Against my usual instincts, I ignored them. They were either dead or in need of help, and that wasn’t coming while there was a crazed werewolf running around. I looked at Will, who was holding a huge revolver in his right hand, his left hand flat and out in a “calm down” gesture. They were both pointed toward the back corner of the bar, which I couldn’t see yet. I stepped up next to him, trying to keep as quiet as I could, and rounded the bar to see an enormous wolf—Eli—growling in the back corner of the room. The wolf’s fur was raised all along his back, and his huge teeth were locked around the neck of a young woman in her midtwenties. She was pale, drenched in blood and tears and wolf slobber, breathing in a rapid pant with little whimpering noises. My own breath caught in my throat.
I had seen pictures of Eli’s wolf, but they didn’t do him justice: he was gorgeous, colored in blurred shades of silver and black, with white tips on the bottom of each paw. I couldn’t get over the size of him, either—wild wolves are big, but werewolves weigh as much in wolf form as they do in human form. Eli had to be around two hundred pounds, most of it muscle, and the wolf was the same. His eyes, though…there was unmistakable madness in them. I’d seen werewolves from this distance before, and I’d once seen a rabid dog in our neighborhood when I was growing up. But I’d never seen the two combined.
The woman was scrambling to hold her own weight upright on the slippery blood-and-glass floor so she wouldn’t just be dangling from the wolf’s enormous jaws, while simultaneously trying not to jar the wolf. It was obvious that she was tiring, and with nothing to gain purchase on, she was beginning to slip downward. I tried to swallow, my mouth suddenly bone-dry.
Will must have seen me in his peripheral vision, but he gave a tiny head shake. Don’t move yet. I stayed a step behind him, keeping the wolf’s attention on the bigger man. “Eli,” Will crooned softly, “let go of her, okay? She’s a friend.” The wolf didn’t move, just continued to growl. “He’s shifting about every two minutes,” Will said in the same soothing voice, and I realized he was talking to me. “He’s got maybe a minute and a half. If he starts to change, he’ll bite down. I will shoot him before that happens.”
Will’s voice was firm and calm, but when I chanced a sideways look I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. “Silver?” I asked briefly, though I knew the answer. Will was the one who had shot Caroline. Later, Scarlett.
“Yes.”
“Let me try,” I whispered, as calmly as I could.
For the first time, Will took his eyes off Eli’s wolf to glance at me. “He can snap her neck before you can get a single step forward—”
“No time to argue,” I said. Moving very slowly, I pulled Molly’s sweater over my head, keeping my eyes away from the wolf’s. I spotted a tattered gray bar rag hanging out of Will’s back pocket and reached forward to tug it out at the same speed. “You have to let me try, Will. It’s Eli.” I tried to keep my voice as calm as Will’s, but when I got to Eli’s name I couldn’t keep the desperation out of it. The wolf heard it and snarled in his throat, ears flicking in my direction.
“If he so much as starts to twitch—”
“Shh. I know.” Wearing only my bulletproof vest on top, I slowly lowered my body to the floor. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about Will shooting me in the back by accident.
A cornered wolf was one of the most dangerous creatures in nature. Still, all I had to do was get close enough to get him in my radius, which meant I needed to move maybe fifteen feet. I wanted to try my new expansion trick, but it had backfired on me at Kirsten’s, and besides I just couldn’t trust my ability to concentrate, not now. I dropped the sweater on the floor and put my right hand on it. I kept the bar towel covering as much of my left hand as possible, though my finger pads got cut almost immediately. My hands more or less protected, I got down on my hands and knees. Ignoring the pain in my back, I kept my lips closed and my teeth covered as the Velcro on the bulletproof vest rustled softly. My gaze focused on the floor, I made my first “step” on all fours toward Eli’s wolf.
The wolf growled again. I had changed the rules of behavior. I cringed a little but kept going. “It’s okay,” I said softly, keeping my eyes on the floor. I kept my body low, so my face and my imaginary tail wouldn’t appear to be any higher than the wolf in front of me. The struggling woman had started making involuntary whimpering sounds, which probably wasn’t helping Eli calm down any. “I’m a friend. It’s okay.” I kept going, crooning nonsense in the same calming tone Will had used. The bar towel was already soaked through with blood, though none of it was mine.
I flicked my eyes up for the briefest of seconds, to check on the wolf’s reaction. The fur had gone down along his spine. He was still growling, but there was a note of uncertainty in it now.
“My mom was an veterinary tech at an animal hospital,” I said to no one in particular. I just wanted to keep talking, keep the calming sound going. “She worked with abused dogs a lot, crazy dogs.”
“Thirty seconds, Scarlett.” Tension had crept into Will’s voice now. I gave a very brief nod without looking back and kept going. Just eight more feet.
“I know you’re not a dog, Eli, but I’m really hoping the same rules apply,” I added, keeping my voice low. Five more feet. The wolf’s low-throated growl changed slightly, to something that sounded more like whining. His tail, which had been standing perfectly straight and stiff, wilted a bit into a more relaxed pose.
“It’s gonna happen, Scarlett,” Will whispered urgently. As he said it, the wolf made a sudden cry of pain and began to flinch, cringing inward upon himself like he’d been viciously kicked in the stomach. The woman cried out in fear. Without thinking, I dropped and rolled as fast as I could, sliding in the slippery mess. Blood-covered glass fragments cut into my jeans and the bulletproof vest.
There. I felt Eli enter my radius, and faster than my dizzy eyes could follow, a naked man dropped suddenly to the floor in place of the wolf. The woman gave a full-out scream, but I skidded right past her through the blood, to Eli’s side. He was unconscious. I shifted to kneel next to him and checked his pulse, held my cheek in front of his nose. Alive. I sighed with relief and looked back up.