Melanie, on the other hand, took one look at Max’s progressing condition and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here. Come on, come on, come on.”
“Hold on,” I said, and steadily approached Max.
“Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
We had been through too much for me to leave him like this. I had to try to help him before he fully turned.
“Max,” I said. Startled, he jumped, and he glared at me like he was shocked I hadn’t left yet...or maybe it was furious because I hadn’t left yet. “Max, can you still hear me?”
“Cora, get away. Now!”
“Just practice what Aga told you. Listen to your breathing, calm your heart.”
“Go!” he screamed menacingly. His voice had dropped so deep he barely sounded human.
I was terrified, but I was relentless. “You can fight it.”
“No, I can’t!” he strained.
“Yes, you can. This is the entire reason you’re here, Max. Use what they taught you. Fight it, dammit!”
He involuntarily growled and slammed his fist down on the ground like a gorilla, and then roared, “I can’t!” I immediately heard a snapping sound, like one of his back bones was breaking. I was helpless to watch as Max’s body began bending inward like a folding chair.
“We gotta get out of here!” Melanie shrieked.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Max pleaded, and dropped his head down low as his body continued to crunch and alter. “Please, don’t make me hurt you.”
Melanie grabbed me by my arm and shook me. “Come on,” she begged.
My brain was urging me to get the hell out of there so Melanie and I had a chance of surviving, but my heart was shattering, knowing I’d have to leave him behind. This was Owen all over again. It was like I could hear Owen’s voice syncing right with Max’s. Why would life let this happen to us again?
But it wasn’t just my life that was in jeopardy. Maybe I could be reckless or daring on my own, but I couldn’t endanger Melanie like this.
I abandoned any mission to save Max and ran to the window with Melanie by my side. I dropped to my knees, cupped my hands together, and said, “I’ll elevate you. You kick the window open and I’ll push you through.”
She gripped the wall and stepped into my hands and I lifted her up. It took a few jabs with her elbow, but she managed to pop the thing open. “Oh, gross, it’s dusty up here,” she complained, wagging her tongue out of her mouth and scrunching her nose as she batted at the dust particles that floated in the air.
The muscles in my arms were shaking from holding her entire body as she fought with the flyaway dirt. “Really, Melanie? Get your ass through there.”
She put both hands on the windowsill, and once I knew she had a good grip, I lifted her up and helped shove her through. I held my breath, praying to God that she was able to fit. Once the weight in my hands lightened, I knew she had wiggled her whole body through the window and was halfway outside. I had no freaking clue what was waiting for us outside, but it had to be better than down here.
I looked back at Max and he was surprisingly still in human form, but was screaming and spitting on the floor. He was in so much pain, I felt like it was being transmitted into my body and spreading throughout my heart. I’d never wanted to stay and face an unknown fate as much as I did right there. The amount of guilt I was experiencing over leaving him behind couldn’t be put into words.
I had to remind myself that Max had gone through this plenty and all without me. He could and would survive this, but I surely wouldn’t if I stayed. I had to get out.
“Cora, come on!” Melanie was on the ground outside and putting both arms through the window frame for me to grab. I took her hands, stepped on a box, and tried to lift myself as much as I could as Melanie tugged on me from outside. She wasn’t very strong and I kept slipping and falling back into the basement whenever we made even the tiniest of progress. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept apologizing.
Max let out a bloodcurdling scream, and I heard the faintest of a sharp werewolf howl beneath his voice. It was happening and I wasn’t out of the basement yet.
“Come on, Melanie,” I said and put my hands up for her to hold onto.
She pulled, but I slipped again.
Max began yowling.
That’s when I began to freak out, crawling toward the window and failing, looking like a cat slipping and sliding across ice. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Hold on,” she said, and sat her butt on the ground and then pressed the bottoms of her feet against the building’s outside walls. She took both my hands and then pulled as hard as she could, using the foundation of the building to keep her body in place so she could use all of her strength to pull me out of there. After a few attempts, I felt my body being lifted. My ribcage settled on the windowsill and I used it to balance myself as I crawled through the tiny space.
At last, I was outside. The night air never smelled sweeter.
“Let’s get your car and get the hell out of here,” Melanie eagerly said, hopping up and down like she had to piss.
“No. My car is in one of the garages. There’s no way we could get in there without somebody hearing the door open.”
“Then what do we do? We can’t stand here like idiots.”
“We hop the fence and run to Nancy’s Bar. There will be people there that can call the cops. We can hide there. We’ll be safe.”
“I really don’t care where we go, as long as it’s not here.”
So, the two of us did just as I said; we hopped the fence, stayed low to the ground, and once we found the main road, we went running like a bat out of hell down it.
We reached the street corner right before the bar when we suddenly heard all this screaming followed by a car alarm. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the gunshot that followed.
I ducked behind a parked vehicle and latched onto Melanie’s sleeve and pulled her down next to me. We heard two more gunshots and the sound of people screaming, and it wasn’t long before we saw a crowd of frightened people dispersing all over the streets. They were running for their lives like someone was chasing them.
I spotted the bartender, Mickey, from Nancy’s Bar struggling to run across the street the best he could, but old age held him back as he staggered slowly across the pavement while pulling his jeans up so they wouldn’t trip his feet.
Suddenly, a large grayish-silver werewolf leapt onto his back, pressing him down onto the concrete and piercing his flesh with its long, fang filled jaw. I could feel my body gearing up to run out there and save him, until Melanie tugged on my arm and kept me in place, because someone was already coming to his aid. It was a dark haired man in his forties, and he was yelling at the beast in front of him and throwing stones at its massive body. The nearly dead bartender looked like an ant crushed beneath the paws of this thing as it rose onto its hind legs, blood dripping from its teeth, as it let out one loud roar in the direction of the man that was helping. Its eyes were a hypnotic bright golden shade, and as it and the man made eye contact, the man must have suddenly realized his mistake. He took off running for his life, but his speed was nothing in comparison to the werewolf, as it pounced on him, pushing him down and riding him across the road like a skateboard as he devoured him.
I heard chewing, gargling, and then silence.
“Oh, my God...” Melanie whimpered.
“Shhh,” I said with my finger pressed to my lips. We couldn’t risk making even the slightest of noises.
“Travis! Travis! Here boy!”
I recognized the voice as belonging to Kat, and it sounded like she was somewhere down the street calling for him, whistling to find him like he were a dog. That’s when I knew the werewolf who had just decimated two men in front us was, in fact, Travis.
There was a whoosh noise to my left and I caught a dark image flying past me. It was Travis, and he was galloping down the road to the source of Kat’s voice. “There you are,” I heard her s
ay. “We have more spring cleaning to do down here.”
Screaming commenced, and it sounded like it was a very large group of panicked people scattering like cockroaches as each one was hunted down and torn apart. Gunshots followed as Kat laughed like a hyena, aiding Travis in wiping everyone out.
I felt sick to my stomach. They were slaughtering the entire town person by person and they weren’t going to stop until we were all dead. The thudding of my pulse suddenly felt like a clock ticking away, knowing we were minutes, perhaps even seconds, away from being devoured or shot dead.
I looked over the hood of the car and I could see Kat down the street, pacing back and forth with the shotgun relaxing against her shoulder like she was holding a baseball bat. Meanwhile, werewolf Travis chewed on the bodies that had piled up on the cement.
“What do we do now?” Melanie whispered to me. “There’s no one left to help us.”
“We’re just gonna have to help ourselves.”
Her brow knitted in distress. “How the hell are we going to do that?”
“Nancy’s Bar has a rifle bolted to the wall. We can get in there and grab it.”
“It’s probably not even loaded.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I heard excessive growling in the distance, and when I turned my eyes back to where Kat and Travis were, there were two more werewolves that had joined them. At first, I thought it was Paul and Corbin, but the two brown wolves were growling and hissing at Kat and Travis as one went into pounce mode and the other stood straight up like a human.
It was a bizarre sight, seeing these two brown werewolves in a faceoff with Travis’ gnarly gray self, neither attacking, but seemingly on the verge. I had never seen werewolves behave this way and I had to wonder if they were speaking to one another telepathically.
“Oh, look, it’s Daggett and his little boyfriend,” Kat noted with a cackle.
I gulped. They must have sensed the commotion going on in the city and left their safe zone in the woods that they went to under every full moon. They hardly had any control over themselves, yet knew Travis and Kat were the enemy.
“You’re much cuter in this form, Daggett, I gotta say,” Kat said, and werewolf Daggett barked in her direction, causing her to jolt back and then laugh. “Calm down, Doggett.” She stopped mid-sentence to laugh hysterically over her own joke. “Doggett! Why did I just now think of this? I have so many regrets in life, but this one is up there.”
Both Daggett and Kerry took turns growling and barking at her, and the smaller wolf, who I assumed was Kerry, began digging his claws into the street and sticking his rear into the air like he was fighting the urge to kill her.
“You gonna attack me?” she asked. “What are you gonna do little barky, bite me? Eat this!”
She fired off the shotgun and Kerry went flying backward. As soon as his body hit the pavement Travis pounced on top of him and began tearing him apart. Daggett jumped at Travis, but Kat began firing the gun at him, and from my hidden space behind the vehicle I could see one shot nailed him at close range.
Daggett went charging out of there, limping and whimpering, and as his body raced away from Kat, turning the corner around a building, he went completely out of my sight. All I could see was Kat aiming her shotgun in his direction and repeatedly firing.
A loud, high-pitched werewolf whimper quickly followed and then silence.
Daggett.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In reality, we waited behind that car for five minutes, but emotionally, it felt like an eternity. The bar was right there across the road, but if Kat or Travis even thought they saw movement, we were both dead.
I had seen the two of them skip away from the dozens of bodies they had mangled on the streets, but I gave it an extra minute just in case they returned. Once that minute passed, I figured it was safe to run to the bar.
“We have to make a run for it,” I told Melanie.
“No, no, I don’t want to move.”
“We’re not safe hiding behind a car like this. They’ll come back and they’ll see us. It’s a lot safer with us inside a building with doors that bolt shut than out here.”
She nodded. She knew I was right.
We slowly rose from behind the car, and the two of us leaned forward and creeped out onto the street like two thieves in the night. As soon as we were in the center of the street, we booked it as fast as our legs would allow and got right up to the entrance of the bar.
Nobody saw us. Thank God.
“Wait, use the back door,” I told her. “It’s quieter.”
The entire side and backyard around the building had a tall wooden fence to separate it from the other lots, and there were milk crates stacked in the grass beside a parked delivery truck that had its doors still hanging open. It was like someone was in the middle of stocking the store up and then left in the midst of finishing.
“What kind of bar gets their milk delivered at night?” Melanie asked as she scanned the stacks resting at the edge of the grass.
“I don’t know. What kind of bar even has milk?” I asked back.
The backdoor led to the bar’s kitchen area, and when I put my hand on the doorknob to twist it open, I felt a resistance. It was locked. “Shit,” I exclaimed, and then wiggled the handle one more time quietly.
“What?”
“It’s locked.”
“Just crawl through.”
“Crawl through?” I stopped myself from asking any further questions and looked at the wooden door, and noticed at the very bottom was a doggy door. Why it was there I’ll never know.
Memories came flooding back.
Cora, Cora
Stick your head in a door-a.
No way was I being that girl again.
“Why don’t you crawl in while I keep guard out here?” I suggested.
She rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “Don’t be such a baby. We both know you have more experience in this department than I do.”
“Ah-ha,” I said and threw my finger in her face. “I just knew you were waiting to bring this up.”
“All the danger we’re in right now and you’re still going to act like an immature little brat?”
“I reserve that right, yes.”
“Just move your ass,” she instructed and then shoved me into the door. I didn’t appreciate the forwardness, but I complied.
I knelt down onto my knees, held my breath, tried to remind myself this wasn’t demeaning if it was saving our lives, and then crawled through. I was surprised by how much wiggle room there actually was. Either I had shrunk or I underestimated the size of the doggy door.
I poured into the kitchen and fell face first onto the cold tile. I could hear Melanie bitching me out for the collision making a noise, and for me to unlock the door. I did just that.
All the lights in the bar were turned off, but I could see my way around because of the street light right outside the entrance window. There was no way they had time to turn off all the lights due to the surprise attack, so my only conclusion was Kat had cut the power. How nightmarish to be enjoying a night out with your friends only to be put in total darkness and then hunted like animals.
Even though the place was still empty, I made sure to tread lightly, keeping my footsteps as hushed as possible as I inched my way slowly to the bar where the rifle was. As soon as it was in my line of sight, I sped up and went running behind the bar.
I was too short to simply grab it, but if I climbed up onto the counter I could retrieve it in no time.
Suddenly, right over my shoulder, I heard the ker-chuck sound of a gun cocking right in my ear. I then felt a small blunt object shove into my back with one hard thrust.
“Looky, looky, I found Cookie,” a Tweety Bird sounding voice teased.
“Kat...” It was suddenly hard to breathe.
How did she get into the bar when we had the backdoor covered? Was there another exit I hadn’t seen before? Had she been hiding in here t
his whole time?
“Turn around before I pop your head like a dandelion.” It was a threat, but her tone felt more comical and lighthearted. This was a game to her.
I did as she asked and turned around very slowly. She had her shotgun pointed directly at my face, and the weapon was so big, she looked like a kid holding it.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told her.
She waved a finger at me and pouted. “You’re not very good at playing hide-and-seek. This is going on your permanent record, young lady.”
“The police will be coming, and if you kill me you’ll be going down for murder.”
“Normal rules don’t apply to werewolves, pumpkin. Not anymore. Paul will just take care of them like he’s done everyone else.”
“Where is Paul?”
“With Romeo and Juliet. He has a real treat in store for them. You’re gonna love it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Oh, wait, you won’t be alive to see it,” she added with this child-like realization as though someone told her there was a present for her under the Christmas tree.
“Look, Kat, I’ve done nothing to you, personally. So, you can walk—or skip—away and we’ll never have to lay eyes on each other ever again.”
“That doesn’t sound like any fun. But killing you does,” she gleefully spoke, and then tightened her grasp on the gun and appeared to be going in for the kill.
My chest caved, my heart sped up, and I got so dizzy, I thought I was going to faint. I was literally staring down the barrel of a gun held by a seemingly crazy woman, and she was seconds away from firing. I had faced being torn apart by a werewolf, so I knew the fear of death quite well, but even with a werewolf there was the slight hope that I could get out of it still alive. Injured, but alive. This, however, was an automatic death. It would be quick and I wouldn’t even know it happened.
Lunar City (Lunar Rampage Series Book 2) Page 33
