When all of it was done... and gone... and silent...

When the world stopped spinning...

When the shadows ceased their rapid dance above... below... around... and WITHIN...

When the hellish landscape stopped racing up toward her and decided to simply reach up and SNATCH her out of the air...

The very FIRST thing Zade noticed was the smell.

It was sharp and bitter. Familiar. The stench was not overpowering, but was more like an annoying insect buzzing at the edge of her senses, making just enough noise for her to know it was there. Likewise, the place reeked just enough... just barely enough... for her to know that it DID, in fact, reek.

It was a cold and dark room. Very cold. Very dark. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust... and then a few MORE for them to adjust further, beyond what they would have been able to do had she been human. She looked around, without moving from her low crouching position

The room was rectangular. The center was empty except for the drifting clouds of her own breath in the cold air. The wooden floor was unusually cold... as if the source of the freezing air lay below it. Large shapes rested against the walls... stacked horizontally in piles, like logs awaiting the sawmaster's blade. But these logs weren't destined to become lumber or tools or furniture... or even firewood.

Well, perhaps firewood.... for the scent that Zade smelled was death, and the shapes lining the walls were bodies. Human bodies. Dead slaves who had not yet made it onto a pyre or into an unmarked pit.

There were dozens of them. Forty at least. Most were men, but Zade saw a few smaller, softer shapes as well.... some too young to distinguish as either male OR female. Those were the children. They all rested together in a chilled room... chilled to keep the stench and insects down... awaiting their final desecration.

This was the place.

Her MIND wouldn't be certain until she opened the door and looked outside, but her HEART knew that N'Doki had fulfilled his word and sent her home.

Home.

The word caught in her throat, even though she had made no attempt to speak it. It stuck at the base of her neck like a briar. The very thought of it made her eyes narrow and her fingers clench.

Home.

Zade stood and inhaled deeply... forcing the cold scent of death into her lungs. It smelled like sweet ambrosia. Her lips twitched, assuming neither frown nor smile... but instead becoming part of a wicked emptiness that radiated from her face like the light of a lantern.

It was emptiness that she would soon fill... that she YEARNED to fill... with as much death as she could achieve before her time was done. There would be no end of it until she was either satisfied or dead... as if one were even capable without the other.

Home.

The door had no lock. Zade turned the latch and opened the door just a crack. Feeble rays of sunlight filtered in. Outside, she saw a rectangular dirt courtyard enclosed by a high wooden wall. There were other doors in the wall besides the one she was looking out of, but none of them seemed like a main entrance. There was a balcony about thirty feet up. It didn't go all the way around; just the length of one wall. The balcony held an enclosed room and a short walkway on either side. A sturdy set of wooden stairs led up to it from the ground level. A loud, hammering sound came from the center of the courtyard... produced by some workman that Zade couldn't see from where she was. Zade heard the sound... listened to it... then listened THROUGH it, searching for other, more interesting sounds.

Like the footsteps that were approaching.

Two men, walking quickly, but not hurried. They were following the wall, and would walk right past her in a moment.

Zade pulled the door closed and waited. The hammering paused. One man shouted a greeting to another, then the pounding picked right back up again.

When the footsteps were almost in front of her, she thrust the door open. The fingers of one hand curled around the closest man's throat, while her other hand grabbed the knife from her belt. She yanked the surprised workman into the cold room and immediately thrust the knife up through the soft spot behind his chin. The 14-inch blade sank easily into his flesh, plunging all the way up to the tip of his skull. Then, with almost the same motion, she yanked it out. The blade's rear-facing serrated teeth made a bloody mess of the man's throat, palate, and brain as she let the twitching corpse fall from her grasp.

That felt good.

The second man... little more than a boy, actually... had seen the whole thing. He saw not because of any particular desire too, but because it had all happened much too fast for him to do anything BUT see. But when Zade stepped calmly out of the corpse-room, with blood and gore dripping from her knife, the man found his senses and quickly did the only two logical things:

Screamed and ran... beginning the second action before the first was completely underway.

His scream alerted the old man hammering at the platform in the center of the yard. It was a small stage of some kind, and the man was hanging a sign. He looked up from his work, glanced at the running boy, then stared wide-eyed at Zade.

"ESCAPE!" he yelled instantly. "ESCAAAPE!"

The old man quickly hobbled off in the general direction of the stairs, making pitifully poor progress due to his wooden leg. Zade ignored him. The younger man had finished his scream and was now just running.

He didn't get far.

Zade tossed her bloody knife into the air and, while it was still tumbling upward, she snatched the whip from her hip.

The motion was as smooth as silk.... and as quick as a cobra's strike. Her arm went up and down, sending a powerful impulse hurtling down the length of the leather. Zade FELT the whip as it unfurled. Yes! She HEARD the sound as it cut the air. YES!

whhhhhhhhh-KAK!

The sound was like a thunderclap to her ears... and was even louder to the ears of the fleeing lad. The whip caught him at the back of the head, right where the skull and neck merged. The whip kissed him there... pain and shock did the rest. The boy's feet flew out from under him as he pitched forward, landing face-down in the dirt. He wasn't hurt... merely stunned by the well-placed blow.

Zade held out her hand, and her knife fell into her grasp. She walked over to the workman and caught him by the hair just as he managed to get to his hands and knees. She yanked him the rest of the way up.

"Ellis," she hissed into his ear. "Where am I, and how do I get to Ellis?"

The man had just begun to answer when one of the doors flew open. Four men rushed into the courtyard, spreading out as they approached. None of them were familiar, but then, Zade hadn't expected them to be. Their weapons, however, were.

One man had a net, and another a long length of chain that he was spinning over his head like a lasso. The other two carried staffs.... long wooden poles with a sharp point at one end. Like the whip that Zade carried, they were weren't weapons that one would use think to use for battle. They were tools to handle slaves. They obviously intended to CAPTURE her and return her to whatever cell they thought she'd escaped from.

They would die for their foolishness.

They would die very, very badly.

The quartet spread out around her, intending to encircle her even as she held the frightened, trembling workman before her... with her arm around his throat, allowing him almost enough air to breathe.

"What do we have here,..." said the man with the net. "Don't look like one of ours."

"Looks like one of them gladiators," replied one of the pole-wielders.

Gladiators?

Did she hear that right? No matter...

"Ellis," Zade said loudly.

"You one of Ellis's?" said one man.

"Yeah, she's got that look," added another. "Looks like one a his, all right."

"Well you put Patrick down and we'll take ya back where ya belong, eh?" said the net. "How 'bout it?"

"Put him down?" Zade sneered. Apparently she couldn't be about the business of killing these slave-trading fools while she still had a hostage. Oh, well... that was easy enough to solve...

With a sudden tightening of her arm, Zade snapped the young man's neck, then let his body drop at her feet.

"He's down," she said.

The man with the chain let one end of it fly, right toward Zade's head. Zade knew the plan. She was to grab the chain, and while they played tug-of-war with each other, the man with the net would entangle her, then the other two would jab her with the sharp ends of those poles until she was either dead, unconscious, or willing to be taken prisoner.

It was a stupid plan, and Zade let them know what she thought of it.

She DID grab the chain just before it would have cracked her skull. But when its wielder pulled back, she released it... sending the man stumbling backward, tugging against a resistance that wasn't there. She felt the net brush against her arm as she spun away from it. The spin not only avoided the entangling net, but it added momentum to the shuriken that was already in her hand. The throw was perfect-

THWUCK!

"-URK!"

One of the pole-wielders flew backward, blood fountaining from the five-pointed metal projectile lodged in his upper throat. He would live just long enough to feel himself choking on his own blood.

The man with the chain was charging her. He swept the chain at her feet, but he'd allowed himself to get too close. Zade leapt over it and, while in the air, delivered a powerful kick to base of the man's nose. Zade hit the ground at about the same time he did. She was alive. He was not.

Zade ducked. The net passed over her head with a thick, deep WHOOSHing sound.

Zade grabbed it. She pulled. Hard. The man pulled back harder. She let go.

He was too much of an idiot... too much of a MAN... to learn from another man's mistake... no, he had to go and make the exact same one just to be certain. He stumbled backward, twisting to his left. He was temporarily off balance. Zade helped him out by burying a shuriken in his right ear. He collapsed,... still alive, but not quite man enough to yank that projectile out of his ear canal, shredding his flesh and probably ripping out a few nerve endings and bone fragments along with it. Instead, he just rolled back and forth, screaming like a little slave girl on her first night in an overseer's bed.

Zade was amused.

But not so amused that she didn't notice the last man coming up behind her.

He was lunging with the pointed end of his 'staff' aimed at her back. He would have impaled her... if she were slow and stupid. Either he figured she wouldn't hear him coming, or that he was too fast for her to react. He was wrong on both accounts. She spun, her arm lashing out in a ridge-hand strike that snapped the staff in half. Zade grabbed the pointed end, rotated it so quickly that it actually made a SOUND, then thrust it into the charging man's torso.

The man made a gulping, grunting sound. His eyes got wide...

Zade removed the staff and stabbed him again, driving it completely through his body. She let him fall, and let him die. Zade had intentionally missed his vital organs so that he would die relatively slowly of shock and blood loss.

Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to stand by and watch.

She heard footsteps on the balcony above and behind her. She turned quickly... but not quick enough.

thhwwwWWIP!

Archers. Two men with crossbows... one on either side of what must be the office. One of them was the old workman who'd sounded the alarm. HE missed, but his companion caught Zade in the shoulder.

Zade hissed as the projectile pierced her fleshed and grazed the underlying bone. Even if she were human it wouldn't have been a fatal wound, but it certainly would have slowed her down.

Fortunately, she wasn't human.

She tore the bolt out of her shoulder as she ran. The pain was extreme, but she didn't let herself feel it. She threw herself to the ground, right beside the howling slave-catcher who'd tried to snare her in the net. She grabbed him and rolled to one side... he ended up on top of her-

thhwwwWWIP!

thhwwwWWIP!

His back took the two bolts meant for Zade's chest. She thrust the dead man away the instant the second bolt hit. She took an instant to grab the key pring from his belt, then sprinted for the stairs.

She was counting on the 'archers' not being good enough to hit a rapidly moving target... OR fast enough to fire more one or two volleys before she got to them. The gamble paid off. Two more arrows zipped past her as she ran.

It would take them time to reload. When the old man's not-so-nimble fingers had another bolt loaded and ready, Zade boot was already on its way to the side of his head. She hit him, he hit the wall, and his crossbow was in Zade's hand before he even knew what happened. She fired... not at him, but at the other archer, who was already taking aim.

They both hit.

Zade's shot was fatal. The second archer tumbled from the balcony with a bolt protruding from his heart. His bolt lodged in her abdomen, somewhere in the vicinity of her kidney.

Zade felt the twinge of something deep within her responding to the injury.

The pain had prodded the wolf-mind, coming close to awakening the creature she was. It was always there, waiting for the full moon... or for some intense emotion to summon it from its hiding place. She was by no means the thing's master, but it wasn't HER master, either. They merely shared the same body, and she could hold it back...sometimes... If she remained in control of herself.

Concentration helped... And a high pain threshold helped even more. A second of strained calmness... a forced emptying of her mind... no pain, no emotion... and the wolf rolled over in its fitful sleep and let her be. For now.

Now... back to business...

She pushed the shaft completely through so that it pierced her back, then snapped off the hooked tip and pulled the shaft out without removing her intestines along with it. The wound began to heal instantly, just as the one on her shoulder had.

Still, Zade cursed her foolishness. She USED to be able to do this kind of thing without being hit at all. She was letting herself get carried away. She had to slow down and do this the way it was SUPPOSED to be done...

She'd slow down later. After she'd killed a few dozen more people.

The old man was trembling at her feet. She snatched him up. He tried to fight her... more an attempt to escape than to do her any harm. She snapped his wooden leg with a downward thrust of her boot. That made his attempts a lot less bothersome. She dragged him along and, when she kicked open the door to the office, she pushed him in ahead of her just in case-

Sure enough... another fool with a crossbow.

There were two people in the small, cramped room. One was a bookish man, complete with spectacles perched on the end of his long, hooked nose. He was an accountant, bookkeeper or other such non combatant. The other was a middle-aged woman dressed in expensive, ostentatious silk. The woman had the bow, and her shot hit the old, one-legged workman square in the chest, killing him instantly.

She tried to load another shot... but found it hard to do so with one of Zade's shuriken imbedded in her hand. The woman didn't even scream. That didn't surprise Zade, as women had higher tolerance for pain than men. She DID drop the crossbow, however.

The man screamed loud enough for both of them when Zade grabbed him. She lifted him up by the throat... and slammed him down onto the desk.

"Please don't kill me," he whimpered. There was a dark, wet stain already spreading outward from the crotch of his pants. "I've got a family... k-kids... p-please..."

"Kids, eh?" said Zade. "Are they proud of what daddy does? Keeping numbers for slave owners?"

"I don't own any slav-"

Zade slid the man off of the table in the middle of his ridiculous answer. Of COURSE he didn't own any slaves. He just helped make it possible for other people to own them. She grabbed him by the belt and tossed him over the balcony. He landed hard, breaking more than enough bones to send him into shock and, eventually, death.

Zade turned to the woman.

"Who are you?" the woman asked. There was fear in her voice, but defiance as well.

Zade approached her slowly. She saw the woman's fingers inching toward the knife... or whatever... hidden beneath her shirt. She ignored it for now.

"Me? I'm someone who doesn't care for the concept of slavery. So I'm going to kill it. One... person... at a time. Where is Ellis?"

"N-nathan Ellis?"

"This is YOUR operation, isn't it? You sell slaves to him, don't you?"

"N-no, he doesn't buy from me. He buys from the other farmers, or breeds them on his island-"

"Island. Where."

"The orchard-"

Zade knew the place. She didn't know where it was or what it looked like, but there was only ONE orchard near this place. It was an island.

"How do I get-"

The slave-trader made her move. She was surprisingly quick for an old woman... the knife was in her hand in the blink of an eye. She stabbed downward at Zade's heart... and never came close.

Zade grabbed the woman's arm, broke the dainty wrist like a dry twig, then spun the woman around. Zade wrapped her whip around the slave owner's neck and sent her to join the young bookkeeper... shoving her out of the office and over the balcony.

But as soon as the woman was over the edge, Zade yanked back on the whip-

CRACK!

-snapping the woman's neck like a noose on the gallows. She released the whip and let the corpse drop. Then she went down to retrieve her weapons. These scum weren't worth the cost of her expensive shuriken.

She freed the slaves as an afterthought. She found them huddled in cages behind the door where the slave trappers had emerged. She tossed the keys through the bars and left them on their own. If they were too stupid figure it out from there, then they were probably safer where they were.

The bookkeeper was, amazingly, still alive and conscious as she headed for the main gate. Zade didn't kill him. She left him to suffer.

The main gate was a huge door, bared with an enormous length of wood. Zade heard people milling around on the other side. She SHOULD have climbed the wall and taken a look first, but she didn't. It didn't matter who was out there. She was going to kill them all anyway, so what difference did it make?

She un-barred the door and flung it wide.

The muffled conversations ceased instantly when the crowd saw her.

There was an auction today.

That was the sign the old man had been nailing on the platform... a list of slaves up for sale. Fully three dozen farmers, traders and other slave owners had arrived to bid on the human beings that Zade had just freed. They stood just outside the door, waiting for the auction to begin.

But when they door opened, they got Zade instead.

They just stood there, looking at her with shocked expressions on their faces.

And Zade?

Zade smiled...

...giddily...

...from ear to ear.
---

There were four people on the ground before the people at the rear of the crowd knew what was going on. The people in the FRONT knew immediately, of course. They were the ones on the ground.

Zade had grabbed the first person she saw by the throat... killed him by driving her thumbs into his trachea, crushing his windpipe... then shoved him violently back into the crowd, knocking down two over-dressed women who weren't quite smart or quick enough to run. Then someone made the mistake of trying to grab Zade's arm. She let him do it, and gave him her OTHER arm as a bonus. One punch sent the dazed man staggering. He tripped over his own feet and dropped, bleeding profusely from a nose that now resembled a tomato that had been crushed beneath someone's boot.

Zade wasted no more time after that.

She unfurled her whip... pausing only to affix one of the tiny metal blades to the tip. One of the men shouted a warning, and Zade neatly removed his bottom lip with a well-placed lash. The man's scream blended perfectly with the terrified wails of the women with him as they scattered. Wife and daughter, perhaps?

wha-KASSSH!

Zade carved a deep red line down one woman's back. Zade's own back flinched at the wound.... but it was a GOOD flinch. Zade's smile widened at the sight of it. The woman, of course, was now laying on the ground screaming for her husband... who was running away, leaving her behind to save his own hide.

He wasn't alone.

The crowd had exploded into a frenzy of people running in every conceivable direction. If it had been possible for men to fly or for women to dig tunnels like gophers, they would have eagerly done so to escape the wicked cackle of Zade's whip.

wha-KASSH!

wha-KASSH!

She cracked the whip over a their heads just to see them jump. It was rather amusing-

wha-KASH!

-but not as amusing as ripping the tendons out of a man's calf in mid stride-

wha-KASSSH!

-or castrating another man as he turned to retrieve his dropped coin purse-

"YAAAAAAAAA-"

Some idiot hero charged Zade from behind. Zade turned and held out her knife, letting the man impale himself on it.

"-URK!"

But she wasn't about to let him keep her favorite knife. Knives were expensive. She yanked the blade out... the serrated edge caused the man to convulse in the most delightful way as he dropped to his knees, then collapsed on top of his own spilled intestines.

Zade rested her foot on the man's bloody chest and surveyed the scattering crowd for more targets. That's when she saw the riders.

Five men on horseback. Three were close. The other two were further back, still several streets away.

The first three looked like soldiers. The rider in the middle wore heavy plate armor that Zade took an instant disliking to. She didn't recognize the make or design, but the fact that it WAS armor nearly sharpened Zade's teeth at the very sight of it. A massive shield and bastard sword were strapped to his back... clanging noisily as he rode. The other two wore lightweight leather and carried swords and crossbows. The rider on the right, however, had added a whip to his arsenal.

"A SLAVE!" said the man in the plate-mail. His helmet was tucked under one arm. "Looks like a gladiator," the man with the whip said. Not accounting for armor, he was the largest of the three.

"Take her!" The armored one motioned to the other two. Zade watched as they drew their weapons and veered to either side to try and flank her. The one in armor rode straight toward her, picking up speed as he donned his helmet and reached for his sword.

Zade ignored him. The leader would reach her first, which meant that he was a distraction. She dropped her whip and snatched two shuriken from her belt-pouch. She threw them at the other two.

Both men were already bringing loaded crossbows to bear on Zade. The one on her right saw her motion and immediately ducked, delaying his own shot by a split second. The missile sailed over his shoulder. The second took the missile to the forearm, grunting as it pierced his flesh and spoiled his aim. His shot went wild, coming nowhere near Zade.

The delay was just long enough for Zade to touch one of the symbols of on

her bracers. The metal hummed and throbbed... and Zade's golden crossbow appeared in her hands. It was already loaded. She aimed and took her shot instantly... the magically augmented bow jerked in her hand as it spat out the bolt of speeding metal... the same incredibly strong substance as her bracers.

The armored man barely got his shield up before-

*KLANG!!!!*

The bolt struck dead-center of the shield, hitting with enough force to throw the armored man off of his horse and propel him several yards back before gravity finally reclaimed him. He hit the ground and slid another few feet, still clutching the twisted, ruined shield in his hands. When he finally stopped sliding, he lay still, with Zade's bolt protruding from the center of his shield like a dart.

Zade was amazed that he'd managed to get that shield up in time. But regardless, the man was out for at least a few seconds. That was long enough.

zzzZZ-THH!

Zade threw herself to the side just in time to avoid a shot from one of the archers. Moving on training and instinct, she loaded another bolt and then bent down to scoop up one of the corpses of the slave owners she'd killed. She held the dead body in front of her with one arm as she turned toward the other archer-

zzzzzz-THWOCK!

The bolt sank into the corpse's chest.

HER turn now!

She fired. The archer... the one with the whip... had been using his own horse for cover. Zade's shot turned the horse into something resembling an explosion at a butcher's shop. She immediately turned to the other man-

zzzzz-THWOCK!

The corpse took another shot... one that had been meant for her back. She dropped her meat-shield and charged. The archer drew his sword. Zade parried his slash with her knife while kicking him in the stomach. His leather armor absorbed most of that blow, but did little against the one that followed. Without even letting her leg touch the ground, Zade kicked the man in the chin. He staggered back one step... allowing Zade room for a spinning hook-kick that cracked the man's skull. She ducked as she continued her spin-

zzzz-THH!

The remaining archer's shot barely missed her. The bolt ripped through the leather armor covering her shoulder, just grazing the skin underneath. It was a wound Zade wouldn't have even noticed-

-until it started burning.

A screaming, red PAIN flared up from the wound. Zade reeled as the bolt's acidic poison ate into her flesh. The lycantrhopic cells of her body fought the damaging magic, but magical weapons were one of the few things that could kill her. And the act of fighting it only made the pain worse as her regenerating nerve endings were seared away again... and again... and again...

..and again...

She was still holding her crossbow. She loaded another bolt and lunged to the right as she fired. Her shot was wild. The single bolt went completely through one building and into another before it found something resilient enough to stop it. Zade could only hope it had turned a few people inside out along the way. Zade followed it with another shuriken just as the archer emerged from behind a chunk of horse-

*CLACK*

The spinning projectile lodged itself into the crossbow's mechanism, slicing the cord and ruining the weapon.

It wasn't the target Zade intended to hit, but it would do.

The archer growled.

Zade grabbed a fist-full of dirt and spun... flinging the dirt into the face-plate of the armored man who'd been coming up behind her.

What possessed a man in PLATE ARMOR to try and sneak up on someone, Zade would never know. She had heard him coming the instant he got to his feet.

Enough of the dirt found its way into his face to give him pause... with his bastard-sword still raised high above his head. Zade slid another bolt into her bow-

wwwhh-KAZZZZZZ!

Something hit her arm. It felt like fire and acid... like the bolt that had grazed her earlier, only a hundred times worse.

And it hadn't even touched her skin!

The soldier's whip-strike had drawn a line down her arm. The leather was

scorched, but not torn. Yet the weapon had sent a streak of pain through her flesh as if she were stark naked. Her arm spasmed involuntarily, and she dropped her crossbow somewhere between the fifth and sixth convulsion. The weapon didn't have far to fall, as Zade was already on her knees, reeling from the pain.

"HIT HER AGAIN!" the armored man ordered. He'd taken off his helm to rub his eyes. "TAKE HER!"

The soldier's arm raised and lowered... sending an impulse down the length of the whip.

The tip of the whip was glowing, and it left sparks in its wake. Zade took the strike to the chest. Her breasts... lungs... and every other organ in her upper torso felt as if they were being burned with boiling hot acid. The whip had very little physical momentum.... it was Zade's own spasming muscles that threw her backward into the armored man's arms. He grabbed her and wrapped his steel arms around her, pinning her arms to her side.

Again, the wolf-mind began to stir. Pain and emotions.... to high....

The fact that she was here... HERE... was almost too much by itself. Thevery THOUGHT of this place lengthened her hair and constricted her throat around the guttural growling from within her soul. The heat of battle made it worse. And now the pain... REAL pain.

But if she changed now, it would be over and done with. And she was not
finished... NOT finished...

She fought back, closing off the pain before it could reach much deeper into her psyche. She pushed it away. She wrapped it up in the thick cloth of her training as a mercenary, and buried it somewhere in the back of her mind.

Zade struggled. The man may have been wearing steel plate, but he was no stronger than anyone else. Zade's legs were still free... she positioned them for leverage and twisted suddenly. The man pulled back to hold her in place. Then, without warning, she twisted the other direction, using his own force against him. She threw herself back and they both fell. He landed on his back, and she landed on top of him. Zade slipped out of he grasp and reached for-

wwwwhh-KAZZZZZZ!!!

Zade's hand erupted in pain. She honestly expected to look down and not see a hand at all... just a scorched stump. But the hand was there, visibly swollen and paralyzed in pain.

With her chest still sizzling from the previous blow, Zade had to try HARD not to scream. While she was trying, the armored man grabbed her extended arm and pulled her toward him once again-

"HIT HER AGAIN, LOVEJOY!" he said as he clutched her, throwing one arm across her chest and grabbing her left arm with the other. "PUT HER DOWN!"

Lovejoy... the man with the whip... let go with a rapid series of lashes.

wwwwhh-KAZZZZZZ!!!

wwwwhh-KAZZZZZZ!!!

wwwwhh-KAZZZZZZ!!!

The first strike hit Zade in the left shoulder. The left side of her body clenched with so much painful force that Zade thought she was going to rip in half right down the center. The second hit the armored man's arm, but the man never flinched. His armor must have protected him.

By the time the third lash rang out, Zade had thrust her leg back between those of her captor and twisted to the side in a half-trip, half-throw. This time he landed on top of her. They rolled back and forth, with Zade wrestling to get free and her captor struggling to contain her. But his armor restricted his flexibility, and Zade was on her feet in a few seconds.

She heard the whip coming.

Zade spun and extended her arm. The whip wrapped around her bracer... Zade could feel the metal humming on her arm. She yanked Lovejoy toward her. Instead of pulling back, he charged. Her knife was already in her hand, and she quickly cut the leather whip free before dodging to one side-

CHUNK!

The armored man's bastard sword whooshed past her. The tip hit the dirt, drawing sparks from a half-buried rock. Zade grabbed the man's arm and twisted it behind him... or as far as his armor would allow... and shoved him into Lovejoy's path.

"MOVE, ye fool!" Lovejoy spat as he deftly sidestepped his stumbling leader and came for Zade.

Zade already had something for him.... but the soldier blocked her spinning hook-kick while drawing his knife. He slashed at her extended leg. Zade was too quick. She drew her leg back and dodged the series of quick slashes that followed. The two of them circled each other while the armored man got up, retrieved his sword, and put his helmet back on.

"Hell, this is no gladiator," Lovejoy spat. "She wouldn't last two seconds in the arena. Look at her..."

Zade didn't need Lovejoy to goad her into acting... she had already finishedthe fight six different ways in her mind. She picked one-

Zade reached for another shuriken. Lovejoy saw it coming. He attacked,stepping in and slashing-

Zade's kick caught him in the center of his chest, just below the ribcage. Lovejoy's lungs emptied themselves in an explosive cough, but he still dodged to one side and blocked Zade's knife while thrusting his own toward her gut.

Zade's blade fell from her fingers...

..right into the palm of her other hand. She carved a chunk out of Lovejoy's left cheek while spinning away from his blade. Her second slash went for his throat. Lovejoy leaned back at the last instant and, while her arm was extended, lunged toward her, attempting to bury his blade in her side.

Zade's elbow caught him in the back of the head. He lurched forward, and Zade plunged her blade into his exposed back.

"AAA!"

Lovejoy staggered away, reaching for the blade protruding from his flesh.

Unfortunately for him, Zade had placed it within easy reach of his fingers. He grabbed it and, like the warrior he was... yanked it out.

Serrated edge.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGG-" The rest of Lovejoy's scream was a string of curses as he fell to his knees, frantically undoing his armor so he could stop the blood gushing from the ragged hole in his back. Zade was surprised that he was still conscious-

-WHOOSH!-

Zade ducked under the armored man's attack. His sword cut nothing but air... but his swing left him wide open for a stunning variety of counter-strikes.

But very few of them would do a thing against a man in armor.

The armored man forced her back toward the slave-auction's gate, obviously intending to trap her there and take the fight out of public view. Zade decided that it was in her best interest not to let him do that...

..especially now that the two other riders were arriving. One looked like a mage. The other was another man in plate armor.

"YAAA!"

Zade dodged to the left, ducking under the armored man's sword and going into a roll that took her right past her discarded whip. She snatched it up as she rose-

The armored swordsman was right on top of her.

wwhhhh-KASH!

The whip struck nowhere near him.

But the metal tip on the end hooked around the trigger-guard of her crossbow. She yanked hard on the whip as she spun away from the bastard sword.

The whip, with the crossbow on the end of it, proscribed an arc through the air. With another yank, she brought the bow to her hand. Quickly back-peddalling, she aimed at the second armored man and removed him from his horse much as she had done with the first.

KA-KLANK!

He was a bit too slow with his shield. The bolt caught him in the upper chest, piercing his plate-mail like a toothpick through paper. He toppled from his horse... doing one complete end-over-end flip before hitting the ground.

The mage... or priest, judging from the holy symbol hanging from his neck... pointed at her and shouted. Zade was about to launch a shuriken at his throat, but the armored man charged her.

Zade back-flipped away from the swordsman, throwing the projectile at one of the gaps in his armor as she landed.

-clink!-

She missed. But now the armored man was between her and the mage... the mage wouldn't have a clear shot with whatever spell he was about to throw at her-

Unless...

There was an brilliant explosion of light and a corresponding crackle of electricity from behind the armored man. HE had taken the blast instead of Zade...

..but that had been the priest's plan all along.

The armored man leaned back into the blast, as if bathing in it. His armor soaked up the sizzling, flesh searing energy like a sponge until it had had its fill. Then the blast ended.

The soldier's armor and bastard-sword now glowed white-hot, filled with so much energy that tendrils of lightning spilled off of its gleaming surface.

Even standing three yards away, Zade could feel it. Her hair was standing on end, and her nose burned with the acrid scent of electricity.

The guard charged. Raising his glowing bastard sword as if it weighted no more than a dagger, he charged.

Zade fired her crossbow, which she had calmly reloaded during the priest's spell.

zzzzZZZAPT!

*KA-TANNNG!*

The bolt struck the now-enchanted armor and disintegrated in a spray of sparks, lightning, and glowing metal fragments. The momentum of the impact made the soldier miss a half-step in his charge... but that was it.

Zade back-flipped away-

The sword struck the ground where she'd been standing, and LIGHTNING poured out of the point of impact. The thick ropes of energy arced through the air and caught her-

"AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGH!"

The air was on fire.

The air... in her lungs... was on FIRE!

Zade landed hard; only her ample chest kept her from landing on her face. The impact took the wind out of her... forcing her to bear the searing wave of pain in silence as the sword came down again-

The wolf within her writhed in time with her agony. It was too much... He animal mind had not just been prodded and awakened... but ANGERED as well.

She fought to hold it back... hold it back... hold it back...

Zade rolled. She gathered just enough awareness, strength and energy MOVE out of the sword's way an instant before it would have beheaded her. But when the sword struck, it released a second spray of lightning that lifted Zade up off the ground...

..and dropped her again. This time, she landed on her shoulder, dislocating it.

"Ungh!"

Struggling on two fronts now, Zade's strength was divided between the battle within and the metal-clad soldier. She was losing both, and her efforts grew increasingly futile with each passing second...

She had to try twice to get her arm to move... to resist the urge to tighten up into a fore-limb and a paw-

She reached for her crossbow... but she had parted ways with it somewhere between the first and second blasts. She still had her whip tucked into her belt, but-

WHOOOSH!

Zade stumbled to her feet and sprang out of the path of the descending blade. The sword cut nothing but air, but it still trailed tendrils of electricity behind it... and several of these caught Zade in the face.

After the initial blast of agony, her skin went mercifully numb. But the distraction was enough-

WHUMP!

The soldier's armored boot caught Zade in the gut. A hard kick that was made even harder by the energy that ripped gleefully up and down her torso in spastic waves.

"AAAGKK"

Zade backed away, too slow!

A back-fist strike... a fist enclosed in a white-hot metal gauntlet... nearly removed the skin from her face.

Everything went black for a moment-

And then the color rushed back into the world in a sudden surge. Zade was still on her feet. Her head felt like it had been cracked open... perhaps it had... but she was still standing.

WHOOOSH!

There was a sudden jerk... from somewhere... and Zade's eyes widened as sherealized she'd been hit.

He'd gotten her.

Hit her with that damned... enchanted... sword...

Zade looked down and saw the gaping gash across her midsection. The slash had caught her across her stomach, ripping open her leather armor... and her abdomen right along with it.

It was a fatal wound, with an enchanted weapon. The man in the armor had killed her.

Just that easy... just like that...

Amazingly, there wasn't any pain for the first half-second.

Then her bones caught fire.

Zade's muscles clenched tight, forcing air from her lungs and blood from the slash in her gut. She fell... it was almost like she was gently floating to the ground... and landing on a bed of white-hot nails. Every thought in Zade's mind turned to ash. And when she forced them to re-form... they turned to ash again. Her body spasmed as it tried to heal itself, but the sword's energy was still burning its way through her, boring through her body, using her nerves for passageways. The world faded in and out in sudden flashes of white... red... black... and some other colors that perhaps didn't exist at all.

Zade felt her body changing... her muscles sliding across one another as they sought an older, more primal form. Her skin thickened and her organs shifted... But the wound remained. The magic of the wound held it fixed as he rest of her body swam around it, stretching and bulging oddly beneath her suddenly ill-fitting clothes. The sizzling burnt tracks left in her flesh by the lightning also held firm. They did not heal... and the transformation of her body only squeezed MORE pain out of nerve endings she thought had been seared away.

With the last bit of herself that remained, Zade clamped down... placing a mental stake in the ground to mark the line she dared not let the wolf cross. It would hold here... It would NOT pass while she was still capable of even a SINGLE thought. And that thought was...

I'm dying...

NO!

what's the use?

NO!

When she died, she would die as a WOMAN, not as some wounded animal squirming and howling in the dirt!

The raging beast tore through her mental barrier and charged toward the surface of her mind, dragging her body along with it. Zade grabbed onto it... wrapped her arms around its throat and held it as her own life ran out from between her physical fingers, still clamped to her gut. She slowed the beast... Slowed it... Slowed it enough to open her eyes and see the soldier standing over her.

Still giving ground before the beast, Zade forced her mind back together and

HELD the fragments in place... HELD it with willpower, just like she was holding her innards together with one hand clutched to her stomach. She had to move... she had to.

die

-do something.

The armored man turned to the priest.

"Finish her, sir?"

"She's already done," the priest said distastefully. "No good to anyone now.... end it."

"Aye-"

The man turned back to Zade.

Zade's other hand had already crept down to the handle of her whip. She wasn't dead yet. What she was about to do would finish ripping her stomach open and send her reeling into the hell, but at least it wouldn't be that damned SWORD-

The man raised the weapon and, without hesitation, brought it down-

Zade gathered what remained of her strength. The clenching of her muscles forced more warm, almost boiling blood from her wound as she moved-

Zade's whip lashed out-

www-KASH!

The very first man to arrive... the first soldier Zade had killed... had left his riderless horse milling around the edge of the battle. Zade's whip wrapped around the horn of the empty saddle-

The sound and the sudden jerk startled the animal, and it ran.... ..dragging Zade along behind it. The armored soldier's sword buried itself halfway in the ground just past her feet as the horse carried her off. Had the blow landed, it would have easily slit her in half... but now it was stuck in the earth. Zade's fist barely held onto the whip while the steed took off through the streets... moving a quick gallop past the startled townsfolk. If Zade were a little bit stronger she could have pulled herself along the whip and up into the saddle, but all she could do was wrap the whip around her wrist, hold on,and hope the animal kept running...

That was how it would end... her dead body being dragged behind a trotting horse like a load of garbage.

It was funny... she was just getting used to the idea of being immortal, and now-

But her final efforts to escape had used the last of her will. The wolf, tired of her struggles, shrugged her mind off like a blanket, scattering her fading thoughts to the wind. She could hold it back no longer, and her body surged into the transformation, warping and shifting around her wound like a river flowing around a stone.

"No..." Zade moaned as her fingers began to slip free of the whip that was her life-line. There was nothing left within her that could resist the change. The smell of blood... her blood... blossomed in her nose as her nasal passages transformed. Zade caught a few glimpses of sky... and of the river of blood she was leaving down the street behind her... then she realized she wasn't moving any more. The pain was still there, however. The magical wound would not close. Her blood was still spilling out of it; and without hands she wouldn't be able to hold it-

But that wasn't her problem now. She was done with it. Let the damned wolf bleed to death in the street... maybe that was best after all...

Somewhere, oblivion opened its dark maw and Zade tumbled in... her descent trumpeted by the pained and mournful howling of a wolf...


[To Be Continued]