Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            Pissed, I grabbed the rifle from Parker’s slack, surprised grip, then dropped the circle. Somehow I resisted the urge to smack the butt of it across her chin—but it was close.

            “You should have snuffed her,” Jenks said, a harsh expression pinching his brow as he hovered over my shoulder. “Crazy never tells you anything.”

            “She has to,” I said, but Al was watching me over his blue-tinted glasses, his head moving in a slow denial. Crap on toast, I thought. She was under the same no-divulge curse? Why couldn’t I ever catch a break!

            “What is wrong with you!” David shouted as he pulled Cassie deeper into the pack.

            Parker began to laugh hysterically, until the pain became too much and she gasped for breath.

            “David, I’m okay,” Cassie said, trying to soothe him, but the man was incensed. And he loves her, I thought, seeing it in his desperate hold on her.

            “Go ahead,” Parker taunted, her voice raspy. “Try to force me to tell you who the mage is,” she chortled, and Jenks’s wing hum eased in pitch. “I’ll be dead before his name passes my lips.” Her lip curled into an almost smile, ugly. “Once by accident, the coven might believe, but twice? You will rot in Alcatraz, Morgan.”

            It was that damn no-divulge curse. I couldn’t break it even given time I didn’t have. The last of the mob was beating a hasty retreat at the I.S.’s cautious advance, leaving only the Black Dandelions. The alpha challenge the I.S. could ignore, but the rifle shot? Not so much.

            “I’m going to hound you all until the day I die,” Parker burbled, her eye beginning to bleed again as she dragged that blanket over herself. “You’ll never sleep safe. You’ll always be looking. Or you will be dead.”

            Well, screw that, I thought, handing the rifle to Al and taking my bag back in turn.

            Al’s heavy brow lifted as he held the rifle as if it was a dirty rag before passing it to Garrett lurking behind us. “If she refuses Cassie’s sovereignty, her life is forfeit,” the demon said. “As Cassie’s second, it’s your responsibility to kill her.”

            “Whoa. What?” I said as David’s expression lit up.

            “He’s right.” David turned to Parker. “We won’t know who the mage is, but she won’t be his tool anymore.”

            “I am no one’s tool,” Parker whispered, and the watching paramedics shifted nervously.

            “I’m not going to kill her,” I said, horrified, and Al sighed. “What do you think I am?”

            “A fool,” Al grumbled. “Kill her and leave your people safe. There’s no extradition from the ever-after, and the line is five steps away.”

            My thoughts flicked to Constance’s belief that I’d continue to fail until I learned the art of killing those who opposed me, her claim that I was putting my own people, the ones who loved and supported me, at risk. This is not who I want to be, I thought as I looked at David and Cassie, beaten and hurt—because of me. Maybe the half-crazy undead vampire mouse was right, but there were worse things than death, and I knew what Parker valued to the bottom of her soul. The question was, Could I be that cold and take it from her?

            Jaw clenched, I moved closer to the downed Were, my grip on the ley line becoming more sure. “I’m not going to flee to the ever-after,” I said, and Al sighed dramatically. “And I’m not going to kill you,” I added, and Parker grinned through the agony, thinking she had won.

            “I’m going to take your ability to Were,” I said, and David’s protest choked to nothing. “I’m going to turn you into a human.” Al’s frown eased into a wicked smirk as Parker went ashen, and I eased closer still. “You are going to be stuck as a warped, half-blind, scarred woman who remembers what it is like to run under the moon when the snow is fresh and unspoiled.” Exhaling, I drew the line into me until the stray strands of my hair began to float. I didn’t know the curse, but Al did. It had to be in the collective. All I had to do was access it. That proud grin he was now wearing told me he’d do it.

            “W-wait,” Parker stammered, real fear in her voice. It went to my core and lit an ugly side of me, one I wish I didn’t have. Bitter satisfaction rose up from a lifetime of being bullied, swamping the softer parts of my soul, silencing them. I would not live looking over my shoulder. Not for her. She was not worth it.