Chapter 2

The basement air was damp and cold. The disinfectant couldn't mask the stale blood underneath.

Arthur tossed me onto the freezing surgical table and strapped my wrists and ankles down with thick leather belts.

"You handle her," he said to Buck, loosening his tie. "Keep the eyes and heart intact. Film the rest. I need to take a call upstairs—buyer's getting impatient."

"You got it, boss."

Buck was nearly two meters tall, all meat and no neck, wearing a waterproof apron stained dark red.

Arthur turned and left. The iron door clanged shut behind him.

Buck didn't rush.

He dragged over a metal folding chair, sat down in front of me, and spun the scalpel slowly between his fingers.

"You know what, little blind girl," his voice was strangely calm, "last month the boss brought back this Japanese girl. Disabled too—missing three fingers."

He laid the blade flat against my collarbone, the cold steel sliding slowly across my skin.

"She had the prettiest cry. I recorded it and set it as my alarm. Wakes me up every morning."

He smiled.

"But you'll probably be even better. Blind girls react more."

He stood up and started checking the camera equipment beside the table, adjusting angles, focusing the lens.

"Don't be scared. I've got steady hands—you'll get to watch your own guts come out." He flashed a grin full of yellow-black teeth. "Well, I guess you won't be watching anything."

He cracked up at his own joke, the laughter bouncing off the basement walls.

Then he raised the scalpel, aiming it at my eye socket.

"Is that right?"

I stopped trembling. The whimpering vanished.

Buck froze.

In the half-second he hesitated—

The bones in my wrist shifted with a faint pop, and my entire hand slid out of the thick leather strap like it had no skeleton at all.

My right hand shot out and locked around his thick neck.

"Ghhk—" Buck's eyes bulged. The scalpel clattered to the floor.

He clawed at my hand, trying to pry it off. It was like trying to bend a hydraulic press.

Gold, slit pupils surfaced in my eyes. Dark, blue-black scales began to ripple across the pale skin of my hand.

"You stink too much to even qualify as an appetizer."

I squeezed.

Crack.

His cervical spine shattered.

Buck's massive body went limp. I flung him into the corner and flicked the grime off my fingers.

I scanned the basement. Buck's blood had splattered along the edge of the surgical table—wrong direction. If someone had broken in from outside, the blood would be near the door. I dragged his body toward the iron door with my foot, smeared a streak of blood on the door frame, and kicked his fallen scalpel into the far corner.

Then I climbed back onto the table and slid my hands back into the straps, bones clicking into place. The leather was still intact—not a scratch.

Right then, footsteps echoed outside the iron door. Arthur was back from his call.

I let out a piercing scream.

The door burst open.

Arthur rushed in, saw Buck crumpled by the doorway with his neck twisted at a wrong angle, and his face went white.

"What happened?!" He drew the pistol from his waist, sweeping the room.

"Someone—someone was here!" I curled up on the table, sobbing hysterically. "A shadow came in and snapped his neck—said they were looking for something!"

"What thing?" Arthur's gun swung toward me.

"I don't know!" I was babbling, nearly incoherent. "I'm just a guide! My sisters are still on the island—they have the sea chart! It's about a Spanish shipwreck!"

Arthur's aim dropped a fraction.

"A Spanish shipwreck?"

"Yes—at Mist Reef, out in open water. There are crates of gold coins... I was supposed to lead people there, but I can't see..." I cried harder. "Just take me back and all the money is yours! My sisters—they're younger than me, prettier, they don't know anything about the world—you can have them too!"

I could hear Arthur's heart pounding.

A sunken fortune plus a handful of defenseless, beautiful young women. For a man as greedy as him, that was a temptation he simply couldn't refuse.

He looked at the body by the door, then back at me—a blind girl strapped to a table, completely helpless.

No way she could have killed Buck.

"Shut up." Arthur hauled me to my feet and jammed the gun into my lower back. "You're taking me to your sisters. Right now. Try anything and I'll blow your head off."

"Okay... whatever you say."

I lowered my head, shoulders trembling.

He shoved me toward the exit, face lit up with excitement, already too far gone to wonder how Buck had really died.