First off, Thresher apparently had discovered his other self and strongly implied that he had seen some powerful dryads in that life. Shilloh would need to grill him on that. But more importantly, what the actual fucking fuck?

  Birch snapped another picture, and she glared at her friend.

  In that brief moment, Wade very tentatively raised his hand. "I'm sorry, but now that she's on the team, are we able to learn what abilities she'll be bringing to the table?"

  Beige closed his book and gave his full attention to the conversation.

  Thresher grinned and subtly winked at her. "Would you like to tell him, or should I?"

  "Would you mind? I'm struggling to visualize the role you want me in?"

  "Wonderful," he said, clasping his hands. "Ms. Methusela is a dryad, as we've discussed."

  Both of the Godkillers—which was one hell of a sentence to even think—nodded.

  "That means that she has a less stringent and rule-bound magic than ours. It's not as consistent in terms of exact outputs, but it will greatly diversify what we can do. Additionally, she can provide excellent information on local cryptos if I need it while calibrating the best way to cull a horde. She can help Wade learn about types of energy and energy flows that would massively boost his effectiveness, and she is strong enough to access immediate superhuman capabilities if we're caught unprepared. And all of that is before we discuss her Wild Talent."

  Again, Wade shot her a look. One that was exasperated and amused in equal measure. She subtly inched away from everyone, not looking forward to the next part. Her ability was a little embarrassing.

  Birch, on the other hand, was absolutely beaming with joy and had her camera up and ready to go. Which, now that she thought about it, had to be a massive security risk.

  Actually, was Beige's magic pervasive enough to handle that? Could anyone even do something that was a security risk? Like, was Birch forced to move certain things out of frame? She might even have no film and just be making the camera flash for the bit. Shilloh would need to learn more about her teammates' abilities.

  Frost kept speaking, not letting her seek distraction with her internal dialogue, "To put it simply, if Shilloh has a strong bond of love, affection, and loyalty towards someone, then her ability will trigger if she perceives a being trying to do serious physical or magical harm to them. Not only are they protected from a massive portion of the actual injury, but, based on several factors, the violence and damage are sent back at the attacker in the form of a stackable, progressive curse."

  Birch caught a picture of the two men staring at her with shock.

  Beige spoke first, animation coming to his usually withdrawn and somewhat broody appearance. "And this doesn't care about comparative scale or magical defenses?"

  "It doesn't appear to. Obviously, we haven't been able to test on anything truly large. But there are strong indicators that if a T. rex tried to step on Birch, that Birch would come out injured but alive. The dinosaur would then develop bruises and microfractures to its bones. Those injuries would get progressively worse until several hours had passed, it died, or until it attacked Birch again. With another act of aggression, the curse would renew, and the effects would grow even stronger, worsen faster, and be longer lasting."

  "What about regeneration?" Wade asked. "If scale doesn't matter, does that mean it'll work on anything without advanced healing?"

  "Let's ask the expert."

  Everyone turned to Shilloh, and she found her face growing hot. This wasn't something she was used to talking about. And it definitely wasn't something she expected anyone but her grandma to find impressive. Especially not when you talked about all the drawbacks and limits that came with it. "Augmented healing makes it worse."

  "Worse?"

  "Yeah," she said. Thinking back to the autocanabalistic troll and the bullshit moonlight owl. "I haven't exactly 'tested' it, but it seems like the healing factor is reversed, or something. Every bit of healing that would happen expands the wounds instead."

  Birch cackled. "I fucking love this. I still can't believe it. You can turn a healing factor into a hurting factor."

  Shilloh winced, remembering what had happened to that troll. It had tried to swipe aside Fraulein. Her friend had flown through the air, bounced on a tree, and landed with a cut along her belly instead of being split open.

  Even the memories of that bit of blood started to fill Shilloh with an insane rage. At the time, that anger insulated her from the shock of what her ability had done. That evil, vile piece of shit had gotten its own slice to the belly and blunt force trauma. But it shouldn't have been enough to do lethal damage. Not for a while at least. In fact, with an initial attack like that, she would expect blood loss over an hour to be the dangerous part, since the wound wouldn't heal and would be constantly incrementally worsened: a couple of millimeters worth of additional laceration per minute until the curse expired.

  Instead, the healing factor tried to undo the damage. But that was not how punishment worked. Being born gifted did not let one escape from righteous consequences; it made them worse.

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  Seeing cuts and bruising spread like mold on toast was not something she was happy to have in her memory. Luckily, the creature healed at an insane rate, so it had, to put it crudely, minced itself, before eighty seconds had passed.

  Which hadn't helped with her apocalyptic rage, or stopped her from sprinting right at the owl, ready to make it pay.

  That death had not been kinder, but the dissolution of sentient moonlight had been a hell of a lot prettier.

  Shilloh shivered, waiting to feel guilt or shame at killing in anger, but the only thing that she felt was unsated rage and a grudging acceptance. They deserved more pain, but had gotten death. It was unfair considering what they had done, but you had to be practical.

  "It's not as great as you're all making it out to be." She said, trying to keep her hand from making a fist as the waves of memory and rage tugged at her. "There are lots of issues and complications that we're ignoring."

  "Of course we are," Thresher said. "That's why you're with the Godkillers and not some federal agency that uses an acronym and badges. All of us have serious limitations, liabilities, and drawbacks. And you'll become intimately familiar with them as we work together. Obviously, you're not going to need to fight in the upcoming incursion or lay down your life for any of us when you're still learning if this is the right path for you. But I personally feel that spending time learning about your potential team is critical for making an informed decision."

  "Alright. I mean, of course," Shilloh said, sitting up straighter and regathering her composure. "I look forward to getting to know all of you and learning more about the work we do."

  "Wonderful, now, before we handle any more of these dull logistics, I would like to formally shed the shroud of formality and propose a toast as friends and as a team."

  Faster than any of them could blink, Birch brought out a massive bottle of gin. "Finally. I've been waiting forever for someone to bring it up."

  "Birch," Shilloh said, her eyebrows raising, "where did you—"

  "I couldn't have said it better myself!" Thresher cried, pulling out his own bottle of fucking absinthe from under his cot.

  Wade and Shilloh both started spluttering out questions, but Birch waved their concerns away, taking the bottle from Thresher's hands so she could read the label. "Why didn't anyone say that you were holding out on me?"

  "I could ask you the same thing."

  "You little sneak," she muttered with a smile as she took in the bottle with a look of genuine respect in her eyes. "The lie of omission hurts, but I'll let it pass since it got me the good stuff."

  "If the betrayal stings too much, then I know two botanical remedies that may address it. Plus, it's like I always say," Thresher smiled." Surprise is the spice of life. Isn't that right, Wade?"

  "I actually don't think you've ever said that before."

  "Really now?" With a tinkle in his eye, the older man went to the tent flap and knocked out a rhythm on the tent pole.

  Immediately, Scotty burst into the room with shot glasses in hand.

  "Party time?" he yelled.

  "Absolutely, but first, don't I always say that surprise is the spice of life?"

  Eyes fixed on the bottle in the older man's hand, the skinny Bane shook his head vigorously. "Of course! You tell me that almost every day."

  Thresher slapped Scotty on the shoulder even as Wade called his best friend a Judas. Beige walked over to do the weird man thing, where they sort of shook hands and leaned in to smack each other on the back, in what was totally not a hug.

  The mood was great. Thresher made sure everyone in the tent had a glass, acting more like a host than a boss or supervisor.

  He complimented Birch on her bottle, "I love this stuff, but I have to be careful with it. They say gin can damage your long-term memory. If that's true, just imagine what gin can do."

  Wade groaned.

  That seemed to feed Thresher, "What did the bartender say when Charles Dickens asked for a martini?"

  "What?" Birch asked, delighted.

  "Olive or twist?" the older man said before cackling at his own joke.

  Scotty slipped into the group and threw his hands over the impish woman's shoulders. "Don't encourage him."

  Frost let the two of them fall into their usual squabbling and moved around the tent, asking everyone if they were more in the mood for wormwood or juniper, making sure each person had a drink before raising his own in the air. "A moment of attention, please! Let us all raise our glasses."

  They all did, and Wade said, "To mask and mission."

  "To Shilloh," Beige said.

  "To booze and brotherhood!" cried Scotty.

  "To bitchessssssss!" Birch roared.

  Everyone turned to Shilloh, and she smiled back at the crowd of happy faces, "To surprise friends, hidden bottles, and secret colleagues."

  "Here, here! To friends, new and old. Tonight we share drinks, and soon we share victory!"

  As one, they all lifted their drinks higher before knocking them back and falling into laughter and conversation.

  Thresher, who everyone called Frost since he had taken his uniform off, complimented Shilloh on her negotiation skills. Birch interrupted to start berating him about how horrible, inefficient, and out of date his recruitment process was, and the two wandered off. She was talking about psychometrics and structured interviews with blinded scoring panels.

  Before long, the late hour caught up with them, and people started making their exits.

  "Hey, Shilloh," Wade said, stepping next to her so he could speak quietly. "Would you like to go on a walk with me? Now that you're sworn in, there's some stuff I wanted to tell you about."

  "You sure now's the time? It's already pretty late."

  "We can wait if you'd like, but it's like Frost said; you're going to learn about all our weaknesses and liabilities. So I just figured," his eyes dropped to the ground, and she caught him hesitantly sneaking looks at her, "that I could tell you about mine. I think that it would be better if you heard it from me. Also, I sort of owe it to you."

  "Ahh," she said, looking at the clear liquid in her glass. "You want to tell me about some of these big things that I'd need to know before we could…"

  "Yeah."

  "Hard to believe there's even more secrets."

  He didn't add anything else. So, before the silence grew too long, or she could start wondering if two people in positions like theirs were even allowed to date, Shilloh emptied her glass and nodded her head with all the conviction she could muster. "Let's do this then. I think we've waited long enough."

  Wade, who was fiddling with a shot that he appeared to have barely sipped, didn't react at first. But when he saw her smile, he managed to shoot her back a wan one of his own.

  With that, they made quick goodbyes and stepped out of the tent to finally sort out the cluster fuck they had gotten themselves into.

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