I froze as soon as I laid eyes on the contents of the room. From the sturdiness of the table and all of the equipment surrounding it, I could tell instantly that this was an operating room. I staggered back into the main room.

I shook my head firmly as Jocelyn eyed me with a frown. “I’m not stepping into that room until you tell me exactly what you want to do to me.”

Jocelyn heaved a sigh, with an almost weary look on her face. She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew a gun. She aimed it at me.

“Look, Alice,” she said. “I don’t want to have to threaten you like this. Just step inside. I promise, this won’t hurt.”

If there was one thing I possessed, it was speed. And Jocelyn didn’t exactly strike me as the most athletic of sorts, especially in her clackety heels. Likely, I could dodge beneath the tables out of view quicker than she even managed to pull the trigger of the gun. But that thought only brought me back to the same question as before. Where would I go? Even if I managed to outpace her and avoid getting hit by a bullet, I was trapped in the midst of a colony of hunters.

But I simply couldn’t hand myself over to her like this. As futile as trying to escape would be, I wouldn’t willingly step in that room. They would have to drag me in there kicking and screaming. I had the right to know what they were going to do to my body, dammit. I was not an animal to be herded from place to place and probed all they wanted. And I would fight to not be treated like one.

I took a gulp and met her eyes steadily.

Would she really attempt to shoot me? I knew by now that they saw value in me as a half-blood. It seemed that I was the first half-blood they had ever come across, and consequently I was also rare. But I didn’t have time to debate the matter. I had made up my mind.

Before Jocelyn could react, quick as a flash, I’d ducked beneath the table behind me.

“Alice!” Jocelyn’s voice echoed around the lab.

Keeping down low, I scrambled across the floor from table to table, winding through the maze toward the door which led to the staircase.

Her footsteps sped up across the room. By the sound of it, Jocelyn had removed her heels and she was running fast, faster than I’d expected.

But she couldn’t come close to my speed. I had already reached the exit and launched myself down the stairs by the time she’d made it quarter way across the room. I sped up, leaping three steps at a time, wondering as I did why they didn’t have a damn elevator running through this lab when they seemed to have them everywhere else. I’d almost reached the last flight of stairs when, turning the corner, I collided with someone. I was knocked backward, landing on my backside painfully against the sharp steps. My eyes shot upward. It was Mark. And approaching behind him were six other hunters.

I had not heard Jocelyn sound any alarms yet, and from the look of surprise in Mark’s eyes as he stared down at me, I guessed that he and his companions had already arranged with Jocelyn to meet us up in the lab. What else would they be doing climbing up these stairs at this time in the morning?

Which meant… what exactly? What were they planning to do to me in that operating room that required all of them to be present?

Mark, along with the men behind him, drew out a gun. My attempt at escape had been even more short-lived than I had feared. Desperation overcoming all logic and caution, I hurled myself down the stairs. Even though they barricaded it, I hoped that the shock of my throwing myself toward them while they held loaded guns would work to my advantage.

And it did, but not enough. One of the men recovered from the surprise and he leapt at me. As he fell to the ground, his hands closed around my ankles, causing me to trip and crash down against the steps. I would have knocked my teeth out had I not instinctively put my hands out to shield my face in the fall.

“Let go of me!” I grunted, trying to wriggle away from him. I was almost successful, until the other men caught up with us and swooped down on me. When Mark approached and pressed his gun firmly against my neck, I knew that the game was over.

They quickly secured my hands behind my back with cuffs, and then they bound my feet. They carried me fighting and squirming back up the steps and into the lab. Jocelyn trailed behind us, her heels clutched in one hand.

“Convenient timing,” she murmured to one of the hunters.

They marched me back to the operating room and wrestled me down onto the table, where they secured me with metal restraints.

“No!” I yelled. My back arched, the muscles in my arms and legs straining as I tried to break free. But whatever these restraints were made from, they were impervious to my strength. A sweat broke out on my forehead. “What do you want with me?” I panted.

The hunters’ mouths remained closed in hard lines as they finished securing me in place.

And then, perhaps all too predictably, one of them reached for a syringe and sank it deep into my neck.

Julie

I thanked my lucky stars when we finally arrived at Uma’s island. As we entered shallow waters, again, Aisha insisted that I handle the box myself. I hauled it off the boat and managed to pull it onto the sand without getting it too wet.

Aisha joined me next to the container. I gazed up at the sloping hill, at the top of which stood a castle—the witch’s medical center. I already guessed that Aisha expected me to drag the box all the way up there by myself. This was just her wanting to inflict suffering on me, because she could have easily used her powers. Wasting time waiting for me to lug this thing up the hill was just plain stupid. But even aside from that, I had another incentive for wanting to do things a different way.