Chapter 32 Kiera
KIERA
The big Monstrum came out of the maze of hanging canthors like a living nightmare—huge, fast, and terrifying.
His eyes had gone blood—red and as Kiera watched, his face changed in the span of a heartbeat.
The sharp, human angles lengthened–bones shifting beneath skin and fur until the face above that broad, powerful body was no longer truly a man’s at all.
It was a wolf’s.
A great snarling wolf’s face with blood-red eyes and fangs bared, but somehow he kept his bipedal form.
Kiera had never seen anything so frightening in her life…or anything so beautiful.
Brux hit Higgs so hard the bigger male flew off her and crashed into a row of hanging carcasses, sending them swinging wildly on their hooks. Metal shrieked and frozen meat slammed into frozen meat. Green—black blood flakes and frost rained down.
Higgs yelled and lashed out blindly with the knife.
Brux was on him at once, growling and snapping, half man and half beast and wholly enraged.
Kiera scrambled backward across the freezing floor, boots slipping, bound hands scrabbling for purchase on bloody ice and concrete. She could do nothing but stare in horror as the two males battled.
Higgs fought harder than she would have expected. For all his potbelly and his stink and his disgusting slovenly appearance, he was still big and strong from ranch work and butchering. He swung the knife in vicious, desperate arcs, trying to keep Brux at bay.
“You freak!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the frozen walls. “You mangy fucking freak!”
Brux answered with a roar that made the hanging carcasses shudder. He knocked the knife aside once, twice—then Higgs ducked low and drove the blade forward with a grunt.
The rusty knife went into Brux’s side.
Kiera screamed in horror, but Brux barely seemed to feel it–or if he did, the pain only fed the terrible red fury burning in his eyes.
He slammed Higgs back against the steel butchering table so hard the whole thing rang like a struck bell.
The rusty butcher knife came out in a wet jerk and hit the floor with a clang.
Dark red blood ran down Brux’s side, startlingly bright against his fur and skin, but he didn’t even glance at the wound.
Higgs did and for the first time, Kiera saw real fear in his face–fear and the knowledge that the half man/half beast attacking him couldn’t be stopped.
Brux’s wolf muzzle pulled back from his fangs in a snarl that promised nothing but death.
“No, you fucking freak!” Higgs tried to twist away, but it was too late.
Brux caught him by the throat and shoulder and bore him down to the concrete. They rolled together in a blur of limbs and claws and snapping jaws, knocking into the hanging carcasses and making them swing in wild grotesque arcs overhead.
Kiera couldn’t look away…couldn’t move.
Her head was pounding. Her body was so cold it no longer seemed to belong to her. The whole freezing warehouse had taken on a gray, dreamlike cast, as though she was watching all of this from underwater.
Still, she saw everything.
Higgs got one hand around Brux’s throat and shoved, his face dark with effort. Brux snapped at him and missed by inches. Higgs tried to scramble for the fallen knife, fingers clawing over the floor. Brux caught his wrist in one huge hand and slammed it down hard enough to make bone crack.
“Ahh–you fuck!” Higgs screamed.
Then Brux’s wolf face dipped, his muzzle finding the other male’s throat.
There was a horrible wet, tearing sound and a spray of bright red blood across green—frozen concrete.
Higgs jerked–his big body fishtailing under Brux’s half—animal form. He made one last choking, bubbling noise…then nothing.
The refrigeration units hummed on. The hanging carcasses swung more and more slowly.
Brux stayed bent over Higgs for a long moment, shoulders heaving, red eyes blazing, blood running from the stab wound in his side and from Higgs’ torn throat. He looked like the “werewolf” Iyanna had accused him of being–he looked like vengeance given shape.
Kiera just stared. She was horrified…and yet some deeper part of her–some primitive frightened female part–felt only savage relief.
Brux did it, she thought dazedly. He killed Higgs–he killed him before Higgs could kill me.
Brux lifted his head from the kill. His muzzle and chest were streaked with blood now, his breath steaming in the freezer air. He turned to look at Kiera and for one long terrible moment she saw no recognition in those red eyes at all.
Only Rage…only the beast.
“Brux?” she whispered.
His name came out weak and slurred. Suddenly she felt very, very tired. Too tired to go on.
The fight…the fear…the cold…the blow to her head–all of it had been building and building and now that the immediate terror was over, it was as though her body had decided it had done enough.
The frozen concrete floor under her felt oddly soft–like a feather bed. The freezer lights seemed dim and too far away.
No, she thought. No, don’t do this. Don’t get sleepy. Not now–just look at him–he needs someone to pull him back from the edge!
But she was so sleepy. So very, very sleepy.
Somewhere deep inside, she seemed to hear a little voice say, you’re going into shock.
The wolf—faced Brux took one step toward her…then another and another.
Somewhere in the distance she heard the slow drip of blood and the clink of a swinging hook settling at last to stillness.
This was bad–Brux wasn’t himself. She was in danger.
Kiera tried to keep her eyes open–tried to stay with him. Tried not to slide down into the soft gray drowsiness wrapping itself around her.
Don’t close your eyes, she told herself desperately. Don’t give in. Don’t—
But the freezing air was so cold, and she was so very, very tired.
As the last of the fight’s echoes died away in the deep freeze, Kiera felt herself slipping away, despite every frantic effort not to.
And then the darkness closed over her.