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  Fast as lightning, Annie leapt off the porch and began running up the lane to get her. Fortunately, she and her husband lived just three cabins down from me. Also fortunately, Annie and I had just seen her heading to her house not ten minutes earlier.

  Still on her knees, whimpering, Jen clutched at my arm. “Please help take me to my Marbles. My legs aren’t working right.”

  Heart aching, I helped her up to her feet with an arm around her back, then helped her down to the lane, where we met Aaron.

  Immediately, he told Jen that Marbles was alive and breathing. “He’s probably going to be just fine, but he somehow wound up on the north side of the fighting field, and he got zapped pretty good by an Angel. Knocked him out cold.”

  I could see a quarter-sized patch of singed fur on the side of his head.

  Jen was now sobbing hysterically, grabbing for Marbles and begging Aaron to let her hold him. “At least set him down in the grass or something, so I can hug him and tell him he’s gonna be okay!”

  Aaron did as she’d asked, setting Marbles down in the grass on the side of the lane, and Jen sank down in the grass beside him and began sobbing into his golden fur. The scene was heartbreaking to say the least, but for some reason, the ache in my chest was quickly becoming replaced by some other feeling, something like a current of electricity flowing through my veins. Whatever it was, it was making me clench and unclench my fists, heart pounding.

  After pulling me aside a short distance, Aaron began speaking rapidly. “The Angels are attacking en masse at the field right now. Seems like it’s every last one of them, including Maxwell Bliss himself, who’s not only their leader, but the most powerful sorcerer on the planet right now. Most of us shifters are already on the field, and Tasha is just to the south, calling all our Gifteds in a phone chain system that we worked out for an emergency such as this. I need to get back right away, so if you could please stay with Jen until Annie and Alexis—”

  “No, I’m going back to the field with you. I’m going to fight.”

  The surprise apparent in Aaron’s expression mirrored how I myself felt. I hadn’t even planned to say what I had. It had just come out.

  “Avery, this is going to be a much larger fight than the last, and if the last one upset you, this one is certainly-”

  “I don’t care. They hurt Marbles, and they made Jen cry. I’m going to be a part of helping to take them out.”

  “But you’ve never fought in even a small battle, let alone—”

  “But we’ll all be watching each other’s backs, right? I’m doing this, Aaron. I’m not going to let the Angels do what they did without being a part of destroying them.”

  “But—”

  “Jim told me once that love is what makes him fight, and I get that now, because that’s what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to fight out of love for Jen, and Marbles, and this whole community that’s now my home. My mind’s made up. I’m going. I’m fighting.”

  My words sounded strange to my own ears, as if I was hearing someone else speaking through me. Though at the same time, I knew what I was doing, and what I was getting into. And I knew I couldn’t not do it. Before Aaron had come striding down the lane with Marbles, I’d been content to just continue on with the cowardly course of my life, as long as I could be happy with Jim, but I knew now that I couldn’t go that way anymore. Not if I ever wanted to look Jen and Marbles in their eyes ever again.

  “The second Annie and Alexis get here, Aaron, we’ll leave. I know we need to hurry.”

  Seeming a bit hesitant to do so, he finally said okay, and just then, a bark made us both turn our heads. Somehow, Marbles was up, actually licking Jen’s face. Sitting in the grass, she was laughing and crying, trying to hold him to her chest.

  “You’re a miracle dog, Marbles! You’re a miracle dog!”

  It seemed like he really was. Now wagging his tail vigorously, he actually looked completely fine. Relieved beyond words, I said a silent prayer of thanks. Aaron asked me if I was still sure I wanted to fight now, and I nodded.

  “Yes. Just because Marbles is okay, it doesn’t change anything. I still need to do this. I’m still fighting.”

  Within seconds, Annie came sprinting down the sunlit lane with Alexis, and then everything happened fast. Alexis began leading Jen and Marbles away to her house; Aaron shifted into bear form; and after I’d told Annie that I was going to fight, the two of us got on Aaron’s back, and he began speeding us toward the northernmost field.

  At first, my worry of falling off his back kept me pretty preoccupied, but soon I realized that even as fast as he was charging up the forest path, Aaron wasn’t going to let Annie and me fall. His sense of balance seemed incredible, and also, I was holding big hunks of his thick black fur in my fists, just like Annie was doing.

  Once I felt secure, my thoughts turned to the fight ahead, and I began to question whether I was doing the right thing. I knew I really wouldn’t survive turning tail and running for the third time in my life, at least not emotionally. But at the same time, I felt confident that I wouldn’t emotionally survive not helping in this fight, either.

  I really didn’t have much time to think things over, which was probably good. Within a minute or two, we were at the fighting field, dismounting from Aaron’s back. He charged into the fray, and Annie grabbed my hand and began leading me into it as well.

  “Let’s just jump in before you have a chance to change your mind. I’ll stick close to you. Just do what we do at practice.”

  Before I knew it, I was doing just that, levitating Angels into the air with lightning-fast speed, moving them out of the way before they could zap any of my fellow Timberline fighters. I was shaking from head to toe, my hand visibly moving from side to side each time I extended my palm to levitate, but I was doing it. I was fighting, and I wasn’t running. For the first-time in my life, other than my knee-jerk reaction with the little boy and the car, I was rescuing. I was being a protector.

  With Annie flanking me, zapping any Angels I couldn’t levitate fast enough, I slowly started moving to the center of the battle, where the fighting was the thickest. Along the way, I spotted Jim, and he spotted me. If a bear could look absolutely astonished, he did, his furry face taking on an almost human expression with eyes wide and jaw dropped. However, he seemed to get over his shock quickly, because the fight required him to. The Angels seemed drawn to him like a magnet, probably having been told by Maxwell Bliss to try to kill Jim first. Too bad for Bliss and his Angels, Jim was an incredibly strong and fast fighter, catching, biting, and decapitating two Angels within the span of five minutes. The kills were exceedingly gory, without a doubt, but I knew I’d better get used to all the blood and guts, because the battle was heating up.

  For maybe a half an hour, the fighting was intense, but it was clear that we Timberliners were more than holding our own. While Jim periodically issued roared signals to all of us shifters and Gifteds, the body count of Angels on the field grew and grew until there was maybe a dozen headless Angel carcasses strewn around the grass. However, when Maxwell Bliss made his appearance on the field, murderous-looking with eyes that were somehow glowing red, things sort of began to unravel. Shooting flame-red bolts of electricity from his palms, he hit a few shifters, making them roar in pain, falling to the ground.

  Beside me, Annie spoke in a near-shout to be heard above the din of the fight. “It’s okay. Don’t lose your focus. We might have some injuries, but it takes many zaps to kill a shifter, or a human, for that matter. They’ll be just fine.”

  I continued on levitating while Annie zapped, but I couldn’t help but become a bit distracted when Maxwell hit a few more shifters, including Jim.

  Once again, Annie spoke to me in a near-shout. “Don’t look at him. Just keep your focus. He’ll be up in a few seconds.”

  He was, but at the same time, at least a half-dozen of his men went down, having all been zapped in some sort of an Angel blitz attack that none of us Gifteds had
been able to prevent.

  A few minutes later, I realized that fully half of our shifters were now down, and meanwhile, new waves of Angels were pouring out from the trees on the northern edge of the field about every minute. For the first time, I began to see traces of fear in Annie’s eyes.

  “Just remember, Avery, no matter what happens, we stay on the field and we try to hold our ground. No matter what. We Timberliners don’t run. Okay?”

  My full-body trembling had lessened a bit, but now it was back full-force.

  However, I managed a nod at Annie while levitating an Angel at the same time. “Okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

  About a minute later, even more shifters were down, and so were at least a dozen Gifteds who’d been zapped. I noticed that Jim and a bear I was fairly sure was Aaron were kind of trying to fight their way over to Annie and me, a sight that for some reason scared me even more than the sight of yet another wave of Angels emerging from the woods behind them. It was as if Jim and Aaron were thinking that they might soon be the only ones left to defend Annie and me.

  I could hardly believe it. For the first time in my life, I was truly, deeply in love with an amazing man who loved me, too. Also for the first time in my life, I was showing real guts, real bravery. But now it seemed that there was a real possibility I could die, or at the very least be seriously injured, even though I knew that Jim would fight like hell to keep that from happening.

  After another minute, though, the battle seemed to take a slight turn for the better. Roaring, Jim charged a tight cluster of Angels, sending them all flying like bowling pins. Then, without missing a beat, he attacked and killed two of them in rapid succession, while Aaron and another bear were making kills of their own.

  When a sudden noise something like a sonic boom sounded, I just about jumped out of my skin, along with Annie and most everyone else, including Angels. The battle field quickly went quiet as everyone looked around, trying to identify the source of the boom. By the simultaneous gasps we both made, it was clear that Annie saw it at the same time.

  Standing on the south side of the field stood a tiny figure that appeared to be a little girl. She had red hair pulled into a high ponytail, and she was holding her hands in front of her a short distance apart. Just then, she clapped them together like cymbals, causing a burst of silvery light between them, and causing another sonic-sounding boom. I’d never seen another Gifted do this strange trick, ever.

  Now every single shifter, Gifted, and Angel on the field seemed to be frozen solid, not making even the slightest noise. Which is why when the tiny, redheaded figure walked out on the field, shouting, everyone could hear her with crystal-clear clarity.

  “Who hurt my dog?”

  Annie made a noise between a whimper and a groan, then spoke in an anguished near-whisper. “No, Jen. Go back. Go back home.”

  It was too late now. A half-dozen Angels were now moving, gliding around behind her to block an easy escape back down the dirt path.

  If Jen noticed, she didn’t seem to care. She just kept advancing onto the field, moving in a very unhurried, purposeful, and confident sort of way. “Can’t any of you Angel guys hear? Who! Hurt! My! Dog!”

  More Angels swarmed behind her, and others moved to her sides and front.

  She came to a stop and slowly began moving in a circle, seeming to want to address all the Angels at once. “Come on! Which of you was it? Face me! Don’t be chickens! I want to fight the one of you who hurt my dog, but I’ll fight all of you if I have to!”

  To my right, I saw Jim begin creeping toward her and the Angels now in a loose ring around her.

  Annie seemed to see him, too, and she whispered to me. “When Jim makes his move, you start levitating, and I’ll start zapping. If we can take out all the Angels behind her, maybe one of us can drag her off the field.”

  “Okay.”

  Not seeming to realize the grave danger she was in, Jen raised her voice even louder, still slowly twirling in a circle in the middle of the loose ring of Angels, now with her arms outstretched. “Come on! If any of you morons thinks you’re strong enough, just come at me right now! Or all of you come at me! I’m ready to fight you all at once!”

  Just then, Maxwell Bliss came speeding across the field toward Jen. At the same time, all the Angels around her lifted their palms and began shooting beams of silvery white light.

  *

  Instantly, Jim began charging toward the Angels and Jen. Making near-identical strangled cries, Annie and I rushed forward as well. But within a split-second, we both froze, stunned. It seemed that maybe Jen didn’t need our help after all. All the Angels that had been surrounding her were now on the ground, after having dropped like flies. Jen had issued a beam of electricity that had hit one, and then probably literally as fast as lightning, had circled around the whole group, doing a kind of domino action.

  Now in the process of stepping over bodies, she suddenly ducked to avoid a thick beam of electricity that had been issued by a still-charging Maxwell Bliss.

  “Oh, hello.” Immediately bouncing back up again, she fired off a return zap, which connected with her target, sending Maxwell rocketing backward at least fifty feet. “Now, that’s what you get! And if you were the one who hurt my dog, I hope that hurt a lot!”

  From what I’d seen on the battlefield, zaps from other Gifteds didn’t send their targets rocketing backward even a foot.

  Suddenly, the fight roared to life again. Angels started zapping wildly, Gifteds, including Annie and me, started zapping and levitating, and bears charged and went in for kills. With most of her earlier anger seemingly spent, Jen sauntered around, alternating between appearing to just be casually observing, and doing things like taking down ten Angels at once with a single zap, somehow making the electricity travel from one to the other without having it hit any shifters or Gifteds in between.

  Within ten minutes, all of the Angels were either dead on the field or otherwise gone, maybe half of them having escaped into the northern woods, surely making a beeline for their supernaturally-protected fortress. Unfortunately, Maxwell Bliss had apparently been among the escapees, because several shifters reported that they didn’t see his body or his distinctive red-eyed head on the field anywhere.

  Once all shifters had shifted back into human form, and once Jim had determined that all Timberliners were all accounted for and basically okay, including a few still walking off pain from being zapped, he called for everyone to gather in a group at the mostly-free-from-carnage southern end of the field.

  Jen picked her way around several headless Angel bodies, frowning. “All this dead sorcerer stuff is... well, it’s pretty gross.”

  Once everyone had gathered loosely together, and once many hugs had been exchanged, including a long one between Jim and me, along with a kiss, Jen came over to him and tugged on his sleeve.

  “Can I do something real quick?”

  Looking at her with his eyes slightly wide, and with an expression like he’d maybe never seen her before in his life, he silently nodded, and she stepped into the center of the gathered group, asking everyone to please back up from her a little. Once everyone had, she began writing on the ground with a beam of electricity, which served as a pen of sorts, singeing the spring green grass and making it a shade of brownish green.

  First, she wrote Timberlinnirs are grate, followed by Jim is streong. Then, Avre is braeve. Then last, I am awsim.

  Once she’d finished, she addressed the group at large. “While we were all here together, I just wanted to show all you guys that I can read and write now. I’m not only a super-gifted Gifted, I’m not illiterate anymore.”

  With her face pale, how it had been since Jen had stepped out onto the field, Annie took a few steps closer to her. “Jen, just... how?”

  Jen frowned. “I thought I already told you how Avery has been teaching me stuff almost every day.”

  “No, what you did on the field just a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh. You
mean how did I become such a powerful Gifted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, pretty easy. Ever since I was banned from joining in training sessions, I’ve been practicing every day when me and Marbles go off deep into the woods. We go deep into the eastern part mostly, where nobody else can see us, and I practice all my little zapping things for hours. That trick where I made my zaps ping-pong all the Angels or whatever... I taught that to myself one day by seeing if I could get my zaps to shoot from tree to tree, to be a fun little game for me and Marbles. We both thought it was pretty awesome. And that move today when I got everyone’s attention with my hand clap, I learned that just because I thought it would be neat to see what would happen if I shot a beam of light from each hand at the same time but hit my hands together before the zaps could fully come out. I honestly thought they’d cancel each other out or something, and boy, was I surprised when they didn’t. That was the day that all you guys thought you all heard strange thunder, even though the day was sunny. To be completely honest, I peed my pants a little when I first thunder clapped. I’m not ashamed to admit it. It was pretty startling.”Annie frowned. “But why didn’t you tell anyone that you’ve become so good at zapping?”

  Jen shrugged. “I guess because I thought you guys would all say that now I’m more dangerous than ever or something, and I thought I’d be banned from ever doing Gifted stuff again for life or something. And I wanted to keep on having fun and doing Gifted stuff and games with Marbles. I never thought you’d be proud of me or anything, Annie. I honestly thought you’d yell at me.”

  Annie just looked at Jen for a long moment with her eyes slightly pink. “I’m very proud of you... for so many things.”

  Jen’s own eyes suddenly became pink, and she wiped them with the back of her hand before responding to Annie. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear you say. Well, that, and ‘I built you a gingerbread tree house,’ but I’ll have to explain that later.”

  They soon hugged, each of them sniffling, and Jim called for a round of applause for Jen and me, for both fighting so incredibly during what was for each of us, our first fight. Both pleased and embarrassed, I smiled with my face warming. I wasn’t sure I’d made quite as spectacular a showing as Jen. But I hadn’t run, and that in and of itself was pretty spectacular to me.