Natalya had told her, "I heard that you experience pain like you've never known. They slice nerves or pluck at them just to see how you tick. You're awake when they crack open your chest to get at your heart. Afterward, they wire your ribs back together."

Unfortunately, Regin didn't have an escape plan yet. The only thing she knew for certain? The more she learned about Declan Chase, the more she wanted to take him out.

He truly was in charge of this entire hateful facility. all operations-from the experimentations to the torturous interrogations-were under his iron-fisted control. He himself was supposed to be a master at torture.

She studied her claws. Just thinking about the Blademan made them straighten and sharpen with aggression. For Aidan, they'd curled, aching to clutch his body close to hers.

"Care to crowd-source your plan?" Natalya asked. "Garner feedback? I actual y have some experience with escapes."

"I'll let you know." Regin did have that one ace in the hole. Chase would soon be dead if he remembered her. But, hel , she could be vivisected or executed before he ever did.

Regin had begun to see why some of the prisoners were going crazy in here. Their third roomie wasn't the only prisoner who banged his head against the wal . Time passed at an agonizingly slow pace. With no shower available, she'd been eyeing the sink for a whore's bath. Her side had ful y healed, but her clothes were stiff with dried blood.

Each second, Regin's anger toward Chase escalated, her temper redlining toward DEFCON REGIN.

In the old language, Natalya said, "I recal ed something I'd heard about you. Aren't you supposed to have a kiss that drugs men?"

"So everyone says." Regin didn't actual y ... know. Aidan had sworn her lips were like a drug. And with each reincarnation, her kiss had triggered his memories. As soon as their lips touched, his past assailed him.

But the "drugging kiss" rep sounded cool, so Regin had run with it.

Natalya said, "You could kiss Fegley or Chase, then command him to free us!"

What was so bad? They were equal y unappealing.

Regin's ears twitched. "Speak of one of the devils." Fegley's cheap orthopedic lifts were squeaking closer.

When the warden appeared outside their cel , he ogled Regin's bared midriff. Gross. Whenever men leered at her, Regin tended to leer back. She canted her head on the floor, turning it one way, then the other. "I finally understand what a dickie-do is. Your gut does stick out more than your dickie do."

Natalya guffawed, slapping a hand over her mouth.

His beady eyes slitted, and he wal oped his nightstick against the glass directly beside Regin's head.

Which made Roomie Number Three's tempo speed up. She clenched her teeth, wrestling with her temper.

"Your time's running out, Valkyrie." Fegley gave another wal op before he squeaked off.

Regin narrowed her eyes, watching him til he was out of sight. "One day I'm going to make that little piggy cry all the way home." With a sigh, she rose and crossed to the boy.

The only thing that broke up this prison monotony was studying their curious fel ow inmate, trying to pinpoint what species he belonged to. So far, she'd determined only three things about him.

Since he didn't fit a single species' traits definitively, he must be a hybrid or halfling of some sort.

His gray athletic T-shirt indicated that he played footbal for the Harley High Tigers.

And he sure was cute.

He was over six feet tal , his build corded with muscle. His eyes were hazel with blue flecks, his brown hair thick and tousled.

The first time Regin had awkwardly patted his banging head to calm him, the fey had raised her brows.

To which Regin had eloquently replied, "Oh, eat me."

That night Natalya had wiped the blood from his hair, then covered him with her jacket when he'd slept.

After that, the two of them had started to view him as kind of a pet rock, almost like they were the de facto guardians of their very own sea monkey.

Kneeling before him, Regin murmured, "Don't let that Fegley worm get to you." still staring ahead, the kid slowed his banging. "There's a good ... male of indeterminate species." Over her shoulder, Regin said, "We've got to come up with a name for him."

"Why don't we cal him Tiger?" Natalya suggested.

"For his footbal team? Good idea."

"Not quite." At Regin's quirked brow, Natalya admitted, "He has a trouser tiger. A waistband topper. He might have no other bodily functions, but last night when he slept, he must've been dreaming really hard about cheerleaders."

"Nuh-uh."

Natalya raised her right hand. "Hand to goddess."

"Speaking of big cats. Cougar, he's a zygote. "

"Can I help if I notice him? I haven't been around available males in eons."

"How's that?"

"I was taken hostage at the Battle of Seven Hil s."

Regin snapped her fingers. "I remember now." She'd been pissed to miss that epic conflict between the fey and the centaurs. Nothing hurt Regin's feelings like not being invited to war. "We'd heard you died there."

Natalya shook her head. "Good old King Volos planned to ransom me, but failed to realize that I was ignoble and no one would pay. It took me a decade to escape."

"How'd you do it?"

"His nephew-and royal heir-took me out of my cel to make me his concubine. I acted receptive, right up until I ganked him with my poisonous claws, then decapitated him." Natalya said this dispassionately, but her eyes flickered. normally her irises were the color of plums, but with emotion, veins of black forked out. "At last I'd escaped. Then less than a week later, I was captured by these wanks. Your takeaway from this story: I need to get laid." She cast a keen glance at the kid.

"He's like six hundred years younger than you are." Regin pointed a finger at the ceiling and declared, "I refuse to be the moral compass of our cel ! Most weekends I have an intoxispel bong attached to my mouth like a respirator. I love scatological humor, and I list 'pranks involving nuclear waste' and 'making demons eat things' as my hobbies." Hubcaps, fire extinguishers, pizza boxes. Though she was friends with many of the demon species, she made the rest of them suffer.

"Valkyrie, if there was ever a cradle to be robbed ... Gods, just look at him."

Admittedly sigh-worthy. But Regin merely shrugged. "What are you going to do with him if he wakes?

Make  p**n  for the security cameras while I plug my ears and drone la-la-la? Besides, he's not ful y immortal yet. You claw him and he's dead."

Natalya glared at her claws.

"Face it, Nat, this is one tiger who will never be jumping through your flaming hoop-"

Regin caught the sound of Chase's nearing footsteps. She recognized his long-legged stride, the echo of his heavy combat boots. "Here comes the Blademan. ..."

Chapter NINE

Is anything wrong, Magister?" Dixon asked, fawning expression in place as they moved down the corridor, assessing new prisoners.

"No." His tone was brusque, his answer a lie.

Declan was having a shite day, and it wasn't even noon.

Tests on the vampire's ring had revealed nothing-which made Lothaire's interrogation this afternoon even more critical.

Declan still hadn't crushed his unnerving fascination with the Valkyrie; her cel was coming up fast.

And he'd found out that yet another magister's prisoners were on the way to his facility, though Declan hadn't even surveyed the ones brought in while he'd been away hunting.

Dixon had offered to bring him up to date on the recent arrivals. He'd accepted because she'd brought him the additional doses and because he'd assumed-rightly-that she wouldn't dare broach the subject of them anytime soon.

Now as they passed cel s newly fil ed with more creatures from "myth," she relayed details of their capture and backgrounds.

One cel contained Cerunnos, sentient creatures possessing the head of a ram and the body of a serpent. Another held a number of revenants-zombies con-trol ed by some unseen Sorceri master.

Even a winged Vrekener-a horned demonic version of an angel-had been captured.

Declan grudgingly admitted that this wasn't a bad haul, though not nearly the caliber of his last one. Nor in the same league as my next will be. He'd been laying a trap for the most powerful immortal ever to live. A vampiric demon ...

When they passed the cel of Uil eam MacRieve, the Lykae said, "You're the magister?" His Scottish brogue was thick, his eyes blue with rage.

Declan merely stared at him. In less than half an hour, Dixon was scheduled to examine the were-wolf. She and her team would be doing the regular workup, but they'd also be testing a sonic weapon devised to immobilize a creature with his acute sense of hearing.

Turning strengths into weaknesses.

MacRieve bared his fangs. "When I get free from this place-"

Without a word, Declan continued on, ignoring him. If he had a quid for every time one of them said, "When I get free ..."

I'd be even wealthier than I currently am.

All these immortals smugly thought they'd escape soon, assuming that humans could never contain them. Yet in the centuries of the Order's history, none had escaped.

And no one would be breaking that perfect record under Declan's watch. He'd instal ed so many security fail-safes that commanders and other magisters mocked him. They cal ed this Instal ation Overkill.

What they considered costly excess, he deemed standard precautions.

The metal wal s of the cel s were solid steel, three feet thick. The forward glass wal was made of the same material used for space shuttle windshields. If reentry into the earth's atmosphere couldn't crack that glass, then an immortal with a torque sure as hel couldn't.

But if one did breach the glass, then hydraulic bulkheads-barriers of six-foot-thick steel-would drop into place, sealing each of the three corridors. And once those bulkheads dropped, a self-destruct sequence would engage, overridden only by an officer.

Every contingency planned for, he mused, even as concerns about overcrowding weighed on him.

"You seem distracted," Dixon said. "Is it because of your upcoming interrogation?"

"Lothaire will be just one among many vampires," he replied cool y, belying his interest in this one.

Though the Order knew more about their kind-their origins, weaknesses, any anomalous powers-than about any other species, aspects of Lothaire proved a mystery.

Certain vampires could harvest memories if they drank blood straight from the flesh. And if one killed as he fed, he could usurp a victim's physical and mystical strengths. Over time, the older ones grew maddened from so many memories, their irises reddening.

Lothaire had that harvesting ability and was one of the oldest vampires alive, yet his eyes hadn't turned ful y red. Somehow he'd refrained from drinking as much as his brethren, shrewdly clinging to what little sanity he still possessed.

The Enemy of Old was an anomaly. Anomalies fascinated Declan.

Stil the vampire had stolen enough memories to suffer bouts of instability and hal ucinations. Declan had observed him slicing his black claws across his wrists to dine on his own blood as he conversed with himself. While at other times, his red eyes had seemed to burn with intel igence and cunning.

Declan wondered which side of Lothaire he'd encounter this afternoon.

In any event, he expected a worthy opponent. Natural born vampires like Lothaire were physically incapable of tell ing a lie, so they resorted to trickery and verbal misdirection; by all accounts, Lothaire was a master of deception.

No matter. I will best him. Just as I will best the Valkyrie in her interrogation tomorrow.

As they approached her cel , his skin pricked with awareness. For the most part Declan had ignored her-until earlier this morning when his curiosity had prevailed, and he'd pulled up her cel on the monitor.

She'd been braiding her hair into haphazard plaits that he somehow found pleasing to the eye-though one would think she'd grow more proficient at braiding after a thousand years. When a fight had broken out in a cel down the ward, she'd bitten her knuckle, then cried out dramatical y, "Can't we all just get along?"

Did she consider this some kind of game? Once Declan had finished with her tomorrow, she'd understand how dangerous her position was. ...

For now, seeing the Valkyrie in her cage, imprisoned right along with the other unnatural beings would remind him that she might be fair of face, but beneath the surface she was still one of them. A detrus.

Her beauty just made her more dangerous.

He'd been taught by the Order that they were abominations walking among humans, fil ed with untold malice toward mankind ... a perversion of the natural order, spreading their deathless numbers uncontrol ably ... a plague upon man that must be eradicated. ...

Experience had taught him no differently.

Chapter TEN

When she heard Chase's low voice in a clipped conversation as he approached, Regin resumed her customary spot on the floor.

Footsteps closer ... closer ...

And then he appeared-pale, angry, with his gaze fixed directly ahead. His pupils were dilated-everyone here knew he was on something. And he still sported those same black leather gloves. Rumor held that Chase hated to be touched, wore the gloves to avoid it. Freak.

At his side was Dr. Dixon, the head researcher/dissector. Though Dixon wasn't a pound-candidate per se-she had an athletic figure and even features-she was no looker either. She had lifeless brown hair, and her oversize glasses were the type that only a supremely confident woman could pul off.

Chase seemed to be half-listening to the woman, answering in monosyl ables-while Dixon was visibly lusting over him. The sick mortal two-bit.

When they paused at a cel diagonal to Regin's, she tried to determine what the woman saw in him.

Regin supposed his thick coal-black hair was nice, and his features were attractive enough. He had a strong chin, defined jawline, and prominent cheekbones with shadowed hol ows beneath them. His nose was thin and straight.

He held his broad shoulders erect in a proud military posture, and his soldier garb was pleasingly butch -shined combat boots, a black crewneck pul over with shoulder patches, and camo pants that were fitted around his narrow h*ps and muscular legs.

All in all , she might turn and check him out if he passed her on the street, but he was nothing like the other magnificent embodiments of Aidan. Not to mention his mental state.

A drugged-up freak of a torture expert? Have at him, Dixon.