moment had changed into another, and Dane was airborne, falling from the sky with the thick snow.
Dane’s aim was perfect, even without having seen his goal before he leapt. Jonas was moving already,
but not soon enough. He went down under Dane’s mass with a thick crackle of bone and tendon parting.
Pain seared through Dane’s side as four long claws gouged through skin and muscle to catch on his ribs on
their way to his heart. Dane’s laugh was caught in a snarl of pain, but the rush of adrenaline swept it all away. They rolled through the slush and puddles and Dane got his teeth into Jonas’s neck, a snap of fangs
that filled his mouth with hot blood. There was a flurry of limbs and claws and fists before they parted,
gasping, to face each other in the dark.
“Dane.” Jonas had his hand to his neck to staunch the flow of blood while his flesh knit itself together
far faster than Dane’s own body was healing. The faint light glinted off deadly claws extended from his
fingertips. Dane’s belly was still holding his insides in and his head was too full of blood rage to care about the wounds so long as he wasn’t tripping over his own guts.
“Jonas.” There was an affection in Dane’s voice that he reserved for his favorite enemies. His body
was singing with pain and fury and hunger and joy. At times like this, it was easy to forget that he was
mortal. He felt so much stronger than his body.
“The girl didn’t mention you’d be here,” Jonas said, straightening as his spine put itself back together.
“Maybe she doesn’t like you anymore.” Dane’s hand flicked out, claws piercing a trash can as he
grabbed it to toss at Jonas’s head. Laughing, Jonas deflected it with a punch. “I don’t mind doing her dirty work.”
“Maybe she wanted to surprise me.” Jonas charged, getting airborne at the last minute in a beautiful
leap that aimed one steel-toed boot at Dane’s face. Years ago, it might have hit, but Dane hadn’t passed the time being lazy. Age had only made him faster and wiser to compensate for the loss of his magic. He
shifted and caught Jonas by the ankle, using the man’s momentum to swing him headfirst into the side of a
building. The brick cracked, and half of Jonas’s face peeled away to the bone. His neck snapped back, but
before it broke, he caught Dane in the wrist with his other foot, almost shattering the bones.
“Surprise,” Dane rumbled, ignoring the agony in his arm. Jonas’s breath was ragged, stuttering, but
even as he was dying, he was healing, moving again. It would have been terrifying if Dane hadn’t seen it
before, if his own body wasn’t humming with remnants of magic that healed him from the inside out.
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15
Anah Crow and Dianne Fox
Jonas grabbed a rusting pipe, wrenching it loose from whatever held it, and brought it around as
survival instinct and rage drove him to his feet. The pipe caught Dane in the left side of the head. His jaw and cheek crumpled as he rolled with the blow. While he was catching his balance and rallying to retaliate, Jonas hit him twice more with the pipe, smashing against his right shoulder and his ribs.
Dane let momentum take him to the ground and out of range, and rolled to his feet. He retreated
deeper into the alley, buying time for his broken magic to put him back together enough to be able to see
out of both eyes. His bones still remembered his old self, but barely, and they settled into place with a groan.
“Down, boy.” Dane spat blood and flesh into the muck between them. He let his shoulder drop, let
one leg buckle as he backed up, feigning only a little more weakness than was real in the moment.
“You first.” Jonas took the bait and rushed him. Dane danced aside, faster than anything human, faster
than Jonas could react, and grabbed Jonas by the shoulder and hip. His claws cut through Kevlar clothing
that the dry intellect in the back of his mind recognized as a uniform, and got a purchase deep in dense
muscle. Dane hurled Jonas toward the end of the alley as hard as he could, despite the screaming agony in
his own shoulder and chest. Jonas hit the wall hard, sending fragments of brick and mortar showering
around his body as he slid to the ground.
Not satisfied with that alone, Dane grabbed a dumpster with both hands, claws digging into the
rusting steel. He whined with pain as he lifted it, his body shaking in protest, but he got it off the ground and brought it down on Jonas as the other man was struggling to stand.
“Stay.” Dane sagged against the dumpster, adding his own weight to it as it crushed Jonas, at least for
the moment. He inhaled and gave it another shove, grinding it against the wall until it grated on the brick.
He leaned on it, pushing hard and making the metal groan, until he could see bright, hot blood running
from under it. The red rivulets wound past his boots and he allowed himself a slight smile. “Good dog,” he
muttered, pushing himself to standing.
The smell of their blood and adrenaline was a fog around him, but Dane could still sense the fading
threads of fear and pain that had drawn him here. It took him a moment of staggering through the alley,
pawing through the trash of one dumpster after another, until he found something warm under a pile of
sodden cardboard. He lifted the cardboard, throwing it into the alley behind him.
What he found looked as discarded as the rest of the trash, a spindly shell of a human body wrapped
in a white lab coat. The long, pale hair was as fine as a woman’s, but the body smelled male. Dane leaned
in and dragged it out with a grunt. The body smelled poisoned too, as though it should have been dying, but the heart was still fluttering stubbornly against the prominent ribs. Dane carefully tucked the body under his coat, against his bloody shirt.
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Tatterdemalion
“Lot of fuss for a little thing,” he grumbled without any real displeasure. “Let’s not keep Cyrus
waiting.” Holding the body to him with one arm, he scaled the fire escape and disappeared into the dense
white veil of the snowstorm covering the city.
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17
Chapter Two
It was a long time before Lindsay woke. His sleep was as silent and dark as it had always been,
though it lasted far longer. There were no dreams in Lindsay’s world. He never tossed and turned. Since he
was born, he’d only lay where he’d fallen asleep, still and quiet. For him, sleep was the absence of
everything. The slightest sound could wake him without dreams to explain it away.
When he finally did open his eyes, there was no segue between sleeping and waking. He was simply
thrust into consciousness and the nothing was replaced by terror and confusion: he wasn’t alone.
The room was huge, like something out of a fairytale. He lay in a four-poster bed, swathed in soft
sheets and blankets. A fire crackled in the hearth across the room and, beside it, there sat a man.
The man filled the chair he was sitting in. He was tall and broad, wrapped in a long, dark coat. His
hair fell loose around his shoulders and his face was hidden by shadows and a heavy beard. His eyes
glittered in the dark, watching Lindsay.
More tests? Was this a trick? The Institute? He had hoped this was all over—he’d thought he was
dead. Perhaps he was. He never dreamed, and there was nothing in his life like this, not anymore.
He shrank into the covers, moving farther from the man, and was surprised when it worked. There
were no restraints, nothing at all to keep him in his bed. He tried to use his magic to get away again, but it snapped like a rubber band, recoiling against him and making him gasp with pain.
“No need to be so frightened,” the man said. His voice was strange. “Didn’t go to all the trouble of