Welcome to New York City’s Underworld PRESENT DAY
Dark Elves/Drow: We rock. Demons: I am so through with Demons. Dopplers: Paranorms who can shift into one specific animal as well as into their human form. Fae : Should have paid attention during our last case if you wanted to know all of the different races. Gargoyles: Freaking ugly. And dangerous. Incubis: No Adonis could begin to compare to these paranorms. Stay. Away. Light Elves: Mirror, mirror, how art we better than all? Metamorphs: Slimy paranorms who can take on the persona and appearance of any human and almost any paranorm. And not in a good way. Metamorphs have no redeeming qualities. None. Necromancers: Exactly what you think. They talk to and raise the dead. Creeeeepy. Shadow Shifters: Paranorms with the ability to shift from human form into shadows. Shifters: Can transform into any animal of their choosing as well as take their human form. Succubis: Promise sex good enough to sell your soul for. One word: don’t. Vampires: There’s something with these guys that we’re missing.… Werewolves: Can take wolf form almost any time, but at the full moon they go nuclear. Zombies: I do not want to talk about Zombies. You can’t make me.
CHAPTER 1
Like a metal ball in one of those old pinball machines Rodán kept at the nightclub, the earth spun. Whirled. Bounced. Pinged. Every time I thought I would rush down into oblivion, something hard would smack me back into a spinning orbit.
What was happening to me?
I couldn’t think clearly. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning like that metal ball. Where was I? Why did I feel like that tiny pinball had smashed me like a wrecking ball? My whole body was one big mass of pain. I felt fluid trickling from my nose and over my lips, and tasted blood.
“Look at me, Tracker.” At the sound of the male’s voice I started. Could a voice be hard and cold, yet amused at the same time? Apparently it could. “Now, Tracker .”
I opened my eyes and tried to focus on what I saw in front of me. The images of three human males were wavering and trying to merge into one. Finally they became one and my head spun a little less. The male was dressed like an NYPD officer, and he was holding a baton streaked with blood. My blood.
The smell of alyssum, like newly mown hay, meant there was a Metamorph close. The strength of the smell told me there was more than one. At least two, maybe three. Despite my muddled state, I was pretty sure the male I was staring at was a Metamorph. Or rather I was looking at the reflection of the human whose appearance the Metamorph had taken.
“Thought I’d get the beating out of the way.” The male snapped his baton, then returned it to its place on his duty belt. “You’ll be less likely to draw out a game that you’ll lose … Nyx of the Dark Elves and Night Tracker.”
Connect the dots, Nyx.
I knew I was in my human form because I sensed it was still daylight and I felt the differences in my body. How did the Metamorphs know how to find me during the day or even know that I was a Night Tracker?
Night Trackers patrolled their territories to make sure scum like Metamorphs who broke the laws were eliminated or taken off the street and put into the detention center. The Metamorph’s or other paranorm’s punishment depended on the severity of the crime.
Then bits and pieces of memory came back to me as my thoughts began to clear. Chills rolled through my body.
I’d been waiting in my apartment for Adam to drop by for a little afternoon recreation. But when he got there, something had seemed wrong, out of place. I’d been so excited to see Adam, thinking about his adorable tousled hair and his boyish smile, that at first I didn’t notice that he didn’t smell of coffee and leather like usual.
Without bothering to close the door, he grabbed me to him and kissed me—
He’d tasted like grass. Dry, dust-coated grass.
Not Adam. Not Adam!