Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Blood drips around his teeth, dark rivulets soaking my thighs.
A scream stretches without an end until my throat goes ragged and my voice cuts off without warning. There’s no pulling myself free. Not unless I want him to clamp harder.
I drop the cleaver.
His fangs slide through skin and muscle and send a wave of darkness across my vision.
Instinct driving me, I kick up against his belly, driving my knee into the soft parts. “Let go!”
My foot makes contact with his leg. Eyes narrowed, Grayson finally releases me with another snarl.
I clutch my shredded arm to my chest and scoot backward until I hit the wall.
He rounds on me the second I make contact. Another beat stretches out. My breath snags behind my teeth.
Half formed thoughts bombard the inside of my skull. His muscles flex and bunch.
He leaps.
I turn and his head collides with the wall where I’d been.
Pulling forward on my hands and knees, I skid into the kitchen, frantic. His back legs knock against the cleaver and when it slides out of reach this time, there’s no getting it back.
My frantic gaze spans the counter.
What do I grab?
How do I protect myself when this is my fault?
His growl echoes off the cabinets and the distinctive click of his claws on the linoleum lights my blood like a lightning strike.
The stove.
The skillet.
I throw myself forward and grab the handle of the cast iron pan as Grayson jumps.
I turn in the same beat. Swing the pan.
I’m sorry.
It connects with the side of his head and Grayson falls, hitting the floor. Teeth stained with blood, my blood, he blinks at me.
His snarl reverberates through me. I wing the pan again, a Rapunzel wannabe and nowhere near as brave as she is.
Hesitation makes the hit unstable. I don’t want to hurt him.
His wolf knows it. They sense weakness and understand exactly how to capitalize on it to bring down their catch.
My third hit is stronger.
Grayson crumples. This time when his eyes shut, they stay closed, and I stare at him, breathing like a bellows.
Silence stretches more awful than the roar of our attacker. I count the seconds, making it all the way to twenty-five, and Grayson hasn’t moved.
He isn’t breathing.
“Oh my god.” I won’t release the pan. “Oh my god, I killed him. I killed him! Grayson, no.”
A sob stretches my chest. I grip the pan tight enough to lose feeling in my fingers and when I’ve counted to sixty, I haven’t moved any closer to the body.
“What do I do?” I blink past the burn.
Panic isn’t an option yet but it’s close enough to knock on my heart. I should check for a pulse. Not like it matters.
“You killed him. Checking for a pulse won’t change what already happened,” I snap.
Black fur seeps back into his skin, melting into the curves and hard angles of him. His jaw shortens before bones crack back into an all-too familiar human shape. His handsome face, somehow more devastating and heartbreaking in death. His black lashes stretch over unmoving cheeks.
The man who hadn’t had a chance to live yet.
“Are you definitely dead?”
My voice cracks. I shouldn’t have hit him so hard. I should have done a lot of things differently tonight and maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.
Hours ago, I’d been trapped in a vampire dungeon.
Now I’d trapped myself in this hell.
I shake my free hand to ease the numb sensation then clear the tears away.
On my knees, I scoot closer with my pan at the ready, searching for movement where there’s none.
“Grayson, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My low moan resembles the wind outside, rattling around the corners of the house. I drag my fingers across his jaw and cheekbone, down to the side of his neck searching for a pulse.
Then jump backward when his chest gives a single jerk upward. I leap out of my skin before sniffing, forcing my hand out to rest against the side of his neck.
After a few swipes to find the right spot. A pulse. Thready and thin but there.
“Alive. Oh, thank goodness. You’re alive! It’s okay.”
Like my apologies do anything.
A sour sensation of guilt gnaws my insides. An unconscious human is better than an unconscious werewolf but this one happens to have powerfully muscled legs and scars around a bite mark that has never fully healed.
I can’t look away.
Stop staring.
I’ve got a better chance of growing a beard than looking away. My attention snags on his shoulder and the scar, the shredded and knitted skin from the bite, and up to his earlobe.
Earlobes are safe.
“Okay,” I say to myself. Desperate for the sound of another human voice. “Okay, so now we have to figure out what to do with you. And I have to decide whether the shame is worse, or the worry that you’ll wake up and attack again.”
There’s a huge chance he’ll come to when I’m moving him. Wolves are powerful. Our healing abilities are quick enough to make short work of any concussion I might have given him. Mental fingers crossed.
The tears in my arm tweak when I move and the second I tune into the pain, I flinch. Blood coats my arm and pools on the floor between us.
“I’ll do this quickly,” I mutter.
Then I’ll have to find something to stop my bleeding until my system catches up. But days in the dungeon aren’t helping me.
Trembling, I maneuver Grayson onto his back, carefully avoiding looking south. He flops like a ragdoll until I hook my good arm beneath his shoulder. My ruined forearm protests and I push the pain aside.
I drag Grayson toward the open door to the bedroom on our left.
It creaks when I push it wider.
A red and blue comforter rests in origami folds at the end of a bed large enough to accommodate him. Two short side tables anchor the bed beneath a window and a dresser clear of dust faces the bed.
“Sorry to whoever uses this cabin, but thank you.”
Puffing, I get Grayson over the threshold and bend at the knees, shifting underneath him to get him onto the bed. Another low moan rumbles through him.
“I’m sorry.”
I leave him with the apology and scurry out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me. And with another breath, I shove a chair from the kitchen table underneath the knob to keep him inside.
Just in case he goes crazy again.
Adrenaline slowly leaks from me, a wave receding from shore. Exhaustion takes its place and I sag, clutching my arm against my chest, more blood seeping into my shirt.
Don’t look at it.
Looking at the wound acknowledges the severity of it. I don’t want to examine the rough skin where he bit down and shook, tearing through things I didn’t need torn. Especially not when I still have no clue if he’s got the curse.
If I’ve got the curse.
If Grayson was infected, then odds are good I’ll be moon-mad, too.
“Okay.” I shake my head from side to side and swallow, slowly letting the constriction in my throat ease. “There’s no sense worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. What do we do now? We look for first aid.”
I’ll have to stop the bleeding until my immune system kicks in to knit my skin together.
No hunter worth his salt—and the cabin has to belong to a hunter of some kind—goes without a first aid kit. There are too many variables out in the wild to leave things to chance.
A second doorway leads to a bathroom with a utilitarian shower and a small box of a vanity. The lighted mirror swings open to reveal a medicine cabinet tucked into the wall, making use of the space.
“Cabins in the woods belong to hunters or hermits.” I talk myself through the search, trembling. “Either one will have supplies. What happens if they get a splinter? Or hurt themselves cutting firewood?”
Which only begs the question—where is the owner?
The medicine cabinet yields nothing, but behind a stack of towels in the vanity, I catch a flash of white and red. The rectangular kit is stocked with bandaids and gauze, along with an assortment of antibacterial creams.
My fingers refuse to work to tear the package open for the alcohol wipe. Holding it between my teeth, I rip, shaking the pad out and steeling myself.
“You’ve had injuries before. Hell, this isn’t the first time you’ve been bitten. You remember the time Holly nipped you on the leg?”
My sister was only into her second shift and wasn’t in full control of her wolf yet. She’d gotten too excited about something and took it out on me. A love nip, she always insists when I bring it up.
“This is nothing.”
My stomach heaves when I finally look at the puncture. Grayson tore deep grooves in my skin that pump fresh blood with movement. It’s impossible to be clinical about it.
My head spins and that queasy feeling gets stronger until it chokes me in a death grip. I fall backward and hit the towel rack on the opposite wall, knocking it free with a clatter.
“I can do this.”
I don’t sound convinced.
Somehow I manage to get the edges of the wound clean but there isn’t enough gauze to wrap around the area. Instead, I grab one of the fresh white washcloths from the pile of towels and wrap it around my forearm, securing it with tape.
It’s not a great solution but it works until I heal myself.
The reflection in the grimy mirror shows carved out eyes smeared with blood and dirt like bruises across my face. Knotted hair is plastered to the top of my head and somewhere in the rat’s nest, leaves stick together with what I assume is algae from the tunnel we took to escape the vampire’s manor.
“What do we do?”
There’s no answer from my reflection.
I need Grayson to plan on what to do next, because I can’t leave him. And I can’t make it out there on my own with a moon-mad wolf prowling near the cabin.
I rip my attention from the mirror and swing open the door to the hush of night.
Wherever the creature went, he’s gone for now.
I’ll have to find something to board up the broken window or else other critters will climb in, searching for a place to snuggle.
A low moan sounds from the bedroom. My nerves on edge and I swallow back bile. Grayson’s waking up. Already. Healing fast.
I stare holes through the door and lose my cool when the doorknob rattles.
Then comes, “…Mandi?”
Okay. Hell, alright. What’s the pan?
The knob gives another ominous rattle and my heartrate spikes like a punted football.
“Mandi, what’s going on? Why am I naked and locked in a bedroom?”
It might be the wood warping his voice but he sounds pissed and I’m not taking any chances. Shaking, I grab the pan from the floor of the kitchen and hold it in front of me, poised to strike.
The door shakes and the hinges give a protesting squeal at the pressure.
Rather than run, I hold my ground, frying pan gripped tight and galvanized for the moment he opens the door and attacks.
I try to speak and my throat closes again, any safety or relief from the previous moment gone. I hadn’t clawed my way this far just to go down now. Everything that has tried to break me was wrong. I don’t break.