Excerpt: SHIFTERS

From the corner of her eye, Zara caught a flicker of movement, silhouetted by firelight. Ancien had cast aside his staff, letting it fall carelessly to the dirt. And he was changing. The solid lines that made up his body were oddly wispy, like the outline of a ghost. Then they fell away altogether, collapsing in a lump on the ground and out of that rose the statue of a four-legged beast—a leopard.

Zara watched as he seized the closest caracal in his jaws and tumbled to the earth with him. Dust flew in all directions, highlighting the shock and terror on the faces of those who had witnessed the transformation. Their ignorance made Zara smile with glee. But one leopard was certainly no match for four caracals, let alone four caracals on the brink of starvation. And judging by the reaction from the crowd, they were alone in a sea of disbelievers.

Zara carefully weighed the options. The transformation was anything but easy and it always gave her shudders thinking of the needles that tore through every fiber of her body. It wasn’t something so took lightly, but ultimately the beast inside her was getting excited from the smell of blood that mingled with the hot night air. Almost before she knew what she was doing, her form was twisting, shifting to become the black panther she knew lurked just beneath the surface.