Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

      Greta didn’t flinch. Her hands were rock-solid. If the silver cage surrounding Nathan was any indication, Greta probably had silver bullets too.

      Meredith poked her head through the swinging door. More than anything, even Greta’s gun aimed at my head, the sight of Meredith made me freeze with dread. I wasn’t ready for this. If I hadn’t been ready to face my half-Damned brother, I certainly wasn’t ready to face my full-human, best friend.

      “I heard a scream. Is everything al—” She blinked at Greta’s gun. “What are you—” And then she invariably followed Greta’s aim to me and didn’t blink at all. “Oh, God.”

      “No, just us,” Dominic rumbled behind me, attempting and failing to bring some levity to the conversation. “But I understand the confusion. Happens all the time.”

      I didn’t have the ability to contribute with a witty rejoinder and prove to everyone that everything was fine and under control. It wasn’t—I wasn’t—because Meredith wasn’t. Her confusion and fear and relief and grief bowled me over like a gale force wind. My ears were deafened by the howl of her denial. My skin was shredded from the grate of her terror, and my mouth was flooded by something thick and cloying. It had the consistency of honey but the flavor of acetone: tar, maybe, or wet cement. Whatever it was, it constricted my throat, and when I breathed, all I could smell was cinnamon.

      My talons, which I still hadn’t successfully retracted, unwillingly extended another inch.

      “Meredith,” Greta said, her voice so calm and careful, I wanted to scream. “Please return to the lab.”

      No one moved.

      “It’s me,” I said, finally breaking the horrible, flesh-eating silence. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m telling you, it’s me. I survived, and I’m here to help.”

      I might have been more convicting if my last few words hadn’t ended on a growl. It came rumbling up my throat of its own accord, like a growling stomach, never minding that friends don’t growl at each other.

      I tried to mask the noise by clearing my throat.

      “What should I tell Rowens?” Meredith asked, and it took me a confused moment to realize that she was speaking to Greta.

      “Tell him,” Greta eyed me up and down. Whatever she saw made her sigh. “Tell him Susanna needed her notes.”

      “My notes are on the floor,” Dr. Chunn whispered.

      “Her other notes,” Greta snapped. “And Susanna will stay here for now. Until I need my notes.”

      “Right,” Meredith said. She ducked out of the room without a second glance, and the dead muscle in my chest throbbed. All of Meredith’s aching emotions remained in the room, flaying me even worse in her absence.

      It killed me not to go after her, but no one would see that as anything but an attack. I turned away from the swinging door to face Greta and her gun instead. “Sorry I missed all your meetings this past week. Want to catch me up?” I asked, striving for normal and failing miserably.

      Greta narrowed her eyes. “Have you seen the streets? Take a look around; it’s pretty evident what happened.”

      I crossed my arms. “I know what happened. I want to know what you’re going to do about it. What’s the plan? What’s our next move?”

      “‘Our’ move?” Greta shook her head. “You bailed on me, DiRocco. Whatever plan I have is my own.”

      “That’s bull, and you know it. You wanted me to bail. ‘Get out of the city,’ you said. ‘Get Meredith, Rowens, and Dr. Chunn as far away from ground zero as you can.’” I shook my head. “As if.”

      “You disobeyed a direct order.”

      “I’m not one of your officers, G. I don’t take orders.”

      “And look what happened to you.” Greta’s voice cracked. She didn’t put up her gun, and her hands never wavered, but the stone-cold shield of her expression faltered. “Jesus, Cassidy, look at you.”

      I caught myself before I could wince from the disgust in her expression. Regret was there too; I could taste its bitterness and swallowed the knee-jerk urge to apologize for the creature I’d become, as if I’d willingly chosen to switch teams. As if I was even playing for a different team.

      Never apologize for surviving, I reminded myself, and lifted my chin up a notch.

      “I think you look great, sis,” Nathan interrupted from behind his bars. “Better than you’d look if Lysander hadn’t saved you.”

      Behind me, Dominic snorted.

      “Thanks, bro. It’s always a comfort to know I look better than death.”

      “Anytime.” Nathan smiled, and his grin was all fangs.

      Dr. Chunn gasped. As if Nathan had pressed a reset button, she unfroze from her fright, pounced on the nearest pen and paper scattered on the floor, and jotted a note.

      I eyed Dr. Chunn pointedly before settling my gaze warily on Greta. “I don’t need to look in a mirror to know who I am, but seeing how you’re treating Nathan, I’m not sure I know who I’m looking at.”

      “He’s dangerous. Until we know what we’re dealing with—”

      “He went with you willingly,” I reminded her.

      Greta winced.

      “He agreed to help you find an advantage over the Damned, to discover his weaknesses and find the chink in his strengths. He came here to lay bare his darkest secret for your scrutiny, to give you the ultimate power over him, and this is how you repay him, caging him like an animal?” By the end of my sentence, my words were all growls, but I didn’t care. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “Where did you even get a silver cage on such short notice? I doubt you had one in storage next to the spare test tubes and eyedroppers.”

      Greta sighed. “The cage is just a precaution.”

      “An unnecessary precaution. An insulting precaution, considering he came here of his own volition. I let him go with you because I trusted you.” I pointed at the cage. “This is a betrayal, Greta, and you know it.”

      “What I know is that I don’t know. I don’t know shit about the creatures we’re up against, and that ignorance got hundreds of people killed.” Greta swallowed, and for the first time since she had entered the room, her rock-solid aim slipped slightly. “My raid failed, just like you said it would, because we didn’t have adequate weapons to use against them.”

      I glanced at the cage. “Well, it looks like you’re well on your way.”

      Greta pursed her lips and with one last, long hard look, she put up her gun. “Look, Nathan is safe here. The cage aside, we’re caring for him, feeding him, and guarding him.”

      Dominic made a strange noise behind me. “Even lambs are cared for, guarded, and fed before the slaughter.”

      Greta blushed. “It’s just a precaution.”

      “Just a precaution,” I muttered. “Hitler’s Jewish ghettos were just a precaution, and look how that ended. Next, you’ll have me in there, but unlike with Nathan, you won’t have the excuse of science to back you.”

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” Greta scoffed.

      “We could probably learn a great deal from you too,” Dr. Chunn chimed in, only listening enough to know when a scientific opportunity might be presenting itself.

      Dominic growled.

      “Sounds like an excellent idea to me,” a male voice drawled, deep and lazy. Ian Walker stepped out from behind the swinging door. He was tall and lanky, his height all in his legs, and his head was topped by commas of golden curls. His brown, velvet eyes—a gaze