By the time Shilloh's magazine was nearly empty, the perfectly clear goo the Crypto bled had started to darken. With barely restrained rage, her st two bullets smmed right into its skull, and she switched to a fresh magazine.

  Shilloh blew an errant hair from her face and stalked over to the monster's side. Her fixed-bde knife cleared its sheath, and she focused on following her instincts. Two areas seemed to pulse with life and vitality. One was where a human liver would be, and the other was past its disgustingly armored chest, just under a cvicle.

  Without hesitating, she reached over the creature as it began to heal at a visible rate from the bullets that had taken it in the 'skull.'

  She knew as soon as she saw it that the skull was a distraction. Like how some badgers grew distractingly white patches of fur in pces where they could most safely take damage if they got into a fight. They drew attention and made enemies waste their energy and efforts.

  Shilloh ignored the 'skull.' Instead, she stabbed right into where the liver should have been, going between two chitinous ptes, and twisting her bde to rip the wound further open.

  At the same time, Jasque's spear broke through the armor over its cvicle and straight into the other center of vital energy.

  Wade was not far behind.

  "Back!" he yelled.

  She pulled her knife out and leaped back. The impressive withdrawal was ruined by her tripping over a root and eating dirt.

  Fuck it. The ground was cool, and she was sweaty. Shilloh lingered even though it probably wasn't smart to be lying down right now.

  Oh well, in her guts, she knew the beast was gone, so she took some time to breathe. Slowly, the cartographer got up, dusted off her pants, and watched with a grimace as Wade pulled out his broad sword. He sliced down like an executioner and sent a crescent of invisible energy through the air.

  The green body was cut in half, and the two banes repeated the process of calling out to each other as they scanned the area and confirmed their kill through whatever inscrutable methods and tools they poked the body with.

  She had already waited through it once, so she stalked over to where the Were had dropped his cleaning rag and got all the gross stuff off her knife. It was drying into something disgustingly close to py dough mixed with rubber cement. It also smelled awful, like bug guts and sour incense.

  A liberal amount of water from her canteen and hydrogen peroxide from her pack went a long way towards getting it off.

  "Clear!" Wade finally called, all but running to her as soon as they were sure it wouldn't revive, "are you alright—"

  "Shut up, Wade."

  "No," he said, almost grabbing her by the shoulders. But he stopped himself with visible effort. After some deliberation, he settled for a gre and crossed his arms across a muscur chest that she no longer wanted to bite, just to taze.

  "As part of my job, I need to know you're safe."

  "I'm not hurt," she said. With an effort of will, she took her anger, a boiling tar-bck pool, and condensed it into a cold, hard stone. It was packed tight with feelings she didn't want to examine. "See, that was a threat. That is what a bane is supposed to be here for. It chose to attack us. It sought out humans to kill. Sure, we were somepce we probably shouldn't have been, so part of that death is on us. But it wasn't trying to protect a judiciously marked home that we willfully invaded. One we easily could have respected and walked around."

  He clenched his jaw, "I've said my piece. Maybe you need to see it go wrong before you understand. But I won't have more deaths on my conscience. I won't. For someone like me, inaction is murder."

  She took a deep breath and tried to remember why she was there. It wasn't to banter or debate. It wasn't to talk about how they could best protect the world if only they could have whatever imaginary wild power they wanted.

  Shilloh was here to track down something scary. Something that was ciming territory. Something her gut told her could cim Forsythe and every life in it given the opportunity. The money from stopping that would go towards doing the greatest good any single person in her position could do.

  Unfortunately, remembering that liking Wade wasn't necessary to her goals didn't stop her from being pissed. It was the fucking melodrama of it all. The 'people like me have so much at stake that I can't even engage with your small-brain ethics' type of bullshit that could only ever rub you the wrong way.

  God! Why had she even let herself talk to him in the first pce? The man was paid to hike around the city with his stupid boy toys and fuck up the ecosystem when it resisted human colonization. Not caring or understanding was practically in his job description.

  "Whatever, Wade. When people like you," she said sarcastically, "chose to do nothing, it just means the powers-that-be spend two extra seconds sending some other wanna-be soldier with a gun. Probably right before they decide to make a parking lot even closer to the deep forests without putting in a proper buffer species. We would barely need to give money to 'people like you' if we just took the time to do it right."

  "Yeah," Wade said, jaw muscles clenching, "that would be sunshine and roses. But tell me, Shilloh, how many buffer species are out of The Vault? I don't see and Fae, any dryads or a single satyr. And right now, we," he said, meaning 'Weres,' "can only do so much. That doesn't stop the fact that humanity needs to rebuild before the next yer pushes us even closer to medieval times. We do what you can, the best way reality lets us."

  Off to the side, Jasque was mutiting the bodies of both their victims and putting identifiable body parts in little bags so they could be paid for their murder.

  "I don't need your excuses about society. You and I do not have the fate of the world in our hands. We only have this right now. The only relevant point is you provoking fights instead of listening when something tells us we are in a pce we don't belong. That's not preventing a massacre or a noble sacrifice. It's a dirt-common dick move."

  Wade lifted his eye to the sky. He let out a breath and visibly rexed. "You have a point. I am frequently preoccupied with big issues. But the issue you are talking about is a personal choice I made. I'm sorry."

  Shilloh's eyes narrowed, but he left her no other choice. "Thank you for acknowledging that."

  Sanctimonious, high-ground taking asshole. She wanted to scream, but that would make her look like a child.

  "What if," he said, still condescendingly calm and fair," I told you that the goril thing was an unstable manifested crypto? That it would have ranged further and started killing indiscriminately?"

  "I'd say to show me a reputable source of that information, and then we can argue about whether that was your real motivation or not. But!" she said, holding up her hands," it doesn't matter. Like you said, you made a personal choice. Your personal life isn't what you paid me to be involved in. Let's just find the mossquade bodies and get on with the matter at hand. I need a drink."

  Jasque calmly took his position behind her and waved the bigger man back to his spot in the front before speaking, "Does that mean you'll be acting as our guide tomorrow?"

  "I'll be here. You're still paying me, aren't you?" she said, focusing on the property auction in her future and what good she could do with the money.

  It also helped that Shilloh didn't give a fuck what they told her to do anymore. She would avoid any future areas that had signs of habitation. Wouldn't even point out what she was doing. They didn't deserve an opportunity to argue.

  "Shilloh," Jasque said, his voice oddly hollow, "How did you sense that Crypto?

  Her mouth went dry, "Don't know," she lied, trying desperately to think about what answers her cover identity would give. "it just happens that way."

  "Hmm? Can we factor that into our pns for the rest of our hunt? Maybe because of my own sensory abilities, but I've gotten very interested in magical senses recently."

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