Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  And then finally when we stood over them, blood dripping from our human skin, our wolf fangs and claws at the ready.

  I knew what thrill killing was. For a predator, making a kill, ripping out the prey’s throat, feeling that hot rush of blood, there was nothing like it. In the presence of gentle, domesticated animals, it could be a hard impulse to control. Everything that made them strong, able to fight their way free of our grips, was bred out carefully over generations. The Engel brothers were no cows or sheep, but after the blood singing struggle that wasn’t one, they lay beneath our collective gaze as if they were.

  “You… You… Dad…” Baz panted out, blood leaching sluggishly into the dirt.

  “Your dad told us where to find you,” Lorcan said. “He knew what was gonna happen. That’s the thing with being a fucking Engel. In the city or anywhere else, you’d be flunkies and thugs. Low level shit kickers directed at enemies by someone with a fuck load more brains than you. Instead, you languish in Lupindorf, protected somehow, but no one protects you from each other. That’s why they hate us—we’ve no loyalty and none of the sense the Mother gave a cat, just an uninterrupted desire to survive. You were sacrificed like pawns on a board. This way, Gary appeases both powers in town. You followed Nance’s orders, and now you’ll be executed for doing exactly that.”

  “Fucking…cunt!” Jim strangled out, but his and his brothers’ words all became mangled as Lorcan and I stepped forward, dropped to our knees, and took wolf form again for one final strike.

  For a moment, I just panted, my jaws and fur matted with blood. I was fucking drowning in it. But it was Bridget’s broken pants that had my wolf eyes flicking up, then over she went, falling heavily to the ground and vomiting into the white dirt. I was up and rolling into my human form moments later, then shoving a finger down her throat to clear airways that had been bruising and filled full of blood.

  “It’s OK…” I said in a shaking voice that indicated anything but. “It’ll be OK now.”

  “She can’t breathe properly. She needs to shift,” Zack said, sliding down beside her. “I’ll reset her nose.” Bridget clawed helplessly at him as he inspected her face. “It’ll fucking hurt, but her nasal pathways are compromised.”

  “Or?” I asked with an imperiousness I didn’t feel. His eyes slid to the others, Micah stepping forward finally.

  “Make her shift. It won’t heal everything, but it’ll help. You’ve got the dominance and the blood. Force her.”

  He held out a hand, and mine fit in his as a matter of course, Zack’s slapping down on my other, while the rest linked up around my frantically wheezing cousin. As soon as we linked, I felt it—a power. All of us carried a reservoir of it, being the creatures of myth and magic that we were, but as each hand joined another’s, something more rose. Big and unwieldy, like a leviathan rising out of the dark, it came.

  Us.

  It would get bigger than this. We truly would become greater than the sum of our parts when I had taken each one of them as mates, but right now, I had to pray we were enough.

  Shift…

  Like a far-off explosion, the command pulsed outwards, through the trees and over rocks, arrowing into my cousin. It had a weight to it, our compulsion, but what we were trying to do, it would take more than that. Her mind, her body, something fought the unnatural push.

  Shift…

  What was within us grew like a tidal wave stirred up by artificial forces, sweeping with a momentum of its own, but she fought it. Her wolf, her, they’d been pushed and beaten and manhandled enough. What was left inside her dug in its paws and prepared to fight.

  Shift…

  I felt the strain, the shake in bodies already worked hard. I felt hers tremble, at what we asked and at what she’d been through, but all her energy was directed at us, not her shift. I caught it, nightmarish glimpses of what Peters and Nance had done to her own daughter, and knew in the jumbled haze of her mind, we were just another abuser.

  Shift…

  My heart felt like it slowed with each push, labouring now to force the issue, but Bridget pushed back. “No one makes me do anything I don’t want.” Bridget’s words reverberated in my mind, reminding me of why this was never going to succeed.

  Bridget wasn’t susceptible to dominance, otherwise she’d have been an empty-eyed doll just like Selma. We were never going to force her to do anything, but we’d put something in motion together, something I still didn’t understand, and it carried with it a momentum of its own. We needed to pull away, disengage but…

  Shift…

  I struggled to release my mates’ hands while they fought to do the same. This had been poorly thought out. We were asking too much, too soon. Hadn’t we already used up the coiled power of our wolf forms to fight this battle? Wasn’t now the time to rest? Shouldn’t we have been rushing Bridget to the nearest hospital, to let the humans with their tubes and machines help her breathe?

  Shift…

  “Paige…” Declan groaned as we all did, feeling the swell of what we were trying to generate either sweep over us or threaten to suck us down. We had overcommitted. Bridget’s body, mind, and animal fought us because it was stuck in a cycle of fight or flight and we were the only thing left to make an enemy.

  “Fuck!” Lorcan ground out. I felt how every muscle in his body shook with the effort of what we required, but they all did. It took blood pattering on the forest floor, dripping from people’s noses, to make my hands jerk, needing to be free. But my hands stuck to Micah and Zack’s like glue, the muscles spasming erratically, no longer able to obey my mind’s orders, but I didn’t know why. As my heart raced and my body rioted, it occurred to me that we were connected. Bridget, the guys, and me, we were locked into some kind of fight I never wanted to wage.

  Bridge… I pleaded, my breath coming in great ragged gulps. Please…let us go, shift. I didn’t know, and I could no longer care. Whatever we had decided to fuse with, it was taking us down. It felt like we had been welded together, imperfect and forced, and through it an unearthly power rushed. But at what price? I heard wet coughs as blood filled my nostrils until my own joined it until finally.

  “NO!”

  Mason jerked free of the circle with a strength I couldn’t understand, breaking the loop for long enough that the rest of us could stagger free. The forest rushed back in, too bright, too intense, my eyes going to slits as the tears streamed. But he didn’t just save us, did he? He was still connected. I saw it in the way he slumped down onto his knees, crawling through the dirt to my cousin. His pace was jerky and spasmodic, blood gushing from his nose. He needed to break the connection, not complete it, but…

  “No…” The word was garbled and choked with blood I spat on the ground as I watched my cousin’s body arch like a bow, shaking and twitching until his hand slapped down on her chest.

  “SHIFT!”

  I felt the prickle of power washing over my skin like rain, clearing away the gore and the mess, then my cousin’s skin turned to fur right as he collapsed down upon her.

  Wolf Bridget looked up at me mournfully, whining before licking the side of the unconscious man’s face.

  Chapter 19

  For a second, I just stared, looking down at two people I loved, one barely breathing, the other hurt badly despite being in fur, and I couldn’t move. I just stared, unable to reconcile what I was seeing, my brain transposing dizzying, disorientating memories of Dad in hospital, shrouded by tubes and blankets.

  “Paige!” Declan cried, snapping me out of it, my knees giving out as I dropped down beside them.

  “Mason…” I said his name tentatively, knowing he wouldn’t answer but wishing he would. Dec and I rolled him over, brushing the dirt from his face, then Declan put his ear to Mason’s chest.

  “He’s still breathing. Just,” he announced. “We need to get him in the car, both of them.”

  “You guys take him in the 4WD, we’ll take Bridget in the Toyota, assuming it runs,” Micah said.
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  “He…” Zack had the same shell-shocked expression as mine, his eyes wide and unseeing as he looked down at us. He blinked, obviously yanking his focus back. “He needs a hospital.”

  “We’ll get him to Lupindorf Hos—” Declan started with some irritation, nodding to Lorcan and Micah to help him pick up Mason.

  “No.” Everyone froze at my word. “We’re as close to Berkefeld as we are home, and I trust the humans there more than I do my own people. We head to Berkefeld.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  More interminably long road trips. I sat in the backseat with Zack, Mason spread across our bodies, and cradled my arms around his head, hating the loose way it rolled with the car’s movement. I stroked my fingers through his hair, dislodging sandy soil and twigs, watching the air go in and out of his lungs much too slowly, hanging on every breath.

  “We fucked up,” Zack said in a tone so perfectly flat. There was no inflection, no emphasis, just endless fucking pain. “We were never going to be able to force Bridget. Her own bloody mother couldn’t. We committed to something…”

  “And she nearly pulled everything we are out of us fighting it,” I agreed grimly. “I didn’t even know we could do that.” I shook my head. “So why did this happen? He broke her hold.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Zack said softly. “If I had to take a guess, he broke our connections, but not his.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he knew someone was going to go under for our mistake,” Declan said, looking into the rear vision mirror as he drove. “And he didn’t want it to be all of us.”

  I smoothed a shaking hand down the side of Mason’s face, over and over, until we reached the hospital.

  “Mrs Klein?”

  I jumped up as the doctor pushed through the somehow forbidding swinging doors that led into the treatment rooms. I’d passed myself off as Mason’s wife to make sure all information came to me.

  “We’ve done some scans on your husband, and it appears he’s in a coma. He injured his head when you were rescuing your cousin?”

  “Yeah,” I croaked out, finding it too hard to squeeze anything else past my swollen throat.

  “We’re in the process of examining her as well. I…” The man stiffened, as if bracing himself for what he was about to ask. “I have to ask—should we conduct a rape kit?”

  Just a few words, but oh so powerful. They hit me in my midsection more effectively than if he’d wound up a fist and drove it in. I nodded, feeling the tears I’d been holding back start to well. My tear ducts burned like acid with the effort of stopping them from falling. The doctor’s eyes softened, a hand moving to reach out and—

  “Yes,” I said, clearly and concisely. “I think you should.”

  “Very well. Your husband is stabilised for now while we do some more tests.” He saw my lips part, ready to ask, but preempted me by saying, “You’ll be able to see him soon. I’ll need to make a report to the police.”

  “Of course. And we need to talk to them.”

  “So I’m gonna drive out to one of the pine plantations and find three dead men savaged by dogs?” the police officer asked.

  We were still sitting in the hospital waiting room, quite a few other people seated in the long rows of connected chairs waiting to be seen. Two police officers had approached us, introduced themselves, then began their interrogation.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I assume they were the Engel brothers’ dogs. Perhaps in the scuffle, they got fired up and attacked.”

  “Their masters?”

  “My mum is an Engel,” Lorcan said. “Trust me when I say those boys weren’t smart. Those dogs, they were half feral. Not proper trained attack dogs, just bad tempered, half-starved savage things that had a go at us first.” He showed the scratches and wounds he’d gotten, throwing himself into the fray. “And when the tide turned, they attacked their masters.”

  “Right, well, we’ll go out, use the mud map you’ve provided, and establish the crime scene. You’re staying in the area?” the officer asked.

  “Lupindorf,” I replied.

  The man stilled at that, casting an eye over the five of us, seeming to take in more details than he had when we told him our version of what had happened.

  “Spehr…” The officer tapped his pen against his notebook. “Any relation to Adam Spehr?”

  “He was… He was my father.”

  Declan’s hand rubbed across my shoulders in slow sweeps.

  “That right?” His eyes sharpened as he took me in. “Seems like from this map you were about halfway between home and here. Why not drive everyone back to Lupindorf? Hospital’s bigger.”

  “I was told my cousin had left for the city to study full time. Instead, some of the local thugs took her to the old shack to rape and kill her. I need justice.”

  “I’ll have to make contact with your local police as a courtesy.”

  “You do that, officer.”

  And so we sat, waiting and waiting and waiting, until finally, we could go and see them.

  “I’ve put Ms Spher up in a private room, but she’s…” the doctor said as we paused in front of a closed door. The echoing halls and the hard reflective surfaces bounced back every sound. “She’s obviously traumatised by what happened. I would suggest only family at this stage, Mrs Klein.”

  “But not my aunt. If she gets wind of this, if she comes here…” I said, forcing dominance into my words. It worked on humans as well, if required. That…hurt somehow, like the feeling of an overstrained muscle.

  “Of course,” he replied politely and then opened the door.

  Bridge was near unrecognisable. Not so much because of the injuries, though they were plentiful, but due to the way she scuttled back in her bed, pressing her back into the corner and tucking all of her limbs in tight.

  “Bridge?” I said gently, but she just eyed us suspiciously.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes,” the doctor said and disappeared out the door.

  “Hey…” I pulled up a chair and sat back from the bed, giving her plenty of space and keeping my head lower than hers. It was something wolf shifters did to show respect or to reassure. “Bridge…” What could I say that was not completely banal and prosaic? “Are you OK?”

  “Did you know?”

  There was none of my cousin in her voice. All the warm humour and mischief had been scrubbed away, replaced by a hoarse growl. Her throat’s been torn up by screaming, I realised.

  “When Nance and Selma showed up in the town meeting, I figured something had happened. The way she tells it, you’re gay, unable to stand living at home anymore, and are headed to the big smoke to study full time.”

  The sound that came from her next was so odd, it took a bit for me to interpret. A harsh snort or bark, it was almost a wheeze. That’s laughter, I thought. But what a grim sound that was.

  “So I’m the one—” Her words were cut off by a racking cough. I was up and out of my seat without thinking, grabbing a jug and a cup to pour her some water, but her eyes went wide at the movement. I paused, put both of them down slowly until she nodded. I poured the water, leaning over to hand it to her, and she drank it down greedily.

  “You killed them,” she said finally.

  “Yes.”

  “This isn’t the local hospital.”

  “No, we’re in Berkefeld.”

  “You want to avoid Mum and her cronies.”

  “I want justice,” I said definitively.

  Her smile, when it came, was a ghastly shadow of her old one.

  “You’ll have to kill her. It’s the only way. She will let nothing, absolutely nothing, get in her way of taking the alpha’s estate. Selma will be her puppet heir, and they’ll keep brainwashing Aidan into raping her over and over until she bears a daughter. That’d have been me if she could influence me at all,” she said with a shudder.

  I nodded slowly, making it clear I’d had the same thoughts.

  “Then you better sit down. I�
�ll tell you everything I know, but in exchange, I want one thing.” She fixed me with an unwavering gaze. “I’m not going back there. Not ever. That fucking town… The fucking bullshit that goes down… Never, you hear me? Never will I step foot in that place again. Promise me, Paige.”

  I thought about the position I’d found her, the sight of those fucking dicks clawing at her, Mason falling face forward into the dirt. I nodded, my jaw firming.

  “I promise, Bridge. I’ll get you away and free of this place. We’ll set you up somewhere safe.”

  “My dad did most of this,” she gestured vaguely to her face.

  “What? Bryan’s—”

  “Dead? Yeah, and I learned last night he’s not my father. Marshall is.”

  “Aidan’s dad?” I jerked back when I realised what that would mean. “So that would mean…” I recoiled in horror. Selma and Aidan were siblings?

  “Yeah, but just me. It’s where I get my gift as a null from. Mum worked out it was Marshall that had created the problem when she couldn’t coerce me, so she let Dad… Bryan sire Selma. He didn’t know, of course. Thought that both of us were his.” Her eyes softened. “I’m not sure if that would have mattered. Dad would have loved us either way. He was soft, too soft. She killed him, she let me know that.” She snorted. “I guess evil monologues where you confess your crimes are all par for the course when you’re murdering your daughter.”

  I remembered vaguely when Uncle Bryan died, as it wasn’t too many years after Mum. It was part of what had seemed to bring Bridge and me together and keep Selma apart from us. She was younger, quiet and unnaturally still through all of it, just staring at her father’s prone form through the vigil, unblinking. My hand slid hesitantly across the bed, waiting for her to reach out and take my hand. She squeezed the fingers hard.

  “She’s had this plan in play since she was a girl. Get rid of your mum, then Dad, then your dad when it looked like he was going to encourage your nix nature. Couldn’t stand for that. She was the answer, the way to ensure the Spehr legacy was retained. Initially, the plan was to have you go through the normal process and she would have made sure you selected Aidan.”