They advanced upon Janine, with Phaser casually waltzing in, almost inviting Jao try her cws on him, and the s cirg like a unit of hungry ioids, trag her every move. Janine’s arms hung loose as she preteo be shocked at the loss of her cws, intensely them. Wolfkins cws’ toughness exceeded even their boheir incredible density kept them safe from splintering even when raking at power armor. As a Wolfkin received gifts of power, their instruments of destru thied and sharpeo the point where Janine could pier armor pte with a simple tap.

  And a light touch of these elohin fingers cut her cws away. There was anle; the ability to scratch space surpassed any durability the warlord’s body had built over her lifetime, and she let out a low whine, and Phaser’s lips parted in a smile. Portals floated in the air around him as he approached her, his hands weaving a pattern in the air, creating immovable shields to protect himself. He was too sure of his victory.

  Wolfkins’ range of vocalization covered a wide range of sounds. Most served as simple expressions of dominance or submission, but there were hidden meanings behiain patterns: warnings, a demand to follow, an urgent halt, and many others. This was what Janine had used to request immediate aid. The ground around Phaser exploded; little shapes ricocheted off each other, finding their paths around and iween the h windows. Phaser’s smile ged to a scowl. The man grabbed his torn shoulder and Janine closed the distance, ign the awkward ssh that left long gashes iy. She sshed above that line, cerating his stomach, and Phaser recoiled, screeg, not uanding why his allies retreated too, instead of sshing at the warlord’s sides.

  “By the Sky, what was it?” Adonis cursed, evading passing projectiles.

  “Bullets, brother.” Heika recovered first, striking oo block a bullet aimed at the teleporter’s eye. She poi the approag Wolfkin. “She did it.”

  “Janine, you are so greedy!” Martyshkina chuckled. Bullets danced between her fingers, and at a Phaser’s move, her thumbs swo of them, sending them flying and boung off the grouo Phaser’s legs. If not for his allies, the teleporter would’ve had his knees pierced. “How about a team-up? Two against three sounds fun, right?” The amber eyes found Phaser. “Minor space maniputor, capable of cutting through most materials. Wow! Must be scary to sleep at night. What if the power activates and you find your dong cut off by act in the m, am I right? Eh, don’t worry, I know how to handle your kind.”

  “Adorable,” Phaser replied dryly, retreating to the open crack. Janine and Martyshki after him, but the man swung his arms, opening a path to a desert in front of Janine and a portal to a misty mountain that swallowed bullets aimed at his face. “We’ve bled you enough for one day.”

  He stepped into the cut behind him, and the tear iy disappeared, abandoning Adonis and Heika. The s leapt away from the firing bullets and slithered into narrow recesses between the sidewalk and the street, desigo collect rainwater.

  “Janine here.” The warlord pressed a terminal to her ear, raising a fist above her head, while Martyshkina collected her cut cws. “We entered a New Breed capable of hoppiween pces by opening portals. One such rift showed us dead knights of the Ice Fang Order. Request immediate medical assista our location. Pursuing esg prey.”

  The fist came down, smashing through the street. Stone sbs rose to the left and right, opening a gap wide enough for Janine and Martyshkina to fall, nding in the shallow waters of the underground sewers. Sniffing the blood of the fleeing s and heari footsteps, the warlords stomped after them, spshing garbage against the walls.

  “Sword Saint Tancred has ignored my order, likely uhe influenotional manipution,” Dragena informed calmly. “I saw your battle through the lenses of our allies. Assist our reckless cousin, sisters; his st known location is iuo your north. Alpha is ing. The survival of the sword saint and your own es before all else.”

  “Uood.” F herself to give up the hunt, Janine sulted the terminal, pulling up a map to see the closest route to their destination. Notig how long a detour would take, the warlord cursed and shoulder tackled a wall in front of her, breaking into aunnel, apanied by Martyshkina’s ughter. The ughter died instantly at the sound of gunfire.

  The Ice Fangs fought each other in a half-flooded tunnel. Knight-captains stood upright in the murky water, r, bringing swords and maces down on their own lesser kin, cutting through shields and taking shots iurn. One sage spun his give around, nearly decapitating a nearby defender. Martyshkina saved the endangered woman; a bullet flung from her fingers khe defender bato the water, and the give sheared metal from her helmet.

  Discipline, kinship, cohesion, and even the famous dignity had been abandoned. Soldiers used their ons not only against allies, but had fotten their fabled skill and here and there cwed and tried to bite the opposition. Holes from rifles and pistols covered the walls; the g of the on added to the bestial growls filling the tuhere was heat. The heat was not the pleasant, f warmth of her home, but a ferocious heat of furhat permeated even her mind. Whatever was causing the raging violence was close by, affeg the troops unhindered by Alpha’s fear wave.

  And worse still, the moment Jaepped closer, her fiouched a submerged body. No. Not a body. Bodies. How many? To see their cousins, the ideal of dignity and duty reduced to this, has filled Jah irresistible rage.

  “Enough!” she roared, shaking random stones, and a few soldiers stopped, but the sage turo her, his helmet missing.

  Howling and spitting drool, the sage lunged forward, bringing the give down in an overhead strike. Janine dodged the attack, which exploded the water, and smmed the man into a wall with enough force to crack it, struggling not to bite his snout off. The sage showed no such restraint, thrashing in her embrad trying to push her away with the shaft of his on. His feeble fangs snapped, stu the rough warlord’s skin.

  A male dared to bare his fangs on a female, and not during a marriage ritual. Janine’s nostrils inhaled loudly and a red mist covered her eyes. She wao rip off his lower jaw and strike up to his brai his tongue and the oill warm stomach. He dares! No male had ever disrespected her so! Every instinct called for his death, and something a resonated. A pale memory of a dark pce, of groping fioug the helpless body, surfaced. It was an unknown experience, and she wasn’t even sure if it was hers, but it fueled the urge to mutite even more.

  Her cws came from her fingers, ready to pluo the crimson eyes and damn the sequences. Here and now, she will teach the Ice Fang Order the meaning of disrespeg a warlord! Too long had she ehe humiliation and…

  “Restraint,” a voice whispered, and familiar dim and dead eyes looked at Janine from the cracks in the wall, halting her long enough to realize the gravity of what she was about to do.

  Janine closed her eyes and roared, giving everything in a wordless howl of frustration that escaped her lungs. A trick. This rage is not her own. Someooyed with their minds, tugging at their emotions and guiding them toward the most unfavorable choices. I refuse. My anger is too precious a thing for anyone else to wield. It is mine, and mine alone. I, with all my faults and all my might, am I. Janine of the Wolf Tribe.

  The sage gasped in her hold. His head was knocked back against the wall by the roar that reverberated in his ears and shocked his brain. He gasped, and Janine had to help him stand when all the aggression washed out of his body, filling him with fusion as his mind cleared.

  “Warlord…” the man gasped.

  “Janine,” she said.

  Their kinship strengthened. It was shamans’ duty to guide young cubs through their first violent urges, passed on to them by the Blessed Mother. There were cims of seeing great beasts in their dreams, but as the cubs grew older, they themselves doubted their visions. It was hard, mastering rage, but necessary, for if they experie elsewhere for the first time, they risked endangering the Normies. Her cousins had no such training, but in a way, it leasing to see that they shared the same trait.

  She just wished the price wasn’t so high. “Report.” Around them, the battle stopped, although Martyshkina had to sp several knights t them back to their senses.

  “He tricked us. The bastard lured us here and challehe ao an honorable duel, and when the lreed, a fsh of aruck our brains. We weren’t ourselves. The liege was the only one mostly ued, but the coward struck a knight in the middle of the duel, breaking the rules, and used him as a hostage to spit acid into our master’s eyes, blinding him. Pray, be on yuard against this insidious fiend.” The sage shook his head, trying tain posure.

  “Where is he?” Janine demanded. “Where is Sword Saint Ironwill?”

  “Jani!” Martyshkina’s paw grabbed her, pulling the warlord aside.

  Waters swirled as a dark shadow passed underh them. A bde sliced through the surface, bleeding Janine’s neck, but Martyshkina’s timely intervention saved her life. Her friend often boasted that no o friends could ever sneak up on her, and by the Spirits she had proven herself true in full measure! The bde struck the wall, and a shower of stones rattled against a rising figure cloaked in heavy armor.

  “Here.”

  Six massive, segmented legs, each the length of a knight and as thick as an oak, raised a massive torso above the water, puzzling the warlord as to how someone so massive could hide so well. The green armor was covered in occasional gashes and cracks, revealing tanned skin and a deceptively chubby build. Several wires hissed the visor no llowed, so a metal hand ope. Golden medallions and jewelry were ed around arms. The unknown madman had two human arms. Ohe long, curved bde, and a set of ioid limbs extended from uhe armpits, ending in pincers covered in chitin rather than steel. Golden, diamond-encrusted bracelets, stained with soot and blood, covered each wrist. The man’s bald head nearly scratched the ceiling; the ends of his long mustache slipped from his helmet and touched his chest, and s from unknown nds glittered in the skin of his forehead. Sharp brown eyes scrutihe warlords mogly.

  “Greetings, sweet madams.” He bowed courteously to the warlords, his voice soft and pleasant, kind even. “Janine, is that correct? You have taken something of mine. Iurn, I will take everything from you. I am Brood Lord, the Breaker of Nations, the Despoiler of Women, the Father of Thousands, the Merciless Bde of Mad Hatter, and the Master of the Northern Pins. Your sons I will see eradicated; your daughters, if you have any, will whore themselves to my whims; and you yourself, blinded, armless, and legless, will wail in despair, cursing the day you stood in the way of the Gilded Horde. And when I finish amusing myself with you, not a trace of your bloodline will remain in this world or any other. So I have decided, and so it shall be.”

  Brood Lord’s pincer arm rose high, dispying Tancred’s severed head for all to see. A tongue dangled weakly from the sword saint’s mouth; dark holes repced the once bright red eyes.

  “Give, Sage,” Janine anded, extending her paw. “I have a crusta to cook.”

  ****

  “Wake up, sir!” he yawned, surprised by a powerful tug as sweet Najwa, very undylike, pulled him out from uhe warm water.

  “Hello there, dear.” He g to her, breathing in the st of her stunning golden locks. She smelled of apples and roses. “No more ‘sir’, please. Call me however you like.”

  Najwa’s slender brown body was already dry, and she threw a bck bathrobe over her shoulders. The worry in her gracious blue eyes ed him. Had he insulted her in any way? Teically, her job was to protect him, but he preferred a more intimate retionship with members of the fairer sex, and so he treated the surprised bodyguard like a queen. It didn’t take long for her to join in the evening ies, although as ht now, he hadn’t yet known if the beautiful agent was doing it out of obligation or pleasure, and the mystery was intoxig!

  The rest of his girls were rexing on the white edges of the rge pool, still dreaming after a long, passionate night. What were they taking? He remembered coe, enough to kill a normal persoimes over; then there was liquid hot mind, a highly addictive drug bringing about every hidden desire inside a human. Biological enhas to their bodies gave them all the bes of tasting these forbidden fruits and protected them from aive effects. Alcohol, that’s a given, food… es? He raised his bck eyebrows. Probably ordered by the ioid agent, the shy girl had peculiar tastes, making her all the more precious to his heart. No, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, and if he’d learn that he’d dared to say so much as a dirty word to his sweethearts, he’d whip himself.

  “You o see it, sir!” Najwa insisted, dragging him to the window.

  “Sure-sure, just let me get dressed.” The st time he walked o a window of his penthouse, he ended up being at every yellow neer in Houstad and on more sites than he had wished. His girl tossed his clothes atop a statue whose bronze surface almost matched the color and perfe of his perfect skin.

  “No time!” Najwa shoved him to the window and his eyes widened.

  Houstad was burning. Bck smoke now covered the streets of his city, his base of operations. His perception sharpened as he saw waves of dark-cd bodies swatting away armored figures trying to gun down civilians. There was no mercy. The jaws of the Third’s mutants were closing in on necks and arteries, biting off ks of skin, their ugly guns barked, drilling holes in the oversized bodies.

  The destru was horrific. A skyscraper fell, bringiru to Houstad as if a giant dagger had been stuto the city and then drawn a line across it; cars burhere were explosions that destroyed parts of the streets as pipes carrying gas exploded and drove into the cracks. There were even several pools of overheated water, and even he didn’t want to think about the st moments of those who died there. Rescue teams, like busy bees, tried to save lives, but there was too much chaos, and many lost their lives, trampled to death.

  “Who… who dare?” He whispered and a halo of light briefly fshed into reality around his body, atuating well-built muscles and bck hair. Why didn’t the arm go off?!

  He restrained himself, obeying the order to ceal his presence. Even through the bulletproof windows, he heard the scream of a family trapped in aor oside of the skyscraper. Ay elevator above them broke free of its shaft and was about to crush the family. He was about to let them die, notig an ugly goat-headed freak among the people, but there were normal humans there, too. And they fought for the liberation of humanity. A fsh of light, traveling at the speed of light, vaporized the falling elevator, leaving only steam rising to the surprise of the terrified civilians.

  There was no for the world capable of withstanding his wrath. This senseless massacre could be stopped in minutes, but he was strained by his rank. Win or lose, Houstad would have to fend for itself. Still, there was fire ing from the floors below, and at the very least some help and evacuation of his adorable bodyguards to safety was in order.

  “Wakey-wakey, dies!” He cpped his hands; they snapped out of their dreams and grabbed ons, ready to fight. So cute! But whether or not they realized it, he was the one responsible for their prote, even if some of them were mutants. Otherwise, what kind of man was he? “The city is utack, but let us not panid evacuate in an orderly fashion. Permission to rescue anyone is given and…”

  A heavy bang on the window stopped him. There was a crack, and a bck-furred arm of a gigantic beast broke into the apartment.

  “Not an enemy!” roared the thing, stopping the bodyguards from firing and pushing her body inside and widening the hole. “Evacuation team. Do not fear…” There was a mane around the creature’s neck. It she air loudly, and he uood it was a warlord. “Degees,” it said, and he raised a hand, anding his girls to obey. As far as he khe warlords were females, and it would not do to harm a woman. A few visits to the beauty parlor, a rejuvenation procedure, several operations to remove scars... He clicked his tongue. Yes, do it, and she might be pretty enough to invite for dinner. And where there was dihere was also the possibility of extending su exquisite enter into a night of al pleasure... “Great,” the warlrumbled, looking down at him. “This one is too high to uand.”

  “Wait, it isn’t what…” he tried to expin, to dispel the wrong first impression, uanding that she had caught the st of narcotics.

  “You. Are. Being. Rescued. Rex,” she interrupted him, speaking slowly and scooping the people into her embrace, jumping bato the broken window where another enormous, bck-furred woman was saving people trapped in the elevator.

  Elder Spaniad of the anization rolled his eyes, pced a hand on Najwa’s shoulder to show he was not angry at being disrespected, and tried to enjoy the sudden attra of being saved in such a unique and unorthodox manner.

  I o find and burn whoever has caused chaos in my city. Spaniad thought.