Something else hit me from the side, and I ended up plastered on the floor. The pain came in a huge tsunami wave, my shoulder grinding and screaming. Hands on me, and a familiar wave of apple-pie scent, drenched with copper wetness.

It hurt. It hurt so much, the spot at the back of my throat where the bloodhunger lives slammed shut, closing the aspect away from me.

What? I thrashed, caught between August and Christophe. Augie lay on the floor, head tipped back, throat working as he tried to move. Christophe crouched over me, his arms steel bands. “No!” he yelled, almost in my ear. A long string of vile-sounding syllables I guessed were curses in another language before the pain hit again, swallowing me, and the world went a funny gray color, color bleeding away.

Shouts. Screaming. More gunfire. Cover. Get under cover. I tried to move, succeeded only in flailing a little bit. Christophe was still crouched over me, ranting, and I realized he was protecting me. More chips of stone flew, and the gunfire reached a crescendo. Christophe’s body jerked, and he hissed.

August suddenly jerked back into motion. He rolled to the side, and my head was tipped the right way to see the aspect boil over him. White streaks slid through his dirty hair, his fangs came out, and his eyes suddenly blazed, clear yellow instead of dark. I could see that through the haze coming down over me, though the rest of the world was slowly draining of its color, turning into a charcoal sketch.

He curled himself up like a pill bug, then was somehow kneeling, the gun yanked free of its shoulder holster and pointed up as he took his time with the shot. He exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and the gun spoke, its voice lost inside the cacophony.

Everything stopped. The gray curtain came down, and I heard a thudding.

Boom. Boom.

Feathered wings beat frantically. They brushed me all over, little feather kisses, except for the ball of agony high up in my left shoulder. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, and when I tried to get up, to scramble somewhere to find cover because, duh, someone was shooting, I couldn’t. A hot egg of agony broke in my chest again, and I whimpered.

Boom . . . boom . . .

A long silent moment, the gunshots fading. Was it over? I tried moving again and whimpered silently. It hurt to even try.

The throbbing in my ears was my heartbeat, I realized. Each thud was a brush of feathered wings, and I heard an owl’s soft who? who?

The numbness crept up my hands. What just happened? What was that?

I was still trying to figure it out when the world went white all over. A sound like the whine of a thousand speakers set on feedback filled my head. My heartbeat stuttered, the spaces between each throb growing wider and wider until my overloaded heart . . .

. . . stopped.

“ Clear!” someone yelled, and the white glare slammed through me again. Someone was still cursing raggedly. A babble of voices. “Get him out of here!”

“Dru? Dru, hold on. Just hold on.”

“She’s still bleeding. Why isn’t she healing?”

“Exhaustion, and she’s not fully bloomed. Her blood pressure’s dropping. Where’s that other sliver? They keep disappearing.”

“Fragging ammo. Hate that.”

“Let’s hope none of them punctured her heart. Pericardium seems intact, but she’s fading. We can’t get claret in her fast enough—”

“Transfuse me.” Cold and calm, Christophe’s voice.

“We can’t. It could kill her, we haven’t typed her yet—” Finally, another voice I recognized. Bruce’s English accent.

“Then get out.” Christophe sounded furious. Funny how he just got quiet and icy, kind of like Dad. Only it hurt, when Christophe spoke like that. Dad’s mad voice never hurt me because if he used it I knew he wasn’t angry at me. He never was.

“What are you—”

“You can’t—”

“I said get out. I am not losing her.”

“She’s not even bloomed yet!” Bruce sounded deathly tired. I tried to open my eyes, failed, and heard a whimper. Someone was having a bad day.

Gran’s voice, quiet and final, echoed through my cotton-stuffed skull. Dru, honey, that someone is you.

A silent thundercrack, and I saw the room in the lightning flash.

It was another stone-walled infirmary cell. A weird directionless silver light drifted like snow, lying over every surface with a powder bloom like moth wings. I stood there quietly and heard machines booping and beeping. A small shape lay on the bed, djamphir clustered around. Bruce faced Christophe, Arab Boy a little taller but Christophe looking bigger because of the vibrating rage bleeding out from him in every direction.

Metal dropped into a pan. “Saline!” someone snapped. “Wash that clean, dammit! Let’s get this closed up; she’s still losing blood!”

“Blood pressure still dropping. Take it outside, Kouroi, we’re trying to save her.”

“I know what will save her.” Christophe half-turned and shoved toward the white-draped figure on the table. The thudding vibrating through me paused.

Bruce grabbed his arm, and someone yelled, “She’s coding again! Clear!”

A glare filled my vision, but not before I saw the head of the figure on the table, face turned to the side and with plastic tubing in its nose. Dark curly hair lay tangled wildly against the operating table, and I saw my eyes were fluttering as if I dreamed. My skin was chalk-white, and Bruce was on the floor.

“Touch me again,” Christophe said quietly, “and it will be your last act in life.” He shoved aside two dark-haired, lanky djamphir in white coats who were fiddling with the machines, and I saw a huge flayed mess where my left shoulder should be. The blood was almost black. I wasn’t seeing color. Flecks of white bone gleamed as another duo of teenage-looking Kouroi probed in the mess with shiny surgical tools and dropped fragments of something in a metal pan. Another djamphir with curly hair stood by with paddles, and I saw the electricity trembling in them like drops of water spattering on a hot griddle.

I’m in bad shape, I thought. It didn’t seem particularly important. I just stood and watched as Bruce wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t do it, Reynard. We can’t afford to lose—”

“I will not lose her. Get OUT!” The yell shook the walls, but nobody moved.

Christophe lifted his wrist to his mouth. He bit down hard, the aspect flickering over him. A flash of red down near his feet, shocking in the black-and-white movie the world had become, was the fox I’d seen before. It was puffed up, baring its teeth and hunching down, ready to spring.

He lowered his wrist. “This is usually private. But if you insist.” Something dark dripped down his hand—he was bleeding now, too.

He pressed the ragged wound in his wrist to the mouth of the body on the table. “You can hear me,” he whispered, bending down. “You’re in there, skowroneczko moja. You’re fighting. Fight just a little harder. Take what you need.”

Oh, gross. A shiver went through me. My body twitched. I remembered what it was like, that night in the woods, fire and smoke and Christophe’s fangs in my wrist. The awful pulling, tearing, ripping sensation as bits of myself—something I would call my soul—were torn away. I couldn’t do that to someone else.