Changeling bones were tougher, so the bone didn’t break, but she did enough damage that his hand didn’t seem to work as it should. When he scrabbled at her, there was no power in it, his claws not even penetrating the tough fabric of her uniform pants.
He was totally at her mercy.
When she glimpsed his form begin to shimmer, she said, “Don’t shift.” Her own gun in her hand, pointed directly at him. “You do and I’ll shoot directly into the shift.” She didn’t know exactly what that would do, but she had a feeling it would be fatal. “It’ll be interesting to see if the pieces of you that end up scattered all over this park will be from your human or your animal form.”
The man’s body solidified, the threat clearly finding its mark.
She thought about how to torture him and a hundred different methods popped into her mind. Sliding away her gun and lifting the foot not on his wrist—which she’d slowly crushed and which had to be causing him agony, she placed it very carefully on his sternum and met his gaze. The torture was psychological this time.
She had no intention of crushing his ribs into his internal organs. To do so would equal too quick a death. But he believed she did, terror a slick sheen over his eyes. Giving him just enough time to truly fear her, she took her foot off his sternum and went down on her haunches without removing the boot she had on his mangled wrist.
Then, dropping her voice into a range that would be inaudible to their audience but which this changeling would hear, she said, “You have two choices. To die quickly or to die slowly and in intense agony. If you choose the latter, it doesn’t matter if you later beg me for mercy. I won’t have mercy. I don’t know how. I was trained that way.”
She saw from his expression that he believed her.
Speaking through the blood that had bubbled down to his mouth, he said, “Quick.” His voice was slurred as a result of the damage she’d done to his jaw.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said, grinding her boot into his broken wrist without doing anything other than slightly shifting her weight.
A scream erupted from his throat, causing their silent audience to flinch. Waiting until he’d settled, she said, “Tell me what you know.” She didn’t elaborate—there was no need for it. And this one had to know something. His hit had been too up close and personal with too high a risk of capture. He was either a leftover Pure Psy fanatic or part of the conspiracy.
Instinct told her it was the latter. He hadn’t intended to become a martyr; his plan was to escape. And there was the fact that the squad had picked up certain scuttlebutt in the dark highways of the world—seemed like the contract killers were turning down major pay packets at any whisper a hit might involve an Arrow. Too many of their fellow killers had been eliminated or taken hostage for the money to be worth it.
And even those who still believed in Pure Psy were looking askance at recent events. The latest whispers tagged by the squad said the fanatics had started to mistrust their new ally when it was only the Pure Psy people who seemed to be dying—without any observable change in the status of Silence in the Net.
The honeymoon was over in those quarters.
As a result, the conspiracy had likely run out of disposable bodies and been forced to use some of its own. “Talk,” she reiterated coldly when he didn’t say anything.
“They’ll kill me.”
“So you choose a slow death.” Retrieving a blade from her boot, she had the point at his eyeball with such speed that he blinked, not realizing the blade was so sharp it would split his eyelid.
When it did, blood dripping into his eye, he said, “No.”
“Then talk.” She bent closer, always keeping an eye on his limbs. His shattered jaw meant he couldn’t bite her, but she didn’t disregard that, either.
As it was, he knew he was beaten, saw living death in her eyes. He spoke in a near-subvocal murmur and though his words were a touch garbled, she understood it all. And she knew he’d given her everything he had on the wider conspiracy, his fear of her too pungent to allow for a bluff. But she had one more question to ask him. “There’s a changeling child. About two years old. Her name is Persephone.”
His throat moved, Adam’s apple prominent. “She’s dead,” he whispered.
The rage in Zaira wanted to stab the blade into his eyeball. “You saw the body?”
A shake of his head. “I helped move her to a new holding area, and after, I was told she died in the night.” A touch of horror in his expression. “I never agreed with keeping the kid.”
But he hadn’t helped the small, vulnerable girl, which made him just as culpable. “Tell me the location of the new holding area, and any other locations you know.”