Seth half-crouched in the back of Brett’s blacked-out Chevy Suburban, fiddling with the straps on a bulletproof vest as what Seth could only describe as Viking chanting came from the speakers. The car accelerated as Brett went through an intersection. Seth had noticed he had a thing about yellow lights.

With a last tug, he managed to fit the vest to his torso. It was heavy, though not as heavy has he expected, maybe about twenty pounds, with rough black material and military-style webbing across it. Brett had helped him strap his knife into the webbing with a new sheath—the old sheath was gone in the ‘gas leak’, but the knife remained mostly untouched. Seth sat down, adjusting the drop holster on his right hip. Despite the mechanism to keep the gun in place, he felt certain it would slide out of its own accord and let loose a couple rounds into the cabin of the vehicle.

“All set back there?”

“Yeah.” Seth put his legs up on the seats across from him. The back of the SUV was set up like a limo, and had a strange dais in the center with slots to hold some sort of equipment set. Brett had taken a single long, black Pelican case with them, and it sat in the back of the SUV, cargo straps crisscrossed to secure it in place. After a few more minutes of driving, Brett silenced the music. “ETA five minutes, we’re taking it on foot like we discussed.”

Seth nodded and continued to wait. Eventually, Brett pulled the car quite a ways off road. “Come on.”

They exited the vehicle. To their left, a back-road of the city. To the right, forest. Brett looked up and down the road, then walked into the treeline. Once in, he pulled out his pistol, cocked the slide halfway to check the chamber, and glanced at Seth. “Brass check or get yourself condition one.”

Seth fumbled a bit, imitating the movement Brett did, pinching the rear sight and the grip in a circle with his finger and thumb. Bullet in the chamber. “I’m good.”

Brett wordlessly glanced at the black watch on his wrist, turning himself a few degrees left. “Step it.” He walked into the woods, Seth fast on his heels. This was the edge of Benson Park. Seth was curious to see how the witches behaved without guests, even independent of Brett’s requirement to perform reconnaissance. The woods weren’t dense. They were an intra-city forest, small and curated by government funding, but the foliage provided just enough cover for them to move unseen until they arrived at the open area of the park the community center sat in. Brett went prone, and Seth followed suit beside him.

The community center, about two hundred yards away, was dark as the night Seth had first approached it. But tonight, they were there before the arrivals. They saw two women, dressed in black and carrying backpacks, walk up the steps and enter the building. Brett opened a pouch on his vest and pulled out a small, flat, circular object. “Alright. Here’s what we’re using. At three, when they start, I’m going to go up to the building and plant this on the door. It’ll turn the door into a receptor, and we can listen to whatever’s happening inside. It’s extremely sensitive, so we’ll be able to hear two or three rooms deeper. Just gotta wait for now.”

As they did, the wind blew clouds across the sky, revealing the waning moon above. Not yet drawn down to half, it cast pale light across the landscape. Seth kept his head down like Brett had told him, so as not to have light reflect in his eyes and reveal their position. At three on the dot, Brett twisted his neck to look at him. “Here.” He handed a half-circle to Seth. “Jawbone mic. Put it on your head.”

Seth donned the headset, and it rested comfortably around his skull.

“Radio check.” Brett’s voice now came in loud and clear despite the whisper. Seth nodded.

Brett transitioned to a crouch and moved to the edge of the woods, keeping cover behind a tree as he scanned the environment. After a full minute there, he moved, low and quick, across the park to the community center. He slowed when he reached the steps, but went to the door and back down with calculated speed. He took a different route back, heading into the trees a couple hundred yards to Seth’s right. A few minutes later, he was back beside Seth.

“Movement?”

“No.”

“Good.” Brett pressed a button on his watch and the sounds of beating drums filtered in through the jawbone headset, accompanied by a just-audible humming behind it. Seth wondered if Emma was doing… whatever she had done that night again. “This is good music,” whispered Brett, his voice loud and clear conducted through Seth’s skull.

“This is weird music.”

Brett shrugged and kept his eyes locked on the community center. The music rose and fell for long minutes, swelling to a crescendo about fifteen minutes later before finally fading out and going silent. A few seconds passed, and they heard the sound of metal scraping over wood, a few hollow metallic rings, the sound of something snapping into place.

“I think they’re setting tables up,” said Seth. “That’s what I saw before.”

Brett nodded. Conversation started to filter in, but it was muffled, and there were too many separate people talking to discern any one thread. Brett moved to a crouch. “Come on. We’re not going to pick anything out here. We’ll sit in the car until they’re done, and then we can clean up the audio back at the hotel.”

Seth began to follow him, but grabbed Brett’s shoulder as something caught his eye across the park. He pointed. On the opposite side of the community center, by the playground, they both could clearly see something moving in the forest. Something big.

“Goddamn,” said Brett. “Fucking with my intel, are you?” He crouched down and took cover behind a tree. “Stay out of sight, Seth. We don’t have the right tools for this.”

Seth obeyed and pressed himself to the trunk of an oak, looking around to the park as six brown bears padded silently out of the forest and through the playground, making beelines for the community center. Brett looked over to Seth. “You ever seen extranormals duke it out?”

“Barely.”

Brett chuckled. “Watch.”

One of the brown bears shifted to human form as they walked, and the six of them halted about forty yards from the steps of the community center. The man was fully human now, revealing he was the leader of the shamans. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted loud and clear. “Matron Dianne! Get out here!” The leader of the shamans crossed his arms over his chest and waited. A moment passed and the door opened, sending bad feedback into the headsets for a moment. The five Matrons Seth had met stood there, wearing their black cloaks, hoods up.

“The Alpha honors us with his presence,” the one in the center spoke. Her hood concealed which one of the women she was.

The man spat. “Don’t insult us with the terminology of lesser beings.”

“My apologies, lycanthropes are all the same to me.”

The man took a step forward, jabbing a finger in the air. “Bite your tongue, witch. Do I call you by any name other than what you are?”

“It’s only natural the inferior should recognize the superior.”

The man bared his teeth. They glinted in the waning moonlight. “Don’t make me do this. You know what we want.”

“He’s not here,” she said. “You will know when he is though, because his blade will be tearing through your throat… I hear he’s figured out how to use magic. How’s Loraine?”

The man’s body rippled, showing the start of a change, but he tensed up and stayed in his human form. “Do you really want to do this now?”

“Why not? There’s two dozen more of us inside, and only six of you. If you want such a thrashing, then by all means, attack. In fact, I think you should release your hostage so he knows that we’re serious about him being on our side.”

“Like hell.”

The woman shrugged. “Maybe we kill your friends and take you hostage then. An eye for an eye.”

“Maybe we hedge the line now. We have what we need to do so, do you?”

“Fool. And lose the only leverage you have?”

“Don’t need the leverage then.”

“Then why haven’t you done it?”

The man’s mouth snapped shut.

“You know what? We’re done with your antics. Have a a parting gift.” She placed her right hand on the shoulder of the woman beside her, and held out her left, fingers together, palm up. As she moved, the man leapt backwards, his body surging in microseconds to full bear form. But even as he finished his transformation, a blinding hot ray, filling their headsets with the sound of crackling energy, blasted out of her palm and hit the grizzly bear straight in the shoulder. The woman to Matron Dianne’s right buckled and went down to one knee.

Psychically loud enough to hit their minds even in the woods, they heard the leader howl in pain, then say: They’ve completed worship! They’re sourceless! Attack, my brothers!

The five uninjured bears lumbered into a charge, chewing through the forty yards. Matron Dianna grabbed the shoulders of two of the women next to her and tilted her head back, her hood falling away to reveal the raven-haired older Matron. She shrieked, a banshee’s wail that overloaded their headset completely and sent it dead silent, their ears still ringing. All but one of the bears went down, roaring and writhing in pain. The two women she had grabbed lay next to her, passed out. The final bear still charged, almost at the steps.

Matron Dianne produced a knife, slitting her own hand open in one smooth motion and sucking the blood out of the wound. The bear had two yards to go. As it planted on the first step and reached its claw up in a raking attack, she spat, a spray of red leaving her mouth and splattering all over the bear. And where it hit, it burned, the entire bear erupting into flames and charging away the way it had originally come form, attack completely forgotten. Dianne walked down the steps to the bears stunned by her scream and started drizzling blood all over them. They were all in too much pain to do anything about it. The blood didn’t burn, yet, but the smile on Dianne’s face said to Seth that it would.

“Stop!” Shouted the leader of the shamans. He had returned to his human form, his right arm covered in blood. “Leave my brothers alone.”

“No.”

The man clenched and unclenched his fists. “You and me. Just us. Leave them out of it.”

The witch smiled. “No.” She snapped her fingers and all the bears blazed.

The man howled in rage, then held up a single hand, two fingers extended to the sky. His other came forward, fingers extended to Dianne.

Lightning flashed out of the sky from a cloud Seth knew hadn’t been there a second ago, accompanied by a rolling, shaking clap of thunder. The lightning met the man’s two fingers and blasted out of his other hand square into Dianne, sending her flying back. She hit the dirt and rolled, crashing hard into the steps of the community center. Smoke rose from her.

She moved. Gripping the railing, she hauled herself to her feet. Her eyes glowed with the same violet light Seth had seen from Emma. The leader of the shamans put one foot back, standing his ground. Dianne held her arms both up, the same lightning that had hit her a second ago arcing between them and then blasting out to the man. He held up both his hands, but it wasn’t enough. He flew backwards through the air, far further and faster than Dianne had. One of the two remaining other Matrons dropped to the deck of the community center. The man hit the ground, rolling, rolling, rolling until he came to a stop.

Matron Dianne collapsed and the last standing Matron rushed to her, holding her up and shouting for her to wake up. Across from them, the leader of the shamans pushed himself to his feet and staggered off into the woods. Brett nodded. “That’s it, let’s get out of here.”

The two of them took off through the woods to Brett’s SUV and sped away into the night.