“No!” Gallagher shouted as thefuriae’s rage poured out of me and into her target.
Gallagher wrenched my hand free, and the naked man reached for his own neck. His eyes widened as his fingers sank into his flesh. Then he ripped his throat out.
Blood sprayed everywhere, but most of it hit Gallagher.
Miri and Lala screamed. Zyanya stared in shock.
Claudio lurched forward and grabbed the dying man by the shoulders, gently lowering him to the ground as his mouth opened and he began to suck at the world, trying to breathe through the fountain of blood his throat had become.
Gallagher guided me back by both arms, heedless of the gore he was covered in. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry!” The room blurred beneath my tears. “I couldn’t help it. I don’t understand what’s happening!”
“We have to get out of here.” Gallagher tossed his hat onto the floor next to the body of the now-deceased nude man, and blood began to run into it. More blood started to roll, drop after drop, down his shirt onto his pants. It beaded on the floor around his shoes and flowed like tiny, gory rivers toward his hat. “Zyanya, get everybody to the van.”
But she only stood there, staring at the body. “What’s happening to his face?”
“What?” Gallagher turned, and I moved to see around his massive arm.
The dead man no longer had brown hair and blue eyes. Now his hair was dark and his eyes were brown and set far apart from each other. His nose was narrow. His forehead smooth and pale.
He looked just like the other two men thefuriaehad killed through me.
“Glamour?” Zyanya asked, still holding the white lab coat. “Is hefae?”
“He said he was some kind of shifter.” Gallagher bent to grab his hat, though it hadn’t yet absorbed all the blood, and as he placed it on his head, the rivulets of blood on the floor reversed course, flowing toward him on their way to his cap. “That would imply that he’d actually changed his physical form, rather than mentally projecting the image he wanted us to see.”
“Assuming he was telling the truth,” Zyanya said. “I don’t know of any shifter who can take on another human-looking form.”
“Neither do I.” Gallagher began to corral everyone toward the door. “Much less an entire species whose natural face is that one. That exact face, right there.” He pointed at the dead man. “Because the man Delilah killed last week looked just like that, after he stopped breathing.”
“This makes no sense,” Claudio whispered as we all stepped back into the hall. “They were truly identical?”
I nodded. “They could be mirror...” My mouth snapped shut as I realized what I was saying. WhatRommilyhad said.
The reflection cannot be trusted.
Had she seen something about the identical shifters thefuriaewas killing?
“Delilah.” Mirela pulled me into an awkward hug, bending toward me over my huge stomach. “It’s so good to see you again. Even under such bizarre circumstances.” Her gaze flicked toward the room where we’d had no choice but to leave yet another corpse of my making.
“And such joyous ones,” Lala added as she took my arm. “No one told us you were pregnant. Who’s the lucky—?”
“Stop right there!”
I gasped at the sudden shout, but before I could find the source, Gallagher was in front of me, pressing me against the wall, the bulge of our child trapped between me and his spine. My pulse rushed in my ears, and the hallway suddenly felt too crowded. Too closed in.
“I’ve called for backup, and they’ll be here any minute.”
I looked around Gallagher’s arm and saw a man in a campus security uniform pointing a pistol at us. His aim shook slightly as he tried to decide who to focus on. Then Eryx pushed Miri and Lala gently behind him, and the cop decided.
He aimed right at the huge minotaur’s chest.
Huddled behind Eryx, Mirela and Lala exchanged an ominous look, and though neither of them had the white-eyed appearance of imminent premonition, they both seemed to...know something. Lala grabbed Miri’s hand in a white-knuckled grip.
The rush of my pulse became a roar.
“If you want to live, put your gun on the ground and step into the room to your left.” Gallagher’s entire body felt tense against mine. He’d gone so still that I couldn’t even feel him breathing, and his voice carried an inhuman thread of warning that set off alarms in my head. “Then close the door. We’ll walk right past you, and everybody gets to go home tonight.”
