“Understood,” Burke said roughly. He brushed his elbow against O’Sullivan’s arm. “You have any questions?”

“Do any of you have a suggestion for where I could set up a small office for the ITF? I’ll talk to Governor Hannigan about it, but I think it would be wise to have an ITF agent stationed here in Lakeside.”

“There are desks here in the consulate going unused,” Elliot said. “You could make use of one of them for the time being.”

“Thanks.”

“Just don’t expect any clerical help. It’s in short supply.”

“Understood.”

Vlad watched everyone but Simon leave the room. Resting his chin in his hand, he studied the Courtyard’s leader. “Think O’Sullivan and the other humans really understood?”

“How much human do the terra indigene want to keep?” Simon countered. “Or more to the point, how many humans do we want to keep? The ones we let in. We’re stuck with them now.”

He couldn’t disagree with that. “We have a Courtyard, a village, a city, and a community to work with, including the land that supports them.”

“We can’t feed all of Lakeside.”

“We’re not supposed to. Predators gather when there is a bounty of food and stay until the food source crashes and they begin to starve. Then some stay but more leave to find another place to hunt. There are empty places now, Simon. They’re not human controlled anymore, but there is work, and where there is work, there will, most likely, also be food.”

“Tolya and Jackson are all right. So is the Hope pup.”

“And Stavros is on his way to Lakeside to talk to Grandfather before going on to Talulah Falls.” Vlad pushed his chair back. “Go find Meg. Check out the garden and let her see if the green things survived.”

“They’re probably floating, with the ground being so soggy.”

Simon was a friend, but every once in a while Vlad couldn’t resist pulling the Wolf’s tail. “If you don’t want to be out there trying to mop up the water to unsoggy the ground, I suggest you sound more optimistic.”

“Meg wouldn’t want to do the mopping thing.”

“Are you sure?”

Simon just growled and walked out of the room.

Vlad smiled. None of them were sure what the female pack would think was a reasonable thing to do, but the one thing he was sure of was that the Others weren’t going to ask those females what should be done for baby plants stuck in soggy ground. They might think mopping the garden was a fine idea.

Amused—and wondering if he should mention the garden to Jester and let the Coyote be the one to start a little trouble—Vlad returned to Howling Good Reads to deal with humans who hadn’t been harmed but still had good reason to be terrified.

CHAPTER 52

Cel-Romano

In villages all along the Cel-Romano border, people regarded their restless, fearful animals and, remembering stories passed down through generations, knew what was coming.

After sundown, when soldiers bivouacked around the villages wouldn’t see and report them to the Important People, they placed bowls of sweetened milk on their back doorsteps, or a slice of bread with a bit of oil or butter, or a slice of cake that had used up precious rations. They placed their gifts and whispered, “For our friends,” before they gathered their children close and prayed they would see the dawn.

They heard the rat-tat-tat of gunfire and the truncated screams of the soldiers who had laughed at the villagers for their superstitions about the creatures that lived in—and guarded—the wild country. They heard things bump against their doors, sniffing around the gifts. And they held their loved ones tight as a terrible silence brushed against their homes and continued on its way to the Big Cities where the Important People lived.

• • •

Elementals rode their steeds through the cities on the western half of the Mediterran Sea, tearing through factories and warehouses, leaving nothing but rubble and fire in their wake.

Elementals rode their steeds through the cities on the eastern half of the Mediterran Sea, the pounding hooves shaking buildings into pieces, or cracking the land to swallow buildings whole.

And the leaders of the Humans First and Last movement, fleeing their cities, saw a truth about the world just before Namid’s teeth and claws tore them apart.

• • •

Alantea rode Hurricane across the waters of her domain, gathering a storm full of fury and vengeance—a storm unlike anything that had been seen in a very long time. She caught small ships and snapped them in half, driving the debris and toxins inland for miles as she struck her enemies’ shores.

On the eastern side of Afrikah, Indeus rode Tsunami, heading for the strait that Earth and Earthshaker had expanded to accommodate the monstrous waves that struck that part of Cel-Romano minutes after Alantea and Hurricane galloped onto the western side of those lands.

And on her island in the Mediterran Sea, ancient Tethys summoned the waters to rise and reclaim the land she had once, long ago, ceded to Earth.

• • •

As the waters of the Mediterran receded and the surviving humans stumbled around the ruins of their cities, looking for the living and mounding the dead, the Plague Riders came down from their isolated lairs to feast and breed and establish new territories within the broken cities.

CHAPTER 53

Thaisia

Drops became a trickle, which became a stream, which became a raging flood of failures as the structure connecting the human places in Thaisia broke.