Was that why he had asked Flute to exchange blood with him that day out at the Briggs homestead? Had it been some prompting way down deep in his psyche? Maybe after being with her in the forest outside of Tyson Station? Something about Talina Perez had always ensorcelled him; he figured that she was the first woman he’d ever met who was beyond his reach. Something he’d never even considered with Kalico Aguila—who had rightly loathed and despised him.

From the beginning, when it came to Talina, he’d had the feeling that he’d never measure up, be worthy of her respect, let alone consideration. And—for a Taglioni—the entire notion was not only totally foreign, but entirely unthinkable.

“Fool!” The word seemed to pop into Dek’s head from nowhere, and with it came the distinct hint of derision.

“Demon,” he whispered. “Not playing this game. Rocket’s in there, too. And so is Flute and his lineage. My call, piece of shit? You better look to your rear, because they’re on my . . .”

He couldn’t finish as his vision filled with a splendor of color, flashes of laser-bright reds and greens. The room slipped sideways, spinning in fragments that kept resetting, leaving Dek to gulp as his stomach flipped with increasing vertigo.

God, he hated nausea. In the end, he closed his eyes, shifted, and lowered his right foot to the floor.

“Asshole,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “You do this to Talina, too?”

“Stronger.”

The beast was referring to Talina and not him.

“What’s up?” Talina’s voice came from the doorway.

“Demon. The fucker just tripped my sense of equilibrium, made the room spin so bad I want to throw up.”

“He talk to you?”

“Yeah, said you were stronger. The toilet-sucking little creep likes making me feel inferior.”

Dek blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, delighted when he opened them to find that Tal was staring down, her alien-dark gaze fixed on his.

She asked, “Why is he using me against you? In case Demon hasn’t noticed, I’m on your side.”

Dek bit his lip, let his eyes slide to the side while he tried to find the right words, but suddenly he was a quetzal, surrounded by aquajade and scrub chabacho. He was in midair, leaping across a brushy meadow . . . and onto the back of an old and scarred quetzal. Dek’s jaws clamped shut, crushing the top of the old quetzal’s neck. He could feel the bones cracking and snapping under the rows of his serrated teeth. The two of them crashed to the ground, Dek’s weight pinning the older animal. The elder’s mouth gaped; the contraction of the lungs could be felt sucking at the constricted windpipes.

“Hey!” Talina’s sharp voice cracked through the image. “Where are you?”

The vision shattered as Talina, hands gripping his shoulders, shook him back to. . . .