She blew out a breath, nodded. “Okay.”
Stevie pulled a backpack like the one he used to have in high school off her shoulders and dug inside. She took out a slim, long, silver case and used a code on the keypad to unlock it. When she produced a very large syringe with a very large and scary-looking needle, Shay began to doubt his insistence on subjecting Tock to this treatment. He’d only said “try it” because he knew Tock could handle most things. Like all honey badgers. More important, he knew how brilliant and ethical Stevie was. She wouldn’t try something that she knew wouldn’t work. Especially on a friend of her own sister’s.
But that ridiculous needle . . . And what was that stuff in the syringe?
Stevie went over to the tray beside the lion. While staying as far away from the big cat as she could and watching him with panicked eyes, she pulled on nitrile gloves, took an alcohol wipe from its packaging, and moved over to Tock.
She pushed the blanket off Tock’s leg and moved the gown away from her thigh. Then, after sterilizing the area with the wipe, she took a very deep, long breath, briefly closed her eyes, and after muttering something he couldn’t understand, pushed the needle into Tock. She pushed hard because she had to get through that thick badger skin. The same thing happened any time his mother had taken their baby sister to the doctor for vaccines.
Shay was sure he’d heard a whimper come from Tock, and he brushed his fingers against her cheeks, hoping to soothe her. To let her know she wasn’t alone with these insane people.
Stevie pushed the plunger down on the syringe, waited a few seconds, then pulled the needle out.
“Okay. That should do it.”
“What did you give her?” one of the cousins asked. A question they should have asked a few seconds before, Shay abruptly realized.
“A mixture of forty-seven poisons from some of the deadliest snakes, scorpions, and spiders known to man.”
There was a stunned silence for a long moment before the room exploded with the rage of all those honey badgers.
“You did what?”
“Neither I nor the medical center will be responsible for any of this!”
“Oh, my God!”
“You’ll pay for this, MacKilligan!”
“We’ll need to get the family together as soon as possible for the funeral.”
“No problem. I know a good rabbi.”
“Tock, you’ve always had the worst friends. The worst!”
“I am not telling Savta we allowed this on our watch.”
The explosion of panic ended, though, when they all realized that Stevie had launched herself onto the ceiling and was walking on it until she reached a vent to crawl into. A few seconds later, she reappeared on the other side of the room’s glass window, staring inside.
Charlie moved in front of the glass doors and folded her arms over her chest. The expression she wore was a direct challenge to anyone in the room who wanted to get past her to Stevie.
Not liking the tension in the room, Shay readied himself to grab Tock and evacuate her any way he could.
Then the explosion. Not from any of them. Or some device attached to the building. But from Tock.
Suddenly, screaming the entire time, Tock sat up. Every muscle in her body was distended, straining against the flesh. Veins popping. He could only see the whites of her eyes, and her fangs and claws were out. She thrashed on the bed for a few seconds, then flipped off and landed on the floor.
That’s when everything stopped.
Stevie pushed her way back into the room, muttering under her breath, “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me,” to everyone else as she made her way to Tock’s side.
Shay already had his arms under Tock when Stevie crouched next to him. “Get her on the bed,” she ordered, and he did as she said.
She pressed her fingers against Tock’s neck, placed her ear against Tock’s chest, then announced, “Her heart’s stopped. Perfect.”
“You killed our cousin,” someone said. “Our grandmother is gonna be pissed.”
“Perfect?” Shay repeated. “How is this perfect?”
“Wait . . .” Stevie said. And they did. But there was nothing. No sound. No movement. Not even a dying gasp. Nothing.
Horrified, Shay leaned over Tock’s inert form on the bed. But with surprising strength, Stevie yanked him back. He didn’t know why until he looked at the bed and didn’t see Tock but just a slash of fresh blood across the white sheets. He only had a moment to wonder where she was and why she was bleeding, when Stevie pressed her hand against his neck and told someone, “Dammit. I think she nicked his artery.”
What? Nicked whose artery? Not his. He’d been—
Shay was on the floor and didn’t know why. That lion male and Stevie were hovering over him, twin expressions of panic on their faces.
“I think it was more than a nick,” the big cat told Stevie, and Shay wondered where all that blood on the pair came from before he blacked out completely.
*
She was traveling through the ceiling of some building she didn’t know. She was in full flight mode, which was weird. Honey badgers didn’t really do the flight part of fight or flight. They mostly just fought and backed up. Fought and backed up. Until their enemy wisely retreated. But everything inside her was telling her to move, move, move! So she did.
As she did, though, she could hear yelling from beneath her. Could hear the word “Tock!” yelled over and over again. She just didn’t know why. Were they counting down to something? Did they need a clock? And why not “tick-tock”? Who just said “tock”?
Since she had no idea what was going on, she kept moving. On all fours. Through the ceiling until she found a duct that had fresh air coming in. She went for that, slamming her body into the metal until she forced it out. She dropped onto the ground and took off running. She heard lots of people coming after her. Then she sensed some were in front of her. She stopped. Backed up. Turned and ran the other way. But there were more there. She stopped. Backed up, and tried a different direction.
It didn’t work. She was surrounded. She bared her fangs and hissed in warning. That’s when she realized she was in her honey badger form. But that was okay. There were a few people staring at her. Moving in.
She’d take them all on.
She charged forward, ready to destroy, when a person she didn’t know tossed a live king cobra in front of her.
The snake was pissed, rearing up; its neck flap spread in warning, and that’s when she realized how hungry she was. She could not care less about these people surrounding her. All she knew was that she wanted to eat.
She changed direction and threw herself at the snake. It bit into her neck, injecting poison into her veins while it wrapped its long body around her. But she was too hungry to care. She just grabbed it by the head with her two front claws and pulled until she’d torn its jaw from the rest of it. She fell asleep after that.