“I don’t—”
That was as far as he got.
Because at that moment the sun fell below the far horizon.
And a split second later the wolf attacked.
There was no howl, no snarl of warning as the wolf hit the Huntsman. Milo saw white teeth in a red mouth, and then the impact knocked him flying. He hit hard and rolled into a painful sprawl. Three yards away, the Huntsman staggered sideways, bellowing out a cry of pain.
For a moment Milo could not understand what was happening because he could still feel the monster’s fist clutching his shirt, but the monster was now six feet away. Then he looked down and saw the fist and two inches of wrist and then . . . nothing.
With a cry of disgust, Milo slapped the severed hand from his clothes and scuttled backward from it. The hand fell to the ground, and the fingers slowly opened like the legs of a dying tarantula.
The Huntsman stayed on his feet even though blood—mingled streams of red and green—shot from the stump of its wrist. He clamped his other human hand to the wound to stanch the flow of blood.
The wolf landed and turned, crouching low as it wrinkled its muzzle at the monster. Milo was amazed to see that the animal was no longer injured. The terrible wounds it had sustained in the fight with the Stinger were gone as if they’d never existed. If it hadn’t been for those luminous eyes, Milo might have thought this was a different wolf.
It wasn’t, and he knew it as sure as he knew anything.
The Huntsman bellowed out a call, and immediately the sound of approaching Stingers tore through the air. Milo got to his knees and cast wildly about to see from which direction the scorpion dogs were coming. Their hunting calls seemed to come from everywhere.
The Huntsman stood wide-legged, chest heaving, pain etching deep lines in his hideous face. He released his maimed arm, drew a pulse pistol from his belt, ignited the glowing blue blaster lens, and then jammed it against the stump of his wrist. He threw back his head and howled out his anguish. But his hand was steady as he held the lens there to cauterize the wound. The stink of burning flesh filled the air.
“Stop gawking and get up off the ground,” someone said from behind him.
Milo twisted around, startled to hear this voice so close to him.
Standing where the wolf had stood was a slender figure who casually wiped red and green blood from her lips.
Milo mouthed her name. “Evangelyne.”
She frowned. “How do you know my name, boy?”
There was no time to answer that question. The Stingers were getting close.
“I will hang your skulls on my belt,” hissed the Huntsman through his pain. He shoved the gun into its holster and reached for a coiled whip that hung at his side. He shook it out with a snap of his wrist. Milo saw that its entire length was set with gleaming metal hooks, and the tip was a Stinger’s barb sheathed in steel. Another flick and the whip cracked like a gunshot in the air between Milo and Evangelyne.
Evangelyne, despite overwhelming odds, smiled. She had a pretty face, but it was not a pretty smile. Her teeth were very white, and Milo thought they looked very sharp. She dabbed at the blood on her chin, tasted it with the tip of her tongue, and spat it at the Huntsman. Then she straightened, trying very much to look like an adult—tall and imperious and confident.
“You taste like a stinkbug,” she sneered.
Despite his agony, the Huntsman smiled back.
Milo didn’t think anything good was going to come from all those smiles.
“My pack will tear you to pieces and gnaw on your bones. I will . . .” His voice trailed off because the forest around them suddenly seemed to twist and change as if the trees themselves were coming to life. The Huntsman stiffened and looked around. The Stingers all turned and sniffed the air, clearly disturbed by whatever was in the trees.
Something was coming. Even Milo, having only ordinary human senses, could feel it.
One of the Stingers whined nervously.
Evangelyne edged toward Milo.
“Get ready to run,” she murmured to him.
He wanted to say something. To make a joke about how he was born ready to run. Or something snappy. But his brain and his tongue were in separate gears, and neither was the right gear. He said something like, “Um . . . oh . . . yeah.”
It was the best he could manage.
The Huntsman laughed. It was a small thing. A faint chuckle, but it was enough to show his utter contempt for whatever was about to happen.
“You’ve actually set a trap, haven’t you?” He shook his head. “That’s almost charming.”
“See how charming it is when your bones lay bleaching in the s-sun.”
She stuttered on the last word.
The Huntsman yawned. “You can’t even make a threat without your voice shaking. So sad.”
Evangelyne hunched forward, eyes filled with hatred. “This is our world.”
The things in the shadows growled.
They all looked toward the woods for a moment; then the Huntsman smiled in a mockery of humanity. His steel teeth dripped with saliva, which ran down over his chin. He held out the severed stump of his arm and showed her the burned flesh. The way he did it was like a threat. Or a promise. His mouth pincers snapped and clacked in what Milo could only interpret as some kind of laugh.
“I’ve already taken your heart, girl,” he told her. “Now I’ll take your life. No—maybe I’ll kill everyone you love and keep you on a leash so you can watch.”
The Huntsman cracked the whip again, and this time the pack of Stingers burst from the woods and rushed in for the kill.
Evangelyne stood her ground.
As the pack rushed toward her, she raised one small fist in the air.
“Orphans—NOW!”
She slashed downward with her fist as she let out a fierce cry. It did not sound even remotely human. More like the howl of a night-hunting animal.
All around them the forest wall seemed to come alive.
Milo cringed back, terrified at what was happening as bizarre shapes erupted from the shadows.
“Oakenayl—now!” cried Evangelyne. “For all the forests they’ve burned, rend and tear them!”
As one Stinger raced forward, the leaves and branches of the trees seemed to reach out for it. Branches curled like long fingers around the mutant’s forelegs, tripping it. Creeper vines tore loose from tree trunks and whipped around the hind legs. Thick branches came out of the shadows and wrapped around the barrel of the scorpion dog’s chest. At first Milo couldn’t understand what was happening. Then the truth forced itself through his shock. It was not the forest that attacked the dog. It was a single thing whose body was like a tree trunk, and all of the many branches turned and bent like arms; all of the smaller branches and twigs combined to form a dozen clutching hands. Framed by leaves and moss was a face that could have been the carved face of a teenage boy, except this was no piece of art. The face grimaced with effort and anger as it engulfed the struggling Stinger and bore it forcibly to the forest floor.
Milo understood now who—or what—had grabbed him yesterday. Not a group of people, but one impossible figure. A boy made from tree. Or one who somehow was a tree.
He mouthed the name.
Oakenayl.
The Stinger howled in pain as the forest creature fought to crush the unnatural life from it.
“Halflight—now!” cried Evangelyne, and Milo turned to look. “For seas boiled and meadows turned to ash, burn them!”
Something flew past him so close he could feel the cool air of its passage. For a moment he saw nothing more remarkable than a brightly colored hummingbird.
Except that there was something mounted on the hummingbird. A tiny figure of silver and gold that rode the bird like a warrior riding to battle on a warhorse. It was a girl no larger than his little finger, with hair that seemed to be composed of a cloud of bright orange fire. She raised her little arms, and suddenly the air exploded with fireworks of ev
ery color. Brilliant balls of flame that burst into view with sharp cracks and showered two Stingers with multicolored sparks. The Stingers tried to stop, to twist away, but the sparks fell like rain, and wherever they touched, the creatures’ armor began to smoke and sizzle and then burn.
“Mook, for mountains torn down and valleys cracked open, smash them now, now, now!”
Evangelyne pointed to a pair of Stingers who raced toward her from either side of the crippled red ship. Huge beasts whose mouths trailed saliva and whose eyes burned with red flame. They separated to pass on either side of a pile of mossy rocks, but then the rocks reached out for them.
Milo cried out as the pile of rocks rose from the ground, leaping up and colliding to form, piece by piece, a towering figure that was, in shape only, human. Arms made from schist and granite spread wide; fists made of marble and iron ore swung through the darkening air. One fist struck a Stinger full on the face, and the sound of breaking bone rose even higher than the screams of the burning Stinger. The other hand caught the throat of the other scorpion dog and lifted it into the air.
“Mook!” cried a voice that was dusty and hard, and Milo realized that this thing, this boy of stone, had called out its own name. “Mook!” it shouted again, and with a grunt of titanic effort, hurled a Stinger across the clearing directly at the Huntsman.
That should have been the end of the Huntsman. Two hundred pounds of muscle and insect armor, tail slashing the air as it flew toward its target, should have smashed him down and dead. However, the Huntsman, with a sound like a man annoyed at a buzzing gnat, bashed it out of the air with the burned stump of his left arm. The Stinger twisted and fell badly to lie quivering.
I’m going nuts, he thought. This isn’t happening, so I’m really going nuts.
“Now, Iskiel!” called the girl. “For a billion hearts stilled, turn theirs to ash.”
And a huge salamander dropped from a tree onto the Huntsman. It was enormous—bigger than an iguana, with smooth gray-green skin through which intense red fire blazed, revealing the inferno inside the creature.
A fire salamander! Milo had read about one in an old book of fantasy stories. Yet here it was, real and hissing like a snake as it landed on the Huntsman’s back. It instantly coiled its long tail around the alien’s throat and dug into his flesh with the claws on four slender feet. The Huntsman dropped his whip and gagged as he dug his fingers in to find purchase.
Then, to confuse things even more, the girl raised her hands and called out in some strange language that Milo had never heard. It didn’t sound like human speech, but rather the mingled calls of a dozen different birds.
There was a responding call from the woods. From everywhere in the woods. High-pitched cries that struck Milo’s ears like ice picks, and then the whole clearing was filled with movement. Milo reeled as thousands upon thousands of small black shapes came pouring out of the trees to create whirlwinds of sound and movement.
Bats.
Thousands of them.
Tens of thousands of them.
They covered a half dozen of the Stingers, burying them under flapping leathery wings, tearing at them with needle-sharp teeth.
Not just bats.
Vampire bats.
A voice spoke to Milo. The witch, speaking not in dreams or while floating as a spirit, but here and now in the physical world. An impossible voice speaking to him in an impossible moment.
Now is your chance, child of the sun, she commanded. Run for your life.
“W-what?” he stammered, rooted to the ground with shock.
Run while you can. The Orphan Army cannot win this fight.
All around him these creatures were locked in deadly combat with the Stingers and the Huntsman.
“Looks like they’re doing okay to me,” said Milo. His comment caused the girl to glance at him, and Milo realized that only he heard the witch speaking.
That’s ’cause I’m going nuts, he told himself.
“Mook!” cried the rock boy as he smashed and smashed.
“Die!” bellowed the tree spirit as he crushed and tore.
The salamander hissed and the little sprite shattered the air with fiery explosions while Evangelyne urged them on.
Then, as fast as the attack happened, it fell apart.
The Huntsman secured his grip at last, and with a grunt of effort, he tore the salamander’s tail from around his neck. He raised it up and then slammed it down against the ground. Once, twice, until the creature simply exploded. The resulting fireball and concussion knocked the Huntsman back a dozen paces, but the towering mutant did not go down. He leaned into the shock wave and endured it, grinning at it as if proving to the world that nothing could defeat him.
From the woods came responding howls of at least a dozen more Stingers.
The shocktroopers drew pulse pistols and began firing at the swarms of bats, and immediately the air was filled with the stink of burning fur. Hundreds of bodies fell like cinders, and the others scattered into the trees.
Milo dug into his satchel for another grenade, but he didn’t know what to do with it. Everyone was too close.
That’s the wrong magic, boy, whispered the voice. There is a time to fight—and bless the shadows in your heart for wanting to—but there is also a time to run.
Four Stingers erupted from the woods and hurtled toward Evangelyne.
“No!” yelled Milo, running to put himself between them and the girl. He dug out a grenade, twisted the arming cap, snugged it into the pouch of his slingshot, raised it, fired, sending the bomb over the heads of the Stingers. It exploded as it fell behind them, and the blast tore two of the monsters to rags.
The other two, undaunted, came on, teeth bared, barbed tails raised.
Run! implored the witch.
Milo held his ground between them and the girl as he fumbled for another grenade. He knew without doubt that he now stood well within the blast radius.
“What are you doing, boy?” growled the girl.
“Stop calling me ‘boy’—and run!” he yelled to the girl. “I’ll hold them here.”
To his right there was a sound like nails being pried from green lumber, and he turned to see three Stingers tearing at the tree spirit. For a moment Oakenayl fought back, his many hands punching and tearing, but then all life seemed to vanish from the living wood and the Stingers tore him to splinters.
“No!” Milo felt totally helpless.
Suddenly, a bolt of blue fire punched down from above and the rock boy—Mook—exploded, spraying everything with smoking chips of stone. Above them a drop-ship came spinning down from the darkened sky, and a moment later shocktroopers leaped from it, riding steel cables down to the ground.
“NO!” Milo yelled again.
The Stingers were nearly upon him.
There was nowhere left to run.
Run, demanded the voice in his mind.
The Huntsman laughed and retrieved his whip.
Milo reached for the arming cap of another grenade. Better to go out in a blaze of glory, he realized, than let these monsters take him.
Maybe he’d see Shark and Barnaby and Lizabeth again.
Maybe Dad would be waiting for him on the other side. Not in some Bug collection, but on the other side of life. Somewhere else. Someplace where there was no invasion, no Swarm. No war. A place where Dad would be like he used to be. Happy. Playing his guitar. Singing old songs.
Maybe, Milo thought, if there were such a place, then all of his fear and doubt would be done with.
“I love you, Mom,” he said as he took hold of the cap.
Then someone shoved him and he was falling. The grenade, unarmed, rolled out of his reach, and he twisted on the ground to see someone leap over him.
It was the girl.
She jumped with incredible speed and grace and then dropped to the ground on the other side between Milo and the Stingers.
She landed on all fours.
Not on feet and hands.
She landed on four feet.
Four.
Four feet that ended in sharp black claws, and when she looked up at him, he did not see a girl.
Or a wolf. He understood that now.
Evangelyne was a werewolf.
A werewolf.
His inner mind had been trying to tell him this since the first fight with the Stinger during the patrol. Maybe earlier. Barnaby’s warnings of a rougarou had given fuel to the thought, but Milo’s conscious mind had not wanted to hear it. Not wanted to accept it.
Werewolf.
Werewolf.
Werewolf?
Werewolves don’t exist.
Neither do tree spirits or sprites, fire salamanders and boys made of rock, he told himself.
Neither do witches that step from dreams into the waking world.
None of that is true. None of that exists.
Except when it does.
Milo staggered to his feet and backed away. From the Stingers, from the Huntsman, from the shocktroopers.
From the girl.
He retreated from all of it.
“No,” he breathed. He was panting like a winded horse.
But the moment said, Yes.
The scorpion dogs slowed and stood wavering, uncertain and confused. Even the shocktroopers seemed stunned. They had all seen the transformation.
All of them had.
Only the Huntsman seemed to understand what was happening. He stood with his back to the rim of his damaged ship and slowly raised the seared stump of his left arm. Perhaps it was a salute, perhaps a challenge. However, the expression on his face showed a kind of eerie joy, as if seeing the werewolf revealed something wonderful to him. Or proved some important theory.
Milo thought he knew what it was. He had been inside that dark mind.
The Huntsman, the evil man who had become a monster, believed in magic, but like most people, he could not prove it existed. He had stolen the Heart of Darkness to try to find that proof.
Now, here, in front of him and all around him, was proof. Spirits and sprites. And a werewolf.
The Huntsman nodded to himself.
“The black jewel is mine,” he said, touching a pouch on one of the straps crossing over his massive chest. “And I will use it to hunt you all through forever. A billion-billion worlds will open to the Swarm. This world will fall, and then the worlds of shadow will fall. Look upon your doom, daughter of the wolf, and despair.”