When Cooper woke up, his shoulders and back ached, and his fingers were numb.
“Mmm,” he mumbled, rolling his stiff neck. Whatever his head was resting on moved with him, and he realized he was sitting upright, leaning against something.
“Cooper?” Park asked. “Are you awake?”
“Mmm,” he said, deciding Park could interpret that how he wished and Cooper could still claim plausible deniability in case he changed his mind and went back to sleep.
He felt horrible. Like being a teenager again and waking up after twelve hours of painful, unconscious growing—feeling all at the same time like he’d slept too little, too much and like he wasn’t waking up in his own body at all but rather some heavy, tender thing.
“Cooper, I need you to wake up.” Park spoke again, and the pain in his voice forced Cooper to reach deep within himself and focus. Park needed him.
He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Eli.
Eli, sitting on the cement floor of a cage, head tilted back against the fencing, watching him. Expressionless. Not like when Park was hiding his emotions, but like he’d...given up.
Cooper tried to move and immediately felt pain in his wrists, like they were bound by something. That finally snapped him the rest of the way into his senses.
He was sitting upright on the floor as well, his ass fully numb against the cold cement, which somehow just made the small of his back feel like it had taken over Atlas’s job and had absolutely lied on the résumé. He was leaning up against Park’s warm, solid much sturdier-seeming back, which was almost nice except for the fact that their wrists seemed to be cuffed together between them. They felt thicker than handcuffs. Heavier. Some kind of animal restraints, he’d guess, based on the whole zoo thing.
Cooper looked around as best he could and realized Eli wasn’t the only one in a cage. He and Park were in the one the bear had once occupied, Eli on the other side of the fence with the howdy door between them.
“We’re still in the same building,” Park said. “I think it’s been about four hours.”
“When did you wake up?” Cooper asked, eyeing Eli, who just stared back, unsmiling.
Park paused. “Only a couple of minutes ago.”
Cooper felt surprised by that. Werewolves’ higher metabolism usually meant they processed things like food, alcohol, and other drugs a lot quicker. But Park had barely regained consciousness before Cooper had.
He tried moving backward, piecing together what had happened. It was rather dark in the cages, only lit by moonlight that filtered in from the tiny, high up barred window along the outside wall. It must be fully night then, and unlikely anyone was going to come wandering by. Which was probably the point of keeping them tied up here waiting.
He thought of the person walking up to him just before losing consciousness. Not an enormous bug-man but someone wearing a gas mask staring down at him. Protecting themselves from the mist that had come out of the sprinklers, just after they’d seen Eli watching them from the doorway and Neil on the...
Cooper exhaled shakily while regret, sadness, and anger flipped over in his stomach like a stone dislodged by the tide and resettled heavily somewhere so deep within he didn’t think he’d be able to budge it again for a long time. Foolish to feel so viscerally because of a man he’d only just this morning despised. But loss was too complex a thing to always feel what you were supposed to feel.
“Are you okay?” Park was asking, clearly sensing some of the turmoil Cooper felt.
“I’m not hurt,” Cooper said. “You?”
Park hesitated for so long Cooper had halfway convinced himself the next words out of his mouth would be Actually, I was just clinging to life long enough to say goodbye.
“I’m not injured,” Park said finally. “But I’m having a hard time...moving.”
“Okay, in what way?” Again, the silence stretched between them. Cooper tried to help. “Aching pain? Sharp pain? Numbness? Coordination problems? Stiffness?” he asked, quickly trying to remember what each one might indicate, some more serious than others.
“Yeah, those,” Park said.
Cooper stilled. “What, all of them?”
Park shifted on the floor, and Cooper could feel him straining against him, as if trying to crack his own back into place. “Yeah, my spine feels like crumbled cement, someone’s stabbing me in my shoulder, my ass is just one enormous hunk of aching meat and everything’s...muffled,” Park said, still trying to stretch. “My nose feels all stuffed and my ears are still full of water and it’s so. Fucking. Dark. In. Here,” he went on, getting more and more frustrated, stretching his back and rolling his neck and shifting on the floor.
He was moving around so much it was really starting to irritate Cooper’s skin as their cuffs pulled together. Almost as soon as he noticed it, Park stopped tugging. “Now my wrists are burning. It’s like as soon as I focus on one thing, something else starts hurting instead.”
“Okay, okay, breathe with me,” Cooper said, trying to calm down himself. It wasn’t like Park to be so...vulnerable. “Does any of it feel life threatening?”
“No,” he said. He sounded a little more settled after matching his breaths to Cooper’s. “Nothing that bad. It all just feels sort of the same level of...unpleasant. And I feel really weak. Drained.”
Cooper maneuvered his hands a little so he could grasp a couple of Park’s fingers. He squeezed them comfortingly, and Park jerked away. “What’s wrong?” Cooper asked.
“I think I have a bunch of glass in my fingers,” Park hissed. “My whole hand just feels packed with it.”
What the fuck had happened to Park while they were unconscious?
“Okay, it’s going to be okay. Eli, are you hurt?” Cooper called out, and felt Park jerk behind him and try to turn his head.
“Eli’s here?”
The pure shock in Park’s voice chilled Cooper to the bone. “Yes,” he said softly. “He’s in the neighboring cage. Can’t you—you didn’t scent him?”
Park didn’t answer. He just sat very still.
“Eli?” Cooper tried again when Park stayed quiet. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Eli said so quietly Cooper barely caught it. “In a way.”
“What happened? What’s going on?” Cooper asked.
Eli’s eyes slid shut, and he pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to lie to you. But I had to, I had to, and it’s my fault. Again, again, it’s always my fault.” He dropped his head to his knees and rocked slightly.
Cooper couldn’t help but feel like he was the worst possible person to be sandwiched between two wolves having full-blown mental crises. He tried to think of what Dr. Ripodi would say.
“We’re running out of time,” Cooper said. “Just start with why you’re here.”
“I—” Eli started, and his voice cracked. He picked his head up with a deep breath and looked Cooper right in the eye, seeming to steel himself. “I wasn’t actually being blackmailed. I just told you that so you’d help me find the phone.”
Cooper blinked, not expecting that. “So it was a lie? Everything you told me about what happened to you with the rebel pack?”
“No,” Eli said firmly. “That was all true. Ollie—Oliver can confirm.” Park shifted behind Cooper, the first movement he’d made in a while. “But—but what he doesn’t know, what I didn’t tell anyone, was I... I didn’t join the rebels alone.”
“You do have a sister,” Park said wonderingly. “How could you never tell me?”
“My twin sister,” Eli confessed. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think I would ever see her again, and it was painful. And...made me feel guilty.”
“Why guilty?” Park asked.
“Because it was my fault she ever got mixed up with them anyway,” Eli snapped. “Because the first time I ever saw James, I became so ridiculously infatuated and believed he was everything a werewolf was supposed to be that I begged her to come with me. Begged her to break the promise we’d made to each other as children and show someone else what we could do. Because when I was finally free of my imprisonment”—Eli kicked out at the fencing that clanged and shook—”the entire pack was dead and I thought she was too, and it was my fucking fault.”
He emphasized each word with another kick. The wobbling metal hummed long after Eli fell silent. When he spoke again, it was a whisper. “Why on earth would I ever want to tell you about that? I was already enough of a monster in your eyes, and mine too.”
“Eli—” Park said, sounding like he was in almost as much pain as Eli. “I never thought that. I still don’t.”
Eli sniffed, turning his head to the side and wiping at his nose. Ideally, Cooper would just let them sniffle it out. But ideally, they wouldn’t be doing a three-man reimagining of the Count of Monte Cristo either.
“But she wasn’t dead, was she?” Cooper prompted as gently as possible. “She’d wound up in the WIP.”
“Yes,” Eli said. “Eventually. She thought I was dead too. It was Daisy actually who reconnected us in the end.”
“Daisy?” Park asked a little breathlessly.
“Mmmm, they were in the same WIP group for a while. I guess after she showed up in Cape Breton this February, she put two and two together, realized we were related, and my sister found me a couple of months ago. But she was in trouble.”
“She was the one James Finnigan was blackmailing,” Cooper said.
“I live in the middle of the woods of Nova Scotia watching soaps all day; he never had a chance of finding me again. And even if he had, the Park pack would have protected me.
“But Alice...my sister, she lives right here in DC. Her partner is human. She has no pack protection. Has nowhere to turn. I knew Helena would never help. Friend of Daisy? WIP? Part of the very group she blames for the death of her son? I left the pack before she’d ever have the opportunity to tell me no. With the debt I owe Alice, I had no choice.”
“So you hired us, told her when it seemed like Arthur had the phone, and she showed up at the gala to steal it,” Cooper said. “Why would she attack us, though?”
“She was just scared,” Eli said quickly. “She saw you standing over Arthur and thought you’d killed him. She thinks you’re the...” He trailed off, and the silence sat awkwardly as Eli studied Cooper very carefully, warily.
Finally, he shook his head. “No. Well, she only saw you briefly in the dark during a very traumatic situation. Even the most discerning eyes might mistake you for something special.” There was the briefest flicker of the old Eli’s biting tone before his voice got even more frantic than before. “I rushed over here to dissuade her from acting on such a nonsensical idea. But he has her, and he’ll kill her if I didn’t do what he says, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I can’t let that happen, not again, I couldn’t—”
The whine and creak of a door opening echoed from down the dark hallway. Eli fell silent, pulling his knees close to his chest again and seeming to shrink in on himself. Cooper heard footsteps and the erratic rumble of flimsy wheels on cement slowly approaching.
Ryan Basque appeared pushing a four-foot-long metal cart covered by a light blue sheet, same as had been draped over Neil. There were also shapes under this one—what looked like bottles and jars as opposed to a second body, thank god.
“Wakey wakey!” he called, clapping his hands. “Oh, good, everyone’s up. I was a little worried I’d used too high a dose. That’s the first time I’ve administered through aerosol, you know.”
“You,” Cooper said, mind spinning.
“Oh yes, me,” Ryan agreed, and pulled the sheet off. The bottom of the cart was just sliding metal doors that looked like storage, but the top level was full of what looked like veterinary supplies. Various brown plastic bottles, large syringes, shiny, sharp instruments.
“It was too much,” Cooper said, hastily trying to pull it together and come up with any reason to get Ryan to open the cage. “My partner’s very sick. You don’t want him to die like this—otherwise, why keep us here?”
“Oh, he’s not dying,” Ryan said cheerfully, fiddling with one of the syringes and bottles. “He’s just human.”
Cooper’s heart clenched painfully, and behind him, he felt Park jerk, as if he’d tried to leap up and hadn’t even made it off the ground.
Ryan had stopped futzing to watch them intently. “Or as close as their kind can get, anyway,” he added. He held up the syringe in his hand and waved it. “You’ve heard of paralytics targeting one system of the body or another. This one specifically attacks the wolf system. Just completely zones in on every cell with those particular protein markers and beats the living crud out of them.” He laughed. “I got to admit this is the first time I’ve seen it work like this, though. So totally cool.”
“This is what you used on James Finnigan and Arthur Crane,” Cooper realized. “This is what made them...stuck.”
“I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to work. They’re supposed to monster out as soon as the toxin hits the bloodstream and they feel something’s wrong. It’s like literally their number one defense system—animals are so predictable—but by the time they’re mid-transformation, all the little wolf cells are totally freakin’ paralyzed. They can’t move forward, but they can’t move back either. You can see it in their eyes as it’s happening. They’re like, huh? Does not compute! It’s actually so wild to watch. Nature is crazy!”
A flash of irritation passed over Ryan’s face. “You could have seen it yourself if this one hadn’t figured out what was happening right away and refused to do his thing,” he said, wandering over to Eli’s cage and looking in. “There’s something extra abnormal about him.”
Eli pulled himself up a little taller, stuck his chin out defiantly, and with a glimmer of his old self, puckered his lips and blew a kiss. Ryan’s face turned red and his expression angry before he turned away and walked quickly back to his cart.
By the time he got there and started sorting through his tools again, he seemed to have regained his composure. “Still, all the greatest discoveries have come from making mistakes,” Ryan said practically.
Something about it set off a distant memory, but Cooper didn’t have time to contemplate it further. Ryan was still talking. “Like, look at how horrible they both look right now. They’ve never felt this way before because they’ve never felt human before. Even when they look like they’re a human or when they look like they’re a wolf, they’re not. They’re never entirely one or the other. Doesn’t that just teach us something amazing?”
“Is that why you’re doing this?” Cooper asked. “Why you murdered James, Arthur and Neil? To learn something?”
Ryan looked startled, then laughed. “Um, no, what do you think I am, crazy or something? You killed them.”
“What?” Cooper choked.
Ryan nodded earnestly. “Oh yeah. Wolf traitors hated by all, getting away with it, living guilt-free, until you swept in and punished them with your unnatural powers that banished them between worlds and left your mark on their bellies so that all will know who struck them down. Don’t you get it, yet? You’re the Moon, Cooper Dayton.”
Ryan smiled a bit, as if amused despite himself. “Or that’s what the wolf world is going to think, anyway, when I’m done setting you up for these murders. I mean, jeez Louise, even these guys were looking at you spooked there for a minute,” he said, gesturing at Eli and Park.
“What possible reason could you have for wanting to convince wolves Cooper is some...legend?” Park asked. “Even if you’re able to get him arrested, you can’t believe you can plant enough evidence to charge him.”
“What would getting him arrested do for me?” Ryan asked, bewildered. “No, no, that would ruin everything. Sorry, Cooper. You have to die tonight, buddy. But like any god worth his salt, you’ll rise again. Somewhere else when you’re needed most.”
“I don’t understand,” Cooper said, lips dry.
Ryan tucked his hair behind his ears, thinking. “You know what people do when they believe in gods? Half of them pray for him to make their problems go away.” He pressed his palms together at his chest and said in a childlike voice, “Please, Mr. Moon, the big bad wolf has hurt my pack. Here’s my donation of ten grand to punish him like you punished the others.”
His voice returned to normal. “And the other half of them blame him for their problems.” He stuck his hands on his hips and spoke like an old-timey detective. “Got another killing, Lou. Same distinct signature as the others: half transformed, gut clawed open, covered in rose heads. Must be that Cooper Dayton that’s struck again. He really thinks he’s the Moon, doesn’t he? Well, it wouldn’t be the first occasion he’s taken justice into his own hands. It was only a matter of time till he snapped, I always said.”
Ryan let his hands drop and a big grin split his face. “We’re going to clean the heck up, you and I. Well, me and your reputation, anyway. Which, like, couldn’t be any more perfect for this, by the way. I mean, when I found out the wolf who mutilated you was murdered by your ex-partner and that some wolves still think you were involved? I was like, oh wow, am I being baited right now? ’Cause this is literally too perfect. I really owe you, man.”
Ryan tilted his head. “Well, you and Neil. We wouldn’t be here without him.”
Neil... Cooper thought, and for the next couple seconds couldn’t think of anything more than the violet color of dead lips that used to say his name.
“Is Neil Gerhart who made you aware of wolves?” Park bit out behind Cooper. “Is he where you got all this nonsense about the Moon? Because it’s all wrong and I’m afraid you’ve bought into one fairy tale too far.” He sounded icily dismissive, not like Park at all, and Cooper wondered if his words rang as false to everyone else in the room.
Ryan certainly didn’t seem worried. If anything he looked passively entertained. Much the same way as people did at the zoo, standing and staring at an animal with vague, condescending interest. “I didn’t need Neil to tell me about all that,” he said as if the idea was ridiculous, then shook his head. “Well, that’s not fair. I might have known about your secret little world, but he is the only way I found out about you, Cooper. He was so excited to meet someone who ‘actually also believed in werewolves’ that it only took a month of guys’ nights out and he was showing me his creepy altar. What a jackpot.”
“Neil wasn’t a wolf traitor,” Cooper said softly.
“Yeah, no, that one’s on me.” Ryan shrugged. “Dude had literally started to believe you were some kind of magic moon fairy and was stalking you nonstop. No way he wouldn’t have noticed when you died and I took your place. Get this: he even thought you were the one who’d killed James and suspected you were going after Arthur next. I barely even had to say anything! Talk about a perfect test run.”
Ryan sighed heavily. “I was going to let him live longer, too, but the big doofus showed up here last night rambling about how he’d tried to talk to you and that you’d refused to let him in on whatever you were planning.” He dragged his finger across his throat while making a rude sound, and Cooper couldn’t help flinching.
“Aw,” Ryan said, watching him. “Don’t look sad. Honestly, you should probably be thanking me. He also said you were keeping two werewolves as pet monsters and how he couldn’t wait to do the same thing to you soon. I swear, half the time I couldn’t tell if that guy loved you or hated you. He was so...creepy. And mean. But I don’t need to tell you that.”
He made a face and went back to filling a syringe with something from a small glass bottle. “Whatever, I’ll figure out some way to explain it so it doesn’t affect our brand.”
“So this is just advertising, to you?” Park said, sounding sick. “You’re doing all this for money?”
“Oh, boo freakin’ hoo. Someone did something bad to make buttloads of money. Hello, journalism? Have I got a scoop for you.” Ryan snorted. “I’ve been making money off of animals my whole life. The bigger the animal, the more money they bring in. Getting zookeeper credentials opened a lot of doors for me in animal trafficking, and a lot of wallets. But when I found out there’s a whole animal species walking around with their own bank accounts?”
He gestured vaguely at Eli and Park. “Big leagues, baby. I started planning that very night. It’s taken me months to get everything in place but shoot, I’m a born entrepreneur, man. Do you want to live on the top or die at the bottom? I mean, what do the killers you usually run into do it for? Revenge? Love?” Ryan laughed. “Here, maybe we can make it look like that, if you want. The Moon is out, after all.”
He yanked open the sliding metal drawers under the cart top, and a woman half fell out.
Cooper only had to hear the rage in Eli’s voice as he leapt to his feet and tore ineffectually at the fencing to know it was Alice. Even so, Cooper recognized the white-blond buzz cut, the blue-gray eyes half-closed but still clearly white-less, luminescent and as inhuman as the rest of her half-transformed face.
Both Eli and Park were snarling now. It sounded different than usual, lacking the guttural, vibrating edge Cooper would feel in his throat. There was nothing wolf-like about it. Just a noise made from muscle memory and something akin to human anguish.
Cooper felt a wrenching sadness for this woman, for Eli, for Park. Ryan wasn’t just a murderer; he’d stolen the very core of their identities, their control over their own bodies, forced them into the skin of strangers.
A cold, burning anger swelled inside of him as he stared into Alice’s unfocused eyes. There was nothing he wouldn’t do, he thought, to get them back their souls.
Alice’s eyes moved to look straight at him. Cooper inhaled sharply.
Ryan picked up a long electric animal prod and walked over to the cage fence, searching for what had caused the reaction, and Cooper hastened for a distraction. “You must have something pretty big planned for the finale,” he said.
“Mmhmm,” Ryan said, apparently bored with explaining himself. Behind his ankles, Alice’s fingers twitched, and her half-extended claws shrank almost imperceptibly.
The paralytic was wearing off. Sooner than Ryan expected, probably. It must have something to do with Eli and Alice’s uncommon relationships to shifting. Their bodies must be reacting to the toxin slightly differently than the others had. They needed time, though. And with Ryan standing right there with a zapper in one hand and a syringe full of more toxin in the other, the slightest mistake could set them back to square one. At any moment, he could decide to top Alice off. Or, you know, just move on to the killing stage.
“I mean, it’s a pretty good plan and everything,” Cooper said. “But don’t you think you’re missing a huge problem here?”
Ryan looked at him, interested once more. “What’s that?”
“I get why I might have killed James Finnigan. He was the worst. And I get why I might have killed Arthur Crane. I even kind of think Neil’s de-death will help convince people it was me,” Cooper said, stuttering over the word only slightly. “Our relationship was rough. No one even knows how rough.”
Behind him, Park’s hands flexed spasmodically and his nail slightly nicked the skin under one of Cooper’s fingers. It stung surprisingly bad.
“But you and Neil talk—talked about me, so maybe you do know,” Cooper said, ignoring the pain. “I guess there’s motive there too.”
He looked away as if embarrassed, but used the opportunity to check in on Eli, who was still standing, fingers grasping the fencing loosely. At a glance, he just looked defeated and lost in his own thoughts, but Cooper could see the way he was rocking on the balls of his feet ever so slightly, the preferred balance point for wolves.
“I mean, I wasn’t going to say anything about it now and make you feel awkward,” Ryan was saying. “But yeah. He talked about a lot of cruddy stuff. I told you you’re better off without him.”
“Thank you,” Cooper said. “But now you have a problem. These people here? I don’t want any of them to die. The opposite. And you’re going to have a really hard time convincing anyone differently.”
Ryan frowned. “Okay, I still feel like you don’t really understand the power of a myth. It sounds totally dopey to me and you, because we’re not wolves and weren’t saturated in that stuff. But when human sinners are punished and someone says it’s god’s will or karma or whatever, even total atheists don’t say no freakin’ way, you’re out of your mind. They keep their traps shut.”
Alice’s mouth was moving slightly now. Not like she was trying to speak, but like the teeth hidden just behind her lips were moving around of their own free will.
More time, more time, more time.
“But these aren’t sinners,” Cooper protested. “It won’t make sense.”
Ryan laughed. “Um, the twins were literally the heart of Robin Hood’s merry band of thieves. And this one?” he said, gesturing to Park with the electric prod. “He’s totally the bad guy. Wolves are almost as afraid of him as I’m going to make them afraid of you. You know how huge that’s going to be? The Moon taking out the Shepherd. I mean, we are talking Alien vs. Predator shizzle, right here. You are about to explode on to the scene. Our cred is going to rocket.”
Considering everything else going on, up to and including their imminent brutal murders, maybe it shouldn’t have shocked him to hear Ryan call Park that, but it did. “How do you know about the Shepherd? Who told you all of this?” Cooper blurted out because he couldn’t help wondering, not because he thought he was going to get an answer.
Still Ryan hesitated and an almost pitying expression crossed his face.
“Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Maybe I’m not the only one who recognizes a good opportunity when I see it,” he said absently and checked his watch. “Almost time. I need you guys displayed for maximum effect right when the zoo opens.” He unlatched the cage door.
“But you’re talking about letting humans see,” Cooper protested, feeling Park start pulling desperately at the cuffs between them as Ryan stepped inside.
More time, more time, more time.
“Yeah, it will be a big story sure to get lots of national attention, and then the wolves will reframe it like they always do. I mean, the day after Halloween? I’m practically handing them a cover story on a silver platter. But those in the know will still know. They won’t be able to convince them.” He stepped closer holding the electric animal prod up and pointed at Park.
“Don’t bite me, now,” Ryan warned. “You’re really not up to causing the kind of damage you’re used to, and you can’t imagine how much pain this thing will cause to your human body. You might even have a heart attack. Or bite your own tongue off! Trust me, totally not worth it.”
It suddenly reminded Cooper of his and Park’s first case together. The cage. The electric prod. Only this time his position had changed. He wasn’t on the outside with the humans lying and pretending. He was inside the cage with the wolves.
If this was really it and it had to end, this was exactly where he wanted to be. Fighting for and beside people he loved. Proud of the direction his life had taken. Of the ways he’d changed and been changed.
Cooper flexed his hands and found Park’s doing the same. They intertwined fingers as best they could and squeezed. Once, twice—
On the third squeeze, Cooper pressed against Park’s back and felt him do the same. Using opposing force, they were able to make their way to standing. Or semi-standing, at least. Cooper’s legs were so numb from sitting, he was propped up more on the belief that they still existed beneath him than any actual feeling that proved it.
Ryan was looking at them, amused and vaguely impressed. “Okay, that was pretty cool. I almost feel bad I have to kill you now. But—” He raised the prod and turned it on, the crackling ringing through the air. “Don’t worry, legends never really die.”
His head suddenly snapped to the side and he stumbled over, revealing Alice standing behind, still half transformed, barely able to stand. Ryan was already getting up, face twisted in rage, gripping his prod as he turned toward her.
“Bend!” Cooper shouted, throwing himself up and backward at the same time Park bent over at the waist without question.
Cooper landed on Park’s back, using the momentum to swing his legs up a bit and then kicked out as hard as he could at Ryan’s back, sending him stumbling toward the howdy door, where Eli shoved his narrow, thumbless hand through a fence hole and stabbed Ryan in the shoulder with his claws.
Ryan screamed, ripping off of Eli with a sick squelch, but still managed to hold on to the prod. He raised it over his head, bellowing, and Cooper tensed as he ran toward a wobbly-looking Alice as if he were about to beat her to death rather than electrocute her.
A gunshot rang out and Ryan froze. Arms still in the air, face twisted in shock, there was a horrible clicking sound from deep inside his open throat, and a thin dribble of blood suddenly ran down his chin.
Ryan collapsed to his knees, prod falling to the ground beside him. His eyes spun wildly, as if confused, and his gaze landed on the small window over their heads. For just one moment, as he stared, his pupils were obscured by the reflection of the full moon. Then Ryan collapsed forward with a thump.
Niko Hirano walked toward them, out of the shadows of the long hall, gun still raised. Cooper immediately looked to Alice, who was still bent over unnaturally, face nowhere near human-passing.
“Don’t hurt her,” Cooper said quickly. “Please, I can explain—”
He cut off as Hirano hurried into the cage with them and gathered Alice in her arms just as she began to collapse.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Hirano murmured as Alice let out a low gurgling howl. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you now. It’s okay.”
“Do try to close your mouth, Cooper,” Eli said, still entangled with the fence but somehow making it look like a chic ’90s photo shoot and not the aftermath of a horrific near-death experience. “You’re losing heroic appeal at a speed heretofore unknown to man, and I’m not in the mood for any more long-winded explanations.”