by Debra Dunbar
I threw the statue, but what truly saved me from being shot full of holes was the pup who had been pushed backward and onto the stairs. He’d landed hard, then with the speed and strength of an adult werewolf, he kicked the human in the ass, sending the man tumbling down the steps.
The statue clattered behind him, thankfully missing the child. The gunfire blew drywall chunks in a line across the foyer. Before he could bring the gun around, I was on him, stomping his wrist, then grabbing his head and twisting.
It wasn’t as satisfying as sinking my fangs into his neck, but dead was dead, and I was sure if one of them had snuck in to grab this child, others would be doing the same.
“Can you shoot?” I asked the kid. He nodded, so I reached down and grabbed the rifle, shoving it into his hands. “Get in the bathroom, lock the door, and hunker down in the tub. If anyone human tries to open the door, shoot him. Got it?”
He nodded again and I ran, wincing as I realized I’d just given a ten-year-old child an assault rifle with bullets magically coated to kill werewolves. It was too late for me to regret what was probably a very bad decision, though.
The next house had a broken-in door, and the two children were gone. I noted signs of a struggle—dented drywall, scratches, a door half off the hinges. Running to the next house I saw a man leaving, carrying a struggling child in his arms, a dish cloth jammed in the kid’s mouth. Putting on a burst of speed I tackled the guy. The kid went flying, rolling across the pavement and pawing at his face to dislodge the dishcloth.
“Run,” I told him, using my knee to hold the guy’s gun arm pinned down as I grabbed his head and smashed it onto the pavement. He had a helmet on, so it took considerable force for me to crack the thing and then crack his skull. We’d need to patch the asphalt in that section of the driveway. Oh well.
A flash of light caught my eye and I launched myself off the dead guy, running through the compound and behind the dormitory. A bullet grazed my ear, and I felt blood trickle down my neck and shoulder. My beast roared to get out, to kill them all, but I needed control—control it was becoming harder to maintain. The bullet wound burned and refused to instantly heal, but the blood clotted, and the cloying scent of dead flesh and infection slowly reversed.
Karl had been wrong. The bullets did affect me, but not to the degree that they affected the other shifters. For once my fucked-up DNA worked in my favor.
I rounded the corner and saw them—three men, one holding a gun, one with a baby in his arms, the other holding Mir.
She looked pissed. There was blood on her head from a wound that had already healed. Her hands were twisted behind her back and upward. Mir was strong, and I knew she would risk getting shot, even getting killed, to free herself and rip these assholes to shreds. What was stopping her was that the gun in the one man’s hands was pointing at the baby.
It stopped me too. It didn’t stop my beast. My fragile control shredded, and I felt my skin tear, bones and muscles pop as I shifted. It would have taken other werewolves twenty minutes. It took me seconds. And from the expression on the humans’, as well as Mir’s, face, the form I was assuming wasn’t a wolf.
Whatever it was, my beast was pretty damned confident that whoever held that gun on the baby would be turning it to shoot me instead. That would free up Mir to attack. And my beast was so furious, so lost in rage at this moment, that the guy could have had an endless supply of bullets in that magazine and he wouldn’t have stopped me. I was going to kill the both of them.
But the guy with the gun didn’t point it at me, he kept it on the baby, shouting at someone to hurry. My beast sprang forward in spite of my panicked protests, ready to sacrifice the baby if needed. The man holding Mir pulled something out of his pocket—something that looked like a stone with carvings in gold on the surface. Then he shouted words in an unfamiliar language. There was a flash of light that blinded me, the smell of burning hair. I felt myself fly through the air where there had once been three humans and crash, skidding nose-first across the ground.
Gone. They were gone. They’d taken Mir and a baby and vanished. My beast went insane with grief and fury, and pushed the rest of me down, taking control of my body. Everything healed—the remaining injury to my ear, the road rash, the broken tooth. It all healed in a blink and I rose to four legs, feeling my size stretch and expand, horns bursting from my head, curls of smoke puffing from my nostrils. Huge claws dug deep into the ground, I lifted my head to the sky, and I roared.
Chapter 22
The rest was a blur. I ran through the courtyard, across the compound, circling around buildings and attacking every human I saw. They were in pairs or small groups, and each time I took one down, his friends turned their weapons on me. I felt the burn of the magic, and stamped it down, healing slower than I would normally have, but still healing. As many times as they shot me, I kept going, bullets hitting the ground with a metallic clink as my body rejected them and healed. I was fast and efficient, quickly snapping spines, opening arteries, and crushing skulls, then turning to the next attacker. With each group, they’d quickly realize that their bullets weren’t taking me down, then they’d try to run. I was too fast for them. One guy managed to shout something into a walkie-talkie before I killed him. After that, the hunters began to disappear with the same strange words and gold-etched stones as the guys who’d taken Mir. I quickly realized that not every one of them had such a device, and that quite a few humans were running, frantically trying to find those who did so they could escape with them. When I saw one pull a stone from his pocket, I tried to take him down first, hoping that if I killed the ones with the teleportation devices, the others would be trapped here—trapped with me.
My pack was as terrified of me as the humans were, and rightfully so. If one of them had accidently been in my way, I would have killed him or her without a second thought. What had started as “kill the humans, they’ve taken Mir” was now just a gleeful celebration of blood and slaughter, of death by my claws and teeth.
My pack mates must have realized this because they stayed out of my way, circling with their fur standing straight up on their necks as they herded the humans inward toward me, killing those they could and leaving the rest for me to deal with.
I rounded the dining hall and saw a group of hunters converging in a central area. One took out a stone, and I launched myself at him, a blur of speed. The stone clattered to the ground as I landed on top of him and sank my teeth into the Kevlar plates and into his chest.
The other humans screamed, a few trying to grab the stone, while the others shot me. There must have been six of them, and six attackers unloading fully automatic weapons on me was having an effect. It wouldn’t kill me, but it was hard to bite through this fucking protective vest while projectiles were filling me full of holes.
The bullets ripped my flesh. There was a burning pain, a nearly uncontrollable urge to revert to a wolf form instead of whatever the hell it was my beast had decided to become. It was as if I had a horrible itch and was desperate to scratch it. These bullets hurt. The hunters were running and screaming, the few of them that were left. And I was determined to make sure none of them made it out of here alive.
I was too late. One of the men had grabbed the stone before I’d finished killing the guy with the protective vest and ran toward the others. As soon as he reached them, he shouted the words to the spell and four of the six vanished, leaving two behind.
One of the abandoned humans froze, his head tilting upward as I rose to my feet. He shot me a few times, backing up as quickly as he could. Then he dropped the rifle, spun about and ran.
My claws tore chunks from the pavement as I pursued him, careful not to get so close that he’d lose any hope of getting away. Chasing was such an adrenaline rush, especially when flavored with the hunter’s fear and his optimism that he might actually have a chance of getting out of this alive. I have very little patience, so before he’d reached the edge of the compound, I was on him, pressing him to th
e ground as he screamed and cried. It was too much—too much excitement, so I indulged in my desires, sinking my claws deep into his shoulders and clamping my jaws on his neck.
His head came off, because I’d forgotten how fragile these silly humans were. Blood geysered everywhere and I lapped at it as if I were drinking from a fountain. Then another human caught my eye. He was standing over a small cream-colored wolf, aiming his rifle for the kill shot. In seconds I was on him, crushing his rifle in my jaws before knocking him down. He scrambled to his feet, looking at the destroyed rifle before trying to run.
I snarled and snapped my teeth. Then with a leap and a swipe of my paw, the hunter was down with me straddling him. His soft flesh called to me as he pounded and kicked me. I batted him with soft paws, just to play a bit before I killed him.
Mills.
I let just enough claws out to scratch the man’s skin and tear his clothing. His hands gripped my neck, fingers sinking into my thick fur as he tried to hold me away from the soft skin of his face and neck. I let him think just for a second that his strength would be enough, then eased my head down, fangs bared.
Tupper. Tupper don’t kill this one. Stop.
The words were like an annoying fly buzzing around my head. I let my hot breath wash over the man’s face.
Tupper.
There was a collective gasp as I felt a hand on my back. I tensed, expecting to be pulled backward, expecting the assertive dominance of an Alpha. But instead the hand stroked me, fingers tickling through my fur and lightly scratching my back.
I’d never known the soothing touch of a parent, but even through my bloodlust, I could tell this wasn’t the same. This touching was intimate, reassuring, as if the person behind the hand didn’t condemn me for what I was, as if they understood. It was the hand of a lover. Not just a sexual partner where physical gratification was a primary goal, but someone for whom touch was both sensual and emotional.
Tupper, we need him alive. Let him live.
I looked down at my human hands, fingers white as they gripped the man’s torn shirt. Blood covered my skin, dripping down my face. I tasted the copper on my tongue and along my teeth. The man beneath me was still struggling, trying in vain to push me off of him. I grinned down at him, licking the blood from my lips.
And all the while, that hand kept stroking my back, my very naked back.
“Nice job, Tupper. Now get off him, please. We need to have a few words with this man.”
I looked up into the startling blue eyes of my Alpha. There was no fear in his face, no uneasiness, no shock over what he’d just witnessed. I’d completely let my beast off-leash. She’d killed with the sort of reckless and joyful abandon that I’d always been terrified of anyone witnessing. But in spite of that, Jake’s expression was warm and loving. His hand left my back and I felt my world tilt to the side. I needed his hand. I needed him touching me. I needed him like I’d never needed anyone in my life before.
“They took them,” I told him, my voice rough. “I guarded the kids, but they took Mir and a baby and I lost it. I just went crazy.”
I felt sick at the thought. I’d gone crazy, gone on a killing spree and left the children unguarded. If more had been taken, if any had been killed, it would be all my fault.
“You did a good job, Tupper,” he insisted. “Can you help interrogate this guy with me? Do you need to take a moment?”
A moment and do what? I guess clean up, put on some new clothes, maybe become less of a psycho. I stood and staggered a few steps away from the man on the ground, not really trusting myself to say anything at the moment.
They took Mir. They took Mir. I need to get Mir back. I need to save Mir.
I did, but I needed Jake to help me because I sucked at strategy. Case in point, I’d been ready to kill this guy, the only survivor of my rampage, and if I had we would never be able to find out where the hunters had taken Mir and the baby.
Jaimie stood to his side ten feet back, and her expression was not impassive. She stared at me, shock and horror in her face. From her I felt the slight tendril of fear, although she quickly hid it. I looked around at the rest of the pack. Many were tending to the injured who were still in their wolf forms, but the others stood in a ring around us, their expressions mirroring Jamie’s.
I stood back while Jake pulled the man to his feet, then followed as he and Jamie hauled him along.
As we walked, my pack edged away from me any time I came too near one of them. I’d never had my beast loose like this before. Never. They were terrified of me. They’d seen exactly what I could do and how little control I had over my baser instincts. They knew I was dangerous before, but now I was a threat to them all. I knew every last one of them wondered what might set me off, what minor incident might cause me to snap and tear through the pack like a rabid monster. I knew they’d want me dead.
I’d started out this morning thinking I finally had a pack to call my own, an Alpha strong enough to manage me, a lover that was my equal. Now I wasn’t sure I had any of those.
Chapter 23
Jake had dragged our prisoner across the compound and back behind the incinerator where the bear-proof dumpsters lived. It was a good spot for an interrogation, and just to make it clear what I thought we should do with this guy, I fired up the incinerator.
Jamie didn’t protest my tagging along. Other than Jake and I, Jamie was the only one present. Everyone else was off taking care of any wounded that needed assistance, or checking to make a count of who had been taken and who we’d lost to the hunters.
I had no idea how many of our pack were dead. And injured…was there enough of that antidote stuff to heal those who weren’t already dead? Was there a limit to what that stuff could counteract? I remembered the bullets that had hit me, still feeling the wounds that were taking what felt like forever to heal. Then I thought of Mir, praying that she was still alive. She had to be alive. They wouldn’t have taken her just to shoot her in the head, would they?
Mir is gone! My beast was nearly insane with panic and rage. My friend. My only friend and they’d taken her. The only consolation was that if they wanted her dead, they would have shot her and left her body with the others in the compound. There was a reason they wanted Mir and that baby alive, a reason they’d been trying to take the children rather than just killing them. Whether it was for ransom and negotiation or to sell on the black market, or for other nefarious purposes, I couldn’t think of that right now. The only thing keeping me sane was the conviction that Mir was alive. I’d rescue her. Gwylla would heal any of her wounds if she’d been shot and we ran out of antidote. Fuck, I’d haul her off to an angel if I had to. Anything for Mir to be okay.
Jake propped our prisoner against a dumpster. He wasn’t tied, since we could easily catch him if he tried to run for it, and without his weapons, there was little he could do to hurt us. He was fucked, and he knew it. His chin might be up, but there was a slight tremble to his jaw that I didn’t miss.
“Why did you attack us?” Jake asked.
The guy sneered. “Because you’re monsters that never should have been born. Because the world will be a better place once you and the rest of these scum are gone.”
Well, that was no surprise.
“You failed,” Jake told him. “Even with the special bullets and a small army, we still managed to kill almost all of you.”
His eyes slid to me and I knew what he was thinking. Things could have gone differently if I hadn’t gone on a berserk killing rampage, if there hadn’t been an almost-demon in a pack of werewolves. I was beating myself up over having lost Mir and a baby and potentially more children, but my spree had probably saved werewolf lives.
“We’ll eventually kill all of you, and the ones we shot will eventually die,” the man vowed. “There’s nothing you can do to save them.”
“That’s where someone’s been lying to you.” Jake leaned over the man. “Two shifters that were shot in Kenai survived. One shot in Juneau survived.
We’ve got an antidote. And we’ve also got a healer with more magic than you planned for, and between the magic potions and our healer, those who you wounded will survive.”
I hoped Jake was right, but in my heart I worried that many had died before they’d ever had the chance to drink that jewel-like liquid.
“Still killed a lot of you,” the man countered. “And we would have killed a lot more if…” He looked over my way. “What is she? She’s not a shifter.”
“I’m a monster,” I told him, walking close. “Where did you take the girl and the others? Where are they?”
He smiled. “They’re as good as dead. And next time we’ll be ready for you. We’ve got ammunition that can take out an angel. You won’t bounce back from that one, wolf-monster.”
I looked up at Jake, wondering if the guy was bluffing. From the expression on my Alpha’s face, the man wasn’t. Bullets that could kill an angel? I should be flattered that they’d think to waste such a thing on me, but instead I was calculating how many of these fuckers I could take down before they managed to shoot me with something that actually ended my life.
“Where. Are. They?”
I shivered at the look in Jake’s eyes. The man held his gaze for a few seconds then looked down. “Dead. You’re all dead. It’s just a matter of time.”
Jake stood back and stared at the man. “Jamie, would you go check on the others? See if any children besides Mir and that baby were taken?”
Jamie paled, shooting the man a sympathetic glance. “Will do.”
She left and I remained, determined to stay until Jake told me to go. Actually I’d probably argue with him to stay even if he tried to send me off. I was barely in control of my beast now. If he tried to make me leave, she’d rip through and start killing again.
