Something in the air itself shifted. We all stopped talking, going still as an odd sensation rolled over us. I blinked in confusion as I tasted power on my tongue and smelled it in the air–spicy and sweet. The familiar pressure of Lorcan’s lust settled over me.

“Fuck,” Roman growled, breathing heavily. “I need to go,” he blurted suddenly, running from the building without explanation, his face flushed. The other men looked confused and flushed as well. I swallowed. They all felt it.

I turned and left. I needed to get back to the Tower of Sin. Something had happened. Something big.

* * *

Once the hooves of Dullahan’s Hellhorse couldn’t be heard I shifted from a horse to a bird. The drop in air pressure made it hard to fly, my wings beating twice as hard to go twice as slow but a lone horse wasn’t very inconspicuous and I needed to find a squirrelly god hidden somewhere in Chinatown and I needed to do it fast.

Suddenly everything was dark around me. I thrashed, feeling fabric in every direction. I was in a bag I realized. Whoever had me stayed silent as they carried me. Right away I shifted into a cat, making the bag weigh a good thirty pounds more. The person nearly dropped me but then clutched it to their chest. I sunk my claws through the fabric and they hissed in pain, wrenching me away from them. Still, they held onto the bag tightly.

Unhappily, I decided to reserve my energy for when they let the cat out of the bag. I licked the blood from my claws as I curled up comfortably. Couldn’t wait for them to see what I had in store. Capturing me was a mistake that few had made and none who lived to tell the tale. These fools were going to realize why one didn’t bag up an ancient god.

After a long walk, I heard them open and close large doors. We were inside now, the storm couldn’t be heard at all.

“You’ve brought me one of them?” A voice said.

“Yes, Tu Shen. The shifter.”

“Ah good. That one should be the easiest to handle,” he said. Well, sorry Lacey, but it appeared I had to kill your friend. I’d actually been planning to anyway though. No reason for past dalliances to keep living now that me and the others were in her life.

“Let him out.” The bag was set on a table. They opened the top and gently shook me out. A pale Asian man sat on a gaudy, gold filigree chair at the end of a long business table. His pink eyes looked down at me, unimpressed. His mouth twisted in a small sneer.

“A cat? I thought you said he was a bird? I hate carnivores,” he said with disdain, looking me over in thinly-veiled distaste. We were in a modern building decorated in whites and reds. It matched the man in front of me with his white skin and hair and deep pink eyes and lips.