The fight was dirty, bloody, to the death. Nothing I hadn’t done before, just not as a wolf. I have to say, it wasn’t bad. I was faster, stronger, with the built-in weapons of tooth and claw. No more worrying about where I’d left my knife or if I had silver bullets in the gun.
The coyotes split up. Three went for Sawyer, the other for me. I would have been insulted if I hadn’t been so glad. My attacker didn’t waste time but went right for my throat. I ducked and rolled, just as I would have as a human.
But I had two extra legs that didn’t bend quite as well as real legs did, or maybe I just didn’t know how to work them yet. The extra strength gave me speed, but that only made me crash into the earth harder. The roll wasn’t really a roll, but a goofy-looking collapse and slide.
The coyote recovered and jumped on my back; his teeth sank into my shoulder. Yelping, I tried to throw him off, couldn’t, so I rolled again, smashing him into the ground, and he let go. I scrambled free and, before he could right himself, I did to him what he’d planned to do to me.
The arterial spray blinded me. I wasn’t used to fighting with my face. I backed away sneezing and pawing at my snout. I was tempted to jump in the lake, but as soon as my vision cleared I saw Sawyer.
He’d already killed one coyote and was chewing his way through another. But the third was huge, and he wasn’t going to fight in the way of every movie villain, politely allowing Sawyer to finish what he was doing before he tried to kill him. The big coyote preferred the tag-team method.
But then so did I.
I charged across the space separating us and plowed into him just as he sank his teeth into Sawyer’s back. The coyote grunted and let go, though not without taking a bit of Sawyer with him. I had to give Sawyer credit. Despite the pain, he didn’t stop what he was doing, which was holding the other shifter down, teeth buried in his throat, until he quit moving. There had to be a quicker way.
A way I needed to find because the third coyote recovered from my broadside blow with such ease 1 knew he could wear me down. If I tired, I was done, because my only weapon against this one was my speed and determination.
He charged me as I’d charged him, but I saw it coming and got out of the way. He stopped, turned, and launched himself before I had time to recover. Maybe speed wasn’t going to save me after all.
I cast a quick glance at Sawyer. He was still screwing around. I gave a sharp yip as the big coyote knocked me over. The yip turned into a yowl when he bit into my leg; I scrambled to protect my soft underbelly.
Kicking and clawing, I managed to hit him in the face, near enough to the eyes that he released me, but my leg wouldn’t hold when 1 tried to get up. My right flank sank to the ground.
The big coyote’s mouth opened in a lolling, victory grin. He hovered over my prone form, letting me think about what he meant to do. From the expression in his eyes, I had a bad feeling I was going to wish I were dead long before I was.
He turned in Sawyer’s direction; I’m sure he meant to lope over there and kill him; I wasn’t going anywhere. I used the last of my strength to yank on his hind leg as he’d yanked on mine.
The bones crunched between my teeth; he went down with a thud and I twisted, forcing him onto his back. He scrabbled frantically, trying to defend his underbelly, but it was too late. Sawyer was there, and he finished him off, much quicker than he’d finished off any of the others.
I lay for a minute, panting. The clearing was awash with blood and fur and bodies. Groaning, I tried to get up. Sawyer used his head to nudge me back down.
He shimmered, body lengthening, fur shortening, face melding back into that of a man as he rose from four legs to two. If I didn’t know better I’d think he’d been performing some strange, Navajo mountain ritual, complete with red war paint.
I whined. I wanted to change back too, but I didn’t know how. Panic made my heart thunder. What if I stayed this way?
“Relax, Phoenix.”
I understood him. How strange. If I was a wolf, how could I understand words? But I was a woman too. I had all my memories. I knew who he was, who I was.
“Imagine yourself as yourself and yourself you will be.”
Amazingly, that gibberish made sense. I closed my eyes and focused on my own image. Heat flooded through me, followed by icy cold. I saw a bright flash beyond my closed eyelids, as if lightning had flared from the clear blue sky. A breeze blew, ruffling hair, not fur. I opened my eyes and lifted my hand, tilting it this way and that, fascinated with each one of my five fingers.
I couldn’t stop shivering. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the sudden loss of fur, or the dampness of the blood on my skin. I was naked, like Sawyer; the clothes I’d been wearing lay in shreds across the ground.
I touched my face and my palm came away coated in red. My mouth tasted of hot copper pennies; my nose filled with the scent of them. Leaning over, I retched.
“You’ll get used to it.”
My head came up so fast, the world rocked. “What was in that fire?”
“You think—” Sawyer broke off.