Shannon was just beginning to worry that she would run forever when Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s desperate voice called from the distance, “Slow down and wait for me!”

“What the fuck is going on, Angus?!” Shannon demanded, slowing so he could approach. She was feeling cold chills all over at the twisting pain in her guts as the arrow shaft moved around in her abdomen as she looked over her shoulder. “Who are those guys?!”

“My brother!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried. “Keep running!”

Shannon did. In the distance, she thought she heard the sounds of a helicopter.

Seeing that, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen frowned and slowed to a halt. Behind them, the eerie braying was echoing amongst the birch trees, the unnatural animals almost crystalline in their howls. For her own part, Shannon could feel herself slowing. The arrow was sapping her somehow, draining her energy as well as her blood. She tried to tug at the arrow in her gut, but she might as well have been tugging on something fused to her body.

“That won’t come out without releasing the curse,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said.

…curse…? Shannon did not like the sound of that.

Behind them, she heard men running along the raised edge of the riverbank, then a second arrow took Shannon in the back, knocking her forward suddenly, into Tl'oghk'etnaeyen in a fiery searing pain. They went down together in a sprawl, half falling into the sluggish green water. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen was up in an instant, throwing muddy water off his silken clothes as he backed away, horrified eyes fixed on something behind them. “Get up!” he cried. “Come on! Run, Shannon!”

Shannon’s body immediately lunged to her feet despite the arrows, following the feylord in what appeared to be a blind panic.

“Where are we going?!” she cried.

“I’ve gotta open a portal!” he cried, panic raw in his voice. “They’re trained. Kesani'aan had my father’s best tutors. They catch us, we’re dead!”

“Hurry up and open it then!” Shannon cried.

“They’re not gonna give us time!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried. “I have to concentrate to—”

An oval of light sliced into the Void in front of him, and the tall, dark-robed vampire and the native lord stepped out.

“Ffuuu—” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen started, stumbling to a halt.

“You!” the creepy, D&D sorcerer-wannabe snapped, pointing at Tl'oghk'etnaeyen. “I have had enough of your shit, feylor—”

A glowing green arrow shaft zinged past Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s ear and buried itself in the blood-sorcerer’s chest, making the vampire grunt and look down.

“Fight my pursuers for me, Buðlungr!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried, spinning away from them and running up the bank, into the forest. Shannon scrambled after him.

The native lord grabbed Shannon by the wrist with a vise-like grip, and Shannon spun and kicked him in the crotch. Instead of doubling over, the vampire snarled and stepped towards her. “Let go of her!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried, hesitating at the forest’s edge.

Somehow, the native creep held her through the compulsion, though the sorcerer was drawing black runes of blood in the air, and the strands were lancing out, rushing at the four feylords even then jogging to a startled halt on the bank.

When you allow the enemy to put his hands on you, you allow them to control the fight, Masaaki had warned her. If they reach for you, throw them into the shit like the honorless dogs they are.

Using the hold the vampire had on her wrist, Shannon spun and threw him over her shoulder, tossing him into the water behind her. Behind her, the four feylords were quickly ducking out of the way of the slashing black cables even then reaching out from Buðlungr’s fingers. Shannon had only a moment to blink at them, dimly recognizing something from the time the Inquisitors had tried to kill her.

The native vampire lord, however, didn’t let go of her arm in the fall, and instead took her with him, much like a wall of granite.

Hesitating, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen glanced between Buðlungr, who seemed distracted with the feylords who were even then ducking between Void-black cables that sliced the foliage apart in waves, and the native lord, who was crawling out of the water, reaching for Shannon’s throat…

A silent helicopter crested the treeline across the slough behind them, and a sudden strafe of bullets pelted the ground and mowed the foliage around them, catching Shannon, the two vampires, and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen in a scream of tearing shrubbery, breaking rocks, and ripping flesh.

“Get in the portal!” Buðlungr snapped to his companion, who still hadn’t let go of Shannon’s hand. “Take her!” He had switched his target to the silent helicopter, slashing a wave of black through it, cutting away the nose and part of its rotor mechanism. A moment later, the helicopter blade spun up much too fast, and the whirring engine roared as the vessel fell from the sky.

“Shannon!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen cried. The feylord, who had been knocked down by the spray of bullets, was panting, holding a bleeding abdomen, glancing desperately between Shannon and the forest behind him. Still holding her, the native vampire lord was getting up, a snarl on his face.

Then, like a freight train, the native-dude with the old woman fetish was yanking her towards the open hole in reality as Buðlungr backed up, clearly intending to join them and seal the portal.

“No!” Shannon cried, struggling against the much stronger vampire.

“Come on, woman,” the native vampire snarled, yanking her with approximately the force of a bear. Ahead of him, Buðlungr had already stepped back into the Void.

“No, no, no, no!” Shannon cried, as her heels dug into the ground, creating furrows that didn’t slow the vampire lord at all. He was already climbing back through the portal, tugging her—

Something tight cinched around Shannon’s waist, dragging her up short with the suddenness of a chain going taut. She paused and looked down.

The thin green cord that Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had called ‘feywire’ was even then knotted around her waist, the other side wrapped around a cluster of cottonwood trees. The culprit was even then finalizing the knot with bloody fingers.

The vampire lord took one look at that, then turned on Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, who was backing away with wide eyes, and grabbed the feylord by the throat. “Release her!” he snarled, yanking him off his feet. “Or I rip you apart.”

Emerging from the woods, a group of black-clad Inquisitors were returning fire at the portal, catching the native vampire and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen in a spray that made the lord grunt and her friend scream. One of the humans threw a grenade like the one that had debilitated Shannon at the café, and it went off in another explosion of silver mist that suddenly rendered Shannon’s lungs and eyes completely useless. A glowing hunting arrow slammed into the native lord’s shoulder, barely missing Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s kidney. The lord grunted and threw up a hand to try and pull out the arrow, then grunted when it refused to budge. As Tl'oghk'etnaeyen continued to choke in his grip, he waved at the mist, then hissed when his skin started to burn where it touched the silver fog.

A moment later, through the burning, blurry agony of silver aerosol, Shannon watched the vampire lord back through the portal, dragging Tl'oghk'etnaeyen by the throat.

A glowing hunter’s arrow followed them, hitting something on the other side and making the vampire grunt before the portal snapped shut behind them, leaving Shannon alone on the riverbank.

Realizing the hopelessness of her situation, knowing that she was surrounded by people who wanted to kill her and that she had no way to extract herself from the situation, Shannon nonetheless heard Masaaki’s disapproving voice in the back of her mind.

If you ever find yourself cornered, death is a better option than being captured. Fight to the death, daimyō. Never let yourself get taken in battle. For you, it would be a fate worse than you can ever imagine. Use that knowledge to power you, when all hope is lost.

So, when the black-clad men started pouring out of the forest to surround her, Shannon put all thoughts of how much she hurt, how badly she was bleeding, and how much she didn’t want to die from her mind. The feywire still wrapped around her waist, she spun and attacked them with a violence of complete, thoughtless fury.

She wasn’t the best martial artist, but she was fast, and she was strong, and she hit the first Inquisitor head-on with a speed that dragged him down to the ground with her. She stabbed him with her fangs, an instinctive push-pull in her wrists, tearing the life-force out of him, and was already getting up and charging the next.

“It’s the queen!” someone was screaming. “Kill it, kill it!” Men with machine guns were trying to scrabble back up the bank, to get away from her, obviously not having considered she wouldn’t be escaping through the portal with the others. Shannon followed them gleefully, the new surge of energy she’d taken from her victim relieving the drain of the silver and the arrows. She found another victim, stabbed him in the neck, and ripped her fangs free before she’d even had a chance to drain his life force, tearing away part of his neck as she did so. The man slumped to the ground and she found another.

And another. And another. As they tried unsuccessfully to crawl back up the bank and get out of range, Shannon fell upon every Inquisitor within a thirty-foot circle of the cottonwood tree that held her.

All but one.

He had stayed up on the bank with a high-powered rifle, and, as she lunged and pulled at the feywire holding her just out of reach, he raised his weapon, aimed at her head. Desperate, Shannon threw herself to one side. She heard the bullet whistle past her ear.

“Damn,” the black-clad man said, sounding totally emotionless and sinister in his calm. She heard the gun mechanisms click as he casually reloaded another huge silver round into his rifle.

Make use of your environment, wan-ko, Masaaki’s words returned to her, chastising her for, yet again, letting him cow her with a sword. Never accept that you are without weapons when you go against a better-armed foe. Use his sense of superiority against him. If they have a sword, you get a stick. Anything is better than bowing your head and accepting your fate like a peasant.

In front of her, the rifleman was chuckling as he slid the bolt back into place. Shannon grabbed a rock from the ground and, as the man with the hunting rifle once more raised the scope to his face, she threw it with all her strength at his chest.

The man, who was ten feet beyond the reach of her tether, went suddenly stiff as the rock entered his cranium, the gun firing by accident as he fell, grazing her cheek as the bullet lodged in the tree by her head.

Panting, Shannon grabbed another rock and crouched, senses on high alert, looking for movement in the shadows of the forest.

She heard it before she saw it. Two huge, green, near-hairless hounds with glowing skin and burning yellow eyes stepped from the foliage, followed closely by the four feylords. They stood there, watching her a moment in almost curious silence, their clothes making them blend perfectly into the forest, their bodies only showing when they moved. The hounds, if they even could be called that, stood rib-high at the shoulder, with tall, blocky shoulders and hand-like feet with talons rather than toes. Their green tongues were lolling, and they drooled pure energy into the ground that made the flowers grow, their eyes and mouths like a glimpse into a sunny day.

“How many times have you had sex with my brother?” Kesani'aan asked finally.

Shannon, still filled with the carnal rush of violence, only snarled and crouched against a mass of driftwood, hands each clutching a rock, daring the fey to walk within range.

The leader of the four lords sniffed, pulling his leather gloves from his hands as he surveyed the damage around them disdainfully. Wordlessly, he stuffed the leather gloves under his belt and reached for his elegant, carved compound bow. In the slough, the remains of the helicopter were bubbling as they sank, one of the soggy survivors of the crash climbing onto the bank towards her, a small black pistol in one hand. He raised it at Shannon…

And a glowing green arrow shaft took him between the eyes.

“I’ll ask again,” Kesani'aan said, casually lowering his bow. “Was my brother’s curse affected at all by you fucking him?”

“I haven’t fucked him,” Shannon bit out. “Why are you all so freakin’ obsessed with that?!”

The feylord gave her a smug look. “That was the wrong answer.” And then, as carelessly as a butcher cutting the throat of a chicken, he raised his bow a second time and, between the feylords’ arrows and the two shimmering, tiger-sized hounds that rushed down the bank to savage her, Shannon quickly lost consciousness.