The Lincoln Park Zoo was just a little farther north, there in the Lakeside district. Dema went back to her Jeep and drove it up to the zoo's parking lot. One of the few free zoos anywhere, it had a lot of visitors, mainly people with a little spare time who found the animals fascinating.

People like herself. She had spent many hours here as a child, usually ending up in front of the snake displays. They had always been more responsive to her than any of the other animals.

As she walked to the tiger pit to look for Bonnuchi, she opened her senses to the animals. They were well cared for here, and existence for most of them was considerably easier than it would have been in the wild. Their territories were smaller than they might have liked, but comfortably safe and familiar, and their needs were well met within the confined spaces, thanks to the zoo attendants. This relationship, and the constant parade of visitors, had for the most part lulled their natural mistrust of human animals, since except for the attendants the humans all seemed to respect their territories, always staying just outside the boundaries.

At the tiger pit, the big animal was pacing back and forth, but stopped and looked at her when it sensed her presence. If Bonnuchi was a frequent visitor, the tiger might remember him, so she sent it the image of him she had from Jackson and the man on the street.

The response was instantaneous and vivid. This human, she learned, smelled strongly of fear. It acted like a monkey, throwing small stones and sticks at the tiger from the safety of its place above the wall, and jabbering insultingly.

Once it had thrown a small bag of white powder, and watched intently as the tiger ripped it open. But the tiger had merely sniffed at the powder and decided it was something foul, and ignored it. The human had flown into a rage, jabbering more insultingly than ever and throwing stones with all the puny force it could muster. The tiger had simply retired to its den and waited for the nasty human to go away.

This was a very different picture of Bonnuchi than the one she had from the two humans, but it was undoubtedly him. She learned that the man still came every day, but no longer threw things. Instead it merely stood and gloated from its safe place outside the tiger's space.

The tiger did not understand the unusual monkey-like behavior of this human, but didn't care too much about it, other than to convey the intention that this one would certainly die if it ever crossed into the tiger's realm.

Dema let the tiger know that she intended to confront this human in his own realm, and deal with him. The tiger was pleased, and returned contentedly to his pacing.

There was a bench across the walk from the tiger pit, and Dema sat there and watched the people drift by, waiting for Bonnuchi to show up. It was a stake-out of sorts, and she had learned the patience for it long before.

But she realized as she waited that this was another area where her shaman abilities helped. She recalled Sedna's story of sitting motionless on a rock for three days, waiting for her shaman awareness to be released. Dema's shaman awareness was always available to her now, and it made the waiting easy. It was not so much waiting as simply standing outside of time.

Eventually, he showed up. Dema sensed the fear in him, just as the tiger had. It was not a fear he was aware of, it was something he kept buried deep away from his consciousness. But to her shaman sense it was palpable, right there at the surface.

The tiger, she realized, symbolized for him the thing he feared, and coming here was his way of facing it without facing it, of convincing himself that it wasn't a threat, that it couldn't get to him. It was pathetic, really, because it was clearly something that was only in his mind, and if he would face it there he could conquer it. Instead he came here and faced the tiger, and suppressed it for another day.

But this was all surface noise. To get what she wanted from him she would have to talk to him, engage him directly. She hesitated to do that, because he might then pass on her description to others in the organization, and this could make her next move more difficult.

The fear in him gave her an idea. As she continued to watch him he was approached by another man and an exchange was made, so this was surely a regular business location for him. When the exchange was done and Bonnuchi walked away, she followed him.

As she had hoped, he didn't walk straight out of the zoo, but detoured through one of the houses where the lighting was subdued. Dema was not surprised that he chose the snake house, given his need to face dangerous creatures from behind the safety of a barrier. She followed and watched as he tapped on the glass of the displays and gloated whenever he produced a startle reaction from one of the snakes. There was no one else in sight, and he did not notice her watching him from the shadows.

The setting could not have been more perfect for her plan. She took off her jacket and tied it around her waist, leaving her arms bare to the shoulders of her sleeveless sweater. She continued to follow him until he stood in front of the display of the king cobra. Then she dream-shifted from her normal dark hair and complexion to the death pallor and white hair of the Lamia, and stepped in front of him.

To him it seemed as if she had appeared out of the darkness like a ghost. She used his own startle-reaction to overwhelm his senses and access his mind. As she did this, she was also in contact with the cobra behind the glass, and at her summons it slid forward and raised its body behind her, spreading its dramatic hood. She raised her pale arms in a similar arc and took Bonnuchi's face in her cold white hands.

Speaking in a low, husky voice, she said, "Joey Bonnuchi. He who fears tigers, and taunts them from behind a wall. He who fears snakes, and teases them through a barrier of glass. He who fears something deep in his past, and is too weak to allow it to come into his mind. This too he keeps behind a barrier, unable to face it directly. Instead, he faces tigers and snakes, trying to convince himself that he is brave. Poor Joey. Does Joey fear Rankine as well?"

At the mention of the Jamaican, an image sprang vividly to Bonnuchi's mind, displacing from his view the ghostly face and menacing cobra before him. It was a recollection of himself standing in front of the Jamaican, quaking with fear and trying desperately to conceal it. With it came awareness of the room, of walls that threatened to close in on him, and the knowledge of where this room was located.

Dema had what she needed. She said, "Know this, weak-hearted one. Such as you are not permitted to defy the will of the Lamia. Confront what you truly fear, and mend your weak-willed ways. Do not continue to prey on the innocent. If you would live, heed my words."

As she spoke she released him and backed away, dream-shifting her pallor back to her normal coloring as she did, so that she seemed to fade into the shadows and disappear out of his sight. Donning her jacket, she quickly made her way back out through the familiar maze of displays, leaving Bonnuchi to whatever fate his personal demons had in store for him.

As she walked back to her car, Bonnuchi's impression of Rankine remained alive in her mind. Bonnuchi did not know much of Rankine's affairs, but what he did know was enough. This was one of the evil ones. Dema felt the cold fury of the Lamia rising within her. When she got in the Jeep, she glanced at her face in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were yellow.