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The old bird turned from Kai to face us. “Come forward and state your business, then be gone. We want no contact with your species beyond removing ourselves from your debt.”

“Fair enough.” I wasn't exactly tickled to be there, either. “Is anyone among you willing go on a reconnaissance mission for us?”

“Will this mission absolve us of our debt to you?” a softer but equally creepy dual-tone voice asked, and I turned to find a dark-haired mostly human man waiting for my answer.

“Not alone, no. This mission is simple and safe—hardly worth Wren's life.” At a shuffling sound behind me, I turned to see the toddler safe in her mother's arms. I smiled at them both, then continued. “I have something else in mind to erase that debt. This recon is…separate.” I hesitated, reluctant to say the next part, but I was out of options. “A favor, of sorts. Which I will gladly repay.”

“No. You are of no use to us,” the old crone half shrieked. “Now we are done. You will go.” With that, she turned her back and spread her wings, preparing to take to the air. We had been dismissed.

“W
ait!” I shouted, and the crone lowered her wings, then pivoted slowly to face me again, cocking her head in that weird avian manner. Like she was curious, but not in a good way. Curious like a child examining a dying bug. “Don't you want to see justice done?” I demanded, trying to ignore the fact that everyone was staring at me now, and that the only two sets of eyes that didn't look hostile were both feline. “If you do this, Calvin Malone will pay for what he did to you!”

The old woman stepped closer, and vague shuffling movements began all around us. Talons scraped the floor with each step. Feathers made a soft, eerie rustling sound. Several beaks snapped together in menacing, hollow clacks. The birds were closing in. Gathering to watch the show, with us at the center of their circle. We were prey, surrounded by several dozen full-grown thunderbirds.

And in that moment, Kai's promise of a safe return trip no longer seemed so ironclad. Would he still honor our deal if they told us to leave, and we refused?

“We've had justice for Finn.” The male bird crossed
still-human arms over his bare chest. “You brought us his killer, and we feasted on every edible part of his body.” At his words, the inarticulate din around us grew stronger, like the birds were all fidgeting in anticipation, and my pulse raced uncontrollably. “We have no further business with you until you claim the debt we still owe. And we have no further business with Calvin Malone at all.”

“But he lied to you. He used you! He nearly robbed Finn of justice and he certainly made fools of you all!” I couldn't understand their ambivalence. How could they not be
burning
to see Malone pay?

The male bird drew closer, and as I watched, the slightest ripple crawled over the skin on his crossed forearms, as if feathers wanted to sprout there, but he was holding them back. Along with his temper? Did that work the same way the partial Shift did for us? The angrier a bird got, the more likely to burst into feathers and claws?

“Our egos are not so fragile that they are bruised over every insult,” he insisted. “Malone lied to us, and for that, he has lost all credibility. But in the end, we suffered nothing from his lie. On the contrary, ill-meant though his manipulation was, it afforded us much needed recreation.”

Recreation?
Slaughtering members of our Pride was recreation?

But I probably shouldn't have been so surprised. The thunderbirds were hardly our brother-species. More like distant cousins. Once or twice removed.
Far
removed.

“So, you don't care that Malone's just going to get away with this?”

“No.” Kai stepped up to his Flightmate's side. “Do
not bother us with this matter again, or you will find yourself less warmly welcomed.”

Yeah. Their warm reception made my mother's deep freeze look nice and toasty.

“Faythe…” Marc put a hand on my shoulder, and I nodded without looking at him.

“I get it. They aren't going to help with the recon,” I mumbled. “Now if they refuse to help rip the living shit out of our enemies, we'll be oh for two.”

“What's that?” Kai's head tilted in interest this time. “You want us to defecate on your enemies? We're eager to repay what we owe, but we aren't pigeons, leaving droppings when-and wherever the urge strikes.”

I fought inappropriate laughter at the very idea. “Sorry. My colloquialisms seem to lose clarity in the translation. No defecation. No bodily fluids of any sort, except for blood, hopefully.”

The older female bird spoke up from somewhere to my left, and the crowd parted to reveal her. “You have caught our attention, Faythe Sanders. What blood can we spill for you, to absolve our debt?” Their obvious eagerness looked a little too much like feline bloodlust to me, but so long as it was working for us, rather than against us, I was willing to deal.

But first, a precaution… “So, this is a definite no on the reconnaissance?”

“Unequivocally.” Kai's feathers had receded, but he opened and closed his wing-claws like fists in anticipation of a fight.

“Fine.” Though it was actually far from fine. But not unexpected. “Then I'm ready to call in your debt. We've tried to deal with Malone through political means, and
that was a spectacular failure. So we're going to remove him from power by force…”

“The only proper way…” The crone's head bobbed eagerly, her beady eyes gleaming.

“… and you're going to fight on our side.”

“Fight…”

The whispers echoed throughout the cavernous room, accompanied by more rustling of feathers, scratching of talons against the floor, and excited clacking of beaks. And after several seconds of that, the questions came hard and fast.

From above: “To kill or maim?”

“Whichever proves necessary.” I glanced up, but was too late to spot the speaker. “But you can only fight our enemies. Don't touch our allies.”

From my left: “How will we tell you apart? You all look the same to us in cat form.”

“I don't know.” I whirled, but again found myself speaking to the entire crowd. “We'll mark ourselves somehow.” I rubbed my forehead, already overwhelmed by the number of details I hadn't even considered.

“When do we leave?”

“Can we eat what we kill?”

“No!” I shouted, horrified by the images now forming in my head—birds perched on a field of corpses, tearing furry flesh from broken bones. “Even our worst enemies deserve a decent burial.” Except Luiz. We'd scattered his ashes to be trampled regularly. But that was another story…

Screeched from the back of the room, as I spun again, and Jace reached to steady me: “Will there be enough to go around, or must we compete for our kills?”

“Unfortunately, I suspect there will be plenty, but
that really depends on how many of you are willing to come.” And that's when I lost track of who was speaking. They called out from everywhere, having apparently forgotten I was even there.

“All of us!”

“We will all go…”

“It's only fair…”

“Someone must stay with the children…”

“Some must stay to hunt…”

“Then we'll draw quills. Feathers into the pile! The twenty drawn will go and fight!”

“Wait!” I had to shout to be heard. “Don't you want the details?”

Kai frowned, one of the few birds still paying me any attention. “No. We want the fight, and the feast.”

“No! I said there will be no feasting! It's a war, not a fucking dinner banquet!” I threw my hands up in exasperation. Mentioning war to a Flight of thunderbirds was evidently like dangling candy in front of a class full of children! Ruthless, deadly children… “Listen, please!” And finally the din began to die as several dozen sets of small, black eyes focused on me.

“I'm glad you're all so eager.” And even more glad that they'd be fighting on our side. “But there are important details. This isn't a free-for-all, and I won't consider your debt paid if you don't play by the rules.”

“Faythe, I don't think they're interested in our rules,” Jace whispered, inches from my ear.

“Well, that's too damn bad,” I muttered, as the huge crowd of birds reassembled around us. Then I raised my voice to address the crowd. “Okay, here's the deal. When we're ready, we'll give you a time and place. You show up and wait for the signal. Then you attack. You can only
attack the enemy—again, we'll make sure we're clearly marked—and you can
not
eat what you kill.” The fact that I even had to repeat that particular warning gave me chills. “If you're hungry when it's all over, pizza's on me. But no snacking while you work!”

Marc chuckled, but most of the birds only looked confused.

“If someone surrenders to you, knock him unconscious, but let him or her live,” I insisted. We'd discovered that during large-scale fighting it was easier to knock out surrendering enemies, rather than risk tying them up, which could lead to escape, betrayal, or both. We'd sort the bodies—both living and dead—after the action was over. “Everyone understand?”

“Why not simply kill them all?” a familiar voice asked, and when I glanced to my left for the source, I came eye to eye with Neve, the she-bird my father had shot during the onslaught against our Pride. She'd obviously fully recovered.

“For the same reason we didn't kill you when we could have. Or Kai. We're interested in winning—in removing Malone from power and dealing out justice. But we're not in this for the slaughter.” At least, not once Malone's blood was soaking into the ground and Colin Dean's innards had been exposed to the rest of the world.

“Then you're fools.” The old woman watched me in blatant disgust now. “You suffer abuse from a rival, yet you would cut that rival's head off but let its body live. Your rival will grow a new head and rise again, and again you will make a pitiful effort to stop it, but never truly eliminate it. Mercy is a weakness, child. It
is a trait of your human half, and you indulge it like a spoiled child. Just as the wolves did. I assume you know what happened to the wolves.”

Um, yeah
. “Extinction. But they were killed by human hunters.”

“Yes, and by the bruins, and by us, and by some of your own ancestors, no doubt. Because the wolves bred weakness as if it were a virtue. If one group had risen to control the rest—or eliminate them—they wouldn't have made such easy prey.”

“Malone's allies comprise fully half of the Pride cat population. And you seriously think we should just…kill them all?” I could barely even conceive of such large-scale death, and so much of it pointless! “I don't know about you guys, but our numbers aren't exactly swelling. We're doing well to maintain our current population, and killing off half of us is not going to help that.”

The crone shook her head, as if she pitied my ignorance. “But those who remain will be stronger, and the next generation will be stronger still, from having cleansed the gene pool.” She did
not
just say that. I glanced at Marc to see him scowling.

“Is that what happened to you guys? Until last week, our most recent thunderbird sighting was more than fifteen years ago. We assumed that was because you keep to yourselves, but maybe that's not it. Maybe you've scrubbed your own gene pool so vigorously there's little of it left. Maybe
you'll
be next to follow the wolves.”

For a moment, the crone looked like she'd either burst into feathers or flames, and my heart pounded so hard the front of my shirt jiggled. Had I just insulted the
entire thunderbird way of life, surrounded by several dozen of their best specimens?

But then the old lady burst into harsh, cackling, dual-toned laughter, black eyes shining. “You are soft with foolish, sentimental ideologies, but that comes with youth. You will grow harder and smarter, if you are not ground beneath your enemy's boot. But if your people fight half as fiercely as you speak, your species might yet have a shot at survival.”

I exhaled heavily and felt both Jace and Marc relax on either side of me. Thank goodness my youth and foolish idealism amused her. They just pissed most people off.

“Let's wrap this up,” Marc suggested softly, and I could not have agreed more.

“Okay, so that's basically it. Only kill the enemy, and only if he doesn't surrender. And
no eating the casualties.
We'll let you know when we're ready to go. It won't be long, but you have to wait for word from us.”

Speaking of which…

While the birds protested the rules with reactions ranging from strong frowns to angry clucking, I dug my cell from my pocket and held it up. “Does anyone here know how to work a cell phone?”
Or even what one is…?

Beck stepped out of the crowd, and I recognized him from the assault on our ranch as the bird who'd come to help Neve after she was shot. “I spoke on your father's phone. Is yours like his?”

“Yeah.” Fortunately, I hadn't yet upgraded to a smart-phone, and with fewer options on the device, there were fewer ways for the thunderbirds to mess this up. “Okay,
I'm going to leave my phone here with you guys, and we'll call you when we have a concrete plan.”

“Faythe, you can't leave your phone here,” Marc said, angling me away from the crowd.

Jace nodded before I could reply. “It isn't safe for any of us to be out of communication right now.”

I rolled my eyes at them both, already digging in my other pocket. “Relax.” I held up my father's phone, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. I felt guilty for claiming it—like I was taking another right I hadn't earned—but we couldn't afford the time for another flight to New Mexico just to tell the birds we were ready for them.

Jace grinned. “Good thinkin'.”

Even Marc looked impressed. Mostly. “What about the charger?”

I smiled and pulled it from my jacket pocket, unreasonably pleased with myself for having thought that far ahead. Fortunately, generators—and thus outlets—were among the few modern conveniences the birds used, mostly to provide light and heat.

I showed Beck how to use the phone—just the basics—then gave him a list of names that might appear on the screen when I called, just in case something went wrong with my dad's phone.

“Okay, keep it plugged in somewhere where the children can't reach it—” fortunately, most of the small ones couldn't fly very well yet “—and don't answer it unless the call is from someone on that list.” I'd left a very comprehensive list, but knowing my luck, some college friend I hadn't heard from all year would pick this week to try to get reacquainted, and wind up talking to a thunderbird in New Mexico instead.

That
would be fun to explain.