For a brief moment I fantasized about the doctor in question not talking, and about ways we could loosen his tongue. Then I shuddered, feeling my power and my anger drain away as the havsrå’s lovely, gentle face rose in my memory.

Strength doesn’t equal violence, I realized suddenly. But then I thought about how good it would feel to kick that damned Healer-monster in the goolies. While wearing a pair of Iris’s very pointy designer shoes.

Strength doesn’t have to equal violence, I amended. But sometimes a little violence can go a long way, too.

“Jane, Anyan… Good to see you both,” Capitola said as she gave us each a hug in turn. The tall woman was wearing a simple outfit of jeans, boots, white T-shirt, and leather jacket, but that just made her look all the more like she’d just stepped off the cover of an action-adventure novel. That said, when she got closer, I could see her eyes were shadowed and tired.

We were in Pittsburgh, which we’d settled on as the halfway point between our two parties, and it was about ten hours after we’d gotten the original call from Capitola. I’d slept about four hours as Anyan drove, then we’d switched and he’d stretched out in the backseat while I drove the rest of the way. He’d snored away—and occasionally barked, to my consternation—while I thought about the case, and about what I’d like to do to this “doctor” when we laid hands on him.

“Sorry we had to make you come all this way,” she apologized, as I watched Moo and Shar emerge from the back of the unmarked white van Cappie had been driving.

“Terk totally exhausted his mojo taking all of us in for the raid. He barely made it back from getting you that last message, but I didn’t want to use phones… None of us know who to trust anymore.”

“No worries, Cap,” Anyan rumbled. “How’s the prisoner?”

“Alive. Squealed like a pig when first captured, but has since clammed up. No doubt you’ll be able to get through, but just in case, I’ve brought you the tapes and the transcripts…”

Capitola kept talking to us, but all my attention was riveted as Ryu, Julian, Daoud, and Caleb stepped up to the white van. Moo and Shar each took a moment to greet Julian warmly. He looked thrilled to see the two women. So thrilled, in fact, that he was like a whole new Julian.

Julian wasn’t the show, however—the main attraction was waiting for us in the back of the van. The prisoner was about to emerge, and we were finally going to have our hands on one of the murderous bastards who’d caused so much pain.

Fury beat through my system as I thought of finally coming face-to-face with the kind of shit who could take away a woman’s power and then abuse her, as if he were some monstrous god from Greek mythology. There was commotion from the van when something Capitola was saying recaptured my attention.

“… and this one’s a halfling, like everybody in this lab was, including doctors. A decent fighter, and definitely a damned zealot. Somebody known of as the Healer, also a halfling, is recruiting from the Borderlands. That’s why we never sensed anything. This batch of vics was all halflings, like I’d said, but they were a new crop. Former ‘patients’ were apparently all purebloods, captured inside the Territory and brought to the border by their fellow purebloods, but then they’re given over to halflings. So that’s why nobody ever raised any alarms: Purebloods never enter, unless they’re prisoners.” Capitola sighed, running her hand over her raucous chestnut Afro.

“And this is where it gets extra freaky. We don’t sense the pureblood prisoners who enter because they’ve been given some kind of…”

“Injection,” Anyan grunted. “We rescued some hostages this side of the border who told us the same thing. Hopefully, whatever it is they’ve been given probably just needs to wear off, but, in the meantime, they’re still cut off from their power.”

Both Anyan and Capitola fell silent, as if processing the horror of something that could steal a creature’s magic.

“Does your doctor know who’s behind everything? And why are the halflings participating?” I interrupted. After all, if Jarl was running the show and he wanted to purge the world of halflings, it made no sense for creatures like me to participate in his mad schemes.

Capitola shook her head. “The only person the good doctor ever met was this ‘Healer’ character. He’s apparently a goblin-halfling—”

“Yeah, we know about him,” I interrupted, wanting Cap to get to my question.

“We’re gonna have to have a powwow before you leave, Anyan. Looks like you guys have learned as much as we have in the past few days.” Anyan nodded as I cleared my throat, causing Capitola to smile.

“To answer Jane’s questions: Our prisoner was singing like Pavarotti right up until we asked about the higher-ups. Said the worst we could do wouldn’t compare to what they would do, they’re scarier than we are, the usual. We couldn’t get anything more after that; I’ll leave that up to your king and queen.

“As for why someone would be willing to turn on their fellow halflings like that, the shit the Healer promised all his minions is crazy. Basically, despite being a halfling, he hates halflings and wants to be a pureblood. Which ain’t gonna happen, obviously, but I guess he thinks he can make up for it somehow… probably for the same reasons Hitler worshipped a race that looked the polar opposite of him. Talk about self-loathing. Anyway, as for the ‘doctor’ back there—” Cap jerked a thumb roughly back at the van, which was rocking as Daoud and Caleb tried to clamber into the back. Nobody’s fool, Julian watched from the sidelines, cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his shirtfront. “The Healer apparently promised everyone who worked for him a place in the new world they’re ‘building.’ And that once they solve the fertility crisis for the purebloods, they’ll get to breed with them so their children will be nearly pure-blooded… Then their children’s children can breed with purebloods, etcetera. They’re told they’ll contribute to a new race. Of course that’s not how genetics works, but who needs reason and logic when you get to torture people?”

I nodded. “I’m sure some of these halflings are fucked up enough, like Conleth was, to believe in crazy-assed ideologies like that. But I’m sure a lot of them just want to cause pain.”

Capitola nodded her own agreement. “Exactly. The one we captured I think really believes in all the Healer’s philosophies. But from what we know they did to their captives, I think it was as much about hurting people as anything else.”

Our philosophical discussion was interrupted, however, as Daoud and Caleb both came stumbling out of the van to land with a thump on their asses. Moo shook her head, stepped forward, and calmly raised an arm. Alfar power bloomed forth, that distinctive blending of all four elements that rushed through the air toward the van.

I moved toward the van, knowing that our enemy—or one of them, at least—was finally to be revealed.

Only to gasp as what floated out of the van, surrounded by a sparkling nimbus of Moo’s power, turned out to be…

A female.

She was middling height and weight, and wearing scrubs. Her hair was sandy brown; her eyes brown as well. She looked unutterably average.

And yet she’d been willing to sell out her own people, and to stand by as other women were raped and abused, because she’d been lured by the Healer’s promise of (maybe, someday) having children that were more “pure” than her?

I knew my jaw had dropped, but neither Anyan nor Ryu seemed bothered that the “doctor” was a woman. Then again, I supposed it made sense. I’d been raised human, in a world where a little extra upper-body strength, a few inches of average height, and some extra pounds of average weight meant men were, for the most part, physically stronger than women. That left us vulnerable in certain situations, no matter how much we hated to admit it.

But in the supe world, who cared if you couldn’t bench-press a couple hundred pounds using your muscles when you could loft a thousand using your magic? Tiny females like Phaedra could, quite literally, rip apart the most muscle-bound human male without even blinking. So power and mastery, I realized, weren’t tied up with gender for the supes as they were for humans.

Moo lowered the struggling prisoner to her feet, and then, to my surprise, the Alfar-halfling exerted enough pressure to force the woman to her knees. My gaze flicked to Moo’s face, and I saw that behind her calm, Alfar exterior lurked menace and anger. As if sensing her friend’s mood, both Cap and Shar strode forward to each place a gentle hand on Moo’s shoulder. The statuesque woman blinked once, her power gathering, before she blinked again and it dispersed, leaving Daoud, Ryu, and Caleb responsible for the “doctor” at their feet.

Cap stroked a hand across Moo’s shoulders as Shar put an arm around Moo’s waist. She blinked again in response, and for a second I wondered if she was forcing back tears. Then it hit me.

Anyan said her father was a god-king who made her his consort… In modern times, we call that child abuse. I shivered, my heart going out to the beautiful woman before me who was busy burying her pain behind her pride.