Margo jerked. The fur on her body melted. Her bones folded on themselves, shrank, realigned . . . She cried out, and a human girl, naked and bloody, fell to the floor.
Thank you. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs.
"Margo!" Meredith called. "Margo, honey, answer me. Answer me, baby."
"Mom?" Margo whispered.
"My baby!"
Maddie's body shuddered. Her limbs twisted. The distortion in her body shrank, but the signs of animal remained. My heart sank. It didn't work.
"She's down to two," Doolittle said.
The shift coefficient, the measure of how much a body had shifted from one form to the other. "What does that mean?"
"It's progress," he said. "If we had more of the panacea, I would be optimistic."
But we didn't. Tony hadn't just emptied the bag, he had cut it and rubbed the inside of the plastic on the meat and then scraped it clean with the back of the knife. Maddie was still going loup. We had to get more panacea. We had to save her.
"You can't kill her!" Julie's voice shot into high pitch. "You can't!"
"How long can you keep the child under?" Curran asked.
"How long is necessary?" Doolittle asked.
"Three months," Curran said.
Doolittle frowned. "You're asking me to induce a coma."
"Can you do it?"
"Yes," Doolittle said. "The alternative is termination."
Curran's voice was clipped. "Effective immediately, all loupism-related terminations of children are suspended. Sedate them instead." He turned and walked out.
I paused for half a second to tell Julie that it would be okay and chased after him.
The hallway was empty. The Beast Lord was gone.
Chapter 2
I climbed the Stairs of Doom to the top floor. I had wanted to chase Curran down, but Julie was still freaked-out and Meredith ping-ponged from hugging one daughter to crying over another. She didn't want us to induce a coma. She wanted more panacea and couldn't understand that there was none to be had. It took the three of us-Doolittle, Julie, and me-over two hours to convince her that Maddie needed to be sedated. By the time I finally left the medical ward, Curran was long gone. The guards at the entrance saw him walk out, but nobody knew where he went.
I reached the guard station at the entrance to our floor. Living in the Keep was like trying to find privacy in a glass bowl, and the two top floors of the main tower were my refuge. Nobody entered here unless the Beast Lord's personal guard vetted them, and they weren't charitable when approving visitors.
Sitting in a dark room watching a child suffer while her mother's soul died bit by bit was more than I could handle. I needed to do something. I had to vent or I would explode.
I nodded at the guards and went down the hallway to a long glass wall that separated our private gym. I took off my shoes and stepped inside. Weights waited for me, some free, some attached to machines. Several heavy punching bags hung from chains in the corner, next to a speed bag. Swords, axes, and spears rested in the hooks on the wall.
My adoptive father, Voron, died when I was fifteen, and afterward my guardian, Greg Feldman, took care of me. Greg had spent years accumulating a collection of weapons and artifacts, which he left to me. It was all gone now. My aunt paid us a visit and left a chunk of Atlanta a smoking ruin, including the apartment I had inherited from Greg. But I was rebuilding it slowly. I didn't have any prized weapons in my collection, except for Slayer, my saber, but all of my weapons were functional and well made.
I shrugged off the back sheath with Slayer in it, lowered it to the floor, and did push-ups for a couple of minutes to warm up, but my weight wasn't enough, so I switched to the bag, hammering punches and spinning kicks. The pressure, building in me for the past several hours, fueled me. The bag shuddered from the impact.
It wasn't fair that children went loup. It wasn't fair that there were no warning signs. It wasn't fair that I could do absolutely nothing about it. It wasn't fair that if Curran and I ever had children, I would be like Jennifer, stroking my stomach and terrified of the future. And if my children went loup, I'd have to kill them. The thought spurred me on, whipping me into a frenzy. I wouldn't be able to do it. If Curran and I had a baby, I couldn't kill him or her. I didn't have it in me. Even thinking about it was like the shock of jumping into an iced-over pond.
I worked the bag for the better part of an hour, switched to weights, then did the bag again, trying to drive myself to near exhaustion. If I got tired enough, I would stop thinking.
Exhaustion proved elusive. I'd spent the last few weeks recuperating, training, eating well, and making love whenever I felt like it. I had more stamina than the battery bunny from the old commercials. Eventually I lost myself to the simple physical exertion. When I finally came up for air, sweat slicked my body and my muscles ached.
I took a Cherkassy saber off the wall and went and picked up Slayer. The saber had cost me an arm and a leg many years ago, when I still worked for the Mercenary Guild. I had kept it at my old house, and it had survived my aunt's reign of terror.
I raised the two swords-the Cherkassy saber was heavier and more curved, while Slayer was lighter and straighter-and began to chop, loosening the muscles. One sword a shiny wide circle in front of me, one behind me, reverse, picking up speed until a whirlwind of sharp steel surrounded me. Slayer sang, whistling as it sliced the air, the pale, opaque blade like the ray of a steel sun. I reversed the direction, switching to the defense, and worked for another five minutes or so; while walking, I turned and saw Barabas standing by the glass.
A weremongoose, Barabas was raised in the bouda clan. They loved him, but it soon became apparent that he didn't fit into the werehyena hierarchy, so Aunt B, the alpha of Clan Bouda, had offered his services to me. He and Jezebel, the other of Aunt B's misfits, acted as my nannies. Jezebel watched my back, and Barabas had the unenviable task of steering me through the Pack's politics and laws.
Slender and pale, Barabas was born with a chip on his shoulder, and he made everything into a statement, including his hair. It stood straight up on his head, forming spiky peaks of brilliant orange and pretending that it was on fire. Today, the hair was particularly aggressive. He looked electrocuted.
"Yes?"
Barabas opened the glass door and stepped into the gym, his eyes tracking the movement of my swords. "Don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes you scare me, Kate."
"Barabas, you grow two-inch claws and can bench-press a Shetland pony. And you find me scary?"
He nodded. "And I work with some very scary people. That should tell you something. How do you not cut yourself?"