Shivs #2
The world slowed, like it always did right before the shift. My vision tunneled, then widened, the colors blurring at the edges until all that was left was red and white and the frantic thud of my heart.
I dropped the first man with a two-tap, the second with a shot to the throat.
His body jackknifed over the conveyor, spraying blood on a thousand waiting bottles of Stillwater Black Label.
I barely noticed. The next thing I saw was Carrie, crouched low, moving with a grace I didn’t know she had.
She yanked Bennet out of the line of fire, dragging him behind a copper still so old it probably predated Prohibition.
“Miss Stillwater, get down!” Bennet screamed, but she was already yanking him lower, pressing herself flat against the tile and scanning for threats.
My pulse spiked, the bond between us thrumming like a downed powerline. I could feel her fear, but more than that, her resolve. She’d decided: nobody dies tonight, not even if it means burning down the last good thing in Kentucky.
Another wave of mercenaries came in from the warehouse, heavier this time—ex-mil, clean cuts, moving in formation. They swept the floor, aiming for the sound of our breathing. I let them come. My skin itched, the urge to shift so strong it nearly made me retch.
Carrie fired, a perfect shot, and dropped the lead man in his tracks.
The rest scattered, hugging the barrels, and opened up with suppressed submachine guns.
The air filled with splinters, glass, and ricochets.
One slug pinged off the still right above Bennet’s head, showering him with metal shavings.
“Fuck!” I roared, and the shift finally took me.
It wasn’t pretty. It never was. The bones crack first—shoulders, jaw, then spine—followed by the ripping, tearing, wet sound of muscle rearranging.
The world flipped inside out, and fur erupted through my skin, shredding my shirt and jacket.
My hands warped, fingers fusing into claws, and the next time I looked up, I saw through the eyes of a predator so old it didn’t even remember how to be afraid.
I howled. The sound bounced off the walls, and for a second, everyone froze. That’s all I needed.
I launched myself at the nearest man, jaws open, and closed them on his forearm. The bone snapped like a dry stick, and his gun clattered to the floor. I dropped him and turned on the next, claws raking down his back. He screamed, but it cut off as my teeth tore through the artery in his neck.
Blood everywhere. The air tasted of iron and gun oil, and I wanted more.
Another man tried to run, but I was on him before he cleared the corridor. I yanked him off his feet, slammed him into the wall, and left him there, twitching.
I lost count of the bodies after that. Every time a gun flashed, I moved. Every time a voice shouted, it was silenced. The part of me that cared about anything but the kill was gone, replaced by the pure, mindless joy of doing what I was built for.
But I never lost sight of Carrie.
Even as the world burned, I kept her at the center of my vision. She darted from cover to cover, always staying low, always dragging Bennet with her even as he tried to protest.
At one point, she stopped to reload, ducking behind a stack of barrels. That’s when I saw him—a man in a dark suit, standing just outside the chaos, hands folded, face lit only by the muzzle flashes. Marcus Ellery. The architect of all this.
He didn’t flinch as the bullets flew. He just watched, cold and calculating, and when Carrie finally looked up, their eyes locked for a single, silent second.
Then he was gone.
The fire started with a hiss—a single bullet, wild and dumb, had punctured a steam line near the main tank. The next shot struck the copper, and the whole thing let go with a roar, spraying vapor and boiling water everywhere.
The scalding heat hit me first. I reeled, shaking it off, then turned to see a wave of fire roll across the floor, hungry for anything that would burn.
Bourbon. The whole place was soaked in it. In ten seconds, the production room turned into a furnace.
Carrie grabbed Bennet, hauling him to his feet. “Move!” she screamed, and he did, hobbling along as best he could.
I cut through the flames, ignoring the pain. The wolf in me didn’t care about scars, didn’t care about fire, just wanted out. I leapt over burning crates, dodged falling glass, and got to them just as a wall of heat blew out the side windows.
The alarms kicked in, shrieking over the chaos. Fire suppression started, but the system was old—more for show than anything. Water drizzled from the ceiling, evaporating before it hit the flames.
Bennet coughed, face streaked with blood and soot. “The valves!” he shouted. “If the fire hits the rickhouse—”
Carrie’s eyes went wide. “We lose it all.”
She looked at me, the bond a raw nerve between us. She didn’t have to say it.
Save the barrels. Save the legacy.
I nodded, then barreled through the door to the back hall, knocking aside the half-melted handle with a swipe of my paw.
The smoke was worse here, black and thick, clawing at my lungs.
But I could see the control room at the end of the corridor, half a football field away, orange light flickering under the door.
I ran for it.
Behind me, gunshots still popped, but fewer now. Most of the mercs were dead or dying. A couple had gotten out, but they were nothing compared to the fire.
I crashed through the control room door, splinters flying. Inside, the heat was so bad the paint was peeling from the walls. I scanned the panels, looking for the emergency cut-off. There: a big red lever, right at eye level.
I jumped, grabbed it with my jaw, and yanked. The whole building shuddered as the valves snapped shut, choking off the fuel to the fire. The pressure in the lines bled off with a banshee howl, then silence, except for the crackle of flames and the slow drip of water.
I staggered, suddenly weak. The shift was burning out—my muscles trembled, vision doubled. I stumbled out of the room, barely making it back to the main floor before the wolf melted away, leaving me naked, blood-slick, and raw.
Carrie and Bennet were waiting, pressed against the exit. She caught me as I fell, arms strong around my shoulders, and for a second, everything was still.
Then the building groaned, the fire eating through the roof. We ran.
Outside, the night was chaos. Bikers everywhere, hauling bodies, shouting orders. Some had buckets, trying to douse the fire, but it was hopeless. The main rickhouse was already an inferno.
We made it to the grass, dropped to the ground, and watched as a hundred years of bourbon history went up in smoke.
Carrie didn’t cry. Not even a tear. She just stared at the flames, jaw clenched, hands balled into fists so tight her knuckles went white.
Bennet sobbed, low and broken, but she didn’t comfort him. She just looked at me, the bond sparking between us, and nodded once.
“We save what’s left,” she said. “And then we hunt the bastard who did this.”
I nodded, wiping blood from my face with a shaky hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “We fucking will.”
We picked our way past the wreckage, stepping over bodies—some of them still twitching, but most not.
The main production floor was a disaster: fire-blackened pipes, a slurry of bourbon and blood pooling in the low spots.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed; the local volunteers would be here soon, but not soon enough to save much.
If we didn’t get the aging warehouse valves shut, the fire would reach the old stock, and there wouldn’t be a drop left to carry the Stillwater name.
Carrie knew it before I did. She took my wrist—her grip a live wire of desperation—and pulled me through a maze of toppled barrels toward the back wing.
The heat was worse here, the floor sticky with spilled white dog and the walls weeping sap from the old oak supports.
I coughed, tried to say her name, but she didn’t slow down.
The bond between us wasn’t a metaphor anymore. I felt every thought she had, every heartbeat, every nerve that told her to keep running. I felt her fear of losing it all, but under that, a hunger that didn’t come from the wolf. It came from her.
We reached the fire doors, but the control panel was gone, shot out by one of the mercs in the first volley.
The only way through was to pry, so I did—bare hands, fingers slick, feeling the skin tear but not caring.
I got the seam open wide enough for Carrie to slip through, then followed, bracing my back against the door to keep it from closing behind us.
Inside, the heat was blinding, the air boiling with vaporized bourbon and smoke. Carrie coughed, doubled over, then looked up at the catwalk above. “Up there,” she choked. “Emergency shut-off.”
I didn’t ask if she was sure. I just threw her over my shoulder and made for the stairs, two at a time. The metal burned my feet, but I kept going, the bond screaming at me to hurry, hurry, she needs this, she needs you.
We reached the top. The valve was huge, wheel-type, painted red, and ringed with old brass. Carrie lunged for it, hands on the rim, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Move,” I said, then set my hands on top of hers. Even with the wolf beaten back, I was still strong enough to break men in half. The valve shrieked as it turned, then gave with a shudder. Steam hissed from the pipes overhead.
Below, the fire door finally caved, a wave of smoke and heat chasing up the stairs. We had seconds, maybe less.
Carrie looked at me, eyes wild, and I saw her thinking—saw the memory of her father, of every ancestor who’d ever stood on this catwalk and claimed the Stillwater legacy for their own. She smiled, blood on her teeth.
“We did it,” she said.
The wave of fire roared up the stairwell, punching us flat against the catwalk.
I grabbed Carrie, wrapped her in my arms, and let the blast wash over us.
For a second, I thought we’d both go up like two sticks of dynamite.
But the fire skirted around us, hungry for the barrels, and when it passed, we were still breathing. Barely.
The alarms were dying now. The fire, too. Below, the bourbon pooled in lakes, glinting gold in the ruined light.
Carrie staggered. I caught her before she could fall, and together we climbed down, moving slow. Every step, the bond grew heavier. I could feel her thinking of me, the way her body wanted to curl around mine, the way her hands trembled not just from shock, but from need.
We reached the bottling office, a bunker of glass and steel that had survived the worst of the heat. I slammed the door, and for a second, it was just the two of us, in the only quiet place for a hundred miles.
I tried to talk, but she grabbed my face and kissed me—hard, teeth and blood and all. Her hands slid into my hair, yanked, and I let her. She didn’t want gentle. Neither did I.
She shoved me back onto her father’s desk, sending papers and old awards crashing to the floor. I hit the wood, hard, and she was on me, straddling my waist, pinning me in place. The look in her eyes was pure challenge: prove you’re mine, or get the fuck out of my bloodline.
I took her challenge.
I grabbed her by the hips, feeling the bruises already blooming there, and rolled her under me, slamming her back onto the desk. She laughed, a raw, broken sound, her nails leaving tracks up my chest.
I bit her neck, right on the mark I’d left two nights before. She moaned, then bit me back, drawing blood.
We tore at each other, tearing off what was left of our clothes, fucking like the last two animals on earth. I rammed into her, hard enough to rock the desk, and she took every inch, nails digging into my back, her thighs clamping around my ribs. The bond lit up every nerve, every hair on my body.
She pulled me in, biting my lip, dragging my hand to her throat. I squeezed, just a little, and her eyes rolled back, a smile on her lips even as her whole body shuddered.
“Mine,” she gasped. “Mine, mine, mine.”
“Yours,” I grunted, and it was true. I’d never belonged to anyone, but I belonged to her.
She came first, a hot flood that almost drowned me. I kept going, kept pounding her into the desk, until I felt my own body start to go, the world narrowing to just her and me, the taste of blood and bourbon in my mouth.
I let the wolf out, just a little, and then she pulled away, her eyes not wild, but something far stranger. “I want to see it happen,” she said.
She sat in her father's leather desk chair and pressed her hands to the sides of her tits, pushing them together.
I straddled the chair, still standing, and shoved my wet cock between her tits, the head poking her chin.
I placed my hands on her shoulders and slid my cock between her breasts as bikers and firemen yelled outside the building.
For several minutes, I kept a steady rhythm, the two of us watching my cock slide up and down, her nipples gorging.
I pinched the dark buds, and she moaned when a clear wetness appeared.
“Do it,” she said. “I wanna see it, Shivs.”
She spat on my cock several times, the lubrication sending me over a dark edge.
“Oh fuck,” she said when the base of my cock grew.
I shoved upward again and again, the ache numbing my body. Still watching me swell, she opened her mouth, and I came in multiple fast spurts. When I finished, I stepped back, Carrie licking her lips, her eyes watching my cock until the swelling dissipated.
“What the fuck just happened?” she asked.
“It’s only the beginning, babe,” I said. “The next time will be nothing like what we’ve done, Carrie.” He kissed me and stepped back. “Will you be prepared?”