I was turning to find the next one when I was hit from behind in a low tackle. I twisted as I fell, and we rolled in the grass, struggling. Hands closed around my neck.
“For God’s sake,” Gravett shouted, “don’t damage the adult female!”
That distracted the guy, and I broke his grip. I heaved him off me and jumped on him, my hands on his throat now, squeezing. He clawed at my hands. I squeezed harder. The demon mark was on fire; I felt strength like I’d never known. I could squeeze this asshole’s head right off.
“Hey, freak!” called a man’s voice. I’ll kill this one now, I thought, andthen I’ll pulverize his friend. “Hey! Your boyfriend’s in trouble.” Boyfriend? Did he mean—? Keeping the pressure on the fallen guard’s neck, I looked up.
Daniel lay on his back, still unconscious. A guard stood over him, pressing a rifle barrel into his throat. “Give up now, or I’ll kill him.”
Gravett stepped between us. “He could do it,” she said. “That man entered the premises illegally, and armed. You attacked my private security force. Everyone would swear it was self-defense.”
Everyone who counted, I thought. As a PA, I couldn’t testify in New Hampshire.
The guy with the rifle kept his gaze locked on mine, his slitted eyes daring me to defy him. Waves of hatred swept over me, hot as the burning demon mark. I could kill the guy, easy—snap him in two in a second. Then I looked at Daniel, vulnerable and deathly still.
I removed my hands from the fallen guard’s throat. He convulsed under me, gulping in air. The other guard lifted his rifle.
“Good,” Gravett said briskly. “Take the juvenile back to her cell. And I think the adult needs to be tranquilized until we’ve secured her.”
The guard I’d nearly strangled pushed me off him. I fell on the ground and just sat there.
I’d lost.
I’d never leave this place; I’d be tortured and imprisoned for the rest of my life. Worse—far, far worse—I’d failed to rescue Maria from whatever horrors they planned for her. That bright, happy girl, reduced to less than an animal. To some kind of lab specimen.
Gravett approached me, holding a hypodermic needle upright and flicking its tip. I looked at the woman and felt a hatred deeper than anything I’d ever known. Daniel lay unconscious and bleeding on the ground. Maria was rolled up in a ball, howling with fear. And Gravett was coming to knock me out until I woke up in a locked cell.
I wanted that bitch to suffer. I wanted her to hurt as badly as all those creatures she’d locked up and experimented on, as badly as she’d hurt my family. Something stirred in me, some deep, savage hunger. I wanted to feast on her screams, to drink her tears as she pleaded for a mercy she’d never get.
The hatred twisted my limbs. A bubbling—fast, frantic, boiling—started under my skin. My spine contracted and kinked, and the longing to tear Gravett’s eyes out made my toenails become thicker, sharp, steely. At the same time, my legs withered, grew thin and tough.
“My God,” Gravett whispered. “Who has a video camera?” she called out. “Quick, someone get a camera—we have to record this!”
I feasted on my hatred, pushing the emotion through my veins, filling my lungs with it. Revenge. Revenge! A shock of pain went through my body. My arms stretched, feeling like they were being pulled out of their sockets, and kept stretching. Widening, the hairs thickening, becoming feathers. Another jolt of pain as my torso compressed, crushing and reshaping each rib. My lips pursed as if expecting a kiss, then my nose melted into them, the skin hardening into a new form. A tingling shot through my scalp, and I heard a soft hissing that seemed to come from all directions.
Maria screamed, and I turned to comfort her. Then I realized she was screaming at me.
I wanted to say something to her, but my voice came out as a squawk. Then the world’s colors bled away. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. Everything had changed. Colors were dimmer, overlaid with gray like a layer of ash. But shapes were sharper. I picked out an ant crawling up a tree trunk fifty yards away. I turned my head, looking. I didn’t know this place; what I didknow was that I had a mission here. My hunger—deep and gnawing and demanding satisfaction—told me so.
Prey. There was prey nearby. Where? I tossed my head, flinging my lovely, living tresses of snakes that hissed and wriggled with the movement. Harpies are proud creatures, vain, and rightly so. I tossed my head again. With the movement, I noticed a small human lying on the ground, hopped toward her. There was fear there, lovely, but the hunger didn’t flare. Not this one.
A large female stood a short distance away, rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging open stupidly. She wore a white garment, and her hair was the color of brass. The sight of her sent a sharp knife of hunger into my bowels. Hunger spiced with hatred, with cruelty and revenge. Demanding satisfaction, demanding gorging until I could feed no more. And I knew: This was the one; this was my prey.
I shouted with triumph and delight. The idiotic humans covered their ears. I hopped, flapping my wings to get airborne. The snakes hissed their excitement as I climbed into the air. Higher I flew, and higher. So high that the humans looked no bigger than field mice. I circled once. I marked my target and dove.
Shouting, shouting my glorious cry of battle. The pleasure of watching the prey’s face as it came into focus, surprise tensing into terror. I slammed into her chest, gripping it with my talons, and took her to the ground. She writhed and screamed under me, writhed like the dancing snakes. I dug my talons deeper into her chest. I joined her screams with a song of my own, using my talons to cut and tear, to make her sing new notes. Then, I prepared to feed.
“No!” A sweet young voice—the child’s?—made me pause. “Aunt Vicky, look out!”
The child. There was some kind of danger here. And I was supposed to . . . help her? I? I looked for her, confused. I dimly felt something, some impulse that was foreign to me. Something to do with the child.
Ridiculous. I was hungry; I was here to feed. That was my mission. I struck my beak into the soft, doughy flesh of my prey, searching for tasty entrails. She screamed. What a delicious sauce.
A blast thundered, and something struck my wing. I looked up, a morsel dangling from my beak. The snakes snapped and spat. A human, a male, pointed a weapon at me. The man had dared to fire! I rose into the air, screeching my rage.
Of course the wing was unhurt. I laughed. The human did not know enough to use the death metal. Humans are such fools.
But so delicious.
I rose higher in the air, and saw one of the men pulling at the child’s arm. She was crying. I cocked my head. Something about this one . . . Most humans made me frantic with rage. But the girl, somehow, calmed me. I wanted to sit beside her, let her stroke my feathers, gently pluck morsels of food from her small fingers.
A strange desire, but a pleasant one.
A movement from one of the buildings caught my eye. A door opened and out rushed a group of creatures—wolves and odd-looking furred men. They bounded toward the humans, toward my prey, setting up a howling that made my snake-hair hiss in response. I added my own voice, my wondrous, piercing cry. I soared in wide circles above the battlefield as together, the creatures and I proclaimed our war on the humans.
My pulse quickened, my hunger grew sharper. I trumpeted my excitement. War is something I understand.
The creatures bounded across the lawn with breathtaking speed. The humans panicked, breaking ranks and running. Waves of fear shimmered in the air. Guns fired; pack members fell. But still the pack advanced.