Demalion pulled into the hotel lot, found a space in a mostly empty lot. He wasn’t wrong about the hotel’s ambiance; it did run toward rat and roach more than bed and bath, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Stay here,” Sylvie said. “I need you to keep the truck running.”
Sylvie headed out of the truck. She’d left Lupe in Room 213, sulking and none too pleased with her environment. Then again, as far as Lupe was concerned, everything in her life had been on a downward slide since the moment she was kidnapped by Azpiazu.
Given that and the manager’s call, Sylvie was less than surprised to find her knock answered by a crash and a strange animal sound. Something large, she thought, since the floorboards creaked as Lupe paced toward the door. Exactly what shape Lupe had taken, Sylvie couldn’t tell. The animal protest that traveled through the door was like nothing she’d heard before. Something like a snake rattle, like a cat’s purr, but high-pitched.
Tranquilizer gun. She should have invested in a tranquilizer gun. Another thing to set Alex on. God, Alex. She should have warned her about the ISI, told her to get someplace safe. Was there anyplace safe? Sylvie’s head spun.
She leaned on the door frame, tried to muster patience. “Lupe. It’s Sylvie.”
The door jolted as Lupe crashed into it; the thick wood bowed outward, and the rattling shriek made Sylvie wince. Up close, the sound could cut glass. Or shatter it.
“What the fuck did you leave in there?” the manager said, joining her.
“Give me the key,” Sylvie said. “Go away.”
Toro passed her the key, backed up a few feet. Sylvie eyed him, knew he was hoping to get something on her that would net him some more cash, and thought, Fuck it. She was sick of playing censor. If he wanted to see, let him. The ISI wouldn’t like it, and that was reason enough to let it happen. She waited until she heard Lupe retreat, then keyed the door open a crack. Peered inside.
“What is it? What do you see?” he asked, leaning forward.
Trouble.
Serious trouble.
Not only had Lupe changed independent of the lunar cycle, but there was absolutely no way this change could be passed off as normal. No “zoo escapee” excuse was going to cover this.
Lupe raised her head; a long forked tongue flickered out, tasting the air. Tasting Sylvie’s presence. The mane of feathers around her neck shifted and fluffed. She shrieked again, and lashed her long, tawny tail. She sprang forward, and Sylvie slammed the door just in time to avoid a clawed paw.
“I’m going to need a nonlethal weapon,” she told him. “A Taser, stun gun, or a tranq gun. Something.”
He looked at her blankly, and she said, “Get me one.”
“Shadows, I don’t know what you—”
“Toro, your hotel clients are 90 percent violent offenders of one kind or another. You’re telling me you don’t have an entire armory in your office?”
“I got an Uzi?”
“If I wanted to shoot her, I’d use my gun,” Sylvie snapped. She knew she was being irrational, that most of her anger was self-directed—she just didn’t have things under control.
“I got roofies.”
Sylvie grimaced. She hated the people she interacted with sometimes. “Fine. Get me a handful and a steak.”
“Five dollars each—”
“Toro, I could walk away and leave her to you. Make her your problem.”
“Fine,” he said, and slunk off.
Sylvie shuddered. She was so going to call Suarez and sic him on Toro. There was sketchy, and then there was
Demalion joined her on the second-floor balcony, ignoring her scowl. “I left the motor running. What’s taking so long?”
Lupe hiss-purred through the door, and Demalion said, “What is that?”
“My client,” Sylvie said. “She’s having a bad day.”
Toro returned with a handful of pills going chalky and damp in his hand, and a steak a couple of days past fresh. Sylvie could smell him coming.
She wasn’t the only one. The door shuddered again in the jamb, the hinges jolting. Toro crushed the pills into the steak, and Sylvie took it with one hand. It took more concentration than she expected to hang on to the slimy, heavy mass, and that was the beginning of the end.
She took her eyes off the crack in the door to focus on the meat’s getting away from her. Demalion stiffened like he’d been electrocuted and swept her down to the concrete walkway, scraping her arm, numbing her elbow, and knocking the breath from her.
Lupe’s claws closed on empty air, and she leaped down to the parking lot. In the sunlight, she was a beautiful monster. She had a huge catlike body, tawny and stippled with tropical bird colors, blue, green, red. A ruff of bright feathers stood out around her serpentine head like an Elizabethan collar, and the scales on that massive snake head glimmered with an oily green sheen. Like a poison-arrow frog, everything about her screamed toxic.
“Lupe!” Sylvie yelled, hanging over the edge of the balcony. She hurled the steak down in front of her. It landed with a wet, messy splat and spread out across the concrete like a rooftop jumper.
Lupe flickered a skink blue tongue at the steak, then dismissed it.
“No, no, no,” Sylvie muttered, scrambled to her feet, and headed downstairs, Demalion shouting behind her. Maybe if she could get Lupe into her truck, the situation could be salvaged.
Traffic on the road outside the hotel suddenly bottlenecked as first one driver, then another, saw Lupe and slammed on the brakes, and got rear-ended for their pains. Horns filled the air, and Lupe let out her freaky howl- shriek again and headed straight for the traffic in a ground-eating lope Sylvie couldn’t hope to beat. Maybe with the truck, but the road was blocked.
Her breath seesawed in her chest, panic striking hard and deep. Lupe was going to get killed. Or kill someone. Or both. And it would be her fault.
Sylvie raised her gun, belatedly thinking even a flesh wound would slow her down, be better than this, but there were too many people around, and Lupe was so fast. …
Sylvie closed her eyes, shut out Demalion shouting at Toro, the sounds of panic and excitement on the street, the sounds of Lupe’s life being destroyed step by step. There had to be something she could do.
Whether it was exhaustion or panic or the catastrophe about to happen, she could only think of one thing that might work.
“Erinya!” she shouted. “Erinya!”
Her breath felt like it was torn from her, and she didn’t even know if it would work. If Erinya was listening. And if she was, if she’d come.
Lupe gained the roadway and the stopped cars, lunged atop them, and flared her neck feathers. Her clawed feet crashed through a windshield, and the carpoolers inside hurled themselves out, one man clutching a bloody shoulder.
A second later, he was convulsing in the street; Lupe was, apparently, as toxic as she looked.
Demalion said, “Shoot her. Sylvie. You don’t have a choice. She’s killing people.”
Sylvie lined up the shot, blinking sweat out of her eyes, her vision blurring. She scrubbed her face, scented the lingering aroma of putrid meat on her skin, and gagged. The gun shook in her hands.
Demalion took the gun from her, aimed, and Lupe dropped between the cars, showing that, animal or not, she still recognized danger. Sylvie got a glimpse of that snaky head peering at them beneath the SUV she’d just trashed and had only a moment to realize that Lupe was coming for them at speed.
Demalion held his ground, took the shot—head shot, too high. The scales furrowed back, exposed thick bone—another scar for Sylvie’s client should she survive turning human again—but Lupe didn’t even slow.
Sylvie swiped her gun back, holstered it, and shoved Demalion toward the truck.
“Lupe,” she said. “Lupe.” Like the name was a spell to return her to herself.
Lupe slowed in her advance, tilted her head. Listening, Sylvie hoped.
“C’mon, Lupe. You don’t want to kill anyone, right? You don’t want to hurt anyone else. Remember how bad
