Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Greatest Hits

The king and his retinue waited at the rim of the pit, and all gasped when he appeared well and whole, without a scratch.

Darius, reclining on his litter, surrounding by gaping sycophants, could not maintain an indifferent mask. He’d become dumbfounded, barely able to move his mouth to speak. “Daniel! How—how did you survive?”

Daniel gave a wry smile. “I prayed, and my God sent angels to hold closed the mouths of the lions.” Later, he would pray for forgiveness for that fib.

His voice filled with awe, Darius said, “Your God is powerful.”

“And wise,” Daniel said, thinking of all the full moon nights he had asked why . Of course God had known why. “God is most wise.”

The talking dog always whined when Robin fed the griffin.

“C’mon, Robin, please? The doc’ll never know. I never get any treats.”

“Sorry, Jones,” Robin said to the dust-colored mutt in the steel and Plexiglas cell.

“Please? Please please please ?” Jones’s tail wagged the entire back end of his body.

“No, Jones. Sorry.”

“But it’s not fair. Those guys get fed late.”

“They have bigger stomachs than you.”

“Oh, please, just once, and I’ll never ask again!”

But it was a lie; the whining would never stop, and giving in would make it worse. It turned out that a talking dog was even more endearing than the nontalking kind. It took all of Lieutenant Robin Green’s army training to turn away from the mutt and move on to the rest of her rounds.

She hit a switch to illuminate a bank of lights in the second enclosure. The occupant had the thick, tawny-furred body of a lion, but its neck and head were those of an eagle: feathered, dark brown, with glaring eyes and a huge hooked bill. It opened its beak and called at her when the light came on, a sound somewhere between a screech and a roar.

A small door at the base of the Plexiglas allowed her to slide a tray of steaming meat into the cell. The griffin pounced on it, snarling and tearing at the meat, swallowing in gulps. Robin jumped back. No matter how many times that happened, it always surprised her.

Next, she took a bundle of hay to a side door that allowed access to a third enclosure and went inside. Technically, entering the enclosures was against regulations, but she had asked for special permission in this case.

“Here you go, kid.”

Hoofed footfalls shuffled toward her through the wood shavings that covered the floor. The animal stood about fifteen hands high, had a milk-white coat, cloven hooves, a tuft of hair under its chin, and a silver spiral horn between its eyes.

Robin spread out the hay, feeding some of it to the creature by hand. She and the unicorn got along well, though at twenty-three she didn’t like to admit her virginity. She’d fallen back on excuses to explain why she’d never seemed to make time for dates, for getting to know the men around her, for simply having fun: too much to do, too much studying, too much work, too much at stake. She’d always thought there’d be time, eventually. But those old patterns died hard. Colleagues and friends paired off around her, and she’d started to feel left out.

All that aside, now she was glad about it. Otherwise, she’d never have had the chance to hold a unicorn’s muzzle in her hands and stroke its silken cheek.

She’d graduated top of her class with a degree in biology and made no secret of her interest in some of the wilder branches of cryptozoology, however unfashionable. She’d gone through the university on an army ROTC scholarship and accepted an active-duty commission because she thought it would give her a chance to travel. Instead, she’d been offered a position in a shadowy military research project—covert, classified, and very intriguing. She’d accepted, transferred to the base in California, where she couldn’t talk to anyone about her work because of how classified it was. Not that anyone would believe her if she did talk.

After visiting with the unicorn for half an hour, Robin continued to the next level down: The Residence.

This level of the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology made Lieutenant Green nervous. It seemed like a prison. Well, it was a prison, though the people incarcerated here weren’t exactly criminals. Colonel Ottoman, PhD, MD, et cetera, liked to say it didn’t matter since they weren’t really human. A lowly research assistant and low-ranking, newly minted officer like Robin, perfectly turned out in her prim uniform with pressed collar and skirt, was not supposed to question such a declaration. Still, she made an effort to treat the inhabitants of the Residence like people.

“Hello? Anyone home?” Colonel Ottoman and Dr. Lerna were supposed to be here, but Robin must have been the first in for the night shift. The day shift had already checked out.

Despite its clandestine military nature, the place was as cluttered as one would expect from any university laboratory. Paper-covered desks and crowded bookshelves lined one wall. Another wall boasted a row of heavy equipment: refrigeration units, incubators, oscillators. Several island worktables held sinks and faucets, microscopes, banks of test tubes and flasks.

One Plexiglas wall revealed a pair of cells. The first cell was completely dark, its inhabitant asleep. Special features of this room included a silver-alloy lining and silver shavings embedded in the walls. The next cell had garlic extract mixed with the paint.

“How are you this evening, Lieutenant?” the occupant of the dimly lit second cell greeted her.

“I’m fine, Rick. Where is everyone?”

“There’s a note on your desk.”

Her desk was the smallest of the group, and the only one without a computer—she was still using a typewriter, although the colonel had promised to get her a computer on the next requisition cycle. She assumed he’d forget. She found a note in Dr. Ottoman’s jagged writing on her desk calendar:

Lt. Green, sorry to leave you alone, special conference came up, Bob and I will be in DC all week. Hold down the fort. No special instructions regarding the new arrival, just leave it alone.

Col. Ottoman

Just like that. Gone, leaving her alone on the night watch for a whole week. That meant she wouldn’t actually have anything to do but feed everyone and keep an eye on the closed-circuit screens.

“Bad news?” Rick said.

“Just inconvenient. Do you know anything about a new arrival?”

“In the aquatics lab.”

She started for the next door.

“Ah, Lieutenant. Chores first?” Rick—short for Ricardo, surname unknown, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown—slouched nonchalantly against the plastic window at the front of his cell. He didn’t sound desperate—yet.

“Right.”

From the incubator she removed the three pints of blood, “borrowed” from the base hospital, which had been warming since the last shift. She poured them into clean beakers, the only useful glassware at hand, and reached through the small panel in the window to Rick’s cell to set the glasses of blood on a table inside. It wasn’t really any different than feeding raw meat to the griffin.

Rick waited until the panel was closed before moving to the table. He looked composed, classic, like he should have been wearing a silk cravat and dinner jacket instead of jeans and a cotton shirt.

“Cheers.” He drank down the first glass without pause.

She didn’t watch him, not directly. The strange, hypnotic power of his gaze had been proven experimentally. So she watched his slender hands, the shoulder of his white shirt, the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

He lowered the beaker and sighed. “Ah. Four hours old. Fine vintage.” His mouth puckered. A faint blush began to suffuse his face, which had been deathly pale.