Free Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins

the same result. Phelan and the pink-haired guy then dragged Lukas into the van. The moment the door slammed shut, the picture became scrambled, like an old television signal.
    By the time it cleared up, I could see Lukas was in a room somewhere, possibly a basement, judging from the exposed pipes. He was strapped to some kind of medical gurney. A figure stepped forward—a tall, thin Kymeran dressed in a long white coat with dried blood-stains all over it. For some reason my blood ran cold.
    “That’s Dr. Moot.” Hexe more spat the name than spoke it. “He used to be a surgeon—until they found out he was doing unnecessary surgeries to harvest body parts for the black magic market. What is he saying to you, Lukas?”
    “He’s telling me my new owner needs to have a few ‘adjustments’ made to me. He needs me to put on my cougar skin. But I refuse. He says it doesn’t matter because he can make me change, whether I want to or not.”
    I watched as the Dr. Moot inside the scrying crystal filled a syringe with some kind of liquid and jabbed it into Lukas’s arm. The captive bastet started to convulse, transforming into his were-cougar aspect. Dr. Moot then turned to a tray of surgical instruments laid out beside the table. He picked up a scalpel and held it to the light, turning it so he could study its blade.
    Hexe leaned forward, peering deep into the crystal. “Is that a silver scalpel?” he asked.
    “Yes.” Lukas nodded sadly.
    “What’s he doing?” I asked, a sick feeling rising in my gut.
    “Moot’s hambling him,” Hexe replied grimly. “It’s a stroke of evil genius, really. Not only does it keep a beast fighting in the pit from being physically able to back away, basically forcing it to fight, it guarantees they won’t try and run away.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “If any of us were to return to our preserves as a cripple, it’s practically a death sentence,” Lukas replied. “Some of the older weres who end up in the kennel simply lie down and die after they realize what’s been done to them.”
    Mercifully the image inside the crystal grew fuzzy and distorted as Dr. Moot took the scalpel to Lukas’s hind legs. When the picture cleared back up, I could see Lukas, once more in his human skin, lying on a pile of dirty straw inside a large metal cage. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of track pants, with filthy, bloody bandages wrapped about his feet. There was a shock collar fastened around his throat. I watched, my heart nearly breaking, as he dragged himself across the grimy floor to a metal bowl to try and get a drink of water.
    Suddenly Lukas looked up and saw a figure sitting in the cage next to his. It was a young man slightly older than he, with scruffy hair, dressed in a tattered pair of jogging pants with a shock collar around his neck. I could see a scar going from his left brow up into his hairline.
    “Who’s that?” I asked.
    “That’s Rufus,” Lukas said sadly. “He was from the Embreeville Preserve. We became friends. He was the one who told me that all the werewolves and other shape-shifters in the kennel belonged to someone called Boss Marz—and the only way I could hope to stay alive was by fighting to the death in the pit.”
    “I should have known Boss Marz was involved.” Hexe scowled. “Leave it to the Malandanti to traffic in something barbaric.”
    I felt a little flower of panic blossom in my belly. I might be a nump, but even I knew about the Kymeran version of the Mafia. Gambling, drugs, smuggling, prostitution, theft . . . If it was illegal and going on in Golgotham, the Malandanti had a six-fingered hand in it.
    They first emerged during the Unholy War, where they offered protection to fellow Kymerans and other supernaturals—for a price. After the Divine Intervention of 1111 put an end to the wholesale persecution of nonhumans, the organization went underground, infiltrating supernatural ghettos worldwide.
    “I realize shape-shifters have a