Chapter 7 #3
She glanced back at the three women, floating toward them. The dark, long-haired woman was squatting down beside the man now, holding out a handful of knives. Suddenly, the woman twisted her wrist, and the knives pointed downward, toward the man’s head.
The smaller woman lunged forward, drawing the attention of the long-haired woman.
Oh my god!
Planes of consciousness collided, and Darcy realized where she was and what she was seeing.
That’s Amory on the floor.
Lela is about to hurt him.
Willow can’t protect all of us.
She raced back to the window, hovering behind the glass, and felt the force of her desperation and fear come bubbling up out of her center like a geyser. The window shattered before her as the raw, hot power of her terrified scream broke the glass.
She found the wolf’s yellow eyes on the ground below and beseeched him.
Help me!
“Don’t. You. Touch. Him.” Willow snarled as Darcy shook her head sharply to rouse herself, taking a deep breath.
She’d have to process her feelings about pulling Jack inside later.
With no comforting forest waiting for her when she initiated it, she didn’t like it, that was for sure.
She opened her eyes wide, reorienting herself.
Lela squatted beside Amory, the razor-sharp claws of her hands dangling a fraction of an inch over his unconscious head. With one plunge, his brains would be impaled.
“Lela, no!” Darcy cried, stepping forward from behind Willow. “No! Don’t!”
Lela’s hand stilled, and she turned her face up toward Darcy. Jack was right. She was young. Up close, so very young. It occurred to Darcy that she might even be old enough, biologically, to be Lela’s mother. Under all of that fierce anger, she was still just a girl.
“The meat speaks!” Lela declared, slowly standing.
Willow placed her hand on Darcy’s arm. “Get behind me, kid.”
“No, Will,” said Darcy, a surprising calm blanketing her as she stood before her mate’s sister. She tilted her head to the side, regarding her…her what? Her sister-in-law? She spoke softly, compassionately. “He doesn’t love you like that, Lela.”
Lela’s brows furrowed over narrowed golden eyes.
“He will when you’re gone,” she growled at Darcy.
“No,” said Darcy, and a firm gentleness, such that she’d use with a truculent teenager, came easily to her lips. “No, he never will.”
“I will kill you, meat!” Lela bellowed, her eyes igniting.
“Then he will hate you,” said Darcy with finality.
Lela threw back her head, and Darcy watched as her claws lengthened another two or three inches.
Her fangs also dropped and raised, from the top and bottom of her mouth, sharpening to long shards as they developed in the space of seconds.
Darcy could hear the stretching as her body grew in height and girth, her muscles popping her clothes off her body.
Darcy’s mouth dropped open as Lela’s face turned from a tan, human color to black, her nose widening like a dog’s.
Last, coarse black hair had appeared all over her body until she was covered in it, her face, down her neck, over her breasts, to her stomach, her pelvis, and legs.
When she was fully shifted, she raised her arms over her head, her claws scraping against the ceiling of the room, and she turned to the window, howling at the moon.
Darcy’s heart threatened to beat out of her chest, and she panted, close to hyperventilating with the force of her terror.
Lela was no longer human. She was a fully shifted Roux-ga-roux.
Darcy’s mouth had dropped open, and her eyes burned as she unblinkingly watched with horror as her adversary transformed herself from a lovesick psychopath into a mythic creature.
Darcy felt Willow’s cool hand slip into hers, and she knew what she had to do.
She squeezed it, hoping that Willow would always know the depths of her love for her, no matter what happened, then released her friend’s hand and, placing her hands on Willow’s shoulder, pushed with all her might.
As Willow fell, Darcy stepped forward until she stood toe-to-toe with a shifted Lela, whose sharp fangs were about a foot over Darcy’s head and dripped with froth.
Her gleaming eyes burned like lasers into Darcy’s.
Fear threatened to buckle her knees, but she thought of Jack’s face on his pillow this afternoon, staring at her with enough love to last a lifetime.
And she knew it had been worth it to love him.
It had been worth it to have him again these past two weeks, even if she would never see him again.
If she died now, tonight, at least she’d had a chance to tell him that she loved him.
She faced Lela’s gruesome, slavering face and screamed the words that would surely be her last.
“He belongs to me!”
Lela lunged, and Darcy lurched back, pulled roughly out of Lela’s path by Willow, who had reached up from the floor and grabbed Darcy’s hand, yanking with all her strength.
Darcy fell to the floor on top of Willow as Lela stumbled toward the couch.
Suddenly, they heard the crashing and crunching noise of the locked door downstairs being ripped from its hinges and thrown.
And in one pounding step, two, three, another creature, at least twice Lela’s size, crashed into the room, claws raised outwards, howling with a deafening, blood-curdling roar.
Darcy looked up from her sprawl on the floor to see the larger creature seize, with deadly precision, Lela’s neck, holding her with the V of flesh between thumb and forefinger claws, propelling her across the room until her head slammed against the far wall, cracking the glass of the big screen TV that hung on the wall.
She growled and yelped, thrashing her body violently, but was unable to break the chokehold on her throat.
Looking to the stairs, another creature appeared.
He stopped, surveying the scene, and Darcy watched his eyes glow brighter as he noticed Amory’s body on the floor.
He approached Amory with a decisive grunt of interest, but the bigger Roug pinning Lela claimed his attention with a sharp, brutal roar.
Darcy shifted to all fours and slowly pushed herself up from the floor, backing against the wall to her left. The Roug holding the thrashing Lela jerked his head toward Darcy and locked his glowing yellow eyes with hers. She gasped when she heard Jack’s voice.
I’m still me.
She clamped her eyes shut, bracing herself against the wall.
Her lungs constricted, and she couldn’t take a breath.
She had known it was him, of course, but hearing Jack’s voice in her head as she beheld him in fully shifted form for the first time was still shocking.
She puffed in and out in shallow breaths, trying to get a deep one into her diaphragm.
Close to fainting, it occurred to her that there was only one possible way to comfort and calm herself.
Slowly, she opened her eyes again, and she stared into Jack’s glowing, golden eyes. He was waiting for her.
It’s okay, baby. You’re okay. Breathe.
She wanted to close her eyes, but if she did, she’d lose the soothing, comforting sound of his voice. So she stared at the savage, inhuman golden orbs intently and was relieved to feel her heart slow down.
It’s me. It’s me. Breathe.
Gradually, she found she could breathe again.
She sucked in a deep breath, glancing down at his body for a moment.
He was covered in black hair, like Lela, but the unoccupied claws of his left paw were a good deal larger, sharper, and more discolored than hers had been.
Darcy raised her gaze and met his shiny golden eyes without wavering.
She could finally form a coherent thought.
It’s you, Jack. I know it’s still you.
He nodded at her slowly, then turned his head to Julien, who was still sniffing Amory, and growled at him sharply again. As Julien slowly approached Jack and Lela, Willow scrambled across the floor to Amory’s side, working quickly to tear his shirt aside and inspect his wound.