He was lucky she hadn’t shifted.
She paused, taking stock of her emotions. Her beast wanted to battle, but she had control of her urge to change. So the fog didn’t bother Alterants?
A flash of energy swatted her skin.
She wheeled around to find a person in the last stage of changing into a beast.
The thing was hideous, with hair across its arms and legs. The distorted head on top of his shoulders had a mouth full of fangs, beaked nose, huge ears and patches of hair on his head, plus a single horn that stuck straight out of his forehead.
And brown eyes.
An Alterant? Not green eyes like hers or black like Tristan’s eyes had been in his cage.
Was this a new type of Alterant?
Could this be what had been shifting across the country and killing? If so, the fog had to be behind the outbreaks.
The thing snarled and raised stubby arms with clawed fingers, coming for her.
Evalle took a quick look for humans. None . . . that were still alive. She lifted her hands and shoved a blast of kinetic energy at him.
He backed up a couple of steps and cocked his head at her.
He should have been knocked into the roll-off construction Dumpster twenty feet behind him.
She didn’t want to kill him if she could figure a way to contain the beast and throw him into the Dumpster to hold him. Then she’d have Storm get word to VIPER. Capturing one of these things might help them figure out what they were, why the fog triggered their change and how to stop this from happening.
Based on her line of work, she reasoned that some preternatural being had created this fog to make the beasts shift, but why?
The beast stomped forward and lifted a fist he shook at her.
She laughed. “You don’t scare—”
Something that felt like a bowling ball launched from a cannon hit her in the abdomen. The kinetic punch knocked her off her feet and slid her backwards ten feet.
She sucked in air and shoved up on her elbows.
A man in thrift-store clothes, an unkempt beard and ratty hair came riding up from behind the beast on a rickety bicycle. He rode past the beast without a glance, as if it didn’t exist, but gave Evalle a long, curious look before pedaling past her.
He hadn’t seen that beast?
But the beast saw the man on the bike and started after him.
That’s it. VIPER would have to catch another guinea pig.
Evalle shoved up to a crouch. “Hey, Badass. You want to play? Bring it.”
The beast stopped and swung eyes rotting with evil at her.
She lifted her dagger and waited for him to charge.
Didn’t take long.
Leaping to her feet, she moved forward. In the first stride, she used her kinetic power to shove off the sidewalk, onto the wall, running horizontally for two steps that put the beast at her left shoulder.
He swung claws at her that extended six inches.
She flipped away from the wall and out of his reach at the last minute. Arcing over his head, she stabbed her dagger into the side of his throat, whispering, “Stay put” to the death spell on her blade.
