Shilloh watched the were stare up at her. He looked shocked, and maybe he should have been. But she was barely holding herself back from curling up and screaming; there was no time for his shock.

  She reacted to his open-mouthed stare with minimal tack, but if she were to toot her own horn a little, superb foresight.

  "Birch, make way so he can tell us what the fuck to do!"

  The majestic psycho—who deserved a goddamn kiss on the mouth—hauled herself back in through the sliding window as Shilloh gave Wade a shove. He gathered himself quickly and leaned in to give directions to Kamora.

  They were far ahead of the limb stealers, but only for now. The fuckers leaped with great power but couldn't build up speed with Kamora constantly taking turns and then straightening out.

  Even as she drove, the pink-haired woman spoke to Wade with remarkable—almost disturbing—calm. They began moving away from the city and towards more rural roads.

  When he told her to let the cryptos get closer, she said no. Still sounding bored. She blithely ignored him until he explained how it would allow him to kill their pursuers at little risk and emphasized that they seemed to be tracking Shilloh. So, conflict was a matter of when, not if.

  Kamora accepted that with equanimity, saying 'sure' and asking for a piece of gum from Birch in the same breath. That was when Shilloh and Wade both noticed the mess of wires sticking out from under the console and began asking her why there were no keys in the ignition.

  For some reason, Kamora suddenly seemed to drive through more potholes, and neither of them could put their heads through the window to keep asking her questions without risking a concussion.

  Shilloh sat back on the truck bed, pulled out her phone, said a little prayer, and checked the coverage.

  For once, she had a clear connection. Knowing what she was going to use it for almost made her weep.

  Monsters tracking her, her crazy ability to sense claimed land revealed, and that look in Wade's eyes. Taken together, they could only mean one thing: She had drawn too much attention. Her identity was compromised.

  There was a weight like a bag full of lead balls in her chest. Her lungs moved unevenly, and her fingers resisted preparing the message she needed to type. Odds were that it would spell the end of her life in Forsythe. A life with a garden, a wonderful friend like Nick, a cute cottage in the woods, and bakeries that made savory pastries she had just learned were her favorite food. God help her, this could be the start of her goodbye to Fraulein.

  But she had seen the look in Wade's eyes. Of the many vices she indulged in, willful ignorance was not one of them.

  She sent the message. It went to the name of someone she had never met. Though, if asked, she had a great story about meeting him at a garden center. The contact who managed her case would see the small code phrase and know that someone was suspicious and that her cover as a human may have been blown.

  Wade's name got dropped in addition to a very frank appeal for help. That seemed prudent since a plant monster appeared to have gotten dryad blood, used it to multiply, and was now dedicated to chasing her until she was drained dry.

  Sending the message was not the hardest thing she had ever done, but it was still gut-wrenching. And the worst part was that disappearing in the night might actually be the best outcome she could hope for.

  Red anger began bubbling throughout the morass of grey-blue sadness. It moved through her like a pressurized hose full of magma.

  It was cosmically, intolerably, horribly wrong that she had to feel lucky she would lose everything because the alternative would be getting tied to a chair with needles shoved into her spit glands. She could leave this situation. She was priviledged to leave all the work, all the sacrifices she had made to get property for her dream. And that was supposed to be okay because some even fuck out there wanted to hydrate her through an IV and then tape her inside a plastic suit in a sauna so they could use her sweat to replace a ritual component that had yet to come from The Vault.

  The injustice of it was so great that she didn't know how to handle it—how to make something so wrong, something that took away her reality, fit into her mind.

  The rage saved her. She stared behind them with burning eyes.

  Secrets be damned, she was going to survive this. If people found out she was a dryad, then her life would be at risk, and she would need to start again somewhere new. But she would survive to start again. She was on track to have a very long life, and if she lost her years of toil here, then she would give up enough humanity to add twice that number of years back onto her life span. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  She loved being human, but she hated the idea of failing and victimhood more. The universe would be the once made powerless. These fucking monsters and dryad hunters would be the ones crying in the back of a pickup, unable to process the unfairness of life.

  She refused.

  "Wade," she asked, lifting her voice over the whipping wind, "how do we kill those things?"

  ~~~

  "I'm not sure," he responded. "Something is off about them. They shouldn't reproduce this fast; there should have been evidence of many living here for more than a few weeks. I'm not even sure how many there are or if whatever is mutating them made it harder to put them down."

  "There are only five in total," Shilloh said, smothering the voice of caution in her head that was begging her not to reveal her abilities like this.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Just assume that I do."

  She braced herself for pushback. In his place, she would not want to trust the lives of civilians on an unsubstantiated assumption.

  To her surprise, he just nodded, a faint grin tickling his mouth in a very knowing way. "Secrets?"

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Yeah," she grimaced, "secrets."

  "I understand." And damn it all, but she believed him. It was something about his bearing. He was shaking his head and smiling like they were old friends meeting up after a long time who had just realized that her office had the exact same shitty copier as his.

  "No details then," he said. "But how reliable is that count?"

  Reflex made her pause. If she gave the percentage of times her intuition was right, would it give her away?

  But survival trumped secrecy. And the cat may already be out of the bag.

  "Call it four out of five odds."

  No sudden light of realization came to his eyes, and he didn't start eyeing her arms, looking for a good vein to stick a needle in. The bane just looked back at the pursuing creatures that were slowly gaining on them. Their mossquade arms were getting more and more symmetrical as they were left out longer. But she could also tell the monsters were getting hungrier. Running so far and keeping up with a speeding vehicle cost them a lot.

  "Do you know if the other two are following us?"

  "Not sure."

  "Alright," he said, "we're headed to a safe zone not far from my house. You and I will need to jump out. There will be an ambush shelter there that banes sometimes use. It's very small: barely a shed with some tarp and vapor barrier around it. You and I will jump, this car will keep moving, and then you need to go inside and close your eyes. There are strong defenses hidden on that property. The sort that are usually kept a secret from the populace and only used when small-time local Blightbanes need to stop something outside of their pay grade."

  She nodded and listened while he continued to read her in on his plan. He made absolutely sure to tell her that she was not keyed to the defenses and that even seeing them could harm her. He also warned her that she might need to be debriefed and sign a non-disclosure afterward: that the location had cutting-edge tools that people would be tempted to steal.

  "Yeah, sure, whatever. But where exactly is this location we're running to?"

  He told her.

  She frowned. "Didn't we sense claimed land just a five-minute walk from there?"

  He gave her a wan smile as nervous fingers traced his weapons unconsciously. "Yeah. Hopefully, that won't be a problem today."

  "Yeah," she said, glowering out the rearview window. "Five monsters trying to ruin my life is more than enough."

  The rage and determination shone so brightly in her that she didn't notice the suspicious glint in his eyes as he stared at her. She also didn't notice the way his finger tracked the handle of a knife.

  "True," he mumbled, "one mind-blowing crisis is enough. If that thing you sensed becomes a problem, then things will probably go badly for us."

  ~~~

  Birch and Nick objected. They said driving faster and just leaving the monsters behind would be a better way to keep everyone safe.

  At least, they tried to argue that until Wade pointed out that they had monsters keyed in on Shilloh, who didn't seem like they would give up before the truck ran out of gas.

  "The only question," he shouted into the cab," is if we get them to attack in a place where I can kill them, or we want to chance to pick when we pop a tire, run out of gas, or get jumped by the others out there."

  Birch twisted in her seat and shouted back louder than was strictly necessary. "Then you handle it on your own," the madness was still in her eyes, but she held herself with a sort of authority that made everyone else hold still and listen. Shilloh is not obligated to kill cryptos for you, and the risk is unconscionable. Your job is your responsibility. Catch them without risking civilians."

  "I'm not sure we—"

  "Tough titties," Birch snapped, anger overshadowing that brief overwhelming aura of command. "This is not—"

  "Stop," Shilloh interrupted, "you're sweet, Birch. But I could never forgive myself if someone got hurt because I was afraid."

  "And you wouldn't forgive yourself if bravado left you in chronic pain the rest of your life."

  Shilloh balled her fists and met the other woman's eyes. Saying what she had in mind would be mean, but it had to be done. "Thank you. What you're trying to do is incredibly sweet. But you obviously don't know me that well. I would far rather spend my life hurting for doing the right thing."

  Plus, her internal monologue added, dryad blood was a wildly powerful catalyst. She could not be sure if the multiplying effects had stopped yet. Her control ended within seconds of the blood leaving her body. The monsters hunting her could keep multiplying. It was equally possible they would turn to dust, or learn to fly. Anything could happen if she didn't cut the problem out at the root. She needed all of them in one place, and all of them dead. She was the only bait that could pull that off.

  Plus, if the monsters all died tonight, there would be more opportunity for her to lie. She could invent all sorts of things that might let her stay in Forsythe.

  Which reminded her that there was no point holding onto the hope of a possible future here if she lost the best parts of the life she had built. With silent effort, Shilloh reached out to the web of roots and mycelium running below them. With a subtle flicker of the opalescent mercury that flowed through her mind, she sent out a command. Papa and Fraulein were to stay away.

  At the same time, she pulled a little power from the earth. With it residing in her, strengthening her, she tried to prepare herself mentally for what was to come. But Nick started tapping at the window and pointed behind them. The monsters chasing them were slowing down.

  Kamora adjusted speed and let them get terrifyingly close. To "make them feel like there's still some chance of success," she explained.

  She grit her teeth and mentally urged them to keep going. The whole point of them staying this close was to tire the monsters out until the one with the most endurance was isolated from the group. They had only been driving for a few minutes, even though it felt like a lifetime. Wade insisted that the tilled fields, as well as each home, and power line on the side of the road meant that there was still too much risk of collateral damage for him to try to pick one of the creatures off.

  But over the next five minutes, all the creatures kept getting slower and slower—so slow that the third, which had started falling behind, caught up.

  "Why isn't it working?" she asked Wade.

  He shrugged. "Who knows, but we want to keep them close enough to you that they don't go after easier but less appealing prey."

  "Okay, and what does that mean for our plan?"

  "It means that we need to wait longer to get somewhere safe before I make a move. Once the collateral damage risk is lower, I'll hit them with everything I have and hopefully even our odds by killing one."

  "How are you going to kill them? They're massive."

  The bane tapped the sheathed long sword he was holding. "I have an enchantment that will do it, but it's magic heavy and imprecise. I wish we had a way of separating them into a longer line."

  "Why?" she asked, recalling the cutting crescent of magical destruction he had used when they fought the first limb steeler.

  "So we could slowbait one of them into firing their vines. Then we could get real close, and I'd be more likely to strike through the core."

  "We still might be able to."

  "Maybe, but if not all of them fire, or if they are conserving energy for a final sprint, then we'd be screwed."

  "Maybe if we shoot them, they'll get angry, and all three will try to sprint. We can try to string them along again and isolate the fastest."

  "Maybe?" he said." But I don't think bullets have done much so far."

  "What if we just accelerate and scare them into sprinting?"

  "I don't know, Shilloh. I'm getting the feeling that this isn't going to work. What if they're tired and give up when we do that?"

  "Well, why don't you try to make it work instead of shooting everything down!" she snapped. "I can't have these things chasing me for the rest of my goddamn life, and you were so sure we needed to reduce their numbers before we got to your special site!"

  Wade didn't react to the yelling. He just nodded like they were talking normally. "True. Maybe I—" Then his eyes flashed, and a wicked smile unsheathed itself beneath his gun-metal eyes. "Let's cut your hand and drip a little blood behind us to excite them into sprinting again!"

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

  Piracy Notice: If you’re reading this anywhere other than Scribble Hub, Royal Road, or my Patreon then this is pirated. Please let me know by going to the Jeffrey Nix website’s contact area so I can get really annoyed, complain to my cat, have her tell me this never would have happened if I had just gone back for a Ph. D, send a takedown notice, and get back to writing.