by Eden Myles
Seconds later, wracked with panic, Jill scrambled from the cave. Jace roared and plunged after her, much faster on his four feet than she was. Jill knew she couldn’t outrun him, so she did the only thing she could—she reached down for a large rock and swung around just as Jace reached her. She saw his burning, evil eyes in the last seconds before she pitched the rock as hard as she could into his face. She might have been in her human form, but she had more power behind her pitch than most major league pitchers. Jace yelped and fell away, his paws rubbing at his broken and bloodied nose.
Jill didn’t wait around to see him recover. She raced full tilt toward the gate, running faster than any human could. Jace let out an unearthly howl behind her and dashed after her. He might be faster than she, but Jill had a few seconds handicap and she reached the edge of the enclosure first.
There was no time to key in the security code; Jill vaulted to the top of the fence. It was just a little too high, even for a she-wolf, and she only made it three-quarters of the way up. She kicked out with her sneakered feet, clawing at the reinforced steel links as she struggled to make it over, but Jace, too, was nimble, and very, very determined.
Enraged. Or maybe en-lusted was a better word for what he had.
Just before she made it to the top, she felt his hot, stinking breath on her back, then his teeth clamping down around one of her legs like a steel trap full of scissoring teeth. The fabric of her jogging pants shredded, her skin tore. She heard the sound of her own flesh ripping. Suddenly, Jill’s entire body was alight with scorching pain. She couldn’t help herself. She screamed, head tilted back toward the gravid moon drifting carelessly overhead. Her cry ended on a high, primal note of pain and outrage, and every doglike creature in the sanctuary responded to it. For one moment, the night was skewered with a symphony of howls and yips.
She wanted to change—she needed to change—but her mind and body were wracked with too much pain for her to concentrate as Jace shook her like a terrier with a bone. She was whipped violently against the fence, then ripped away as Jace threw her down onto the ground with such force her breath was knocked from her pain-riddled body.
Weakness and panic overwhelmed her. She whimpered deep in her throat. Her head spun and she found herself choking on a fair bit of blood from what she figured were broken ribs, not that she had the luxury to contemplate her injuries. Somehow, she had landed in a pile of gory remains near the edge of the fence.
At first, she thought it was Roscoe, but then she recognized Al’s terrified expression stamped on his waxy white, lifeless face, his hands frozen into pitiful human claws as if he’d valiantly fought off the werewolf even as Jace tore into him like a crazed, blood-hungry machine. She cried out at the sight of him; his face and chest were shredded and covered in blood, but from the waist down he was simply…gone. Consumed. She tried to scramble up, but she wound up just skidding in Al’s blood. She could find no purchase…
“Jjjjjjiiiiiillllll…”
The familiar, subhuman cry left her flailing in blood-soaked terror. She had to get up the fence! But long before she could, Jace suddenly appeared, looming over her.
Jill growled and snapped at him with her human jaws, but he set his huge paw atop her chest, holding her down. She screamed and scratched at his face, but her pathetic human fingernails broke off as she encountered his thick hide.
Focus, Jill, focus! she chastised herself. She started to shift, but Jace casually leaned down and bit into her shoulder with his tusk-like teeth. She screamed until her voice broke and her entire body spasmed with the force of Jace’s bite. It wasn’t a fatal wound; she knew that. It was only meant to wound her so she was easier for him to handle.
Jill fell back, covered in blood and hiccupping with pain. She gasped through the agony riding her body hard up and down and looked up at Jace’s monstrous face. “Fuck…you…!” she spat.
“Miiiiiine,” the creature answered, slurring his words through a long muzzle of teeth never designed to speak human words.
“Never yours…!” she choked out. “You’re sick, Jace, and if you touch me, I’ll kill you!”
He ignored her and started licking her wound with a rough red tongue as large as a blanket. By then, Jill was beyond pain. Beyond panic. She felt numb all over as her body struggled to repair its wounds. She barely felt it as the werewolf began ripping at her sweat suit, nosing under the thin material to lick the blood that dripped between her breasts and down her belly. “Kill…you…!” Jill protested. She felt her fingernails lengthen at last, her rage slowly overcoming the pain wracking her body. “Stop!”
He didn’t stop. He licked down her body and between her legs. Jill screamed in protest. She could see how hard Jace was, how big his member as it swayed over her like the mast of a ship. There was no doubt in her mind what he wanted from her, what he meant to do to her. Whether or not he killed her afterward was an entirely arbitrary decision on his part.
Jill was no one’s victim! She hadn’t lived over sixty years by being weak.
With a snarl, she plunged her fingernails into Jace’s face, piercing one of his eyes like an olive on a skewer. Jace reared back and screamed. Jill followed through with a slash of long, bone-hard claws across his throat. They were still too small to do any real damage to the monster, but she was satisfied to see she’d drawn blood.
While Jace snarled and scraped at his face and throat, Jill rolled to her feet and slashed at the fence. The metal peeled apart easily and she slipped through the narrow aperture and raced for the Jeep. Within seconds, she was gunning the engine and rocketing down the road. Then she was driving at breakneck speed through the gates of the sanctuary and into the street, nearly hitting a vintage Cadillac as it rumbled by.
She moaned, her body full of twisting agony as her flesh busily worked on re-knitting the last of her injuries. She was frightened and alone, but grateful nonetheless. She was still alive. Yet a part of her wanted to go back. She had left Maya behind when she didn’t know if she was injured or her pups alive. She wanted to go back…but she knew, intellectually, that there was nothing she could do for them anyway, not in her present condition. She couldn’t fight Jace, and she didn’t have a gun powerful enough to put a feral werewolf down. The ranger station didn’t keep weapons like that, and she had nothing at the house—not even a Wolfsbane medallion to disable Jace.
Distantly, she heard Jace howling in pain and outrage, making the little hairs on her body stand at rigid attention. She was breathing raggedly through the blood and terror engulfing her. She knew her wounds were healing, but it was a slow process and she needed to find some place to hide and regroup. She needed to get to a safe place! Her first instinct was to drive home as quickly as possible, but there was real danger in doing that. If she went home, Jace would follow. He’d smell her blood. He’d find her easily, and then Ethan would be in mortal danger.
No, she couldn’t go home, not now. Maybe not ever.
Tears and blood blurred her vision, and she had to swerve to avoid hitting an oncoming car when she realized she’d drifted into the opposite lane. Christ, she was shaking like an epileptic! She didn’t know what to do or where to go!
Then she spied the cell phone on the seat beside her. She’d left it there when she’d gone to investigate Maya’s cries because the tracksuit she wore—now mere ribbons on her bruised and lacerated body—had no pockets. She scooped it up, her fingers squicking in the blood all over everything, and punched in a familiar number. She had to do it three times because she kept hitting the wrong numbers.
After three rings, a man picked up and said smoothly into the phone in his rough baritone, “Jillian? It’s your cell phone, isn’t it?”
“Giovanni? Oh, thank god. Thank you, Christ!”
“Jillian?” Giovanni sounded more concerned as he picked up on her panic. “What’s happened?”
Jill hiccupped on blood. “He’s found me, Giovanni. Jace found me. He attacked me. I can’t go home. I don’t know where to go!
”
There was a moment of profound silence while Giovanni considered. “Let me help you,” he said. Then he gave her instructions to meet him at a rest stop on Rt. 17 near Mahwah. “Can you make it there? Are you able to drive?”
“Y-yes,” she answered, still shaking so badly the Jeep veered dangerously over the double line.
“Are you certain?”
She took pains to concentrate, to get herself under control. The last thing she needed was to get into a bloody car accident on the highway. Jace would just take advantage of the chaos to abduct her. She knew all too well what he was capable of, the evil that festered in his brain and heart. Slowly, she reduced her speed to a more manageable level and told herself to calm down, to breathe in and out.
Soon she was calm enough to answer him. “Yes, Giovanni, I am. Meet me there. Or send one of your goons. I need protection.”
“I’ll be there myself. I’m heading out now,” he said, his voice clipped and no-nonsense.
“Thank you, Giovanni,” she told him. “Thank you so much.”
“After all we’ve been through, Jillian, it’s the least I can do.”
***
Chapter Three
The tinny bar of the song “She Wolf” woke Ethan close to morning. Grey early morning light was filtering through the curtains and spearing into his eyes, making vague shapes and shadowy lumps of everything in the bedroom. He rolled over and instinctively reached for Jilly. Not finding her, he grabbed for the cell on the nightstand, dragging it under the covers with him. “Hmm…yeah,” he mumbled.
“Ethan? Tell Jill we need her. There’s been a break-in.” It was Steve’s voice, the head ranger that Jill worked with.
“A break-in?” said Ethan, his head still fuzzy from sleep.
“Something got in, killed one of our red foxes.” His voice choked, then he began to speak rapid-fire. “And whatever it was, it was big and mean. It killed Al, our security guard, too. We think it might be a rabid bear, but we won’t know for certain until the coroner gets here. The police, animal control and CDC are also on their way. I tried phoning Jill, but she’s not picking up.” Steve stopped to let out his stuttered breath, clearly shaken by the morning’s events. “I know it’s her day off, Ethan, but I need her out here as soon as she can come. Under the circumstances, I think she’ll understand.”
Ethan slowly sat up as he tried to filter all this crazy info through his caffeine-deprived brain. A dead wolf. A rabid bear. A dead security officer. The CDC on their way. What the hell? “Why not call her, Steve?”
“Because she’s not picking up!” said Steve, sounding more panicked than ever.
“What…?” he began, and turned to find the other side of the bed wrinkled but empty. Something like his pulse ticked in his throat, and his stomach twisted in sudden alarm, but he told himself not to jump to conclusions. “Jill?” he said, calling toward the bathroom. “Jill, it’s Steve on the phone!” No one answered, so he got out of bed and padded over to push the door open. Nothing. He looked around, suddenly, completely, awake like he’d had a massive shot of espresso. “Jill!” he said, his voice louder now as he moved into the living room and then the kitchen.
The house was empty. Her keys and cell phone were gone. Where the hell was Jill?
“Why is she not picking up?” Steve asked.
“I don’t know, Steve. She’s not here. Maybe she’s on her way.”
“But I only just called! She can’t know.”
Ethan felt a surge of panic. His first thought was that Jilly’s disappearance had something to do with their fight last night, that she’d gotten mad and walked out on him, but that made no sense. Last night they’d made crazy love, and afterward they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Not exactly the M.O. of a pissed off woman. Besides, that really wasn’t Jill’s style. She was the very antithesis of passive-aggressiveness. If something bothered here, she came out and said it.
His second thought was that something had happened—an emergency, a break-in. Something bad. “Look, Steve, I’ll call you back,” he said and hit End even as Steve rattled off more of his concerns.
He called Jilly’s cell number, but just like Steve, got her voice inbox. He left a quick message before hanging up. Feeling more confused by the moment, he checked the house over for signs of a break-in, but everything seemed to be in order.
By the time he made it back to the bedroom, he was starting to feel more than panicked. A quiet kind of dread was slowly building inside him, but he worked at talking himself down. Probably Jilly had just gone out for a run. Jill was a huge fitness nut and loved to run in the early morning. She said it helped clear her mind and get her into the right mental place when dealing with the animals.
But why wouldn’t she be picking up her cell? an evil, traitorously paranoid part of his mind whispered.
A more reasonable part answered, Because she lost it. That’s why Steve can’t reach her. She dropped it in the park, or down a sewer grate. Hell, maybe she forgot to plug it in last night and it’s dead.
A lot of maybes.
He threw some clothes on and took off down the path toward the local park where Jilly liked to run, then backtracked when he realized her Jeep was gone from the driveway. So Jilly had taken the Jeep. But where to? It wasn’t like her to leave in the early morning without at least waking him up and telling him where she was off to.
His thoughts latched onto the most logical explanation. Maybe she went to get coffee and breakfast. Jill had one of the healthiest appetites he had ever seen. It wasn’t unusual for her to go for take-out at all hours of the day or night.
Hell, maybe she ran away because you harassed the shit out of her about having kids last night, you stupid knucklehead…
He paced back and forth in front of the house before giving her cell another call. More voice mail. He sent a text as a backup, even though Jill hated texting.
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. No answer.
Ethan Twofeathers stood in the middle of the sidewalk in sweatpants and a robe and bare feet, the sun barely up, staring witlessly at his phone as he willed it to ring—willed it to be Jill, telling him she was on her way home with coffee and bagels. A skateboarder on the way to school skirted past him, then a woman walking her dog. Both probably wondered why the scruffy-looking guy in the rumpled green robe was staring at his phone like an idiot.
What in hell had happened to Jill?
***
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