It was like one of those “previously on” recaps you see on TV. Just flashes, first slow, then faster: a memory I’d completely forgotten of my father picking me up and swinging me around over his head, his face so blurry; Mom holding my hand as we walked into the grocery store in town; Gram making melon balls at the kitchen table, putting one in my little Peanuts bowl so I could nibble on the cool, sweet fruit; my first kiss with Daniel Miller; the first time I dumped a drink on a customer at Ironcloud’s; Shifting into my cat and running through the forest; Gram’s funeral; how it felt finding out mom had left; the skinwalker; running from everything and it still catching up with me; blood and Wade.
My eyes shot open and I felt my body jerking.
Oh god, what happened?
I leaned up, every muscle in my body aching and jittering.
I blinked, my vision foggy. And then I saw Wade lying beside me.
Wade…
I touched him and felt him breathe. Relief washed over me.
And then I looked past him and that relief evaporated.
A battle was raging, Stormy and Maddox fighting two werewolves a piece. Bly and Bull throwing punches and head-butts at two or three more. Everyone seemed to have their hands full.
But why?
And then I saw why.
A huge man with white glowing eyes was holding my friend Chelsea by the neck.
A flash of him, with lightning shooting out of his hand at me, and Wade jumping in front of me to protect me.
My big, bad fool-in-shining-armor.
I felt adrenaline shoot through my system, but when I tried to get up off the ground, my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
The man with the glowing eyes—he’d called himself Ford, hadn’t he?—shook Chelsea, making her whimper.
“It had said you and your people would be a challenge,” he opened his mouth and I saw sharp fangs elongate.
No…
Chelsea’s eyes were wide with terror. “Roxy?” she choked out.
With blinding speed the wolf lunged at her, his mouth fastening to her shoulder, Chelsea writhing as her cries shattered the night.
I got to my feet, seeing Wade beginning to stir, and ran toward the monstrous werewolf.
I moved to punch him in the throat, but he’d stopped biting Chelsea and backhanded me easily away from him.
I hit the warm dirt, still jerking, my mind not working right.
Ford laughed, a sound so wrong it grated on my flesh.
I looked up at him as he dropped Chelsea’s bloodied body to the ground.
Don’t be dead.
That’s when I noticed it—a dirty stain in the air right beside the lightning wielding werewolf.
Tendrils of black, sheer and dirty looking, floated and swirled in the wind, red and orange light, like the glow of charcoal embers, throbbed through the mass.
The skinwalker.
Just thinking the word made icy claws rake over my flesh.
Was this it in its natural form? Pure, abhorrent black spirit.
Ford laughed again, and I got the impression that the dark mass beside him was talking to him, egging him on.
I was on the ground, but I was quite close to the werewolf. I chambered and then threw a kick at him, aiming to take out his knee from the side.
But I was still too slow, and he batted my leg away and then seized it, using it to throw me about twenty feet further away.
Having my leg wrenched like that hurt, sailing through the air made me dizzy. But it was landing, skidding and scratching my face and arm along the hard, dry ground that really rang my bell.
I shook it off as best I could, rolling over to face where the action was. Wade was punching Ford, but every time he touched the wolf he was being shocked. Which after the first lightning strike, was bit by bit bringing Wade to his knees.
Ford glowered down at him, and I could tell he was about to strike.
I saw a nice big rock lying right by me.
A piece of my dream about Gram at her graveside slid into place. She’d asked me if I remembered breaking Sammy Hurt’s bat with a fastball.
I did.
The rock wasn’t all that round, and when I picked it up I noticed it was a lot heavier than a baseball. But it felt good in my hand, familiar.
I surged to my feet, planting my feet into the ground, wasting only a moment to take aim.
The rock went so fast through the air it was a blur.
The werewolf’s head snapped back and a crimson line formed on his forehead, and then blood started to pour out of it.
I reached down and pulled two more rocks from the ground. They weren’t as heavy or big, but I put even more oomph into pitching them at the electrically charged werewolf.
He dodged one, muttering the word, “Bitch…” But my second stone got him right between the eyes.
Wade shook his head, looked up at Ford and then threw another punch, this one to his gut.
The werewolf was knocked back a few paces—obviously, he couldn’t concentrate and keep himself charged up electrically when he was in pain. And my second rock had sliced open the flesh between his eyebrows. Blood poured out into his eyes.
This was our chance.
I ran at the alpha werewolf, Wade now on his feet again, throwing brutal punches at the wolf, making contact with his jaw, his gut, and his eyes.
I was just about there when wolf boy, the asshole who’d started this all, popped up out of the darkness, a piece of freaking silver duct tape covering the hole in his face where his nose used to be.
The skinwalker must have been cloaking him in shadows, and he tackled me mere feet from where his alpha and Wade were fighting.
Sneaky asshole.
I didn’t exhale as he blindsided me, so when I hit the dirt, the wind got knocked out of me. Plus he landed on me.
I would’ve groaned in agony if only I had the breath to do it.
Wolfboy gripped my throat with one hand and pushed himself up with it until he glowered over me, his now grisly face stretched in a gruesome smile.
I tried to pull breath into my lungs, but he was effectively strangling me.
I panicked. Not being able to breathe, having a werewolf pinning me to the ground. It all pushed me over the edge.
I was going to die.
But that only lasted for a moment.
Then I got pissed.
Again this ugly fucker was in my territory, trying to push me around.
My training took over. I took both hands and braided my fingers together. Then I swept my arms from right to left, easily pushing wolfboy’s arm to the side. He fell forward into me, and that’s when I bit his ear off.
I know… I’m a biter, who knew?
Wolfboy howled as he pulled himself away from me, holding the gushing wound where his earlobe had been.
I spit it out on the ground and pushed myself onto my feet.
My puma was on fire, clawing at me from inside, wanting more blood, wanting to feel this asshole’s heartbeat cease under her fangs.
But I needed to be in control, so I couldn’t just let her out, or shift into my animal form.
No, this—right here—ended now.
He pulled something out of his pocket as he turned back toward me. I heard the snick of a switchblade before I saw the blade glint in the moonlight.
What kind of shifter resorted to using weapons?
We are weapons.
I moved on him heedlessly, rushing toward him as if following the flow of a great wave. One moment I was standing still, the next I was ducking his fast yet utterly clumsy attempt to stab me with his switchblade.
But I hadn’t stopped moving. I evaded his attack but slid in like a knife, climbing up and around him, using his much larger body as handholds and stepping stones until I was literally standing on his shoulders.
I’m strong. All shifters are at least twice as strong as an average human. But I knew I wasn’t strong enough to do what I wanted to do.
So I needed to put every ounce of my body weight into it as well.
I dropped to my knees. Wolfboy cried out, reaching up with his hands, trying to pull me off of him. But I had my thighs wrapped around his head, my hands laced down around his chin for leverage.
I let myself fall to the side and swung around. I felt and heard Wolfboy’s neck snap with a satisfying crunch.
His body shook as he fell forward. I rode him to the ground and rolled off into the dirt, popping up to my feet, instantly ready for the big asshole to come at me again.
But I’d done a good job breaking his neck. He lay there, not moving, yet he still breathed.
No, he wasn’t going to live through this.
No fucking way.
Over by the side of the house an old shovel, wooden handled with an iron blade, sat leaning against the clapboard siding.
I walked over, grabbed the shovel, and then came back over to Wolfboy. I held onto the handle as I hauled it up into the air, and with every ounce of strength I could muster I brought it down and severed Wolfboy’s head from his shoulders. The shovel was lodged into the ground as his body’s life-blood gushed out onto the cold hard ground.
I heard something behind me.
I turned, but too late. Ford had me by the throat and held in the air, cutting off my air supply and leaving me unable to even call out for help.
His eyes were still glowing, but they weren’t as bright as before.
I looked past him and saw Wade lying on the ground.
No…
I tried to gouge his eyes out with my thumbs, but he just shook me and added pressure to his grip around my throat.
It was all I could do to try and pry his hand away.
Though my sight was turning darker, I made out the misty blackness of the skinwalker. He slithered through the air and wrapped himself around Ford. And then his grip lessened, just enough to allow me to drag in a breath.
A terrifyingly familiar grin stretched across his face. “Here, kitty, kitty.”