The next wave of cousins came from the trees. It hit the south mouth with horns screaming impatience.

Two trucks abreast tried to force the lane, metal screaming against railings.

Elias clipped a tire, then a radiator.

Steam billowed and turned the air into a white wall. Alexei sent cold into the cloud and made a screen the sun couldn’t punch through. Shapes stumbled on the far side, coughing on their own bad timing.

Sera dropped back to the lane and looked up at Zubair.

He had learned the meaning of that look.

He put both hands to the barricade and bled heat down through the bus skin and into the stack of welded junk beneath.

Rust went orange to white and steel groaned as old fractures widened under stress.

The whole front of the blockade slumped like a rotten tooth giving up.

He pushed forward again. The bus frame sighed and folded inward. The lane opened enough for a truck to nose through, theirs, not theirs, didn’t matter.

"Clear it," she ordered, and Lachlan grabbed what used to be a door and dragged it aside with a noise like a dumpster off a curb.

A cartel captain with a red scarf tried bravery near the shack. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He made the mistake of talking to her while he lifted his weapon. "Kneel," he instructed, his face flushed, and his finger shaking on the trigger.

She walked through the order without slowing, gripped his wrist, and twisted until the bones grated.

The gun came out and she used it to break his teeth because Anselmo liked teeth metaphors and it seemed polite to keep the theme. She put the muzzle to the captain’s sternum and pulled twice.

He folded with a wet sound, his scarf turning a darker red.

Anselmo watched her kill his captain and didn’t blink.

The calm moved him up her list of threats.

He glanced at the ledger bulge in Alexei’s jacket and then at Sera’s face. "You’ll drown in favors you don’t owe," he evaluated. "The river doesn’t care."

"The river’s mine," she answered again, for his benefit and hers. "It won’t touch me or mine."

He almost smiled—almost—and then his eyes cut to the south mouth where a new engine yowled high.

Not a truck this time.

A stripped frame with a welded cage for a driver and twin spiked wheels up front like a nightmare stroller.

The driver aimed it right at her, his mouth open, his eyes glassy with whatever he’d taken to make himself brave.

Elias’s first shot broke the cage’s crossbar. The driver dropped his head lower and kept coming.

"Mine," Zubair breathed, and stepped, both hands lifting.

Heat gathered tight, bright, not a wall this time but a coil, a lasso.

He threw it forward like a cowboy trying to get a cow to heel.

The air over the lane wobbled as it went. It caught the stroller’s front axle and jerked.

The spikes bit asphalt, hit the heat, and softened. The axle bent like a straw. The whole thing flipped end-over-end and ate itself into the lane with a crash that dented the world’s noise.

The driver tumbled, hit the wall, and slid down leaving a smear. Luci padded over and put a paw on the man’s chest, then looked bored again. Sera scratched the wolf’s ear in passing; he flicked his gaze up and accepted praise like it was his right.

"Push forward," she told them, chin at the wreck. "Make a path."

The guys obeyed—not because she was bark and they were collars, but because the road always moved when she wanted it to.

Lachlan and Zubair shouldered the softened bus hull aside another foot.

Alexei thickened ice under the useless gun truck and skated it left by inches, metal squealing while tires gave up.

Elias covered the far tree line and knocked down anything taller than a fence post.

Anselmo took the first real step back since this started.

Choice showed on his face. He could run now, he should... but he didn’t.

Instead, he lifted both hands and walked into their side of the lane like a man choosing whether to die standing or kneeling.

"You’ll keep this bridge today," he judged. "Tomorrow, you won’t want it."

"Tomorrow isn’t here," Sera replied, and looked over his shoulder at the trucks still trying to pretend momentum beat physics. "Now burn it."

Zubair didn’t bother to ask which part.

He put his palms to air and laid heat under the dead barricade’s belly, through the grease, into the stack of old road flares someone had collected for emergencies. They woke up like a choir.

Red fire climbed the scrap and caught the plastic crates that had been used as furniture for bored guards. Smoke rolled black and oily.

Alexei lengthened ice into a tongue and dragged a leaking gas can close enough to join the song. The fire found it. The lane turned into a furnace no one else would pass without permission.

Sera watched the smoke build and the flames lick at everything the cartel had nailed together.

The heat didn’t touch her. The smell didn’t bother her. The sound of men groaning around boots and steel didn’t register as anything that should slow her hand.

Anselmo closed his eyes for one measured breath and then opened them again on the same calm. "The General will come," he warned, not a bluff, not a threat—just weather. "He likes new puzzles."

"Then he can bring a better pencil," she returned, already turning away.

Elias moved to the lead truck’s cab, checked gauges, checked warning lights, checked the vibration in the wheel like he could smell a bad bearing through rubber. "We can drive through now," he reported. "Two minutes, we’re across."

Lachlan planted a boot on the edge of the bus carcass and grinned at the inferno. "Ten out of ten toll experience. Would not pay again, but this was fucking fantastic."

Alexei patted his jacket where the ledger rested. "Let’s go discover how many bridges a man can pretend to own."

Sera looked at Anselmo one last time. "You run," she advised. "Or you swim." She turned her back on him like he didn’t matter and meant it.

He didn’t move. Not yet.

Zubair climbed into the driver’s seat.

The engine caught and idled as if relieved to be on the winning side. Luci jumped into the bed and planted himself where he could watch all four corners at once. Elias checked ammo, swapped magazines, nodded once. Alexei took the second truck and brought it to life with a stroke of the key like he’d been born doing this.

Sera stepped onto the rail, put a hand on the roll bar, and watched the flames find height. She smiled—small, real, satisfied. "Drive," she ordered.

They drove.

They took the bridge like it had always been theirs.

Behind them, Anselmo finally lowered his hands and watched them go through smoke he once owned. His face didn’t change. The ledger in Alexei’s jacket felt heavier by a pound.

The river rolled under the tires, black and indifferent and busy.

And to the victor goes the spoils.