by Keri Hudson
Paul sniffed him, listened for his stilled heartbeat. He turned to check that Lisa was still all right. Seeing her unharmed, Paul limped over to her. He had healing to do before he could safely shift back, and he couldn’t leave Lisa unguarded.
What was going to happen as a result of being seen by those men, who Paul was certain were Lisa’s own rescue team, Paul couldn’t begin to imagine. But he knew it wasn’t going to be good.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lisa came to with a fluttering of those pretty eyelashes, her head lolling on the rock, a moan escaping from her mouth. Paul was still pushing the bullets out of his side, his leg slower to heal than he’d thought. His body was having to do too much too soon, and he knew he couldn’t shift back into his human form, however frightened she might be of Paul in his lupine form.
She focused on him quickly, shocked at first but acclimating quickly to the sight. She’d seen him before and she had no reason to fear him, she seemed to know. She winced and raised a hand to her face where her bruise was rising, but her attention was quickly drawn to his injuries.
“Oh, you’re… you’re hurt.” She reached out, putting her delicate little hand on his massive, muscular lupine frame, near the bullet wounds, the blood crusting on the fur. Paul was just in the process of ejecting them to heal, and one came out very near to where Lisa’s hand was. She was startled, jumping back a bit, then looked closer at the wound.
“It… is it healing? So fast?” Paul growled and nodded, the best he could do in his lupine form. Lisa deduced, “I suppose… wounds like that would kill you in your… your other form.” Paul was pleased with her insight and intelligence, but there was no time to relish it. He turned and walked to the forest, and Lisa was quick to follow. They walked as quickly as Paul could manage into the wooded area with her, his leg hurting but healing. But it was a vulnerability she could scarcely afford.
Lisa looked over to see the dead man lying on his back. She gasped, looking back at Paul before getting up and walking over to the man. She looked at him, then back at Paul. “You… you killed him.” Paul nodded with a regretful whine. Lisa looked around, spotting the gun not far off. “He was shooting at you. Well, I guess you couldn’t just… let it happen, but… that means my father’s here! It means we’re rescued!”
Paul had the same hopes, but he knew the surviving man would bring others, a force that could perhaps wipe out a family of five shifters, or a family of fifty. He led Lisa into the forest, ejecting bullets and feeling his wounds healing, testing his leg as he went along.
The pigs attacked from out of nowhere, without the warning of a single snort. One hit his wounded front leg hard, biting down with his powerful jaws, tusks digging in to reverse the healing and increase the damage, causing stinging pain to shoot up into his chest. Another attacked from the other side, jumping up to bite into his neck. He could sense their anger, their righteous fury, but he had no sympathy.
Lisa screamed and stepped back as Paul reared up. He twisted his body and extended his front leg to smash the hog into the trunk of a macadamia tree on one side of the trail. The hog squealed and let go of his arm, bone crunching, body twisting before flying broken into the forest.
The other hog clung to his collar, but it lacked the power to pierce the hide. Paul used his uninjured paw to pull the hog from him and send the pig to the forest floor. It landed with cry and turned on Lisa, standing just a few feet from it. She screamed, clearly paralyzed with fear. But Paul was fast and he smashed his good front paw down onto the pig’s back, sending it straight to the floor, flat, front legs splayed out to the sides. The crack of the pig’s ribcage was even louder than its death cries, but neither lasted very long.
Paul and Lisa both surveyed the area, other hogs squeaking and grunting unseen, quickly getting quieter as they fled. Paul growled and turned to lead her through the forest. Another lupine growl got Paul’s attention and he stopped, turning to see Ruth approaching through the thick foliage.
Ruth looked at Lisa, sniffing to deduce her state of health before turning her attention to Paul. They could not speak any human language in their lupine form, but they still had a language and an intuitive understanding. Lisa had clearly been through some trauma, and that would have been Matthew’s doing, there couldn’t be any doubt.
She tilted her head just a bit, her little yelp asking, Is he dead? Paul nodded. They shared a somber silence, but it didn’t last long.
Bang! Bang! Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
Paul knew immediately what that was, though Ruth didn’t seem to understand. She had to have heard the gunfire, and the sudden, quick-fire releases finally seemed to tell her what he already knew. Lisa’s father’s forces had come to rescue her from that island full of monsters, sent by the man who’d fled from Paul. He’d called backup and they’d arrived. They seemed armed to the teeth, with a hunger to kill.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
Paul leapt into the charge, but Ruth was uninjured, faster, and she jumped to the front of the line, Lisa running behind Paul to join the fight.
Gun shots kept ringing out, but not all from the south beach. But that was the best landing point on the island, which meant they’d already leaked though the jungle and were hunting them even then. Paul got stronger on the course through the jungle, gearing up for the fight of all their lives. He knew the men were there for a good cause, in the cause of their own safety and rescue. But they were trying to kill Paul’s family, and it was little surprise. But Paul’s lupine self had a primal mind which drove his body’s incredible fighting skill. His ancient self came to the fore, and lupines had never been diplomats.
They were fighters.
They were killers.
Ruth led Paul through the forest and into the clearing of the south beach, where his father and brother were facing a dozen men with machine guns. Several lay dead on the sand, but the two lupines were at the center of a hell-storm of firepower. Ruth broke out a fantastic roar and charged at the nearest man, taking a hail of gunfire from one or more of those machine guns.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
Lisa stepped back but did not run, but Paul could not linger to protect her. He ran and charged one of the gunmen, all of them dressed in khaki clothes like the first two. He jumped to dodge the stream of gunfire, one swipe of his arm taking the man’s head clean off his shoulders. His body kept shooting the gun even as it fell back, headless.
Paul turned to another and jumped at him from twenty feet away, jaw locked on the man’s neck. He stumbled back, Paul squeezing tight until the crisp snap of the man’s neck told him he was no more a threat.
But Paul had made a target of himself, and other gunmen were quick to turn on him.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
They went in deep, but Paul ducked his head and took them in his muscular sides where he could. He cried out in pain and Lisa cried out too, shouting, “Stop, stop it! Stop!” But they were clearly beyond hearing it or beyond caring. Faced with creatures like those, there would be no time to reason with any hysterical woman. These men had stormed the beach with the intent to kill each and every one of them, and they didn’t seem interested in stopping until they’d done just that.
“Please, don’t, you’re killing him, you’re killing him!”
Paul spun to avoid another stream of fire, cutting one man in two just above the waist, legs slow to fall. He turned to face another, even as his sister was embroiled in another fight entirely. The pigs were charging in on her from every angle, dozens of them. They’d clearly waited for just the right moment, organized and launched an ambush. They rushed at her in incredible numbers, a dozen or more, big males. They snorted and bit and thrust their terrible tusks, Ruth swatting them away, biting into them and throwing them aside. But more rushed at her, rats jumping onto a sinking ship. Ruth screamed, and Peter arrived to support her, swatting and splitting the pigs in a blistering fury.
Paul lunged to join the fight, pelted with bullets from
behind.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
Paul squirmed and writhed under the rain of hot lead, bullets coming too close to his spine, his organs. They could take a certain amount of damage, but too much would end him. And he could hardly go on keeping his head protected. That was the point of greatest vulnerability, a shot to the brain that would bring death and end the self-healing process. But the same could be accomplished with a barrage of bullets, puncturing the heart, obliterating the organs, smashing the spine and the nerves beyond repair.
“Stop it,” Lisa cried out, “for God’s sake, stop shooting!”
Paul looked over at his father, James, pushing himself into a last-ditch attempt to lash out against the normalo gunmen. They pummeled him with bullets, his body flinching and twisting and falling to the sand. One man walked up, pointed his terrible machine gun at Paul’s father’s head, and squeezed the trigger.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
James’ head erupted in an explosion of brain and bone, disappearing as the shells tore into him.
Paul’s emotions welled up even greater than before. That good and strong man, a creature far beyond anything his murderers could even imagine, the man who’d given him life and given him his own life, lay dead on the sand.
For Paul, the world became a tidal wave of anger and fury and power, generations of shifters seeming to throw themselves behind his assault. Peter clearly felt it too, and between the two of them, the brothers executed a counter-attack that found one man skewered through the gut and hurled into the waves, another screaming in terror before Paul ducked and rolled and thrashed him with several hard swipes that reduced the man’s body to a bloody pulp.
He looked for the next kill, determined there and then to wipe out each and every one of them. Peter was disemboweling one man, and there seemed only one left. He turned and ran, but Paul leapt and sailed through the air to land squarely on the man’s back. He landed facedown into the sand, ribs cracking beneath Paul’s weight. His gurgled breath told Paul that he’d punctured the man’s lungs with every broken rib, five by his count. Another push broke two more.
Paul pulled away, certain the man was no longer a threat.
But the pigs had converged on Ruth, and she’d been exhausted by their frenzy. Paul turned to find her in the center of a pile of snarling, hairy wild hogs, digging into her from every angle. There was no portion of her visible under that feeding frenzy of maddened pigs. They had taken their revenge, they had watched and waited and finally managed to bring down one of their prized kills.
Paul’s sister.
Paul lunged at them, Peter joining the fray as they swatted and bit and sliced and clawed, meat and blood and bone swirling around them. Hogs were thrown in one direction and the other. Lisa screamed in the distance, so he knew she was alive, if terrified.
The pigs finally scrambled off, bodies of their dead fellows everywhere, legs and heads and bowels strewn over the sand.
Paul and Peter looked down on their sister, her dying whimpers leaking from her shredded throat. Like their father, she’d been too badly damaged. She lay there, looking up at them. She struggled to lift her head, but it seemed too heavy, her strength already ebbing. She lay her head down. Paul and Peter looked at one another. Neither was physically strong enough to shift, but they didn’t need human language to communicate. Their growls and purrs said it all.
I’m sorry, Ruth’s voice echoed in the back of Paul’s brain, I tried… I tried.
And you succeeded, Paul thought back to her, certain she was hearing him. You were right, you were the one who stood by me… by us… from the start. And we’re going to be fine, Ruth.
Ruth looked over at the bloodbath around them, bodies of every sort everywhere. No, she said silently in Paul’s ear and, by Peter’s sad expression, in his as well. No.
Rest well, Paul’s voice rang in his own head, and in Ruth’s, he could tell. All will be well.
Ruth looked at Paul. The girl, Lisa?
She’s fine, Ruth, Paul silently answered, we’ll be fine… thanks to you.
Ruth looked around, eyes rolling in her dying head, and her last thoughts echoed in Paul’s brain, his heart, his soul.
This place… this place…
“Wait,” Lisa said, “what are you doing? Let go of me!” Paul turned from across the beach, Peter too. Two more men had come out of the forest behind her, and they weren’t alone. Two more men were with them, each leveling a submachine gun at Peter and Paul as Lisa struggled between the two others.
Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!
“Stop it, please!”
“It’s okay, Miss van Kamp,” one said, “we work for your father, we’re here to help you.”
“No, you don’t understand, let me go!”
One said to the other, “She’s snapped, zap her.”
The other pulled something from his belt and touched it to Lisa’s arm. She flinched and went instantly limp. One man slung her over his shoulder and the two men retreated back into the forest.
Pap-pap-pap, pap-pap-pap-pap!
Paul took the shots, more than he was certain he could survive. He could feel them driving deep through his pummeled flesh, ribs cracking as the lead lodged hard. He and Peter looked at each other, Peter seeming to know what Paul had already decided. The two men had to die. It was kill or be killed, and neither shifter wanted to be killed.
The lupe brothers jumped into action, running in a serpentine fashion, curving one way and then the other in a snake-like fashion to avoid the spattering of bullets as they charged their victims. Paul could only see how weak and vulnerable the men were to a creature of his power and natural weaponry. Without their guns, he thought in that moment, they’re nothing.
By then he was upon the man, whose stark terror lit up his screaming face. It didn’t last long. Paul’s jaws locked down around the man’s face and his muscles pulled down hard. The man screamed into Paul’s mouth, punching feebly at his head and neck, but a loud crack ended the scream and his struggle.
Paul released his victim and looked over at Peter, who had already dispatched his own opponent. The brothers stepped toward one another, each badly torn up with gunfire. They were moving slowly, Paul’s body riddled with pain, bloodied flesh mangled on both sides of his torso. Peter hadn’t fared much better, but he was alive and still ready to fight.
Paul’s lupine instincts were overriding any sense of human reason. The men had his woman and he was going to retrieve her. They and their kind had killed two of the only four living Landrys. Paul’s ancient line gave him physical power beyond any human; speed and resilience rose up in him, not to be denied.
Peter’s instincts seemed to be telling him the same thing as the lupine brothers limped into the forest to find Lisa and kill those who’d taken her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paul and Peter split up, keeping low and moving slowly, each one needing time to heal. Paul was pushing the bullets slowly out of his body even as he stalked through the forest, but there were more than a dozen bullets still in his body, and he didn’t dare shift until the last one was ejected and the considerable damage healed at least a bit. He had no interest in shifting in any case, his lupine form giving him tools the mere humans didn’t have. Even hobbled, he and Peter were quick on the move. And his keener lupine sense of smell helped him zero in on Lisa, not far ahead of them. The men clearly didn’t know where they were going. They were running with Lisa in tow, slung over one of their shoulders, to remove her to a safer place than the beach. But that was where they’d have to bring her back, as it was where they’d landed. Paul could sense their frenzy, their fear and confusion.
But they were also facing men who were heavily armed, trained to some extent in violence and murder. They could yet be waiting around any corner, as Matthew had. They’d have to know they were going to be followed into the forest, unless they assumed Paul and Peter had been killed by their cohorts.
Paul remained cautious, senses f
ocused on his surroundings. A scarlet macaw screamed out from the canopy, the hairs on Paul’s blood-encrusted hide standing on end. He and Peter prowled on, staying low, healing a bit more with every step.
They got close, Paul keeping very low to remain hidden in the thick forest foliage. He still needed some time to heal, and with Lisa so close and so vulnerable, he knew his attack had to be perfect and precise. She could still be accidentally hurt, shot, even killed. Paul glanced over to where he’d last seen Peter, no sign of his older brother telling Paul that he was following the same strategy.
The men’s voices leaked into Paul’s ear as they approached.
“Yeah,” one said amidst some metallic crackling sounds from his handheld radio. “We’ve got her, she’s fine. Don’t know what we’re dealing with here, but we’re heading back to the beach. We’ll take the RIB back to the yacht as soon as we know it’s clear, sir. Not sure how long.”
A small voice said from inside the device, “Just get my daughter back on this boat, goddammit!”
A little more crackling ended the conversation, and the other man said, “What the fuck is going on here?”
His partner shook his head and looked around the forest. Paul pushed out another bullet and took another two steps forward. “Dunno. I mean, are they… are they wolves, or… or chupacabras?”
“Not wolves, chupa maybe.”
“What else?” After a frightened pause, he went on, “They suck your guts out or something, don’t they?”
“Suck your guts out? They tear your fucking head off! You saw that beach! Jesus Christ, these things are… suck your guts out!”
“All right, all right.” After a moment to consider, the gunman asked, “Now what?”
They both looked around as Paul and Peter crept very slowly toward them. “I think they must have got ‘em, Taylor and the other guys. Call ‘em, see what’s up on the beach.”
After another burst of crackling static, he said, “Taylor, you there? Taylor? Armstrong? Davis? Anybody, come in? Over.” After a few seconds, still no answer had come back through the metallic pop and sizzle.
