Fired again at a leaping wolf, freshly changed. This one was bigger, stretched out in midair. He took the shell full face. His jaw, teeth, and brains exploded backward. Silver burst into flame in his blood. He fell in a heap at my feet. The others seemed to sense they faced a more deadly opponent than they had expected, and one hit the lights. The place went black except for light through the windows. I crouched into a shadow, knowing their wolf eyes were better in the dark than my human ones, even if I drew on Beast’s vision.
The semiautomatic barked in my hand, hitting and missing as I methodically emptied the magazine at wolves, counting rounds as I fired. The wolves were freaking fast, streaking close and swerving, and I missed most of the time, in the dark. I fired the last two shotgun shells at two wolves silhouetted in the doorways like guards, hoping the silver fléchettes would slow them down. There wasn’t time to reload the M4. I set the shotgun at my feet. Digging one-handed in a pocket. My fingers touched a replacement magazine for the nine mil as I fired the last rounds in the H&K. Three wolves leaped at me. Knocked me to my butt. Claws digging at me even through the armored leather. The magazine slipped away, into the deeps of the pocket. Huge teeth and fangs ripped. Tearing at me through the leather armor. Flinching at the taste of silver rivets and studs. Snarling. Growling.
I rolled and got the magazine out, snapped it into the sidearm, the sound lost beneath concussive deafness. I grabbed for the six-shot from my ankle holster. A wolf came out of the dark. Snapped at my face and I dodged. Fired. Teeth snapped on my ear. The pain was distant, my blood hot on my skin. I got the backup gun free. My brain having trouble with the different firing sequences between pistol and semiautomatic. Muscle memory finally won, and I fired with both hands. But I had a feeling I’d missed almost every shot since the lights went out.
Fangs ripped at my hand. Fingers went numb. The H&K clicked, empty again. I dropped the sidearm. Pulled a vamp-killer. Fired the last two shots with the pistol. Pulled and emptied the two shots in the derringer. I was down to blades. I was a goner. The wolves were too fast, too many. My hands were slick with blood, some of it mine. I stabbed upward, cutting into the belly of a red wolf with amber eyes. Sliced the ham-string of another. Both fell away.
A monstrous wolf landed on me. Knocked out my breath in a grunt I couldn’t hear over my damaged eardrums. Fire Truck. Had to be. His jaws snapped down. At my throat. And met the silver collar. He yelped in surprise, teeth caught in the chain-mail mesh. Jumped back. Ripping the protective necklace from my neck, the rings and the busted clasp caught on one of his canine teeth.
I sliced across the face of a shaggy wolf with Roul’s blue eyes. He danced back out of blade length. And then farther. The movement of the wolves halted, all of them looking up.
I panted, trying to catch my breath. Hurting. And became aware that I wasn’t alone. A slender form landed beside me, silhouetted in the window, poised on the balls of his feet as if he’d dropped from the black ceiling. Another opponent. Crap.
In an eyeblink, I took him in. He stood bent-kneed, two blades drawn, silvered swords, one long, one shorter, but not Japanese in style. Spanish, maybe. He was dressed all in black, top to toe. Lots of silver. More than I wore. Weird what you think in the heat of trying to stay alive and figuring you aren’t going to.
He held the blades in what was clearly a martial position, one blade pointed forward at two o’clock, the other to his left side at his nine o’clock, making small circles, at an angle to the ground. His stance made the wolves his target, not me. I had help. The relief was so sudden that nausea rose up my throat, burning and acidic. Zorro, I thought, naming him. I wanted to laugh at the thought, but I didn’t have the breath.
“Roul, Roul, leader of the Lupus Clan,” he said. I heard him, even over my concussed ears. His voice was like ice cream, cool and rich, melting into a pool of hot caramel. I shivered at the tone, his words in an accent that would have been sexy had I not been bleeding, in pain, and thinking I might die shortly.
“This is not the way—to kill the messenger.” He made a little tsk-tsk sound. “You knew that Leo would not permit your wolves in his city without a fight. Do you desire to waste all your energies on this, the first round of the game? No, no, no. Think. You have made your point and bloodied your opponent.”
And that opponent would be me. I took the opportunity to stand, feeling pain in one knee and ankle. I had landed wrong when they pushed me down. I swallowed and the fang abrasion in my neck and throat pulled and stung. That was gonna hurt until I could change. Bad.
I adjusted my grip on the weapons, and pain zinged up my arm. My fingers were ripped; one, maybe more, wasn’t working at all. Someone turned on the lights in the pool area, the illumination like a camera flash, throwing the room into harsh relief.
I spotted the smallest wolf, the bitch, on the fringes of the fight, under the pool table she had been sitting on earlier. She was bleeding, weight on three legs. She was the one I’d ham-strung. I grinned at her, knowing my expression was vicious. I was hurt, but some of them were hurt a lot worse. Not that that would have kept me alive much longer. Sheer numbers would have won in the end.
“Withdraw for now,” sword-guy-Zorro said, “and wait. Leo must come to you eventually, one-on-one. That is a battle you may yet win.”
Roul threw back his head and howled, throat exposed, the sound not mournful at all, but filled with fury, like nothing nature had ever planned or created. Magic sizzled and hissed through the room. And they attacked.