Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
We sprint to the left and the witches pause, keeping the wolf contained, before their yelps sound from the right, growing softer with every passing heartbeat.
Through limbs and thick trunks, I catch a flash of their fading light before they disappear. Swallowed.
We head in the other direction.
The diversion we might have hoped for fails when the remaining wolf takes off behind us, its claws crumbling for purchase in the soft earth.
Drawn by the scent of Grayson’s blood.
“Go, go!” Grayson pulls me faster and it feels like my legs spin in useless circles.
He catapults me ahead of him, terror carrying us through the underbrush.
I’m not fast enough to avoid the tangle of briars I stumble through. Thorns snag my jeans and sip blood from the lines they drag across my skin, taking their payment for our passing.
No paths are clear this deep in the wilderness. No exits miraculously appear to offer us safety from the wolf. And neither one of us is in shape to attack.
Grayson hasn’t changed yet and I can’t. We’re pitifully human, my throat constricting and my knees determined to give out.
If he’s losing blood, and the moon-mad wolf is at full strength, we’re done. My own wolf stays shackled by invisible chains.
Breath leaves me in a whoosh. Where the hell do we go from here?
The distant crash of RJ and Aimee’s flight disappears the longer we run. There’s nothing but the ragged sounds of breathing, the strangely thick panting from the wolf giving chase.
Faster, God, faster.
Yet nothing happens. I don’t slow but I also can’t summon an extra burst of speed to outrun this thing. It’s built for carnage.
The curse practically assures it.
It doesn’t understand what’s going out outside the remaining urge to tear and rip and devour.
These things have no sense left. They’re pure rage. They won’t stop until they catch whatever they’ve got in their mind.
“I’m sorry, Mandi.”
Grayson growls under his breath and reaches for me, knocking into my shoulder before hurling me onto his hip. He adjusts before we both lose our balance and carries me out of the briars.
My lungs seize. There isn’t enough air to make them work, not when the blood in my veins goes sluggish. Spots dance in front of my eyes and a strange queasy heat starts in my stomach and curdles.
I can’t take much more.
Which only fuels my terror.
This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a moon-mad wolf and I’m not ready to die as Grayson carries us both through the dark. I haven’t come this far. I haven’t swallowed down secrets like soup only to lose it all now.
A stray root catches beneath him. We both go flying and I land hard on my stomach, the impact driving sanity from my brain and the air out of my lungs.
The creature barrels toward us. It reaches for Grayson, grabbing him around the ankle and dragging him backward.
I glance up in time to watch him curl up, snagging a branch as round as his thigh and using the wolf’s momentum against it.
The beast releases him when it slams into the branch, bending in two from the force.
Grayson drags his legs back and uses his weight to angle onto the balls of his feet, swinging the branch and slamming it into the wolf’s legs.
Wood smacks and something snaps.
The moon-mad shrieks with the shattered bone, but it will only stay still for a moment.
I know it.
For one terrifying moment, silence stretches, more awful than the creature’s roar or stench.
“Grayson, come on, we have to go, now.” My gaze meets his crazed one.
There’s something about his eyes, about the rich pools of topaz, the fear he hides like his own version of a dirty secret. I manage to gain my feet again despite the screaming protest of every muscle I’ve got.
I reach for him, both of us searching, desperate for a relief we can’t find.
Not when the moon-mad wolf recovers.
In the brief moments between blinding panic, my mind conjures up all kinds of terrible ends met at its teeth.
My throat bobs at the thought of those teeth tearing me open and draining me.
Or worse. A bite, a scratch, a life-changing injury that will devolve me into the same kind of beast. It might not be within hours like we originally thought but—
“I’m fine. We’re fine. Keep running.”
Grayson snags my shirt and drags me off course, veering to the left. His superior strength is flagging. The trembling of his fingers vibrates through me as he ducks and weaves through the trees, using the maze of trunks like obstacles on his own personal football field.
The creature curves around us, eyes gleaming, red rimmed, vicious. Vile. It lunges in front of us with white bone poking from its calf and only Grayson’s smart thinking pulls me out of the way of those teeth at the last minute.
Sharp fangs snap the air where my hand was a split second earlier.
I stumble again as the bottom drops out of me. Grayson tugs on my wrist to get me moving, the creature pivoting.
Its movements score the ground and the scent of rich loam and dirt fill the air, a strange contrast to its rot.
It won’t give up.
We’re guaranteed to tire first. Lacey fought several of these creatures and won, but she had training. She knew how to use a sword because Colt trained her. That’s what they said when we met at the witch’s magically protected hole-in-the-wall, the Hollow.
What do I have?
My throat closes and I choke, only the steady feel of Grayson’s hand on mine keeping me moving.
I have a responsibility I can’t shake, a will that refuses to die in spite of everything.
“There!” Grayson’s yell breaks the litany of terrible thoughts.
Ahead, trees part and the clearing rests under silvery starlight like an accolade on its knees before a powerful god. Mossy tiles on a steeped roof.
The sloped peaks lead down to a wooden structure about the size of our garage with a wide porch spanning the front like a stuck out lip. A door and two windows overlook the forest with no trails leading to the cabin.
It popped out of the earth the same as any mushroom.
“Shit.” The curse breaks free. “Can we get in?”
“Does it matter?”
We sprint in unison toward the cabin, the moon-mad wolf chasing us. My sneakers slip on the damp wooden stairs leading up to the porch, skidding on moss and slick spots.
Grayson grabs the door handle and pulls. Muscles strain when it holds firm.
“Do something!”
I whip around, pulse thundering in my ears. My throat catches and swells, the wolf plowing forward. It digs its claws into the earth to propel itself up the steps, Grayson throwing his entire weight at the door that refuses to budge.
There’s nothing on the porch to use as a weapon. Nothing to defend ourselves from the attack unless I can pry a piece of planking up from the floor.
It launches itself from the base of the stairs and my heartbeat thunders. Black claws swipe the air, cleave it.
Grayson gets the door open.
He drags me backward through the space and slams it shut as the wolf lands, cracking its skull hard enough to rattle the frame.
Panic claw at my insides. I slap a hand against my chest, the uneven pulses, the awkward skipping rhythm making the dizziness worse
“Mandi, come on, we’ve got to find something to block the door. Or maybe whoever owns this place has to have a gun stashed somewhere.”
Grayson flips the deadbolt shut and wedges his shoulder against the door to keep it shut.
“Go look.” He flashes a smile as though this is another normal day. “I’ve got this.”
His hair curls at the top, the sides shaved down. Veins pulse along his neck, red spanning across the whites of his eyes. Desperate. Frantic.
Despite his orders, my legs have decided to give up the ghost. Then I catch a glimpse of the wolf in the window.
It gusts hot breath against glass panes and fogs them, scratching the tips of its wicked curved nails in a downward swipe.
I wrap shaking arms around myself. “It won’t let us go.”
And the thin safety of the cabin will only hold for as long as it takes for the creature to find a way inside.
Grayson calls my name again and the terror in those two syllables finally sets me in motion. I keep the moon-mad wolf in sight, retreating away from Grayson.
A square, compact living room boasts an empty waiting fireplace with a pyramid of stacked logs. A chair and a sofa stretch in front of the fireplace and a stout stand holds a lamp with a brittle yellow shade, as sturdy as furniture in a doll house.
Only a small crest of moonlight makes it under the porch eaves and into the window.
An open doorway at my back leads into a kitchen where the stale scent of burned coffee and cigarette smoke clings to the walls.
“Grayson.”
I whisper his name and he straightens from the door when the pressure on the other side never comes.
“The cabinets. Look for something we can use. A knife, an ax. I don’t know.”
“I doubt they’re keeping an ax in a kitchen cabinet.”
I root around, flinging dishtowels and mismatched spice containers out of the way. There’s no block of knives but one of the drawers wields a meat cleaver with chipped edges.
Yes. Good. It will cut. It will hack the moon-mad wolf into tiny pieces.
Grayson’s fingers wrap around my wrist and I jump, the moon-mad wolf rattling the window at the same time.
“It’s fine.”
His words aren’t a comfort.
He brandishes the meat cleaver and, blade glinting, stalks forward.
Another hit and the glass shatters. Only a wooden lattice pattern remains in place. Through my scream, Grayson swipes the knife, the wolf taking the hit. Chunks of fur and flesh go flying.
How do I help him?
How do I feel anything but terrified, frozen, useless?
There might not be an ax but the owner of the cabin has to have something near the fireplace to stoke the coals.
I stalk to the fireplace and swipe a poker from the metal hook buried in the wall, swinging it like a sword.
This is what it’s come down to. Instead of shifting the way I should, instead of doing the one thing I was born to do, I’m worse off than a human.
The beast is halfway through the window when it claws for Grayson.
He stabs with the meat cleaver then buries it into the creature’s forearm. There’s no pause, no yelp of surprise. Only another low growl as it pulls itself forward.
It’s close enough to bite him. Close enough to take them both down.
I wasn’t fast enough to save Grayson the first time.
I won’t let anything happen to him again.
With a yell, I slam the poker down. It glances off the wolf’s skull and buries in the wood floor. I pull it free and glance up at Grayson, holding himself still, staring straight ahead as a shudder racks his body.
Sweat trickles from his hairline down to the sharp jut of his jaw.
This time I’m the one who steps in front of him.
The one who sends the tip of the poker into the wolf’s shoulder. Black and red blood oozes from the wound. It roars, setting me in its sights, clawing at the poker like an ineffective needle stuck in an annoying spot.
I drag the poker free and rear back to jam it into an eye socket this time.
Dizziness worse, stomach revolting wildly against the nerves, I drive the poker forward until it glances off bone.
And Grayson hasn’t moved.
When I glance his way, he’s rooted, shoulders rigid, face set in hard lines. His eyes glow gold and when he turns to me and my heart stops.
“Mandi…”
He trails off as his scent changes and I know in an instant we’re royally screwed. The fight has triggered his change. His wolf pushes against his skin in a rippling wave and goosebumps break out across his forearms.
When he speaks again, it’s with a mouth crowded with pointed teeth.
“Run.”