Chapter One
Stunned, Fort Worth PD homicide detective Candace Ewing sat inside her partner’s car, trying to wrap her brain around what she’d just witnessed—the wreck, a possible homicide attempt. The victim inside the smashed car: half human, half bronze statue. But when she’d checked again, human.
How was that possible?
Her face was in her hands, her lips moving as she whispered, “I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy.”
The door on the driver’s side opened and her partner, Detective Gary Tozzi, slid into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind himself.
Leaning over, he placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Okay?” She wanted to scream. She held it down to a hiss. “Okay? No, I’m not okay. I just saw something insane, something improbable, and you’re telling me I have to keep my mouth shut about it or my life may be at risk.” She raised her face, scowling at the other detective. “How am I supposed to be okay?”
Gary squeezed her shoulder, removed his hand.
“Sorry. I know you’re not okay. I know it’s a lot. Really…a lot.” He exhaled a deep breath, staring straight out the windshield, watching the commotion ahead of them as a stretcher carrying a body was loaded into an ambulance. She normally didn’t think this about him, but he looked…old. Tired. Pensive, too. “I remember the first time I saw one of them shift. I think I fell straight down on my butt. On a rock. Hurt to sit for a few days. Bruised my tailbone.”
Ordinarily, Candace would’ve laughed. She wasn’t laughing now.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me anything about this. We’re partners, Gary. Partners. That’s supposed to mean something.”
“It does mean something. It means I didn’t want you getting caught up in their world. It means I didn’t want to put you at risk. Plus, how was I supposed to have told you? You wouldn’t have believed me.”
When she didn’t argue, he pressed. “You wouldn’t have, would you?”
“I would’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Gary snorted. “Right. If I came to you and said I saw a normal woman transform in the blink of an eye into a harpy…you’d really have believed me? You wouldn’t have thought I was crazy or high or had a brain tumor or something?”
Candace folded her arms and looked out the window. She hated to admit it, but Gary was right. For once. She wouldn’t have believed him.
Still.
It stung.
“So, from what you’re telling me, there’s an entire underworld…mob…of these shapeshifters.”
“Not just one mob.”
“More than one? How many?”
“There’s at least two groups in Fort Worth alone. And it’s not like they’re confined to Fort Worth or Texas. They’re all over the place, all over the world. They just happen to have some pretty strong factions here.” He blew out a breath. “Very strong.”
“How? How can that be?” she demanded, swiveling back to him. “How can they exist and nobody knows?”
Gary smirked, one corner of his mouth tilting beneath his close-cropped, white beard. “Where do you think all the stories of ghosts and monsters and boogeymen come from, Candace? They have to have a source. People have seen them, have seen glimpses. They just don’t want to accept the reality of it. None of us do.”
Her brain hurt. It actually hurt, trying to accept this. Trying to put the pieces together.
“But here…in Fort Worth,” she faltered. “You said Sean Costas basically controls a mob, an army of shifters. Sean freaking Costas, who owns towers in downtown Fort Worth and Dallas and hosted a fundraiser for the governor last week.”
“That’s the one.”
“Is he a shifter too?”
Gary squirmed on the seat, uncomfortable. The ambulance doors were closed now, and the vehicle was moving, its sirens beginning to wail as it bore the wreck victim to the hospital.
“Well, you now know his head of security is, and that he basically runs an army of shifters. What makes you think he wouldn’t be?”
“Um, reality?”
“Reality?” Her partner barked a harsh laugh. “Our brand of reality—humanity’s brand of reality—needs to broaden. Shapeshifters exist. They walk among us. You wouldn’t ever know it unless they show themselves. Which they typically don’t, unless they have good reason. Like killing you. You might see a monster out of your nightmares coming at you right before you die, but you’ll never tell anyone.”
“You’re here. You’re alive.”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Because I saved one of their lives on the job. Know what that earned me? Being drawn into their web. ‘Put into the family,’ they called it. They’ve been watching me for years. I see them sometimes. They give me a glimpse, just enough to remind me nightmare creatures are real and their enemies are now my enemies. They give me protection. In return, I keep my mouth shut, I keep my head down, and I do them little favors from time to time.”
“Like trying to steer me off this case…”
It all made sense now. Gary had tried to warn her against going after Carter Ballis—the shifter, the wounded man on the stretcher, currently in the ambulance—from the beginning. He’d tried to persuade her to drop the case. Up until this point, she’d assumed it was because there was so little evidence and no bodies. It was an almost impossible case to crack. Candace didn’t mind almost impossible. She’d wanted to bring Sean Costas down, and getting to him through his head of security had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now? Not so much.
“I tried to warn you, but, yeah, you wouldn’t listen. You’re a fighter, Candace. You don’t know when to take no for an answer. You don’t know when to quit. I hope you’ll take this as a sign.”
Now it was her turn to shift uncomfortably on her seat. “I didn’t get to interview Ballis.”
“And you won’t get to. He’s on his way to the hospital. He may not make it.”
“What if he does?”
Gary raised silvery eyebrows. “Are you insane? You heard what I’ve told you, and you still want to take on Sean Costas?”
“I’m a cop, Gary. I’ve been in danger before.”
“Oh yeah? From bad guys with guns and bullets? Consider yourself lucky. You pursue this, and you’ll be in danger from beasts with the power to incinerate you and turn you to ash, leaving not a trace of you behind.”
Candace felt the knot in the pit of her stomach growing. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that scene at the park? I’ve seen it before. It’s dragonfire. Burns hotter and cleaner than any fuel mankind has ever devised. If there was a killing in the Botanic Garden, you’ll never find a trace of the bodies. They were incinerated by dragonfire. And it can happen to you too. Don’t think you’re special.”
Her body felt hot, then cold.
He’d known. All along Gary had known exactly what the strange ashes were and what they’d most likely meant. He hadn’t breathed a word of the truth.