“We need to get in there,” Malik said. He glanced in the mirror and saw a white van approaching.

  “I got it,” Shade said, and immediately began her transformation. She forced herself to look down at the monstrous, insectoid legs that gave her such speed. Her flesh crept and her mind rebelled, still unable to really process it, unable to quite believe that she was physically something other than she’d been her whole life. The liquid, sluicing sounds came through her bones as her body shifted and moved, as she quickly—down to mere seconds now—transformed into a creature that only a close friend would recognize as being Shade Darby.

  She glanced at Malik and Cruz. They were staring, and blinking ever so slowly. The white van that had been tearing along at good speed was now barely moving. She ran to it and looked inside. There was only the driver, a burly, thirtysomething white man in overalls. He had an ID lanyard hanging around his neck.

  Shade yanked open the van door and hauled out its driver as carefully as she could—although she heard one of the bones in his arm snap—and deposited him beside the road. She couldn’t have him conscious, but he was an innocent bystander, so she slowed her fist so that when it impacted the side of his head the blow wouldn’t crush his skull.

  It did, however, snap his head around and cause his eyes to flutter and roll up in his head. He began a slow-mo collapse.

  Shade raced back to her friends and de-morphed, feeling clever for having changed back before the Dark Watchers could fully turn their attention on her.

Monster, Chapter 20