In a perfectly timed dramatic entrance, the werewolves exploded from the trees, accompanied by Dick Cheney, two big vampires dressed in black SWAT gear, and a bipedal great white shark. In response, the Kelley shapeshifters transformed into two-legged armadillos, giant sloths, the creature from the Alien movies, and several trolls. Once again, I had to wonder whether I had actually died in the plane crash and this was a prolonged hallucination brought on by a lack of oxygen.
Arms swinging, Jane jumped into the fray. She hopped onto the back of a giant Cthulhu-type monster I believed to be the drunk Viking, locking her legs around his neck. Finn made a beeline for me, but a huge bipedal crocodile monster jumped in between us. The wave of werewolves bowled over the shifters, because, after all, the latter weren’t actually transforming into the scary monsters. They only had the appearance of those monsters, a panic response in the face of so many predators with real fangs and claws. Still, I had to respect the fact that they stayed in these foreign forms even when they didn’t do them any good.
All except She-Hulk, who was charging at me like a linebacker.
“You’re mine, you knock-kneed, wasp-flinging bitch!” she howled.
I yelped, dodging out of the way when she lunged. At the last second, I dove to the ground and rolled out of the way. She wheeled around and ran at me again. I stood just in time to catch the strap of her sling, pivoting on the ball of my foot as I threw my weight back. The dramatic shift in weight slung her off course and sent her sprawling into the grass face-first.
“Look, I get that you were just trying to help your family, which is why I didn’t take it personally when you tried to beat the hell out of me,” I told her as she writhed on the ground, clutching her shoulder.
“You say that, and you still wouldn’t give us the damn book!” she growled.
“Because it wasn’t mine to give!” I cried. “It’s Jane’s! But maybe if you would stop trying to steal it, she would share some of the information with you!”
“Wha—what?”
“Do you even know what’s in the book, information-wise?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, there have been rumors about it for hundreds of years. But no one knows for sure what’s in it. We just know that if it’s real, we want it. The shifters in my family, we’ve done well for ourselves, money-wise, but we struggle with our shifts. Sometimes we get . . . stuck . . . in our forms. My cousin Briar has been a panda-butterfly hybrid for a year now. It’s embarrassing. The poor kid was just screwing around, trying to keep his little sister entertained. And now he can’t go to school. He’s only sixteen. He doesn’t even want to come out of his room. We thought that if we had the book, we might be able to find something that could help make him normal again. Well, as normal as a sixteen-year-old willing to turn himself into a butterfly-panda could be.”
“And I’m sure if you asked Jane, she would want to help you. You just have to ask.”
She-Hulk blinked at me, dumbfounded.
“Please tell me this isn’t the first time this occurred to you.”
She-Hulk frowned. “Well, everybody in the shifter community is so secretive, and we’re not real popular with the vampires. We never thought Jameson would consider such a thing.”
“Oh, my God.” I sighed. “Just talk to her.”
Just then, a thick grayish shape stumbled into my peripheral vision. Ernie the pilot looked the worse for wear. While he’d changed out of his stained pilot’s uniform, his lips were red and cracked, and he had a nasty swath of blistering red welts sweeping across his face.
It seemed that I had better forest-coping skills than I thought, at least by comparison. I would be proud of that later. Finn must have ditched the Croc Man, because he was at my side, trying and failing to shove me behind him. She-Hulk had run in the direction of her cousins.
“You two,” Ernie growled, pointing a sharp stick the length of my leg at us. “You two assholes are more trouble than you’re worth. I swear to God, if it wasn’t for that stupid book, I would have just left your dumb asses to die in the woods.”
“What are you even doing here?” I asked. “After you failed to kill us, I would have thought you’d run like hell so the shifters wouldn’t ask for a refund.”
“No, I asked to be here, just so I could have the privilege of staking this guy,” Ernie grunted, waving his death stick at Finn. “I even told the Kelleys they wouldn’t have to pay me.”
“How nice for you,” I said drily.
“You think this has been fun for me? I’m from Brooklyn. I don’t camp. Not even when I was in basic.”