Nightwalker Read Free

that jutted from her belly could pop out unencumbered. It looked like a third hand but with suction cups for fingers. She clung to the car by it, her supple body crouched there like a fly on flypaper. The creature smiled; then her long, grotesque tongue flicked out.
    Takala’s cheek stung as the creature’s hands grabbed her neck.
    Takala slammed on the brakes, gasping, “Back off, Freakzilla.”
    The shifter’s sticky fingers stretched like rubber bands, her sharp nails digging into Takala’s neck. “Who you calling a freak?” The woman’s long tongue flipped out and burned Takala’s forehead this time.
    Takala could take a lot of two-skins, but gecko shifters just plain grossed her out; so did the little talking green guy on the insurance commercials. But this one was real and had broken her car window and was trying to strangle her.
    â€œOkay, I warned you,” Takala gasped past the pressure on her neck. Then she elbowed the shifter in the face.
    The blow sent the freak rocketing from the car window. The gecko two-skin hit a cement birdbath with a loud high-pitched squeal.
    If Takala had been a normal woman, she felt certain the gecko shifter’s gluey body wouldn’t have budged. But Takala had the strength of twenty men. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been fast enough, and the shifter had raked her reptilian claws across Takala’s neck.
    â€œOooh! Gross.” Takala grabbed the bottom of herT-shirt and wiped the sticky green saliva from her burning cheek, then moved to the bloody claw marks on her neck. That’s when she saw Lilly struggling with Houdini.
    Abruptly, Lilly’s body vibrated into a yellow throbbing orb. She spun out of his grasp and leaped straight through his body like a ghost. When she passed through and out on the other side, Houdini staggered and collapsed.
    The atoms of Lilly’s body expanded like a rubber balloon, stretching her features into a grotesque ball. Then she blew a cloud of black mist from her mouth, and her body shrunk to normal size again. The dark energy funneled into a small tornado above her head. Then it headed back for Houdini’s body.
    Takala had overheard forbidden whispered snippets of conversation among her aunts and her grandmother where they had spoken about her mother’s power. Skye was a spirit eater, capable of draining the energy from supernatural beings and temporarily paralyzing them. Takala’s tribe, the Patomani Indians, had a name for the power: egtonha. The power would have been invaluable to an agent. Was this truly her mother?
    Takala floored the accelerator, crashed over a pretty picket fence, and skidded to a stop near Lilly, barely missing the downed Houdini. She motioned for Lilly to hop in.
    The energy reentered Houdini, and he staggered to his feet. In seconds, he’d gain his full power back.
    Lilly seemed to realize this, her gaze shifting between the two Supes coming for her, Houdini, and Takala. Then she leaped inside Takala’s car—the least of the three evils.
    Takala heard Houdini’s icy warning. “You’re helping a killer. You’ll regret—”
    Lilly slammed the door, cutting off his words. She looked over at Takala and yelled, “Drive.”
    Takala floored it, taking out the other side of the fence and a flower bed. They hopped the curve and sped down the street.
    Lilly said, “He set me up and wants me dead. Do you?”
    â€œNope. I’m riding the white horse at the moment.” Honestly, she didn’t know whom to trust. Houdini or the woman sitting beside her. Was Lilly a killer as he’d said?
    â€œThanks.” Lilly straightened the lapels of her cashmere jacket in a fussy manner. “Such a mess, isn’t it?”
    Takala smelled the acrid scent of sulfur and magic on Lilly Smith as she said, “That’s an under statement.”
    Â 
    Striker felt the power forging a path through his body. He