She was trying to get down. Trying to fight or run. She’d been too slow.
“Shit,” she exclaimed.
Wolves began leaping for her. Teeth snapped near her legs. She kicked, catching a wolf in the head.
The man dragged himself toward her, but something inside him was broken. Marcus waffled between the man and the woman. He wanted, most of all, to kill the man—but what about helping the woman?
What did he want more?
A wolf latched onto the woman’s pants. They tore off her limber, two-leg body. Blood decorated one of her legs. The wolves harassing her yelped with excitement as they smelled it. With a shriek, the metal pipe she clutched gave way, bending out and down with the woman still holding on.
She fumed and kicked. Blood droplets spattered the wolves below. The thin tube of metal, her lifeline, twisted and swayed—back and forth, as if in a high wind. She was barely out of the wolves’ reach.
Several gathered to spring. They’d have her.
The man Marcus wanted to kill had found a gun. He wouldn’t have to stand up to use it.
Marcus charged.
* * *
Katie braced for the pain of wolves ripping into her flesh as she dangled like a fishing lure on the broken metal pipe. A fitting end for Chang Cai—torn apart by transformed wolves.
The flashlight had revealed her getaway. Her knife was gone. The spell pods in her pants pockets were on the ground beneath the slavering wolves. The ferals hadn’t been driven mad by lust or violence this time. Oh, no. They’d been sicced on her by Lars.
She heard him cackling his approval right before the pipe broke.
Katie landed on a squirming wolf body. Bounced off, hit concrete. Someone howled. She folded herself into a tight ball and let her alpha side loose. If it bought her a few seconds, perhaps something new and amazing could go wrong.
Do not hurt me. Do not hurt me. Do not hurt me.
The wolves erupted into a giant free-for-all, as if her command had spurred them to kill instead of show mercy. The strange thing was they seemed to be killing each other.
Vicious snarls, howls, barks, whumps. Every moment she expected to feel teeth sink into her. She didn’t even have on any damn clothes! When her only wolf contact was to be repeatedly walloped by large, hairy bodies who then scrabbled away from her, she peered through cautious fingers.
Lars’s penlight wasn’t directed at her, so she couldn’t see much. Flashes of wolves struggling, jumping. Blood on the floor. The thin, bright beam paused ten feet past her, where a large black wolf, rangy and strong, leaped onto another wolf and savaged its throat.
“What are you crazy fuckers doing?” Lars screamed. “Quit fighting.”
Katie gulped. Several wolves trailed the black one. She could be the next victim if they noticed her. Should she run or would that draw attention? Make herself a target? Was one of these brawling wolves her father?
Where was Marcus?
Searching desperately for a solution, in the wavering light she spied a few spell pods that had rolled free of the pants. Green ones. Yellow ones.
A red one.
What could she do with the red one?
“Stop this nonsense,” Lars commanded. He’d probably broken a hip when she’d beaned him with the ladder, but that wouldn’t stop him from shooting guns—or directing his pack. He, like she, would use any tool he could to accomplish his goal.
It was what keepers did.
“Kill Chang Cai,” he insisted. “I am the director of the council. I rule you. I know you understand me, you damned, dirty mongrels. Do your job and perhaps I’ll let you live.”
Katie concentrated harder on the alpha persuasion Marcus had woken in her—she poured her strength and, what the hell, some magic into her effort.
Do not hurt me. Do not hurt me. Do not hurt me.
She imagined it flowing out of her like the waves of a spell. If only she had some lavender in her bra.
“Kill her, kill her,” Lars chanted. “If you don’t kill her, I’ll kill you all. Hey, what are you doing?”
Apparently “you” was barking and growling. Lars yelled. The light blinked out. Gunfire erupted close by. Wolves yelped. The asshole didn’t seem to care who or what he shot.
Katie inched toward the place she’d seen pods. Her knees and hands squished in liquid, syrupy blood, warm on the cold floor. As she crept, she simultaneously commanded the wolves not to hurt her—and tried to keep the tussling beasts between her and Lars.
She had no idea why her influence was making them fight each other when all she wanted was for them to leave her alone. Well, it would be nice if they’d take out Lars, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“Kill the woman,” he shrieked.
The flashlight guttered back on. Katie, staying low, bumped into a crouching, hairy body. A wolf. It growled fiercely. One of its fellow wolves had bitten it in the leg. Blood trickled onto the concrete.
That didn’t stop it from attacking her. Jaws gaped.
Katie smashed the cayenne pod into the wolf’s muzzle. Magic popped through her and the spell components. The wolf yelped once and collapsed.
“Who’s using magic?” Lars asked.
The bright beam fell on Katie. Beside her twitching victim, she froze and glanced toward Lars.
There were no wolves between them. Half seemed to be sprawled on the concrete, whining and bleeding. Others tussled. All of them ignored her and Lars. Lars displayed several bite marks but had gotten himself into a standing position, one leg hanging limp.
“Now we end this.” Lars raised the gun. His hand trembled. A wolf—a wolf whose white muzzle she could see even in the dark—huddled behind him.
Dad?
“I called the region elders with your flunkie’s cell phone,” Katie lied. Though it wasn’t a bad idea, if she could find it. “They know everything. The keeper council is being disbanded.”
“They can’t defend against my power. They will fall in line or die,” Lars snarled. He hopped sideways, keeping her in the light. “Like you.”
The black wolf jumped in front of Katie, growling. Its muzzle dripped with blood, but its hate was only for Lars.
Marcus.
“Come to defend your whore?” Lars, aiming at the wolf now, eased something out of his pocket with the other hand. Marcus crouched to spring. “Ignorant animal. No matter what parlor tricks you pull, your kind will always be inferior.”
Marcus rushed him. Instead of shooting, Lars flung the spell pod. It splashed against Marcus with an audible pop.
He stumbled. Took several more uncertain steps. And collapsed at Lars’s feet.
Katie smelled the draft of monkshood and cried out, the pain of loss so intense she thought she might be the one dying.
No, no, no.
Not caring that Lars had a gun, she charged across the space separating her from the director. He fired.
Something kicked her shoulder like a mule.
She didn’t let it stop her. Fucker was dead. She slammed into Lars and they tumbled back. She angled herself so he took the impact of the fall. She landed on him knees first. His gun clattered free across the concrete.
She didn’t need weapons, magic or even clothes to get her revenge for what he’d done to her—then and now.
Despite the jab in her shoulder, she closed hands around his throat and squeezed. Rage eased her pain and fuelled her with strength. Her own version of feral. He gagged and scrabbled, sick and feeble. Like her he had no gun, no magical weapons. His spells were all for wolves. Witches. Nothing he could do against another convex alpha.
Between the two of them, just the two of them, she was better. Stronger. Smarter.
Which is what he’d always feared, she realized. He would die knowing he’d been right.
“I win,” she whispered. Not because she was glad of it, but because it would damage him. She might be better and stronger than Lars—but that didn’t make her a good person.
His eyes bulged
. His pulse beat against her fingers like a struggling animal. His fist caught her jaw, painful but not painful enough. One of his legs kicked while the other lay flat, broken. Tiny, muffled screams garbled out of his mouth as fear replaced his obsessive desire to kill her.
Good. He should wallow in fear. Fear and horror and regret.
His struggles flagged. His eyes fluttered shut. She squeezed harder. His body lurched with convulsive desperation. Her shoulder screamed with pain.
Time for this nightmare to be over. She felt no triumph in defeating an old, sick man, only exhaustion and heaviness and a soul-wrenching grief that he’d killed Marcus before she could kill Lars.
Monkshood. The ultimate weapon. Fast-acting, paralyzing, fatal. Goddess, why? Was she being punished? Could she at least say goodbye to him? There was no defense against…
Marcus’s herbal cocktail. His defenses. His antidotes. The bay capsules. The damned bay capsules.
New energy, something so much cleaner than rage and grief, zinged through her. She leaped to her feet. Who the hell cared if Lars survived? As long as she had a chance to save Marcus…
She grabbed the gun with her undamaged arm. Lars remained motionless. She could shoot the unconscious keeper, the man she’d wanted dead for fifty years, or she could…
Deal with it later.
Blood dripped down her torso, front and back. The bullet had gone through, and soon the blood loss would affect her. Tick tock.
“Zhang Li,” she called to the wolf cowering in the shadows along the wall. Goddess, she hoped that was actually her father. And that none of the keeper wolves interfered. And that Marcus wasn’t wrong about his bay mix. “Guard him. Bite his throat if he moves. Kill him if you want. I’m getting medicine.”
The wolf scampered forward, into the radius of light from the flashlight. His fur was dappled gray and white, his tail a lush plume.
His eyes were her father’s. With what seemed like pleasure, he lowered his head to Lars’s neck and bared his teeth.
Katie checked the prostrate Marcus. He struggled to sit up and failed. When she touched him, he whined and licked her hand. His tail thumped once.
“I love you.” Her lips trembled. The monkshood had felled him so fast. It usually took longer—but Lars was extremely powerful. “Hold on.”
She took off through the darkness, woozy from the bullet wound. The lab. Marcus had supplies in the lab, his cocktail, his pills. Luckily she’d traversed this path before. She couldn’t do it blindfolded, but she’d memorized all routes in and out of the factory, a habit developed during the previous twenty years.
Claws skittered alongside as several keeper wolves gave chase. Some were mobile. Why hadn’t they defended Lars? If they wanted him dead—why chase her? She could almost feel their hot breath on her heels. Using her ears instead of her eyes, she took aim with her good arm and fired.
A wolf squealed and tumbled paws-over-head. She kept running. Her feet against the concrete shot jolts of pain through her wounded shoulder. She could feel her head swimming and blinked to clear her vision. As soon as another wolf grew close, she shot it too.
Bang. You’re dead.
The rest kept back, leery of her marksmanship. They’d been evolved into wolves by the berserker spell, but they weren’t fools. Their memories drove them now that the initial effect of the spell had passed.
Katie hit the storage area and nearly skidded into a stack of pipes. She caught her balance. Barely. The first spotlight blazed. The wolves wouldn’t have a sight advantage anymore. The door to the lab stood open, its concealing machinery thrust aside. Staggering, she picked up her pace and hoped the wolves wouldn’t notice her weakness. Tiny debris on the floor cut her feet. Two wolves crouched in front of the lab with hackles raised.
She shot one. The other fled. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against born wolves or experienced transformed wolves, but the keepers were unfamiliar with their new bodies, senses and internal changes. Their entire lives had just entered the hell dimension, as far as they were concerned.
Too bad for them. She stumbled over the dead wolf and into the lab.
The place was absolutely tossed. What the hell?
Katie ran to the supply cabinet, which had been vandalized. Why would the keepers waste perfectly good components and lab equipment? Smash the cot to pieces? Shred the books? Blood dribbled down her arm. Her vision began tunneling, and lightheadedness dogged her.
Five more minutes and she’d pass out.
She had to be quicker. Smarter. She flung items every direction, trashing Marcus’s lab the rest of the way. She sniffed here and there, but so many herbs and bases had been spilled, she couldn’t suss out any bay. When she came across their last can of heal-all, she sprayed herself quickly, half-ass, enough to stop the blood loss. Ten more minutes, then. Maybe. Her head felt like an echo chamber. She rotated her shoulder—usable, as long as she favored it.
That handled, she searched frantically on the floor, in piles of rubbish, in boxes, for Marcus’s spells. She finally located the remnants of his defensive cocktail. The greenish-brown mix had been dumped into a deep sink along with various liquids and herbs. If the cocktail was here, some bay capsules…the antidote…might be near.
She pawed through trash until herbs coated her hands and arms, getting in her scrapes, burning her skin. The keepers had been thorough. Everything in the lab was smashed and contaminated.
Dammit, dammit. A miracle existed, and she couldn’t find it. She’d run out of time.
Despairing, starting to shiver so hard from the cold and gunshot and tension that her fingers wouldn’t work, she fumbled on a pair of coveralls. Marcus’s. She smelled him in the fabric. Tears blocked her windpipe. Like her hands had blocked Lars’s windpipe.
Seven more minutes? Enough to finish that job. She’d go back and kill Lars. She swiveled to leave and her gaze fell on the items she and Marcus had brought to the factory today, including their clothing. The keepers had piled them haphazardly next to the door. Marcus’s kit had been trashed, but his clothing, his pants pocket, where he’d carried a bay capsule since the day he’d met her?
Nothing there. Another fail. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she remembered. He’d told her he trusted her yesterday. Teased her to check his pants pocket. He’d meant it. No antidote pill. No defense against monkshood. That meant he’d been without one since…
Since the night they’d made love. She’d flung his capsule into the glassware.
Stumbling, running, Katie ran for corner shelf. With a wad of paper to protect her hand, she pawed through shards. Dark green capsule. Dark green capsule.
Goddess, please.
There.
Small and green, sitting innocently inside a half-broken beaker. Shaking, she reached for it, but she was filthy.
She wiped her hands, thrust them into the ever-present rubber gloves and grabbed the bay pill, a smidgen of primed cayenne from the kit, more gloves and the oven cleaner canister. Pocketing everything, she checked the gun clip.
Three bullets. Half a factory to navigate. Unconsciousness loomed despite the heal-all.
No one interrupted her race—really, her stagger—back to Marcus. When she reached him, the only living creatures were her father, hovering over Lars like the spirit of vengeance, and Lars himself. Maybe. Dad hadn’t ripped open his throat, but Lars wasn’t moving.
Except for a few bodies, the keeper wolves had disappeared. She had no idea where or why. As long as they weren’t attacking her, she didn’t care.
Katie knelt beside Marcus and dug into his thick ruff, trying to find a pulse. Nothing. He was dead—again. Was this a record? He’d gotten the tattoo so they could approach the elders and rescue her family. He’d intercepted monkshood to defend her, thinking it would be a bullet. Sometimes wolves could survive bullets.
Not monkshood.
How sensitive would the bay pill be? It was a mixture, which meant it’d be tetchy. If she only had one, she couldn’t afford co
ntaminants.
Katie snapped off the first pair of rubber gloves and donned a fresh one. Careful to hold her hands away from her grubby, bloody body, she dug out the bay capsule. It would be primed, since Marcus had assumed he wouldn’t possess magic when he needed it.
She smashed the pill into his mouth and held his jaws closed. Magic bloomed.
Thirty seconds. Sixty. Her head felt like a balloon, disconnected and floating. Marcus’s chest didn’t rise. His tail didn’t wag. The spell had done something, but it hadn’t reversed the monkshood.
Frantic now, she yanked off a glove, probed his tongue with the herbs on it, and shot power through the components into him. She added all the power in the smidgen of cayenne to boot.
Inelegant, unpracticed, hopefully effective.
The spell responded explosively, sucking at her reserves like a vacuum. Katie coughed and held on to his furry body. Her vision blackened. She let the last of her magic flow into the components and Marcus.
Get up, Marcus. She ran out of magic and used her alpha on him. Get up. Get up. Get up.
She fell across him, praying. His fur smelled like him. His body was still warm. She couldn’t see anymore so she closed her eyes.
Get up. You have to get up.
His skin shivered, as if he were shaking off flies. There on the cold factory floor, he shimmered and shook and shifted back into his human body. Her face rested against his smooth chest and his arms encircled her.
“I was dead again, wasn’t I?” he said in a creaky voice.
Katie sighed with relief and passed out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Katie’s cell phone buzzed, flashing a West Virginia area code. Hoping it was June or Harry with news about Vern, she quickly stripped off a glove and her goggles and answered.
“Katherine,” said a voice she’d come to be all too familiar with—a voice that did not belong to either Travis. “I’m glad I caught you. You’re so rarely home.”
In truth, she was almost always home, working with contractors, fixing the new house to her liking and letting her father in and out the damn door eighteen times a day. She simply didn’t answer Shirl’s calls if she knew they were from Shirl.
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