“Tara, wake up.”

The young Nocturne twitched at the hushed, anxious voice intruding on her slumber. She stirred, clinging in vain to the dream evaporating in her subconscious.

Once upon a time she was safe. She was pretty and popular. She had a home. Her own room. Parents who loved her. Before that fun year when other girls were having meltdowns over a few pimples while her smooth brown skin turned leathery. Before her hair took on a burnt red hue, her eyes transformed into a kaleidoscope of green-gold with catlike pupils, sharp canine teeth grew in, and horns bulged out of her temples. Before she had to figure out how to wear pants and sit down dealing with a four-foot tail.

Before growing up alone on the streets robbed her of what precious little was left of her childhood.

She dreamt of graduating high school with her friends. Of starting college this year.

Once upon a time her name was Tarese Whitman. Not a freakshow. Not—

“Tara!”

She shot up with a hiss, switchblade pressed to her attacker’s throat.

Except he wasn’t an attacker. She blinked, trying to remember his name and where she was.

“Freddy? The hell’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Freddy rasped.

Tara examined her clothes; custom black denims with a hole for her tail, a threadbare, maroon checkered shirt, and sneakers. More of her memory crystalized. She lowered the knife. “Why’d you wake me up?”

“There’s a scary lookin’ white dude downstairs. I think he’s the guy you—”

Tara scrambled off the ratty mattress and bolted for the hall. The dozen other occupants of the dilapidated house she’d been hiding in watched her go, some annoyed at the sudden movement, most indifferent, depending on the state of their high.

She crouched at the top of the stairwell, straining to hear. Somebody was yelling, but the echo distorted the words too much for her to make out. She flattened herself against the stairs in a serpentine motion and crawled down on all fours to stay beneath the bannister.

“Wrong answer, mate.”

Tara froze halfway down when she could more clearly hear an English accent. She craned her neck to peer into the room adjacent to the foyer. Her breath held fast when the blonde guy in the suit from last night came into view. He held up the dealer who ran the drug house by his collar. With one hand.

Her mouth gaped in terror as the two hundred fifty pound man’s cheeks sunk in and his pudgy fingers thinned down to the bone in plumes of putrid smoke, until all that was left was a limp, emaciated husk.

Tara managed to stifle her scream to a tiny squeak.

Cray’s head swiveled at the sound. His cold eyes locked with hers.