The upper deck of the skytram stank like a farmyard.

Landholder Castelaine shrieked and was forced back into the doorway of the passenger lock as a startled chicken erupted in the air in front of him. He swiped at the creature with both arms, sending it squawking away in a cloud of feathers.

Castelaine rounded on his footman.

“Ashe, what the hell are you trying to do to me? This isn’t executive class. Have you checked the boarding passes?”

“It’s all in the genes,” the minotaur said, relaxing on the heap of human bones, a ruminative expression on its face. “But you probably don’t understand that, do you? The concept of ‘genes’? DNA? Chromosomes? Any of it?”

“I understand you’re a monster. I don’t need to understand anything else.”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make – my genes make me a monster. And you humans made my genes – well, my grandparents’ genes, anyway. Listen, do you know any history, or are you just some yokel with more guts than brains?”

Green-eyed and blind, the diaphanously clad girl turned from the fire as the Lord of Insidiousness entered. She nodded, smiling, as his fingers closed on a fold of silk.

Stunned, he drew back in the moonbeam that slanted perpetually through his window, clutching his bloody cheek.

“Beware the month of June,” she said, pointing to the calendar by the door, “for you, it is the month of death.” Then she was gone.