"Do you feel it?" she whispered.

Running my thumb down the blade, I nodded. She was right; it was dull. I felt nothing. .

A shriek, loud and harsh, startled me from my thoughts. I stepped back, my attention dashing around the clearing. Another shriek, this one closer and overhead.

A bird, bigger than any I'd ever seen or dreamed existed, soared toward us. Its wings, probably eleven feet tip to tip, blocked the sun. Its head was featherless and red, its beak hooked.

I froze, my brain not moving fast enough to process what was happening, to form a defense or an attack.

Thea cursed and my instincts snapped into place. I threw the knife, but the blade wasn't crafted for tossing. It fell with a thud to the ground.

I bent to pick up my staff and swung it overhead, like a child batting at a pinata.

The circling bird barely seemed to notice. His focus wasn't on me; it was on Thea and the child she held.

The child. .

"A son," I yelled. The bird was a shape-shifted son, probably one of the two whom we'd tricked in Beloit. How they had found us this quickly I didn't know, but I had no doubt the monstrous bird wasn't natural. . at least not for northern Illinois.

Something blasted from the dirt beside me. My staff, caught in the explosions, flew from my hand.

I coughed and rubbed dirt from my suddenly streaming eyes. Rocks flew from the ground and shot into the air like missiles. Thea stood in the center of the minefield, her arms held out and her lips moving. She was trying to down the bird with rocks previously buried beneath the soil.

But she had set down the child.

"Thea!" I yelled, trying to warn her to get to the baby, to take her and run. I could fight the son, but if we lost the child. .

The priestess didn't hear me. She seemed lost in her fight. Her hands formed claws and dug down in the air, like she was digging in the dirt; then with a quick twist she flung her hands back up overhead and a new batch of rocks flew into the sky.