He roared and stumbled to his knees, trying unsuccessfully to regain his feet.
Unable to stand on what felt like a broken ankle, he crawled after Sheridan. He didn't get far before one of the rogues fighting for her turned in his direction. Dark brown eyes flashed to green, then back to brown again. Like magic, the rogue seemed to grow, then shrink, and Jules puzzled over the male's ability to change.
“Shit, he's a goner,” the shrinking Circ said. “He's fading fast. Take the girl.”
“No. Sheridan,” Jules rasped and scared himself. He sounded weak, his voice barely audible.
Then the mutant found him.
Too bad he found a moment of clarity only to see a monster out of his worst nightmare descending on him.
Circs who had succumbed to bloodlust faster than others were prone to a speedy descent to hell if they couldn't manage the mating heats or if they'd been dosed with a control drug meant to manage Circs. Unfortunately, the drug didn't manage so much as alter Circs, who soon mutated into creatures no longer resembling anything human.
The rogues Jules had fought looked like him—larger, wider, darker, but still mostly human. This mutant had night black skin and crawled on four feet. Its hind legs were somewhat shorter than the front legs, and it moved the way a gorilla might. But there the resemblance to the mighty ape faltered. Because this thing didn't have ears or a nose, just large red eyes without pupils, slits where its nostrils should have been, and a mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth, almost like a cross between a shark and a predatory feline.
The thing wasn't graceful, yet it moved with such speed that it covered Jules before he could blink.
He swore he heard Sheridan yelling in the background, but he couldn't make sense of anything more than that the fucking mutant was eating his arm. Tearing the flesh from bone and sucking with a pronged tongue.
“Dammit!” He tried to throw the thing from him but could do no more than lie there and suffer. At least some numbness removed him from the pain. But in the back of his mind, he thought the lack of sensation might be worse than feeling the injury.
“Hunger,” the mutant rasped and grinned. “Mine.” It surged against him, letting him feel its mangled cock. “Hunger.”
“Oh, fuck no.” Jules couldn't think of a worse way to die, but at least the thing wasn't after Sheridan. Yet. “Go,” he tried to yell at her. “Get away.” This thing had a bad case of the mating heat; he could smell its lust in the air. But instead of turning him on, it made him want to puke. So unnatural, so pitifully wrong.
With a last burst of strength, he shifted his clawed hand between their bodies and struck hard at the thing's cock, raking his fingers over its most vulnerable part.
It screamed and retaliated by clawing his chest and biting his neck.
The pain blindsided him, but he twisted his fingers and dug deeper, sawing until he'd castrated the creature.
The resulting scream of pain and rage it made into his ear broke his eardrum, but already numb to the pain, he barely felt a pop before the darkness started to settle once more. He felt its bite and its tongue as it sucked the life from him.
But Jules couldn't think of anything beyond ending its life. If the thing made it past him, Sheridan would be next, and he couldn't let that happen. So much life, so much pure goodness in her aura. She had to live. His beast demanded it.
With a strength he hadn't known he possessed, he pulled back his hands and pushed up hard, digging into the monster's chest cavity.
“Holy shit! Do it, Grayson. While Hawkins has its attention, take its head. I'll get its legs.”
He didn't recognize the voice. But he did realize that the mutant's voracious sucking at his neck slowly subsided. At that point, he completely lost his vision.
Scent, touch, and hearing started to fade as well.
He dreamed of his team laughing and smiling. Mrs. Sharpe disappeared, then reappeared, standing arm in arm with his old boss, Admiral Geoffrey London, a good man, a good friend. The sky lit up like a supernova, so pure and bright.
Welcoming.
His beast protested, and Jules frowned. They needed to go. But they… He couldn't leave. Not yet. Not without her.
“No! Jules. Jules. Come back to me. Please.” A woman's voice. Warmth. The fire of pain as his tissue joined and his bones knit.
The numbness faded. Pain, so sweltering and all consuming that he seized in an indescribable spasm of the worst torture imaginable, became his entire center.
His heart stuttered, his breath came in short bursts, and slowly, so slowly, the shaking pain became an aching throb, which gradually eased into an uncomfortable buzzing in his ears, and a weightless kind of tranquility. Not like the numbness, but a good, pure calm.
He blinked up into the vision of an angel surrounded by white. So bright, it hurt to look at, her silhouette was one of grace and peace.
“It's okay. You're good now, Jules. You'll be all right.” Her voice was hoarse but sweet, and she stroked his face with hands from heaven. Jules sighed, basking in the delight of the afterlife.
The warm peace he felt reminded him of something, his experienced pain and resultant pleasure kindling a fantasy of the perfect woman in his arms. He struggled to understand the voices above him, and his beast growled at the deep male tones too close to Jules's angel. But then peace reclaimed him, and he let himself float in the drift of calm nothingness.
Jules didn't stir when Raul lifted him in his arms.
“Heavy fucker,” Raul muttered and shifted the bulk of Jules's large body between him and Grayson. “Can't believe he wasted a mutant when he was nearly dying. Damn.”
“Go easy, please.” Sheridan wiped tears from her eyes and would have fallen if Grayson, the other Circ nearest her, hadn't steadied her.
When the two large rogues in front of her had turned and killed the other rogues trying to drag her away earlier, she hadn't known what to think. She'd wanted nothing but to escape them all to help Jules.
It was only when Grayson left her to help Jules, and Raul caved in to her demand to help Jules as well, that she realized these rogue Circs weren't the enemy. In an odd twist, Raul was in fact the same guard who'd entered her room earlier with Elena. The one who'd told her to comply because he didn't want to have to hurt her.
She didn't understand what they were really after or why they were helping her. But right now, the only thing that mattered was saving Jules. God, she'd wanted to die when Jules had begun to fade. It made no sense, but literally feeling his life force depart from his body had stolen her will to do anything but help him or die trying.
“He'll be okay now,” Grayson murmured. Like Raul, he'd transformed back into the form of a man. She still couldn't totally believe she'd seen men transform into beasts. The scientist within her saw the possibilities, but the woman had a hard time believing she wasn't going crazy. For now she'd accept it, because she didn't have the time or energy to do anything else.
Fortunately, both men wore loose-fitting trousers that had withstood their earlier shift into those beastlike creatures. The pair of Circs stared at her, and she tried to look steadier on her feet than she felt. Healing Jules had taken everything within her. But it was worth it.
She smiled as she stared at Jules draped between Grayson and Raul. He was okay. Finally. He'd need rest, but he'd recuperate. Thank God.
Grayson cleared his throat. “Ah, you might want to put some clothes on.” She blinked, not understanding him, and would have fallen if he hadn't let go of Jules and caught her.