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The woman considered this. Her dark eyes moved from Marcus to Del and back. She took a step forward.

Marcus’s hand closed on the scalpel. The new one, titanium-plated, balanced for a grip he hadn’t trained with. The blade came free of the instrument case in one smooth motion. He held it low at his side, point toward the floor.

The woman stopped. She looked at the scalpel. A calculation crossed her expression, quick and precise.

“That’s silver,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’re a vampire.”

“Yes.”

She nodded once. “Then you know what it does.”

“I know what it does to you.”

The fight started without warning. The woman moved. Marcus moved. The scalpel caught the lamplight as it arced toward her forearm. She twisted. The blade passed through empty air where her wrist had been. Marcus recovered and thrust again, low, aiming for the hip where a major artery ran close to the surface. She sidestepped, and his momentum carried him past her. He turned, and she was already behind him, one hand reaching for his weapon arm.

He dropped the scalpel, caught it with his left hand, and swung backhand toward her ribs. The blade connected. A shallow cut, three inches long, across the fabric of her jacket. She hissed. The sound wasn’t human.

Marcus pressed. The scalpel became an extension of his arm. He had eighty-five years of practice, precision built from ten thousand stitched wounds that never left a scar. He cut where she would have to block. She blocked. He cut again where the block left her open. She evaded. Each exchange took less than a second. Each miss by Marcus was measured in millimeters.

She was faster than he was by a narrow margin, but it was enough. Her hand caught his wrist on the eighth exchange and twisted. The scalpel clattered to the stone floor. She drove her knee toward his sternum. He caught it with his forearm and the impact drove him back two steps. His shoulder hit the shelf. Reagent bottles clinked.

The woman straightened. She brushed her jacket where the scalpel had cut. The fabric was torn. Beneath it, the skin was whole. Vampire healing, accelerated. She looked at Marcus with flat dark eyes that were suddenly, briefly, not dark at all.

The change came and went in the space between heartbeats. Dark fur rippled along her right arm from wrist to elbow. Her right eye flashed amber-gold, the pupil vertical and slit. The fur settled. The eye held its gold for three seconds. Then it was dark again, human-dark, and she was just a tall woman in a torn jacket standing in a clinic with a country doctor between her and a witch holding a heated vial.

Marcus hadn’t moved. His back was against the shelf. The scalpel lay on the stone floor between them. The cut across her jacket had already sealed.

“Hybrid.” His voice was steady. “Vampire and wolf.”

The woman didn’t confirm or deny. She stepped around him. Marcus let her pass. His body was between her and Del a moment ago. Now it wasn’t. The calculation had changed.

She regarded Del across the worktable. Del stood with the heated vial in her left hand and the pestle in her right. Her knuckles were white on both.

“Arrow says you’ve got until sunrise.” Her voice was courteous. Almost gentle. “After that, the next message won’t be delivered. It will be demonstrated.”

Del said nothing, her face blank and controlled.

“The compound is stable,” the woman said. “The degradation is irreversible. You’ve run sixteen tests. None of them worked. The seventeenth won’t either.” She looked at the copper and vinegar in the mortar. At the brass scale. At Denny Alcott’s file open beside it. “A man died tonight. More will die. That’s not a threat. It’s logistics.”

She turned toward the door. Her boots made no sound on the stone. At the threshold she paused and looked back at Marcus.

“The scalpel was a good try. Next time use the whole set.” She stepped out. The door closed behind her without a sound. The latch caught.

The clinic held the smell of copper, vinegar and something else, a scorched silver tang that hung in the air where the scalpel had connected with her jacket. Marcus stood with his back against the shelf. His right hand was empty. The scalpel lay on the floor where it had fallen. The blade gleamed clean in the lamplight, without a trace of blood, because the cut had sealed too fast for that.

Del set the heated vial on the table. Her hand shook. She pressed it flat against the steel to hold it still.

“Who was that,” she said.

“I don’t know.” Marcus crossed to the door and checked the latch. It was secure. He picked up the scalpel and wiped the blade with an alcohol swab. The metal was cool against his fingers. “She works for Arrow.”

“Hybrid. Vampire and wolf. I’ve never seen one.”

“Neither have I.” Marcus set the scalpel in the instrument case. He closed the lid. His hands were steady. His pulse wasn’t. “She knew about the tests. All sixteen. She knew about Denny.”