coms. “Jones. Where are you? Chad’s MIA.”
Jones was one of her few friends. She got along with everyone, but her hesitancy to trust people made her friend circle very small. They didn’t have any chemistry romantically, but they had the same taste in vapid comedies, which they got together to watch a couple times a month.
The familiar click of their coms sounded farther down the alley, a click she herself had just made.
“I’m right here, Henderson.” The deep baritone of her partner’s voice rasped with something…extra.
Her brow furrowed as she struggled against a surge of anxiety. “Are you okay? You sound…hoarse.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m not injured.”
His voice still gurgled, and what kind of answer was that?
Except she already knew, and she begged herself to wake up.
Her dream continued, keeping her trapped in the moment, drowning in the emotions as if they were happening all over again. The desire to run swelled inside her, but she fought the self-preservation instinct, convincing herself to move forward. This was her partner. This was Jones, the guy who never tired of watching Dodgeball and Dude, Where’s My Car?
But if he wasn’t injured, what was going on with his voice?
She whispered this time. “Where are you?”
No, no, no. Wake. Up!
Something was dripping. A leaky pipe? Or maybe her missing informant.
“Chad?”
Her eyes struggled to see in the dim light as she crept toward Jones’s voice, her gun still raised at the ready. Where was Jones? Her partner was at least a foot taller than her, with dark-red hair. He stood out. But she couldn’t see him. Not here.
She searched the darkness, her finger caressing the trigger of her Glock. Something moved behind her, and she spun toward the sound. “Freeze, NYPD!”
Her jaw went slack. It was Chad. Or…what was left of him. His body lay faceup on a trash can. Blood still dripped from the hole in his chest onto the concrete alley.
Adrenaline laced her veins as she searched for whoever or whatever had done this, but the area was clear. Did Jones see them? Maybe they’d tangled with her partner before they’d fled the area.
She lowered her weapon, clicking her coms as she pressed two fingers to Chad’s neck to check for a pulse. “I need an ambulance to the alley behind Corkie’s Deli on 52nd.”
He was gone. No one could still be alive with their heart ripped from their chest. His face was still frozen in terror. What the hell had happened here?
And where was Jones?
She stood, scanning the area as she raised her gun again. Chad’s body was still warm. They couldn’t have gotten far. She clicked her coms again. “Jones. Where are you? Chad’s dead,” she whispered into the mic on her chest.
Two red lights, like eyes, flashed from deeper in the shadows. “I know.”
“Jones?”
Something rushed toward her before she could scream. She fired four times, hitting the creature in the chest, but the bullets didn’t slow him. He crashed into her, and they fell to the cracked pavement, knocking the wind from her lungs. She blinked her eyes, bringing a familiar face into focus.
His features were contorted, swollen somehow, but it was Jones. Or it used to be. His breath reeked of sulfur as his forked tongue slid past his tight lips. She struggled to break free, but he outweighed her, his knees pinning her arms to the ground.
What had happened to him? What was he? Her mind raced while her instincts and training took over. Stuffing her jumbled emotions into a compartment, she forced herself to take note of every detail. Remember. You have to remember.
His facial structure still resembled her partner, but now his eyes glowed an inhuman crimson, and his slender, snakelike black tongue glistened in the flashing yellow glow of the broken streetlamp.
His tongue slithered across her cheek, burning her skin as if his saliva was acid. She screamed. “Let me go!”
He hissed, “I tried to find another way to feed it, but nothing worked, you see?” He ran a warm, wet finger along her jawline. The earthy scent of blood stung her nostrils. He growled, “You were worth the wait, chossssen one.”
Betrayal and terror blended into panic as she shrieked.
“Aura?” A commanding voice cut through the horror, followed by a firm squeeze on her shoulder.
She woke up, her throat still sore from shouting.
Just a dream.
She sat up, gasping for air, to find Greyson beside her cot.
Concern lined his eyes. “You were screaming.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her forehead, loathing