Free Captive Heart by Anna Windsor

Ionian Sea. “Vast freedom within vast limitations.”
    Not enough .
    Damn it, get it together, Myles .
    She fished for the right words, failed, sighed, and tried again to organize what she wanted to say. “I don’t completely understand it myself, but in the natural world, certain laws have to be followed and certain realities can’t be changed. Even in the paranormal world there are basic sets of energies and biological compositions, just like in oceans and seas and other ecosystems. Huge numbers of possibilities, but finite ways they can combine naturally.” She raised the evidence bag with the hairs. “The water in these, the water that’s moved through them—the flow was broken. This biology isn’t natural.”
    Bela, Camille, and Dio stood in silence, looking from the bag to Andy. She could tell they were trying, but nobody was getting it. Andy had no idea how to explain it better, and she felt as clueless as the first moment she had seen someone—actually, her OCU partner and best friend at the time—shift into a demon. She had no words to describe what her senses perceived.
    “The creature who shed these hairs is possible in nature,” she tried again, “but it never would have come about or arisen on its own. It’s like a hybrid, something human and paranormal, but not blended like half-demons or other paranormals we’ve encountered.”
    Okay, maybe that was a little better .
    Lights seemed to be coming on, at least in Camille’s face.
    “Like a turcock?” Camille asked.
    Then again, maybe not …
    Dio stared at Camille like Camille’s mind might have melted during one of her more intense play sessions with fire. “What the living hell is a turcock?”
    Bela put her hand on Camille’s arm. “What she means is, can you translate for those of us who don’t live in books and laboratories?”
    Camille, possibly the only fire Sibyl in history more bookish than an air Sibyl and more science-oriented than an earth Sibyl, warmed to the task with lots of expansive gestures. “Turkeys and peacocks both belong to the pheasant family, so theoretically and biologically they can produce offspring. Only they can’t mate and produce offspring in the wild. They can only make babies in laboratories with scientific help. So turcocks are possible, but they’d never happen in nature on their own.”
    As she finished, Camille smiled like a happy kid.
    “And you know this because …?” Dio’s tone suggested she was trying to keep her impatience in check.
    Camille shrugged. “Birds are interesting. I read about them in my spare time.”
    Andy felt grateful, because she never would have come up with an allegory that made any sense. This one might have been weird, but it worked.
    “So somebody, somewhere, somehow, made a turcock or whatever,” Bela said.
    Dio lifted one finger. “A man-eating turcock.”
    “Man-ripping,” Andy corrected. “It doesn’t eat its kill, which also doesn’t feel natural, since the act itself is so brutal it’s like a wild animal.”
    “It should feed, but it doesn’t.” Jack joined the conversation without jarring Andy in the least, as if he had been watching, guessing, making deductions about the case—and learning on the spot how to better interact with her. “So either it can’t feed or it was engineered not to.”
    “Engineered,” Bela said, sounding far away as she stared at the body parts on the warehouse floor. “As in genetically. Or biologically, at least.”
    Bela’s husband, Duncan, came forward and took her hand, while John Cole and Saul Brent kept their distance. Andy let herself look at Jack. He had his jacket and tie off, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Casual suited him better than she would have imagined. He gave her a polite glance, nothing overstepping. This was work. He was at work.
    So am I. God, I’m hopeless .
    “Biologically engineered is more accurate,” Andy said, instantly annoyed by the slight tremor in her voice. “If