memory that water couldn’t carry magic. Then, sure that his head was not on fire, he stood with a groan.
“Okay, she—it…whatever—is dead. Very dead. Are you two…” His voice trailed off.
Zaara and Lyle stood together close by, their weapons still raised, and around them and the entire shack, a pack of werewolves had gathered. The sun was setting and the moon was rising.
A full moon, he realized in horror.
“Shit,” Justin said. Thoughts tumbled through his head. Maybe the wolves had used them to kill the witch or maybe they were as bad as she’d said. Whatever the case, there was another battle to fight and unlike the last one, they didn’t exactly have a potion to make this one shake out in their favor.
To his surprise, the wolf that padded toward him lowered its nose before it transformed into a human. Around the circle, fur melted away and men and women exchanged glances with one another.
“You said she’s dead,” the bandit leader said to Justin. “Was that true?”
“Well, she’s a puddle of goo,” he said. “And it wasn’t moving when I left. I’d say that counts as dead.” His arms ached where he held the sword. “So, let’s get this over with, then.”
“If you want.” The man held out an amulet on a gold chain. “Take this with our thanks. You will always have a safe haven here.”
He stopped and squinted at the item. “Wait, what?”
The bandit leader did not smile. “I told you we could make a deal if you freed us, and you freed us.”
“We also killed several of your band,” he pointed out.
Lyle uttered a sound of disgust. “Ye’re not good at bargaining, are ye, lad?”
The leader did smile at that. He met the dwarf’s gaze before he focused on Justin again. “Yes, you did. But you also left one of them alive in the tower when you could easily have killed him. You escaped rather than unleash your necromancer on us. And, perhaps most importantly, we would have all been dead in the end if the curse had taken hold—all of us and the forest as well. That monster was an abomination and you have freed us.”
Justin took the amulet hesitantly. It looked almost like a clock and each ray out from the center was marked with a series of cross-hatches he could not interpret. “What is this?”
“Do you see the way the middle shines?” At the very center of the amulet, a piece of gold seemed to catch the light in a strange way. “That means it’s charged. Anyone who wears this and dies will be returned to the last place the amulet was charged, alive and unharmed. It takes its power from old magic, the nodes between the ley lines.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at it quizzically.
“One use per charge,” the bandit leader said. “Use it wisely. If you appear in the middle of our temple, we’ll help you, but it won’t bring your friends and not all nodes are safe places.” He whistled and gestured to his team. “Goodbye, strangers. I’ll be interested to see what becomes of you.”
When they were gone, Justin slipped the chain over his head. He looked at the other two. “And we still don’t know the story,” he said.
Zaara laughed. “You’d better get used to that,” she said. “I have to say, though, your principle of only killing people who are already trying to kill you got us farther than I thought it would.”
“Uh-huh.” He knew better than to look at Lyle, who clearly still disapproved of the tactic. “So what now?”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Mary put the last of the server cords into a large box and shook her head. Eight hours seemed to have vanished in the blink of an eye.
As soon as the PIVOT members agreed with Tad’s proposal, logistics swung into motion. A fleet of trucks was being mobilized for the PIVOT equipment to bring it somewhere that was allegedly close but completely unspecified—and, she expected, classified.
While the rest of the team packed—undoing days’ worth of careful setup in as little time as they could—Justin’s game wound onward. There had been a battle of some kind, she gathered, but DuBois had glanced at the monitor a few times and didn’t seem worried.
“I think…” Amber looked around. “I think that’s it. None of the rest can be unplugged until we have the truck.”
“Which was supposed to arrive an hour ago,” Jacob said quietly. He shook his head. “Did we do a stupid thing?”