He needed to do something quick. He thought back to his brief time with MHI. What would they have done? Those bozos were always motivated. What would Earl Harbinger have done? He would have gotten his crew fired up. I can do that. Horst reached into his coat, unsnapped his shoulder holster, and drew his FN 5.7 pistol. He hoisted it into the air and yanked the trigger.
The sudden bang got their attention. Horst realized how stupid that had been as soon as he’d done it, because the insides of his right ear suddenly felt like someone had hit it with a hammer. “Listen up!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, waving his gun toward the giant hole in the grocery store. “This is what you signed up for. Pull yourselves together, damn it. Each one of those hairy bastards in there is worth at least fifty large. Fifty large! We came all this way to kill these things. We got guns. We got silver bullets. What do they got? Teeth? Shit. They got nothing! I am not going home until I got one of these bastards as a rug. You hear me? We’re Briarwood, and we’ve come up here to show these animals who’s boss.”
The three mutinous members of his crew turned their heads sheepishly, afraid to look him in the eye. Damn right. Lowering his piece, Horst glared at them. After chewing them out, Earl Harbinger had always softened his voice when he was trying to make a point to the MHI Newbies, like they weren’t worth raising his voice over, but it forced you to listen extra hard. So Horst tried it, speaking quietly, but firmly. “So get your shit together and let’s go. We can do this.”
They actually surprised him then. His people responded and went to work. There were a series of metallic clacks as weapons were readied. A smirk crossed Horst’s face. Damn. I’m good.
Nikolai was on him in a flash, claws erupting from the ends of his fingers. Earl moved aside easily, the change pumping massive amounts of adrenaline through his system. His body was flushed with heat. Despite the freezing wind blasting through the gaping wound in the store, sweat rolled from every pore. Time slowed as Nikolai tore at him, Earl swung with all his might, hand open, fingers wide, and was rewarded with a spray of blood as his nails ripped through the Russian’s flesh.
His enemy stalked away, circling. Four lacerations crossed his heaving chest, having cleanly sliced through his ammo pouches. Nikolai ripped the canvas off and tossed it aside. “MURDERER,” Nikolai roared, his jaw already distorting. “I’ll rip you apart for what you did to her.” Nikolai leapt at him.
Earl caught his opponent in midair, using the momentum as a weapon, and hurled Nikolai down the aisle. Earl got one ear sliced nearly in half for the trouble.
Nikolai hit the floor, rolled, and slid on his knees to a gradual stop. The change was fully upon him now. “You die now,” Nikolai gurgled. He said more, but it was unrecognizable as he tore off his shredded clothing. “Die for thing you done.”
Earl had a hard time forming a response. His mind changed along with his body. Words became hard to understand, even harder to use. “Try me,” he answered, his voice a distorted growl.
After the heat came the pain. It started in the bones and radiated out from there. It was part fire, part grinding, all horrible. The pain in his jaw grew as bones twisted, cracked, stretched, and reformed. Blood leaked between his teeth as they changed, new sharp edges slicing through gum tissue. Heart rate elevated, breath coming fast, Earl cringed as his old skin ripped.
Nikolai was a mirror image as he went through the same process, matching cracking bone for cracking bone. Dark gray hair grew rapidly across the Russian’s body.
Clothing. Constricting. Earl pulled off the rest of his armor and kicked off his boots. The change wrenched through him, ten times faster than when he’d first been cursed, but the pain was all still there, just accelerated. Burning. Twisting.
Earl took a step forward. The soles of his feet were hard as leather, but he screamed as they hit the floor, bones cracking, heel separating. His toe claws dug through the garbage. Earl took another step, the pain traveling up his leg, joints tearing, burning, reforming. Muscles hardened, becoming tighter, and it was only because of long exposure that he was able to keep moving. He fell onto all fours, but as the geometries changed, that didn’t matter.
Earl scratched his claws into the floor and howled. The challenge had begun.
Earl was angry. Hungry.
Nikolai raised his face, showing his teeth in a vicious snarl. Earl wanted to eat that face.
As his mind descended into chaos and visions of cascading red, Earl’s last rational thought was a desperate plea. God. Help me now. Keep me sane. Kill enemy. Hurt no people. Amen.
Chapter 13
If I had used my one silver bullet on the Alpha, then Santiago would surely die with a knife through the neck. So I shot the girl. I was rusty, so it went right through the cheek, just under her left eye. It still killed her instantly though, and she went right over the side of the boat and took Santiago with her.
Seamus charged. He was already changing, faster than I could comprehend. He hit me harder than I’d ever been hit in my life. And I found myself halfway down the beach. I came up with a mouthful of sand, four lacerations that went clear to my ribcage, and a transforming werewolf coming right at me.
He called me a fool for challenging him. The voice had changed, the last word tapering off into a growl. He threw off the vest, and black hair was already growing across his body. His eyes were glowing, fingers were getting longer, bones were cracking. Within seconds the most fearsome werewolf imaginable was towering over me. It was unbelievably smooth compared to the clumsy twitching suffering I went through.
He could have torn my human head right off then, but instead he stopped and cocked his head while his fur rippled in the breeze, crouched on all fours, claws feeling the sand, while he waited for me to catch up. I was a challenge to his leadership. And though I didn’t understand it at the time, a challenge was supposed to be met on equal terms. If it wasn’t, then your victory didn’t mean anything.
I could feel the animal inside, screaming to get out. It was angry. Angry at me. I had kept it locked up, only let it free when I had to. I’d mistreated it, but now I was calling on it to save my life. Furious, it could have denied me, left me to die, but it was part of me. And we both wanted to survive.
Let me tell you, the pain is fire. The jaw clenches spasmodically tight. Blood thunders in your eyes. Your muscles pulse with electric shocks of agony, clenching, unclenching, clenching again, so tight that at each surge you wish for death. You change. Down to the level of individual proteins, and you feel every single bit.
It hurts like a stone-cold motherfucker.
It didn’t matter that there were no witnesses. He waited. That was the way it was done. To kill me unfairly would make his victory meaningless. We were werewolves, creatures of instinct and a strange tradition. One would die. One would live.
The pain ends, and then there is the euphoria. I was whole. Beast and man, one. I became We. Then the other werewolf attacked us with a ferocity that had never been imagined. Bigger, stronger, faster, more experienced, the enemy tore into us. Within seconds the sand was soaked red with our blood. We should have lost. Rolling, tearing, snapping, thrashing, and then our teeth were in his neck and hot arterial blood flooded our mouth.
He tried to shake us off. Claws opened our stomach, spilled the stinking bowels, but it was only pain. Pain was nothing compared to the blood in our mouth. We got a better angle and chomped harder, cracking vertebrae and slicing meat. The tearing continued as our enemy grew weaker and weaker, until the claws dropped away from our eviscerated stomach and lay twitching, grasping futilely.