Chapter Eight

Austin dashed from one pine tree to the next, seeking what scant cover there was on the mountainside. He was halfway up the mountain, sliding on loose shale and pebbles. The tree line up here was scrubby and didn’t offer enough cover.

It was late afternoon. He’d left Savannah behind, safely handcuffed, several hours ago.

You have to stop thinking about her. Focus on the job.

There was no breeze, the air was hot and dead still, and he didn’t hear a sound. Not even birdsong.

It was as if the entire mountainside was holding its breath. As if all the local wildlife was smart enough to head for safer parts. Smarter than him.

He stood there for a minute, holding perfectly still, but all he heard was the thundering of his own heart pounding in his ears.

It was like that old cliché. “It’s quiet out here. Too quiet.”

He knew he was getting close. Could he actually take Roy on? He would find out in the very near future.

He had the tranq rifle that he’d stolen from Savannah slung around his neck. At first he hadn’t planned on using it, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he would likely need every advantage he could get.

He was staying in human form for now, so he’d be able to shoot if he needed to.

He was going to have to go wolf pretty soon if he wanted to be able to track Roy down, though. In human form, his scenting ability was very good, but not as strong as when he was in his animal form.

He definitely scented wolf here, and the unique scent of the Dominus Alpha said it had to be Roy. The stink was everywhere

Oddly, it didn’t smell like rage. It smelled more like overwhelming sorrow. Maybe Roy felt bad about the people he’d killed. Maybe he’d been out of control when he’d done it.

Didn’t matter.

Dead was dead. Roy had been their death sentence. And now Austin would be his.

A warm breeze swept through the air. He tipped his head back and sniffed at the wind, searching for her scent, but instead he smelled Roy – way too close.

He dashed from behind the pine tree, heading for another stand of trees about fifty feet away.

Then he heard an odd rumbling sound. He glanced up to see an enormous boulder hurtling straight down the mountainside towards him.

Scrambling madly, he ran for cover, and tripped.

He tried to climb to his feet and kept slipping on the steep hillside, which suddenly seemed to be made of Teflon. Above, he heard howls of harsh laughter.

He stopped trying to stand and rolled over and over. The boulder thundered past him, spraying him with gravel and missing by inches.

He scrambled to his feet and looked up to see Roy standing on a ledge. Fuck, that wolf was crazy strong. And also just plain crazy.

He was wearing jeans and boots, stripped down to his waist. He looked just like his pictures, with a squarish, handsome face, with horizontal lines creasing his forehead and dark hair streaked with white. His scraggly beard had a white stripe through it.

“Oh good, I was getting bored,” Roy shouted down at him.

Austin cupped his hands around his mouth to yell back at Roy. “If you come with me peacefully, I will do my best to see that you get treatment.”

“What, after I butchered all those people? No, no, I really think you should kill me.” Roy threw back his head and laughed again, a harsh, horrifying sound. It echoed off the hills and bounced back, a chorus of madness.

Was that Austin’s future?

Roy came rushing down the hill at him, shifting as he ran. His wolf was enormous, gray and white and snarling. Foam flew from his mighty jaws.

Austin tried pushing at him with his Dominus power, and immediately felt an enormous splitting pain in his head. He was trying to force Roy back into human form, and the results were hideous. Patches of human skin appeared and then disappeared on his flanks, giving Roy a revolting, moving quilt of pink bald splotches. Roy’s ears seemed to melt like candle wax, then reformed.

Roy slowed down, skidding on loose pebbles, and sent his own wave of power at Austin.

Austin felt as if he’d been hit in the head with an anvil. His whole body throbbed with agony. His fangs tore through his gums instead of sliding smoothly through the way they did during a normal shift, and blood ran out of his mouth. His claws punched through his fingertips, spraying droplets of blood. He’d never felt anything like this before. It was bizarre and hideous, more like the werewolf transition of a horror movie than the beautiful melding of his animal with his human form.

Roy was staggering but still advancing relentlessly. He was moving slowly, but he would get there, and Austin didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. He had never encountered power like Roy’s before.

He felt fur shooting through his skin, and his bones snapped. He let out a scream of pain.

Nobody had been able to force him to shift since he was a cub.

It took every ounce of strength he had to force his wolf back down so that he could handle the gun, which was going to be his only hope.

He had really, foolishly hoped that his Dominus power would be a match for Roy. It wasn’t even close.

He fired at Roy. One dart didn’t do it. Roy didn’t even seem to notice.

He fired again. And again. Roy kept coming.

He had no idea how potent Savannah’s darts were, but he suspected that three darts would be enough to kill an average shifter. And Roy was still bearing down on him. This gun had one more dart. He fired it.

That one seemed to be the charm.

Thank God, because Roy was twenty feet away from Austin. But now the crazed wolf was staggering, his eyes rolling back in his head, tongue lolling in his mouth.

Austin stood there, gasping and wheezing like a hundred-year-old asthmatic. He closed his eyes and concentrated all his self-healing power, and his whole body felt as if it had caught on fire. He forced bones back into place, reattached muscles and tendons. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

Roy lay on his side, his flank heaving, eyes closed. A dart stuck out of his shoulder.

Austin could barely see or hear or smell. He swayed where he stood, gulping air, for several long minutes before he finally felt well enough to walk towards Roy.

When he got there, he looked down at the defeated wolf. He felt a wave of pity rush over him. He knew how strongly he felt about Savannah, a yearning that had only intensified after they’d had sex. He couldn’t imagine growing to love and trust and bond with a mate, then losing them. He understood why it had tipped Roy over into madness.

Still, he was here to do a job, and he’d do it.

“Sorry, old man,” he said.

Roy’s eyes snapped open, and he leaped gracefully to his feet. He shifted into human form in seconds, so fast that the air around him seemed to blur.

Son of a bitch. He’d been faking to get Austin closer. Those tranquilizer darts hadn’t even slowed him down.

“Sorry?” Roy said, with way more self-control than Austin would have given him credit for. “Why are you sorry? Because you fucked up and now you’re going to die?”

Austin gathered all his strength, determined to take the bastard down with him.

And then it hit him – the darkness.

No! Not now, not now!

The vision swept over him, and he sank to his knees. All around him, he could see flames. Savannah was on fire, surrounded by darkness. Staggering. Screaming. Smoke swirling up from her hair.

He could smell the stench of her burning flesh, and it was driving him mad.

Desperately, he pushed back against it, as if Savannah were really burning, and erasing the vision would save her.

Panic and rage roared through him as he flailed through pitch blackness. Savannah disappeared into the ball of flames, but her wails grew louder and louder, calling to him, pleading.

He pushed harder.

Lloyd, his dead father, appeared, running towards Savannah with a knife in his hand. Jessica, his mother, stood next to him. She had an enormous martini glass in her hand. So big that it took two hands to hold it, and she was chugging from the glass. Horns swirled up out of her head, and her eyes turned bright red.

An enormous paw hit him in the head, and he felt agony as claws raked down the side of his skull. Real, nightmare, he couldn’t tell.

He fell to the ground. Then he heard a shout of rage. It sounded like Savannah. “Get the hell away from him, motherfucker!”

He tumbled into the darkness, gratefully letting it fold around him and swallow him whole.