“They don’t have a good side!” he snapped, glancing at me briefly before returning his attention to the birds posing the most immediate threat. “I mean it. Stay back or I’ll pull her arm right off.” His hand slid from Wren’s neck to her pudgy little elbow, and the child giggled like it tickled. Then, as if in response to the touch, her arms Shifted into small, beautifully feathered wings.

Lance jerked in surprise and dropped her arm, then grabbed her neck again before anyone had a chance to make a move toward the child. By sheer, bumbling luck, he’d managed to grab the toddler with her back to him, and all her most dangerous parts—beak, claws, and talons—were facing away. He could hold her like that for quite a while, if necessary.

Kaci made an odd noise and I glanced over to see her staring at Lance in horror and mounting fury. She looked disillusioned, and I felt almost as bad for her as for the child Lance held hostage.

Wren began to struggle, obviously tired of whatever game she thought they were playing. She flapped her wings but couldn’t reach back far enough to bother Lance. When that didn’t work, she squeezed her eyes shut in concentration, and one wing Shifted almost instantly into a chubby little arm, though the other remained stubbornly feathered.

Wren fussed—an inarticulate stream of nonsense words and squawks—and waved her mismatched arms in the air.

“Lance, what do you plan to accomplish with this?” I kept my voice calm, hoping to talk him down rationally.

“Survival,” Lance spat, glancing at me briefly. Then his focus flitted from thunderbird to thunderbird, though he still spoke to me. “You said they’d honor their word, so I’ll let her go if they promise to let me go.”

I started to tell him it didn’t work like that. That they’d feel no obligation to stand by a promise made to someone who’d already proved himself dishonorable. They’d broken their promise to Malone for that very reason. But then I realized that explaining that would only make things worse. Make Lance more desperate. Instead I turned to Brynn. Or, to the bird I thought was Brynn. It was hard to tell when no one had a human face.

“Brynn, promise him,” I said, but the bird only snapped her sharp beak, frighteningly close to my arm. I’m guessing that’s a no. “Just promise him you’ll let him go, and he’ll put your daughter down.” Then you can kill him at your leisure. I didn’t think even Kaci would object to that now, after watching him threaten to kill a toddler.

“No,” a voice said from several feet to my right, and I whirled to find Brynn’s face peeking out at me from an otherwise avian body, her stance aggressive and angry. Damn. Wrong bird. I shrugged in apology to the woman I’d mistakenly addressed, then turned to Brynn, trying to communicate the importance of what I was saying with intense eye contact. But if she got my message, I saw no sign. “We will not give our word to a man with so little honor. That would disgrace us all. What good are our lives if our word holds no value?”

Damn it! Was she serious? She would let her child die rather than besmirch her reputation?

Lance turned toward the door so that I saw him in profile, and his fingers twitched around the child’s throat. Wren squawked and reached for her mother, but Lance’s arm was locked around her middle. “Let me through, or I’ll kill her,” he said to the birds now blocking his path. “I have nothing to lose if I’m going to die, anyway, right?” His eyes blazed with panic, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he had scratch-fever. He’d truly lost it.

The three birds directly in front of him glanced around at their Flight mates for a consensus, and though I couldn’t read the subtle body language and silent looks, their decision was clear. The two male birds went left, and the female went right. The path to the front door was now clear, and about ten feet long.

“You should know that as a species, we’re very fast.” Lance shuffled forward slowly, his gaze tripping from one avian face to the next. When talons tapped on the floor behind him, he glanced over his shoulder without loosening his grip on the chicklet. “You can jump me, and probably kill me, but not before I break her neck.”

Several of the thunderbirds glanced at me, presumably to substantiate or refute his claim, and I could only nod. Cat reflexes are phenomenal, and Lance’s were likely a little better than most, considering that he’d killed an adult thunderbird on his own, with only a scratch to show for it.

The birds shuffled forward as one, bobbing their heads, clucking and snapping aggressively, but no one came too close to him.

“Lance?” I said, announcing my presence as I approached him cautiously, Kaci still clinging to my left hand. “What are you doing? You can’t get down. You have nowhere to go.”

He didn’t answer, nor did he turn, and I was virtually certain he had no idea what his next move would be. He was flying by the seat of his proverbial pants, and since he couldn’t literally fly, there was no good way for this standoff to end.

Lance was five feet from the porch now, and Wren struggled in earnest. Her face was scarlet, her cries punctuated with the occasional squawk and highpitched avian cry.

“Lance, put her down. You wouldn’t hurt a child. What happened with Finn was…like an accident.” I chose my words carefully, afraid that if I took his side to talk him into letting the girl go, the fifty thunderbirds at my back would take me at my word. They didn’t seem to understand the art of manipulation. “But you’re not a baby-killer. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do this.”