claws scratch on stone, to the hollow growl as one of them yawned. A dozen of them lived here, fed by victims of the empire’s laws and the king’s whim.
He blinked. His half-lion eyes became accustomed to the darkness. One of the beasts was approaching him —the king of this pride, a tawny giant of thirty stone with a tangled black mane that flared around his head like a crown. Daniel bowed, ducking his gaze as the massive beast came close enough to breathe on him. He let his lion’s instincts fill him and tell him what to do.
Daniel waited, bowing his shoulders in a way that said,
Their languages were not so different. It was as if he could hear the lion speak, and he knew how to answer.
“Why are you here?” said the lion.
“I am a traveler seeking rest among your pride.”
Daniel felt the lion’s hot breath on his skin—dry and fierce like the desert and reeking of old blood.
“You smell like beast. But there is also the scent of man on you.”
“The men are all outside.”
The lion lifted his head, and gooseflesh rose on Daniel’s suddenly cool skin. He kept his head low, but in the corner of his vision he saw the lion’s amber gaze judge him. Then, the animal turned and padded back to his place. The other lions had been sitting watchful, but now they rested, stretched out on rocks, cleaning themselves with thick pink tongues.
“Rest here, traveler,” the lion bade him from across the pit.
Tension left Daniel’s muscles as though lifted by a breeze. Slowly, he stood. The lions paid him no more attention than if he had been one of them. Which, he supposed, he was. A young male stretched out a few boulders away from the king looked at him and invited him to share his place. Daniel did, lying on the rock beside the beast, who returned to cleaning his paws. Daniel was warm here, and safe. He closed his eyes and made a silent prayer.
The next day, the lid was lifted from the pit, and Daniel walked up the ramp. He was cramped and tired— even his lion self preferred the cushion of a bed, or at least a tuft of grass, to the rocks of the pit. But he was alive, praise God for it.
The king and his retinue waited at the rim of the pit, and all gasped when he appeared well and whole, without a scratch.
Darius, reclining on his litter, surrounding by gaping sycophants, could not maintain an indifferent mask. He’d become dumbfounded, barely able to move his mouth to speak. “Daniel! How—how did you survive?”
Daniel gave a wry smile. “I prayed, and my God sent angels to hold closed the mouths of the lions.” Later, he would pray for forgiveness for that fib.
His voice filled with awe, Darius said, “Your God is powerful.”
“And wise,” Daniel said, thinking of all the full moon nights he had asked
THE TEMPTATION OF ROBIN GREEN
The talking dog always whined when Robin fed the griffin.
“C’mon, Robin, please? The doc’ll never know. I
“Sorry, Jones,” Robin said to the dust-colored mutt in the steel and Plexiglas cell.
“Please? Please please
“No, Jones. Sorry.”
“But it’s not fair.
“They have bigger stomachs than you.”
“Oh, please, just once, and I’ll never ask again!”
But it was a lie; the whining would never stop, and giving in would make it worse. It turned out that a talking dog was even more endearing than the nontalking kind. It took all of Lieutenant Robin Green’s army training to turn away from the mutt and move on to the rest of her rounds.
She hit a switch to illuminate a bank of lights in the second enclosure. The occupant had the thick, tawny- furred body of a lion, but its neck and head were those of an eagle: feathered, dark brown, with glaring eyes and a huge hooked bill. It opened its beak and called at her when the light came on, a sound somewhere between a screech and a roar.
A small door at the base of the Plexiglas allowed her to slide a tray of steaming meat into the cell. The griffin pounced on it, snarling and tearing at the meat, swallowing in gulps. Robin jumped back. No matter how many times that happened, it always surprised her.
Next, she took a bundle of hay to a side door that allowed access to a third enclosure and went inside. Technically, entering the enclosures was against regulations, but she had asked for special permission in this case.
“Here you go, kid.”
Hoofed footfalls shuffled toward her through the wood shavings that covered the floor. The animal stood about fifteen hands high, had a milk-white coat, cloven hooves, a tuft of hair under its chin, and a silver spiral horn between its eyes.
Robin spread out the hay, feeding some of it to the creature by hand. She and the unicorn got along well, though at twenty-three she didn’t like to admit her virginity. She’d fallen back on excuses to explain why she’d never seemed to make time for dates, for getting to know the men around her, for simply having fun: too much to do, too much studying, too much work, too much at stake. She’d always thought there’d be time, eventually. But those old patterns died hard. Colleagues and friends paired off around her, and she’d started to feel left out.
All that aside, now she was glad about it. Otherwise, she’d never have had the chance to hold a unicorn’s muzzle in her hands and stroke its silken cheek.
She’d graduated top of her class with a degree in biology and made no secret of her interest in some of the wilder branches of cryptozoology, however unfashionable. She’d gone through the university on an army ROTC scholarship and accepted an active-duty commission because she thought it would give her a chance to travel. Instead, she’d been offered a position in a shadowy military research project—covert, classified, and very intriguing. She’d accepted, transferred to the base in California, where she couldn’t talk to anyone about her work because of how classified it was. Not that anyone would believe her if she did talk.
After visiting with the unicorn for half an hour, Robin continued to the next level down: The Residence.
This level of the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology made Lieutenant Green nervous. It seemed like a prison. Well, it was a prison, though the people incarcerated here weren’t exactly criminals. Colonel Ottoman, PhD, MD, et cetera, liked to say it didn’t matter since they weren’t really human. A lowly research assistant and low- ranking, newly minted officer like Robin, perfectly turned out in her prim uniform with pressed collar and skirt, was not supposed to question such a declaration. Still, she made an effort to treat the inhabitants of the Residence like people.
“Hello? Anyone home?” Colonel Ottoman and Dr. Lerna were supposed to be here, but Robin must have been the first in for the night shift. The day shift had already checked out.
Despite its clandestine military nature, the place was as cluttered as one would expect from any university laboratory. Paper-covered desks and crowded bookshelves lined one wall. Another wall boasted a row of heavy equipment: refrigeration units, incubators, oscillators. Several island worktables held sinks and faucets, microscopes, banks of test tubes and flasks.
One Plexiglas wall revealed a pair of cells. The first cell was completely dark, its inhabitant asleep. Special features of this room included a silver-alloy lining and silver shavings embedded in the walls. The next cell had garlic extract mixed with the paint.
