I stared at the man while thoughts of how they had captured me flashed through my mind. My stomach churned.
When he kissed me, my first reaction had been to jerk away from the being that was not my Adam. I wanted to puke from kissing what I realized was a Metamorph.
Realized too late.
He had a gun to my temple before I could blink. The gun didn’t faze me. Even in my human form I could have taken out a single Metamorph.
Eight more Metamorphs rushed through the open doorway. In my Drow form, with my Drow strength, my dragon-clawed daggers, and my elemental magic, I could have taken on all of them. Even in my human form I would have been hard to beat.
Right now I wanted to shake my head, shake off the memory. But my head hurt too much to move it. Metamorphs had gotten me. Metamorphs.
They’d caught me completely off guard, everything amplified by my shock and revulsion because I’d just kissed a being who was not Adam. A disgusting Metamorph. The fact that the being had managed to get that close to me, without my realizing what he really was, had added to the shock.
Before I’d been able to call the air to aid me, one of the Metamorphs slapped a cloth over my nose. That was the last thing I remembered before this moment.
The fog in my mind started to clear. Thoughts of how I’d been captured and what was happening now raced through my head so fast that I was almost dizzy from them. What were the Metamorphs doing? What did they want? Where was Adam?
I glared at the Metamorph. I wanted my hands around him in front of me so badly I could almost feel myself squeezing his neck. Feel it snapping. I attempted to lunge forward but my arms jerked against chains and metal cuffs bit into my wrists. The legs of the chair I was in scraped the floor as I struggled. I snarled and tried to lash out with my feet. They wouldn’t move. Metal ankle cuffs dug into my skin.
When I looked down at my shackled ankles, my long, tangled black hair fell over my eyes. Blood dripped from my nose onto my Dior pale cream blouse and slacks. My clothing was torn, bloody, filthy. My Pradas were missing, leaving my feet bare.
When I fisted my hands, the tension caused me to fully take in the fact that they’d beaten me while I was out cold.
The elements. I could take care of this whole situation and be done with it. A small cyclone would do.
My first shot at controlling the elements told me that the handcuffs that bound me were treated with elemental magic. My second attempt just reaffirmed that fact.
The specially made cuffs weren’t supposed to affect Trackers. They’d all been altered to recognize every Tracker in New York City so that our magic wouldn’t be affected. How had these Metamorphs been able to contain me? I couldn’t use the elements at all.
I frowned in concentration. Maybe I had to shift into my Drow half before the cuffs would have no effect on me and I could use my elements again. I was Nyx Ciar, paranorm PI during the day. After sundown I would be Nyx of the Night Trackers.
It wouldn’t be long now, though. I sensed that nightfall would be soon—none of them would be getting out of this place alive once I was through with them.
My hair was in my eyes and stuck to the blood on my cheeks when I raised my head.
Instead of some windowless interrogation room, we were in a large kitchen with peeling wallpaper and cracked and chipped laminated flooring. I was sitting in the middle of the cramped space. A dining table was shoved against one wall along with three brown wooden chairs, the varnish darkened with age and worn in places. Apparently I was in chair number four.
I almost smiled when I saw the stove three feet away on my right and the sink two and a half feet away on my left. Fire. Water.
If I could get out of these cuffs I’d be able to use the elements of fire and water and either toast or drown these creeps.