the next day.

Allyson blinked and emerged from the drowse she’d fallen into some fifteen minutes earlier. She sat up straight and stared through a window at the gray sky and the passing countryside. The Jeep’s engine rattled and chugged, its big tires bouncing in and out of potholes as it followed the snaking stretch of rural highway. There were no houses to be seen anywhere. Just trees and more trees, their branches denuded by the season, pale and angling toward the sky like the outstretched arms of worshippers.

The Jeep was at the rear of the modest column of vehicles. Allyson shifted in her seat and peered between the front seats for a glimpse of the road ahead. The other vehicles were staying close, none of them separated by more than a car length. The van directly in front of them was old and painted olive green.

Just like a for-real army truck, Allyson thought, smirking.

But as far as she was concerned, the van’s color marked the end of any similarity between this insane glorified Boy Scout mission and any real military operation. They lacked strength of numbers, for one thing. In the wake of Jack Paradise’s murder and the imprisonment of Jim, the tenuous connections that had held together the always fragile Camp Whiskey community frayed and came apart. An attempt to repel the usurpers from the Order of the Dragon lacked cohesion and direction and was put down in spectacularly brutal fashion. The camp’s mysteriously cowed faux-military wing stood by and let it happen. The bulk of the people saw that the Order could not be overcome and a mass exodus ensued. Allyson had felt a strong urge to run with them, but could not bring herself to do so without Chad, who was riding now in one of the forward vehicles.

Only a small, hardcore group chose not to flee. These were mostly men, and mostly members of the paramilitary unit assembled by Jack Paradise. Most of Jack’s men died alongside him that night. The ones who remained took orders from the Order people, and did so without question. Chad was being held against his will by the Asian woman, but Allyson had a feeling he would have stayed regardless, at least as long as Jim remained alive.

Thinking of that stirred Allyson’s anger anew. The bitch treated him like a piece of property, or a pet, dragging him along wherever she went, striking him whenever he dared to open his mouth. Allyson felt embarrassment on Chad’s behalf any time she witnessed this behavior, and a part of her withered inside every time it happened, as she thought of how humiliating the ordeal must be for him. Doubly frustrating was her utter inability to do anything about it.

The Asian woman forbade any contact between them. Allyson initially wondered why Chad’s new keeper allowed her to stay at Camp Whiskey. She eventually realized the woman was deriving a sadistic enjoyment from Allyson’s predicament, taunting her by flaunting her ownership of Chad. It was a petty, cruel thing. But it was also a good thing. Proximity meant there would one day be an opportunity to exploit. She kept her eyes open. The chance to get away with Chad in tow would present itself. And she damn well intended to make the most of that opportunity.

But now things had changed. Again.

The order to saddle up and head out to the final battle of good versus evil (although Allyson had decided evil versus evil was a more accurate description at this point) had been handed down. Many hundreds of miles later, Allyson was still looking for that perfect moment. The circumstances complicated things. She no longer had an indefinite period of time to work with. She was separated from her man and surrounded by well-armed hostiles.

Still, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

She kicked the back of the seat ahead of her and said, “How much farther?”

The man in the seat turned to look at her. He was clad in camos and sported black shades despite the overcast sky. “Not sure. Maybe fifty more miles.” He grinned and licked parched lips. “And hey…k ick my seat again and I’ll come back there to teach you a lesson.”

The man in the driver’s seat-a black man also clad in camos-glanced at the rearview mirror and grinned broadly. “I’d like to tear me off a piece of that, my ownself.”

Allyson snorted. “Either of you pukebags touch me, I’ll tear your fucking eyes out. And anyway, you don’t have time for pussy. You’ve got a big battle to be dying in soon, remember?”