Once darkness had fallen, we left the hotel room via the window, Navan stretching his wings and flying us to the event site. We risked flying this time, because our destination was not far, and if our pursuer was related to the Fed, we would be forcing their hand very soon anyway.

We had scoped the site out after visiting Jean and Roger, and finalized logistics. Now all that remained was action.

Reaching the park, the music and smoke drifted up from the throbbing crowds, and we stuck to the treetops. We had changed back into our dark, plain clothes, which helped us avoid notice until the time was right. After trailing above a line of trees, Navan made sure the coast was clear and then dropped down through the treetops, setting me down on the grass.

His eyes were wide and alert as he glanced toward the stage, and then back at me. “Okay,” he said quietly. “You know what to do?”

I nodded, gulping. He turned to leave, but before he could fly away again, I grasped his hand. “Be careful,” I whispered.

“I will,” he said, giving me a meaningful look. “You too.”

With that, I moved away from the trees, and looked discreetly at the sky where Navan was flying, like a shadow among the treetops, making his way toward the back of the stage. The crowd erupted in whoops and clapping as a female performer strolled onto the stage and began singing. A long fabric screen hung behind her and her band, from ceiling to floor, which was being used as a projector. That would be Navan’s first stop.

He had now flown level with the back of the stage, and I watched him quickly cross the distance between it and himself, so fast I would have missed him if I’d blinked. He flew out of view, and I could only assume that he was now beginning to figure out how to infiltrate the back stage. We had managed to buy him a backstage pass earlier, but that didn’t mean getting access to the projector was going to be easy.

I moved closer to the crowd, pulling my hood up to cast a shadow over my face. As the first song ended, and the second one began, I kept my eyes glued on the projector screen. I dug my fingernails into my palms for the duration of two more songs, and just as I was beginning to worry that Navan had run into trouble, he made his appearance.

His imposing silhouette became visible through the projector screen, his large wings stretched out, and there was a collective sound of appreciation from the crowd, thinking this was part of the special effects.

That became harder to believe when suddenly, he launched forward, directly into the fabric, ripping the entire screen from its hinges. It collapsed on top of him, folding around him as his wings beat underneath and he took to the air. There was a ripping sound, and then the bulk of the fabric fell from the sky, drifting down onto the crowd, while Navan kept just enough covering him to avoid people glimpsing his body. All anyone could make out clearly now were the ends of his black wings—and that would be enough of a distinguishing feature for the Fed.

People gaped upward, though it was clear the majority still believed this to be a feature of the show, or maybe even a prank.

That all changed when Navan, spotting me in the crowd, dove down at breakneck speed and grabbed me, plucking me up into the air.

I flailed and shrieked, making a show of being petrified, while Navan was ultra-careful to keep my face mostly obscured from the crowd beneath us. He kept me facing him, covering me partially with the same fabric he was using as a cover for himself. If anyone managed to get a snap of me…well, that would be kind of counterproductive to the special visit we had made to Jean and Roger earlier today.

My acting must have been convincing because people started to scream and call for help.

“How much longer do you think we need to do this?” I gasped.

“Not too much longer,” he replied, as he continued to whoosh me about in the sky. “But we want to make sure we leave an impression.”

Navan did another loop in the sky, which left my head spinning. Even after all the experience I’d had so far with being carried by him hundreds of feet in the air, it was incredibly unnerving to have my feet dangling like this, but I trusted his strong grip around my waist, and I continued playing the part of distressed damsel.

When we’d first come up with this final plan of action, I’d been half afraid that the humans beneath us would start trying to shoot at Navan—but thankfully, nobody was that stupid. Leaving aside the fact that Navan was flying too fast for any human to take accurate aim, they were also more likely to shoot me than Navan.

“Okay,” Navan said, after another few moments had passed. “That’s enough. Now we need to get out of here and find somewhere to wait—”

Before Navan could finish his sentence, a heavy weight slammed into us—so sudden and unexpected, Navan’s grip loosened on me and I almost fell from the sky. I screamed, and this time, it was for real.

He staggered in the air, gripping me harder and clutching me to his chest, and then zoomed forward, away from the park, away from whatever invisible thing had almost knocked us from the sky.

We had escaped the park and were flying low, weaving a path in and out of tall buildings, when sharp objects cut through the air, giving me a déjà vu moment of the previous night. I was expecting Navan to pour on the speed to place more distance between us and our invisible attacker, but in a move that almost gave me a heart attack, he soared toward the end of a dark alleyway and stopped at the end of it. He pushed me behind him as two knives hurtled directly at us, and in a moment when I could’ve sworn I saw my whole life flash before my eyes, Navan hauled me downward, the knives slamming into the brick wall behind us and clattering to the ground. I barely had time to look at them before Navan had snatched them up, and faster than I realized what was happening, he had shot the two blades forward with such breathtaking velocity I feared they would travel the entire length of the alley and reach the crowded street on the other side.

But instead they stopped abruptly in midair, less than six feet away. Two bloodcurdling cries rang out, and blood blossomed on the tips of both steel blades, one the color of molten lava, the other dark red. The next second, two figures thudded to the ground.

One was Ianthan, a knife plunged deep into his chest, and the second was a creature who must have been riding on top of Ianthan; the second blade had caught it in the neck. It looked nothing like a lycan or a werewolf—it was thin, hairless like a baby bird, and wiry, wearing an ice blue suit. Its skin was pinkish and so pale it looked almost translucent, and its long hair was almost white. Its hands and feet were far bigger than a human’s, with long and bony fingers, and its bulging eyes were a deep orange color.

“Ianthan,” Navan breathed, dropping to his knees before his friend. “What are you…” His eyes took in the other creature with alarm. “A shapeshifter?”

“Is it dead?” I stammered.

Navan ignored me as he grabbed the creature on top of Ianthan by the hair and threw him aside. He clutched Ianthan’s shoulders and rolled him over, revealing the full extent of his wound. I doubted even one of Navan’s formulas could fix him, but that didn’t stop Navan from reaching into his bag and pulling out two vials. He poured them over the wound, and I assumed they were meant to stall the bleeding, but it wasn’t enough. The blade had wedged too deeply into his chest. Ianthan sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, Navan. It forced me to…” His voice trailed off, his body going still.

Navan’s breath hitched, and then he shook his friend, as if that could bring him back to life. “No, Ianthan,” he rasped, and I realized from the tears glistening in his eyes that, despite Ianthan’s involvement with Jethro’s betrayal, Navan still loved his friend, and would have, in time, forgiven him.

Navan seemed to channel his grief into fury as he turned on the creature next to Ianthan. The “shapeshifter” was still managing to hold out, though from the looks of it, it wouldn’t be for much longer. Blood dribbled from its mouth, its chest contracting erratically. Navan grabbed it by the back of the neck, and the second he did so, the shapeshifter’s body morphed, and to my shock, turned into the spitting image of the homeless man we’d seen the night before, who had taken refuge in Navan’s bunker. The vision flickered, and then changed again, to another human I didn’t recognize. It continued to flicker and blur, from another human form and then to that of a brown Alaskan bear, and then its ability to shift seemed to sputter out, and it resumed its original pale shape. A now dead shapeshifter.

“What just happened?” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribcage.

Navan stepped backward, unsteady on his feet as he stared down at the two corpses before us. His answer came out disjointed, as though his brain was still trying to process it all. “It was him… this shifter. Somehow, for some reason, it had been waiting for us, back in my bunker, to see if anybody was going to come back. And then… followed us, once it found out our intent? It was sent by someone, perhaps, and has been trailing us on and off. They must have kept losing us and finding us again. Using Ianthan as its carrier.”

I stared at him. “What? How could it have followed us? Why?”

“Shapeshifters can adopt any form they like. They can camouflage themselves with the environment, which in effect makes them invisible. They can also impart that camouflage to others, via their touch. Somehow, it got Ianthan, which was why we couldn’t find him. I just… I didn’t know shapeshifters were prevalent on Earth. It makes no sense to me that they would work for the Fed, either, since as far as I’ve always understood, the two have a notoriously bad relationship, almost as bad as they have with coldbloods.” He shook his head. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Well, maybe the Fed made an exception in this case?” I had never witnessed anyone die right in front of me and, even if they weren’t exactly human, it was unsettling.

We didn’t have time to stand there, though, because a crowd had started to gather at the end of the alley.

I grabbed Navan’s arm, expecting him to spread his wings and lift us out of there, but his eyes had fixed on two tall, heavy-set dark figures in skin-tight black suits heading swiftly toward us through the crowd. Steel masks covered their faces, and they moved with a confidence that scared me. Thick belts with sheathed weapons fit securely around their waists.

“Here they come,” Navan breathed, and I felt his hand rest lightly on the small of my back in a protective gesture. “Lycans.”

I sucked in a breath. Our plan had gone horribly wrong. We were the ones who were supposed to have spotted the Fed so I could make the first approach.

I instinctively stepped in front of Navan and moved toward both men. The crowd on the other end, I realized, was staying in place, watching the two men approach us, perhaps mistaking them for off-duty policemen. I could make out the lycans’ eyes as they neared, vibrant shades of green and amber, and my heart was in my throat as they stopped three feet in front of us.

I held out my hands in what I hoped was a universal sign of peace, even as they eyed the two supernatural corpses behind me. Although the first question I wanted to ask was whether the shifter had been working for them, I had to be economical with my words, especially as they both reached for their belts and unhooked some kind of silver handgun.

“You’ve made more than a bit of a mess here, haven’t you?” one of them snarled, glaring at Navan. He pointed his weapon at Navan’s chest. “What’s a bloodsucker like you doing on Earth? Spit it out before I put a bullet in your brain.”

“Please,” I said, my gaze beseeching them to listen. I could see the question whirring behind their eyes as they looked at me: What’s this human doing with a coldblood? “I know what it looks like, but we’re not here to cause trouble. We pulled off a stunt back there only to get your attention—we have an urgent message for your chief, and you need to take us to see him. Human blood is currently in transit to Vysanthe.”

They stopped. It was impossible to tell if they believed it, as I couldn’t see their expressions behind their masks. But they went silent for a moment and glanced at each other, which I hoped was a sign that they were at least considering it.

Then one of them reached out and grabbed me by the arm. Navan immediately stepped forward, but the second lycan pointed the gun at him.

“Don’t move,” the officer growled.

My ears picked up on the sound of rotors, and I looked up to see a black chopper hovering thirty feet above us. Four more masked figures, clad in black suits, dropped from the aircraft, rappelling down on wires. They landed heavily, three of them instantly moving to Navan and grabbing him, roughly locking his arms behind his back.

The lycan who was holding me shoved me toward the fourth lycan attached to a wire. He gave Navan one last glare. “Oh, we’re taking you with us all right.”