Page 116 of Bought for Blood

My wolf takes over, and I don’t try to stop her. The shift takes me down onto the floor. The coat and boots come off me in pieces. The corridor turns sideways and gets bigger, and every sense goes sharp.

Then I’m on four feet, and he’s bringing the weapon round.

I take him at the knee.

The bone goes between my teeth. He comes down on top of me, and I’m already at his throat. It opens hot across my face. He makes a sound for a moment. Then he doesn’t.

Up!

The pull is above me.

Mate, she says, and this time I don’t argue with her.

I put my nose down and run.

Two more come round the corner. The first one fires and it goes past my shoulder into the wall. I’m up against his chest before he can put the next one anywhere. I take the forearm and break it across. He goes down screaming.

The second one turns to run.

I take him from behind at the base of the neck.

There’s another one after that. I don’t remember him at all.

There are stairs. My claws won’t hold on concrete, and I go up two flights half-sliding. Somebody on the landing above is firing down into the stairwell.

One of the rounds goes into me.

It goes in under my collarbone and comes out of my back. I feel the whole of it, front and back. It knocks me over, and I go down the steps on my side.

Up! Now!

I get up.

I shouldn’t get up. Some part of me knows the difference between a thing you get up from and a thing you don’t. This is the second kind, but I am on my feet and moving anyway.

The man on the landing sees me coming and stops firing. His hands go up.

I take him through the stairwell rail.

At the top there’s another one waiting with a length of steel pipe in both hands. He swings it into my ribs and something gives on my left side. I go into the wall with my whole weight. He lifts it again.

Get up!

I get up before it comes down. I have his forearm. Then I have his face.

When it’s finished, I’m standing over him with blood running off my jaw onto his coat. My sides are heaving. There’s a hole through the top of me, and it’s bleeding.

I can hear the wound. That’s the thing I notice. Air going in and out of somewhere it shouldn’t.

It should stop me. It doesn’t.

He’s close now, above and east, so strong it’s pulling my head around for me.

I go up the last flight.

The corridor at the top has doors down one side only. There’s a window at the far end, and the sky beyond it has gone from black to gray. Down the corridor, light is shining through the edges of the doors.

No. No, no—