Without thinking I threw out my hand, and a jagged, neon blue bolt of energy snapped from my fingers and sliced right through the smoky form. Her slash of a mouth widened in horrible amusement.

I was stiff and stupid with fear. We hadn't prepared for this. I felt pearls of cold sweat popping fully formed on my forehead, felt the ache of adrenaline tightening my muscles, the dull pain of my stomach, tight with terror. Selene.

Alyce made an incoherent sound-she and the others had been muttering spells nonstop since the hawk had died-but now I looked down and saw that dark tendrils were spinning off from lower down, and they were beginning to curl around the legs of Hunter, Alyce, and Bethany. They each quickly tried to jump away but already seemed held. They were throwing witchfire at it, spitting spells at it, and nothing they were doing was having any effect. These three witches were all strong, quick, and knew well how to protect themselves-but not even Hunter seemed to be able to stall her attack.

The smoky tendrils were weaving themselves higher, coiling insidiously around their bodies.

"Why are you doing this?" I shouted. I was going to sit here and watch my friends-and my muirn beatha dan-die, and then I was going to die myself if I didn't figure something out. A horrible, risky idea was starting to take form in my mind. I rejected it, but it kept coming back, and now I saw it as perhaps my only hope. It would be dangerous, and I didn't know if I could pull it off. I didn't even want to try.

"If it's me you want, take me, and leave them alone!" I cried.

The horrible Selene face laughed, and I realized that she wanted to see them die, that she would enjoy it. I found my mother's athame in my hand, glowing with a white heat, and without a plan I leaped forward and plunged the blade into the middle of the smoke. To my surprise, Selene actually seemed to feel it-the smoke recoiled and the face gasped. Then her expression twisted with anger, and a dreadful, perforated voice emanated from it. "You can't stop me, Morgan," it said, every word feeling like a steel nail scraped down a blackboard. "You're not strong enough. I'll take my revenge. My kind have been waiting hundreds of years to wipe out your kind, and I'm not going to let my own death stop me. You're the last of Belwicket, the last of the Riordans. Once you're dead, true Woodbanes can continue their work. I'm willing to martyr myself to that cause. Soon we'll be more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Twining vines of smoke slid toward me, running up the bedspread like fire. I edged back against the wall, then looked up to see that Bethany's neck was entwined-she was choking and gagging, and her face was tinged with blue. Bethany was going to die. Alyce and Hunter had turned their energies to saving her, but Selene's march toward death seemed unstoppable.

Unless.

Fully formed, my mother's power chant, the power chant of Belwicket, came to me, as it had on so many other occasions. The ancient, beautiful, and sometimes harsh words spilled from my mouth as I kept my eyes locked on Selene's form. "An di allaigh an di aigh an di allaigh an di ne ullah…" I kept the words flowing like lifesaving water as my hand crept across the bed to the body of the dead hawk. My half brother Killian had caught a hawk once by calling its true name. If you know the true name of something, you have ultimate control over it. I knew Ciaran's true name, but no one knew mine, including me. My fingers brushed the soft feathers, felt the absence of a life force, and I included the hawk's true name in my chant.

Selene was hardly paying attention to me-perhaps she thought it would be amusing to see what I could come up with, what puff of breath I could throw against her turbulent hurricane of power. Bethany was almost unconscious now, and the coils were moving up Alyce and Hunter. I saw hard intent in his face but no fear, and my heart felt a searing pain at the thought of what he was going through and how he was facing it.

I remembered what it felt like to be wolf-Morgan. My birth father, Ciaran, had taught me a shape-shifting spell. I didn't remember most of it, but now I called on ancient Riordan power, the power of my mother and her mother before her, back through the generations. Help! I sent the message silently. Mother, help me. Help me now.

I closed my eyes, swaying for a moment as new words, at once unknown and familiar, streamed into my mind. I recognized the form of limitations of the shape-shifting spell, and silently I repeated them, putting everything I knew, everything I felt, every need I had into the words.

I was frightened, deathly frightened, yet felt I was pulled inexorably toward this future, this one direction. Silently I murmured the true name of the hawk. Then the pieces came together in my mind in a beautiful, dazzling, stained- glass window of magick, the three things I needed weaving themselves together in a spell so balanced and perfect and beautiful, I wanted to cry.

Bethany sagged in Selene's grasp. Alyce and Hunter were now fighting the deadly tethers around their necks. There was no more time-not one second.

"Rac bis han!" I shouted, throwing my arms wide. Selene whipped around to look at me. "Nal nac hagagh! Ben dan!" I had a moment to see her gaping, protruding eyes widen in shock, then I was forced double, and I was screaming in pain.

Even Alyce and Hunter stopped struggling to watch me, and I cried out, instantly regretting my decision through a thousand hours of ripping, racking pain that lasted less than a minute. My bones bent unnaturally, my skin was pricked with thousands of needles, my face was drawn forward like burning steel. There was no way of getting through this with dignity or even a show of bravery. I wailed, screamed, cried, begged for mercy, and finally ended up sputtering incoherently, lying on my side on the bed. I blinked and struggled to rise. The room was strange and hard to understand. My feet couldn't clutch the bed well, and I gave a clumsy hop so I could perch on the footboard. Hesitantly I flapped my wings, felt the latent power contained within.

I was a hawk. I had shape-shifted. I now had a hawk's laser sight, razorlike talons, and merciless, ripping beak. I sent a message to Selene: Catch me if you can. Then I gathered my wings to me, and with a brilliant burst of immense joy and an aching longing for air and freedom, I took flight, right through the closed and locked window. I felt the wood splinter, the glass shatter against my chest, but then I was soaring up, up, into openness. I heard glass raining down, and then, with a soft sound, my wings caught fire and I streaked through the sky.

A few, exhilarating moments later I sensed another hawk coming after me. It was Selene, back in the body she had usurped. However, that body had already been dead for several minutes, its systems breaking down, and as I glanced back for a millisecond, I saw that it flew with jerky, uncon-trolled movements, working hard to keep up with me.

Yet right now Selene seemed unimportant. A hawk's wild joy ignited in me as I wheeled effortlessly through the dark night air. I felt incredibly light and incredibly strong. A thousand scents came to me as I soared higher-the higher I went, the thinner and cooler the air was as it filled my lungs. I heard the flames on my wings whip fiercely through the air, but I felt no pain, no heat, only a terrible, righteous anger and an increasingly strong need for revenge. As ecstatic as I was, shooting through the night, my thoughts once again turned toward Selene. She had been haunting me all this time, appearing to me in Cal's form. She wanted me dead. She wouldn't ever stop until I was dead and the dark Woodbanes were able to flourish. I couldn't let that happen.

I tucked one wing slightly in and began a huge, sweeping arc at sixty miles an hour. The dark hawk was slowly gaining on me, and even from this great distance I saw the glint of hatred in it golden eyes, the overriding lust for my death, and I knew that this could end in only one way: her death. My victory.