Omar stared down in shock as blood seeped through his shirt, spreading over the material like spilled wine.
The queen screamed and the other handlers surged forward. I gathered up Cosmo’s body, not wanting anyone to step on him. I rose, and clutching him to me, I tore for the double doors on the far side of the room, hoping Rafe would follow. As I reached them, the doors flew open. I skidded to a halt to look up at the two manimals now blocking my path. The bull-man thrust me aside, while the rhino-man took several precise steps forward.
“All bend to the king,” he announced formally.
The room echoed with a thud as everyone present dropped to one knee and bowed their heads. All except Rafe and me. Still holding Cosmo’s limp body in my arms, I met eyes with Rafe across the room and with a single tilt of his head, we agreed upon a plan. With the knife in hand, he backed toward the French doors. I slipped along the edge of the room to meet him there. But when the bull-man said, “The king comes among you,” I couldn’t help but turn to look. And suddenly I knew, beyond any doubt, that this nightmare had only just begun.
The king who stepped into the ballroom wearing a green velvet robe and bejeweled crown was none other than the tiger-man who’d prowled through my nightmares and nearly every waking moment for the past two days.
Chorda.
As everyone in the ballroom lowered their heads in deference to Chorda, I slid down the wall with Cosmo in my arms. Across the room, Chorda stood in the archway, his head bandaged under his crown. He surveyed his subjects like a dictator.
“My king!” The queen rushed to his side. “Omar has been murdered!”
My view was suddenly blocked as Dromo dropped to one knee before me and lifted Cosmo out of my arms. “No,” I said hoarsely, grasping Cosmo’s limp hand.
Chorda swept across the ballroom toward the handlers. They bent low before him. “Who did this?” he bellowed.
“Let me take him,” Dromo whispered, “before they throw him on a trash heap.” His eyes cut to the queen. “Let me bury him next to his mother’s bones.”
Around me, guests shifted nervously as the handlers spoke to Chorda in low voices.
I let go of Cosmo’s hand. “Wait.” I arranged Jasper so that the stuffed monkey poked out of Cosmo’s overalls the way he liked. My lips brushed his fuzzy silver head one last time and then Dromo stood.
“Follow me,” he whispered. He cut through the crowd, clasping Cosmo to him, as if carrying a sleepy child off to bed.
I rose unsteadily and searched among the glittering bodies for Rafe. Had he escaped through the French doors when the king was announced? I hoped so. But I couldn’t do the same with Chorda blocking the way. I started after Dromo.
“Lane,” a rough voice called out. “You got my invitation.”
I glanced back to see the guests scuttle aside to give Chorda a direct view of me. A smile curved over his black lips.
“You know her?” The queen’s words quivered like an over-tight harp string in the silence.
Bitterness filled my mouth. I hiked up my skirt and dashed for the archway. Shrieks erupted around me. I banged into a manimal servant and sent his tray flying. Plates loaded with food shattered across the floor. As I skipped over the mess, someone snagged my dress and hauled me backward. I screamed as Chorda spun me to face him, his expression triumphant. I thrashed against his hold, but he caught my wrists and pinned them together in one hand.
“Now what?” Rafe stepped through the open French door. “You can’t rip out her heart here.” He swung his arm wide. “Can’t eat it with them watching. You only do that out in the zone when there’s no one around. No one to see what you really are: a bloodthirsty beast.”
Chorda bristled, and turned slowly.
“How many people have you killed, cat chow? Thirty? Forty?” The knife in Rafe’s hand dripped with Omar’s blood. “When are you going to notice that your cure — the cure your twisted animal brain came up with — it’s not working.”
With a roar, Chorda threw me aside and launched himself across the room. Rafe lifted his knife, ready for the fight, but Chorda’s reach was longer. He slashed at Rafe, tearing through his shirt and leaving four bloody scratches across his chest. The knife clattered onto the floor.
I jumped up and snatched another from a place setting. A handler rushed for me. I dodged him and he stumbled aside. I ran for Chorda’s back, but another handler tackled me from behind, bringing me down so hard, my chin hit the floor with a crack. He wrenched the knife from my fingers and kept me pinned down with his knee on my back.
With a laugh, Chorda retracted his claws and began to beat Rafe with his fists. Rafe defended himself as best he could against Chorda’s superior speed and strength, but he lasted only moments before crumpling to his knees. He spit out a mouthful of blood and glared up at Chorda. “Time to face the facts, whiskers. You’re a psycho with a disease and you aren’t ever changing back, no matter how many human hearts you scarf down.”
Chorda grabbed Rafe by the throat, lifted him into the air, and threw him against the wall. He extended his claws once more and moved in, his eyes glowing with hate and bloodlust.
“No!” I screamed.
It was enough. Chorda seemed to remember himself … and that he had a ballroom full of witnesses. Standing over Rafe, he pulled in his claws. “When you caught me in your snare, you were going to kill me without a thought. But now our places are reversed. You are at my mercy, yet I am choosing not to kill you. Tell me, hunter, who is the beast?”
He waved several handlers forward, including the one holding me down. I felt his knee lift and scrambled to my feet.
“Take him to the zoo,” Chorda told the handlers, where he can live in his own filth like the animal he is.”
I shoved through the guests to face him. “The only animal in this room is you.”
The crowd gasped and I sensed them edging away. I whirled on them. “Oh right, you all can’t see that he’s part tiger.” Not a single person would meet my eyes. “Cowards.”
“Out!” bellowed Chorda. “All but Lane.” He turned his red-brown glare on the handlers and pointed to Rafe. “Put the animal where he belongs or you will be joining him.”
The handlers scrambled to do Chorda’s bidding. I tried to block them, but the blond handler who’d ridden in the rickshaw with us shoved me aside. They hauled Rafe to his feet and three more handlers lifted Omar’s body and carried him out of the ballroom. The guests and manimal servants stampeded out of the ballroom after the handlers.
Only the queen remained, her eyes pinned on me. “How do you know her?” she asked Chorda.
“I ordered all but Lane to leave.” Chorda took a seat at the head of the table. Only then did I notice my dial hanging around his neck, as was an electric blue Ferae test. My father’s machete was stuffed into the sash around his waist. I stared at the two of them: the tense, almost haggard queen, and the tiger-king with glittering eyes and twisted ideas.
“Leave!” Chorda snarled, and the queen flew from the room, though not without throwing me one last hate-filled look as she closed the door.
I was trapped.
“My bag … you found Director Spurling’s letter. You burned down her house.”
A smile crept over his black lips. “What else could I do? Once you got the photograph, you would have left the Feral Zone … without giving me what I need.”
I couldn’t bear the feverish excitement in his eyes. I looked past him. He seemed more horrifying than ever with his crown and his yellow-crusted bandages. He was going to rip out my heart. Right now, right here — with his handlers and wife in the next room. If Dromo was right, the queen was listening at the door — not that she’d stop him from killing me. All she cared about was making sure that I didn’t replace her. I shuddered. Speak his language, Rafe had said. Talk crazy. But how could I talk, when I couldn’t think?
Chorda ran a hairy hand down his velvet robe. “I will leave this room tonight in my human skin.”
“Will you tell your subjects how you broke the curse? How many human hearts you had to eat to get the job done?”
“It’s the beast that kills. When I’m human again, the beast’s sins will not be mine.” He took my dial from around his neck and laid it on the table in front of him. “And now I know the way into the human world. I will go to this tunnel” — he tapped the dial’s screen — “and I will join it as a man.”
And I’d shown him the way. He’d slip right past the quarantine line. He’d infect the West. All because of me. Chorda watched me, enjoying my fear. Hate surged in me — hate for the evil thing that he was. Hate for his insanity. I was verging on crazy as well, so why not give in to it? Do the insane. The unthinkable. What did I have to lose?
I took a breath and then forced myself to do the absolute last thing I wanted to: I moved closer to Chorda. “It’s a test, you know,” I said in as steady a voice as I could manage.
The patches of whiskers above his eyes twitched.
“So far you’ve failed.” I pulled the bobby pins from my hair and let it spill over my shoulder in a dark wave. “Are you going to fail again?”
His eyes narrowed. “What test?”
“Take my heart if you want, but you won’t break the curse that way. Know why?”
He grew still, watching me with the luminous eyes of a predator. Make him believe. I leaned across the table. “Because I have to give it to you. Keep stealing hearts and you’ll stay an animal forever.” I ran my eyes down his body, letting my disgust show. “The beast has to win the girl’s heart, that’s how it works. How it’s always worked.” I tapped my chest just above the neckline of my dress.
He dragged in a breath, and time hung in the air between us.
“Make me love you,” I said softly. “And my heart is yours for the taking.”
“How?” The word was no more than a low growl.
I pushed aside a place setting, including the steak knife, which I so desperately wanted to snatch up. I leaned across the table. “Let Rafe go.”
Chorda rocketed to his feet, the veins in his neck standing out like rope. I gaped at him. “No,” he snarled as curved claws sprung from his nail beds. “The hunter stays.”
The urge to flee buzzed through my veins like a drug, but I gripped the edge of the table and dug in. Run and the tiger would pounce. I waited until I could open my mouth without screaming. “Fine. Act like a beast; stay a beast.”
His eyes were wild, and I knew that if I wasn’t very, very careful, he’d break my neck on impulse. “Or find another way to win my heart,” I added and held out my hand, but I couldn’t stop it from shaking and I couldn’t take back the gesture.
Chorda’s mottled features relaxed. Bending, he turned my hand over and kissed my trembling wrist.
Suddenly, the door flew open and the queen stormed into the room. She paused, taking in the scene and yet clearly seeing it so wrong. “You don’t need to win her heart, darling. You have mine!” she cried.
Chorda beckoned her to him. “You love me?” He cast me a sly glance as if we were sharing a joke. “With all of your heart?”
I wanted to warn her, to yell Run! But my vocal cords were frozen.
“Yes.” The queen hurried over to us, thrusting a furious finger at me. “She’s just after your crown. She doesn’t love you. But I do.”
Her voice edged on hysterical and I almost felt sorry for her. She was walking right into Chorda’s trap. But I couldn’t worry about her. I had to get as far away from Chorda as I could. And this was my chance. With his attention on her, I slipped my dial off the table and edged toward the open door. Not too fast. Not so he’d notice me.
“So your heart is mine for the taking?” Chorda purred, turning the queen in his arms so that he stood behind her.
She stiffened. She must have guessed the terrible double meaning of his words. “I just meant that I love you and —”
Chorda cupped her chin and tilted her face to his, as if to kiss her. Then he raised his other hand. His two-inch claws slipped forth.
“No, please!” The queen struggled in his hold. “I’ll go to the feral house. Or put me with the lionesses. I’ll —”
With one clawed hand, he tore open her throat. The queen thrashed in his arms, trying to get away as dark blood streamed down her neck. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. He’d sliced through her vocal cords. And then she sagged, though there was still life in her eyes. Chorda caught her flowing blood in the cup of his hand, brought it to his mouth, and lapped it up.
I skittered backward — unable to take my eyes from the scene, unwilling to turn my back to Chorda. He reached around the slumping queen and slashed her bloodstained chest once, twice.
I whirled and tore for the hall, leaving behind the sounds of bones cracking and a splatter of liquid. At the door I glanced back to see Chorda kiss his queen on the mouth and drop her to the floor. Crimson blood dripped from his fist. He was holding her heart in his hand! With her twitching body at his feet and his velvet robe flecked with red, Chorda lifted the heart to his lips.
I spun into the hall. So many doors, so many halls. Which would get me out of here? I couldn’t open them all. I raced past a brass cage of an elevator and pivoted. Elevators and stairs went together, yes? I tugged at the nearest door and saw a spindly staircase that descended into darkness.
Down I went, into a darker, grimmer part of the castle. I ran through the rabbit warren of a basement — so like the chimpacabra tunnels — turning corners and skirting the entrances to darkened halls. The warren ended in a large, poorly lit room, and I skidded to a stop. Either Chorda himself or his handlers were going to come after me. I needed to find someplace to hide.
A stainless-steel worktable gleamed in the center of the room, laden with jars of chemicals and bolts of fabric. Mannequins lined the walls, some nude and some wearing colorful clothes of leather and fur in various stages of completion….
I focused on the long zippered bag on the worktable — a body-sized bag — and my thoughts slowed until they crystallized into one chilling realization: This is where Cosmo’s mother had been turned into clothing. And the same thing was now happening to other manimals.
Something clacked across the room. With a tap, I darkened my dial, tucked it into my dress, and darted among the mannequins. In the far corner, a seamstress sat hunched over an old-fashioned sewing machine, her wide back to me. She wore a dirty kimono and seemed completely focused on her work, which had to be unending. Torn clothes lay piled on the floor by her feet — maids’ uniforms and white jackets like Dromo’s.
There was nowhere in this room to hide, but maybe I could swap my silk gown for something less conspicuous. I crept as close as I dared, snagged the hem of a maid’s dress, and dragged it to me. When the seamstress set the machine clacking once more, I snatched up the dress and stood. Again she paused, but only to fold the jacket that she’d been working on. I edged away from her, but then a collar with a glinting buckle fell from the folds of the maid’s dress and hit the floor with a ping.
I froze.
The seamstress turned stiffly, as if her neck was fused to her shoulders. When she faced me, I had to bite off my gasp. Her nose ended in a mass of small pink tentacles, like a star-nosed mole’s. We stared at each other for a moment, silent and gauging. Finally she spoke. Well, tried to speak. She could only manage garbled syllables. With a frustrated grunt, she hefted herself up and shuffled toward me.
Maybe she thought I was a servant? No. Not a chance. Not in a satin gown.
She pointed at the maid’s uniform in my hands.
I tightened my grip. “I need it.”
“Tra —” she wheezed. “Tra —” Her clawed toes jutted past the edge of her flip-flops as she hobbled forward, pointing at my chest. “Trade.”
“Trade the gown for the maid’s dress?” I plucked at my gown. She nodded. “Deal,” I said and turned my back to her. “Please unzip me.”
Despite having thick claws
for fingernails, she had a delicate touch, and the gown fell away from my skin. As I shimmied out of it, the folded paper that had been in Cosmo’s hand fell out. I snatched it up and read “21:00 on roof.” The roof? What kind of escape plan was that?
I pulled on the ragged dress, fastened the collar around my neck, and then rubbed my hands on the basement wall until they were good and filthy. Without a second of hesitation, I smeared the damp grime over my face and down my arms. Finally I tore off my blue Ferae test and threw it into the corner. I had to get Rafe and be back here by nine, which was — I checked my dial — in an hour.
I glanced at the seamstress, who was brushing the satin across her cheek, and then she held the gown against her body. She swayed while making a rhythmic, chirping sound. Singing? Had the gown stirred up some long-buried memory?
She stopped abruptly and looked toward the corridor. A second later, I heard what she had: boot steps in the passage. The seamstress tugged off her head scarf and offered it to me. I took it gratefully and managed to pull it over my hair just as a five-man squad of handlers hustled into the room. Three of them hurried past, giving the seamstress and me the barest glance before moving on to search the hallways beyond. We stood silently among the mannequins as the two remaining handlers poked around the sewing room. After a moment, the seamstress slid my gown — now her gown — over a naked mannequin and thrust a pincushion into my shaking hands.
A handler strode over to us. “Did a young woman come through here?”
The seamstress shook her head while pinching in a side seam on the gown. I handed her a pin. The handler shifted his gaze onto me and I quickly shook my head. His look turned to one of disgust and he moved on, which meant — unbelievably — that I’d passed for a manimal!
I released my breath as the handlers left the sewing room. I’d bought myself a little time, but that was all. If I was going to escape from here and free Rafe, I had to get the handlers off my back. But how? Maybe if they had a bigger problem than me to occupy them. Something so bad or so dangerous that it would require all of the handlers’ focus and energy …