Okay, that sounded bad.
Real wolves, I knew, tended to attack their prey’s extremities. They often bit a deer or even a buffalo on the leg, then simply waited for it to bleed out. So I dropped into a boxer’s crouch, which put us almost at eye level, and waited for him to attack.
When he lunged for my right leg, I was ready—but I still wasn’t fast enough to stop him. He got his teeth around my calf in a shallow bite. I immediately hammered my silver-clad fists on his snout, and he yelped and backed off.
I gave my leg a quick glance and saw a few puncture wounds, but nothing that would even require stitches. Good.
The wolf was already circling again, but the space was too small for him to make a big enough circle to flank me. I backed toward the nearest wall, intending to get myself in a better defensive position. He didn’t like that, though, and he made another lunge, this time for my face.
Silver knuckles or not, there wasn’t a lot I could do about his momentum, and when his paws hit my shoulders, the weight knocked me onto my butt. I let it happen so I could concentrate on keeping my hands up.
When you take self-defense classes, or do military combat training, they often teach you to shove something into an attacking dog’s mouth to prevent him from biting. In the absolute worst-case scenario, you can theoretically use your fist, if the dog’s mouth is big enough.
This particular canine had the biggest mouth I’d ever seen. When he opened it, I crammed my fist with the silver handcuff down his throat. He let out another yelping noise, trying to release me and back off, but I bent my wrist so it formed a hook, making sure the silver stayed in contact with him.
Then he raked his claws against my shoulder and upper arm, and I had to release him. Declan backed away from me, pawing at his muzzle. The silver had burned his esophagus. Good.
“Mary,” I yelled. “How’s it coming over there?”
“Soon . . .” Her voice was ragged, but sounded stronger than the last time I’d heard her speak.
Declan snarled, but his circling had put me between him and Mary. His feet shuffled a little in frustration. There were burns on his nose from the silver, and I noticed with satisfaction that they weren’t healing well. “Not used to an even playing field, are you?” I said.
Then Morgan edged into the cave through the narrow entrance. She took in my bloody leg and the silver handcuffs, and Declan shaking his head back and forth like the pain in his throat was an annoying gnat he could shake off. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Uh . . . your guard dog attacked me?”
I saw Morgan’s lips move and tried to duck, but the spell hit me anyway, catapulting me backward. I was too far from the wall to actually hit it, but I landed on my back, which hurt like a motherfucker. I groaned, and Declan trotted over to me, his fangs bared. He put his two front paws on my chest and just stood there, his muzzle dripping saliva and a little blood.
Morgan stalked over to us and crouched down near my face. “I’ll ask again,” she said, annoyed now. “What the hell is going on?”
“Keith attacked Declan,” I wheezed. It was hard to breathe with two hundred pounds of werewolf compressing your lungs. “For . . . alpha. Keith is hurt. He’s in the hallway.”
Declan snarled again, pissed now, but Morgan held up a palm to him, her eyes on me. “Where did you get the—” she began, but at that moment a blur in short-shorts seemed to fly across the room and tackled her around the waist.
Mary.
Chapter 45
There was no sign of Katia, but I figured she was probably too weak to climb out, which meant she was too weak to fight. I had to trust that she was safe for the moment.
Declan began snapping at my limbs again, and I lost track of what Morgan and Mary were doing. I landed one good punch on his snout, then reverted to hammering my fists against him as he tried to get a grip on me. I knew what he was trying to do—get an arm or leg in his mouth so he could shake it, breaking bones—and my best bet was to keep hitting him with the silver cuffs.
Unfortunately, he was smart enough to switch to leading with his claws. For a while I was able to turn my wrists sideways and counter, so any time he tried to rake his paws down me, he got the silver cuffs first. This worked for maybe two minutes, but he was just too fast. Soon there were shallow scratches all over my arms and legs, and I fell down again. I was losing. I opened my mouth to yell for Mary—but then she came flying across the room, hitting the wall a few feet away from me with a very gross crunch. Declan advanced on me, his lips pulled back.
“Stop.” Morgan’s voice rang out sharply, and Declan made himself take a step back from me, though there was an unnaturally sullen expression on his wolf face. I wanted to take stock of my injuries, but there was no time. Morgan strode over to me with her hands on her hips. “Where is Keith?” she demanded. “Tell me the truth, or I’ll let Declan bleed you out.”
I climbed to my feet, ignoring the pain from my injuries. None of them were life-threatening. “He’s dead,” I told her. “His body is in the hallway.”
“I wanted to kill him,” Mary muttered under her breath.
“Hmph.” Morgan’s lips pressed together, and I could practically see her running new calculations in her head, reorganizing her plans to cover the loss. I used those precious seconds to scan the room, desperately looking for my revolver. Werewolf or not, Keith had been a coward. He wouldn’t have wanted it to be far from him, not when I was in the other room with his ghosts.
“Well,” Morgan said, “that’s mildly annoying in the short term, but I suppose I can work with it.” She looked at Declan. “You still want to move into Colorado?”
He didn’t exactly nod, being a wolf and all, but he jerked his chin upward once in the affirmative. Morgan pointed at Mary like a haughty socialite sending back an entree. “Kill her first.”
Declan’s huge head swung away from me, toward Mary.
Where’s the gun? It had to be in this room; he hadn’t had enough time to shuffle sideways through the four o’clock exit. But there just weren’t any decent hiding places where he could—My eyes traveled upward.
Declan’s lips peeled back as he began stalking slowly toward Mary. He was obviously enjoying himself . . . but I was still just a little closer to her. “Mary,” I said urgently, already starting to sprint. “Boost me!”
To her credit, Mary reacted fast, lacing her fingers in a stirrup like any kid who needs to help her friend over a fence or into a tree.
My timing wasn’t perfect, but I had a superpowered foundation. As I jumped, Mary bent a little extra to scoop my foot into her hand, thrusting it upward so fast I went flying up to the shelf. Damn she was strong.
I heard Morgan yelling, and I scrambled to get all my limbs over the ledge as fast as I could, before she could zap me. In the process I lost the silver handcuffs, which went clinking down to the rock floor below.
No time to worry about them. The sandstone was dry up here, thank God, or I would have made a very comical sight slipping right back down onto my ass. Unfortunately, it was also a lot darker than the chamber below, and all I could really see at first was a fuzzy blackness.
I began crawling cautiously along the ledge, feeling with my hands. I had only about two feet of clearance, and this wasn’t a man-made shelf, so there were hundreds of nooks and crannies, plus loose sand. Plenty of places to stash a gun.
“What was the point of that?” Morgan called up, sounding exasperated. Declan, who knew what was up here with me, must have crouched to jump up after me, because Morgan snapped, “Forget her. I’ll get her in a minute. Kill the werewolf.”
Then there were a lot of scuffling sounds, followed by a couple of lupine yelps. I forced myself not to look down. Morgan could throw a spell at me, and getting my night vision was more important at the moment.
After a few more seconds, I could make it out: the revolver was about twelve feet ahead of me on the ledge. I crawled toward it as fast as I dared—but Declan knew where the sidearm was too, and I was still six feet away when he sprang up onto the ledge like a fucking velociraptor.
I got one shoe under my stomach and pushed off as hard as I could, diving for the weapon between us.
My fingers touched metal and slipped, knocking the gun to one side. It seemed to teeter precariously on the edge; then my grasping fingers went around it and I pulled it toward me, narrowly missing the extended claws as they came at me from the other side.
I might have fumbled a different gun, but my grandfather had taught me to shoot on the revolver, and I had it turned and pointed at Declan before he could do anything. I cocked it, aimed loosely at his center mass, and pulled the trigger.
Only Declan wasn’t there. He had thrown himself sideways over the ledge.
I cursed, my ears ringing. Keith had fired the gun twice, which meant I had only three shots left.
I leaned my arm over, trying to aim, but he was so fucking fast on four legs, and he was already hiding underneath where I lay on the ledge. Morgan was in the center of the room trying to put another pair of silver handcuffs on Mary, but when she saw me with the revolver, she swore and straightened up, extending her fingers to catapult me.
Mary swept Morgan’s legs out from under her with a vicious kick. “Shoot him!” she yelled.
Fuck it.
I dropped my head and shoulders over the ledge, like I was doing an upside-down crunch, leveled the weapon at where I thought Declan would be in two seconds, and fired.
The wolf screamed, falling back, but I couldn’t tell where I’d hit him. My lower body started to slip off the ledge, so I flailed my arms, trying to get my balance back—but the back of my left hand struck the rock hard and I cried out and let go of the gun. With a massive effort, I got my right hand back on the ledge and flipped myself over onto my back, listening for the clatter of the old revolver hitting the cave floor. It didn’t come.
“Mary,” I said, more or less to the ceiling.
I could hear heavy breathing and the hum of the generator, but that was it. I peeked over the edge of the rock shelf—and saw a large, naked man, a pool of blood spreading away from his body. Mary was standing right beneath me, holding the gun. The barrel was pointed at Morgan Pellar.
Chapter 46
“Don’t kill her,” I blurted.
“Why the fuck not?” Her voice was ragged. She was close to the edge of her control, though I wasn’t exactly sure if that meant she would shoot Morgan or turn into a wolf.
Because I’d promised Simon? Mary wasn’t going to go for that, so I said, “Because she spent way too much time on the phone.”
That made Mary pause to think, which was what I wanted. I slid my legs and lower half over the ledge first, hanging on, then dropped down, bending my legs to absorb the impact.
Morgan, I could see now, was completely still, but she had that calculating look on her face that I knew all too well. “Her bullet is faster than your spell,” I snapped at her.