Sara entered the bathroom with a basket of bottles, brushes and jewelry in one hand and what looked to be not nearly enough fabric for clothing in the other. She placed her items on the small bathroom counter and pulled out one of the bottles and a rag. As soon as she opened the bottle, the familiar smell of chloroform filled the small room. Nope. Riordan wasn’t going to let her take him out with a fight.

He waited until she had soaked the rag and reached towards him to spring to his feet. Riordan was still hobbled and his hands were still bound, but he had enough movement to grab her wrist as he stepped into her, bringing her hand up to her face and pinning her body up against the bathroom wall. He pressed against her arms and legs, keeping her ability to struggle to a minimum.

Surprise worked against Sara here. She opened her mouth to yell, inhaling deeply just as Riordan brought the rag up to her face. Her free arm and legs kicked lightly against the wall as she began to go under, but lacked the momentum or any loose targets to make any real racket. A few seconds later, Riordan eased her unconscious body to the floor.

He hadn’t exactly talked over his choice with Billy before acting. Riordan glanced over at the man who shook his head. “Don’t worry about me,” Billy said with grim determination. “If I can get through this alive, I will. If I can’t, make them pay for it. It was my own mistake that put me under their control. I’ll accept the consequences.”

Riordan nodded, but that short speech made him only more determined to see Billy through this alive. That kind of partner was hard to get on a mission. Most people couldn’t match paces with Riordan because they still had a sane self-preservation instinct. If Billy hadn’t been cursed, the pairing would have been perfect for crazy shit like this. Unfortunately, he was cursed, which meant Riordan was largely on his own for causing mayhem.

Shedding his ropes was fastest accomplished via shifting into his badger. Riordan snuffled and quickly shed the ropes with a few wiggles and kicks. Billy watched with interest, pulling the unconscious assistant further into the room and gently settling her into the tub. The guard shook his head, saying softly, “You’re lucky to have a form small enough to do that. So many of the guards have larger forms, like my bear or Maudy’s moose.”

Riordan snorted, shaking his head from side to side. In his fur, Riordan felt powerful and angry, ready to take on the whole damn cult by himself if it came to that. Billy’s comment might be true, but it felt a little condescending. Riordan would be more than happy to show him that smaller didn’t mean weak. He set that urge aside for some future moment when he actually had the time to indulge his ego.

He sniffed the contents of the bottles she’d brought into the bathroom and looked with disgust at the little scrap of fabric that turned out to be some sort of decorative jock strap and some scarves. The male equivalent of a fantasy harem costume. Riordan took pleasure in shredding it. Phenalope had some fucked up fetishes that he wanted no part of.

Most of the bottles smelled of soap and makeup, but one smelled similar to how Phenalope’s kiss had tasted. Riordan would have bet that the bottle contained more aphrodisiacs. He wondered how much rape was built into Phenalope’s cult. It was a pretty common perversion of power. Notorious cults often had cult leaders with multiple wives or the right to sleep with everyone else’s wives or other fucked up shit that was basically all about the leader’s desires and the cult members were tricked into viewing it as some sort of privilege to be used in such a manner.

As much as Riordan preferred to be a badger right now, his fury close to the surface, he knew that he’d be better at fast sabotage with hands. Reluctantly, Riordan shifted back to human. He sometimes wondered about the mental and spiritual aspects of identity that could distinguish the rope bindings as foreign to his human form, leaving them to be shed by his badger, but marked the clothing as part of his identity and self and hid them in wherever his other form resided between shifts.

Riordan had never considered how casually powerful shifter magic was until he had to consciously try to use spirit magic on its own. He had a ton of power in the spirit realm and some power within himself, but affecting external physical objects with spirit magic was difficult without enlisting the aid of a spirit. Perhaps it was that the other form of each shifter was a type of spirit and it was their aid that made such things as the transmutation of clothing possible.

He peeked through the blinds on the nearest window. He’d have to be cautious. Not all of the windows were covered. Tom still waited on the porch, having settled down into a chair there with Duke at his feet and his shotgun near at hand. A few people were out near the vehicles, checking over the items in their trunks and comparing it to a paper. Preparations were ongoing, clearly. No one was heading towards the cabin, but he could feel their awareness of it. They had trained themselves to orbit Phenalope, leaning into the gravity of her existence.

They wouldn’t casually intrude on Phenalope, but they would also be watching for problems. That meant Riordan had to act fast. He needed to set back their plans as much as possible without making much noise. His eyes fell on the stove and its banked embers.

Grabbing a kitchen knife and the fireplace tongs, Riordan rapidly disemboweled a couch cushion and started one fire there. The tote and its contents became the locus for another fire. The cabin was primarily constructed from wood, but the timbers were weathered and wouldn’t catch quickly. He needed to get the fires as entrenched as possible to keep it from being easily extinguished. More embers were scattered across the rugs and into dusty corners in the short time Riordan could spare.

His next point of attack was clear. This would be his only chance to Phenalope alone and unaware. Riordan had played his hand and wouldn’t be trusted or ignored once someone realized it. He grabbed the chloroform from the bathroom and shut the door to protect that space from the fire as long as possible. Billy nodded as Riordan shut him off from the main room, gesturing to make it clear that he’d go out the bathroom window with the unconscious assistant if the fire threatened him. Riordan also noticed Billy grab the bottle of aphrodisiac and, with a grimace, take a swig of it. That would make for an excuse how Riordan had gotten away from him.

He cracked open the windows in the main room that he could safely reach. That increased air flow. The embers were catching fire in a few places. He fanned them larger, but knew he had to choose between working on the fires and getting a shot at Phenalope. The priority was clear.

Riordan’s team usually took scouting and infiltration missions. They were the sort to get in, get whatever the target was, and get out. Towards the end, their targets had slid from largely being intel or objects to being someone to take out. Riordan had done this before, even if it had been decades and the associated memories sent a chill through him. He let all that fall away, breathing in the meditation pattern to center himself as he slunk across the room, avoiding the uncovered windows as much as possible.

Despite his combat boots, Riordan’s footsteps were light and quiet on the solid wood flooring. The crackle of growing flames covered his steps and even that was beneath notice. He doused a rag in chloroform, holding that in one hand. He swapped the kitchen knife for a combat knife he spotted near Tom’s gun collection. If the hunter hadn’t been so good at securing his ammo, Riordan would have been more than happy to riddle Phenalope with bullets. Nothing could be that easy, of course.

Riordan breathed in, the air tinged with acrid smoke, and out. Then he opened the door to the bedroom and stepped in and to the side. Phenalope whirled, her arms tangled up with a shirt or dress that she had been about to don. Riordan launched himself forward, leading with the chloroform rag. He managed to grab her chin, holding the rag across the lower half of her face, before her defensive ward blasted him backwards.

The bang of his body impacting the wall echoed in the space, oddly deadened by the solid construction of the cabin. Snarling, Riordan pushed off the wall, kicking the door beside him closed, and launched himself forward again. This time he led with the combat knife, getting up into her personal space and slashing high before stabbing low. Phenalope, for all her nasty magical tricks and stolen power, was not a combatant. She defended against the high blow and let the stab sink into her abdomen.

Through the medium of the knife, the defensive spells just sent waves of pain up Riordan’s arm rather than launching him bodily. A beserker rage swept over him. Pain fed his violence. His snarl turned into a rattling growl as Riordan swung his free elbow up into her face, the blow pushing her away even as he yanked the knife out. Her blood splattered across the floor, vibrant red streaked with smears of black corruption.

Distantly, Riordan heard yelling and the front door opening. He had seconds before he lost his chance. He swung again. Phenalope threw up her arms as a shield, staggering backwards and hitting the bed. The blade slashed along her arms, leaving gashes on both forearms, and she fell onto her back on the mattress with a cry of pain and surprise. Riordan raised his knife to stab down on her exposed torso. She rolled at the last minute, taking the blow as a shallow slash on her side. He tackled her to the bed, pinning her in a straddle. Pain raced through his body and Riordan yelled in angry agony as his muscles seized up.

He shook it off quickly, but not quickly enough. Before he could strike again, the bedroom door banged open. Tom raised his shotgun, squeezing his trigger even as Phenalope started to yell not to kill Riordan. The shotgun slug hit Riordan in the back of his left shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him off the bed. He hit the floor hard, growling in pain. His thick skin and shifter resilience made the wound far less serious than it should have been, but blood still streamed down his back and arm in a wicked mess.

Keeping low, Riordan rolled, coming up to his feet at the end of the bed, near the door. He dropped his knife to grab the shotgun in both hands and yank it free of Tom’s grip. Even with one arm slick with blood and weakened with injury, a human had no match to Riordan’s rage-fueled strength. Only training kept Riordan from trying to crush or snap the shotgun for the insult and injury it had dealt. Instead, he tried to capitalize on his rapidly vanishing moment.

Spinning back around, Riordan chambered the next round for the shotgun, glad Tom favored pump action shotguns instead of single shot. He brought the gun to bear on Phenalope, the death mage still struggling to her feet from his assault. She stared at him, blood dripping between her fingers pressed to her belly.

Then pain bloomed in the back of Riordan’s skull. The impact sent him stumbling forward a step, barely holding onto the gun as he went to one knee.