Page 33 of Monster Queen Rising

"What is he?"

I pause. "They call him a demon hybrid."

She stares at me. "A demon."

"That's what they wrote down."

"There are demons," she says. Quieter. Not to me. To the window.

She doesn't look at me for a minute. When she does, her eyes are wet and her mouth is set hard.

"All this time I thought it was bad lab work," she says. "A year of panels that didn't make sense, and I kept re-running them, thinking somebody fouled the draw." A short, wrecked breath. "It was never the lab. It was me. It was in me the whole time."

"It was. Your blood was their tell. They've been watching anyone whose numbers looked like yours."

"How many people are walking around like that? With my numbers? Not knowing."

"We don't have the full registry. They have a list of twenty-three women they're actively moving on. There are more than that — twenty-three is just who they've decided to take."

"And you're getting them out."

"As fast as we can. You're the first."

She doesn't answer. She looks at her hands, still shaking, and presses them flat to the duffel.

"I'm scared," she says. Quiet. "I'm not breaking, but I'm scared."

"Good. Say it as many times as you need to."

Her breath shakes on the way out.

"Where are you taking me?"

"You tell me. Is there anywhere the Syndicate wouldn't think to look — someone out of state, off any paper that connects to you, that you'd trust with your life."

She's quiet a moment. “My college roommate. Colorado. We're not on anything together — no bills, no lease, nothing with both our names. She'd take me and never ask why."

"Then that's where you go. We drive you the whole way and we don't leave until you're inside her door."

"Who is driving?"

"Daron. Wolf-shifter, born that way.”

"The men in the van. They're Syndicate."

"Yes."

"They won't find her house. In Colorado."

"No paper leads there. You'll be somebody nobody's looking for at an address nobody's got. That's the safest thing we can give you."

"And after."

"After is yours. Stay with your friend, start over somewhere new, go back to your old life when the danger's past — you decide. We'll give you a number to call if you ever want to, and we'll check that you're all right. We won't make you disappear unless you want to disappear. You see any more vans and you contact me."

She looks at me a long moment. "You mean that."

"I mean that."