How did I get everyone to an area outside where they were keeping our friends—and my brother?

  It was a combination of shadow magic and creative use of chaos.

  The downside was that it hit every trigger I had.

  After arriving beside an old wrought-iron gate, I spent the next few minutes bent over, breathing through the panic.

  I said it was more manageable.

  Not perfect.

  “Is he okay?” Raj asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “Long story,” Carter said, hovering near me. “Give him a minute. This is progress.”

  I flipped them all off.

  A few more regulated breaths and I straightened, finally looking around to see where the hell we were.

  At the end of a winding, cracked asphalt drive—like the kind that led up to an old hotel—stood our destination.

  “Wanda, can you fly up and see where we are?” I asked.

  She nodded and snapped her fingers. A broom appeared in her hand. She adjusted the shotgun slung across her back, mounted the broom sidesaddle, and shot into the air.

  “What is my life right now?” Carter muttered.

  A low, eerie howl rolled through the trees.

  Weapons came up.

  Albert immediately ducked behind Frankie.

  The howl was followed by something cackling—high and sharp, like a hyena.

  “Might want to use your hybrid form,” Raj said quietly.

  ‘Dragoon? How?’ I asked, revolvers raised.

  Our form shimmered.

  Black scales crawled over my skin—torso, arms, legs still human-shaped but heavier, armored. My neck lengthened, subtly serpentine. My face shifted into something unmistakably draconic.

  A tail uncoiled behind me.

  Great.

  The thing coming out of the trees laughed.

  Not a howl.

  Not a snarl.

  A cracked, manic hyena cackle that echoed wrong through the woods—too loud, too eager—like it was laughing because it didn’t know what else to do.

  Its hybrid form was a mess.

  Hyena shoulders hunched too high, spine arched forward as if permanently bracing for a kick that never came. Patchy fur clung to scarred skin, mottled and thin in places where stress had burned it out entirely. The jaw was too wide, stretched into a grin that showed far too many teeth—not threatening so much as desperate.

  The eyes darted constantly.

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  Not predator focus.

  Permission-seeking.

  Fear clung to it like oil—old, ingrained, obedient fear. The kind that didn’t flee. The kind that learned to survive by agreeing.

  By laughing.

  By saying yes.

  The smell hit me next.

  Not feral.

  Not clean.

  Submission. Panic. The echo of someone who learned early that cruelty was safer than resistance.

  “This is… wrong,” Wanda said quietly from above us.

  She was right.

  This wasn’t a shifter who lost control.

  This was a shifter who had been broken—then handed power.

  Then he spotted Carter—and his laughter sharpened.

  “Now who has the power, General?!” His voice was a singsong parody.

  Jake didn’t hesitate. A knife buried itself in the creature’s shoulder.

  “Davis?” Carter blinked as the creature screamed in rage.

  I really didn’t think it could feel pain.

  Its claws extended—long enough to behead a man—as it lunged.

  I didn’t think. I fired into its chest.

  That should have been enough.

  It wasn’t.

  The shot punched through fur and flesh—

  and it kept coming.

  It hit me like a fucking Mack truck.

  I slashed with my talons, barely keeping its jaws from snapping down on my muzzle. No one fired. I was in the way.

  Jake’s sword shortened into a dagger as he leapt in, driving it into Davis’s side. The other dagger tore free of his shoulder and snapped back into Jake’s hand.

  Black blood spilled from the wound, thick and rotten.

  I rolled Davis onto his back and threw myself clear.

  Raj holstered his revolvers and blasted him with sand. The grains wrapped tight around his body—everything but his head—then compressed into stone.

  He thrashed, snapping his head violently. For a second I worried he’d break his own neck.

  “You okay?” Raj asked, dusting his hands off.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Hybrid form was a good call.”

  “What did they do to him?” Carter stared at the creature.

  “They made him a monster,” Drac said dryly, studying it.

  “You knew him?” I asked.

  “Was a sniveling prick who liked anyone in power,” Carter said flatly. “He helped Taro and Odin escape from the base to become a shifter.”

  “I wonder how many others he may have created, since this experiment seems to be a success,” Albert said, studying the creature with quiet fascination.

  Everyone stared at him.

  Everyone except Frankie, who glared.

  “Bro, really?” Frankie sighed.

  “What?” Albert shrugged. “I’m just saying—if this worked, there could be more. They could attack us. Or be roaming the grounds like him.”

  Oh.

  Oh…

  “That explains the fence,” Drac muttered.

  “You just had to say that,” Raj glared at Albert.

  I scanned the trees surrounding us and sighed. “Anyone mind if we shadow-walk?”

  Blank stares all around.

  I took that as a no.

  Startled yelps followed as the world drained of color, shifting into something that looked like an old black-and-white television. That earned another sigh from me.

  “What the hell?!” Wanda landed hard and made her broom vanish. “Where did all the color go?!”

  “Shadow realm,” I said, starting down the cracked drive. “Looks like an old black-and-white television. Also—we’re basically ghosts to the outside world.”

  They followed, but we hadn’t gone far before Carter grabbed my wrist.

  He would’ve left a bruise if I hadn’t still been in hybrid form.

  I looked at him.

  He pointed behind us.

  A man stood over Davis.

  Dark skin.

  A full white beard, neatly trimmed—almost cheerful. Santa-adjacent, if Santa had never needed to blink.

  His eyes were wrong.

  Not dark.

  Empty.

  Black pools that reflected nothing back.

  The white suit he wore should have stood out, but the shadows clung too deeply to its seams and folds, settling where light should have been. They pooled in the creases, as if darkness had weight.

  Something flickered behind him.

  Four—no, six—tentacles phased in and out of existence, stuttering like a damaged VHS tape, never quite syncing with reality.

  Then he smiled.

  Just a little too wide.

  Just a little too patient.

  “What the fuck is that?” Jake asked.

  “Dr. Attwater,” I said. I recognized him from the false mental institution where he’d held me.

  “Attwater’s fear form,” Carter added.

  As we watched, Attwater’s tendrils uncoiled and slid down into Davis’s body.

  Sound didn’t carry here.

  I’d never been so grateful for that.

  We could still see it, though.

  Davis arched, his mouth stretched wide in a scream we couldn’t hear. His limbs jerked once—twice—then went slack. The struggle didn’t end so much as empty out.

  Whatever had been animating him was gone.

  Not dead.

  Gone.

  Attwater straightened. He didn’t look at us.

  Didn’t need to.

  Then he turned and walked back into the trees, the darkness folding around him like it had been waiting.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “That’s not what fear is supposed to be,” Frankie said quietly.

  “No shit,” Raj muttered.

  “We need to get Jerod and the others out of there. Now,” Drac said.

  “Nope,” Albert shook his head. “Even I don’t want to study that.”

  We all turned to go.

  Quickly.