“She’s coming ’round.”

The voice was male, low, without a trace of inflection. A second, equally emotionless voice answered it.

“Finally.” The sound of boots scraping against cement, a chair being pushed back. “Let’s begin again.”

She recognized the sound of flint striking metal, the flume of paper and tobacco catching fire, the acrid sting of smoke in her nostrils. Before she could speak or wake or open her eyes, another pain, newer and infinitely worse, sliced through her dreaming death like a thousand heated knives pressed into the tender skin of her inner thigh.

Then the sickening, awful smell of burning flesh.

Her flesh.

The scream tore from her throat before the pain really took hold, before it became so bad she thrashed helplessly against it, desperate for it to stop. But she was shackled, restrained by unseen bindings around her ankles and wrists that held her in place. Her scream went on and on, just like the pain did.

The flexed fist that cracked hard across her cheekbone stopped it short.

“Shut the fuck up or say good-bye to your tongue, you stupid bitch!” The second voice, hissing and spitting into her ear.

She fell into dazed, agonized silence. The thumping heart grew nearer, and nearer still.

“Now,” the voice began again, this time in a reasonable tone, “I’m going to ask you one more time. And this time, I suggest you tell me what I want to know.”

She turned her head toward the voice, sending needles of pain shooting into her closed eyes. She squeezed her lids against the stinging needles, then blinked them open.

The room swam into view. The bare walls, the scratched wood table, the gleaming tray of tools. A lamp affixed to the ceiling hummed and flickered, smothering the room in blunt fluorescent light.

The Smoking Man towered above her, smiling down with flat, expressionless eyes.

Daria...where was Daria? She recalled a fleeting struggle, the Smoking Man’s arm lashing out in a blur, the hideous popping sound her abdomen made when the knife punched through it. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to Shift, though she’d split open one of their noses with a hard, well-timed swing from the fist that clenched the piece of the iron bed frame.

They had beaten her and cut her and burned her, but she had been spared the final brutality of rape. When they tied her to the bed and she’d screamed and shrunk from their rough hands, they laughed and made crude jokes about how sex with her would be worse than bestiality.

Something wet and sticky was spread on the sheets beneath her, something warm still oozed from the open wound in her stomach. Blood, pools of it, though she couldn’t, for some strange reason, smell it. All she smelled was cigarette smoke and scorched flesh and the fetor of unwashed bodies.

“Shall I repeat the question? Or do you think you have an answer ready for me?”

He lifted his cigarette to his lips and inhaled against it, drawing the tip into flame, then exhaled. The smoke plumed from his nostrils like a dragon. Through the swell of pain that pounded through her body like waves pummeling the shore, she noticed his fingernails were grotesque. Chewed to pulpy stubs, ragged and yellow.

Thin and spindly as a spider, he leaned over her and let the smoke drift and curl like ghostly fingers around her face.

“Where is the fourth colony, pussycat?” His voice was playful, stroking, light as an afternoon breeze. “We know about Quebec, and Sommerley, and the one in Nepal, and we know there is a fourth plague land where the rest of you repulsive animals live, but we don’t know where it is. And we can’t put our plan into action until we do. I must say, your so-called ‘Keepers of the Bloodlines’ have been remarkably tight-lipped.”

His malevolent smile lingered. He held her in his keen, hollow gaze. “Even when we cut off their heads with a kitchen knife,” he said softly. “A very, very dull one.”

Snickers from the unseen men. She wanted to spit in his face, but her mouth was too dry.

“There’s a lovely display case at our headquarters in Rome where we keep all the heads. A trophy case, you might say,” he calmly explained. “It’s quite impressive; we’ve been collecting for centuries. Formaldehyde truly is a remarkable preservative. If I’d known we were going to have two guests today, I might have made a slideshow for you.”

He sat back into the chair and smoked, calm and controlled, watching her with those glittering eyes. “Though most of them are women and therefore not as valuable to us. It’s the Alphas we really want.”

The small gesture he made with his cigarette seemed somehow regretful. “As the old saying goes, cut off the head of the serpent and the body will die—your entire species being the body in this case. We needed the Keepers to tell us who the really important pussycats are. For some reason, though, it always seems to be the females of your kind who are the most eager to talk.”

The glittering eyes narrowed. “Although your friend in the other room hasn’t been much help. Yet.”

His tiny, vicious smile continued on and on as if it were permanently affixed to his face.

“But perhaps you will be more accommodating, yes? I’ll make a bargain with you. Tell me now and this will all be over quickly.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the room, the set of tools, her naked body laid out on the bed. He leaned forward in his chair and slowly lowered his arm. He didn’t blink, his smile didn’t waver.

“Or, if you prefer, I can take all the time in the world.”

The cigarette sent up lazy whorls of smoke just inches from her right eye.

“I...”

It came out a pathetic, broken thing, a humiliating whimper. Jenna stopped herself and licked her lips. The Smoking Man raised his eyebrows. He waited, patient and inscrutable, until she tried once again.

“I do have something to tell you.”

A broken whisper again, somehow less pathetic, but weak and pain-drenched nonetheless. The Smoking Man’s flat gaze flickered briefly away to the men she sensed on the other side of the room, then settled back on her.

“Well.” His smile deepened. He straightened and reached for a chair to drag next to the bed. He sat down and she stared at his face, his bald, gleaming head, the small black image inked on the inside of his wrist. The dead eyes.

“I think...” she began, trying to stay afloat on the river of agony that wanted to swallow her whole. The sound of the pounding heart was so close now, booming in her ears, rushing through her blood, drowning out even the sound of her own heartbeat.

The Smoking Man leaned in, waiting. He spoke, a sibilant hiss, and she almost couldn’t hear him over the noise in her head.

“Yes? What is it, my helpless little pussycat? Tell me what you think.”

She opened her mouth again and he leaned even closer, so close she saw the tiny red blood vessels snaking through the whites of his eyeballs. He hadn’t shaved recently, he had a bit of meat from his last meal caught between his front teeth, and he was in dire need of a bath. He leaned in even closer, reached out, and touched one long, clammy finger to the pulse at the base of her throat.

She looked him up and down through her lashes and smiled at him, sweetly, without a trace of guile.

“I think you’re even more stupid than ugly,” she whispered. “A bitch is a female dog.”

There was a suspended beat of silence before he registered it, before he stood up abruptly, dropped his cigarette on the floor, and kicked the chair over backward with his boot.

She felt a weary, thorough satisfaction that—finally!—his spidery smile had vanished. She began to drift, carried by a current of pain that flowed and tumbled and held her in its clutches, spiraling her down into the waiting blackness.

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet. Eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider. And sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away...