More important was Whitcomb’s pistol that was skidding to a halt in the middle of the road. The sheriff thrashed a few more times and lie still amid a pool of spreading blood.
Chapter 16
The large wolf backed away from the fallen sheriff and melted before her eyes. The ridges and shape turned liquid as hair was sucked back into the amorphous shape and bumps and ridges moved and reshaped themselves. His tattered clothing fell free and left behind the familiar form of Hank on his knees with both hands on the ground. He lifted his head and twisted his neck, stretching the muscles before he let out a sigh.
Hank lifted himself up and rose to one knee and then his feet. He turned to Crystal and frowned. “Did he hit you?” Hank asked as he stepped closer to her.
Crystal heard the sheriff shoot twice. Had one of the bullets hit her? She turned and glanced down her left flank and then did the same to her right. There wasn’t any pain and her fur looked unruffled. She turned back to him and shook her head.
“Shift back,” Hank said. “We’ve got to get away from here.”
Crystal whimpered. She’d just shifted and, now that the adrenaline surge was passing, she wasn’t looking forward to the pain.
“Hurry,” Hank urged.
Crystal growled her displeasure and then made herself think like a woman again. Her skin felt like it was on fire as her fur pulled back and then the real torture began as her bones, muscles, and organs rearranged themselves. The pain vanished and left a dull ache, only to come back and feel like a wave of acid splashed over her when her nerves reconnected.
Crystal groaned and remained on all fours, her body trembling and her arms and legs feeling too weak to support her. She blinked as the misery faded and felt the warmth from the mid-afternoon sun filling her with strength. She pushed against the ground and then caught Hank’s hand in hers to help her stand.
“It gets easier?” she whimpered.
Hank nodded. “It does.”
She looked past him and saw the sheriff’s throat and face looked more like fresh ground hamburger than human flesh. She winced and turned away. “So much for that.”
Hank nodded and walked over to where his clothes were spread across the ground. “Get our stuff from the cop car,” he said.
Crystal nodded, the urgency of their situation helping her past the phantom memories of pain. She stepped around the dead policemen and stuck her head into the open door of the cop car. Their cards and Hank’s registration were lying on the console. She picked them up and hesitated. Had she touched anything to leave a fingerprint? Was there any other evidence? She looked around at the trooper’s computer and saw that he hadn’t even typed anything in yet. Or had he cleared it out already?
Crystal frowned and backed away. She shook her head and looked back. Hank was shoving his torn shirt in his saddlebag and already had his pants, vest, and loose tied boots back on. She was still nude.
“Hurry,” Hank called to her when he saw her looking.
Crystal nodded and walked back, skirting the bodies and staring at them even though she didn’t want to. Officer Ted—she wondered what his last name was—didn’t need to die. It was so stupid. So pointless! He’d been a decent person trying to do a job he believed in. Now, because of the sheriff and his stupid beliefs, he was dead. She bit her lip and shook her head.
“Sorry about how that went down,” Hank said when Crystal walked up to him. He held out her clothes to her.
“Ted didn’t need to die,” she said.
“I know,” Hank agreed.
“Whitcomb did.”
Hank stiffened. “I thought—”
“Hank, I’m not stupid,” Crystal snapped. “I don’t believe in hurting people if there’s any other way. I still think maybe we should be running and hiding instead of fighting back, but we didn’t have that choice here. He was an asshole. A royal jerk who was so full of himself he couldn’t see reality. Even with that, maybe there was hope for him, or at least maybe a padded room somewhere in a hospital.”
“Wait, you just said he deserved it?”
Crystal nodded and finished wrapping her borrowed skirt around her hips. She pushed it down on her hips until it wouldn’t go any further, offering some modesty at the expense of showing enough lower back to prove she wasn’t even wearing a thong. “When he killed the other cop,” she continued without missing a beat, “he gave up any rights he had, as far as I’m concerned.”
Hank nodded. “They’re all like that,” he said.
“All of the men we’re after?”
“All paladins. At least all the ones I’ve come across.”
Crystal pulled her shirt over her head and dragged it over her chest. She fixed him with a serious stare and asked, “How many is that?”
“Probably a couple dozen.”
“A couple dozen?” Crystal gasped. “There’s no way they all found you out. You guys don’t go out of your way to expose yourselves!”
“We hunt them.”
Crystal stared at him for a long minute with her lips pressed together. “I’m not like that,” she said.
“I know.”
Her chin trembled as she demanded, “Are you? Wait, that’s a stupid question. Of course you are. Here we are, doing this.”
“Crys, it’s not like that.”
“It’s not?”
“Well, okay, it was. It is. Christ, I don’t know.”
Her eyes narrowed and she held out her hand. “Give me my phone.”
“What? Oh, here.” He reached into his vest pocket and pulled her phone out. “That’s just what we’ve always done. Or what they’ve been doing. I’ve only been doing it with them since I changed. I know I wasn’t sure at first either. My first time, I learned how evil they are.”
Crystal jerked her attention up from her phone to him as he laughed. “This is funny?”
He nodded. “In a twisted way.”
She brought up the text message thread from Ember and saw the only response was her saying, “OK.”
“I’m not laughing.” Crystal growled. She looked up at Hank again and felt the world spinning around her. Had they really lied to her? How much was a lie? Where they evil after all? Was there something satanic about them? She didn’t feel that way but she’d wanted to kill Whitcomb just as much as Hank had.
“I said they’re evil, and they are,” Hank explained. “The funny part is they think they’re the good guys. They want to rid the world of people like us. Well, people like anyone that they aren’t. They start with us but when all the shifters and witches and everything else are gone, what’s next? Muslims? Atheists? Democrats?”
Crystal blinked and shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t care. You lied to me. The others too, but you let them. You—you’re supposed to be my boyfriend. My mate! How could you?”
“Crys! Stop, it’s not like that!”
Crystal shook her head and turned away. “Go back to your friends. Your murderers. I’m done.”
“Crystal! Wait. You can’t walk away. You won’t be safe! You need us. And we need you.”
She turned back and stared at him through the tears that made him swim in her eyes. “Is that right?”
“I need you.”
A sob escaped her throat. Her heart leapt out of her chest for him, and she ached to run to him. She shook her head. “I can’t live like that. I’m not a killer!”
“Crys—”
“No!” she sobbed. “Leave me alone! Damn you, Hank. Damn all of you!”
Crystal turned and ripped her clothes off as she ran. She threw herself forward and shifted flawlessly for the first time. She hit the ground running, too consumed by her own misery to realize what she’d accomplished.
Chapter 17
Crystal ran cross country, leaving Hank behind to clean up the scene. She had to get away. From the dead cops, from Hank, from everything. There was nowhere she could think of to run that was safe. Her mom’s house was being watched. Beth was being watched. Stephanie—S
teph lived with the enemy. Her only escape was in the act of running itself. So she ran.
By the time Crystal crossed fields, streams, woods, and a few pastures, she realized she’d gotten herself lost. She’d run to the north, away from where the officer had stopped them. No, not stopped them. From where they’d ambushed him. He was dead because of them. Sheriff Whitcomb had stabbed him, but if they hadn’t been hunting the sheriff, he never would have died.
She could go and see Clover, she supposed, but what would Clover do? Offer to help for a price. She didn’t have anything left to give. Nothing except her own blood. She’d been willing to accept that before, but if she was going to give up her life, she might as well do it fighting the paladins.
Crystal slowed to a stop and paced back and forth. She could smell a herd of cattle nearby, over a ridge, but she ignored them. She had more important things to worry about, things like how she’d been toyed with and lied to. Or at least they hadn’t been honest with her, and that was basically the same thing.
Or was it? Hank said he loved her and she believed him. She loved him, even if he’d tricked her. Well, he hadn’t tricked her; he just hadn’t told her everything. But had she asked him? She’d asked him about his past and how he changed. About who he was. But mostly when they were together, they were busy making love. That, or helping her figure out what was going on. So had he held anything back from her?
Crystal growled and lifted her head so she could let out a frustrated scream. It came out as a howl that surprised her and filled her with energy. It filled the unseen nearby cows with terror—she heard them cry out and felt the ground tremble as they started to turn and run away from her.
Crystal felt her heart leap in her chest and ached to rush forward. She shook her head, pushing the instinct aside. There were more important things to do. She wasn’t even hungry; it just seemed like a fun thing to do. She turned away, determined to leave the cattle alone, when she heard a man cry out.
Crystal spun and saw a farmer on a horse at the fence row that ran along the top of the ridge. He reached down to his side away from her, scrambling for something. She crouched down and looked around, trying to find the quickest escape. There wasn’t one. When she looked back, she saw him fumbling with a gun, either a rifle or a shotgun.
Crystal snarled. She’d had enough of being shot at! She dug her claws in and leapt forward, tearing across the ground towards the rancher. He fired but the bullet passed over her. The miss made her dig in harder and helped her surge up the shallow rise towards the battered wire fence.
The rancher’s horse whinnied in terror as she approached. She could smell its fear, adding a primal surge to her chase. The rancher tried to calm it and then fired again, missing to her right and spattering dirt against her side from where the bullet dug into the ground. He pumped his weapon to load in another bullet and she realized he had a shotgun, not a rifle, even though she wasn’t sure what that meant.
The horse reared up beneath him, sending him flying off its back and slamming into the ground hard enough she heard the air explode from his lungs. His shotgun went off again, firing into the air. His horse came down and ran, galloping hard and kicking dirt back that slapped the fallen ranger to add insult to injury.
Crystal crouched low, losing sight of the rancher for a moment before she pushed off the ground. She sailed over the fence and landed just past the rancher. She spun, sliding and nearly going down in her haste to turn and be on him. His gun roared, leaving a ringing in her ears and making her feel like she’d been slapped in the head with a baseball bat.
Crystal shook her head and jumped forward. Her left leg trembled and burned when she came down on it. He’d shot her, the son of a bitch. She growled, pushed herself onto him, knocking the shotgun out of the way and then stepping on it while he struggled. He cried out, yelling without saying anything in a modern language. He was speaking a primal language, one she could understand all too well. He reeked of terror and desperation.
Crystal’s teeth closed on the neck of the beaten man. She hesitated, her tongue tasting the sweat and dirt on his skin. He froze beneath her, his body tight in its final expectation of life. She growled and felt him shudder and collapse beneath her. It only took a few excited breaths before she smelled his terror in another way. His bladder released and soaked his pants.
Crystal growled again and snorted. He whimpered as her snort put extra pressure from her teeth on his neck. She released her grip and pulled her head back so she could glare at him.
“Please!” he begged in a whisper. “I won’t shoot no wolf ever again, I promise!”
Crystal snorted and turned to look at his gun.
“You understand me!” he breathed.
She swung her head back and glared at him. She nipped at the air, sending him jerking back and forcing his head to strike the ground. He grunted and closed his eyes at the impact, giving her a chance to turn and try to pick up the shotgun in her jaws. She could manage it, but it was long and heavy. Too awkward to carry. She heard him gasp again and decided to drop it.
She couldn’t pick it up and she couldn’t bite through it. She might be special, but she didn’t have that kind of strength! At least she didn’t think she did. She wasn’t going to try to find out she was wrong in front of this guy. She pawed the ground and felt a numb tingle in her shoulder, reminding her he’d hit her. It didn’t hurt too much, just a dull ache. Maybe he’d grazed her?
Crystal returned her attention to the gun and then looked up at him. He shook his head. “I won’t shoot, I promise!”
Crystal snarled and moved sideways until she felt her left hind paw brush against it. She picked her leg up and straddled it before squatting down and snarling at him while she forced her bladder to release. There was no way she could have done it on two legs—the sheer embarrassment alone would have killed her. On four legs, as a wolf, it felt like something she should do. Like she was saying he didn’t have any right to it anymore. She straightened and stared at him as he gawked at her.
“You just pissed on my gun,” he breathed. Louder, he said, “Holy shit! A wolf done just peed on my gun! Nobody’s ever gonna believe this.”
Crystal took a step closer to him, shutting him up. She snapped her teeth together again and then turned away and ran. Her shoulder hurt at first but each step worked the ache out of it. She focused as best she could while she ran on, making the pain go away, and soon was moving smoothly again.
She glanced back once, as she neared the edge of the field she’d run through when he’d first shot at her. She saw him sitting up and staring at her. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t picked up his gun. She huffed and took off again, running away from him and heading to the northwest.
If she could teach a rancher not to shoot at wolves, maybe she could teach people they didn’t need to hate each other for being different.
Chapter 18
Crystal kept to the afternoon shadows as she crept through the rural neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Sirens sounded from time to time, keeping everyone looking off in the distance. The distraction helped her and scared her. She knew it was the pack hunting. Her pack, whether she liked them right now or not.
How many times had Ember or Hank saved her? Or the rest of them? How many times had they been there to help her? Sure, she didn’t approve of what they were doing right now, but that didn’t mean they were her enemies. They were her pack. Her blood. Her family. She didn’t have to always like them to be a part of them.
That’s why she breathed a sigh of relief when she walked alongside the house and saw the garage door was shut and Stephanie’s car was in the driveway. More importantly, there weren’t any motorcycles parked on the street.
Crystal backed up and glanced back and forth. The street was empty and nobody was tending their lawns. Was it because Guntar had declared war on the paladins, or was it because the hottest part of the afternoon was just passing? Her fur kept her protected from the sun but too much running, she�
�d discovered, made her pant. It felt weird, panting, but it also helped cool her down. Not as much as the stream she’d run through before she made it to town, but it helped.
Crystal huffed to herself, knowing that her time was limited. If they couldn’t lure Mr. Edgerton out, they’d come to his house. She was pretty sure they’d wait until dark, but not sure enough. Every minute she wasted was a minute where she might not be able to stop a tragedy from happening.
Crystal took off at a run, bursting out from the shadows of the house and streaking between a pair of parked Cadillacs. She raced across the street, her ears back and body low to the ground for speed. She made it without hearing any screams or, more importantly, anyone shooting at her, and dug her feet into the yard beside the driveway to run even faster. She reached the infamous gate to the backyard that had given her so much trouble before and leapt up.
Crystal’s front paws touched the edge and corrected the direction she was headed. She pulled her hind legs up to her body until she was sure she was past the gate, and then dropped them down in time to land on the ground and absorb the impact. She took a few more steps to slow to a stop and let out a huff of victory. She’d beaten the gate!
Crystal looked around and froze when her eyes fell on the shed at the back of the lot. It was tucked back in the corner and mostly shaded by the fence. Vines and tall grass surrounded it, giving it a menacing look. The grass was ornamental, she knew, but with the experience she had, it was easy to imagine it as overgrown and haunted. She wondered how many other people had died inside the small tool shed.
“Holy shit!”
Crystal spun and saw Jimmy, Stephanie’s younger brother, staring at her from the edge of the pool. He stared at her with his mouth open, gawking. Behind him on a reclined beach chair, Stephanie picked her head up from where she’d been tanning and scowled at him. She opened her mouth to snap at him when he raised a hand and pointed at Crystal.
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