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We got damned lucky that nothing major was damaged (my superhuman healing has its limits), but I couldn’t bite back a scream. Trin shouted for someone to hurry the
fuck
up. Agony increased ever-so-slightly, but I managed to keep silent, thanks in large part to the gods-blessed serpents working their mojo. Finally, both pain and magic faded to bearable levels. I pushed myself to a sitting position, and Trin whirled from scanning the empty doorway, eyes widening as she took in the ragged hole in my leather vest created by the exit wound-and the perfectly knit flesh beneath.

“Jesus.” She let out a shaky breath. “I knew you guys healed quickly, but that’s. .

“Freaky?” I offered with a small smile. “Yeah, you’ve mentioned my status as freak of nature before.

Can’t say I mind so much at the moment.”

She nudged me backward, angling for a battered desk that would shield us from the empty doorway.

“No shit. Riss, you should so be dead right—”

Renewed gunfire punctuated her words in sharp staccato. This time
she
dropped to the ground, blood darkening the sleeve of her crisp white blouse. Surprise flickered across her face. My superhuman reflexes snapped into gear before the third gunshot echoed. I grabbed her by the uninjured arm and thrust her behind the desk.

“Officer down!” I ripped the clean sleeve from her blouse and pressed it tightly against her wounded shoulder. Her typically dark brown skin paled as her breathing became ragged.

Shock faded enough that she knocked my hands away and replaced them with one of her own. “I’m fine. Go. Get that jackass.”

I hesitated. She’d become the closest thing I had to a best friend in the years since Vanessa disappeared, and the thought of abandoning her didn’t sit too well in my stomach. Yet the adrenaline pumping through my body demanded I take down the psycho who had shot us both.

“Riss, it
has
to be you. You have superhuman healing, for God’s sake.
I’m.
sure as hell not going.”

Biting my lip, I squeezed her thigh with a nod. “The bleeding seems to be slowing. You”—my voice grew husky—”you be careful.”

She met my eyes unflinchingly. “No, darlin’,
you
be careful. Someone’s obviously got a hard-on for you. And not the good kind.”

My lips stretched in a faint facsimile of humor. I shifted to mortal form and back again, washing away the vestiges of pain and restoring my dark red uniform to its former leather glory. This time, I shifted into
full
Fury form. My mortal honey-blond hair shaded to deepest charcoal; deep-blue eyes became faceted emerald; brilliantly drawn tattoos burst into real-life serpents. And, of course, the bloodred leather vest, pants, and boots that signaled my status as magical badass to other arcanes materialized.

“Time to hunt,” I whispered to Nemesis and Nike, then leapt into action.

Magic responded to my call in an instant. I gathered arcane energy and thrust it inside my body, grunting as threads of magic temporarily reknit the fabric of my being. Although I couldn’t manage true invisibility, this particular spell allowed me.io redirect my normal shape-shifting abilities into a hyped-up form ‘of camouflage. I dashed along the nearest wall, blending in with the natural play of light and shadow. Adrenaline flashed through my body, and I allowed it to amplify, dancing along the edge of full-blown Rage. And then I surrendered, allowing my’ mortal psyche to be subsumed by Fury.

Late-afternoon shadows aided my attempt to pass unseen through the empty doorway. I ran my gaze along the roofs of the buildings across the street. They ran the gamut from modern steel and glass to faded red bricks and mortar. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But then a glint of sunlight striking metal caught my attention,, and I took off. Literally.

Wings nearly as wide as I was tall spread to each side,. catching the magical breeze I summoned and pumping in staccato rhythm. For a moment, nothing happened, but then magic and physics worked in tandem and I rose straight into the air.

I zeroed in on the building where the flash of light had caught my eye. The closer to direct sunlight I drew, how-ever, the less effective my camouflage became. Just before passing completely out of shadow, I traded magically enhanced stealth for superspeed, clearing the nearest edge. of the several-story building in less than a second. One thing immediately struck my attention. The guy who’d shot me was mortal--completely mortal. My wing feathers stiffened at the insult. Then the black-clad man noticed me.

“What the—” As I landed on the roof he raised his weapon in slow motion—well, slow to me—but I jerked it from his hands and bent it into a useless lump of metal, tossing it fifty feet away in one brief motion. His eyes widened, and then he did something unexpected. He jumped, but not toward me. Off the building.

My eyes widened, and thought slowed to a crawl. By the time I realized I wasn’t hallucinating and leapt into the air, it was too late. The man’s body hit pavement seconds later, crumpling with the force of impact.

Nemesis and Nike hissed in displeasure. I hovered for a moment, staring down at my attempted assassin’s body. From this distance it looked like a child’s broken doll— until you factored in the glistening pool of blood spreading in all directions. I shook my head and let out a hiss of my” own. Who sent a single mortal after a full-grown Fury, and’ how the hell had they talked the man into committing suicide rather than being captured?

The only obvious answer to the first question was other mortals. Ones who either couldn’t, or didn’t dare, risk hiring immortal thugs to handle their dirty work. Which meant my earlier suspicion had been right on the money. This
had
to have something to do with the Accord. And someone would do anything, kill or be killed, to try and keep their dirty little secrets.

ONCE DISBELIEF GAVE WAY TO A FURY’S IN
nate sense of self-preservation while fulfilling a Mandate, I got the hell out of Dodge. Exhaustion echoed through my body from the strain of using too much magic in too short a time. The strange jittery tingle of an unfulfilled Mandate buzzed at the back of my brain. That buzzing would turn to outright pain the longer it took to fulfill my task. I hovered over the Boston skyline and tried to catch my breath.
Calm down, Riss, and think.

Okay. Step one: Call in the location of the body. Check. (Thank the gods for cell phones.) Step two: Lead any other potential assassins
away
from Trin and company. Easy enough. But Step three—head home for a quiet night with Jack—didn’t seem like the brightest thing to do. Ranked right up there with crawling back to my ex-boyfriend, something I’d never yet resorted to.

The stink of blood and sweat assaulted my nose, and I scowled.
Gods, I need a shower.
But where could I go while I tried to figure out who wanted me dead?
Not
home. Staking out the PD while neglecting my home would be Plain stupid, and of all the things I could call the many people who’d tried to kill me over the years, that wasn’t one of them.

Speaking of staking out the PD, my earlier suspicion that this might be an inside job came back with a vengeance. What were the odds that the three shittiest things
lo
happen to me since Nessa’s disappearance and my explosive breakup with the aforementioned ex—all on the same day, no less-were all mere coincidence? Yeah, even more minuscule than Zalawski’s .. . intellect.

If things weren’t on the up-and-up with my mundane employers, it was time to bring in the big guns: the Conclave of Fury Elders. If you’re picturing something like the kindly, batty fairy godmothers from Disney’s
Sleeping
Beauty—get that image right out of your mind. Substitute it with ageless badasses more like Maleficent, the wicked witch of that particular tale, and you get a little closer to the truth. It took a lot of strength—mental
and
magical—to head up the arcane equivalent of mortal law enforcement, and the Elders had both in spades.

Unfortunately, reaching the Palladium, the Fury version of the Batcave, was not as simple as clicking one’s heels three times. Nah, that would be
entirely
too easy. I gritted my teeth and prepared to do one of the things Furies did best (other than maiming and killing). Fading into the background.

After landing in an alley several blocks from the police station, I channeled Fury magic, shifting red leather clothes and boots into more practical T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. My own face wavered and was soon replaced by a pale, mousy face that few would notice. That theory was proven by the half dozen people who nearly mowed me down on the ten-minute walk to the nearest T (what most Bostonians called our subway system) stop that suited my needs. The walking assholes in people’s clothing were lucky I was in incognito mode, because by the time I finally stumbled through the subway turnstile I was ready to murder someone. Or at the very least horribly disfigure them.

Nobody claimed Furies were cute and cuddly. Least of all me.

Some jackoff actually tossed his discarded cigarette at me, and I nearly leapt on him then and there.

But the walls began vibrating with the low-key buzz signaling an incoming train, and I was in a hurry, so I dodged the flying cancer stick and pelted toward the end of the platform. In an eye blink I went from mousy woman blending in with passersby to winged Fury blending in with the background more effectively than a life-sized chameleon. The magical camo was damned handy but also took way more energy than it was usually worth and was hard to maintain in direct sunlight—thus the plain-Jane disguise being my usual preferred method of dodging attention.

The train’s doors slid shut, and it began pulling away from the platform. I edged backward until the gum-covered wall touched my butt, then took a running leap forward, flapping both wings rapidly, gaining just the right amount of altitude before my body slammed down on the top of the rearmost car of the train. Hard.

I winced, hands scrabbling to slow down my motion, my emerging talons digging in to find purchase.

My breath whooshed out in relief when my body slid to a stop, boot heels dangling over the edge but not

—quite—banging into the rear door. Missing hurt like a son of a bitch. Which I’d found out my first time through, since it’d taken five freaking trains before I finally managed the trick of
not
busting my ass on the tracks.

The train accelerated rapidly when it reached a long straightaway. I stiffened my body and closed my eyes, summoning Nemesis and Nike from the magical limbo they inhabited when in tattoo form. Only those bonded to the Amphisbaena—and traveling faster than a Fury could manage in such a confined space—could cross the threshold I was about to pass. A foolproof magical security system, if ever I’d seen one.

Nemesis and Nike adored zipping ‘through the darkened subway tunnels. Had they been dogs, they would have hung their heads over the side of the car and leaked slobber for a country mile. Since they weren’t, they did the next best thing: wound their way along my trembling arms and flicked their forked tongues in what passed for serpentine pleasure.

Magic tingled along my skin, signaling the approach of our stop. Granted, it wasn’t listed on the MBTA’s maps and wasn’t so much a stop as it was a leap of faith. I kept my eyes scrunched closed.

Doing what needed doing was bad enough; watching while I did it always made me want to hurl. A bad idea, considering that the force of our passage would push it right back into my face. And yeah, I speak from experience.

The magic built to a fever pitch, and the girls tightened their slender bodies around mine. “Here’s where we get off,” I muttered, more to hear a reassuring sound than anything, and let go.

The train’s solidity vanished as momentum hurled me backward. Magic picked up where steel left off, suspending me in a warm cocoon as it began cataloging my species and checking for the presence of my little beauties. If we didn’t pass the arcane test, we’d take the same face-plant I’d taken many times before, only at the speed of a bullet rather than a metallic snail’s pace. But of course we checked out—as I inwardly chanted,
There’s no place like

home.
The magic shot us straight upward in a cyclone of garishly colored light that somehow imprinted itself onto my eyeballs despite screwed-shut eyelids, and the overwhelming light became earsplitting sound as we pierced the veil separating the mundane world from the arcane pocket of the Otherrealms claimed by Furykind. And, as always happened, no matter how I struggled against it, the light and sound sent my senses into overdrive, clubbing them into unwilling submission, and both mind and body gave out. At that point, the unconsciousness sweeping over me ‘felt better than sex. . . well, almost.

ONE MOMENT, BLESSED DARKNESS; THE NEXT,
I found myself kneeling on cold marble, shivering. Disorientation flooded all five senses. My mind clawed its way through the confusion, finally catching up with what my body had already processed. I was safe and sound in the heart of the Palladium.

Footsteps sounded on the floor, helping me focus on the here and now rather than the maelstrom I’d just left behind. But the sight of a completely unexpected woman smiling down at me had my brow raising.

“Stacia? Where the hell did
you
come from?” I accepted the hand she offered, letting her bear most of my weight as she jerked me to my feet. My eyes roamed around the small antechamber just outside the imposing hail where the Conclave met. Nope, the usual low-level flunky I’d expected to find was nowhere to be seen. Instead, one of the seniormost Elders had been sent to meet me. I didn’t know whether to feel complimented or worried. Then again, at least they’d sent my mentor.’

Stacia inclined her head, faceted emerald eyes lighting up with amusement. “You don’t seem too happy to see me, Marissa.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all. I’m just. . . surprised.”

She stroked the silver serpent with crimson eyes twined around her right arm, right-side fingers drumming against her thigh. “Ah, yes, the rumçrs of my retirement were greatly exaggerated, I can assure you.”