The prop cage went deeper, the still-moving prop showering us hard with tiny, cutting water droplets. The engine whined and stopped. We rolled upside down, into the mud, and began to sink. The only thing holding us out of the water was the seat belt and the quickly sinking cage.
The wolf released his body-hugging embrace and fell into the water at an angle, his mouth an inch from my face. Snarling, snapping. His body was twisted and pinned by the seat back in front of me. I struggled to both pull a nine-mil and get the seat belt lose at the same time. Neither was working, with my body prisoned by the coiled safety straps.
I yanked a boot free and kicked the wolf’s jaw. His head whipped back. The boat sank farther, pulling his body under the surface of the water. Only his teeth and nostrils showed. My head was closer to the high end of the angled boat, but it was only seconds before I’d go under too.
I stopped trying to get the gun free and used that hand and my feet to lift my weight off the seat belt. The narrow strap finally popped free. I caught my body on the seat bracing and pushed off into the water. The wolf’s head vanished under the surface in the same heartbeat. Bubbles came up from the muddy canal. “Yeah,” I huffed for breath as I swam, my weapons weighing me down into the mud. “Drown,” I said to him. “Please.”
The mud was sticky and deeper than my arms, and the canal seemed to have no actual bottom, just mud and mud and more mud, and things were buried in it that I didn’t want to touch but had no choice as I crawled toward shore.
As I crawled I heard growling and snarling and I saw Brute and two other werewolves fighting, the bitch and a small black male. The bitch had Brute by the ear and jaw, and he slung her hard, slamming her against a dock pillar while the black werewolf attacked Brute’s hindquarters, trying to hamstring him. The bitch held on, though I smelled blood.
Eli, his rifle to his shoulder, moved at a crouch from the low trees, watching for a shot, watching the house, and keeping an eye out for more wolves. I was still kneeling in about six inches of water when the three snarling, growling wolves rolled toward me in a mass of snapping teeth, claws, blood, and fur.
I pulled the nine-mil and took two shots into the black wolf’s side. He squealed and broke free, rolling from the fight, making an awful arrarrarr sound of doggy pain and surprise.
I aimed at the bitch. Eli raced into the line of fire, shouting my name. Just as something snared my boot and hauled me back into the water. And under.
The dire wolf had my ankle in his jaws and was backing through the mud. His coat and eyes were the color of the muddy water, and all I could see was his teeth. And my combat boot in his jaws. My heart hit like a jackhammer.
I don’t have nightmares of drowning. Or suffocation. Until he yanked me hard and my head went under. The mud and water was a thick, slimy consistency and if I gave in and took a breath, I’d be full of mud. And I’d die.
I could shift, but Beast would be underwater too. And would die.
The wolf pulled me deeper, placed a paw on my belly, pushing me down.
I fought. Struggling to get away.
I needed to breathe. I needed to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathebreathebreathe. There was no air. The water was deep and dark and sluggish. I had mud in my eyes and ears, and my butt was buried in it, dragging a trail deeper. There was no light. Werewolf claws pierced my belly.
Give in. Stop fighting, Beast thought at me. Pull body to paws and fire.
It was not an intuitive action. And I had no idea if the gun would work in muddy water. But I did it. I stopped fighting to get away and drew my body tight, crunching down toward my feet. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I shoved the muzzle of the nine-millimeter semiautomatic into the first hard thing I found that wasn’t me. And fired. The wolf let go.
It was too dark to see and I wasn’t sure which way was up or sideways, disoriented by the cloying mud. Once again I had to let go and stop fighting. Hardest thing in the world. Hardest thing ever. Harder than fighting. Harder than dying. To not move and not breathe. Panic clutched at me with suffocating fingers.
But I let my body relax. And I started to float. I was ready to breathe mud long before my butt broke the surface. I was facing bottom and had to writhe upright. The breath I sucked in then was part slime, part air, and part water. It was glorious. I coughed, sputtered, coughed some more. Spat mud that left a grainy coarse film in my mouth and nostrils. My teeth ground on it like fine sandpaper. And it tasted like rotten leaves and clay and dead fish. I wiped my eyes, blinking against the filth that coated them and scraped my corneas.
Eli was standing ankle-deep in mud onshore and he tossed me a rope. Mr. Prepared.
I wrapped it around my left wrist, because I was still holding the nine-mil in the right, and I let him haul me ashore, which mostly meant him dragging me through a trough of mud until I was far enough on what passed for dry land to crawl out of the watery furrow and struggle to my knees. Again. Eli started laughing, and I looked down at myself in the dusky light. In the sunset and moonrise, I was covered in a slick, slimy layer of dark brown mud. I coughed and sputtered some more.
Brute trotted up, laughing at me, tongue lolling. Behind him lay two dead wolves, one reddish and one black. They had died in wolf form and showed no signs of morphing back to human, which was a good way to keep Eli out of jail for murder and Brute off an animal control officer’s death list.
I made it to my feet, Eli not offering a hand up, holding on to his rifle, which was a good thing.
I was standing in six inches of mud and water, trying to find my balance, when the werewolf lunged out of the canal straight at me. Eli screamed, “Down!” bringing his weapon up toward me. I dropped, rolled, and brought up my handgun. Eli fired. I fired. My weapon didn’t. Misfire. The werewolf was directly over me. Jaws reaching.
Brute collided with him. Midair. I heard the thud of bodies over the gun blast. They fell, jaws locked around each other. And landed with me in the middle. Paws shoved me down, deep into the mud. Claws slicing me, them dancing on hind legs. One paw landed on my solar plexus and the last of my air ooffed out.
The water was a frothy, muddy mess all around me. I rolled, pushing deeper into the slick slime. Pushed away from the fighting weres. I came up within arm’s reach of the combatants. My lungs full of mud. I threw up muddy water. Breathing between each retch with a frantic, rubbery, tearing sound. I tasted blood, gagged, and vomited again.
Eli held his weapon, ready to fire, the night-vision scope doing nothing to help him differentiate the two mud-covered werewolves. I caught my breath, staying low to the surface of the water, and crawled through the canal, back to shore, again, still, miraculously, holding my useless, mud-caked weapon. I fell, gasping, on the beach. The roar of the wolves made my eardrums shudder.
They fought in hip-deep mud and water, two enormous wolves. Wrestling like grizzlies, biting, fangs raking, claws trying to keep purchase on wet fur, jostling in the water with supernatural speed as the sun set behind them. I smelled wolf blood and heard their harsh breathing, like broken bellows. I was shivering, hard shudders bashing through me. It was still winter. And I’d been in the winter-cold water too long. And I’d nearly drowned in mud. Twice. My body was reacting to the stress with a case of shock.
The werewolves fought onto shore, Eli backing slowly, not daring to take a shot, unable to tell the two wolves apart. Then one broke away. Rushing toward me. Jaws wide. Eli fired, the concussion echoing across the still water. The wolf stumbled. And Brute landed on top of him. Sinking his fangs deep into the back of other wolf’s neck. With a wrenching motion, he snapped the enemy wolf’s spine with a crack that rebounded across the black water.