 
She Who Sees Through Darkness

Liz Ellor

Copyright 2015 Liz Ellor

Published by Liz Ellor at Smashwords
Table of Contents

Part 1: The Lawyer

Part 2: The Mole

Part 3: The Subject

Part 4: The Traitor

Author's Note

**Part 1: The Lawyer**

Katrina Harris woke to the sound of violin music drifting down into her ears from the floor above. _Annie._ Her niece's music plus the lumpy cushions under her head said she was at her brother's place in Brooklyn, not the studio apartment in Alphabet City she split with five other staffers. How'd she end up here?

_Shawn._ The memories returned. She and Kyle had found him waiting outside the bar when they'd climbed out of their taxi. Shawn had grabbed her arm and towed her away. She'd shouted at him—it was just for work, shouldn't you be home with your wife, don't you trust me—and he'd answered _no_ and ushered her into his car.

"I had a vision," he'd explained when no one could hear them. "You would have relapsed. I saw you afterwards, sobbing in the bathroom." A police car had shot by them, its red and blue lights dancing in his black and grey hair and casting shadows in his thin cheeks. "There was an eighty-five, ninety percent chance. You need to tell your boss."

"Senator Winters?" A strangled little laugh had escaped her. "She calls me her attack dog. She trusts me with her reputation. What's she going to think if I tell her?"

"That you're a grown woman with a chronic mental illness who needs to stay away from bars. You're two years sober. You've finally put your life back together." They'd argued all the way back to his house, until she'd agreed to tell the senator and explain how work stress plus Kyle's return made a toxic combination of triggers.

_Like hell I will_ , she thought, rolling off Shawn's couch. The long tee-shirt she'd slept in billowed down past her knees. Admit to her tough-as-nails boss just how weak she really was? Emma Winters had once called the two of them _kindred spirits_. Katrina needed to believe that was true.

_Fuck Shawn and his visions_. She herself was painfully ignorant of what, exactly, he saw. Part of the price of magic. It messed with family genetics, cutting fertility, leaving a whole child here, a disabled one there, and, in her case, one without any powers at all. She might have been a second-generation Descendant, but without the pyromancy that marked her bloodline, simply being a Descendant meant nothing. It wasn't even something she could brag about—telling anyone about magic would constitute a breach of the Seal, which meant death for her and whoever she'd told. And since she lived in Shawn's jurisdiction, he'd have to give the order for her death.

Katrina found Anaïs in the kitchen, frying bacon, her unruly red hair floating in a cloud around her head. Anaïs's blue eyes narrowed as they found her sister-in-law.

"Do you have an iPhone charger?" Katrina asked. Her phone was dead. Her fingers itched to check her text messages.

"Shawn and I use Blackberries." She looked back down into the pan. Her tone hadn't exactly been friendly, but Katrina couldn't blame her. She'd been a third party in their marriage for too long. "And Annie's phone privileges are on pause, since she told us she was going to a study group and went to a party instead."

"That's too bad," Katrina said. It felt like the appropriate thing to say.

"You talking about me?" Annie—Antoinette Harris—glided down the stairs. She'd inherited her father's long black hair and her mother's pale complexion, her fingers delicate and her smile mischievous. "What are you doing here so early, Aunt Kat?" She looked at Katrina, who turned to look out the window _. Fuck, she could turn into a little me._

Shawn walked in, dressed in khaki pants and a polo shirt that squeezed tight around his forearms arms. The magic in his tissues and years of training meant he could, at forty-four, handle weights and take injuries that would destroy a man twenty years his junior. As an agent of Indigo, ninety percent of his work was spycraft: seeking Descendants who didn't register with their local Indigo station, putting names to the faces of people glimpsed in visions, keeping the public convinced that Indigo's purpose was monitoring the CIA's internal financial assets. But ten percent of his work was eliminating rogue Descendants who threatened the Seal, and Shawn excelled at one hundred percent of his job. All New York's Descendants, whether Indigo, civilian, or criminal, called him the 'Living Flame.'

The formidable Living Flame poured coffee into his travel mug. "Are you going home this weekend, Katrina?"

"Probably." The old family farm in the Adirondacks was a four hour drive from the city, but she hadn't been back in nearly a month. "Need to do some cleaning. My marathon's the second weekend in November. Five weeks left. Need to train."

"Rumor has it . . ." He paused and looked at Annie.

"I'm going to be an agent, Dad. You can talk about this stuff."

Katrina took a long, bitter sip of coffee. She didn't trust herself to comment.

"Rumor has it there's a valkyrie in town, asking questions about local history, especially the farm. I'm driving up tonight with everyone I can spare to investigate her. We'll be gone all weekend."

Katrina whistled. The Harris family had belonged to Indigo since its inception. The cache of Indigo documents in their basement vault went back three hundred years, and the only people who'd be interested in obtaining them were among the most dangerous people in the world. People who wanted nothing more than to overthrow the Seal and watch the world burn.

"How's the Universal Vision look?" Katrina asked. For a second-generation pyromancer, Shawn's clairvoyance was fairly weak. But every pyromancer in Indigo could foresee a threat to the Seal.

"Fuzzy. There's a low likelihood this woman will try to break the Seal any time soon." Shawn's dark eyes, twin to her own, narrowed. "That doesn't mean she's no threat. There's the vault . . . and our intelligence says this one might have a criminal record. If you go home, keep the doors locked. Stay out of the woods and hold on to your gun."

"Will do," she said, cheerfully. An image danced before her eyes: a furious valkyrie, transformed from human to monster, eight feet tall with feathered white wings, breaking into the old Harris House to rob the arsenal in the basement—and Katrina, her long black hair flying back off her face, golden-brown skin glowing with sweat, angled features set and deadly as she pumped the monster full of lead.

"I mean it, Katrina. You're not an agent anymore."

_They might reinstate me if I killed a valkyrie_. She shook off the fantasy. Indigo had already made one major exception when they'd hired her, a woman without magic. Considering why they'd fired her, she'd need to stop World War Three to get back in. Especially since this valkyrie didn't seem to pose an immediate threat to the Seal. "Any interesting cases this week?"

"Rogue aeromancer in Chinatown," Shawn said, wary. "Suffocated his wife and her lover. Anaïs fought him for control of the air while I got behind him."

Warm satisfaction bubbled up in the back of her throat—a diminished version of the rush that had come from stopping the bastards herself, but a rush still worth pursuing. "And? Any more new arrivals causing trouble? What's the word from the international branch?"

Anaïs broke in. "We also had to track down a teenage boy. He was planning to upload videos of him shapeshifting online. "

"Hard fight?" Katrina asked.

"Hard? Of course not. He was a child. And his punishment . . . was severe. Third time this year someone's tried that stunt."

Katrina knew Anaïs was trying to make her feel better about not being an agent any more. But Katrina wasn't naïve, like Annie—she knew being an agent meant getting your hands dirty. Most of the people who threatened the Seal were criminals, people who cared for no law, who used their magic to rape, murder, and steal. But some were teenagers, or seniors with dementia, or mentally ill. The work wasn't pretty. The world needed it, all the same.

She'd seen Shawn's face when the Universal Vision sharpened, indicating a breach of the Seal was near. He'd often described it to her: whole cities dissolving in chaos, werewolves openly chasing human prey, innocent Descendants murdered by suspicious neighbors and criminal Descendants killing hundreds, thousands. Ordinary spies took drastic action all the time. At least the agents of Indigo knew for sure their work upheld the greater good. _They fight in the shadows. They keep the peace. No need for glory, or even a 'thank you'_. Katrina liked her job well enough, but fighting to protect the name of one of New York's richest families felt tiny in comparison.

She wolfed down her bacon and wrapped the toast up in a napkin. "I should go."

She read the headlines off the newspapers of other subway passengers and learned the campaign was in deep shit.

Their offices were up on 88th and 3rd. Debris swirled against her legs as she walked, buoyed by the wind and kicked up by other pedestrians. Horns blasted. People shouted. Katrina's eyes darted all around the crowd, scanning for threats. Useless paranoia. She wasn't important enough for anyone to want to hurt her.

Unless you counted Ford Maxwell. The portly campaign manager awaited her just outside the elevator, his flabby white cheeks now boiling red. "Why didn't you answer your fucking phone?"

"Ran out of juice." She shrugged past him and pushed her way into the office. Rows of plastic tables filled the center of the room, each lined with phones and volunteers. Cheerful 'hello, sirs!' rose up over and over. Red, white, and blue 'Winters for New York, Winters for Governor,' posters covered the walls—in more than one case, covering cracks in the plaster.

"Are you an idiot?" Ford said. "Carry spare batteries. Herself is on the way! We need to have answers when she gets here!"

Katrina shared her cubicle with Nathan DeSoto, a campaign-finance expert Senator Winters had brought on board when her opponents accused her of taking illegal funds from the natural gas industry in March. Nathan had nose buried in his laptop out, gathering information on HIPAA.

"Thank god," he muttered when she sat. "Where were you last night? Ford's been looking for you all morning."

"New boyfriend," she lied, opening her laptop. "Who's our leak? The doctor? His staff?"

"Finding the leak's your job. I'm only here because the _Times_ hinted she used campaign funds."

"Fucking liberals." Katrina said. Well, at least her job wasn't boring.

Jerry Court stuck his head into their cubicle. The kid was a decade younger than the other staffers, but his poll-tracking algorithms had correctly predicted the outcome of every 2010 midterm race three months before the election, and Winters only hired the best. "We're fucked, guys!" He jerked his can of Red Bull at the ceiling.

"I can prove she used her own money, Jerry," Nathan said. "I've got the documents right here. We'll release them—"

"How she paid doesn't matter. What matters is that every publication in the world now knows Senator Winters had a boob job while in office. Have you checked Reddit this morning? They've posted before and after pictures. 'Senator Tinytits,' they're calling her. Frankly, I'm surprised it took so long for this to leak. It's obvious. Guess everyone figured she'd get her butt-ugly face touched up before worrying about her tits."

Katrina squeezed her pen. "Watch your mouth, kid. That's your employer you're talking about."

"Hey, I'm an opinions guy. And that's the general opinion of the Internet. Probably why she's trailing by three points in men eighteen to twenty-four. Whatever. Let's talk housewives, ages thirty to fifty. Core constituency. They had a few on _GMA_ this morning—wives of big donors. All bitching about how they had to explain what breasts were to their kids. One more scandal, and they'll throw their weight behind Prescott."

Katrina snorted. "Good luck getting our donors to support a man who loudly declares the Earth's four thousand years old."

"Voters are idiots, Katrina."

High heels clicked on the tiled floor. All heads jerked up. Nathan wiped crumbs off his shirt. Katrina opened a binder to look busy. Then Senator Emma Winters walked in, her blond bob swaying. "Jerry, remind me never to put you in front of a microphone." Behind her stood her son, Kyle Winters, who looked like he was about to puke all over his mother's expensive jacket.

He also happened to be Katrina's oldest friend.

"We're going to spin this." Ford walked in behind Senator Winters. "Got that, ma'am? It's going to work out fine. We blame Obamacare. Physicians making patient records public? It's fucking perfect. We go on the offensive."

"And when the soccer moms decide I'm the Whore of Babylon?"

"Just tell them the reason you did it," Kyle suggested. "It made you feel sexy."

The senator stared at her son like he was a badly trained puppy who'd chewed up her shoe. "Excuse me?"

Katrina imagined doing what Shawn had asked of her, saying _Ma'am, I'm an alcoholic, and I can't watch Kyle when he goes to party, which is a key part of my job_. No room remained in this campaign for the senator to indulge a hint of personal weakness, let alone indulge it in her personal lawyer. Instead, Katrina stepped forward. "Ma'am, what do you want me to do?"

"You? Get your ass to the clinic. I want the leaker fired. Gone. Out on the streets. Take Kyle with you. Everyone else, my office, now. We've got to strategize—press conference at noon!"

She moved like a hurricane, sucking up the other staffers in her wake, leaving Katrina and Kyle alone and staring at each other. His hazel green eyes were cloudy, unfocused.

"Missed you last night," he said, fighting past his hangover. "It was fun. Really." He'd just gotten back in the country from a three-month jaunt in Europe. Before he'd left, he'd been making a run at responsible adulthood—investing in businesses, doing his taxes, going to bed at ten. Something had clearly happened to make Fun Kyle resurface, and to a degree she hadn't seen in years. It was one thing to supervise him at family weddings and press conferences. Fun Kyle liked bars and clubs and trouble.

"Bet it was." Katrina gritted her teeth and hit 'print' on her laptop screen. "Let's go threaten a doctor."

The drive to Long Island took them past the old mosque on Atlantic Avenue. Katrina's mind flew to her mother. _She said she prayed the family power would pass me by. Why? Why would she do such a thing? Didn't she believe in me? Did she know what I'd become?_ The memory stung, even from a lifetime away.

"The weather's nice," Kyle said. "For October."

Katrina grunted.

Three news vans waited outside the Bellmonte Clinic. Katrina passed Kyle her attaché case and strode forward, a copy of the NDA in hand. A lawsuit became a bigger threat when people could see the contract they'd broken.

One journalist jumped when he saw Kyle. "Mr. Winters! How does it feel to have your mother's surgery public knowledge? Is the family embarrassed?"

"We are—" he started.

"No comment," Katrina said.

A woman thrust out a tape recorder. "Is it true she had breast cancer? Do you know how she paid? Was it with the donations from FuturePAC?"

"No comment," Katrina repeated, and grabbed the door handle. Locked.

The receptionist watched the proceedings from the other side of the glass. She held up the papers so he could see. "I'm Senator Winter's personal lawyer! Open up!"

He got up and walked into the back office. A second later, he returned and opened the door. She and Kyle darted inside.

"I'll get Dr. Fisher for you," said the receptionist.

The clinic's walls were soundproof. Katrina's mind relaxed, as it so rarely could in the city. Soft New Age music played. A fountain gurgled. _Stay on edge_. She toyed with the idea it had been laid out this way as a trap for sharp-witted lawyers. _They won't trap me. I'm Senator Winters' attack dog. Dangerous, deadly, not easily thrown by wind chime music and some lights on a dimmer._ It wasn't the career she'd dreamed of, but it was a career. _I could say I'm fighting for something good. Fewer gun laws, low taxes. A nice increase to security spending to keep Indigo afloat_.

Dr. Fisher turned out to be a short man with a greying beard and a warm smile: a classic TV grandfather, not some insidious threat to mankind. She handed him the papers.

"I'm so sorry about how all of this turned out," he said as they sat in the front room. He'd had the receptionist bring him and Kyle herbal tea; Katrina had declined. "I was out drinking with some friends last weekend and said some things I shouldn't about my clientele. Someone in the bar must have overheard. Mr. Winters, please convey my personal apologies to your mother."

Rarely in her line of work did Katrina ever encounter a poor liar; she'd forgotten how good it felt. _Like some stranger in the bar overheard and remembered the precise dates of the surgery, the type of implant, how she'd told her colleagues she was going home that weekend to read books with inner-city children._ The details were too specific; the leak had been deliberate

"I will," Kyle said.

"Apologies won't cover it," Katrina said. "You violated a contract when you leaked my client's medical information to the press. It's entirely within our rights to bring suit." _Why leak, though?_ A surgeon with Fisher's celebrity clientele pulled down millions per year. Whatever a reporter would pay for dirt on a politician's plastic surgery wasn't worth the lost revenue. _A political statement?_ People did crazy things for causes they believed in.

She set him up. "I didn't think Obamacare would destroy medical ethics that quickly."

"No," Fisher said. "Just my income."

_Strike on that._ "Looks like your income might be in line for another hit. You're liable for millions in damages. Not to mention what happens when your other clients realize you can't be trusted. You could lose everything, and it would serve you right—"

"Katrina!" Kyle glared at her, his curly brown hair tumbling into his eyes. She knew he meant well, but he'd skipped from job to job since he'd graduated college, insulated by his trust fund and family name—he didn't get that, sometimes, force was the answer.

She sighed. "Look, Dr. Fisher. I know you didn't leak the information. You're protecting an employee. There's fifteen of them." He'd posted a photo of the lot of them smiling on his clinic's website. "One of them leaked my client's medical records for cash. My client wants that employee fired, or we move forward with the lawsuit. Then all fifteen lose their jobs. And so do you."

"The employee in question is going through some tough times, Ms. Harris." He lowered his voice. "Drug issues. Her father passed away last year, and—"

"The offer stands. It is our only offer." Her guts had twisted themselves into little knots, but none of that turmoil came across in her voice. Perverse pride flickered in the back of her mind. _You can show no weakness. You can do your job._

"I don't get it," Kyle said. "How could someone—anyone—hurt another human being just to fuel an addiction? How could you sink that low?"

That time, Katrina flinched. Neither man noticed.

Dr. Fisher called his lawyer, resulting in a heated exchange of words when the lawyer urged him to take Katrina's offer. Then he called the employee in question: the afternoon receptionist, all of eighteen years old. Katrina waited alone for her arrival, skin itching. Kyle had decided he was too mad to confront the leaker and stormed off to wait at the nearest café.

Katrina waited by the reception desk, fiddling with her phone to keep her memories from spinning. It didn't work. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Anaïs, pulling a bottle from her hands. That had been at Thanksgiving dinner, four years ago. Katrina would have punched her sister-in-law if Anaïs hadn't sent a gust of wind to know her over. Annie had stepped back into the living room just as Katrina had stumbled to her feet.

Now the memory left her hands cold and trembling. _Alcoholism._ Around Shawn, it was easy for her to brush off his worries as the way a big brother might monitor a kid sister with a peanut allergy. Some of her law school friends knew. Hard to keep a secret when you got fired a month out from graduation and all but dragged into rehab at gunpoint. For them, she'd made it into a punchline: _Man, I sure did some crazy shit in my twenties. I was such an alcoholic._ For the past few months, the campaign had eaten up too much time for her to attend AA meetings or visiting her sponsor. She'd been fine. So far. But sitting here alone, remembering how she'd nearly shown the little girl she loved her despicable weakness, the word burned.

A short brunette walked in the door, her outfit professional and put-together. Katrina hoped she'd done something fun with the money, but knew it had probably gone to her dealer.

"Carla." Dr. Fisher stuck his head out of his office. "We need to talk."

The girl was in tears a minute later. Katrina explained her legal situation—Senator Winters wouldn't press any personal charges if the girl made a public apology—but she'd already known Carla wouldn't appreciate the reprieve. She denied stealing the senator's file, then screamed and cursed at both of them when Fisher said he knew she'd taken it. Katrina told her Fischer had tried to protect her, and the brunt of the snot-filled cursing was turned against her. She didn't mind. Fisher signed the termination papers, and Katrina made photocopies.

By the time she returned to Kyle and their car, every muscle in her body was as tense as if she'd been electrocuted. _Hello. My name is Katrina Harris, and I'm an alcoholic, and wherever I go, people get hurt._

"Do you want to go down to the range?" Kyle asked as they drove. "Shooting always helps me relax."

"Have to get back to the office." The range they frequented was all the way down in Jersey. Kyle himself went down three days a week. Katrina was a competent, experienced target shooter, but Kyle lived for his guns. He'd even made the 2008 Olympic shooting team. They'd made sure his biographic paragraph on the 'Meet Emma!' section of the campaign websites had photos of him holding a red, white, and blue gun blown up large and 'proud member of New York's LGBT community' written very small. "Feel free to drop me off and head down yourself. I don't want your mom thinking I'm slacking off."

"You mean, like me?"

The uncharacteristic bitterness in his tone made her sit straight upright in her seat. The belt tugged at her shoulder. "Kyle, I wasn't talking about you—you're her son, for fuck's sake, not her employee." Unbidden, a memory rose up of the senator telling off a staffer for being 'lazier than my goddamn son'—but she would have cursed out Jesus for not folding his shroud on Easter Sunday.

He sighed. Dark circles sat under his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just—remember when I told you about Bean Choice?"

"That artisanal coffee shop your friend Rob started?" He'd taken her there, once, and the coffee was good, if not worth eight dollars a cup.

"I borrowed ninety thousand dollars from my mother to fund it. And now it's going out of business." He ran his hands back through his curly hair and stretched out his long body. "What am I supposed to tell her?"

"The truth," Katrina said, knowing it was bullshit. Kyle looked at her like a lost puppy. She reached deeper, searching for some solution, some combination of words that could change the world. "I'm sorry, really sorry. Tough break. But what do you expect me to do? I'm more fucked up than you are!"

"Fucked up? You?" He shook his head. "You're like my mom. Strong, aggressive. You've got everything pulled together—you're _fine_. Me, I'm thirty-one years old and still living off my mom!"

_Katrina Harris: everything pulled together_. The thought warmed her, and she seized onto that warmth, trying to spread it through her whole body. What could she tell him? What would put-together-Katrina say?

"Relax, Kyle. Just relax and try not to think about it." It was bad advice, but she didn't have much more to say. "Try and have some fun." Fun Kyle she knew and understood. Depressed Kyle she didn't.

"Fun," he repeated. "Right. Let's have a little fun before the world implodes. One of my exes is throwing a birthday party tonight. Rented out a whole club." A sad smile flickered across his face. "We'll go, we'll dance, and then we can be responsible adults in the morning. Remember all that fun we had back in college? Let's convince ourselves we're still young."

She remembered those days keenly, the weekends he'd come up to visit her at NYU. They'd always spun out into crazy adventures—the time they stole the unicorn piñata, the time they convinced Belgian tourists in Time Square to lift your middle finger to hail a cab, that time they'd snuck into the music building and filled all the trumpets with glue. She'd always felt so light on her feet afterwards, convinced she could accomplish anything, magic or not. Surely that feeling hadn't only been the effects of the alcohol. _Those hours with Kyle had meant something. Meant something more that us being assholes._ She'd considered telling him about her drinking problem for years, now, but tainting those memories was the last thing she wanted to do.

Shawn would be on his way north by now, determined to flush out the valkyrie with the suspicious questions. Anaïs would have gone with him—she was an agent as well—and Annie would be staying with friends. His top agents would be gone as well, leaving behind only the few with emergency duties. Even if it struck him to search the future for her relapsing, there was no one he could send to stop her.

Besides, she could control herself. Indigo had trained her to resist torture. She could resist an open bar.

"I'd love to," she said, and meant it.

The rest of the work day passed in a blur—surprising, considering how frequently they'd work until midnight. Katrina emailed the senator's doctors, threatening legal action if they revealed anything, and send a similar list of threats to the _New York Post_ , warning them to stop snooping for information on the senator's father's suicide. Senator Winters herself dropped in once, between a firemen's brunch and visiting a public school. Unfortunately, it was when Kyle came in to loan Katrina a sequined vest.

"Dress code," he muttered. "It's a theme party. Mardi Gras."

Senator Winters stepped out of Ford's office. Her head snapped up at the sparkling sight. "Are you going to Maximum tonight?"

Katrina's eyebrows shot up. "Ma'am?"

"Don't play coy with me, Ms. Harris. I had a photo-op there this summer. For the magazine spread on promoting LGBT entrepreneurship. Kyle introduced me to the owner." She glanced at Kyle. "An absolutely charming man. Grew up with next-to-nothing in Spanish Harlem. Now he owns three nightclubs."

Kyle muttered something and dropped his head, his cheeks flaring red. Katrina reached for something to say. "Smart move, ma'am."

"It wasn't a move. Gay people invest in businesses and pay taxes. For Pete's sake, they want to get married and move to the suburbs! I'm not letting some religious fanatics drive off economically-conservative voters." Her tone softened. She reached over and squeezed Kyle's shoulder. "And besides, someone has to protect my son. Don't do anything stupid tonight."

He smiled, weakly. "Come on, Mom. When was the last time I did something stupid?"

The squeezing, familiar pressure of jealousy swelled in Katrina's lungs. I want a mom like that. All she had of her mother were flickering memories: a warm hug, hands bandaging a scraped knee, bright lines of fire twisting around her body. She and Katrina's father had been killed in action when she'd been nine years old. Shawn, ten years her senior, had known them well enough to tense with anger whenever their names came up. She didn't dare push for more information. Better a few memories of unconditional love and acceptance than let whatever Shawn had observed about them rise up and taint her perspective.

"Stay sober," Senator Winters told Katrina. "Bring the papers. No photos, no embarrassing stunts. Bring him home when he gets too drunk. We're one more minor scandal from a complete breakdown. Take care of my son."

"I always have, ma'am."

The _or else_ in her boss's voice lingered after she'd walked away.

"Stay sober?" Kyle muttered. "Hell, how are we supposed to have any fun now?"

Neon yellow ridges lined the club's molded plastic façade. Inside, light from a disco ball cast shining circles over the electric purple dance floor. 'Just Dance' blasted from the speakers. Katrina positioned herself along the far wall, away from the bar. She wore a blue sequined vest, a white leather miniskirt, and nothing else. Kyle had gone to say hi to the host.

"You look lonely, honey," said a girl draped in a rainbow feather boa. "Single?"

_Shit, she's young_. When Katrina had been her age, she might have started flirting with her, but leading people on could hurt. "Sorry. I'm straight."

"Too bad." She grabbed a sushi roll from the tray off a passing waiter and winked at him. "You've got nice legs."

"I'm a marathoner." She reached out with her chopsticks and snatched a piece of salmon nigiri. A few bad stomach-aches had left her wary of raw fish, but she could trust the quality here. Kyle's rich friends didn't half-ass anything. She dropped down on the couch next to the girl and put her legs up on a table. "Name's Katrina."

"Ruby." The girl looked her over, frowning slightly, as if trying to reconcile Katrina's golden skin and dark eyes with a name that belonged on a Dutch milkmaid. "You . . . holy cow, your legs."

_Shit._ She pressed her thighs together.

"Did someone do that to you?" Ruby lowered her voice to a whisper. "You don't have to put up with that shit. I know a place where—"

"It was an accident." She knew how obvious the lie was. Eleven peachy-red burns, some as round as Shawn's fingertips, some imperfect licks from her lighter. Two more marked her left wrist. She'd forgotten how the old scars might look. She'd asked him to do it. Older agents said the method sometimes worked to force latent magic to manifest. _He didn't abuse me, and I'm not crazy_. Of course, she'd kept it up well through her early twenties, ten years after she should have manifested. "Excuse me."

She jumped to her feet and crossed the room, fighting to balance on her stilettos, hating her costume. Showing skin for a party had been fun in college—when she'd had advanced notice, remembered to smear concealer over the burns—but she was thirty-two, a goddamn adult, and it all seemed stupid without a buzz. _Is anything fun anymore?_

She leant up against the bar. Music pounded in her ears. Temptation bit at her. _Fuck that. I'm strong._ So strong that her greatest achievement in life was getting some people fired and making it to age thirty alive.

If she'd OD'd back in 2005, would the world be any different? Shawn would have gotten over it by now. Anaïs would be glad her alcoholic sister-in-law wasn't throwing a wrench in her marriage anymore. Annie wouldn't even remember her. Annie would have been better off if Katrina's life had become a family cautionary tale.

"Hello, hello!" The speaker was the man coming up behind the DJ booth—a tall, pale Asian man wearing a thong and a hundred different necklaces. "Everyone having a good time?"

The crowd cheered. All the noise washed past Katrina, leaving her a separate part of the assembly, like the one dim bulb on a Christmas tree.

"I'd like to thank my good friend Kyle for coming out here tonight!" He motioned in the crowd, and Kyle jumped up behind him, his own necklaces swinging. They kissed. The crowd went wild, shouting, laughing.

Katrina couldn't remember the last time she'd kissed someone. She'd been born straight as a rail, and men fell in three categories for her: agents of Indigo, who knew why she'd been fired and avoided her, other Descendants who feared her ties to the agency, and normal men, who could never know the truth of what she was.

Behind the DJ booth, Kyle met her eyes and waved. He hopped down, and the crowd mobbed him. _Even he doesn't need me as a friend_. He might have claimed to be a screw-up, but everyone loved him. _And he doesn't have to worry if they're just his friends because his mom pays them._

"A Coke, please," she asked the bartender. Her hands needed something to hold.

He poured a can into a glass and handed it over. "Are you all right, miss?"

His patronizing tone made her want to scream. _You think I'm so fragile? That a woman born to defend mankind needs to be guarded from her own feelings by you, some nobody who happens to have a dick?_ "You don't know me. Fuck off." She moved away from the bar, picking up speed as he shouted at her back, squeezing the can.

"Katrina!" Kyle fell out of the crowd and wrapped his arms around her neck. The sweet scent of rum rose from his breath. His eyes looked even bigger with the eyeliner surrounding them; sweat glowed on his skin. "Let's go _do_ something!"

"You can't leave the club unless you're heading home. Your mom made that clear. If you want to leave, you better offer me a new job."

He pouted. "I'm broke, remember? Can we at least just dance?"

She rolled her eyes and lowered the can back onto the bar. He grabbed her wrist and tugged her towards the dance floor. _That could work for fun._

Her hand slid onto his lower back, steering him as they spun, twisting in time with the beat. In her four-inch stilettos, she towered over him. Their bodies pressed tightly together, sweat mixing. Kyle leaned backwards and she slid on top of him, her black hair sweeping out like a curtain. Energy rippled in her veins. _Just a little good clean fun._

A hand pressed on her shoulder. "Aiden!" Kyle shouted, and Katrina spun around. Their host smiled at her, holding out a hand. She took it and spun in close to him, shimmying in time to the music. His thong responded as her breasts brushed his necklaces. _Bats for both teams._

He leant forward. Even with her stilettos, he had a few inches on her. "May I?" She nodded and stuck her tongue in his mouth. Aiden moaned and sucked on it. She tasted alcohol in his mouth. It lit her neurons on fire. _Too late for me, Shawn!_ Giddy pleasure washed over her.

"Bad, Katrina, bad!" Laughing, Kyle shoved his face in-between theirs, flicking out his tongue as if a kiss could somehow be turned into a three-way. She nipped at it, and he reeled backwards. "Cooties! Someone call nine-one-one, I've got girl cooties on me!"

She bent over. Her stomach ached from laughing. Aiden clapped, slowly, and Kyle pounded her on the back. _Well, a little good dirty fun never hurt anyone._

"Katrina!"

The clipped, disapproving tone echoed in her ears, striking her like a mallet on a bell. Damn. She straightened to find a short, thin white woman with a greying bun standing near the bar. A sweater and slacks made Lisa Franklin stand out like a sore thumb. _Retirees. I forgot Shawn could have called in a favor from one of them_.

The past few years had softened her face, but Katrina would know those moist blue eyes anywhere. She'd seen them every day in training and every day after Indigo had sent her back to Washington. They watched her from the balcony as she sparred, waiting for her to fail. Katrina had passed all her classes in spy craft with flying colors, but agents worked in the field, and they needed to be able to take on a powerful Descendant with their bare hands, if necessary. So she'd spent hours bulking up in the gym, learned three different martial arts, and chopped off her hair so no one could grab it or light it on fire.

Lisa thought the best advice she could give a female agent was to get a desk job, now, before a werewolf rips out your uterus and no man wants you. Practically, Indigo had always used female agents. Women had always formed the backbones of intelligence networks, and magic made both sexes equally strong. But Katrina _embraced_ the work, despite lacking magic. She did not fit in Lisa's worldview.

Lisa had made Katrina one of her projects, selflessly sacrificing hours of paperwork to stalk her, assuring Katrina that there was nothing wrong with wanting to protect humanity—women were made to protect, to guard their children with their lives—but Katrina would never be as good as a magic user—it's just a fact, honey—and she should find a nice normal man and have his babies, and everything would be just fine. Looking at her, Katrina glimpsed the sterile walls of a hospital, smelled disinfectant, felt a thick cast around her leg. Lisa stood above her. _I told you this would happen. Why can't you be grateful you don't have magic?_

Indigo had recalled her to desk duty until she recovered, and never got around to declaring her fit for action. A year and a half she'd spent as an analyst, hearing sloppy, inattentive, but _oh-so magical_ agents be praised to the high heavens. _Miriam Arnold_. Miriam's flashy sparring style and elegant control of flames made her an Indigo darling—never mind that she'd never caught a single criminal. A liquor-fueled Katrina had held a knife to her neck at a Christmas party, just to show she was strong enough, that she could kill a Descendant if she had to.

They'd fired her on the spot, of course, but she'd realized by then Indigo would never, ever, give her a posting where she could prove herself. Lisa had escorted her from the building. _This is for the best. You can't change what you are, Katrina. You'll be happier as just a normal woman_.

Utter bullshit.

"Shawn sent me to look after you," Lisa said. "He told me about your . . . little problem. What's wrong with you, Katrina? Why can't you just behave? Like a normal adult?"

Rage boiled in her stomach. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with me." She grabbed a lonely shotglass from the bar and downed it. It burned, and the burn filled her with warmth. "Tell Shawn he can go fuck himself. I do what I want."

Lisa paled. Aiden tapped Katrina's shoulder. "Do you know this woman?"

"Yes. She wasn't invited." She smiled so wide she thought her face might split.

Aiden motioned for the bouncers. _Oh, the irony_. They each took one of Lisa's arms and marched her towards the door. _Passive aggressive in, passive aggressive out_.

"Your brother babysits you more than you babysit me," Kyle said. He waved at the bartender. "More Mai Thais!"

Hers tasted like freedom.

The next two hours passed in a blur. Kyle's hand rested constantly on her shoulder, but a wonderful lightness filled her chest, tugging her upwards like a balloon on her wrist. She danced until her feet blistered and laughed until her lungs hurt. Why had she denied herself this for so long?

"So you're a Republican?" Aiden asked. Both of them were leaning on the bar for support. Katrina gripped a cocktail glass full of red and orange ice that swirled as she flicked the paper umbrella from side to side. "I should call the bouncers on you."

"You'd have to throw out Kyle, too." She pointed across the floor, to where three men had picked Kyle up and started passing him over the heads of the crowd. "Believe me. Emma Winters is the best canni . . . canda . . . person in the race." She hiccupped. Her thoughts swirled like the colors in her glass, momentarily incapable of venturing anywhere even remotely unpleasant.

"If I don't vote for Roberts, they'll cut up my bi card."

"Nah. Jay Roberts is scum. Trust me."

Aiden didn't look like he did.

"Are we talking about Roberts?" Kyle asked, staggering up to the bar. His eyeshadow had started to run from all his sweat. "Asshole. You know, his campaign headquarters are only a block away. At street level. Let's go piss on his walls."

"Agreed," Katrina said. Whenever the name 'Roberts' came up at work, it meant headaches and staying up until midnight to counter whatever new dirt he'd come up with.

"You two aren't going anywhere but home," Aiden said. "Let me call you a cab."

_Nope_. She sloughed her drink on him.

"Bitch!" he shouted.

Some part of her thought that might have been rude, but she couldn't feel concerned. "I make my own decisions." She threaded her elbow through Kyle's and decided she'd never liked the pair of stilettos she'd abandoned on the floor. "And I'm not drunk."

The cold sidewalk soothed her blistered feet as she and Kyle staggered along. Autumn wind hit her bare skin, but the cold felt miles away. She had her own little fire glowing in her stomach to keep her warm. A man huddled in a doorway they passed suggested she should let him squeeze her ass. She flipped him off. Kyle laughed.

Roberts' headquarters were another block away. Posters of his smiling face hung in the well-lit windows. Their piss steamed as it hit the walls. Kyle managed to direct a stream on one of the posters.

"Let's go!" she said, pulling up her skirt, giddy energy rushing through her veins.

The police caught up with them a block away and handed out a pair of pink tickets. They made it into a taxi before Kyle's phone started buzzing. His face turned the color of a piña colada.

"There were still staffers at work," he whispered. "They took photos and tweeted them from the campaign account."

Something told Katrina this was bad. "Take us to Brooklyn," she told the driver, suddenly aware she might not be welcome at the staffers' apartment. She hoped she could remember where Shawn kept his spare key.

Light forced itself between her eyelids. Katrina sat up, unwillingly, and rubbed her eyes. Gunk and eyeshadow covered her hands. Something wet touched her leg.

She'd thrown up in Annie's bed.

_Oh, no. Oh, no_. Heat filled her cheeks. Her stomach churned. She threw up again, soaking Annie's old teddy bear in vomit. _Oh, no_.

She started crying as she dragged the sheets down to the washing machine. Shame she could handle, shame she could hide. Crying was so ordinary, such a mark of weakness—but she was weak, wasn't she? _Just a stinking alcoholic. A human wrecking ball. Fucking up my family, hurting everyone I touch_.

She knocked over some of Annie's comics as she stumbled back into the room to grab the comforter. Hesitantly, she picked one up.

In the 1930's, some crafty bastards had used the medium to start telling stories about men with supernatural strength and agility. Indigo had shut them down fast, but co-opted the medium to record stories of its own greatest triumphs. Katrina's father had brought new ones home for her every week. She'd devoured them like candy, drinking in the message: the noblest act of all was to bend one's magic to the protection of mankind and the protection of the Seal.

Her fingers lingered on the newsprint. The story was new, but the themes remained familiar: a brave warrior fighting selflessly to protect a group of children from a crazed Descendant who wanted them dead. She'd imagined herself filling those heroic shoes, as a child— _you goddamn drunk, you're so weak, you'll never be that that warrior_. She dropped the comic before her tears could ruin it. Indigo made them fragile on purpose.

She couldn't bring herself to look at her phone until noon, after she'd showered, fixed the bed, thrown up again, and swiped some clothing from Anaïs. Fifty new texts and emails awaited her. The media wanted interviews, her coworkers hated her guts, and the one she dreaded was at the bottom.

_Fired. For the third fucking time_. It felt like a punch in the gut. _What did you think would happen, Katrina? You think you deserve a job? You're the one who keeps screwing stuff up!_ Part of her wished she'd told Winters about her drinking problem back when she'd been hired. The other part suspected Winters wouldn't have hired her if she'd known.

The world spun around her. Nothing felt quite real. She sat on the sofa and buried her head in her hands, but being alone with her thoughts was too much to bear. She flipped on the TV. Five minutes later, a picture of her with a blurred circle over her genitals popped up on CNN. She flipped it off.

Her phone rang. Senator Winters. She ignored it and poured herself a glass of Shawn's orange juice. Then she threw up in the sink. Senator Winters called her again. She let it go to voicemail.

Then came a third call.

Katrina realized that the solitude she was cherishing did not contain Kyle, who she vaguely remembered stuffing into Shawn and Anaïs's bed.

She stumbled up the stairs. The bed was empty.

"Shit." She wanted to curl up into a ball and vanish. Or find some way to turn back time.

Her phone rang again. This time, she picked up.

"Katrina?" Senator Winters gasped. "Where's my son?"

Kyle had left a note at his mother's hotel: 'I'm sorry'. Tears streaked the ink. He'd tossed his phone out on the pavement. His mother still had access to his bank account, which said he'd rented a car. The police had been contacted. They'd flagged his car speeding through a tollbooth, streaming northward. Officers in Hamilton County had also been alerted. Katrina had called and tried to describe the old hiking trails as well as she could, but she doubted they could find it.

The Winters had bought the better portion of the Harris land back in the eighties, when her father had sold it to pay off his debts. They'd build a mansion on the hill and spent every summer there. Kyle had been the only kid her age in a five mile radius. _And if it hadn't been for that connection, you miserable drunk, you'd never have gotten hired by Winters to begin with_. She and Kyle had spent months wandering those woods. If Kyle was feeling . . . sad . . . he'd go to their spot.

Shawn had left his car behind. She grabbed it and raced north. The radio kept telling her that the Winters' campaign was dropping in the polls. One conservative commentator shouted about how you couldn't trust a woman who couldn't even control her family, suggesting that maybe Tea Party Prescott was the proper heir to the cause. It might have meant something, or it might have meant nothing. Senator Winters' campaign could still recover . . . _oh, Kyle, we don't know what'll happen, it's too soon to blame yourself!_

Especially when what had happened was all her fault. _You filthy dirty addict_. She'd promised Senator Winters she'd watch out for Kyle. She'd had every reason in the world to stay sober. Hadn't she grown out of ruining her life? _Your picture on the news. You're the joke of the 2012 election. The Monica Lewinsky who can't get laid_. She'd never get another job in politics. Maintaining the family house and renting the apartment in the city had wiped out her savings. Shawn would give her money, but it'd eat at his marriage even more. Did he hate her for all the trouble she caused him? She couldn't blame him if he did.

The sun set quickly. Tall hills covered in fall leaves vanished into the grey sky. Shadows wrapped around her, as if she was driving into a tunnel that grew deeper every mile.

Four hours passed. She made a beeline for the Winters' mansion. The three story Tudor-style house loomed over the valley below. Lights glowed from the Harris house across the lake. Kyle's rental car sat in the driveway. The front door hung open. Katrina left Shawn's car running and sprinted inside. "Kyle! Are you in here?"

Warm light shone from the living room. Inside, she found the gun safe hanging open. Kyle's Glock was missing.

_Oh, no_.

Gravel spun from beneath her tires as she drove to the trailhead at seventy miles per hour. Anaïs's too-small sneakers pinched her feet as she sprinted up the hill. "Kyle!" The dense pines wove tight nets around the trails. An old chunk of slate that used to support a bench caught at her foot. Her lungs burned by the time she reached the lightning-scorched trunk. Her eyes strained to see through the night as she turned left onto the old deer track. "Kyle! Come on! _Kyle_!" Thorns whipped out and tore her pant leg. She gasped, but kept moving—and then she crested the bluff, and saw Kyle's silhouette against the moon, and froze.

He was pressing the gun to his chin.

"Hi." She kept her voice low, like she was trying to tempt a stray dog. "Can we talk?"

"There's nothing much to say, is there?" He didn't turn to face her. His eyes remained locked on the moon. "And don't say it'll get better. It won't."

She took a tentative step forward, aware she was walking on a tightrope. Her hands shook. "Why do you feel these way?"

"I've failed at everything I've ever tried to do, and now I'm ruining up my mom's life, too! Don't try to tell me it's not my fault, because the common denominator is always me!" A sob escaped along with the words. He lowered his voice. "You should go. I don't want you getting in trouble on my account. That'd be just like me, right?"

_This is all your fault. You failed him. Failed him mom, failed yourself . . . so many fucking times. You'll never be an agent again. Never have any power. Never be who you wanted to be_. And here was Kyle, alone, burning with pain, and she would give anything to make it better.

"What if I go with you?" she blurted out.

Now he turned to face her. His eyes widened. "You can't! You have—"

"I have nothing, okay? No job, no money. My family hates me. You think you hurt your mom? I'm an alcoholic, and I can't control myself. I hurt everyone and everything I touch. You're the only friend I've got left, Kyle. I don't want to live in a world without you!"

He reached out and took her hand. "Kat . . ."

"I'll go first." Tears streamed down her cheeks. "Remember those old games we used to play? You always let me go first."

He didn't say a word as he passed her the gun.

She gripped the cold metal. The hole in the end of the barrel drew her eyes like a magnet. _No more hurting people. One quick flash of pain and everything's okay forever_. She could pivot and throw it off the overlook before he could stop her. Was that why she'd asked for it? Would she really go through with it?

Her gun hand went up as she gripped Kyle's wrist. Her heart fluttered like a canary trying to escape a cage in a coal mine.

A shot echoed from deeper in the woods.

The spell broke. Years of drills took over, and she dropped into a shooter's crouch. Kyle reached for the gun. A thousand revelations fell on her head. She threw the gun from the overlook. It vanished in the overgrown shadows of the cliff.

"How could you—"

She pivoted and slapped him, hard. _Shawn, Shawn's in the woods_. The valkyrie must have run. Indigo was chasing a fugitive. Bullets would fly, and they didn't care who they hit. "We need to get off the mountain, now!" Her hand tightened around his wrist. He didn't resist as she dragged him down the trail.

Katrina scrambled through the bracken. The trail had vanished in the darkness, leaving her plummeting freely downhill, arms wheeling, nearly tripping over every hidden root and stone. Dogs barked through the trees. Another gun went off.

A running figure stumbled out of the trees and collapsed in front of them. "Help me!" gasped a female voice.

_This one's too short to be a valkyrie_. Katrina paused. The woman's breaths were hitching, uneven. The darkness concealed most details, but the woman's hands clearly cupped her stomach.

"Were you shot?" Katrina asked.

"Yes."

_Stomach wound_. She'd die if she didn't reach a hospital soon. Unless— "Are you a Descendant?" The body of a high-generation Descendant could mend the wound if the bullet was removed. _If she's a Descendant, then she got shot for a reason_.

"A what?" the woman gasped.

_Just a hiker. An accident_. She stripped the woman's jacket off and pressed it against the wound while Kyle stared in horror. "Hold this steady. We'll get you to my car. It's just at the bottom of the hill. Can you stand?"

The woman nodded.

"Good. I'll drive you to the hospital." She turned to Kyle, who watched with his eyes open wide. "Kyle, come grab her arm." He didn't move. She raised her voice. "Kyle!"

That shook him out of his stupor. He ducked under the woman's shoulder, lifting her up. Katrina took the other shoulder.

A deep howl rolled through the trees, and the injured woman shuddered violently. "Wolves?" Kyle gasped.

_Indigo brought a werewolf to hunt. With the moon nearly full_. Transforming now was risky enough. The scent of blood might send them into a frenzy. It risked lives. It risked the Seal. _What makes one lone valkyrie that important?_ There were few enough valkyries left in the world, and those remaining tended to work as muscle for hire. _Who does this one work for?_

The headlights of her car glowed from the trailhead. Katrina's heart leapt at the sight. The engine still purred—she'd left the keys in the ignition. Quickly, she and Kyle lowered the injured woman into the back seat and slid into the front seat. Katrina gripped the wheel.

"Keep the pressure on the wound!" she ordered Kyle. He twisted in his seat. Dark shapes appeared in the rear-view mirror. Katrina stepped on the gas.

Gravel flew from under the tires. The car shot forward. She flipped on her high beams, the light threatening to expose any Descendants who got too close. Even werewolves in moonlight could remember exposure meant execution.

The shadows paused at the trailhead. Katrina whipped the car down the road towards town. Something wet dripped down her chin—sweat, or a teardrop? She couldn't tell.

"Katrina," Kyle whispered. "You can't tell anyone what nearly happened up there, okay? I'm fine. Really, I just got carried away."

_He had a gun to his head. He needs help_. She'd leave him and the woman at the hospital, fill the tank with gas, and vanish. Indigo had taught her well. She could stop hurting her family without . . . doing that other thing. She wasn't crazy. She'd stopped herself. "Just keep her conscious. Talk to her."

"What's your name?" Kyle asked.

"Dr. Phyllis Harper."

"You know anything about treating gunshot wounds, Dr. Harper?" Katrina asked.

"Not a . . . medical doctor," she gasped. "Could you open a window? I need air."

Kyle rolled down a window in back. Katrina stiffened, instinctively. She'd heard too many stories in Indigo about things thrown through windows.

"I don't think I'm going to make it," Dr. Harper gasped.

"You will." Katrina turned down a side road that ran between two farms. The quickest route to the hospital. "I won't let you die."

"Please, let me use your phone. I haven't spoken to my mother in ten years. I have to . . ." and she broke off, coughing.

"Here." Katrina reached back and handed over her phone. Dr. Harper's features stood out in the backseat's lights: Asian, with olive skin and wide, worried brown eyes, around five years Katrina's junior. "But you're not going to die. The hospital's two minutes away. Just keep talking!" A glorious sense of purpose had awakened with her agent's instincts. She wouldn't let this woman die.

"Mom? I've been shot. Some hikers are driving me to the hospital, but I'm afraid . . ." Her wavering, sad tone turned to steel. "Portsmith Road. Just passed two barns. Urgent!" The doctor forced herself up and flung the glowing phone through the open window.

Katrina's veins ran cold. _We've been had_. She slammed her foot down on the gas. The car shot forward. Dr. Harper screamed in pain.

"The fuck?" shouted Kyle. "What—what—"

A white shape plummeted out of the sky and hit the road on the other side of a small hill. A woman walked out of the dip, eight feet tall and dressed in heavy black body armor, holding an assault rifle. White wings, each twenty feet long, extended from her shoulders, blocking out the stars.

Katrina braced herself. _Car versus valkyrie_.

"There's a person there!" Kyle lunged forward and pulled the emergency break.

Katrina flew backwards. Her head slammed into the headrest. Stars flickered across her vision. Gravity shifted all around her as the car spun sideway. Her seatbelt dug into her shoulder, holding her down. Lights spun.

Something huge slammed into the side of the car. Kyle gasped. Katrina looked over to see him lying limp in the seat.

"You bitch!" She grabbed the old sunglass case wedged in the CD deck and pulled out Shawn's butterfly knife.

The window behind her shattered. Strong hands grabbed the back of her neck. She felt a pinch. Spinning as fast as she could with the seatbelt on, Katrina drove the blade into the valkyrie's thick wrist. Blood spurted over her clothing. She pulled the knife free and tried to strike again, but the pale skin blurred into five wrists, and Katrina's arm felt as heavy as lead. _I've been drugged_.

"She's the one," Dr. Harper said, and the world went black.

**Part 2: The Mole**

Katrina came to on a hard concrete floor. Fuck. She'd done it again. Two nights in a row. _You idiot. You know you can't be around alcohol. When you're stressed_ . . . and then she realized her hands had been strapped together with a plastic tie. The butterfly knife had been lodged between them. A torn piece of printer paper had been impaled on the blade, reading 'Good Try'.

She forced herself to sit up. They'd locked her in a dusty, shuttered office. No computer equipment, no phone. The last few years hadn't been kind to this part of the state, and abandoned offices dotted the countryside. The valkyrie and Dr. Harper had prepared tranquilizers and secured a safe house. Whatever they were after, they had money and organization behind them.

Sunlight dripped through the shutters. The windowpane was old, real glass. If she got her hands at the right angle, she might be able to smash through the windowpane. But she couldn't leave without Kyle.

_Where is he?_ A spot in the dust besides her marked where a slightly larger body had rested. Icy fear ran through her veins at the thought of what they might do to him. She'd asked Dr. Harper if she was a Descendant. She'd revealed she was Unsealed. They could logically conclude both she and Kyle were agents planted by Indigo, and she'd heard stories about what happened to agents captured by criminals.

Once, she'd been told, the world's civilian Descendants had accepted Indigo as a necessity. They'd trusted its agents to keep their communities hidden and safe, not only from normal people who might react badly to learning about magic, but criminals who used magic for evil purposes. But the world's population had grown, much faster than Indigo's resources, and it was all Indigo could do to keep videos of magic use off the internet. Without the constant presence of agents, the world's Descendants had grown unruly. Robbed their neighbors, raped local girls, started lethal turf wars. _Nairobi. Baghdad. Los Angeles_. Every time, agents of Indigo had to put down dozens of Descendants before the violence ended and the Seal was deemed safe. Despite Indigo's best efforts to control communications between Descendants, they'd begun forming groups, and certain names that were only ever whispered in Indigo offices were being whispered a lot more often. _The Valves_.

Footsteps sounded outside the door. She rolled to her feet, trying to maneuver her bound hands enough to get a good grip on the knife's handle, but her fingers slipped and the blade dropped from her hands. Quickly, she pressed herself flat against the wall beside the door, arranging her wrists so her fists pointed outward.

The door opened. She held her breath.

"Katrina? Are you in here?"

_Kyle!_ Her heart jumped, but she didn't move. The valkyrie might be behind him with a gun.

"Katrina?" His voice relaxed. He sounded almost _happy_. Could he still sound like that with a gun pointed at his head?

_You can't protect him hiding behind a door. If you're the one they want, they might let him go_. If she flung all her weight against the window, she might make it out. _Come on, you worthless alcoholic. For once in your life, do something for someone else!_

"Kyle." She stepped out, bracing herself for the worst.

His pants were covered in mud and his shirt was torn from last night's dash through the forest. But aside from a bruise on his forehead, he appeared unharmed—and he was smiling. _Did they drug him?_

"We need to get out of here," she whispered. "Now. These people are up to their neck in some real bad shit. We—"

He laughed. "Drama queen. Relax, will you? They apologized. It was just a misunderstanding. They grabbed us by mistake."

She stared at him. _Is he crazy?_ He looked different. It wasn't his relaxed pose or his easy laugh. She knew those well. But the fervor in her eyes reminded her of when a fellow rehab patient had first found Jesus.

"Phyllis—Dr. Harper— she works for a defense contractor. She's designing biological weapons for the government. There's this luddite group of religious fanatics out to destroy her work. They tried to kill her last night. Borghild thought we were with them."

_Religious fanatics_. The only religion Indigo cared about was your devotion to the Seal. _Tread carefully, Katrina. Find out what they said_. "Who's Borghild?"

"The tall blond lady. Dr. Harper's bodyguard."

The valkyrie. "Did you notice anything odd about her?" she asked, tensing.

"Odd? Sure, she's buff, but she's a professional bodyguard. They get hired on size. Does it matter?"

He hasn't been Unsealed. Whatever he'd glimpsed of the valkyrie in her warrior form must have been written off by his brain as a brief delusion before a dizzying crash. _There's still a chance we might get out of this alive_. If she could just convince him . . .

Kyle was glowing. Radiant. "Dr. Harper made me a job offer. It's a way out, Katrina. New state. New name. New body."

"New body?" she asked. "What does that mean?" Whatever the hell they might want with the son of one of the most powerful women in the state, Katrina didn't want to know. "You think these people have your best interests at heart? They're dangerous. People are shooting at them."

"In New York," Kyle said. "Their facility's in northern Alaska. They've got armed guards and shit. The weapon Dr. Harper built genetically modifies people, to make them into the best soldiers possible. She wants me as a test subject. Of course she's got my best interests at heart. Marksmen like me aren't easy to find." He swallowed. "I told them . . . well, I told them you were a good shot, too. Dr. Harper will explain the details. Please come with me. I need you. And you need to get out."

_Same old Kyle, always asking for himself first_.

The valkyrie, Borghild, rounded the corner. "The doctor is losing her patience. Come on, Ms. Harris."

Kyle's encouraging smile seemed to wash right past her as she followed Borghild down the hallway. Her mind spun. _Kyle told them my name_. Katrina Harris was a common enough name, but only one Katrina Harris with Arab coloring would be out in those woods when Indigo was hunting. _I helped Dr. Harper. I could convince her I had nothing to do with the shooting, or even that I came out to stop Shawn_. Would they let a poor, powerless woman go? Probably not. _Alaska_. Was this company Kyle mentioned real? Indigo forbade any kind of independent research on magical genetics. What had Dr. Harper discovered? A company that hired valkyrie bodyguards most likely belonged to Descendants, wealthy ones. Had it really established a base on American soil? How had they kept that hidden from Indigo?

The ghost of a plan appeared in her head, tantalizing and warm. Indigo _needed_ to know.

They turned the corner. Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and slammed her into the wall. Katrina gasped as her forehead smacked into the concrete.

"Indigo bitch," Borghild hissed in her ear. "You think you're strong?" Her hands wrapped around Katrina's neck, her skin warm and clammy. Borghild's weight pinned her against the wall. Katrina squirmed, kicking backwards. Even when her foot connected, it felt like kicking a refrigerator. Pressure squeezed on her windpipe.

"Enough." Dr. Harper said.

Borghild released her neck. Katrina scrambled away, panting. "I didn't need your help!" she spat at the doctor. _Strength_. Borghild had it, Katrina didn't, and a wave of blind jealousy left her imagining sinking Shawn's knife into the woman's gut. _I'll show you strength, valkyrie bitch_. With her magic, it might even take Borghild a whole day to recover.

The doctor stood at the end of the dark hallway, wearing sweatpants and a tight exercise shirt that revealed a thick bandage wrapped around her soft stomach. Her face was dead pale and she swayed on her feet, confirming she had no magic of her own.

"You should be resting." Borghild said to Dr. Harper, concerned.

"I find it hard to relax when you're left alone with a former agent. I'd prefer her alive."

She waved Katrina into a side room. The desks and chairs had been pushed against the walls, and the air smelled clean, not musty. Dr. Harper reclined on a couch in the center of the room, her cool beige skin pale from blood loss. Borghild filled up the doorway. An empty chair waited for Katrina. Her instincts screamed at her as she forced herself to sit and smile.

"Are you okay?" she asked Dr. Harper, letting the words tumble out. "I was so worried—"

Borghild scoffed. "Worried? An agent?"

"I've received proper medical attention," Dr. Harper said, quietly. "And she's no longer an agent. Second generation Descendant. Powerless from birth. Hired because of nepotism. Fired over a drunken brawl at a Christmas party."

Katrina winced. _Do they have a mole in Indigo?_ Christ, she needed to tell Shawn about this! But first she needed to get out, and the excuse she'd quit Indigo for moral reasons had just been shot down. _Be careful. Too nice and they'll know you're trying to play them. Be mad. Be irrational. Give them handholds. Convince them they can manipulate you_. If she failed, she doubted Dr. Harper would restrain her bodyguard a second time.

"I wasn't much of an agent." Bitterness came easily to her voice. "You, Dr. Harper, would make an excellent agent. Bleeding out and still remembering your lies."

"It's easier to lie when you're bleeding out. Pain masks signs of discomfort. And most of what I said was true."

"You said you weren't a Descendant." How else would a powerless woman become Unsealed? Dr. Harper had to be someone like her.

"I'm not," Dr. Harper said. "Not in the way you think, at least. The Valves are promiscuous and ancient. I'm sure I'd find one if I traced my lineage far enough. Of course, magic tends to fade from a bloodline with time, unless one does what Indigo families do." She paused. "You're aware that—"

"I am," Katrina said, curtly. It wasn't a secret, but it didn't fit well with Indigo's modern attitudes. Her grandparents had been half-third cousins; her mother had been her father's half-great-great aunt. It happened. Katrina glared at Borghild. "And you must be 'Mom'."

Borghild popped a stick of gum in her mouth and chewed hard. "Mother, sister, daughter." Though valkyries needed sexual intercourse to stimulate conception, each new valkyrie was a clone of their mother. "I am a sword. I live to be swung by my master." Her voice held a heavy Norwegian accent.

"Who's your master?" She shaped the words into a sarcastic throwaway. Lives probably depended on provoking the answer. If Dr. Harper wasn't a Descendant, either she was smart enough to discern the truth herself and accept the reality of magic, or smart enough that a Descendant would risk Indigo's wrath to break the Seal and tell her the truth. The criminal who employed these women had power, money, and influence to spare. She needed a name.

"Not you."

"The feds? Like you told Kyle? That's bullshit. Anyone can see that—"

"Desperation blinds people." Dr. Harper sat up, wincing as her bandages moved. "Kyle told us what happened up on the ridge last night. I gave him hope. The only hope he's felt in a long time. You wouldn't want to take that away from him. He thinks he's getting a new life, with a powerful patron to guard him and meaningful work to do. He is. Not in the form he expects, but he is. Most of my fellow scientists labor under the same delusion. They'll learn the truth when our work is complete."

"You shouldn't be telling her this," Borghild said. "Find another candidate. A Russian. Anyone."

"My orders are—"

"She is one of them!"

"I know who she is." Dr. Harper's voice filled with ice. "I know her better than you do. I might even know her better than _she_ does. You aren't the only person who Indigo has hurt. Leave us."

Borghild's lips narrowed as she stepped outside and closed the door.

"Why did you come to New York?" Katrina asked.

Dr. Harper studied her for a long moment. "Do you remember me?" From her tone, she sounded like a professor giving an oral exam. Katrina had always loved those—the key was telling them whatever they wanted to hear. Problem was, she had no clue what this woman wanted.

"I remember you from last night," she said, studying the doctor. She had a wide-angled jaw tapering into a small chin, full lips, a short, wide nose, triangular brown eyes. Her black hair brushed her shoulders. Indigo had taught her to look past superficial differences, to watch for any signs of magic, any indication the target posed a threat to the Seal. Dr. Harper could have been anyone.

Dr. Harper lifted her chin. "Boston. 2003."

_Fuck_. She'd still been working for Indigo back then, scouring the city for dangerous Descendants, only to find the city's witches worked as accountants and the city's New Age shops in the hands of powerless hippies. The most magic she ever saw was back at the Boston station, where her fellow agents used pyromancy to heat coffee and witchcraft to file papers. She'd started drinking just to cope with the envy. It hadn't helped that the majority of her undercover work had been to search the city's bars for Descendants among college students. She'd spent eight months in the city and left with two months worth of memories. None of them included a young Asian woman with an unhealthy interest in the area Katrina's own unhealthy interest lay. If her memories gave her anything, any flicker of a detail, she could have faked the knowledge. She had nothing. "It was nine years ago. Nothing catches my mind."

"Nothing at all?" The cool edge in Dr. Harper's voice slipped.

_You damn alcoholic_. The woman who held Katrina's life in her hands hated her, and Katrina couldn't even remember why. _Why the hell am I so weak? Why do I always screw myself up?_

But a chance to succeed sat right in front of her. _Get information. Make her talk. Get her sympathy_. Indigo had never offered her an opportunity like this. If she escaped with useful intelligence, something related to a plot to hurt Indigo or destroy the Seal, she could strike a bargain to get back the only job she'd ever loved.

"I don't remember much of the time I spent in Boston," she confessed. Her heart raced, fueled by cool adrenaline. This was the work she lived for. "I drank myself half to death every night. The things they made me do . . . it gets to you. I was fresh out of college when I joined up. My parents had pushed me towards it all my life. What the hell did I know? But there's no honor or glory in hunting down kids or following around families. I'm glad they fired me before I got in too deep."

The speech was nearly word for word what Chuck Danby had shouted across the D.C. office before walking out. _He never had the backbone for this work. So he decided that we were wrong, instead of realizing that he was weak_. She'd seen how guilt affected agents, how empty Shawn and Anaïs acted every time their missions involved kids, the horror in Shawn's eyes whenever he watched the Universal Vision. _War. Massacres in the streets. Thousands of innocents killed. We do as we must_.

"You say you want to bring down Indigo?" Katrina continued. "Let me help you. Everyone says Kyle's mother will be president one day. There's thousands of other people you could use for your work. I know agents. He knows dozens of people in the government. Let us help each other."

She paused, watching Dr. Harper's face. _Let us go. Take the bait_.

"You could attack Indigo from the inside," Dr. Harper mused. "They'd never expect that. Enough planning, and we could arrange for Director Fairfax to be assassinated. Find whichever congressmen Indigo use to prop up their budget and reveal Indigo has nothing to do with monitoring the CIA's internal spending."

"It would be an unprecedented achievement," Katrina muttered, as if she was talking to herself.

"Hardly. Look at the Kennedy assassination. Indigo regroups. It always has. Much as I'd love to see Catherine Fairfax choking on her own blood, the real enemy is the system that supports her. It always has been."

_She's being very frank for a criminal_. Either Dr. Harper was starting to trust her, or she planned to have her valkyrie attack the second Katrina left the room. "The system? Indigo's part of the CIA. Hell, Indigo formed the CIA around themselves. Agents have been part of this country before it was a country. Their work upholds the foundations of Western civilization. It won't be so easy to destroy that system."

"No, it won't. It will take an army." Dr. Harper's eyes glowed with passion. "That's why I want you and Kyle. The Father of Witches stands with us. And I am genetically-engineering him an army no modern soldiers can withstand. You want to bring down Indigo? Take part in my experiment. You can serve as one of his lieutenants."

Katrina's heart thudded against her ribs. Cold fingers of ice trailed down her spine. _The Father of Witches. Dr. Harper works for a Valve_.

Magic was a physical force. It required a living body to bring it into the world. And for all of recorded history, those bodies had belonged to the Valves. Seven people who'd anchored the flow of magic to their bloodlines, gaining immortality in the process. Like all pyromancers, she was a Descendant of Aspeth, a reclusive figure who'd kept to himself for the last few centuries. But Mathus, the Father of Witches, had heavily backed the Axis powers in World War Two, and he'd never forgiven the USA and Indigo for what they'd done to stop him.

_They aren't just criminals. They're terrorists_. Indigo had to be warned, whatever the cost. That had to be her number one priority, even if it meant abandoning Kyle. If Mathus was involved, the whole country was in danger. _If Mathus is involved, this woman is capable of creating horrors_.

"What, exactly, will this experiment do to me?" Katrina asked.

"It will modify your genes. You'll move faster. Your eyesight will sharpen. You'll heal faster. Theoretically, the first—"

"Theoretically?"

"It has not yet been evaluated on human subjects." Dr. Harper shrugged. "Theoretically, the first application of the treatment can cure any physical infirmity."

"Anything?" Katrina asked. "False advertising suit waiting to happen."

"When we rule America, all the lawyers will be executed." Dr. Harper paused. "That was a joke."

_So hard to tell with you megalomaniacs_. "Not all infirmities are part of the body. What about mental illnesses? Depression. Addiction." She tried saying the last one like it meant nothing to her. Had Phyllis noticed?

"The brain is part of the body. Depression is strongly linked to neurotransmitter levels. I believe our techniques can restore these levels to within an acceptable range, along with therapeutic intervention. Addiction is linked both to genetics and learned behavior. Our techniques can theoretically eliminate the genetic factor, lessening the reward effects when the addictive substance is consumed, and certain side effects of the condition may prove additionally effective in treatment of . . ."

Katrina knew couched language when she heard it. _Legalese and medical jargon_. It all added up to one desperate hope. _She could fix me_.

As much as Indigo could use this information, they could use a sample of Dr. Harper's work even more. The threat this army posed didn't sound immediate, not if Dr. Harper hadn't tested her work on humans yet. If she let the doctor experiment on her, and she escaped, Indigo would have to take her back—and she wouldn't have to hurt her family any longer. All she'd have to do was turn over her body. And, potentially, her life.

"I was born without magic," she admitted. For a second, the cool detachment in Dr. Harper's eyes morphed into sympathy. "This process fixes genetic deformities. Can it fix . . . that?"

For a moment, Dr. Harper seemed to tower above her. She spread her hands wide like a pair of scales, weighing Katrina's life, finding her worthy or wanting.

"I don't know," Dr. Harper said. "But you could try."

She'd spent her whole damn life trying.

"Yes. Yes, I will."

A private jet awaited them at a local airfield. The logo on the side read 'Synthos Biotek'. _That's their cover_. Borghild stepped into the cockpit and joined the co-pilot. Dr. Harper buried her face in a three-dollar romance novel. Kyle grabbed a drink from the bar and settled down comfortably in his chair.

Katrina's skin crawled as she watched him, fierce with envy. She needed that oblivion—deserved it, even—but she was on a mission, and a loose tongue could spell her doom. _I should ask him not to do that_. But the thought of asking galled her. _Besides, they're about to fix me. I won't need to worry anymore after that. Maybe_.

Her fists tightened. She dug her nails into her palms, willing her thoughts to go anywhere but the bar. Fix. It sounded like what you did to a cat that wouldn't stop peeing on your walls. She wondered how the cat felt, afterwards.

The old, hidden scars on her thighs suddenly burned again. If Dr. Harper been a halfway-decent manipulator, she would have sworn the experiment could restore Katrina's powers. The mistake told her Dr. Harper had been honest. _She wants to make enhanced soldiers. She admits she could fail, and I'd pay the price_. She pictured her body shriveling, infested with cancers, scarred with radiation burns. _Enough_.

She walked over to the plane's kitchenette, rooted through the drawers, and found a long knife. Standing over the trashcan, she dragged the blade through her hair. Strands tore, ripping painfully. She braced herself and sawed back and forth until a six inch long chunk came off in her hands. She dropped the fine black strands in the trash. _It's just your body. You were okay with destroying it last night. You're doing this for Indigo. It's worth it_.

"Whoa." Kyle sat straight up in his seat when she re-entered the cabin. "Katrina?"

"I felt like a change." She'd chopped off every hunk she could reach. The cool air felt alien on the back of her neck.

Katrina tucked herself into her seat and tried to sleep. Her thoughts kept creeping back to Senator Winters. _I'm sorry I got your son into this; I know I promised to look after him. But he can't be my first priority now. You'd understand. You'd do anything for your country. You're strong_.

The plane touched down in Seattle to refuel. No one but Borghild left the plane. Kyle gave her a letter to post to his mother, explaining where he'd gone. Katrina knew the valkyrie would trash it. How had Kyle's life been so privileged that he couldn't fathom someone taking advantage of him?

She sat down next to him and watched the baggage handlers zip back and forth across the runway. _They'll never know what really happened here. Ensuring that was her responsibility. Keep them ignorant, keep them safe_.

Kyle took her hand and squeezed it. "I'm really glad you're here with me," he whispered. "This'll be good for both of us. You'll see."

"Good for us." She tried not to imagine a thousand needles stuck in her skin, injecting her with a bubbling green cocktail. _Focus on what happens after that_. She would walk into Indigo's headquarters in D.C., her position secured, and watch the respect ignite in everyone's eyes. _We were wrong not to use her talents. That's the one, the one who never gave up, the one who took on a Valve_.

When he walked off to the bathroom, Katrina sat down next to Dr. Harper. She'd finished two novels and moved onto a third. A muscled male torso adorned the cover.

"How'd you get interested in—" she dropped her voice. "—magical genetics?"

"I'm reading."

"Sorry," Katrina said. "Just curious. It's not often I run into someone I can talk to about this stuff." She realized how very true that was. She had Shawn and her family, but New York's other agents knew about her disgrace, and most of the other Descendants she'd known fell firmly in the category of criminal. "Especially not a woman without powers. We have a lot in common."

"I'm a good person. You aren't," Dr. Harper said, turning a page. "The suspense is killing me, Ms. Harris. Will Chad's giant penis heal Penelope's inability to orgasm? Excuse me, I can't pay you any attention. I must focus all my resources on unraveling this text. Please. Leave me."

Katrina slid back into her seat. _Moralizing terrorists. Worse than Shawn's stories from Afghanistan. What the hell did I do to her in Boston?_ A thousand worries spun around her head, and she yearned to make them go away. Her eyes flickered to the plane's bar, but then the seatbelt light flipped on. She belted herself in and gritted her teeth. _It's your life if you talk!_

"It's a four hour flight from Seattle to Anchorage," Kyle told her, and lowered his sleep mask.

Darkness wrapped around the plane, leaving her with no clue where in the world they were. The plane had television screens built into the backs of the chairs. She found a DVD copy of _Die Hard_ in the cabinet marked 'Entertainment' and settled down to watch.

Hans Grueber reminded her of Dr. Harper. _Tell people a story they can understand, that terrorists are taking hostages, that the government is building a living biological weapon, and they'll proceed accordingly. You can pull off the crime of the century under their noses_. Annoyingly, it reminded her of one of Indigo's first lessons: the lies you could give to explain magic, small ways to avoid needing to kill a target who'd seen something they shouldn't. _People need explanations. Hallucinations, drugs, government project. No matter how outlandish the lie, they'll believe. Anything's better than facing the unknown. That way lies chaos_.

Four hours came and went. Dr. Harper fell asleep. Eventually, Katrina's nerves got the better of her and she walked up to the cockpit.

"Are we going to Russia?" she demanded.

"I wish," Borghild said.

"Alaska's a large place, ma'am," said the co-pilot. Concentric circles and arrows had been drawn on his hands, and he'd occasionally tap a wooden compass that would move on its own, pointing northwards. _A witch_. "Wyvernhall is sixty miles south of the northern coast—"

"Wyvernhall?" Katrina's voice rose an octave. "That's what you call your headquarters?"

"The doctor has many gifts." Borghild said. "She can recite three hundred digits of pi. Break into any encrypted computer system she chooses. When it comes to picking names, she has the creativity of a dead lemming." Her voice softened. "I suppose I should thank you for saving her life. Thank you. Don't expect me to be in your debt, Indigo bitch."

"No worries," Katrina said. "Wouldn't expect much gratitude from a valkyrie." Throwing around the V-word felt especially daring, a reminder that she was indeed a Descendant, finally back in the exclusive, important club. She supposed it was juvenile, how that thrilled her, but thrill her it did.

"Of course you wouldn't." Borghild turned in the pilot's chair and glared at her. In her light grey irises, Katrina glimpsed the gun and the overlook in the woods. _The Dead Eye_. "We're all alike to you. We appear identical—if one ignores scars, age, a smile, a nervous tick." Borghild popped another stick of gum in her mouth. "I've read Indigo's papers. You know there's some among them who want to give witches a new classification, because the term is considered insulting? But witches are useful, witches are trusted. The children of Umara remain monsters. If you believe a valkyrie is a monster, what do those things matter? A valkyrie is something you kill."

The co-pilot shrank in his chair. "Ms. Asen, please—"

"Close your mouth," Borghild snapped. "All my mother wanted was to fly. To be who she was. My family moved to the country and bought a farm. Our nearest neighbor was three kilometers away. She was careful. I know she was. One day, I came home from school. Two men with guns were there. They had shot everyone. Even Eir, my little sister. She was seven. They beat me until I couldn't walk, and then they left. Respect the Seal, they said, and you'll never see us again."

"And you think they were agents of Indigo?" Katrina's stomach churned. She'd heard rumors of agents going crazy, purposefully terminating civilians who hadn't endangered the Seal, but those were horror stories, propaganda, not real.

"I hope they were. Because then they will come for me, when we break the Seal, and I will show them just how strong I've become." She smiled. "With Dr. Harper's equipment, I can keep a man alive for weeks."

_Borghild Asen_. She mentally filed away the last name, still shaken, as potentially valuable information. You could put that name on a mailbox or write it on a form. It was the name of a person, with hopes and dreams and ambitions. _Don't be ridiculous, Katrina, of course they have last names. They're people, too. They're just very dangerous people_. She couldn't help picturing a little blond seven-year-old with a bullet wound in the chest. _Not fair, of course, but people don't know how stressful an agent's work can be. Valkyrie girls grow fast_. An agent taking on an unknown farmstead, in an unfamiliar territory—they barely had fifty agents monitoring Northern Europe! You couldn't always avoid collateral damage. _It's all for the greater good_.

Wasn't like valkyries had never killed anyone. _And how does she know Indigo was to blame? Agents are trained to avoid using firearms, in case they encounter enemy pyromancers. Could have been another valkyrie. A turf war. Some hired thugs to pin the blame on Indigo_. That made more sense.

She spent the last hour of the flight staring out the window and trying not to think.

The seatbelt icon flipped on. The plane pivoted. Light flashed outside the window. _Is that a mountain?_

A second circle confirmed it. A ridge of mountains rose from the tundra. The one at the end of the chain was dotted with well-lit buildings emerging seamlessly from the slopes. A wall wrapped around the mountain's base. Tiny lights sparkled from houses just outside the walls.

_How did they build that?_ They'd need underground tunnels to connect all the buildings on the mountain. _How did they move that much rock without giving themselves away?_ They'd have needed to get permits and host inspections. Had a geomancer been involved? They'd cleared out some spaces below Indigo's headquarters. But could they move that much rock?

It struck her, suddenly, that she didn't know. Such uses of power were so strictly regulated and concealed that no unnecessary personnel were permitted to witness them. She'd spent her childhood watching Shawn carefully experiment with his power—lighting candles, making shadow puppets, baking her cakes. It had all stopped after his first few missions. Magic belonged in the shadows. It wasn't compatible with modern society. _How different the world would be without Indigo._

The plane touched down. Katrina searched her memories. _If they have half as many Descendants as I think they might, they'll have an aeromancer waiting_. Like clairvoyance was the secondary skill of pyromancers, aeromancers possessed telepathy: the ability to view the thoughts of others.

Tires bumped down on the tarmac. Cold wind washed in as the doors were opened.

Katrina seized a glance at the mountain: shallow dustings of snow, brown stone where the light touched, a disk-shaped building emerging higher up that blocked out the stars. Dr. Harper guided her and Kyle into a Hummer, and Borghild drove them through the gate in the fifteen-foot-high wall. The muddy road wrapped around an army-style obstacle course and lead deep into a garage the size of her whole house.

Kyle stiffened as the garage doors closed. She reached out and squeezed his hand.

"I'm here with you," she said. It was all she could say.

The Hummer stopped. A man in heavy white snowgear opened the door. "I'm Captain O'Brien. Head security officer here at Wyvernhall." He was tall, white, around fifty, with hair like straw and weathered features.

"Captain, take them to the Eyrie," Dr. Harper commanded. "Run them through the physical evaluation."

Three security officers in white gear escorted them from the garage into a network of underground tunnels. The cold walls closed around them. Katrina shivered. She expected Kyle to make a snide comment or demand a coat. Nothing came.

They lead them to a bank of elevators. The whole group squeezed into one. Letters marked the buttons. Captain O'Brien pressed 'E', and the car shot upwards, rising quickly. The tightness in Katrina's shoulders dissipated as she locked her eyes on the closed doors. _Another morning, another elevator ride_.

The doors opened on a rock tunnel leading to a stairway. Lightbulbs dangled from wires taped to the ceiling.

"When was this built?" she asked

"The tunnels and other buildings were constructed in the sixties," said Captain O'Brien. "The Eyrie was built recently."

"Why do you call it that?"

"Cantilevered." Kyle said, his voice regaining some strength. "An eyrie is an eagle's nest, right? Something you build in the sky."

"I'm not the one in charge of naming things," said O'Brien.

The guards lead them up to the Eyrie's forth floor, which could have nearly contained a football field. Katrina had vaguely expected a room covered in weapon racks and work-out equipment, but the room was instead full of crates and boxes, the walls smelling of new paint. Someone had assembled a shooting range at one end of the hall. Kyle's eyes lit up when O'Brien handed over his pistol and opened a crate to reveal a dozen pairs of earmuffs and goggles. "Dr. Harper ordered me to assess your marksmanship."

They donned the equipment. Kyle's smile nearly stretched off his face as he pivoted and fired five shots into the center of the target.

"You're very good," O'Brien noted.

"Made the Olympic team." Kyle arched an eyebrow, cockily. "You hunt?"

"Some. Give your friend a chance."

Kyle passed her the gun. A bulls-eye had been drawn in silver Sharpie on the grip. _Is that a spell? Is he a witch? Did he touch me?_ Witches could read auras, which gave them much more generalized information than telepathy, but were often more accurate. But O'Brien's gloves were still on, and if he was a Descendant, that meant he was refraining from magic use. It took skin contact to use magic on another person, and he didn't strike her as a very touchy guy. They'd send in a trained aeromancer to do that job.

And if she failed to convince him, she might have to stand at the other end of the range for target practice.

She donned the goggles, braced herself, and shot. Her bullets all hit the target, with three in the center and two on the edge. _Damn it_. Kyle often said he sunk into a trance staring down a barrel. Katrina wasn't sure what a trance even felt like.

"How's that?" she asked, handing the gun back to O'Brien. He reloaded.

"This is a baseline assessment. Not an evaluation." He nodded at the woman who'd come up with him. "Dorcas, bring the targets to Dr. Harper's lab. You—"

"What the fuck?" Kyle shouted, and sprinted to one of the windows on the east-facing side of the room. "Holy shit! Katrina! You've got to see this!"

She hurried over. The security officers laughed.

A great grey shape plummeted down past the window. _Borghild?_ she thought, but even a valkyrie's wings weren't that long.

"Out there," Kyle whispered, his voice hoarse and quiet, like he wanted to not wake himself up. He pointed outside, his hand trembling.

Three grey shapes came together and split apart in the distance. _Birds_ , she thought, but something was off. They didn't move like birds. The shapes were agile, their long membranous wings curling and changing shape as they darted around in the sky. Skin flaps on the ends of their tails acted as rudders. Their long necks wound around one another as they connected, snapping at each other's shoulders. The talons at the end of their long legs raked at each other's bellies. Their bodies were cat-sized, with wingspans up to seven feet long.

Dragons.

The creatures before her eyes belonged in children's fairytales. Here they flew in the flesh. _How?_ Dr. Harper must have made them in her lab, cobbling them together from a hundred different species of reptile. _Indigo will lose its shit_. If the world knew these creatures existed, interest in legends and the supernatural would surge to an all-time high. People would start asking dangerous questions, and the answers would lead straight to the Seal.

"They're amazing," Kyle whispered.

"Can they breathe fire?" Katrina asked, pressing her fingers against the window glass, unable to look away.

"Unfortunately, no," O'Brien said. "But the older wyverns can carry light artillery. We believe they might be very effective in pacifying crowds, although they were designed with air to air combat in mind."

_They could get out of range before a pyromancer could break their guns_. "The older ones?"

Another wyvern circled around the cluster of three. This one had a body the size of the Hummer they'd rode in on and wings that could have cast a football field in shade. One flap of his wings sent the small ones scattering back towards the mountain's peak.

"That would be Veick," O'Brien said. "The Alpha. He's in charge."

Veick's round yellow eyes pierced through the Eyrie, locking on her and Kyle. A steep, boiling rage radiated from those glowing orbs. She knew well the powerlessness that inspired such feelings.

_These creatures are intelligent_.

"I don't think he likes us," Kyle muttered, voice still awed.

"He'll probably send you an angry email before the day's out," O'Brien replied.

"Captain? Are these the new recruits?" The speaker was a younger man who'd just climbed up the stairs, dressed in the same uniform as the other security officers. "Loyal soldiers for the cause!" His smile might have been light and friendly, but his words were designed to trigger certain thoughts to spring to the center of the mind, thoughts that would show where their loyalties lay. _The aeromancer_.

He extended his bare hand for a shake. Katrina brought up her defenses and clasped it eagerly. Skin met skin, forming a conduit for the magic. Shawn's burning finger sank into her thigh. Pain rushed up her leg, hot and intimate and shameful. A picture of his Indigo I.D. flashed through her mind.

"Pleased to meet you," the aeromancer said, and moved on to Kyle.

It was an old trick, and one aeromancers had few tools to fend off. Indigo taught it to all agents. New recruits were ambushed on their walk home and beaten. Some they burned, some they waterboarded. Her throat swelled at the memory of her own time strapped to the 'drinking chair'. Memories of trauma unsettled aeromancers; made them feel like they too were living the horror. Agents specializing in telepathic intelligence gathering a high risk for PTSD. Their training told them to avoid exploring traumatic memories unless absolutely necessary. She'd shown him just enough to make him think an agent had abused her, and that seemed to convince him she was truly on their side.

And yet, she didn't feel victorious, even though she'd gone toe to toe with the enemy and won. Criminal Descendants, miles of wilderness, and creatures that shouldn't exist surrounded her. In the city, Indigo had organization and numbers on their side. Some part of her had assumed the same was true of everywhere.

The security officers sent them downstairs to change into exercise clothing, Kyle to the second floor and Katrina to the third. She found the floor had been divided into twenty smaller rooms, like a big, empty dormitory. _Or a barracks_.

Her belongings—Shawn's butterfly knife and a bag of candy from the plane—had been placed in the largest suite, which boosted a kitchenette, dining area, and its own bathroom. Someone had even ordered her fridge fully stocked. New clothing hung neatly in the closet.

_They're trying to recruit me_. She'd heard stories like this from her more successful colleagues, twisted as it was. _Dr. Harper wasn't joking. They really do want me to work for them_. The other rooms on the floor were empty and small. All occupants of those would end up sharing a communal shower. _Me, in management. Hell, Indigo doesn't need a spy here. Their shitty HR department will do the Valve's uprising in long before it starts_.

A group of men and women in lab coats had gathered on the top floor by the time Katrina returned. The scientists strapped heart rate monitors around their chests and set them to running laps on the track, which looked so fresh she'd bet the surface had only been laid weeks ago. She worked up a glorious sweat by the time they called 'stop', but the calm that usually followed her runs had been replaced by paranoia in the presence of so many watching eyes.

They pulled barbells out of the crates, and the scientists scribbled down how much they could lift. They stretched in a dozen different poses, and the scientists noted down their flexibility. One woman whipped a tape measure around Katrina's leg without saying a word. Her cool fingertips left Katrina's skin tingling. _Measuring muscle-mass density. What exactly is this procedure of Harper's supposed to do?_

When the tests ended, the doctors gave them fifteen minutes to shower and the security officers escorted them back to the elevators. Kyle and the captain were talking amicably about deer hunting. One woman, Dorcas, asked how Katrina was doing, but she couldn't find words to respond. The weight of the mountain felt like it was crushing her.

The hospital building protruded from the mountain slope. Just the light coming through the windows told Katrina it hadn't been build as a hospital originally—no military building would leave their most vulnerable facility exposed.

She and Kyle were separated and stripped. Blood samples were drawn. Every inch of her body was photographed. They'd gotten hold of her medical records from New York, and they ran past each item with her. Childhood bee-sting allergy? Check. Right leg broken in three places after a 'car accident'? Check. History of alcohol abuse? Teeth-gritted check. Gloved hands moved over her body. She focused on humming a Taylor Swift medley, in case one happened to be a telepath.

They slid her into an MRI machine and flashed dozens of pictures on the screen above her: abstract symbols, kittens playing in a field, wyverns flying. Many photos of wyverns—of their long faces and longer legs, their brown-veined yellow eyes, pointing forward like a hawk's, the way flat, shimmering scales swirled across their brows, the patterns of veining in their wings, each as unique as a fingerprint.

The pictures made her suspicious. _What do they care about what we think of their first generation experiment?_ You couldn't have air-to-air combat without missiles to launch, or a competent gunner, at the least. _Goddamn it. They want us to ride them, don't they?_

She muttered as much to Kyle when the security officers came to escort them back to the Eyrie. "Cool," he said. "Always wanted a dragon."

Captain O'Brien frowned. "They're called _wyverns_. I warn you, don't go slipping up around Dr. Harper. Or worse, a wyvern. Tends to offend the big ones, and when they're angry, they go for your limbs." He rolled up his sleeve. Arcs of tooth marks—long, like crocodile bites—dotted his upper arm. Katrina noticed the edge of a tattoo in his armpit, shaped like a red flame. _A witch, indeed_. She couldn't fault him for wanting a permanent heat spell, working here.

"I thought they had human brains," Kyle said, confused.

Katrina sighed. "They might. But it's not like they've got human vocal cords to say 'go fuck yourself'." She glanced at O'Brien. "They don't, right?"

He shook his head.

The next few days blurred into a series of tests and evaluations. They ate meals either in the hospital or in the small cafeteria on the bottom floor of the Eyrie. Either place, the scientists surrounded them. Kyle spoke openly, as he always did. Katrina had to bite her lip to prevent herself from screaming the truth. _Priorities. Kyle versus millions_. The guilt nagged at her, pushing until she'd give anything to make it go away. It culminated in a desperate trip to the scientists' store on the ground floor and an attempt to swap her watch for beer.

"No, ma'am," said the woman behind the counter. "Dr. Harper would have my head for messing in her experiment."

"Come on," Katrina pleaded. "It's a good watch. Just a little." _Just once more time, before they start in on me. Who'll know what'll happen then?_ She could indulge her weakness for just a little longer . . .

But the woman didn't budge, and a nearby security officers decided Katrina was too far from the Eyrie, and escorted her back.

She spent the night staring up at the ceiling of her suite, eyesight blurring as she slid in and out of sleep. What kind of person was she, to try and drown her feelings of responsibility with alcohol instead of telling Kyle the truth? _Why can't they have rehab for selfishness?_ Logically, she knew her actions were justified—but logic had never driven Katrina too far. She'd chosen to enter Indigo against everyone's advice, and she'd fight to get back in against all sanity.

She wouldn't let them put her on easy duty this time. Forget watching frat parties in Boston for a single werewolf brother. She'd tell them to send her to China or India, where she could keep order in a territory with millions of people and thousands of miles to watch. Or maybe to the Middle East, where she'd blend in better, where agents were desperately needed. Whatever good she'd do there would outweigh what she had to do to Kyle. _This fortress must be brought down. It endangers every person in the world_. When the time came to escape, she couldn't run the risk of bringing Kyle along. _I will do good. Some day. Somehow_.

Dr. Harper came for her the next day, right after her scheduled time for psych evaluation ran over. "You're twenty minutes late, Katrina."

Katrina wiped her face across her sleeve and tried to look like she hadn't been crying. Dr. Vasilyev, a tall Russian man with a quiet air, stood. "Dr. Harper, this patient is in urgent need of counseling." Kyle had confessed what had happened on the cliff, and Vasilyev had gently brought it up after the questionnaire, and Katrina had realized she couldn't keep pretending it . . . the suicide attempt . . . had actually happened.

"I don't doubt it," Dr. Harper said. "But the set up is time-sensitive. They won't wait for long."

"You're really going to do this, then?" asked Vasilyev.

"No. I've strung you all along for eight years of research. I'm taking the patients out back and shooting them in the head." She folded her arms over her labcoat. "Have I ever not done something I've said I'd do?"

Katrina glanced down at her body, wondering how she could say good-bye to something she both loved and hated for what it could and couldn't do for her. _If this goes wrong, it could be good-bye to everything_. She wanted to live, now more than ever. She could fake a panic attack and maybe get Dr. Harper to postpone the procedure. Let them test Kyle first, see if it worked, and then—

_No_. He'd be waiting for her. She couldn't let him do this alone.

So she stood, bile rising in her throat, and followed Dr. Harper out. Borghild closed in tight behind them, and Katrina knew there was nowhere to run.

They marched her into the elevator. Dr. Harper pressed the button marked 'S-1', and the car sunk downward. "Take these." She pulled a packet containing two white pills from her pocket.

"I'm fine," Katrina said, automatically.

"That was an order."

Katrina swallowed the pills. Her heartbeat sped up. _Drugs or nerves?_ Her head spun. _Drugs or nerves?_

The world outside her body floated away. When the elevator touched down at the bottom of the shaft, Borghild pushed her forward, and Katrina realized she'd forgotten Borghild was there.

Kyle was waiting further up the stone tunnel with Captain O'Brien. He had a warm smile on; the captain had his fists clenched. Cold wind drifted down from where the garage opened on the outside.

"Ready?" Kyle asked her. He took a step forward and stumbled. She caught him, grabbing on tight to his wrist, and pulled up the tunnel. Bizarrely, she felt like she was walking the aisle at her wedding. Stone-cold air slapped them across the face as they left the garage. Outside, the wyverns waited.

_Four of them_ , she thought, but then her head throbbed and her eyesight swam until all she saw were gray walls of flesh rising up to surround them and the red flash of a caribou carcass. Yellow eyes peered up from above the body. _She's massive_. This wyvern was only slightly smaller than a Hummer—and Katrina knew she was female. Information radiated from the wyvern's body, each new fact trying to rip a hole in her skull. A bone stuck in her long throat, a mix of curiosity and apprehension, a name ripping through the air like bad static from a concert speaker: _Payaa_.

Katrina fell to her knees. _What's in those drugs?_ Her hand reached for the carcass. The world tilted sideways. Her fingers brushed something smooth and warm. She slid into darkness.
**Part 3: The Subject**

Noise.

It played on repeat, weaving in and out of her body, distorted, round and ringing. It was not entering through her ears. She heard hissing, chirping . . . and then it vanished into a thick wave of wind, and then the peeping returned.

"Look at the delta patterns," said Dr. Harper, her voice quivering with hope. "There's an echo. It worked."

"She's still comatose. It's too soon to tell. We could lose her and a fertile female, Phyllis. The risk—"

"We set out to take these risks. And that's Dr. Harper to you."

An avalanche of wind and silence buried the voices. Cold washed over her like the current of a river, and her skin burned, and warmth leaked up from her core.

Someone pressed a thumb to her shoulder. A thousand nerves shouted. She hadn't known how sensitive skin could be— _yes, yes you know, that's how skin works_.

"Ms. Harris?" Dr. Harper asked quietly.

_That's me. Katrina Harris_. She reached for herself, grabbing for memories: concrete pounding under her sneakers, Annie laughing in a party hat, a thousand hands clapping when Senator Winters announced her campaign. Threads of control swam down her prickling limbs. Her thoughts threatened to leak out the back of her head, sucked down by a force stronger than gravity. _No. My thoughts. Me_.

She opened her eyes.

Vertigo hit hard. Shadows scattered. Whiteness seemed to swallow up her world— _no, it's just the damn ceiling_ —and suddenly, every crack swam into vibrant focus, every jagged edge and tear in the plaster. The colors took on a new dimension; a sharper contrast. _Something's wrong_. She turned her head sideways to look for Dr. Harper and realized her peripheral vision had been cut short, erased at the edges. Her vision zoomed in and out on every flickering muscle in the doctor's face: her jaw, clenched, her smile, forced, her eyes, holding back tears.

"My sight!" Katrina gasped, her throat rough and raw. Her lungs expanded and expanded, more and more air filling her chest.

"You can see me?" Dr. Harper asked.

"Of course I can! That's the problem!" She tried to touch her face, but her wrists had been strapped down. _They found me out!_ she thought, wildly tugging against the restraints. Something snapped in her left hand.

Bones slid past one another, scraping under her skin. Light twisted in front of her eyes. The hole in the back of her head seized her, dragging her in, and her wing seized up with pain, and she fell—

_Not mine_ , said another voice, pushing her thoughts sideways. _Her, it's her, the woman from the snow_ —and then Katrina saw herself, picked out with telescopic vision from above.

_Fuck!_ Katrina screamed as she pulled her broken hand free of the cuff, barely maintaining the sense to roll over, reach for the other strap as her bones screamed—

"Do I have to tranquilize you?" Dr. Harper pushed her back down. Katrina tried forcing herself upwards, but the doctor felt much heavier than she looked. Try as she might to move her free arm away, she couldn't stop Dr. Harper from re-fastening and tightening the strap.

_My arm_. It was thin, bony, skeletonized. The thin paper sheet had fallen off her naked body, and she saw her breasts had deflated like two popped balloons. Each one of her ribs was visible, her skin pulled tight like a corpse's. _Dr. Harper's not heavier. I'm weaker_.

"Dr. Garyali!" Dr. Harper shouted. "Get in here! She's awake and injured!"

"What did you do to me?" Katrina gasped.

"Restrained you before you could hurt yourself." She said it without a hint of sarcasm, like a doctor explaining a procedure—hell, that's what she was—but Katrina wanted to rage and scream.

"My head!" She twisted it sideways. "There is someone else— _something else_ —inside my head!"

Dr. Harper paused, pursing her lips. "Well," she finally said. "That was more or less what we expected."

By the time Dr. Garyali made it to her side, the pain had faded from her hand. At first, she thought she'd just become numb to it, but Garyali gently prodded the limb and called for an x-ray. Dr. Harper unstrapped her while they brought in the machine. The break had healed completely in twenty minutes. Only a faint white line marked where the parts had come together.

"Amazing," Dr. Harper whispered. "You can't see the honeycombing, though."

"Doesn't show up on birds or wyverns either. We'll need a bone scan for that." He met Katrina's eyes, a shudder running through his face.

_I'm a freak_. She'd managed to explore her face with her fingers. Her eyes had migrated closer together, flaring up and out in their sockets. Her cheekbones felt sharper; her nose, thin as a knife. Her choppy hair had grown several inches, even though Dr. Harper swore the procedure had only lasted five days. A flash of her reflection in the metal machine showed her irises had gone the same dull grey as a wyvern's scale. She looked feral, dangerous. _I like it_.

"You must be very careful," Dr. Garyali said. "Your bones are hollow, now. Like a bird's. They will heal quickly, and the muscle sheaths around the bone will generally keep them in position if they break, but in some cases, you might need to mechanically straighten a break before it heals crookedly. Are you comfortable with this?"

"Yes," she said, immediately, not knowing if she could do it or not. "Where's Kyle?"

"Mr. Winters woke up several hours ago. He was examined and released back to his suite. We should run some post-transfer tests—"

"Later," Dr. Harper declared. "Her bloodwork is clean. Her DNA is stable. Let's get them up to the terrace. It's time the wyverns learn what we did."

_Wyvern_. Katrina pictured the creature she's seen . . . _Payaa_.

In response, the weight in the back of her head shifted. _Hello?_

The thin hospital gown Dr. Harper had reluctantly given her wasn't enough to face the cold in. They brought her a set of tight fitting leggings and a shirt, both made of the same thick black fabric. Then they formed ranks around her and marched her up towards the Eyrie. She might have found their caution funny, if whatever they'd done hadn't left her as weak as a kitten.

She found Kyle sitting alone in his suite, his face turned towards the window. Dr. Harper stood, expectantly, at Katrina's side, until Garyali whispered a suggestion in her ear, and she stepped back.

"Kyle?" Katrina asked, stepping forward.

He turned. The fading daylight illuminated his profile: his pug nose tilted forward, his curly hair grown into a thicket of thorns. "Katrina? Shit, girl, you look scary." His tone sounded relaxed, but the tension of the muscles surrounding his mouth told her how nervous he was. His brown eyes had turned the same metallic grey as hers.

"You've lost weight," she said. "Dr. Harper should go commercial. She could make a fortune."

"I don't care about money," piped Dr. Harper from behind her.

Kyle stood. All jokes aside, she doubted anyone would pay for a treatment that killed muscle as well as fat, leaving her too weak to fight and wearing away her bones. She wondered if their features had really sharpened that much, or if it was a side-effect of all the fat being sucked from their faces.

"Let's go." Kyle pulled on his boots. "We've got a double date."

They climbed the staircase to the top of the Eyrie and opened the door onto the terrace roof. Cold wind slapped her across the face as she stepped outside, nearly knocking her back into the scientists. _Fuck, it's freezing_. But as she cautiously moved forward, she realized she could take it. The cloth she wore locked her body heat next to her skin.

"Call them!" Dr. Harper shouted. Katrina noticed she'd brought two security officers with her, each armed with large hunting rifles. _What the hell does she imagine might go wrong?_

"How do we call them?" Kyle muttered as they walked out across the roof. A wave of dizziness swept over her as her eyes pierced through the surrounding clouds to the tundra that ringed them.

"Do you feel this?" She tapped the back of her head.

"Yeah, but . . . what do we say?"

"Hello?" She shrugged and probed the cloud in the back of her head. _Payaa? Hello?_

_Hello._ A wave of thought floated through the link between them, laden with weight, heat, and curiosity. _You're Katrina. Right?_

_It speaks English_ , was all Katrina could think.

_And Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. A few words of Afrikaans. Listen_. Something slipped between them, and Katrina muttered a few words in a language she didn't know. Payaa pulled back, shocked. _Sorry!_

Dr. Harper said something in the same language. Payaa responded in turn, moving Katrina's mouth to form the unfamiliar phrases, acting quickly. She knew this was an awkward intrusion, and Katrina knew the words meant 'I'm coming.'

Dr. Harper's lips tightened as Payaa withdrew. Katrina shivered. That creature had just possessed her, with only a touch of the mind.

Through the link, Katrina felt Payaa stand, her weight shifting onto her feet, balancing carefully as she extended her tail as a counterweight to the mass of her upper body. She was lighter than she looked— _about one-thirty kilo_ , Payaa thought. Still, Katrina couldn't not feel the dangerous potential of that size.

Danger she could face. She _could_ be a warrior, no matter what her brother and Indigo and her personal history told her. But Payaa was keeping the link between them wide open, permitting her thoughts and memories to slide forward, introducing herself.

Katrina glimpsed the whelps, again, the fifteen eggs Payaa had watched hatch and grow and worried over daily. She saw giant versions of the scientists, from Payaa's childhood, and watched them shrink as Payaa grew. They made her fly until she dropped and electrocuted her for stopping. She saw Veick, Payaa's mate— _my husband_ , the wyvern corrected, _we're not animals_ —slink suspiciously downward in his den, distrusting whatever the scientists had done to his wife's brain. The clumsy thumb on her wing joint ran over an old-fashioned touch-screen, typing out a letter of protest regarding their treatment. She'd hear the scientists discussing it later as proof Dr. Harper had managed to create intelligent life forms, all her complaints ignored. Drakkaa, her sister, roared in blind pain as the scientists opened her leg without anesthetics, and Payaa drove back the surrounding security officers and earned three bullet scars in her chest.

A thousand points of vulnerability lay out in the open, and underneath them all ran a thick layer of hope. Payaa wanted them to be friends, even though her memories shone with pain and fear— _weakness_ —and that left Katrina shaking.

"What was that?" Kyle asked her.

"She's coming." Her tone went up an octave as she finished the sentence.

"Lucky!" He squeezed his eyes shut, whispering "Tay? Excuse me. Can you hear me?" He wanted that friendship, too, and Katrina could perhaps excuse the impulse in him. Kyle had never known cruelty or unfairness in his life. _Why would you share such shameful, horrible thoughts with a stranger?_

The snap of leathery wings tugged at her breastbone. Payaa dove from the cave opening in the mountain peak. Air slid over the thin membranes as she rose, circling, her legs locked in position behind her. She invited Katrina to reach into her mind and feel what flying felt like for herself. Katrina refused.

_You don't need to fight this_ , Payaa said. _Dr. Harper chose you to ride me, and she doesn't take no for an answer_.

_She better get used to no_ , Katrina replied, digging her nails into her palms and pulling her thoughts backwards, refusing to let the wyvern see any more than what lay beyond the surface.

The roof shook as Payaa touched down. She folded her wings neatly against her side and stepped forward, toes pressed flat against the metal. Her six-inch-long talons curved like a dinosaur fossil's in a museum. The wyverns eyes flickered all over her, yellow with brown veins surrounding round pupils, sizing her up, evaluating her. The snake-like diamond scales covering her whole body glimmered in the sun.

_This isn't a game, Katrina. My whole family lives here. We rely on the scientists for everything. Please cooperate with me. We can take this slowly, but we need to do what they say. They will punish us if we don't_.

"The saddles!" Dr. Harper ordered. Two security officers stepped forward, each carrying half of a tangled mess of nylon straps and carabineers. One tossed her a rock climbing harness.

"Put it on," he grunted, and slapped Payaa on the neck. "Down!"

Katrina slid it on, chafing at the weight of authority. She'd never been one for taking orders from anyone she didn't already respect, especially orders as fundamental as 'wear this'. Worse, she felt like a hypocrite. Scorn bubbled up in her throat as Payaa knelt, letting them snap the harness together, running bands around her wings, cinching it tight around her neck, tightening the strap around the belly. _Why the hell do you always need to be the tough one?_

She was no better than Payaa—she should open her mind, leave her memories out to air, and be thoroughly ashamed of herself. But the thought of re-experiencing that shame sent her stomach churning. _Best to let it lie_. She had a future to think about, now, and that remembrance prompted her to keep her thoughts away from the wyvern. Some things in her head were for no one to see.

_You don't have to show me that much if you're not comfortable with it_ , Payaa suggested, the tone of her thoughts a rich tremor that signaled no gender. Katrina couldn't bring herself to view the sentiments as harmless when they came from such a large creature. _Since we're joined together, though, it would be a good idea to be friends. Where are you from? What do you do for a living?_

"I'm from New York," Katrina said out loud, grounding herself in the feel of spoken human words. Sounds echoed strangely in Payaa's ears. Katrina had to bite her lip to keep her senses focused on her own body. "I'm a lawyer. What about you, huh? What do you do all day?" She knew it was a stupid question.

_I'm from here_ , Payaa said. _They're not keen on letting experiments leave. The border is ringed with missile launchers, and we've all got radio chips that track our movements. And I suppose you could say I'm a stay-at-home mom_. Images flashed between them—a dozen little wyverns, hard black eggs, Veick's sharp yellow gaze—

Katrina felt her nipples tingle. _Attracted to a wyvern_. How much had this creature _changed_ her? The easy warmth in Payaa's thoughts unnerved her. _The fucking June Cleaver of dragons_.

_What makes you so hostile?_ Payaa demanded, pain making her thoughts sharp.

"Katrina!" Dr. Harper shouted. "Mount up! We'll all have frostbite by the time you get up in the air!"

"You want me to do that now?" Katrina shouted in response, her voice amplified by the large volume of air in her new lungs. "How the hell do you expect me to just climb straight up there and fly? I've got no training—"

"Open your mind to her! There's not a person in the world who can teach you flying better than she can."

Payaa slid forward and lowered her head. Katrina didn't move. If Payaa could still keep her heart open, still try to trust strangers after a lifetime as these psychos' test subject, what was Katrina's excuse? One of them was weaker than the other, and Katrina didn't want to open her mind and find out for sure. Besides, she had good reasons to keep her thoughts hidden. Important ones.

"Tayamlaa!" Kyle shouted, doubling the 'a's as a smaller, slimmer wyvern landed on the deck besides them and pressed her face against his.

Then Tayamlaa's words echoed in Payaa's head, as if contained in a large, round chamber. No emotions, memory, or senses came along with them. _How are you, sister?_ It felt like normal conversation, albeit conversation no human could hear.

_I'm fine_ , Payaa replied. Katrina knew it was a lie.

_This is so . . . new_ , Tayamlaa said. _And yet_. Her head darted at Kyle, who laughed, dodged, and vaulted up onto Tayamlaa's shoulders.

"Not without the safety harness!" Dr. Harper shouted, but Katrina could hear the pleasure in her voice.

_This is so cool!_ Kyle's unspoken words slid along the same channel Tayamlaa's had. Katrina nearly jumped out of her own skin

_If you would open your mind to me and let our thoughts mingle_ , Payaa told her, _then I'd let you use the mind-link and communicate as we do_.

"Think I'll stick to texting," Katrina muttered.

Tayamlaa dropped off the roof. Katrina's breath caught—and then Tayamlaa rose up again, the grey-pink membranes of her wings spread wide. Kyle laughed on her back. No harness held him in, and yet not a drop of fear touched his face. Part of her envied him. But she wasn't him. _Priorities. Priorities. Playing nice with a wyvern is not my priority_.

_Why do you lash out me for trying to be nice to you_? Payaa's thoughts went to Veick. He could be the same way, but at least she knew why. The woman they'd given her for a pilot was a mystery to her. _Katrina, we need to make this work, and it won't if you're determined to martyr yourself. Just give me something. You don't need to open up completely for us to fly. You're a dedicated athlete, you'll pick it up_. Memories, Katrina's memories, flashed through Payaa's mind: long roads, honking cars, the pounding of sneakers on asphalt.

Katrina clenched her teeth. If Payaa had gotten that, what else had she seen? Furiously, she imagined her brain was a vacuum, sucking in and holding everything that was hers.

"Ms. Harris! Mount up!" Dr. Harper shouted.

_Time to put up or shut up_. At least Payaa couldn't say anything without Katrina's mouth.

Katrina stepped forward and crumbled, burying her head between her knees. Her heart was already racing. She began hyperventilating, trying to force herself into unconsciousness. A woman she'd known in law school had been prone to panic attacks, and Katrina had always been a good actor. She heard the scientists shout and watched them run over through Payaa's eyes.

You'd rather do this than fly with me?

_My thoughts are mine_ , Katrina thought as Garyali jammed a tranquilizer into her neck. _You have no right to me_.

She woke up in the hospital, strapped down once more. Vaguely, she wondered if the constraints were due to her sketchy psychological history or if the scientists now saw her altered body as their personal property. _At least Payaa had room to move when they cadged her_. A bevy of unfamiliar nurses came and went, staring at her eyes, prodding her with needles. She twisted her right hand until her bare skin touched the fraying cloth strap. The navy fabric was old and cheap, dotted around the edges with blood. It would burn easily.

She tried as soon as the nurses gave her a minute's solitude. Shawn had described it once like flexing a fifth limb, an extra set of muscles that simply came to you one day. She hadn't felt it when she'd awoken, but there'd been so much new to see that it could have escaped her notice.

Payaa was up in the den with her whelps—Katrina knew that much, could glimpse the tiny creatures crawling over her hide. Deliberately, Katrina pulled her thoughts backwards, creating a fog around her thoughts to obscure her intentions. It wasn't the kind of thing that would stand if the wyvern pushed against it, but, for now, a pair of whelps attacking her tail held her attention.

_Burn_ , Katrina thought, willing the heat to slip from her skin to the cloth and ignite the old fabric. Even a seventh generation pyromancer could do that much. Nothing happened. Nothing moved inside of her, like Shawn had always described. The potential of magic, like always, remained stillborn within her.

Her flat hands hit the metal table so hard something broke inside them. Her heart rate monitor went crazy. A nurse poked her head in.

"Get me Dr. Harper!"

Dr. Garyali appeared five minutes later, to inform her the restraints were for her own good.

"We need to assess your metabolic rate. Sooner or later, we would have needed to collect this data—"

"Screw that. What about my DNA? What did you change there? What did you find?" Was he Unsealed? Her instincts screamed at her to ask—but if there was one piece of discipline she could cling to, it was that Katrina Harris would forever preserve the Seal.

"I'm not a geneticist, Ms. Harris. I can share their findings with you when they arrive—"

"To hell with that. Let me up." She didn't have magic, would never have magic, and the loss of it hurt just as badly as it had every day her powerlessness was drummed in during her days as an agent. _Indigo, focus on Indigo_ , she thought. She could still make it back with the information, regain her position, carry out her duty. That meant more to her than any magic. But hope died painfully, and her brain knew two solutions for the pain: alcohol and exercise. There was only one she could persuade the doctor to give her.

The emotions attracted Payaa's attention. _What's wrong?_ she asked. Katrina slammed her broken hand flat against the table, and the wave of pain sent the wyvern retreating.

"You have no history of anxiety attacks, and we have no history working with creatures like you. We're concerned something might have malfunctioned."

This wasn't working out as she'd planned. In her rush to get away from Payaa, to keep the Seal and all other vulnerable corners of her mind concealed, she'd convinced them their experiment might have malfunctioned. "Please," she begged. "I need to move. It's driving me crazy." Her body might have been their creation, but it was her home, and she had to know the limitations they'd given her as well as the supposed benefits.

He sighed. "I suppose there's nothing preventing us from starting in on the physical tests."

They escorted her back up to the track and told her to run, to take things easy and stop if she felt sick. She made it through a mile and a half before her legs gave out. _Stupid_. Her lungs felt perfectly fine, but her legs were trembling. After all she'd given up, did she really have to add running to the list?

"A good deal of the weakness you feel is a side effect of spending five days in bed," Garyali told her. "With time and practice, you might build up the muscle mass to run long distances again."

_Might_. "It'll never be the same." She wished Kyle was there, or anyone from home. It felt like a wall had descended between her and her whole world, leaving her stranded with strangers in a strange body.

_You aren't alone_ , Payaa whispered in the back of her head.

_Shut up. You're part of the problem_.

She felt the wyvern pull back from the link, hurt. Damn, that creature was sensitive! How could you grow up as a lab rat in a place like this and still believe there was some good in people, that this random woman dropped into your mind wanted to be your _friend?_ Katrina liked her friends loud, sarcastic, and distant enough not to ask about depressing stuff like the jobs she'd lost or the now-absent scars on her thighs or why she didn't want to come by the bar. What had Dr. Harper been thinking when she joined them?

"Ms. Harris?" Captain O'Brien held out his gun. "Would you like to try shooting?"

She donned ear protection and took the weapon over to the range. Her eyes locked in on the target. The world shrank down to a pinprick. She saw the angle at which the bullet would fly, her brain informing her of the breeze from the heaters and the weight of gravity.

Five shots thudded into the center of the target.

A warm glow built up in her stomach. This, she could do. This was a skill Indigo would want, especially when they learned what they were facing here. _I'll deliver the enemy's most potent weapon into their hands_ —

"Look!" O'Brien shouted.

She turned to the window, where Tayamlaa looped and spun like a car on a roller coaster. Kyle clung to her back, lashed tight to the harness.

_That's what we're up against_.

She'd never seen anyone look quite so happy.

"This will go easier if you talk with me, Ms. Harris," Vasilyev told her. "You had a panic attack when faced with mounting your wyvern. That's not supportive of our goals at Wyvernhall. We'd like our pilots to remain healthy and productive. And I think we can make inroads on both today. I'd like you to tell me why you reacted so strongly to Payaa's presence in your mind. What did you see there that angered you?"

"I'd like to see you try waking up with a stranger in your head. Isn't comfortable." _Especially when your mind's a mental Chernobyl, and someone wants to come in and pet the feral dogs_. She could think honestly—Payaa was off hunting, out of range for sharing any but the most extreme emotions.

"So the results of your transfer surprised you?" His eyes flickered over her, not with the clinical detachment of the other scientists, but with hunger. Katrina wasn't sure what for, but she didn't want to find out.

"Pretty surprising." She hedged her answer. "No one was sure what would really happen."

"Why did you go along?" Still hungry. Questioning, now. Interrogating her. Did he suspect? _Stay vague and irreverent_. "You must have known the risks."

_Nothing's as risky as standing on that bluff with that gun in my hand._ "Let's just say Dr. Harper made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"Were you forced into it?" He sounded concerned now. _Fuck that_. No one forced Katrina Harris to do anything. No one got to be concerned about her but her. She grudgingly accepted that some discreet counseling might be in order, considering how she'd wound up here. But they'd be staying square in her comfort zone.

"Nope."

The concerned look remained on his face as he turned up the white noise machine and flipped off the tape recorder he was using to document the session. His eyes ran all over the walls. Finally, he gulped and spoke.

"Did Indigo send you?"

"Indigo?" She sat straight up, suddenly realizing how large Vasilyev was. He'd be a threat even if he turned out not to be a Descendant. "What are you talking about?"

"I saw you when they arrested me. At their headquarters in Queens. You came by to see your brother, Shawn Harris, the one they call the Living Flame. I recognized you when Harper brought you in, and I thought you'd defected. But—please, say they sent you to relieve me. I can't keep living with this fear in my mind. Please!"

He stopped, desperate hope flashing in his eyes. _Shit_. What should she say? _Whatever makes him spill the most information_. He could be a desperate informant. Or this could all be a test. Who better than a trusted therapist to root out traitors?

"I take it you don't like my brother?" she said, cautiously.

"If you'll excuse me, miss, he's a hard man to like. My son got spotted in a public shift. We're polar bears, him and I. He only did so to scare off a mugger." His thick Russian accent filled his voice. "Indigo killed the mugger before he could go to the media, and they knew we were the only family of bears in the area, so they came for us. I said it was me who did it."

Katrina stifled a frown. Protecting lawbreakers who shifted in public only enabled them to risk the Seal again. But at least he'd had the honesty to register his family when he'd moved into the area. Most Descendants ignored Indigo's registration law. _Bears_. If only the kid had possessed the balls needed to go for the kill. Shapeshifters' magic greatly enhanced their physical skills. A bear would have the strength to crush a person like a can.

"I thought—well, you know what they do to lawbreakers, but I was second generation and fluent in the language, so Indigo sent me to work for and spy on the Father of Witches." He lowered his voice while invoking the title. "He sent me here." He reached down around his neck to pull out a brightly painted saint's medallion. Popping it open, he revealed a small flash drive. "I've been using this to communicate with Agent Harris."

"My brother knows this place exists?"

"For the last few months, yes. I told him about your arrival the second I saw your name on the medical records. He hasn't responded."

"Okay." He'd be coming for her, then. Anaïs would have tried her best to talk him out of it, but Shawn loved saving people—especially her. She couldn't have him ruin her moment, let him take credit for smuggling out information on the enemy weapons. And she sure as hell couldn't let him loose in a place so isolated that preserving the Seal wouldn't be his first priority.

"Did Dr. Harper force you to come here? Or did you come to take my place?" His eyes shone with pathetic hope. Katrina spared a second of irritation at the thought that Indigo had sent an unwilling person on this mission when there was someone perfectly willing to volunteer. _But he might be lying_. She could report him to Dr. Harper and cement her position in the doctor's trust. But if Vasilyev was telling the truth, she would cost him his life. If her own quest to escape failed, Indigo would need his eyes on the ground.

Taking a middle road would be best. She could always change her mind. "May I?" He handed her the flash drive. She palmed it and slid it into her pocket. "You work for me now, doctor."

"What?"

"You heard me. I defected, shithead. You're going to get me a handle of vodka by sundown or I'll go to Dr. Harper." Not that she planned to drink it, at least not all at once, but it was a good thing to keep for emergencies. Besides, it was the typical move you'd expect from a recovering alkie in a stressful situation. She doubted Dr. Harper would find the blackmail suspicious at all, and she'd neatly covered her own ass while finding a way to potentially contact her brother.

The whites of Vasilyev's eyes drowned in a sea of brown, indicating an angry polar bear was only seconds away.

"We're still under the Seal here," Katrina pointed out, throwing open the door so other scientists could see in. "Leave the goods outside my suite."

A second physical showed she was in perfect health, and, as her medical records featured no history of anxiety attacks, they sent her back up to the roof. Dr. Harper had been ducking out from the terrace to the gym for hours, thawing her fingers over a heater. Her clipboard held pages of notes. She'd recorded all their interactions with their wyverns—at least, if H and W meant Harris and Winters.

"Sudden acrophobia all dealt with?" Dr. Harper asked. "Are you ready to go out there and fly?"

Katrina shrugged. "Suppose so. Pity Payaa's off hunting."

"Then you can go watch Kyle and Tayamlaa. They're doing target practice. Pay attention. Our war won't win itself." The doctor hugged herself as she looked out the windows. "If you're wondering when the appropriate time was to thank me for the great gift I bestowed on you, it was the moment you laid eyes on your wyvern. I'll accept now."

"I'd have preferred a gift card. Those can't invade your psyche."

Phyllis glared at her. "I hate it when people are flippant about serious matters."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"Your rations have been cut by a third. Do you wish to continue, or go to the roof?"

Katrina went. _You're such a dirty hypocrite. No, worse. You're just some weak asshole who thinks she's tougher than all the other assholes. What have you done with your life that's ever benefited anyone?_ That same rational had chased her into the woods with Kyle and closed her fingers around that gun. Before he'd flipped out, Vasilyev had told her to recognize patterns of thought that lead back to those dark places, and she was trying to do just that. Still, she knew those thoughts had a point, and she wanted it to be a constructive one.

Kyle and Tayamlaa circled the roof, making long, elegant, lazy loops. A whole crowd of security officers watched the pair fly. Captain O'Brien threw rolled-up socks full of sand for Kyle to shoot. His bullets found their mark every time.

"May I?" Katrina asked the captain. He gave her a ball. She donned protective earmuffs and dropped it over the edge.

Tayamlaa, at the height of her arch in the sky, folded her wings and flipped her body downward with a stroke of her powerful legs. Katrina froze, thinking Kyle would fall—but he kept his seat as they plummeted, her wings parallel to the slope of the mountain. Grains of yellow sand exploded outward as a gunshot hit her ears. Tayamlaa spread her wings, flying upside-down for a moment. When she was clear of the mountain slope, she flipped over with a single sweeping push.

Katrina had watched Kyle ride horses at the family farm. He'd fallen left and right, refusing to go any faster than a trot. _How is he doing this?_ Tayamlaa banked; Kyle leaned into the turn before she started to move. Tayamlaa flipped; Kyle pressed himself flat against her back. Had he done what Payaa had asked of her and completely opened his mind to his wyvern?

"Watch this." O'Brien threw three balls at once. Kyle's next shot passed through two in a line. His second got the third ball a heartbeat later. "Fastest shot I've ever seen."

"Helps he's crazy," Katrina muttered, noting the face piece with ear protection they'd clipped on Tayamlaa. Strokes of her wings beat against the air. Kyle shouted in exhilaration when they landed on the roof, wrapping his arm fiercely around Tayamlaa's neck.

"Nice shooting!" Katrina shouted, but he wasn't looking at her. All his attention was focused on his wyvern as he laughed at a joke she hadn't heard. It wasn't until he started pulling off Tayamlaa's harness he noticed she was there.

"Tayamlaa calls me Quickfingers," he said. "I'm the fastest shot she's ever seen."

_What do wyverns know about shooting?_ she thought, but then remembered the bullet scars on Payaa's wings, and shut up.

"Can't wait to see them on the big guns," O'Brien muttered, as Kyle ducked behind Tayamlaa to undo more straps.

"Big guns?" Katrina asked.

"The engineering department is working on them. Anti-aircraft weapons they can mount on a wyvern. Something light enough for you to handle." He frowned. "What did you think you'd been recruited for? War's coming. We'll need air forces of our own."

"And the Father doesn't want to buy planes?" She forced herself to chuckle. "Old fashioned, is he?"

"I'd advise you not to talk about my father," the captain said. "The wyverns are more agile than a plane. He believes they're capable of winning this war. I trust him."

A shiver ran through her body. "Lots of people are going to die."

"Indigo has wound itself so tightly into the fabric of your country the two can't be separated peacefully." Seamus squeezed the handle of his gun. "The pyromancers tell us normal folk will turn against Descendants if the Seal is broken. I say let them come."

_This is where wars come from_. She'd heard talk like this before, from criminals who wanted to justify their ways. _Folk like him, they've given up on co-existing. They think they're better than the rest of humanity, think it's just terrible having to hold back on their magic all because its very existence endangers 99.9% of people on this planet_. This was no crazy backwoods witch speaking, but a man with a small army behind him and the powers of a Valve at his disposal. And if the Valve believed the wyverns could take on planes, he probably had a damn good reason for it. _This is why we need Indigo_.

As the officers swarmed around Kyle and Tayamlaa, shouting congratulations and praising his performance, she ducked back into the Eyrie and fetched some rope from her suite.

The town at the foot of the mountain was mostly deserted by the time she managed to scale the locked gate and head on down. All the kids were at school, and most of the adults at work in the fortress. Dogs barked as she passed their houses. A young man took one look at her strange face and ducked away.

The town consisted of two rings of buildings around a central square. It was there she stopped, facing the glass-enclosed bulletin board that announced high school plays, a showing of Rocky at the church, and a for-sale snowmobile. Her eyes darted back and forth over the ground, reading the bootprints in the freshly-dusted snow. Three sets of prints were from new shoes; only one was a men's size eight.

Katrina followed them around the back of the town library and towards an abandoned shed. The second she stepped into the shadows, a strong arm reached out and lashed around her neck, dragging her back into the shadows. She coughed and gasped, and then the pressure relented. She turned.

This was Shawn as she'd never seen him before, and it just because she was looking with her new eyes. His muscles were tensed, like a wildcat about to strike, and bulky armor stood out under his jacket. She'd seen him pissed, seen him fight as a young man, but time had stripped all the humor from him. This Shawn had eyes that said he'd kill without regret, and kill as many as he needed to reach his goal.

She could see now why they called him the Living Flame.

"It's me," she gasped. "Your sister."

"Katrina?" His voice broke. Past the crease in his brow and looseness of his cheeks, she saw the wide-eyed face he'd worn that day twenty years ago when he'd learned his parents were dead. Then he pulled back on his agent's face. "What did these monsters do to you?"

"Nothing I didn't ask for." _More or less_. "You have to leave. They'll kill you—"

"I go nowhere without you." He kept his voice low, but urgent. His hand cupped her chin, exploring her modified features. "It's my fault you're here. I let that bitch get away."

"Can the guilt," she whispered, fiercely. "I chose this. They were going to experiment on somebody. Now Indigo will know what they can do."

"You did this for Indigo?" His eyes narrowed. She hoped that was just a reaction to the shadows. With her new vision, the darkness didn't affect her like it did him.

"You'd have done the same." Wouldn't he? "And the stuff I've learned—Shawn, they've got a mole inside Indigo! They're building an army for the Father of Witches! They're—"

"Katrina!" He ran his bare fingers through his hair. Steam rose from his skin and drifted up the wood panels of the surrounding buildings. She'd seen his control slip like that only once before. "You . . . you take too many risks. Come on. We're leaving."

No way in hell could she go with him. She needed to look like a devoted agent, sneaking back from enemy territory after handing over her own body to gather intelligence. Not like a fool who'd gotten in over her head and required a real agent to rescue her.

"No," she said.

He froze like she'd slapped him. "These people want to destroy our country and break the Seal. You'd side with them?"

At first, she thought he was joking. But Shawn never joked. Her stomach sank. "Shawn . . . I'm on your side. I've always been on your side. You have to know that." She'd gone to Shawn for advice on her first crush, cried in his arms over her missing powers, entered rehab at his prompting. Why didn't he know that she loved him the same way, that she'd fight for him the same way? _What have I ever done for him?_

"Give me one good reason I should trust you. You've lied to me a hundred times." His face hardened. "I can't trust you to walk around the city at night without trying to destroy yourself. How can I trust you to be loyal to Indigo?"

His words felt like a bullet to the chest. "I might have been a terrible sister, but I was a damn good agent." She kept her voice low and balled her fists. Here, even here, she would show him she had what it took. "I would have died for Indigo. All I asked was to be treated like I belonged there. I worked harder than any of them. They never let me prove myself. They gave me the least important postings even though I made the top five on every evaluation. The second they had an excuse, they shoved me behind a desk and called it a promotion. They only put up with me because they needed you, and because I was a Harris. Shawn, I was born to be part of this. To fight for the greater good. I had to find a way back in. It's who I am."

"No. It isn't." He didn't put any anger behind that. To Shawn, he was simply stating a fact. "I'm sorry, Katrina. Indigo's not for you. And now you've fucked up the life you actually had. You think you can go back into society looking like that? It's freakish."

"Guess Indigo's my only option, then." She gritted her teeth to hold back her urge to scream at him. _And I like my face_. "What if I bring them a wyvern?"

**Part 4: The Traitor**

Two hours later, and it was all arranged. Shawn had brought a laptop with a secured connection. In terse words, he'd explained to Director Fairfax what kind of weapon Synthos was building. Katrina had sat besides him, knowing the director trusted Shawn much more than her. The director swore to reinstate Katrina in return for her prize. A transport plane would meet her the next evening at the base of Mount Orso, a peak of the Brooks Range toward the Canadian border. Satellite images of Wyvernhall had found a loophole in its borders. The plane crew would bring along nets and tranquilizers.

"I'll see you then," Shawn said, his eyes full of worries. She knew he hated the idea, but Indigo needed what she could give them, and Indigo always came first for both of them.

"I'll be there," she said, and hugged him. _I'll show you_.

A clear glass jug waited outside her suite when she returned. She'd tried to keep down her excitement, since the pressure in the back of her head told her Payaa had returned. Nevertheless, a spike of warm energy ran through her as she reached down to lift the jug. It didn't move. _Guess I'll have to drag it_.

_Aren't you supposed to avoid that stuff?_ Payaa asked.

_Are you my sponsor? Get out_. The cravings she used to feel had dimmed, but her rational mind knew very well that this would help her relax. She needed to relax. She could handle herself. A dozen memories of times when she hadn't handled herself bubbled up. She ignored them.

She bent to drag the jar. Her hands froze halfway there.

Payaa made her stand up. _Katrina, you almost killed yourself the last time you relapsed!_

Her blood ran cold. How the hell had the wyvern discerned that piece of information? _It's none of your business how I spend my time!_ She fought the bonds, trying to slide her thoughts back into her hands. For a moment, she contemplated trying to see if she could pull off the opposite maneuver and control Payaa, but grappling two-ways for control would require a terrifying degree of intimacy.

_Tayamlaa!_ Payaa called into the echoing space between the minds of wyverns. Fear lined her thoughts. _Get your pilot up there! He'll know what to do!_

_Right away!_ Tayamlaa's mental voice was richer, somehow, and the quick reply carried a hint of subservience. Katrina distinctly remembered Tayamlaa seemed almost two feet shorter in length than Payaa.

_You're the boss of them_ , Katrina realized. _But you're still scared for me_.

And?

Not good. Leaders shouldn't show fear. People have to believe a leader is in control before they feel comfortable following them.

And you'd know? What do you know about fear? Nothing! And fearlessness isn't a virtue. You don't care about anyone enough to worry about them! You don't even care about your own well-being! Look what you're doing to yourself!

Katrina looked at her hand, frozen a foot from the jar lid. Heat filled her cheeks. _That's none of your business_.

Of course it is! Don't you think it might affect me, if you start drinking again? We're linked together. Your actions affect both of us, and I will keep you sober.

Kyle shook his head as he walked up the hallway. "Really, Katrina?" He knelt to pick up the jug, failed, and pulled out the stopper and knocked it on its side. The smell tugged at a wave of memories: some happy, some blurry. A weak craving tugged at her. She could resist it. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

"You didn't have to do that," she said.

"Why? Because you can control yourself?" He kicked the empty jug down the hallway. It hit a wall and shattered. "You're such a damn liar, you know? But for fuck's sake, stop lying to yourself! You're an alcoholic. That means you _can't_ always control yourself. I was there, that last night in the city! You knew you couldn't control yourself, and you went out anyway—"

"To keep my eyes on you!" she shouted. "Because that was my job. Watching you, because you're a thirty-year-old man who can't be trusted to behave himself in public!"

"You should have told me you'd been to rehab!" His already-tilted eyebrows sloped higher. "You think you would have been fired if you'd spoken up? That I'd think less of you? Katrina, I might have been a shitty friend, but I wouldn't have let you down."

"You drank on the plane." It was almost a whisper. The whole conversation made her want to curl up and vanish. "I told you, on the overlook. I almost killed myself because I relapsed. And not a day later, you started drinking in front of me."

His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed, hard. "You're right. I wasn't—no, I should have thought. I should have cared enough about you to control myself. Fuck, I know, I should have known."

She couldn't remember ever hearing him apologize for anything before. "Kyle, it's okay."

"Not Kyle." He smiled, slightly. "Face it, Kyle Winters was an asshole. I don't want to be that person anymore. I . . . I won't be that person. Call me Quickfingers, like Tayamlaa does."

"It's okay," she said, "Quickfingers." As the name left her mouth, it went from strange to solid. This wasn't the same man she'd known all her life.

He pulled a box of playing cards from his pocket. "Come on. I'm going to keep an eye on you tonight. Round of war will be good for us both."

She found she could stand, and move her hands again. "Thanks," she muttered.

"I'm doing it for Payaa, too. She's got a good heart."

They played cards until midnight. He sat at her kitchen table after she crawled into bed. The words to say 'thank you' never seemed to make it into her mouth before she fell asleep.

The next morning at breakfast, Katrina walked past Vasilyev's table. She greeted him, passed him a note, and asked if she could schedule an appointment later. The note ordered him to use his credentials to log into Wyvernhall's computer network and deactivate the radio chips located in her and Payaa. The note also ordered him to go to her suite at midnight, where he'd find the flash drive and, with it, access to Shawn's explanation. Neither she nor Shawn had wanted to risk blowing her cover by explaining the truth before she left. Extractions could be the most dangerous part of any field operation.

The scientists spent the early morning watching her and Kyle exercise. After a round of weights and running on the track, Dr. Harper escorted them both to one of the engineering labs, buried deep in the mountain. There, they watched as an eager young man held up fabric as grey as a wyvern, embroidered in a pattern of scales.

"It's thermalnealing fabric, like the rest of us wear around here. Nano-engineered not to let any heat escape your body. The pores are like tiny mirrors that reflect energy back on your skin."

"I've used it," Katrina said. "The black cloth. It's amazing. Why change it?"

"Everyone here has the black version. Dr. Harper thought you might like to have a uniform."

Katrina met her eyes. Dr. Harper shrugged. "I've already begun looking for the next recruits. Payaa's oldest are mature enough to be bound. We can expand quickly, now that we know the procedure works."

Both Katrina and Payaa heard her, but Katrina was more disturbed. Payaa had always expected this. The wyverns been made with a purpose in mind, and fighting Dr. Harper's will never did one any good. _At least my children have fifty percent odds of having a decent pilot_ , Payaa thought.

"They're three years old," Katrina said, using information gleamed from Payaa's mind. "They're teenagers, mentally. Forcing this kind of thing onto a teenager—"

"Would you rather I do it in infancy? So they know no other life? So their pilot can tell them 'this is the way things are supposed to be' and they know no different? Unpleasant it may be, but we need pilots. In my experience, the most unpleasant things in life are foisted on the young."

"Your only experience is being young," Katrina pointed out. Dr. Harper was four years her junior.

Her eyes seethed. "You're very good at talking when nothing's at stake, Ms. Harris." That look promised storms. Again, Katrina ran through her memory, asking herself what had passed between them the first time they'd met. _It could be a bluff_. She could be toying with me. Maybe that was what you were supposed to expect from a genius. But for all the intelligence Dr. Harper certainly possessed, Katrina didn't think she had the subtlety to weave an act like that. _No. I hurt this person, somehow, and now I'm in her power_.

Quickfingers must have caught the tension between them. "Hey, look! They've got the weapons out!"

The young engineer opened a case. "We're calling this the butterfly spike."

"That's a spear," Katrina said. A black metal shaft five foot long lay inside, topped with a dull-pointed head and two pairs of sharpened curved guards jutting out from the sides just beneath the head. "Not even a fairly sharp spear. The tip's supposed to be pointed."

"We based them off whaling harpoons. Meant to bring down something much bigger than a person." The engineer lifted it. "We developed a new alloy two years ago that changes temperature very rapidly. Stand back, please." He flipped the switch on the base. The dull tip glowed red-hot. Katrina stepped backwards. Quickfingers muttered in appreciation. "Eight hundred degrees Celsius. Passes through flesh, wood, plastic, some metals . . ." He flipped the switch again. The glowing stopped. "Cools rapidly as well. The batteries are in the shaft. An hour's charge gets you about fifteen seconds of heat, and you can keep them on for almost a minute total before they shut down. We're constructing an projectile version that can be used as part of an anti-aircraft system, but thought you might like to have a few of these around . . ."

"I want fifty," Katrina said. "We can use them in hand-to-hand drills." Dr. Harper gave her a strange look. "What? You said yourself we'd be getting more recruits. They'll need to be trained by someone, and I'm qualified."

"Captain O'Brien can train them."

"He's not what we are," Katrina said. "He's got advantages we don't. I'll take fifty butterfly spikes and a rack for my gym."

The 'my' raised Dr. Harper's eyebrows, but she signed off on the delivery. If the order went through, it would tie up Synthos's manufacturer for weeks.

Payaa's attention returned as she latched on to the suspicious thoughts. _What are you doing?_

_My job_ , Katrina thought. _Because I have one. I'm not a broodmare like you._

The venom made Payaa recoil. Katrina steadied her thoughts, smoothing over any site of turmoil before the wyvern could catch on further. _Shit_. Now she'd really owed Payaa an apology. But how could she apologize for keeping secrets without giving those very secrets away?

Soon enough, it wouldn't matter.

"I'm taking this with me," she said, pulling the butterfly spike close.

"I'm honored, ma'am. Now may I show you the rest of your cold weather gear?"

It wasn't the handgun that drew her eye, but the snowshoes—collapsible, durable metal. A box of ammo. A coil of rope. A fire kit, and a first aid kid. A new radio, and a flashlight. The telling part was what wasn't there: tents, blankets, all survival gear too heavy for her new body to handle alone. This gear would keep her alive for a couple hours, if she got stranded. It would not let her move long distances.

She organized the supplies neatly in the pack they'd given her and clipped the gun to her belt. The butterfly spike fit in the loops on the outside of the pack. It was bulky, but she needed a way to transport it.

She didn't dare say goodbye to Quickfingers as they parted in the Eyrie stairwell, her making for the roof, him making for the cafeteria. _He's happy_ , she told herself. She didn't know how long that happiness would last, but it made parting easier to bear.

The size of the den threatened to overwhelm her as she climbed in. The mouth could have held three elephants, side by side. The tunnels were wide enough to fit two-lane roads. They wormed their way through the heart of the mountain, sloping dramatically downward. Heat radiated off the heating elements locked to the walls. Katrina's boots scuffed along the rough brown stone. _This place was not built for humans to enter_.

Payaa's chamber lay to the back. Five cat-sized whelps clambered all over her, squawking and squealing. In the corner sat a large LCD touch screen, mounted on its own podium. In their shared memories, she felt the wyvern running the otherwise-useless thumb on her second wing joint over the screen, reading books.

_Your favorite?_ Katrina asked.

_Tolstoy_. Flashes of Cyrillic slipped between them. _In the original language. It suffers in translation._

You're smarter than I am.

Payaa straightened her neck, suspicious. _When you lack the hands and resources to build things, you try to build something in your mind. What do you want from me?_ Her patience was rapidly running low. She'd been insulted enough by her pilot.

Katrina made herself think it. _I came to apologize. You were right, earlier. I'm not ready to completely open up my mind to you. There's a lot of bad stuff in there_. Her bad stuff seemed pretty pathetic compared to Payaa's, and some of it slipped through—cuffs on her wrists after a bar brawl, getting fired from her second job—but Payaa didn't seem interested in judging her. _I just need time to get used to this. To you_.

One of the larger whelps clambered over and started climbing up her leg. Katrina reached down and tried to pluck him off. He wriggled free of her grasp and perched atop her head, spreading its wings wide. Talons scratched her scalp. She yelped.

Keetek, enough. To me. Me!

The little wyvern jumped from Katrina's head to the ground, scuttling back to his mother's side. Katrina felt a sharp stab of guilt, one she couldn't even try to hide.

_I accept your apology_ , Payaa said, and Katrina knew she meant it.

_Can we go flying?_ she blurted out. _I found this interesting route we could take—loops around to the south, very scenic. Might take a few hours, but if you're up for it_.

Payaa considered. Katrina knew the wyvern felt her guilt and wanted to do something to make Katrina feel better about herself. That only twisted the knife.

_I'll come_ , Payaa decided. _Can you get my harness?_

Katrina ran to fetch it, and Payaa climbed up to the terrace. It took fifteen minutes to get all the straps in place. At last, she climbed onto Payaa's back and clipped the climbing harness wrapped around her legs to the loop in the saddle. Payaa rose. Her weight shifted back onto her legs, and Katrina slid back in the saddle. She had an uneasy feeling she sat atop a mountain.

_This is going to be very cold_ , she thought. The mountain pitched forward. Katrina's breath caught. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Wind slammed across her face, and then she was falling. Terror laced from her mind to Payaa's, and the wyvern stuttered, pushed past it, and spread her wings. Air blasted against the wide surface, throwing them upwards with a jolt. Payaa flapped rapidly, bringing her speed under control. Katrina lost herself in the pattern of strokes—strong and sure, like oars in a river, or feet pounding on asphalt. _An athlete_. Some identity they shared.

Payaa _loved_ this.

Katrina opened her eyes. They danced across the sky, taking in clouds, the low sun, exploring them in dizzying detail. Clutching the saddle so hard her fists hurt, she dared looking out through the junction of Payaa's shoulder and neck. Her vision darted across the thin fall snow, picking out shadows, rocks, and tracks.

_Caribou tracks_ , Payaa told her. _Thousands more flock here in winter, and we eat like kings_. Through memories, Katrina could feel her dive, closing her talons around a buck and snapping its neck as she pushed back into the sky, muscles straining gloriously with the weight. _Where did you want to go?_

South, along the border. She turned her head northward, following the rounded mountain peaks as they swept around, cradling the valley. Thousands of shadowy crevasses lined their sides, cast in relief by the setting sun. The mountain hosting the fortress rose nearly twice as high as the surrounding peaks. Katrina wondered if it truly was natural.

_Your government built the facility. Perhaps they built the mountain as well_. It was accompanied by a conspiratorial tone. Katrina made note of the 'your'. _Well, I can hardly claim them as mine. Your constitution doesn't give citizenship to wyverns_. She extended the vertically-oriented membranes on the tip of her tail and banked into a sharp turn.

The motion threw Katrina sideways. The safety harness cut into her stomach, forcing the air from her lungs. She gasped in pain.

_Sorry!_ Payaa thought. _I thought you were ready!_

_Tell me before you do something like that_ , Katrina thought. With her thoughts held back, she couldn't detect Payaa's intentions.

Payaa leveled out, keeping her flight path steady and her speed even. Katrina drank in the cold, fresh air as it poured over her. Payaa's heat warmed her legs, and her beating heart chased off the rest of the pain the temperature might have caused her. She was tempted to stay quiet and enjoy it, but she knew what her job was. _How much do you know about my government?_

_I know it has three branches, a powerful bureaucratic arm, a more powerful military, and it's considered the most powerful government in the world_. Payaa paused. _That intrigue in your mind tells me that you know more about it than I_.

_Shit_. She'd overreached—everything was wide open, ready for wyvern access—but Payaa withdrew, sliding her thoughts back into her body, reminding herself where her boundaries lay.

_I meant it, Katrina, I won't push you. We all have our secrets. This connection—it's new to me, as well. It's not like talking to another wyvern. It's okay if you want to put up some walls_.

Katrina swallowed. Heat rushed to her face. "I just . . ." she muttered, and realized how stupid a gesture it was, asserting her independence from Payaa by speaking out loud, rubbing in something Payaa couldn't do. Would the scientists have kept mistreating her if Payaa had cried out in a human voice?

_Probably. They aren't very good people_. Flashes came of white lab coats, pictured from the eye level of a young wyvern crouched on cold tiles. _Most of them were expelled from academia for unethical experimentation. Why else would they isolate themselves from the rest of the world to study here? Could we think of something more pleasant?_

Katrina's mind went to her house in the Adirondacks, the feel of her feet on the hiking trails. Payaa welcomed the memories, though she held herself back, not prying. She'd never left the borders of Wyvernhall, and seeing the outside world on a screen wasn't the same as remembering it. A screen had no context; a memory told you how you could feel.

_Where's our destination?_ Payaa asked as she glanced southward. To Katrina, the flat landscape appeared much the same as it spread outward. But in Payaa's thoughts, a firm line cut the land in half, marking where they could and could not go. _We're almost at the southern border_.

Katrina smiled, donning bravado like a cowboy in a movie. _We're crossing._

Payaa mistimed her next wing beat. They dropped five meters. A flurry of frantic flapping kept them airborne. _But—the border! Dr. Harper's armed the border with short-range missiles, and if anyone tries to cross—Veick's tried! He's still covered in shrapnel wounds! He nearly died!_

_There's a gap_ , Katrina told her. _Along the southern border, marked by an icy rise. They couldn't find enough solid ground to sink the launchers close enough together to get full coverage. It's over a hundred feet wide. We can fit._

_There's a dozen other places within the border we could go. Are you crazy?_ Dr. Harper had demonstrated the missiles for her and her siblings when they grew large enough to fly long distances alone. If they didn't kill a wyvern outright, the missiles would knock them from the sky and let the ground do the rest. _You're risking—_

_Relax, will you?_ Katrina thought. _It'd be my skin, too_. The icy rise in question lay just ahead. _This relationship goes two ways. I can't be comfortable with you if you don't trust me_. It was a mean, manipulative tactic, but enough to make Payaa turn southward, hesitating. Katrina slipped her mind into the wyvern's, grabbed control of her wings, and used the muscle movements she'd picked up to propel them through the gap.

A wave of shock swept through Payaa's mind as they passed through unharmed. Katrina used that to take the next three wingbeats. Payaa reached for control and Katrina relinquished it before Payaa could push into her mind and unveil her purpose. Warmth spread through Katrina's chest.

I can't believe you just—

_Come on,_ Katrina thought. _You're out. For the first time in your life, you're out. Fly on back to your cage if you want. Me, I'd suggest we continue southward. Let's go see Mount Orso—it's the biggest peak in the area, and it's barely an hour away. Let's go have some fun._

Fun. Payaa turned the word over in her head, thinking of Veick, her children, the rules she'd never dare break. Maybe things had changed. They wanted wyverns with pilots. They wouldn't dare hurt one of the wyverns who they'd managed to bind. And here was her chance—her pilot wanted this. Her thoughts flew to Tayamlaa, and Quickfingers. She'd named him, claimed him. To have someone on your side like that . . . _Can you promise me you'll tell Dr. Harper this was your idea?_

Katrina pulled on a smile. _Next time I see her, I will_.

The strokes of Payaa's wings fell into a harsh, predictable rhythm. The shadows and dark rock drew apart from one another as Katrina's eyes became more accustomed to the high-contrast environment of snowy tundra. Katrina felt tiny variations in the air as it slid under Payaa's wings, warm and rising, cool and falling. Dryness built in the back of both their throats. The sun sank, the sky darkened, and a thousand stars swarmed above her. She'd never seen so many stars.

_Then I don't care much for this city of yours_. Payaa shivered under her, though not from cold or fatigue.

_What's the matter?_ Katrina asked.

The wyvern paused and gathered up her courage. _I can't keep going. I don't feel comfortable, doing this. The consequences to my family—_

_Wimp_ , Katrina thought, boiling over with self-loathing, trying to hide that hate as anger at Payaa.

No. Enough. I—

And Katrina felt Payaa's muscles bulge as she preparing to pivot. They were minutes from their destination; Orso reared on the horizon, tall and proud. She saw the position she'd fought for—her job, right or wrong—slipping away from her, and she did the only thing she could think of.

Shock ran down Payaa's spine as Katrina pressed a gun to her neck, followed by a crushing, painful blow of betrayal worse than getting body-slammed by another wyvern. Deep-rooted fear followed in its path, and Katrina tried to ignore that. She hadn't come to Wyvernhall to make friends.

"Keep flying," Katrina growled over the wind. "I know the sensitive spots, the spots I can hit without bringing you down, and don't doubt for a second I can hit them. Dr. Harper made me an excellent shot. Make for the base of the mountain."

_Like hell I will_. Payaa reached through the bond between them, fighting for control of Katrina's hand.

Katrina had expected that. She dug deep, grounding herself firmly in her own mind. _I will show them I'm worthy. Every sacrifice, all the pain, all the time spent fighting and training and sulking and lying! I'm a warrior, I was born to fight, and I will fight here and win!_

But Payaa had her own fuel: fear of this danger her pilot had brought to Wyvernhall, a burning desire to protect herself, Veick, and her children. Underneath it ran a deep-rooted, stubborn refusal to ever let anyone push her around again.

Katrina found herself staring down the barrel of her own gun, her finger curled around the trigger. Then her hand turned and flung the firearm away into space.

_I'm better than you_ , Payaa thought, and dove.

Katrina's stomach shot up into her throat as Payaa plummeted earthwards. The wyvern stretched her wings to their full length, her tail streaming out like a banner, neck held firm by iron muscles. Payaa made no effort to reduce her speed, and Katrina's universe shrank to a pinpoint. _We're crashing._

With a chest-tearing heave, Payaa leveled out, swinging across the barren icy plain. Her outstretched talons dug small ruts in the snow as she skimmed above it. She flared her wings backwards, stopping so suddenly that Katrina slammed into the front of the saddle and tumbled off the side. The harness tugged at Katrina's chest, squeezing the air from her lungs.

_Get off me_ , Payaa said as Katrina dangled from her side. _I don't know what you were after, but I want you off. Do I have to bite through your harness myself?_

"No!" Katrina gasped, gloved fingers fumbling clumsily with the carabineer holding her in place. It came free, and she dropped, landing on her back in a snowdrift. Quickly, she scrambled away from her wyvern.

I should have seen it from the start! Guarding your mind, your questions about my loyalties to the government, luring me out here—you're a spy, aren't you?

Katrina gulped. This wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to admit while facing down an angry wyvern, especially when your gun was gone. She'd never reach the butterfly spike on her back in time, and the knife stuck in her belt would do nothing against a creature with a body the size of a car and a fifty-foot wingspan. "Yes, but—"

Payaa lowered her head and roared. The deep, rich tone echoed across the wide-open landscape. Katrina's bones vibrated. _You brought me here to abduct me!_ The wyvern had glimpsed the cargo plane in her thoughts.

"Payaa, listen!" Her hopes clung to life. She'd show Payaa the truth, how vital it was that she go along with the plan. Thousands of lives hung in the balance. "I'll open my mind to you—just let me explain!"

_The time for explanations has passed_. Payaa shifted her weight back onto her hind legs and began to run. Desperate, Katrina threw open her thoughts, exposing everything in the bond between them: Shawn flinging fire, her broken leg, that brawl at that Christmas party.

_The time has PASSED_. Payaa leapt into the sky, scattering snow under her wings. _You can freeze to death for all I care_.

"Damn it!" Katrina shouted as the wyvern rose into the sky. She slammed her fist into her knees and gasped in pain as a bone cracked in her hand.

_Maybe I'll watch_ , Payaa whispered. _Wait until you fall, and eat your body. A fit reward for everything you've said and done to me._

Katrina closed her eyes and tried to filter the wyvern out. The base of Mount Orso was ten miles away. She swung off her pack and pulled out the snowshoes they'd given her. Thankfully, Payaa had already reached an altitude high above her, lessening the pressure of her thoughts into a small trickle of information. If she was going to make it, she didn't need any distractions.

_Director Fairfax won't be happy with me_. She could feel the deal slipping through her fingers, and it made her want to scream and curse at the sky. But she'd paid attention when the security officers had talked about Arctic survival, enough to know she was deeply ignorant of the skills it took to survive in this environment. If she didn't make it to the evacuation point by morning, her job would suddenly cease to matter. _I'm bringing back prototypes of their weapons. That might be enough_.

She pulled down the butterfly spike from her pack, held it like a ski pole, and set off. Her feet skimmed over the snow. Dr. Harper had made her so light that breaking through hidden ice crusts wouldn't be a problem, and her new lungs were plenty large enough to hold all the air she needed. But the procedure had leeched away all the endurance she'd built up over the years. She'd been working out every chance she had, but not enough time had passed for her to recover even a fraction of what she'd lost, and that was what worried her the most. Could she make it?

"I _am_ a warrior," she whispered into the fabric of her ski mask. "On my way, big brother."

Katrina's face felt frozen and stiff, even with her mask. Her heavy breathing had left a circle of wet cloth around her mouth that rubbed painfully against her lips. Her legs felt as heavy as lead. The distinctive broken ridge that marked the peak of Orso had drawn closer, but remained distressingly tiny. She estimated she'd gone five miles. She felt like she'd run a marathon.

_Remove their muscles. Excellent plan to design the ultimate soldier, Dr. Harper_. Her snowshoe snagged on a hidden rock. Gravity tugged her forward. She stuck out the spike in an attempt to halt the fall. It skidded on a patch of ice. She landed in a puff of snow. When she stood, snow slid down the neck of her shirt. _Fuck_. Cold was deadly enough. She didn't need moisture on top of that. _Fuck you, Dr. Harper, and fuck me for being stupid enough to underestimate Payaa_.

Katrina pressed onward. Once or twice, she thought she heard the engine of a snowmobile humming in the distance, but her ears remained as normal as they'd always been, and the landscape had grown rockier, blocking her sight in most directions. _I must be imagining things_. She had no clue why any of Shawn's people would come so close without offering aid. Payaa still hovered nearby—Katrina occasionally glimpsed her distant shadow sliding across stars—and looking through her eyes might have told Katrina if she was alone or not, but she didn't dare reach out. She'd only end up begging Payaa to come with her until she lost her way and dropped into some hidden crevasse in the ice.

Some small part of her was relieved the wyvern had discovered her ruse. This was Payaa's home. No matter where Indigo sent her, she'd never be permitted to fly free. She knew how important flying was to Payaa. _And what do you care about her for? You easily abandoned Quickfingers, who you've known your whole life_. But while Quickfingers was her oldest friend, Payaa was a part of her mind. _So? What's your mind, or a wyvern's, or the lives of all the wyverns, compared to the Universal Vision?_

Katrina jerked her chin up towards the horizon. Sweat tricked from her arms, more than she'd sweated since they'd transferred her. The wind sunk into her bones.

Two more miles passed. She counted her steps, filling her skull with numbers instead of fears. Darkness settled around her like a heavy down quilt. The stars glittered like diamonds, and patches of ice reflected their light and the light of the waxing moon. Cold wind blew snowy dust off the ground, tracing graceful sketches in the air. The Northern Lights danced high over her head. For a moment, one shimmering teal veil slipped into the shape of a wyvern.

_You could slip into death here without even noticing_. The thought startled her. Vasilyev would have noted it as a red flag. Her legs screamed for a break, but stopping meant never starting again. Five marathons had taught her as much. Her eyes tried to pick apart the distant shadows surrounding the base of Mount Orso, scanning for any sight of Shawn and his promised plane. She could radio for help, but the radio they'd given her was attuned permanently to Wyvernhall's frequencies. She could have fixed it, given time and tools, but those were nowhere to be found.

She was about to start screaming curses again when her vision caught a pair of parallel lines: snowmobile treads, fresh ones at that, mostly unmarred by the wind and fresh snowfall. _I'm not alone_. Even if Shawn's men hadn't left this track, machines meant people and people meant heat. Heat meant life. The track pointed towards the mountain—an arrow, leading to hope.

She pushed forward. The land rose up around her, closing her off from the outside world as scrub bushes grew more and more frequent. Her eyes flickered over details in leaves and woody stems. Without open spaces, or the sky, Dr. Harper's augmentations were all but useless.

The snowmobile lay abandoned in a thicket, clumsily covered with branches in a hasty attempt to disguise signs of passage. Katrina looked it over for salvageable parts, but nothing immediately stood out to her, and she couldn't waste more time looking. A pair of bootprints lead away from the machine and towards Mount Orso. Her heart lightened as she pushed forward. The second wind she'd come to count on in marathoning washed over her—she could make it, she would make it—

The boots lay abandoned atop a bare outcropping when she stepped out of the forest. She pushed to the top of the ridge— _further, further_ —and a scream of disbelief rang from her mouth as she found the still-flowing river that shaped the point and cut her off from Mount Orso. The peak was still a mile away.

"Fuck!" she shouted, and slammed the butt of her spike into the ice. Nothing changed. Entering the water meant she might freeze to death before reaching the mountain. Captain O'Brien had told her a method for how it could be done, which required making a torch so a fire could be quickly assembled on the other side. She had her fire kit, but doubted she'd be able to get a fire going with only the wet, dying bushes that lined the banks. _I have to risk it_. The adrenaline was leaking from her limbs, and her head was nodding, but she simply had no other choice.

Katrina turned towards the river.

"I didn't expect you'd come this way," said a familiar voice.

She pivoted. It was Vasilyev, naked and soaked, his milk-pale skin curdling in the darkness. Muscles bulged under his bare skin. This was the same man who'd offered her tissues when she'd cried in his office. She hadn't realized the full impact of his second-generation status until now.

"I didn't expect you to come. At all." She gripped her spike tighter, cursing the loss of her gun. "How did you find me?"

"I paid a local pyromancer to find your destination. She said the odds were fifty percent you'd arrive at Mount Orso. It sounded like my best chance."

_To do what?_ she wanted to ask, but she had a damn good sense of the truth. "You came to kill me."

"I wanted to see my son again. I can't do that if you blow my cover." He stepped forward. "I thought you'd outfly me, even with my head start. I didn't think you'd come alone. I'll have to take care of Payaa when I'm done with you."

She tightened her grip, dredging up more adrenaline reserves. Her pounding heart sharpened what the cold had dulled. "I lied to you. Why do you think I told you to shut down our tracker chips? I'm a double agent, fool, but like hell would I admit as much out loud, in there! For all I knew, you were testing my loyalties to the Valve! The way you broke down—come on, it doesn't matter how long you've been undercover, it's the mark of a shitty spy. I didn't buy the act!"

He took a step towards her, eyes filling with brown as he did, his shoulders joints swiveling forward. "I never wanted to be a spy. You can blame Indigo for this."

"Indigo will blame you." She took another step backwards. "You wouldn't dare make my brother angry?"

Doubt flickered all over his face for a moment, but he shook it off. "Even if you speak the truth, he would do nothing. He wouldn't risk his only spy in Wyvernhall."

_Well, he's right about our priorities_.

White fur burst from his limbs as he curled forward, dropping to all fours. The air rippled around him. Katrina raised her butterfly spike. Vasilyev's form coalesced into a polar bear five feet tall at the shoulder, with jaws built to rip seals in half.

_Well_ , she found herself thinking, _at least no one can say I died easy_.

He clambered towards her and lashed out with one enormous paw. She jumped backwards, stumbling in her snowshoes, and cut clumsily at his neck. The razor-sharp barbs on the side of the butterfly spike tore a shallow gash in his flesh. He snarled and slunk sideways, beady eyes fixed on the tip of her weapon.

_He knows what it can do_. Vasilyev telegraphed his motions so obviously a human could have seen them—for whatever Dr. Harper had done to her, she knew that 'human' no longer applied to her. _A monster made by humans. Shit, I'm sorry, Borghild_. She flipped the switch. The head of the spike glowed red. Despite her physical weakness, she felt as strong as an army.

"Come at me, fucker!"

Muscles bunched in his hindlegs as he charged. Katrina lifted the spike, but Vasilyev's intuition remained human enough for him to dodge. Only by turning herself was she able to sink the red-hot harpoon into his shoulder. Vasilyev roared and turned, easily ripping the weapon free of her hands.

Now he stood between her and escape. She had only the river at her back, and getting wet meant a slower death than at the paws of a bear. Flesh sizzled around the spike as it slowly sunk deeper, but the battery charge would already be dying, and second-generation Descendants healed fast. She couldn't count on that to kill him for her. I need a weapon.

She pulled Shawn's knife from her belt and opened it up. The nine-inch blade felt like a toothpick in her hands. She held it up all the same. Dimly, in the back of her mind, something roared.

The bear reared back onto his hindlegs, making him taller than two grown men. Katrina jumped backwards as he crashed down. One snowshoe hit ice and threw her onto her back. Savage jaws reached for her foot, and she kicked out with all her strength, slamming the metal snowshoes into his face. _Roll_ , she thought, but exhaustion had stolen her speed, and she couldn't get clear.

Pain exploded through her chest as Vasilyev slammed a paw into her chest. Ribs splintered, the shock paralyzing. She drove her knife at his leg, opening a shallow gash. Vasilyev didn't seem to notice as he leant down, pressing the air from her lungs. Part of her knew this was the end, but she couldn't accept that, not after everything she'd been through. She wanted to _fight_ —

His enormous weight was flung off her body in a flurry of frantic wingbeats. A roar echoed in her ears. Katrina felt short, sharp teeth tear scaled flesh from her shoulder. A heavy paw slammed into her skull, knocking her head sideways. Blinding pain filled her face.

"Payaa!" Katrina screamed, pushing through their mingled thoughts. The wyvern advanced on the bear. The blow she'd struck had left deep, bloody gashes in Vasilyev's back, but those were already closing. Payaa had the disadvantage on the ground, even discounting how Vasilyev's magic amplified his strength. "Get out of here! Fly!" She wanted to ask why, but she knew the answer: Payaa wasn't the kind of person to stand by and watch anyone die, no matter what they had done to her. _That's strength. Strength born of kindness. Like nothing I've ever had_.

Instead of retreating, Payaa sunk her teeth into the bear's neck. Katrina felt her push him, attempting to get him at an angle where her talons could get at his intestines. Vasilyev pushed back, knocking her was stronger. He pushed himself up on his hindlegs, knocking her down as he rose to his full height.

_No_ , Katrina thought. She'd hurt the wyvern enough. She'd be damned if Payaa died for her. Cursing at the pain, she jumped to her feet. "It's me you want, you bastard! Me!"

He turned towards her and advanced, blotting out the moon. She tried to drop into a fighter's crouch, but a wave of pain coursed through her shattered chest, and she doubled over. Payaa felt her pain and roared, drawing the bear's attention to herself, even as she struggled to stand and the blood pouring from her face blinded her.

Katrina made herself move. She was light on her feet, lighter than any thinking creature in the world, and she threw herself between the bear and Payaa before he could strike. "Stay away from her! I'm warning you!"

The bear lunged.

_I am Indigo_ , Katrina thought. A scream of pain escaped her as she whipped her arm around and threw.

The nine-inch blade sank into the bear's eye socket. He reeled, toppling towards her like a mountain of white fur. Katrina spun, throwing herself over Payaa. Stars lit up behind her eyes as something heavy landed on her back.

_I thought he'd crush me_ , she thought, rolling over. The naked human corpse that had hit her lay in the snow, Shawn's knife sticking out of one popped eye. _A direct hit through the brain_. She'd killed him instantly. Magic needed a living conduit to enter the world. His second form had evaporated within a second of his death.

Magic? Payaa rolled back onto her feet, fighting a wave of dizziness. Her right eye had swollen shut. Blood dripped from her face where the bear had clawed her. Her good eye surveyed the body. _What . . . what is that?_

_A shapeshifter_. Her Indigo training screamed that this was wrong, that she had to preserve the Seal, that Payaa would be killed if she knew. But Payaa deserved to know the reason she'd been created . . . and Katrina had a feeling the wyvern would prove harder to kill than an agent might think. _I can tell you want he wanted and why he was here, but this is the most dangerous knowledge in the world. You could be killed for knowing this_.

_Tell me_. Payaa's mind was firm, resolute. _I deserve to know_.

Katrina swallowed and let the barrier she'd built around her thoughts dissolve. Her thoughts slid into Payaa's, mingling freely so that for a moment she couldn't tell if she had wings or arms. Everything she'd tried to hide bubbled up, in no particular order. Payaa felt cuffs on her wrists and tasted the bile in her throat, but the memories seemed to shrink in the face of what they'd just done.

Katrina began piling snow over Vasilyev's body. Tiny muscles in her chest tickled as they dragged bits of her ribs back into position. The sight of his limp body sent a wave of guilt rushing through her. He'd had a life and a family on the outside. He hadn't been cut out for spywork, and she'd pushed him too far. _I was playing my role_ , part of her said, and _I was fueling my addiction_ said another, and both were equally true.

Payaa sorted through her memories, building a picture of Indigo in her own mind. _This force of yours. This magic. It changes everything_ , Payaa thought. _It's like an old myth come to life. Harper created us for evil?_ Payaa's memories rose up: Dr. Harper cradling her as a whelp, Dr. Harper standing mute on the sidelines while the coats injected her with reproductive hormones.

_She is evil_ , Katrina thought. _She says I met her once before, when she was younger, and she hates me for that. I think she hoped the transfer might kill me_.

_Dr. Harper doesn't let personal feelings interfere with her work_ , Payaa said. _She's told me many times she loves me and my siblings. It doesn't stop her from letting them inject us with whatever drug they choose or shock us when we disobey them. This news of yours is startling, but not entirely unexpected. I won't abandon my world for you, but I can help you cross that river. It's the least I owe you_. Payaa tried to stand, but her tail didn't rise at the right time, and she toppled over onto her chest. Katrina felt her head swim.

"You have a concussion. He hit you too hard." If Payaa couldn't walk, how could she fly? The wyvern needed urgent medical care.

Katrina pulled the knife from Vasilyev's eye, wiped it on the snow, and set it down atop the mound. If he'd secured his position as the only spy in Wyvernhall, what would he have done about the wyverns when Indigo moved to take down Dr. Harper? The wyverns didn't know about the Seal, or what they'd been created to do. They might look like creatures from legend, but they were scientific creations, with no magic of their own. Indigo had no reason to harm them. But if you couldn't hear the wyverns speak, it would be so easy to ignore the souls behind their eyes and see dangerous, threatening creatures instead.

Payaa wasn't going anywhere; Katrina still had a shot at making it to Mount Orso. The wyvern wasn't that heavy; a group of Descendants like the ones waiting for her could easily drag her to the cargo plane. She'd be a full agent again, with all the prestige of having carried out a successful undercover operation, and even though she didn't have magic, she had preternaturally good aim and enough regeneration to pass. She could have the life she always dreamed of.

And all she had to do was destroy one more life. The life of the woman who'd just saved her. _My brother's family. Emma and Kyle. Vasilyev._ She'd hurt so many people in her quest to become an agent once more. Had that served the greater good? Would dragging Payaa away from her life, her family, and the only home she'd ever known serve the greater good? How could any good come from an act so cruel? There had to be another way. A way to bring Dr. Harper down and end the Valve's plot without abandoning the wyverns to be destroyed.

And then she saw it.

"I'm coming back with you," Katrina said. "I can be your brain and eyes, and fly your body."

_Are you crazy?_ Payaa asked. Katrina pressed her thoughts outward, exposing herself. She felt naked, but at least Payaa could know her intentions were honest. _What about your job at Indigo?_

"That can wait. For now." She tried to smile. _Please don't reject me_. "Indigo will want a new spy here. I've got a feeling they'd prefer a pair of spies, commanding Dr. Harper's air force. And when those spies bring down Dr. Harper, Indigo will owe them a debt."

Payaa understood. _They'll have to protect us_.

A wave of warmth washed over her at Payaa's 'us'. Katrina thought of the flash drive in her room. Shawn would take her apologies easier via email. "Let's fly."

Katrina pulled the rope from her pack and tied herself firmly to the saddle before starting; she didn't know if she'd lose control of herself while in Payaa's mind. She drifted, lifting Payaa's tail like a marionette's. They moved awkwardly, at first, as Katrina tried to recreate Payaa's stride one step at a time. But then it all came together, and her brain balanced Payaa's wings and threw them into the sky.

_You know the way?_ Payaa asked, struggling to hold back her urge to fight for her body.

_I've got the stars_. The angles blazed in her eyes, just like when she fired a gun. She knew what they looked like here and what they looked like in Wyvernhall. That was enough.

Katrina slipped deeper into Payaa's mind, only leaving a spark of attention in her own body to look through her eyes. Payaa's thoughts swirled with pain, fear, and confusion, but one thing was clear: she was glad Katrina was there. And as Katrina wasn't holding anything back, Payaa knew her pilot was glad as well.

Payaa's talons hit the stone lip of the den sometime past midnight. An exhausted Katrina rolled off her back and radioed the hospital before passing out on the ground.

She woke up five hours later. Dr. Harper caught up to her before the nurses could unravel her IVs.

"Someone deactivated your tracking chips last night. You vanished for hours. Where were you?"

Katrina stretched. "Not sure. I'm new around here, remember? You'd have to ask Payaa; she knows the landmarks."

"I emailed her," Dr. Harper said. "She isn't talking."

Katrina grinned. "Then I'm not, either." She needed to get this bit right. "You chose me as her pilot. You want me to lead this army for you. I need you to trust me, Doc. Me and my methods." They'd find out about Vasilyev's disappearance soon enough. The smart ones would realize he was a spy and figured out she'd killed him. She'd be respected, her methods unquestioned. She'd fit perfectly into her role; the commander of an army built to destroy nations. And when the time came, she'd turn the tables and prove to Indigo the wyverns could be trusted.

"Your methods are barbaric and cruel," Dr. Harper said. "Let Payaa know it's her I trust. To gentle you." She turned and began walking away.

"You're holding something over me," Katrina said. "Something I did. The reason you recruited me for this project. Why?"

"I enjoy watching you suffer." Dr. Harper smiled. "Don't worry. You deserve it."

The bond told her Payaa was okay, if sedated. Some bit of wyvern etiquette she'd picked up told her that as long as two wyverns were in communication range, physical proximity meant very little to them. But whatever Katrina had become, she still thought like a human. The minute they released her, she set off for the den.

Tayamlaa and Quickfingers waited on the lip of the cave, relaxing after another shooting drill after a shooting exercise. Katrina fought the urge to embrace him as she approached. He had to remain in the dark until Indigo was ready to strike. Too many people knowing would quickly blow her cover. Besides, she wanted him to have time to live without the shadow of disaster hanging over him.

He hugged her, though. "I heard you two killed a polar bear. With a knife! Are you crazy?"

"I'm fine," she said, and meant it.

Payaa lay behind the two of them. Both of her eyes were open now, although the puffy slashes down the face would scar. _Veick likes it_ , she thought. Katrina glimpsed what he hadn't liked—his wife's reckless pilot—but Payaa quickly shielded that discussion from her.

"Heard you need a new knife," Kyle said. "One of the security officers makes these in his spare time. Thought it would fit."

He tossed her something. She caught it: a sheathed dagger with a silver bear's head for a pommel. A symbol in the hilt where a maker's mark might go told her a witch had laid a spell in the blade. _I'll have to ask what for_. It reminded her of the Harris family sword, covered in gemstones and reinforcement spells, the one Shawn hated having to use. Myths and fairy tales were dead things, trapped within the past, their promises too dangerous to be unleashed on the world. But it might just be possible to bring down Dr. Harper and save the wyverns.

"New York's a thousand miles away," she said. "Can you believe it even still exists, Quick? We're in a different world. We're wyvern pilots. We're warriors. We really . . . we really are something else."

_You guided me home through darkness when I couldn't see the way_ , Payaa said. _You and I, together, we will see a way to lead our people through it. You are Nighteyes_.

A pause fell over the four of them. Then Tayamlaa straightened up. Better go eat, she told Payaa, and dropped away.

"And we better find some furniture for the new recruits," Quickfingers said. "Ready to take inventory?"

"I'm ready for anything," Nighteyes replied.

The End
**Author's Note**

I hope you enjoyed reading _She Who Sees Through Darkness_! Please visit this one of this novella's retail pages and leave a review!

Eager to find out what happens next? Nighteyes, Quickfingers, and Dr. Harper will return in my 2016 novel _Wyverns of Mass Destruction._ Can't wait that long? I've adapted the first few chapters into a webcomic, which you can read here.

I'll also be publishing two more short novellas in this series! For information about new releases, or to chat with me, come check out my Facebook page!
