Page 8 of Shadow

Finally, he stopped in front of a door and held it open. For a split second, I thought he was showing me some courtesy. Then I stepped inside and realized the truth: it was a small, empty room.

The door slammed behind me with a solid, ominous thud. I was alone.

The stifling heat from the car was nothing compared to this. The air in here was thick and oppressive, with no windows or vents to provide relief. I checked the door, jiggling the handle out of sheer stubbornness, but of course, it was locked.

The room was about eight by eight and painted a medium green throughout. I paced the short distance from one wall to the other, and my gaze drifted upward. A skylight provided the only source of light and amplified the sweltering heat. Sweat dripped down my spine, clinging to my already sticky clothes.

They couldn’t possibly mean to keep me in here for long. The heat alone could kill me, and I desperately needed water. My throat felt dry enough to crack, and every step I took seemed to make it worse.

After a few minutes of pacing, I realized moving only raised my body temperature and intensified my thirst. Defeated, I slid down the wall at the far corner, my back pressing against the green paint as my butt hit the floor.

I sat there, staring at the door. Waiting.

Wicked thoughts of killing a Shadow Warrior, or maybe two, ran through my overheated mind. With no watch to track time, I resorted to counting by threes as I tapped my foot against the floor. At two thousand, frustration boiled over, and I threw a shoe at the door. At five thousand, I hurled the other.

Neither action brought satisfaction or results.

Desperation drove me to make imaginary pictures by connecting the slightly cracked paint on the walls. I managed to conjure a large-nosed man and half a camel before giving up. My creativity had officially hit rock bottom. Picking at the dried blood on my knees kept me occupied for another ten minutes.

The only consolation for this hellish heat was that I was too dehydrated to need the bathroom. Even licking my lips had become futile, my tongue dry and rough like sandpaper.

Eventually, dizziness set in, spinning my head and twisting my stomach into uneasy knots. I considered pounding on the door or screaming until my throat gave out, but the effort seemed pointless. Exhaustion crept over me like a heavy blanket, draining what little energy I had left.

Defeated, I slid my upper body onto the Spanish tiles, letting my cheek press against the blessedly cooler floor. The relief was fleeting, but it was enough. I closed my eyes, surrendering to the oppressive heat and the dull ache of thirst.

No one touches her.

The words flitted through my mind, unbidden. King’s order.

Did being manhandled out of the car and tossed into this oven count?

Chapter Five

King

Beast eventually settled, his restless energy receding into a simmering calm. Nokita kept his distance, far enough to avoid provoking a fight but close enough to do his job, which was protecting me. When the tension drained from my muscles and my breathing evened out, I waved him over.

“Shift and run with me,” I rumbled through elongated jaws, my voice guttural and edged with a low growl. “Adjust my gear belts first.”

Our military fatigue pants were crafted from tough, stretchable material that accommodated our transformations, but the leather belts and crisscrossing chest straps were less forgiving. They were designed with just enough give to keep from snapping when we morphed, but they were far from comfortable. In beast form, fine motor skills were nearly impossible. Our claws blocked our fingers’ dexterity for even simple adjustments.

Now that the rage had ebbed, the constriction of my gear became impossible to ignore. I stood still as Nokita moved to my side, carefully loosening the straps to give me room to breathe. His hands made quick work of the adjustments, and once finished, he fine-tuned his own.

Our beast form was like nothing found in nature or myth. We could never pass as anything but nightmares given shape. Every inch of our body transformed. Bones cracked and reshaped, jaws elongated, and our teeth extended into six-inch, razor-sharp fangs capable of tearing through muscle and crunching bone. Claws, non-retractable and deadly, stretched three inches past our fingertips. These adaptations rendered delicate tasks impossible, including traditional use of firearms. Our trigger guards had been removed to accommodate the monstrous hands that wielded them. We also grew a ridge of one-inch protruding bone along our backs for added protection. It wasn’t like the hellhound spikes on their backs; ours protected us from their teeth.

We didn’t just become more lethal; we became giants. In beast form, we grew over two feet taller, towering above even the tallest humans. The sheer size and power of our transformation made us nearly unstoppable.

But with this evolution came challenges. Particularly with boots.

No engineer had yet managed to design footwear that allowed for the explosive growth of toes capped with three-inch claws. Even in human form, boots were hard to come by, and many of our warriors forwent them entirely.

The pair I had when I exited the car? Gone. Ruined in the transformation. I had a backup pair but would need another. It could be weeks, maybe longer, before I came across a damned pair that fit.

For now, bare feet would do. The terrain ahead mattered little when you were built to shred anything in your path.

Our thought process shifted dramatically when we transformed. The frontal lobe of our brains flooded with dopamine at ten times the level of a stressed human. Adrenaline and noradrenaline surged through the rest of our system, fiftytimes the level of an enraged human. The result? We became the ultimate killing machines.

In the minutes immediately following a shift, rational thought was almost nonexistent. Our minds operated purely on predator instinct, processing only the immediate environment. The one saving grace was that we could mostly distinguish friends from foe. Basic strategies stayed intact, but complex reasoning? That took time. The key to stabilizing the flood of chemicals was simple: give us something to kill quickly or enough space to run off the excess energy.

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