“Stella said it was blinding after the utter darkness before it and she couldn’t make out much more than blurry figures, but a man said, ‘Ah, there are my pets. I’ve brought you a special treat to salve that hunger you must be feeling.’

“Apparently, a whimpering figure was then pushed forward and the speaker slashed at them with something, then tossed them into the room and the door closed.”

Allie paused for another drink, her voice grim when she said, “Stella was still having trouble seeing, but she could smell blood and the person was weeping and she managed to get to her hands and knees to move to them. She wanted to help them, wanted to see if she could stanch their wounds or something, but the smell of the blood was overwhelming and her body was cramping. She said the next thing she knew she was licking up the blood rather than trying to stanch it, and then Stephen was beside her licking at one of the other wounds and they both went a little crazy trying to get more and everything became blurry in her memory again except she recalls the sudden onset of pain. Terrible, screaming agony that left her writhing on the ground and shrieking.”

“She was probably telling the truth and didn’t recall much clearly,” Tricia said quietly when Allie fell silent. “It was probably just nightmarish flashes in her memory. The turning can make a person . . .”

When Tricia paused, looking like she wasn’t sure how to say what she was trying to explain, Magnus said, “During a turn, the turnee becomes desperate to get blood, but once they get it, the nanos set to work on the body in earnest and it is apparently unbearably painful. Turnees have been known to do themselves great harm trying to bring an end to that pain.”

“Yeah,” Tybo murmured. “I’ve even heard of them clawing out their own eyes if not restrained.”

Allie stared at them all blankly, and then asked, “Nanos?”

“Explanations later,” Lucian said coldly. “Continue with what Stella told you.”

For a moment, Magnus thought Allie would rebel and demand answers, but in the end she seemed to decide she’d made him wait long enough and continued.

“Stella didn’t know how long she was in that basement. But the same thing kept happening over and over. She’d wake up in terrible pain in that dark room, either just moments before, or to the sound of, the door opening. The blinding light would come on, a voice would taunt them, and then another poor person would be sliced up and thrown in to them like raw meat tossed to dogs. And every time, she and Stephen would fall on the person in search of their blood and then end up writhing on the ground in agony.”