and the muscles in my slender arms became more defined. I wished I had my leather fighting suit as I rose from my chair. I ripped the sleeves from my shirt so that my arms were bare and less constricted.
My body continued to transform into my Drow appearance as I jerked each sleeve off. Expressions of shock and panic were on their faces as my once fair skin turned into a faint shade of amethyst. The tangled hair I pushed away from my face was cobalt blue now instead of black. My incisors lengthened into petite fangs.
Every ache and pain from the beatings vanished as my body healed during the transformation.
Fury built within me, and now I fed it with my elements. The room began to shake, windowpanes rattling as the earth beneath the building started to buck. Kitchen cupboard doors slammed open and closed. Ceramic plates, bowls, mugs, flew off shelves and smashed to shards on the aged linoleum.
Drawers rolled in and out. One drawer filled with silverware spilled every knife, fork, and spoon onto the floor. They rattled and clattered in tune with the pots and pans secured above the stove.
A sack of flour landed with a thud outside the pantry and coated Becky and Carl in white.
Becky let out a scream and landed on her ass on the linoleum, which was now cracking from the force of the earthquake I had created.
Carl swung his gaze around the room as he stumbled against a counter and dropped to his knees. His eyes were wide and filled with shock as he swung the gun from the archway to me and back again. His hands were shaking as he tried to hold on to the Glock. “If—if you’re doing this you’d better stop it, bitch.”
The room continued to rock and Carl had to brace one of his hands on the floor. Becky screamed again and huddled in a corner, her palms braced to either side of her in an effort to keep from rolling across the bucking floor. Dark Elves are lithe, our footing perfect, and I easily kept on my feet.
Loud snaps from wood cracking came from the door frame. I directed my air elemental magic at the frame. I used my element to rip a sword-length shard of wood. At my command, my magic propelled the shaft straight at Carl.
His gun clattered to the floor as he flung his hands over his face.
The jagged point of the staff pierced his hands and buried itself in his head.
Becky screamed again, horror on her face.
I ignored Carl’s body as he collapsed onto the linoleum, and I ignored Becky’s continued screams. I released my control of the elements. The ground beneath the building settled and everything went still.
Keeping Becky within sight, I moved toward Adam. I dropped to my knees beside his body.
My heart felt like it had cracked like a wooden plank, then burned to cinders. If Dark Elves could cry, my face would have been flooded with tears. My eyes ached, and with everything I had I wished I could cry. I grasped Adam’s shoulder and moved him just enough so that I could see his precious face—with his sightless eyes. My hand shook as I reached for him and started to close his eyelids.
I went still. The smell of alyssum was so strong I almost gagged. The moldy odor of wet, ruined hay rushed over me, a smell given off by a dead Metamorph. This wasn’t Adam. This was a Metamorph who had taken on Adam’s appearance.
Confusion, then relief, made my head spin. My thoughts raced. If this wasn’t Adam, where was he? Had they killed him already?
“Nyx!” Olivia’s voice came from the doorway, and I jerked my head up to see my partner there. More relief touched me as I saw her. She looked fine, and this dead male beside me wasn’t Adam.
“Come on.” She cocked her head in the direction she had come from, and the kitchen light caressed her skin, which was like flawless brown silk. “We need to hurry. Something big is going down at the Paranorm Center.”
I registered four things at once in a rapid flash.
Olivia was human and didn’t know about the Paranorm Center.
Olivia didn’t talk that way. She would normally have told me I looked like hell and to stop screwing around and get my ass down where I was needed.
Olivia was wearing a plain T-shirt. Just a plain black T-shirt. She
And this female smelled like alyssum.
No way in all of the Underworlds was this Olivia.
I dove for the pile of silverware that had scattered across the floor. I grabbed a steak knife and rolled onto my back.
I flung the knife across the room. It flipped end over end and then buried itself in the fake Olivia’s heart.
CHAPTER 3
Becky’s screaming was like a shrill alarm clock in the background. I was tempted to shut her off, but she was nothing more than an ignorant pawn, who hadn’t tried to kill me, which meant I had to return the favor. Still, I kept her in my peripheral vision just in case.
I started toward the archway where the not-Olivia had crumpled to the floor. I automatically reached for one of my dragon-clawed daggers when I realized I was still in human clothes and wasn’t wearing my weapons belt. I ground my teeth. It wasn’t likely they’d had the courtesy to bring my handbag along with me, much less my leather fighting suit and weapons.
Rodán and the other Trackers needed to know what was going down, and I needed backup.
“Give me your handbag.” I held my hand in Becky’s direction. The flour-coated simpleton stopped screaming as she grabbed her purse from off the floor and clutched it to her. Idiot. Facing her possible demise and she was protecting her Ferragamo purse from me. She had only one of her matching heels on; the other was near Carl’s body.
With my hand still extended, I scowled at her. The floor started to rock again and Becky screamed and threw her handbag at me.
I caught it and she yelped as I jerked the purse open in a not-so-delicate manner. I dug through it, found her cell phone, then dropped the purse on the floor. Becky started to scramble toward it but stopped when she got a good look at my expression.
That’s right, lady. Don’t mess with a pissed-off blue-haired amethyst female Tracker.
A sense of urgency made my skin feel like ants were crawling over me. I flipped the phone open and called our Proctor, Rodán, who was also my mentor and former lover.
It didn’t take me long to explain everything to Rodán. He pinpointed my location by the cell phone signal and would send the Paranormal Task Force to clean up the mess and take care of Becky.
I would have called Adam, who was an NYPD detective, or Olivia, but both were human and couldn’t enter —or know about—the Paranorm Center. Chills prickled my arms. I didn’t even know if Adam was alive. Or Olivia for that matter. Had the Metamorphs gotten to my lover or my partner?
I pocketed the cell phone, scooped Carl’s gun up from the floor, then grabbed the elemental-magic-treated wrist and ankle cuffs. My eyes narrowed and my jaw set, I approached Becky.
“No!” Her high-pitched voice was a squeak. “Don’t hurt me!”
“Shut up.” I knelt in front of her, grabbed one of her wrists, and cuffed her to the handle on the door of the pantry. For good measure I cuffed her ankles, too. The PTF would be here in no time and take care of her.
I stepped over the dead doubles of Adam’s and Olivia’s bodies before rushing through the archway. Pictures had fallen off the walls, lamps had toppled from end tables, glass from broken picture frames had shattered on the carpet from my mini-earthquake.
From the looks of the place, the Metamorphs had taken over some human’s apartment. The front door of the small place was steps away. I tucked the handgun in my waistband and was out that door within seconds.
I jogged down a set of stairs and pushed my way through a pair of double doors. Cool winter air filled my lungs as I ran around the building until I reached a fairly busy street. Amsterdam, close to West Forty-second Street. Now I had to get to the Paranorm Center which was below the Alice in Wonderland unbirthday party sculptures in Central Park on the Upper East Side.
