It made another pass, the nose dipping, pointing at the bent weeds marking the truck’s path, before lifting and spinning away. She moved then.

A sense of urgency gripped her. Where there was a helicopter, there would soon be guardsmen in trucks.

She didn’t see Levi and could only guess he was on the opposite side of the road, moving forward, as she was. A child’s screams poured ice into her veins, making her steps quicken though her training held, keeping her in shadow.

A hyena streaked by, followed by three others. Fear tightened her grip on the slingshot. Her thoughts flashed to the dragon lizards. If the hyenas were free…

Gunshots sounded, cutting across the engine noise like a sharp knife. A spray of automatic fire that didn’t match Levi’s weapon.

Araña pushed forward, the slingshot leading. The rear of the truck came into view, a twisted mess next to a tree broken and held upright by branches entwined with those belonging to its neighbors.

In a glance she took in the empty cages that had contained the dragon lizards and hyenas when she’d seen them in her vision. The werewolf desperately flung himself against the bars of his.

A bearish, rough-looking man crept around the side of the truck, a gun in his hand. Blood poured over his face from a gash in his forehead.

Hyde, she thought, remembering the name Anton had spoken, as she inched forward, looking for a clear shot.

“End of the road for you,” the trapper said, wiping blood off his face with his arm, then taking aim at the werewolf. “You’d be useful but I can’t trust you. It was the same way with your mother. When I was done with the bitch, I took care of her just like this.”

The werewolf growled savagely in response, hurled itself more ferociously against the front of the cage. Araña moved again, found the shot she was looking for, and released the slingshot’s leather pocket even as the man fired.

The bullet struck metal and ricocheted. The bearing projectile didn’t. It plowed through eye and brain and bone, dropping the trapper instantly.

Levi emerged from the woods with Rebekka behind him. “There was someone else in the truck besides the trapper,” he said, explaining his delay. “A man. He got away but I don’t think he intends to double back.”

Araña nodded as she left her position, securing the slingshot to her belt as she walked. It would have been foolish to ignore a potential sniper.

Levi and Rebekka reached the truck first. Rebekka leaned into the cab and turned the engine off. The child’s crying stopped, and in the abrupt silence, they all heard the unwelcome sound of the helicopter above the canvas of the trees and the distant rumble marking the approach of guardsmen in jeeps.

“Leave the child where he is until we’re finished in back,” Levi told Rebekka.

“The dragon lizards are loose,” Araña said as she knelt next to the dead trapper and rifled through his pants until she found the keys she’d guessed would be there.

Levi picked up the gun and checked it for ammunition before tossing it aside as worthless. “Only one of the lizards is free,” he said. “The trapper used all but his last bullet on it.”

Araña shivered and wondered if the freed dragon would put distance between it and the truck, or if the death of its companion and the smell of the trapper’s blood would keep it close.

She stood and climbed into the truck, pushing her way through torn canvas. Levi did the same.

Part of her noticed the crumpled form of the werecougar, but it was the man at the far end who held all her attention, trapping her in dark pools of blue and making her heart race as he’d done in her vision. She moved toward him without being aware of doing it. Felt again the shimmering touch of soul against soul and saw recognition in his face where there shouldn’t have been any.

Questions pressed in on her, but there was no time to ask them. She selected a key from the ring and fit it to the lock of the cage.

“Wait,” Levi said, lifting his hand to stop her but halting as the spider appeared near her wrist in the place his fingers would settle. “He’s not Were. He smells completely human. Look at his arms. They’re covered in tattoos. Look how afraid those of your kind are of him. He’s a prisoner being shipped to the maze to run. We don’t know what his crimes are or whether we can trust him. Leave him for last. We’ll free him from the cage and the chair then give him the keys so he can remove the shackles and go his own way.”

Ice slid through Araña as the man’s gaze flicked to Levi and she read the promise of death there. She tried a second key, then a third before the lock to his cage clicked and she opened the door.

“Give me the keys,” Levi said. “I can free the wolf and the werecougar while you release him from the chair.”

Araña hesitated, not sure she could trust Levi. She glanced at the keys and tried to identify the one that would open the shackles.

“It’s not there,” the imprisoned man said, his voice rough, as though he rarely used it. “It was never in the trapper’s possession.”

Araña turned the keys over to Levi without looking at him and bent to the task of dealing with the restraints holding the prisoner to the chair. Her fingers brushed against his bare skin as she fought against cruelly tight bindings. Each touch made her breath catch and her eyes flash to the spidery demon mark, but it remained where it was on her wrist, a deadly bracelet with an agenda of its own.

Rebekka climbed into the truck and gasped at the sight of the prisoner before turning and murmuring in a soothing voice to the wolf. Levi opened the werecougar’s cage and found a pulse in the human throat. “He’s alive but unconscious. I’ll have to carry him.”

He stepped to the werewolf’s cage and pulled his gun from its holster. Aimed it at the wolf who was already rolling on its back, exposing its belly and throat in a submissive gesture.

Rebekka moved to the side, out of danger as Levi unlocked the cage. The wolf continued to lie still when the door swung open.

Levi pressed the barrel of the gun against the Were’s skull. “Don’t repay us by making us kill you,” he said as Rebekka stepped forward and removed the band of warded silver from around the animal’s neck. It turned its head slowly and lapped at Rebekka’s hand with a pink tongue.

The last restraint fell away and the tattooed stranger stood, his chains rattling as he took the first shuffling step. Even shackled like the worst of criminals, power radiated from him, stirring a deep instinctual recognition in Araña. Fear matched by and juxtaposed against desire, as if he could be either deadly enemy or eternal lover.

She shook off the strange musings as the werewolf jumped from its cage above the one that had housed the dragons. It closed its eyes, whined as if it was trying to shift into a human form but couldn’t.

Levi hefted the Were trapped in a grotesque blend of cougar and man over his shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”

Araña left first and felt a fresh rush of adrenaline. The jeeps carrying guardsmen were closer, but it was the sound of the helicopter that made her hands go automatically to the knife hilts.

The wolf jumped from the truck and went straight to the trapper’s body. He issued a low growl before sinking his teeth into the dead man’s throat and ripping it out.

Rebekka climbed through the torn canvas side of the truck, then Levi, with the werecougar slung over his shoulder. He glanced in the direction of the clearing and voiced Araña’s fear. “We don’t have much time. The pilot is trying to set down in the cemetery. Even if he doesn’t, with the jeeps close by, he might lower guardsmen on a cable.”

Levi set his burden on the ground. Despite his early argument to leave the tattooed stranger behind, he helped the man from the truck and tossed Araña the ring of keys before pulling his gun. “I’ll stand guard.”