It started snowing—light, fine, powdery snow—as soon as I was a block away from Leone’s. You know, that gorgeous stuff that looks like diamonds.
About a block more and I heard footsteps behind me. At first they matched mine near perfectly, but then they slowed to a leisurely pace.
I didn’t look back, but at the first chance I looked in a darkened store window that showed me what was behind me.
Wolf-boy was back.
He looked so much bigger with my reflection dwarfed in front of his.
Fear raked its claws down my spine.
What if the wolf follows me home?
Then I’ll shred him with my claws, and drink deep of his blood.
Okay, that was my puma talking.
But she was afraid too.
But I’m a shifter! A freaking puma.
I’m a predator.
But he was a wolf like Benny was a wolf.
But Benny had been possessed by a skinwalker.
A puma is as strong as a wolf.
He may have me by about fifty pounds, but I had newly acquired skills.
I could take one lone wolf.
It was time to end this game of cat and mouse.
I’m the cat, after all.
I took a deep breath and led him into an alley and stopped to face him about halfway down the alley.
My puma was vibrating, itching to get out and kick this asshole’s ass.
He appeared a few moments later, standing at the mouth of the alley, leaning against the outer wall of a building. I can see the smile on his face. A baring of his teeth.
“Nowhere to run,” he said, his voice like gravel.
“Not running,” I said back, my voice flat and steady.
He started to walk toward me. “I like it when they fight back. It’s like foreplay.”
My stomach lurched. I was so close to running.
But my cat and I decided at the same moment that we were not running.
This ends now.
My puma flows through me, not taking over, not trying to make me shift, but giving me her strength. She trusts me to fight this one by myself.
“I bet you’re a real Casanova.” I wait for him to come closer. I let my purse fall from my shoulder to the ground. It would only get in my way. “Sure you don’t want to do this at a nice restaurant, say tomorrow at eight?”
He stopped in his tracks and frowned. I can tell from the look on his face sarcasm is wasted on him.
His scent hits me right then, carried on the frozen wind, overpowering even the stench of the trashcans and years of built up filth.
I felt the terror rise up in me, uncontrolled.
I see his nostrils flare as he takes in the scent of my fear.
“You smell good, little cat.” He keeps coming closer. Already too close.
Don’t run…
Prey runs…
I’m not prey.
But I ran away from my home, from my family, from everything…
That’s what I do. I run.
I’m afraid.
“I bet you taste—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” I screamed overtop him. “You gab more than my girlfriends.”
His eyelids lowered as he scowled at me. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.” And in an instant he came at me, fast, arms out to catch me if I tried to get past him.
I didn’t try to get away. But I did duck right past him, under his arms, rounding on him and kicking the back of his knee.
I slipped, and my kick didn’t have the power it needed to do any real damage to his joint, but it did hurt.
When he swung around, “Fucking bitch,” on his breath, I was there, feet planted on the hard cold ground, a punch to his throat already chambered and released.
He tried to feint left away from me, but it was too late. I caught him in the windpipe with a near crushing blow. He staggered back, not believing that I’d already bested him.
Some things could be pushed through—broken bones, blood gushing, even stabbing pain—but a sudden lack of oxygen wasn’t one of them.
He fell against a trashcan, upending it and falling to his knees in the snow.
I stood at the ready.
My training was telling me to finish him off. My puma wanted to kill him.
But I didn’t want his death on my hands.
Stupid conscience.
I started to back away as he tried to speak. His gravelly voice was shredded now, a mere whisper of his former tone.
I saw it in his eyes the moment his anger and his wolf flared and he shot up from the ground and tackled me.
Nothing like being hit by two hundred pounds of pissed-off werewolf.
It didn’t knock the air out of me—I breathed out hard as soon as I saw what he was doing—but I did hit my head hard on the cracked blacktop of the alley. A second of seeing stars and my puma shook off what would have probably been a concussion for a human.
Wolfboy was laughing, an ugly wheezing sound that stoked my anger into pure rage instantly.
It sounded like the skinwalker.
Fear and rage clashed inside me. I tried pushing him off me, but he had his hands on my shoulders in a crushing grip. He had his knees wedged between mine, so I couldn’t kick him in the balls.
He pushed his weight down on me. “I love it when you wiggle,” he hissed.
I love it when you wiggle, little cat.
I love it when you cry…
I pushed my face up to his and bit down on his nose.
His laughing turned to screaming, and before I knew it he’d pulled himself up off me.
I rolled over onto my hands and knees and spit his nose onto the ground.
“Fucking bitch!” his voice was so hoarse, and he was sputtering as blood squirted from his face.
He came at me again, this time trying to kick me when I was down, but I rolled out of his path and then back up onto my feet.
I spit his blood out of my mouth and wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“Aren’t you the pretty one,” I said as he circled me, holding his hand over the still bleeding wound.
He’d grow his nose back. But it probably would never look the same. Cartilage was a funny thing to grow back.
“You’re dead, bitch!”
The sound of his voice, the anger mixed with uncertainty. He hadn’t thought I’d be able to fight back.
Really fight back.
“You have a real problem with women, you know that? You might want to look into getting some counseling.”
He looked hideous as he blew blood bubbles out his ruined nose. “I’ll be just fine after I make you pay for this.”
He moved so fast, anger and pain sharpening his already heightened reflexes.
I used his speed and weight against him, throwing him into the brick wall behind me with a move my self-defense instructor would be proud of.
I rang his bell, that’s for sure. But as I said, shifters shake off head wounds like they’re nothing.
This time, when I aimed a kick to the back of his knee, I didn’t slip, and the full force of my shifter strength snapped his leg like a twig.
Again, he would heal. But from a broken bone that would heal wrong before he could ever find medical help, and then need to be broken again to reset it well enough so he could have full use of his leg again: that would take the rest of the day, maybe some of the next too.
The big bad wolf was lying on the ground, holding his knee and howling in agony.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“If this doesn’t teach you not to try and force yourself on women, then I’ll have to go all the way next time. “So take this as a gift. I’m letting you off easy.”
You should kill him, my puma growls.
And she’s right. He won’t stop—if not with me, then someone weaker… maybe a human.
But I just can’t.
To punctuate my point I press my booted foot into his broken knee, making his scream and howl even louder.
“Tell me you understand me.”
“I understand,” a rough, metallic voice said from behind me.
I turned, keeping my foot still pressed into wolfboy’s shattered knee. The voice had come from a tall, broad-shouldered man with a shaved head and a deep scar running down the side of his face.
This one had seen combat alright.
I took a breath to say I really liked his fashion sense, and that we could talk about the aesthetics of the ugly black tattoo he had on his neck, but another man materialized from the shadowed entrance to the alley.
Shiiit…
Two against one. And from the stench, they were both wolves too.
Suddenly wolf boy pulled his hands from of his knee and grabbed hold of me.
“Kill the bitch, Marster!”
Great… three against one.
I pressed all my weight into wolfboy’s knee. His grip on me faltered and I tore away from him, landing a kick to his balls as I spin around to face the other two.
The big one, Marsters, and the other one, a redhead of medium height and a lean build move closer, with each step becoming more and more tense. Like springs wound and coiled, just ready to launch into action.
Another man stepped into the alley.
Goddamn it… had they brought their whole pack?
All I smelled was wolf. No surprises there.
The redhead laughed nervously as he approached. “Damn Sully, she really fucked your face up good.”
Marsters kept his eyes on me, not moving any faster than the redhead. “She’s tricky then, so keep your head, boy, or she might tear something off you.”
I decide to look scared, which wasn’t too hard to pull off. Part of me was on the verge of tears.
The one thing that I’m most afraid of—wolves—and I’m surrounded by them.
Funny, I ran away from home so I wouldn’t be around wolves, and here they are.
Guess you really can’t run away from your problems. They actually follow you.
So I let that fear slide into me. They’re shifters, and they’d know I didn’t smell afraid. Right now I smell angry.
I left the fear loose inside me, letting my mind wander to memories of the skinwalker, of the wolf in Benny.
And with that, my heartbeat doubled its tempo. I could smell the fear now.
I hugged my arms around myself and took a few steps back.
You can’t take three uninjured wolves…
That thought wasn’t helping. But it did make me stink of fear.
The wolf at the entrance to the alley stayed put. Lookout or just a sentry to make sure I didn’t get loose if I did get past the two wolves coming after me.
The redhead smiled as he caught the scent of my fear.
Marsters stopped in his tracks, canted his head and spat on the ground. “I smell it… I see it… but I just don’t believe it.”
The redhead was already a few steps ahead and stopped to look back at the other wolf.
That was my opening.
My puma was more than riled up. She was seething for these men’s blood.
She slid into me, vanquishing my fear with the instinct to fight, and the need for our enemies’ blood.
I jumped in the air, falling on the redhead with two moves at once: my foot to his knee, and my elbow to the back of the head.
He’d shake off the blow to the head, but there was a satisfying crunch when I sank all my weight into his knee.
Down went one wolf.
Marsters didn’t even blink. He just caught hold of me by my neck and swung me around and right into the sturdy cold bricks of the building we were behind.
I didn’t exhale in time, and the impact into the wall knocked the air out of me. Pain seared my lungs and my body felt suddenly very crunchy. He might have given me some fractures.
And I hit my head again. More stars… think there was even a little birdie tweeting somewhere.
“Fuck! She broke my motherfucking knee!” The redhead roared from where he was sitting on the ground, holding his knee.
Before I could take a breath or even shake the glaring stars out of my head, a huge hand grabbed me by the neck, slamming me right back into the wall I’d staggered away from.
Marsters looked me in the eye, his mouth open enough I could see his teeth bared. Not a smile.
A predator thing.
“Too bad you’re such a nuisance… you’re a pretty little kitty.”
Pretty little kitty…
No…
Fear and rage surged through me, and I wrapped my legs around Marsters' legs, swept both arms across me, pushing his hand from my throat, and then I lunged for his throat, teeth bared.
The moment they sink into his neck, the instant they break the flesh and his blood spurts into my mouth, my puma goes wild.
Yesyesyesyesyesyes…
Marsters cried out, his deep voice angry as he tries to push me off him, but my teeth are secure in his flesh, my legs are entangled with his. I wrap my arms around his neck to hold me to him all the better.
He smashed me into the wall as hard as he could, but that only made me bite down harder.
From behind him, I heard struggling, the scuffling of feet. I imagined it’s the two wolves I’d kneecapped, being helped up by the wolf at the edge of the alley.
Marsters smashed me back into the wall again.
The stars blind me and I felt myself fall limp against him, his blood gushing against my face and down my chest.
He tossed me to the ground, holding his hand to his bleeding neck.
“Dumb bitch!”
These guys were really cut from the same cloth.
I tried to open my eyes, to move at all. But all I could do was lie there on the cold wet ground.
Helpless…
Oh, god… I was helpless again…
I started screaming, even though I wasn’t making a sound, inside I was screaming, clawing to get up, to move, to fight, to run… to do anything.
“I’m going to enjoy breaking you, little kitty. I’m going to—”
He didn’t say another word.
I heard a groan, and some snapping, and a thud, like a great weight hitting the ground.
The alley was so quiet. I heard faint breathing and the falling of snow.
And then I heard footsteps coming toward me.
Nonononononono.
Get up!
Fight! Run!
The footsteps stopped right by me. He was standing right over me.
I felt arms slide under my shoulders and my knees, and suddenly I was lifted up off the ground.
And then I smelled him.
Not a wolf.
No, he was a bear.
It took every ounce of strength I had, but I got my eyes to crack open for an instant. I saw him in the dim light of the alley. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
And then my eyes closed and I passed out.