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“I won’t do it,” I said.

“You still care about him? After all he has done to you?”

I nodded.

“Do him, now, or I will kill him slowly. I will pick pieces of flesh from his bones but never kill him. As long as his heart and head are intact, he won’t die, no matter what I do to him.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. I couldn’t stand by and let Oliver torture him, not if I could help it. Wasn’t a clean death better? Wasn’t it?

I took the stake from Oliver. “I’ll do it.”

Oliver smiled. “You’ve made a wise decision. Jean-Claude would thank you if he could.”

I stared down at Jean-Claude, stake in one hand. I touched his chest just over the burn scar. My hand came away smeared with blood.

“Do it, now!” Oliver said.

I turned to Oliver, reaching my left hand out for the hammer. As he handed it to me, I shoved the ash stake through his chest.

Karl screamed. Blood poured out of Oliver’s mouth. He seemed frozen, as if he couldn’t move with the stake in his heart, but he wasn’t dead, not yet. My fingers tore into the meat of his throat and pulled, pulled great gobbets of flesh, until I saw spine, glistening and wet. I wrapped my hand around his spine and jerked it free. His head lolled to one side, held by a few strips of meat. I jerked his head clear and tossed it across the ring.

Karl Inger was lying beside the altar. I knelt by him and tried to find a pulse, but there wasn’t one. Oliver’s death had killed him too.

Alejandro came to stand by me. “You’ve done it, Anita. I knew you could kill him. I knew you could.”

I stared up at him. “Now you kill Jean-Claude, and we rule the city together.”

“Yes.”

I shoved upward before I could think about it, before he could read my mind. I shoved my hands into his chest. Ribs cracked and scraped my skin. I grabbed his beating heart and crushed it.

I couldn’t breathe. My chest was tight, and it hurt. I pulled his heart out of the hole. He fell, eyes wide and surprised. I fell with him.

I was gasping for air. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. I lay on top of my master and felt my heart beating for both of us. He wouldn’t die. I laid my fingers against his throat and started to dig. I put my hands around his throat and squeezed. I felt my hands dig into flesh, but the pain was overwhelming. I was choking on blood, our blood.

My hands went numb. I couldn’t tell if I was still squeezing or not. I couldn’t feel anything except the pain. Then even that slipped away, and I was falling, falling into a darkness that had never known light, and never would.

48

I WOKE UP STARING into an off-white ceiling. I blinked at it for a minute. Sunlight lay in warm squares across the blanket. There were metal rails on the bed. An IV dripped into my arm.

A hospital—then I wasn’t dead. Surprise, surprise.

There were flowers and a bunch of shiny balloons on a small bedside table. I lay there a moment, enjoying the fact that I wasn’t dead.

The door opened, and all I could see was a huge bunch of flowers. Then the flowers lowered, and it was Richard.

I think I stopped breathing. I could feel all the blood rushing through my skin. There was a soft roaring in my head. No. I wasn’t going to faint. I never fainted. I finally managed to say, “You’re dead.”

His smile faded. “I’m not dead.”

“I saw Oliver tear out your throat.” I could see it in front of me like an overlay in my mind. I saw him gasping, dying. I found I could sit up. I braced myself, and the IV needle moved under my skin, the tape pulling. It was real. Nothing else seemed real.

He raised a hand towards his throat, then stopped himself. He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “You saw Oliver tear out my throat, but it didn’t kill me.”

I stared at him. There was no bandage on his cheek. The little cut had healed. “No human being could survive that,” I said softly.

“I know.” He looked incredibly sad as he said it.

Panic filled my throat until I could barely breathe. “What are you?”

“I’m a lycanthrope.”

I shook my head. “I know what a lycanthrope