The First Animal Sample: I removed this sample (labeled ZANTI on the jar) from its gel preservative and introduced it to a growth medium (two parts human blood, three parts ground bone of sow, two parts sugar, three parts human spittle).

The sample was placed within the most powerful containment environment that I could generate—a large pentacle whose inner circle was fifty feet in diameter—in a meadow at least two hundred yards from the nearest tree. I also protected the pentacle from prying eyes and intrusion with spells of cloaking and menace.

I was impressed by Grimalkin’s methodical approach and attention to detail, but a chill ran down my spine as I read on. The witch assassin, for all her knowledge, intelligence, and courage, had been dealing with unknown forces, and as Jenny had pointed out the day before, she’d greatly underestimated the danger posed by the varteks—a mistake that might have resulted in many deaths in the County.

The first sample had been activated on the night of the full moon. There were lots of the small insect-like creatures. Just before dawn, they had burrowed into the soil, only to emerge again after dark the following day. At this point they were fewer in number, but the remaining creatures had grown to the size of a human finger, and Grimalkin believed that while underground they had been hunting and eating each other.

They carried on doing this until only two remained. She described them as very thin, but roughly human in shape, with long claws on their fingers and toes. Finally she entered the pentacle and killed them with her blades. Grimalkin was brave, but I thought that sometimes she had too much self-belief for her own good. She’d been dealing with entities with unknown fighting capabilities.

Not content with that, she repeated her experiments using a second sample from the jars. These new creatures chased and ate each other on the surface all day and night. These had long, cylindrical bodies in three segments like insects, although they eventually grew as big as a sheep, and much longer. They had a sharp protrusion on their foreheads, which they used to sting and paralyze their prey. Grimalkin nicknamed them stingers.

These stingers had the power to summon their prey, and this worked even though Grimalkin had fortified the pentacle with a spell of menace to keep animals and humans away. They summoned and killed crows, wood pigeons, seagulls, geese, ducks, magpies, rabbits, hare, and even a deer before finally focusing their attention on the witch assassin.

She’d felt their power as they tried to lure her into the pentacle. This time she had been wiser, slaying them from a distance with her throwing knives. After dissecting the dead creatures, she found that each of their body segments contained a heart, stomach, and brain tissue. A subsequent experiment showed that if one segment was destroyed, the creature could regenerate it. This made them fearsome entities indeed.

Her final experiment was with the varteks. It went wrong because, after the young had burrowed underground, only one apparently emerged alive; she didn’t realize that a second one had also survived. When she learned that the creature was capable of eating rock and soil, she resorted to scrying. The future she saw was of a lone vartek burrowing under the pentacle to escape. So she prepared a pit and intended to lure it to its destruction there. But Grimalkin hadn’t foreseen my arrival with Jenny at the moment it escaped. Nor had her scrying told her of the second vartek. Despite the terrifying nature of all that I was reading, I smiled toward the conclusion of Grimalkin’s account: she had completely failed to mention our part in slaying the creature. No doubt our untimely appearance was an annoyance that she preferred to forget. She hadn’t described the pursuit and killing of the second vartek, either.