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My eyes widened and I whispered, “Holy shit.” 1 don’t think I could have done what she did, not even souped up on super-good drugs and armed to the teeth with every ounce of magic I could muster. Calaeno gestured me forward. “Remind me to never piss you off,” I murmured as I brushed past her.

The edge of her irises bled to red as she shot me a completely unreassuringly smile. “I hope you never do.”

I shivered, suddenly feeling completely outclassed in a way my very healthy ego usually prevented.

Maybe her position as Queen of the Harpies set her apart in ways beyond merely seeming more sane than the rest of them.

The room beyond the door was set up like a schoolroom. Old-fashioned green chalkboards graced three of the walls, including both halves of the wall we entered from. Twenty or so wooden desks I was sure would crush beneath my weight were lined up in four neat rows of five apiece. A halfhearted attempt had been made to brighten the room with alphabet wallpaper and cheerful posters, but they couldn’t disguise the utilitarian floor, ceiling, or light fixtures overhead.

Another heavy-duty door lay on the opposite side of the room. Calaeno looked ready to attack it the same as the first, but I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s see if it’s locked first, okay?” She gave a grudging nod, and waited for me to ease the doorknob to the right. When it slid silently in response to my turn, she backed up a few steps, body assuming an aggressive stance. Setise followed suit. They waved me onward.

I shoved the door open and it smacked against the inner wall with a bang. Several men opened fire immediately, but I was already rolling along the floor. Calaeno and Sense leapt into the air, wings earsplittingly loud in the enclosed space, each landing on a gunman and setting to with vicious glee. I ended my roll by knocking a third man off his feet, then kicking the fourth in his knee from a crouch.

When he screamed and dropped to the floor, my own knee twinged in sympathy, but I pretended the pain didn’t exist. Kiara’s magical cure was
not
losing its efficacy. It wasn’t.

The man I’d sent sprawling lost his weapon in the fall but recovered quickly and jumped onto my back.

He freaked out when Nemesis spat venom into one of his eyes. His piercing falsetto sounded distinctly girlish as he clawed at his eye, trying to dislodge the acidic liquid but only digging it in even further.

Idiot.

I took the time to knock out both One-Eye and One-Knee, surprised when I glanced over and saw that the Han-pies had incapacitated their two victims rather than killing them outright.
Aw, maybe I’m rubbing
off on them.

But then I heard the wailing cries coming from behind yet another door, and I realized that wasn’t it at all. Their maternal instincts had just kicked in.

And who ever woulda thunk
Harpies
could get the warm fuzzies?

They were already through the door before I gained my feet. I rushed after them and stopped just over the threshold, finding myself inside a small but cozy nursery. Several cribs lined the far wall, but all were empty. Two nurses in cartoon-covered scrubs—oh yeah, like this was just your friendly neighborhood daycare center—cowered between the cribs, each one’s arms wrapped around a precious baby girl.

Psycho Bitch’s namesake was easy to pick out, what with the spiky purple hair and yellow-green eyes.

She babbled happily around the two fingers stuffed in her mouth, little nonsense syllables that brought an unconscious grin to my face. Jesus, I’d never in a million years expected a Harpy baby—even one only
half
Harpy—to look so damned cute and cuddly.

My gaze zeroed in on the other infant, one with tufts of reddish-brown hair and big hazel eyes that stared directly into mine. As if she recognized me. My heartbeat picked up speed. Damn, she looked like a miniature copy of her mother, down to the little dimple in her chin.

She
is
a copy of her mother.

The Sidhe and Hound DNA lurked beneath the surface rather than shouting themselves to the world in physical characteristics. I wasn’t sure if that made it better, or worse.

Serise crossed the room in ground-eating strides, eyes edged in red and hands stretched out. She didn’t need to speak. Nurse Number One practically
threw
Rinda into her mother’s arms, then rolled under the nearest crib and started crying.

Calaeno watched her sister with wide, happy eyes, but held back, allowing Sense to revel in the reunion daughter. And suddenly I couldn’t hold toward Nurse Number Two.

She had more backbone than the first woman, meeting my gaze with narrowed eyes and tightening her arms around the delicate, swaddled bundle of joy. I hardened my expression. Fear shadowed her face, and hen hands trembled when she offered me Olivia.

“Wise choice,” I said sweetly, claiming the baby with no trace of the nervousness sweeping across my body. Hell, I hadn’t held a baby since Con had been itty-bitty, and
that
had been more years ago than I cared to think about. But Olivia cooed and gurgled, eyeing me with such a trusting expression that my heart melted immediately. Oh sweet gods, I held a little miracle in my hands.

Death blew into the room. The air thickened, feeling like mud as I turned in impossibly slow motion.

Sense still cuddled Rinda close, both looking like they’d won the lottery and completely safe, so I kept spinning. And then I saw the one thing the three of us should have kept foremost in mind. Traitors walked among us.

Blood exploded from Calaeno’s abdomen as magic-wrought steel punched through her body and then ripped toward her heart. She let out a soft sigh as she slid to the ground in a neat, crimson-splattered puddle. Death claimed hen in an instant.

Penelope jerked the long, jagged dagger from her Queen’s back with much the same force and expression Scott had used earlier. The obvious hatred mixed with self-satisfied smugness had Rage flaring in an instant. This bitch was
so
going down.

“Serise!” I barked. As if we’d rehearsed it, she shifted Rinda to one arm and held out the other. Having witnessed the quicksilver reflexes of Harpykind firsthand, I tossed my precious bundle toward her without qualm.

I pounced before Sense caught Olivia, channeling red-hot Rage and clearing half the distance to Penelope in milliseconds. Her eyes locked on mine and she smiled. The irises were edged in red, but strangely, returned to typical yellow-green when they settled on me. I growled. She might not be feeling bloodlust right at the moment, but I was.

She danced back a few steps, passing through the doorway and into the schoolroom. That suited me just fine. Calaeno had sworn a blood-oath to me, witnessed by Sense, who was now bound to keep the same vow: to protect Olivia with her life. I kicked the door closed behind me, and the lock slid home seconds later. I spared a brief moment to pray that Penelope did not have the same strength as her Queen, or Sense and the babies were in big-time trouble if I failed.

Easy solution, Riss. Just don’t fail.

Eerie calmness settled over me, particularly strange because Rage still coursed through my veins. But for the first time ever, it wasn’t like channeling a hurricane. More like steering a stubborn mule somewhere it didn’t want to go.

“What, Fury, so eager to join Calaeno?” Penelope’s smile struck a chord inside, seeming so damned familiar I paused to stare. She found my hesitation funny, throwing back her head in a full-throated laugh.

Her laughter choked off when I funneled magic and moved with the same superspeed I’d siphoned into Con what seemed like eons ago. My fist rammed into her cheek with a crunching sound. She hissed and fell back, hand touching her face with obvious shock. A smile curved my lips. Nice to know she wasn’t the only one with tricks up her sleeve.

“Come on, Traitor Girl. What, not as easy a kill as you thought? Funny how that works when you don’t stab someone. in the fucking back.”

Rage swept over her features and she closed in, fists raining super-fast blows from every direction. It took every ounce of my skill and speed just to defend myself For several moments we sparred in ceaseless motion, she pressing the attack while, I did all I could just to avoid her punches and kicks. Had even one of them landed, I would have been in a world of pain.

It took another minute or two for me to figure out the truth. She was toying with me, holding herself back and letting me tire myself out. Something about the way she darted here and there, something about her entire tactic, screamed~ familiarity to me. But damned if I could figure out why.

I disengaged, skittering backward and putting an entire row of desks between us. She let me go, red-edged irises calming to yellow-green once more. At least she seemed as tired as me. Her sides heaved with the effort to draw in enough breath for oxygen-deprived lungs. And again it seemed I should know her.

Get her talking until you figure it out.
“So, why’d you do it? Couldn’t take the fact that Calaeno was ten times the Harpy you’ll even be? And where’s Ekaterina?”

Her laughter bubbled up again, this time seeming halfway sane. That bugged the shit out of me. “Oh, Marissa, if only you knew the truth.”

The tone of her voice and the way she said my full name stopped me cold.
No, it can’t be..
. Her left arm started to caress her right, then stopped as if something were missing, but her right fingers continued drumming against her thigh. It was a habit I was only too familiar with, since I’d seen it hundreds if not thousands of times.

Shock cut through my body so strongly it felt like a physical blow, and I voiced the impossible truth out loud. “Stacia.”

The Harpy gave a half bow before drawling, “The one and only.” And then she shifted.

BONE-WHITE HAIR FADED TO SHIMMERY BLACK;
yellow-green eyes deepened to faceted emerald; whipcord

thinness filled out to lush curves; harsh, barely familiar features became the pretty, youthful face I had spent years trying to emulate. A sickly green glow morphed into the electric-blue flare of Fury magic, killing the sudden wild hope that a Sidheborn clone was trying to pull one last sick trick on me. Nobody could emulate the magical signature of a Fury. Nobody.

Which meant the impossible had happened. A Fury of the Sisterhood had somehow gained the ability to shift to Harpy—without killing her Amphisbaena—and shift right back to Fury form. My mind didn’t even know where to begin processing that impossible—should have been impossible—fact.

Stacia brushed at her red leather pants before crossing silver-tattooed arms over chest and smiling.

“Sorry I’m late, Marissa. You would
not
imagine how hard it is to put down mortal uprisings. Those little worms were harder to kill than I expected. Guess they learned something from all our years of working together, after all.”

“You bitch,” I spat as Rage tried to gain a chokehold over me. “You hell-spawned bitch.” This entire time she had been feeding my. suspicion that Ekatenina was the Sisterhood’s traitor, when all along
she’d
been pulling my strings like a puppet. She’d kidnapped my mother and essentially killed my best friend.

“Tut, tut, Marissa. Such language, to both an Elder and your mentor. I’m appalled.”

“You’re going to be
dead
in a minute.” I circled the nearest desk and started walking up the aisle in single-minded determination.

Rather than closing in with me, she backed up at the exact same speed, turning the opposite way I did, always careful to keep a dozen paces between us. I snarled in frustration.

“Marissa, love, neither of us is going to die. That would upset plans I made a very long time ago, plans that are finally coming to fruition.”

I continued circling but didn’t increase my pace. My eyes narrowed and my fists clenched. Nemesis and Nike radiated impatience. They wanted to strike our enemy
now.
But I couldn’t help myself, I had to hear what reasons she thought were good enough to betray not just one people, but two. And how the hell she could walk among them both to begin with. Though that explained where she’d been disappearing to often enough lately that rumors of hen retirement had started circulating.

I swallowed down Rage enough to snarl, “What plans?”

She plastered a megawatt smile on her face, one that almost always charmed the socks off anyone she turned it on. Now it just made me want to spit. “Why, the plans for you and me, of course, darling girl.

You didn’t think it coincidence that I took you under my wing just after your mother disappeared, did you? No, I had my eyes on you for quite some time. You had your mother’s heart and spirit, and the double strength of bearing Fury blood on the paternal line as well as the maternal. I knew you were mine from the moment of your birth, notwithstanding which Fury actually gave you life.”

Sweet gods. She sounded even crazier than I’d expected. Crazier than the craziest Harpy who’d ever tried to kill me, and that was pretty damned crazy. “What do you mean, I was yours?”

“Why, the one destined to be my heir, to rule beside me.”

My brow arched. “Rule over what? Hello. The Sisterhood’s a democracy?’

A very large smile tugged her lips upward. “Not for long. Once I’ve solidified my position as Harpy Queen, once I’ve claimed control over all
my
lovely Sidheborn clones I’ve bankrolled from the moronic mortals who thought
they
were in charge all along, it will be time to claim my rightful place over the Sisterhood. As its Queen.”

I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter, which

caused the very faint lines around hen eyes to tighten. “Not in a hundred years. Not in a
thousand
years will anyone convince the Conclave that it should cede its authority to a single sister.”

“They will once wan breaks out, you silly little girl, and they discover that the only way to survive is by joining forces with our once-fiercest enemies, the Harpies. And once they realize the only way to that alliance is through me.”

The woman had gone way past the point of madness, bypassed the land of loons, and zoomed straight on to stark, raving, batshit crazy.