Move, Riley! Run!
One giant razor-tipped hand swung at me faster than I could ever have anticipated, swatting me aside as though I were no more threatening than a fly. I felt the air rush past me as I went airborne, my legs scrambling uselessly as I struggled to tell up from down. I landed with a jarring thud that knocked the air from my lungs, leaving me gasping for breath for a terrifying, eye-watering moment.
Clawing at the ground, I pulled myself back up to my feet, my legs shaky but sturdy enough. Blood matted the fur on my side, and I knew without looking that the impact had torn open my stitches. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but any amount wouldn’t be good around a crazy werewolf. Shaking off the fogginess in my head from the fall, I rounded on Samson, or at least I tried to.
He was gone.
Ghoulish laughter sounded in the dark, made impossible to pinpoint by the overlapping echoes and ghostly creaking of the trees. Somehow, we had made it back on to the road leading to my cabin, but the open area didn’t make me feel any safer. Not for the first time since being thrust into the cluster fuck that my life had become, I felt as if I’d stepped onto the set of a cheap horror movie. Any minute now I would be overrun with zombies or the denizens of Hell.
Maybe they’d be kind enough to take out Samson before they feasted on my brains and devoured my soul.
A flicker of motion in the corner of my eye had me spinning around, once again too late, as Samson streaked towards me. The gleaming canines of the wolf, out of place in his mostly human face, distorted his lips and garbled his laughter. The madness I remembered from when he had torn into my belly all those years ago shone bright in his eyes, and I wondered how I had ever missed the evil inside him.
He swung at me again, his hand cutting through the air in a blur. I leapt back, trying to dance out of his reach, but didn’t quite make it. Pain burned along my ribs as his claws scoured across my flank, my flesh as yielding as warm butter. Anger blinded me, the wolf taking over for a moment, granting me an extra burst of speed as I rounded on him with snapping jaws.
I was so surprised when my teeth connected with the flesh of his arm that I almost released my hold on him. Thankfully my thoughts cleared enough for me to tighten my grip rather than letting go. Bones ground between my teeth, blood and meaty flesh squishing against my tongue. Growling loud and low, I shook my head as though his arm was a rabbit and I was trying to snap its neck.
He howled in pain, his other fist crashing into the side of my skull with the force of a dump truck, filling my vision with stars, and knocking me loose. Staggering back several paces, my legs even more rubbery than before, I stared up at him, wishing that the heat of my anger would make him drop dead.
“You want to play rough do you?” he asked in a snarling chuckle. “We can do that.”
I wanted to say, “We’re not already?” but had to settle for baring my teeth and snarling instead.
The change is normally a dizzying combination of pain and pleasure, the sense of freedom as one half of my consciousness emerges nearly orgasmic. The shift that Samson forced on me was nothing like any of my previous experiences. I’d heard of an Alpha forcing the change on another were, but had never thought I would experience it firsthand.
It was not pleasant.
Pain ripped through me, searing a burning path along every single nerve in my body. Howling and snarling, the wolf was pushed down into the darkness, locked away with a speed and savagery I’d never experienced before. The agony of the change tore a howl from my throat, the piercing sound transforming into a shrill scream as my vocal chords shifted back to human. Fur fell from my skin in fast dissolving clumps, caught up on the wind before they had a chance to hit the ground. I tasted blood as my teeth moved and shortened, returning to my stubby, flat-topped human incisors and molars. The transition from wolf to human took only a few seconds to complete, but felt like a lifetime of torture.
When I was able to draw breath again, it burned all the way down my throat. I couldn’t move at first, my entire body still shaking with pain and covered in a chilling sweat. I tried to take a step towards him but stumbled to the ground, scraping my cheek. All the while Samson looked on, laughing a grating, snarling chuckle that sent a ripple of fear through me. As much as I tried to stop it, I couldn’t hold back the low whimper that flowed out of my burning throat.
The wolf was afraid, and so was I.
“What…the hell…did you do?” I asked around gasping breaths.