Then it was a leap aside, another bolt singing through space I’d just vacated, and I collided with another shooter. He was screaming as I hit him, and blood flew from his mouth as kinetic force transferred. He hit the wall hard, slid down in a boneless lump.
I turned on my heel. Two left. One stank of petrol—the last of the Burners. The other held the crossbow, staring at me slack-mouthed, and he smelled of dominance under a bald edge of roaring fear. The lieutenant.
Both were stocky, short-haired, and well trained. But they were only human. I bared my teeth as the lieutenant raised the crossbow again, and their fear was sweet tonic to me. It was not enough—my charges had suffered more.
Which one should I keep to tell me where their captain was?
I took a single step forward, still smiling, my fangs aching with delight and my jaw crackling as the Thirst sang in my veins. I would need to hunt again before this night was out, the use of speed and strength taking their toll even on one so old.
The Burner dropped his guns and bolted. I leapt for him, and the world exploded with a roar.
The lykanthe leapt on the lieutenant, his teeth sinking into flesh as the man let out a high rabbitscream. It was too late to pull back, I collided with the Burner, my nose full of the reek of death, pain, and fuel. Bones snapped. He was dead before he hit the floor.
I spun. Wolf growled again, hunched over the body hanging in his jaws.
“Drop him!” I commanded, sharply.
He shook the limp form, fur standing up, alive and vital. He had lost his jacket, and his fluid form rippled with muscle. Bits of drywall and slivers of wood clung to his pelt. He looked a hairbreadth away from tearing flesh free of the body and swallowing it, and if he did that …
I know enough of lykanthe to know the taboo. Thou shalt not eat human flesh . I did not know quite what would happen, but I was certain I did not wish to find out here.
“Drop him,” I said again, softly but with great force. “Wolf. Drop him. Now.”
His eyes were mad silver coins. He stared at me, chest vibrating with the growl, and if he attacked me I would have to kill him. It is no large thing to kill mortals, but another of the twilight? A blood-crazed lykanthe ?
That is altogether different.
His jaws separated. The body thumped down, and his growl faded.
I put my wet, bloodslick hands on my hips. “If he is dead, I will not catch their captain as easily. Did I not tell you to stay?”
He merely watched me. Narrow graceful head, the snout lifted a little, blood marking his scarred muzzle. His clawed front paws tensed and relaxed, as a cat will knead a pillow or its owner’s thigh.
There was no pulse echoing from his victim’s body.
I sighed, though the tension did not leave me. And I waited. The air still reverberated with their screaming, blood and death and terror.
The fur receded gradually until he stood there bare-chested, his jeans painted with spatters of blood, and shook drywall dust out of his shaggy hair. He hunched his shoulders, as if he expected a reprimand.
It would do no good. To chastise the uncomprehending is cruelty.
It took effort to speak softly. “Come. We shall search this place, and then we shall burn it.”
His head dipped in an approximation of a nod. “S-s-sorry.” He could not even force his mouth to shape the simple word correctly.
A great pointless rage flashed through me and away. “It is of little account, young one. Come. Help me.”
*
There was a bank of computers, the monitors glowing. Crates of ammunition, stacks of those odd canisters of petrol. The additive was in gelatin form, a large box full of premeasured packets of the stuff set carefully away from the tanks of fuel. There was a filing cabinet as well, and I opened both drawers, reading swiftly and collating information as Wolf touched the glowing screens with his blood-wet fingertips, fascinated.