Fighting Furry

by Katharine Sadler

  I would not allow him to control me. I kept my eyes on his, chanting in my mind that I wouldn't give in, that I wouldn't shift, fighting the compulsion with every bit of strength I had. Despite my fight, I could feel the shift beginning, could feel my fur receding. Jeremiah's smile widened and he leaned back. “That's right, my girl, shift for me. Show me what a strong, beautiful woman you are.”

  I wasn't going to get a better moment than that. I lunged, jaws wide, straight for the pulse beating in his neck. I bit down and tore, and the cold, iron-tinged blood filled my mouth. My jaws clamped tight on his neck, and I pulled and yanked until I'd removed his head from his body.

  It wasn't until I'd shifted back to human and looked down at the grotesque corpse on the floor that it hit me. I'd just killed a man. A man I knew very little about, a man who hadn't been doing much more than attempting to control me for his own purposes.

  I bent over and retched, losing everything I'd eaten over the past twelve hours. I stared at Jeremiah's broken body and the blood coating the floor. I was the monster now. I was a killer. I was also still the captive of a pack of frat-boy werewolves who were working with vampires who could control me with a look and a bite. I needed a plan and I needed one quick. Later, I could freak out and cry, right now, I needed to get out of there alive.

  My clothes had been shredded by my shift and I was covered in blood, but it would probably be a pretty good look for my plan.

  I straightened my shoulders and opened the door, pretending a confidence I didn't feel.

  Jeremiah had been so sure he would subdue me, he'd left the door unlocked. I opened it and walked out into the bright sunshine. Heat beat down on my bare back as I scanned the lawn, looking for vampires or werewolves. No one was there. Damn, they had severely underestimated me.

  I marched to the back door of the house, and found it unlocked. There was no one in the mudroom right inside the back door and the kitchen was empty. I heard laughter and music from upstairs, but my stomach grumbled. I needed food, or I wasn't going to last long against anyone.

  The kitchen was pretty nice, with granite counter tops and a fancy rack for pots that hung over the center island. No pots hung from it. It was decorated with bras and a dildo someone had painted a face on and hung from the center of the rack.

  The counter tops were covered in something brown that would probably be sticky if I dared to touch it. I figured it best to touch as little as possible in that place.

  The fridge was filled with beer and dried out, expired condiments. I shut the door and sighed. The freezer was full of frozen dinners, none of which looked remotely appetizing. Unfortunately, I didn't have much choice, I needed to eat.

  I ripped open one of the t.v. dinners and stuck it in the microwave.

  “Well, well, this is the sort of thing I like to see when I stop by,” a male voice said.

  “Is it?” I asked in my sweetest voice, still facing the microwave. “I'm so glad.”

  His footsteps pounded closer and I could hear his breath pick up speed. He smelled like werewolf, with a side of body odor. Did he really believe he was about to get lucky?

  I waited until I knew he was close and then I spun, giving him the smile and crazy eyes I'd used in the UFC cage. He stumbled back a step. “Holy fuck,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  “I ripped off Jeremiah's head, because he tried to force me to do something I didn't want to do.”

  “Are you serious?” he asked. “Does Alpha know about this?”

  Something crashed upstairs and the punk in front of me, a well-muscled guy in khakis, a polo, and boat shoes, jumped at the sound. I paused, wondering if the folks upstairs had figured out there was a problem. The laughter that followed set me at ease.

  “I haven't told him, yet,” I said. “I need to eat. Can you be a doll and order me something?”

  He looked around like he was expecting help to walk through the door, but it was just me and him. “Are you joking right now?”

  “I need you to pick up your little phone and call in an order for pizza, a lot of pizza. Do it and I'll consider not pulling your intestines out of your body through your nose.”

  “Dude,” he said with a shudder. “Way too graphic.”

  But he pulled out his phone, dialed a number and ordered three large pizzas with the toppings I listed for him. I was feeling preternaturally calm, which I knew wasn't going to last forever. I should be running out of there and heading back to LA, but I'd just killed a man. I was in this now, and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Plus, I didn't have clothes or a car, so I was a tiny bit stuck.

  Speaking of that. “You should give me your shirt now.” I didn't really want to wear the guy's stench of BO, but it was better than naked. Probably.

  “What?” he asked. “No fucking way, I—”

  “Give me your shirt,” I said, using the alpha voice.

  He glared, but he pulled off the neon green polo and handed it over. I yanked it over my head, holding my breath, and it fell to mid-thigh. I smiled at him. “Thank you, kindly.”

  The microwave dinged and I pulled out my dinner. I ripped off the plastic and started pulling out drawers, looking for a fork. There was all kinds of junk in the drawers, but no forks. How did these people survive from one day to the next?

  “Where are the forks?” I asked the preppy asshole who was still standing there staring at me like I was a zoo exhibit.

  “Huh?” he looked a bit dazed and I wondered if he was high.

  “Forks,” I said. “Do you have them?”

  A loud banging at the door snapped the preppy wolf's head around. “Go answer the door,” I said. “Tell them to go away.”

  He nodded and trotted out of the kitchen. The door flung open, there was a roar and a crash, and I figured shit was about to get real. Why couldn't it have waited until I'd eaten? I ducked behind the center island, so I could get an idea of who was barging into the house, not because I was scared.

  “She…She's in here,” the preppy wolf said.

  “You better not be fucking with me.”

  Axel? Was that Axel's growl? I popped up from behind the counter at the same moment a stampede of footsteps pounded down the stairs.

  Axel stood on the other side of the counter, preppy wolf in one hand, Clarissa at his back. His eyes widened when he saw me. He rushed around the counter and grabbed me. “Are you hurt?”

  “It's not my blood.”

  “Well, well, well,” Alpha said, stepping into the kitchen. “Isn't this cozy?”

  He spoke with braggadocio, but his expression was worried and the gun he had pointed at us shook in his hand.

  “Put down the gun,” I said in my alpha voice, putting all my fear and anger and shame into it.

  Alpha dropped the gun onto the counter like it was hot. Axel looked at me, mouth agape.

  He turned and faced Alpha. “Have a seat,” he said. “And start talking. I want to know what the hell is going on here.”

  “I don't think that would be a good idea.”

  I smelled the cold, blood smell, this time mixed with artificial roses, before two women stepped into the kitchen, both vampires. One had short dark hair, dark skin, and piercings. The other looked like she could be the sorority girl to preppy boy's fraternity guy. Both were powerful. Maybe not as powerful as Jeremiah, but powerful enough to be a problem.

  The pierced woman sniffed the air and looked at me, her eyes narrowing, her lips pinching with anger. “Jeremiah? What have you done to him.”

  Now, there were a couple of different ways to play this and I was considering which would be the least damaging when preppy boy spoke up. “She told me she ripped his head off.”

  I glared at him, Axel swore, and both women screamed in fury. I had all of two seconds to figure out that everything was about to go to hell before everything went to hell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A vampiress tackled me and knocked me against the fridge. As she bashed my head into the stainles
s steel, I saw Axel get hit by the other vamp. He managed to hold his ground, but that's all I saw before I'd decided I'd had enough and I punched the vampiress in the gut. She winced, but didn't release my head, so I kicked up with my left leg and nailed her hard in the vag.

  That did it, she screeched in pain and let go of my head. I thumped against the fridge a final time, with less force. Pushing the vamp off, I rolled over on top of her and pinned her to the ground. My vision was a bit fuzzy, but I maintained my hold.

  Gripping her head in my hands, I lifted it and slammed it against the tile floor. She wrapped her hands around my neck and squeezed as I bashed her head down again. She just squeezed tighter and my blurry vision got blurrier.

  If I didn't get her hands off my neck soon, I was going to lose consciousness. I tried to focus on her face, but dark spots formed in my vision. I was going to pass out. She was incredibly strong and I couldn't get breath to try my alpha voice on her, which probably wouldn't work anyway, since she wasn't a wolf. Damn it, think.

  I let go of her head, stopped bashing it against the tile, and let all my body weight fall to the left. It was entirely counter-intuitive of what I would want to do in a professional fight, but a professional fight would have been called by now.

  The vamp followed my body weight to the ground, straddled my waist and applied more pressure. I was pretty sure that, if I hadn't been a werewolf, my throat would have been crushed already. My lungs were on fire and my vision was more black spots than clear sight, but somehow, I was still hanging on. I bucked under the vamp and tried to throw her off, but it was like her knees, on either side of my waist, were cemented to the floor.

  Just when my vision was down to little pinpricks of light, I remembered that I could shift. I wasn't sure I could do it from that position, but the very thought called my wolf to the forefront of my brain. I went furry and the vamp lost her grip on my neck. Growling, I pushed her off me, pinning her to the floor with my paws.

  I held her there and panted, trying to catch my breath and get my vision back. It returned quicker than I'd have expected, my wolfy healing capabilities must have helped.

  The vamp struggled underneath me, but I held her down. I held her down and wondered what I was supposed to do with her. I really didn't want to chew any more heads off. Besides being gross, I hated the idea of having to kill anyone else.

  “Enough,” a regal and cool voice shouted.

  Strong arms banded around my chest and lifted me off my paws, holding me up to face a tiny woman in what appeared to be a satin ball gown. A satin ball gown with nothing underneath it, judging by the way her nipples were pointing at me.

  I struggled against the arms around me, as I could see Axel and Clarissa doing, but whoever held me was incredibly strong. The woman holding Axel in place was shorter and leaner than him.

  “Shift back to human, please. We can't have a conversation when you are wolves.”

  I growled. I didn't want to shift and be naked again in front of all these people. The vamp holding me whispered a word in my ear, a word in a language I didn't understand, and I felt my body changing, my wolf retreating. It was forced and it hurt, it felt wrong, but I went with it, hoping the change would force the man holding me to lose his grip. It didn't. Axel was still in his human form, but Clarissa had gone wolf and she also shifted back to human.

  The regal woman paced closer and looked us over, a smile twitching her lips. “I'm actually quite pleased you showed up here, Axel dear,” she said. “It saves me so much trouble and work. Dear Darius and his ridiculous council always insist on doing things by the books, preventing an uprising he says, but I am an impatient woman.” She narrowed her eyes and stopped in front of me. She ran a finger down my face and her smile widened, revealing a mouth-full of horribly sharp and pointy teeth. “You must be the monster who killed my mate.”

  Aw shit, this was bad, really, really bad. “He was going to…” Yeah, telling her he was going to forcibly have sex with me probably wouldn't improve her mood. “It was self-defense.”

  She leaned so close I could see the specks of green in her hazel eyes, could see the nearly pore-less perfection of her porcelain skin. I could picture Jeremiah by her side. They would have been a regal, stunning couple, if not classically beautiful. “I don't care why you did it, just that you did it. You will be publicly executed after we've all had our taste of you.”

  Like a snake, she snapped her head forward and her teeth sank into the flesh just below my chin. Her teeth through my flesh hurt, and then she began to suck and pain burned from the site of the bite through my whole body.

  Axel roared and then the teeth left my flesh as the vamp was pulled off me. The teeth left my neck, but I felt skin go with them. I clamped a hand to my neck, the man behind me still holding me tight, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility of me bleeding out all over him. In fact, was he licking me? Yep, through the pain I could feel his tongue on me. I shuddered and tried to break free, but he didn't budge. “Let me help you,” he said. “My saliva will close the wound.”

  “Let me shift and I'll be fine.”

  He ignored me and kept licking. I tried to shift, but my wolf curled up and whimpered, refusing. I couldn't speak to her, but I visualized, like I was watching a movie, what would happen if I shifted while the vamp held me: my two front legs would be in a position so awkward they'd likely break. Three vamps pulled Axel off the vampire queen or whatever she was. They held him while the vamp queen smoothed down her now torn dress and patted her hair. “We should take them to our place,” she said. “It will be easier to restrain them there.”

  Shivers shuddered through me and not from loss of blood, from the idea of a dank basement with chains to restrain us. If we went there, we'd be dead or, worse, completely under their control. I wouldn't do it.

  I struggled against the arms holding me, but I could get no leverage. We needed a plan. We needed help. I needed help.

  “Get them some clothes,” the vampire queen said to Alpha.

  Alpha leaned back against a wall watching, showing no interest in getting his hands dirty. “They're our prisoners, Neela,” he said with a bit of a pout.

  She stalked over to him and growled in his face. “Are you questioning me, Alpha?” she said his chosen name with a sneer.

  I'd expected Alpha to back down, to give in and apologize, but he straightened, his eyes narrowing. “I want my people back.”

  Neela smiled. “You give us these three, and we'll return three of your people to you. These three will be much more…Sustaining.” She licked her lips as she spoke and looked us over in an overtly lustful way. This was not good.

  Neela was clearly more powerful than Alpha, yet she was willing to negotiate with him. What did he have on her? And how was Darius involved in this? None of it made sense.

  Alpha pushed off the wall. “I want a guarantee.”

  Neela rolled her eyes, but she put her wrist to her mouth, bit down, and held her bleeding wrist to Alpha. He pressed his mouth to her wrist, took three long swallows and stood. The difference was amazing, his skin was no longer yellow and his eyes were brighter, clearer. “I'll get the clothes,” he said.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Axel growled. “Darius said you and this pack were at odds.”

  Neela licked her wrist and turned to Axel while Alpha disappeared upstairs. “We are at odds,” she said. “I want to have full control of these wolves, but they are less than willing to secede power. Darius has promised me your pack instead.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Axel asked, his tone deathly calm.

  Neela walked over to stand in front of him, her smile wicked. “I have something Darius wants and he is willing to give me your pack to get it. We just needed you out of the way. He wanted to make it look as though you lost the territory in a dispute between packs, and if you died…” She shrugged. “He doesn't want to deal with the uprising if other wolves learn of our deal.”

  Axel's shock and
anger were palpable, so I asked the next question. “What do you have that Darius wants?”

  “Money, dear,” Neela said, speaking slowly as though I was an idiot. “And power. Werewolves are cute, but not too bright, and Darius and the council have expensive tastes.”

  “Vampires are bottom-sucking parasites,” Clarissa said. “Where are you getting this money?”

  Neela smiled and stalked over to Clarissa. She flicked her nose. “Why don't you use that tiny werewolf brain and figure it out?”

  “What do you want with our pack?” I asked, sensing our time to get answers running out.

  Neela stalked over to me. She rubbed her finger in my drying blood, thankfully the saliva of the vamp holding me had stopped the bleeding. She licked the blood and sighed in pleasure. “I tire of drinking the blood of over-sexed, drunken werewolves. My people need a new source, one fed by clear mountain water.”

  “You'll have to kill me first,” Axel roared, clearly not thinking straight.

  Neela's smile widened. “Oh, I will, but I want to enjoy you first.” She placed a hand over Axel's crotch and rubbed. He growled and snapped at her, and a matching growl rumbled up from my chest. If I wasn't so pissed, I might have taken a moment to enjoy being able to make that wolfy sound in human form.

  Neela stepped back and smiled at both of us. “This is going to be so much fun.”

  I struggled to break the grip of the vamp holding me, but he was strong, way too strong. It didn't make sense. I'd been able to fight Jeremiah and he was the king, shouldn't he have been the strongest vamp in his crew? There was something else going on here, and if I didn't figure it out soon, I'd be dead.

  Neela slunk over to Clarissa and locked eyes with her. “You will walk down the street with us and you will smile like you are happy to be with us. You won't make a move to get away or to draw attention.”

  Clarissa fought, trying not to give in, I could see it in her stony expression, but by the end of Neela's sentence, her expression had gone slack and she was smiling. “I'm happy to be with you.”