I close my eyes swiftly. Scents assault me: the acrid odor of the Sweeper’s minions, concrete and dust, chemicals and sweat.
“Turn off the lights,” I say.
“Why?” Jada says.
“I have a headache.” I wait without moving as she hurries about the warehouse, extinguishing the blinding lights the Sweeper arranged for our surgery.
Once I sense diminished brilliance beyond my lids, I open my eyes again. Tolerable.
“Mac, what did you do?” Jada exclaims. “They’re gone. Just gone!”
Sound impacts the delicate structure of my ears as if she’s taken a gong to a shield. Not gone. The Sweeper and his minions were displaced, still nearby. I say, “A simple spell of sifting—backward, not forward.” No Fae has the power to fold things into the future, and only the king and I possess this small way to manipulate the past. In a matter of minutes the Sweeper will be here again, at our operating tables. But I intend to be gone.
I. Intend.
I rise. My body doesn’t move as planned. It shudders, flops, and goes limp. “Stiff from being on the table so long,” I tell Jada, who watches me with narrowed eyes. I contract my abdomen, bend at the waist, stabilize my upper body, rotate my hips and shift my legs as a unit over the side of the gurney and touch my feet to the floor.
I stand.
I AM.
Desire. Lust. Greed. And the path I choose to supremacy.
Master of adaptation and evolution, I slide more surely in my skin with each breath, enjoying the complex albeit imperfect elegance of what I possess. I inhale long and slow, swelling first my abdomen then lungs with air. Breathing brings an assault of unfathomable stenches, but I will acclimate.
Everything MacKayla Lane experienced is filed in my meticulous mental vault, but during my incarceration in her body I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t smell.
I was—as she is now—trapped in a dark silent prison, my only connection to the world an attachment I forged to her central nervous system, through supremacy of will and relentless trial and failure. My existence was a smattering of complex electrical charges, intricate patterns without substance. Although I spied on her life as much as possible, I was able to seize use of her body, hands, and eyes only once, for brief duration. All else was diluted, secondhand perception absorbed from within except on that overcast rainy day I killed the Gray Woman and Mick O’Leary.
The power. The glory. That was the day I knew I would win. Those clumsy, debilitating hours I rode a body for the first time.
I require time to perfect control.
I. Require.
I draw myself up inside, gathering the enormity, the ancientness, the hunger and storm of my existence, and expand into the imperfect biological vessel I’ve claimed, saturating, possessing, every atom. I fill my blood, my bones, my skin.
I turn the full force of my regard upon Jada, blink once, and reveal myself. My eyes, reflected in the stainless steel door of a commercial freezer unit behind her, fill with obsidian until no white remains. Around me the very air cools; I have such presence.
She changes color. Fear impacts the nerves that connect brain to heart, constricting circulation. The blood vanishes from her face, leaving freckles upon snow. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate and freeze. The scent of her body alters to one I find…intriguing.
I experience all of this with my own senses. It’s incomparable. My mere existence embedded within this stolen skin reprograms the anatomy of those around me.
Power.
I was made for it.
I would prefer to shred her flesh from bone but several things prevent me. I smile with my new face.
“I would run if I were you,” I tell her softly.
She does, lightning fast. No hesitation, no debilitating deliberation. There one moment, gone the next. Among humans, she is superior.
I covet her speed and dexterity. MacKayla Lane would call it “freeze-framing.” If I could eat Jada and absorb her talent, I would ignore those things that stay my hand.
There is something else I can eat. Clever MacKayla. Flawed MacKayla. Those that fall pave the way for my ascendance. When one begins at the bottom, ascendance is a given.
I depart the warehouse and enter the gloomy day.
I enter.
I am. The Sweeper will appear shortly. Not even I have the power to destroy that one.
I’d contemplated pretending to be MacKayla, living among them, infiltrating their circle while pursuing my goals, but deemed the risk of discovery too high. Concealing my brilliance, feigning to be so much less—impossible. Besides, I am a newly forged sword and will surely benefit from time with hammer and fire.
Time, my enemy, my ally. I have precious little of the commodity to implement my plan. Expediency is directly proportionate to success. When opponents war, the strongest and swiftest wins. I am already the former and intend to be the latter.