The first bullet took her in the chest as she was falling. It tore a chunk of flesh from her back in a crimson spray. The second, third, and fourth punched her stomach. The bronze ball rolled from her fingers and fell into the green grass.
A small body burst from the brush and dashed across the clearing, dark hair flying. Lark.
At the tree line Cerise screamed.
The kid zigged and zagged like a scared rabbit. Bullets tore the turf on both sides of her. A bolt screeched through the air and sprouted from her chest. It caught the girl in mid-leap, and for a moment Lark flew, weightless, eyes opened wide, mouth opened in a horrified O, face chalk pale, just like the child in a meadow full of dandelions years ago …
The wild screamed and raked at him from the inside with its claws. He dropped off the branch and dashed to her. The grass and rocks blurred. He rushed through the world, governed only by the speed of his own heartbeat as only a wolf could run. Bullets grazed him like searing furious bees, shredding his shadow, biting through his tracks. He scooped Lark off the ground and kept running, faster and faster, too fast, to the safety of the trees.
Erian charged past him to the house. Faces jerked into his view, barring his way. William leaped over them, bouncing off the nearest trunk deep into the woods, over the fallen tree, past the bushes to the stand of cypresses, half-sunken in the water.
He realized they were far enough and landed on a dry spot. His heart hammered in his chest. His ears felt full of blood.
Lark stared at him with terrified eyes like a mouse before a cat. He jerked her up. The bolt had punched just above her clavicle, not in her chest. A flesh wound. Only a flesh wound.
“Why?” William snarled, his voice barely human. She said nothing and he shook her once. “Why?”
“I had to help. Nobody will miss a monster,” she whispered.
“Never again,” he growled in her face. “You hear me? Never again.”
She nodded, shaking.
He whipped around. People were coming through the brush. He lowered Lark to the ground. The knife was already in his hand. He smelled their breath, he heard their pulse. Their fear flooded him, filling him with a predatory glee. He bit the air. They backed away from him.
“William!” Cerise’s voice cut through his rage. “William!”
She pushed through them and splashed through the water. Her scent sent his senses into overdrive. Cerise grabbed at him, her eyes luminescent. Her lips grazed his and he tasted her for half a second. “Thank you!” she breathed and then she was gone, swiping Lark off the ground and carrying her away, and William had to shake himself, because the excitement strained his body, begging to split it open and let the wild out.
People backed away and followed her, until only one remained. William stared at the familiar face. Wild hair, earring, dark eyes … It took him a second. Kaldar.
“Hey, there,” the man said.
William growled.
“Easy now. Easy. Put the crazy away. The fight is that way.” Kaldar pointed back, over his own shoulder. “That’s where the bad guys are.”
“I know.” William stalked past him.
“Talking is good.” Kaldar followed him. “Coherent complete sentences are even better. You’re very fast, blueblood.”
William pushed through the brush. The fury boiled through him. He needed blood. He needed to rip into warm flesh.
At the house Erian, pressed flat against the wall between two windows, ripped a bolt free of his shoulder with a grimace. The Mars kept up the covering fire, their bolts and bullets clattered against the bars guarding the windows above him, mere feet away from Erian’s head. Cerise’s cousin crouched and crept to the right, his back glued to the wall. He reached the small window, shattered the glass with his fist, and tossed the stinker inside.
A wave of guttural howls echoed through the tree line.
The wind brought a whiff of an acidic stench, putrid and oily and sour, like decomposing vomit. Bile rose in William’s throat. He spat to the side. Too much. Too much excitement, too much adrenaline. He felt the familiar ice slide down his skin, raising every hair on his body. The first precursor of the rending, the battle frenzy that struck his kind when the pressure became too much.
William ground his teeth and tried to hold it back. He would need it later. He would need it for Spider. Not now, fuck it. Not now.
“Bet you a dollar I’ll kill more than Richard,” Kaldar yelled, his fingers clenching a wide-bladed sword.
“That’s a losing bet,” Richard said.
Inside William, the wild’s jaws had opened a crack. He caught a glimpse of its fangs, shining and white like the surface of a glacier. He was losing. The rending was coming.
Erian jerked a short, curved knife from the sheath on his belt. A moment stretched into an eternity. Another …
The wild opened its mouth. Bottomless blackness gaped in its maw, guarded by icy fangs. He stared straight into it.
The wild bit at him. The fangs pierced his mind. The wild swallowed. Darkness engulfed him.
The world slowed to a crawl. William walked into the field.
Behind him Kaldar screamed. William paid him no mind.
Another kick rocked the bars and the whole grate came loose and clattered to the ground. A dark-haired woman leaped out of the window. She took two steps and crashed down as a bolt sprouted from her throat.
The Sheerile mercenaries fled from the house, spilling from the window and doors, charging across the clearing. William snarled and lunged at them.
A man hurled himself at him, knife raised. Too slow. William swayed away from the glittering metal arc of the striking blade, sliced the man’s armpit, jerked him to the side, cut his throat, and kept moving. A woman lunged from the left. William disemboweled her with a precise slash, stepped over her body, and kept moving. He killed again and again, knowing that nothing short of shedding his skin and biting into living flesh would satisfy him. He had to settle for what he had. Steel rang around him, punctured by isolated shots. He glided through the air thick with metallic blood stench on soft wolf paws, removing obstacles in his path.
The world dissolved into blackness and blood.
CERISE saw William sprint across the field. Her mind took a second to comprehend it, and by the time she understood what was happening, he’d swung his knife, quicker than the eye could see. Arterial spray wet the ground, bright, vivid red. The Sheeriles’ man fell to his knees, but William had already gone on to his next victim.
He killed the woman in an instant, didn’t even pause, and when he turned to strike at the next man in his path, she saw his eyes, hot like two chunks of molten amber.
“Stay back!” she barked. “Stay away from him.”
He cut and sliced, raging across the field like a demon, killing with brutal, precise savagery. As if a mad tiger had got loose amid a herd of helpless prey. Fast, tireless, deadly.
A shot rang out. William jerked. Her heart skipped a beat.
William swiped a knife from a fallen opponent, whipped about, and hurled it. The blade sliced through the narrow space between the bars on the second-floor window. A woman sagged against the bars and tumbled down, a knife in her throat.
William grinned, baring his teeth, and kept killing.
Chill bumps marked her arms.
Around her, people stood up to get a better look. Nobody said a word. The family just stood and watched in horrified silence.
So that was what he kept chained inside.
“He’s insane,” Richard said next to her.
“I know,” she told him. “He held it in all this time. He’s unbelievable, isn’t he?”
Richard stared at her for a long moment and raised his eyes to the sky. “What are all of you doing up there? You’ve lost your minds.”
“WILLIAM?”
The girl. Her voice, floating into his mind. Her scent swirling about him, filtering through the scents of hot blood