We gathered just after daybreak. Alek and I had made a run to my apartment to collect things, like clean clothes, sleeping bags, and my hiking boots. Yosemite said he had a feeling where the hounds had come from, now that he'd seen them, but it was going to be at least overnight to hike out, maybe longer since we'd have to track the survivors if we could and make sure they weren't doubling back for more.

I described Clyde as best I could from what Tess had told me and Aurelio said he would pass it on to his wolves. Everyone was going to stay at the Henhouse. I'd put the closed sign up on my shop, as had Brie. There'd be some questions from regulars about it, but we'd deal with those later, I figured.

Tess woke up long enough to promise me that Clyde would get to my friends only over her dead body. I still wasn't sure what to make of her yet, but from the grim approval in Alek's eye after she said this, I had to believe she meant it enough to pass his lie-detector senses. That was some comfort.

I walked out to check on Lir, the unicorn. One of Max's ponies had been mauled, a little grey named Merc, but Ezee had told us all about how the unicorn had touched his horn to the wounds and brought the pony back from the brink of death. The little gelding would have scars to show, I saw, running my fingers over the long pink lines, but he was alert and munching hay.

Lir greeted me with a huff of air and a gentle bump on my shoulder with his nose. I stroked his uber-soft fur.

"Lend us some luck, okay?" I murmured.

His intelligent dark eyes watched me in silence as I left the stall. He was magnificent, and my heart hurt looking at him, a tightness in my chest full of wonder and fear for his life. I wanted to kick even more Fomoire ass, and this Clyde guy, too.

Alek had been right. Killing did get easier, especially when the stakes were so high.

Yosemite explained what he thought might be happening and to my surprise he said that he'd spoken with Tess and she agreed it was in the realm of possibility for Clyde to do.

Apparently, back in the time of legend in Ireland, there'd been a really bad dude named Balor Birugderc, also called Balor of the Evil Eye. He'd led the Fomoire against the Tuatha Dé Danann and been slain by a guy named Lugh.

The part of the legend that hadn't made the books and retellings was that the head of Balor had been given to the first druid for safekeeping, and passed on through the ages until it fell to one of the last druids, a youth named Iollan, who, after a few centuries, emigrated from Ireland to what became the United States, and buried the head in a wilderness full of powerful nodes and unbroken ley lines.

Working theory was that Samir, and thus Clyde, had somehow learned this and figured out a way to peel back the lid of Balor's evil eye.

"Seven lids," Yosemite said as we hiked. "Balor's power is much reduced by his death, but it could still kill this whole area."

The forest we hiked through was in full autumn foliage, the deep greens of the evergreens mixing with red and gold from birch, maple, and oak. The ponderosa pine needles had turned to flame red, and fallen leaves created a thick carpet under our feet. Deer flashed tails at us as they took offense at our intrusion. We climbed elevation, the forest growing sparser. Many of the bushes and ferns had turned to red and gold as well, and the grasses between boulders and sheets of grey rock were yellowed. For hours we hiked mostly in silence, moving more slowly than the two of them might have without me.

Occasionally Yosemite would pause and point out a wildflower, or a tiny squirrel. His love of the land radiated from him, showed in how he moved through the woods and over the open, rocky areas with ease and comfort. Occasionally he would stop and confer with Alek about the trail we were following. I tried to pick out tracks, look for signs, but broken twigs looked like broken twigs to me, and the hounds hadn't left much. Yosemite and Alek agreed about which direction we should keep moving in, so I put my trust in them and tried to keep up.

I'm a nerd, I hang out in my store, I play video games. My idea of a workout was playing paintball for a couple of hours. I'd been getting in better shape over the last few months out of sheer self-defense, swimming, even lifting weights with Levi's coaching. Alek and I had started going for runs now that he was back. I still found myself breathing hard as the sun climbed, hit its zenith, and began to descend.

There was that whole "we could be attacked at any time" tension, too, which didn't help. I couldn't just relax and enjoy the nature walk. I kept looking around us, waiting for the proverbial killing shoe to drop.

Day moved to night and we set up camp on a wide stretch of open ground on a hill above a large creek. Two huge boulders had crashed together at some point in the last million years and created a wedge-shaped shelter. With rock on three sides, we felt safe enough camping, though we didn't risk a fire. Dinner was protein bars and water.

Alek slept in tiger form, eschewing a sleeping bag. I dragged myself into mine and curled up against his huge, furry side. I was used to sleeping next to a giant tiger at this point. There's something comforting about it, like knowing you have the biggest, baddest mofo in the room on your side, keeping watch over you. Even so, it took me a long time to get to sleep. I stared up at the stars, wondering where Samir was, worried about my friends back at the Henhouse. Eventually the physical exertion of the day won out and I faded into sleep.

The second day we crested a ridge and then began a slow, painstaking descent down shale-covered slopes toward a thick patch of forest below. The sky was overcast, but so far the day was mild for October and it hadn't rained on us. Even to my untrained eye, it was clear something was wrong with the land here. The leaves were off the trees and the trees themselves looked charred, as though from recent fire. The air smelled of smoke and wet charcoal. The grass was all dead—not the aged yellow it had been the day before, but a wet, unhealthy, slimy brown color.

"Was there a forest fire here?" I asked. "I don't remember that being on the news." Fires this late in the autumn would have been reported, especially one close to Wylde. We'd hiked all day, but I doubted we were more than twenty or thirty miles inside the wilderness area.

"No," Yosemite said. "This is worse than it was even days ago when I last came this way. I fear I am right about Balor's Eye."

We had hit the bottom of the valley, almost to the tree line, when movement caught my eye. I froze, turning toward the wide expanse of dying grass to my left.

The dead forest covered much of the valley floor and the far side, but there was nothing but open ground to our north. Shale and grass and brush spread out from the edge of the dying forest in a wide plateau. In the very edge of the distance I could see, a huge grey boulder stood up and shook itself with a roar that crackled in the dead trees and echoed down the valley and back with eerie reverberations.

Then the giant rock charged, shaking the ground as it moved. Moved straight at us.