Brad watched the cat-bitch depart up the stairs, still caught somewhere between flummoxed bafflement and indignant rage. “Can you believe the audacity of that creature?” he demanded, once he was sure she was gone. The fact that she had known of his favor for the Seattle Seahawks had left him particularly disquieted. It wasn’t something he’d told many people…

But Masaaki wasn’t listening. “Forgive me, my Lord Thunderbird,” he said, bowing deeply. “But she said time was of the essence…” Then, without another word, he bolted up the stairs to go get the keys to the cages.

Brad rolled his eyes, amused that the two bottom-tier actually believed he would willingly take them anywhere until they started showing him the proper respect. He idly started cutting the closest cage open, more out of boredom than a purposeful intent to free the wide-eyed blonde inside.

“You’re…like an elemental or something, aren’t you?” the woman whispered.

Brad groaned inwardly. “No. Those are only mid-tier. Barely worth my consideration.”

She scrabbled closer, careful to avoid the sparks. With curious blue eyes looking up at him in total adoration, she said, “Is it true you can’t have sex without exploding your partner?”

Brad’s arc lightning went out, leaving his fingertip dull and lifeless. He coughed, flushing. “The cat was confused.” Still, he had to try twice to re-focus and get the cutting arc moving again.

“So does it explode them or just roast them a little?” the pretty brunette in the cell to the right asked, sidling closer to hear the conversation.

Brad’s arc went out again and he had to flick his finger a few times to get it primed a third time. Pointedly ignoring the question, he went back to releasing the blonde human.

“So, like, you must’ve not had a lot of sex in your life,” the blonde said. She was wearing sexy lingerie and had obviously been in the harem for some time. “Are you still a virgin?”

Brad felt his face heat as he flushed. “Of course not.”

“So do you really kill anyone you have sex with?” a third captive asked, coming up to peer at him through her bars like he were a strange new form of insect.

“Do you want me to free you?” he demanded, hackles prickling.

“What about Sýrja?” the woman asked. “You could have sex with her if she’s immune to lightning…”

Brad froze, realizing she was right. Unbidden, his mind wandered to what that would be like to not worry about frying a bedmate when he got excited… Then the thought of having sex with the feral, bitchy shapeshifter made Brad vomit a little in the back of his throat. Grimacing, he said, “No thank you. I have standards.”

The three women seemed to consider that a moment, then, thankfully, Masaaki’s return with the keychain interrupted any more of their questions.

“Good!” Brad said, irritatedly yanking the bar free so the woman inside could get out. “I’m going out for fresh air.” Without another word, he stalked past the yatagarasu and up through the living room.

On his way to the front door, he hesitated upon seeing the sanzuwu and her human companion standing outside their cage, the human trying to use a hacksaw to get the ensorcelled collar off the Chinese Three-Legged Crow’s neck.

Brad considered removing the collar for her, then thought better of it. Still irritated by his run-in with the feral beast and the annoying follow-up conversation, Brad stalked past them, out onto the front deck. Knowing he needed a good rainstorm to clear his head, he pulled in the clouds and stepped out into the downpour. He was raising his arms to the sky, allowing the droplets to purify his impotent thoughts of finding a way to electrocute the shapeshifter into submission, when a huge, black dread unicorn stepped out of the bushes a couple yards from him, its four-foot horn dripping with swirling black necrotic

shadows.

Brad lowered his arms even as his mouth fell open.

“I see you killed the serpent,” Pestilence said, to his left. The God of Disease gave Brad a curious look. “But I had you bound, so I’d like to know how you managed that.”

Brad called lightning upon the locust, getting a brief surge of satisfaction as he burst apart into a thousand puffs of insect ash before he was once again stewing over the cat’s words, not even the presence of a unicorn able to tear him out of his foul mood. Of course he wanted to know what good sex was like—he’d read about it enough—but the last thing he wanted was to bed a shapeshifting cat-bitch who had delusions above her station.

When Pestilence re-formed, he was mid-snarl, “—you keep doing that!”

“You still owe me for that cursed horn,” Brad said, waving a distracted hand. “Is this an actual unicorn or some sort of illusion?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the maelstrom in his head. He’d always wanted to see a unicorn up close, but for some reason, they had always eluded him, and he’d never trusted the feylords’ invitation to visit the Second Lands to see one.

In reply, the locust bit out, “My pet, Thunderbird is an ally of the feylords. Him and all of the humans conspired with feylords to consolidate power and make unicorns beasts with the Decree.”

Brad frowned. “What?” But a moment later, the huge black beast was snorthing and pawing the ground, lowering the spiral horn towards Brad’s chest…

“We got them all, milord Thunderbird!” Masaaki interrupted from the entrance to the vampire lair. As he spoke, women were filing from the front door, looking nervous and squinting at the light. “Twenty-six captives, two of which will need detoxification from a lord’s venom…” The samurai froze when he saw the standoff in the rain beyond the front porch.

Pestilence turned toward the samurai with a little frown. “So that’s where you went,” he said, with a tisk. “I thought Ra might’ve managed to make his Call before I finished the binding, but it’s been so long, I’d given up.” He yanked a dagger from his belt, a sadistic smile slipping across his brown Egyptian face. “I’ve been looking for you, Champion.”

Masaaki’s eyes were widening even as the women on the porch slowed, seeing the huge black beast standing in the front yard. The smoke dripping from its flanks, horn, and belly were even then wilting the grasses around its cloven black hooves. The samurai smoothly drew his sword from its sheath and fell into a fighting stance.

In the yard, the unicorn charged Brad, its huge body moving with an ethereal speed and grace.

Before it could stab him, Brad flashed to a different part of the yard. “Oh please,” he said, stepping out of the bolt. “You’re not going to be able to—”

With Brad not there to stop the charge, the unicorn’s horn scratched the blonde woman that Thunderbird had released from the cage and instantly, her body started to rot around the scratch, her flesh liquifying in a brown-black putrescence that took mere seconds to spread outward. As her startled blue eyes were widening in horror, the beast stabbed her and tossed its head, flinging her body in an arc of rotting gore. Then, as the women on the porch started to scream and scatter, the unicorn lunged forward and tore its horn through another. The first corpse was already a puddle of bones and decay on the ground by the time the second body joined it, the horn’s corruption already spreading, dissolving the skin and organs in a wave of black putrefaction. There was nothing left of the first body by the time the second skeleton fell beside the first. Then a third, then a fourth fell beside them, all stinking, rotted corpses the likes that could be found in a centuries-old crypt… And the gesture had taken the beast less than ten seconds.

Swallowing, Thunderbird reached for his lightning.

“No, we’ll be having none of that…” Pestilence said without taking his eyes off the samurai, and in a moment, a cloud of locusts swarmed Brad, getting in his eyes, his clothes, his hair, his nose, biting and burrowing and buzzing… He yelled in dismay and started calling upon his power to make them sizzle…

…only to take the dread horn through his chest.

Brad gasped as the agony tore through him, almost instantly yanking his awareness to a pinprick of where the corrupted horn now sank into his flesh.

Then the beast was tossing his head, throwing him… Thunderbird flipped head over heels and landed in an awkward jumble in the bushes, gasping at the narrowing of his awareness to the agony in his chest. He couldn’t feel the clouds overhead, couldn’t feel his continent, couldn’t feel the lightning, all he could feel was pain…

“Oh Thor’s balls,” Brad groaned, rolling on the ground in agony. “You…fucking…cockroach…” He could feel the corruption trying to spread, and it was all he could do to forge a barrier with his power to keep it in check.

The dread unicorn had gone back to stomping, ripping, and stabbing the fleeing women on the porch, leaving a swath of decomposition and putrescence in its wake. Brad was in too much pain to care. The edges of his awareness were getting dark and hazy, and he was starting to lose focus on the wound.

I’m going to pass out, he realized, in horror. No, I can’t pass out…

Remembering what had happened to him last time, however, did not keep him from losing consciousness. As the darkness claimed him, the last thing he saw was the yatagarasu raise his sword that beamed with the power of the sun and shriek a battle cry…