Page 23 of On the Road

A growl rumbled so deep it shook the cabin. The shotgun blasted.

“Wait here? What are we, demon bait?” Zee’s wings popped out, his tail lashed, claws glinting. He grinned and made his eyebrows jump. “Wanna go housebreak this puppy?”

I fluttered my lashes, interlaced my fingers, and cracked my knuckles. The sweet taste of rising violence roused the beast within. “It’s been a while, but sure.”

Sparks danced in Zee’s purple eyes. “This bad dog is about to realize he fucked with the top of the foodchain.”

CHAPTER 7

Rushing outside didn’t immediately reveal a fight scene. In fact, nobody was in sight. No Zander, no giant furry werewolf, and no Victor either.

“Heads up!” Zee yelled, then dashed forward and reached out to catch the half-shifted werewolf tumbling down off the roof. The stretched and torn clothes suggested the wolf man was Zander but it was hard to tell under all the gray fluff.

Terrified eyes locked on me. “Woof!” Zander wheezed.

“Woof?” Zee asked.

“I think he means roof?” We both looked up in the hope of seeing something on top of the cabin, but our angle from the ground hid whatever was happening up there.

“Adam, you got him?” Zee asked me.

He had wings, and could poof up there in a blink. “Yeah, go.”

Zee set Zander on the ground, flung open his wings, and shot into the air.

Zander was clearly not alright. In my limited experience with werewolves—which mostly consisted of Zee’s old client Abe, and riding one once—they didn’t generally like to be half shifted like this. The half-wolf, half-man state left them vulnerable, and right now Zander’s elongated snout was wolf but his eyes were human and showed pain.

“Hey, we got you, alright? You’re safe now.”

Zander thrashed his head and the poor guy tried to speak, but the snout wasn’t meant for forming words. Everything he tried to say came out as snuffles and snorts.

I scooped him up, intending to take him inside, then saw the gaping wounds in his middle. Four jagged claw gouges . . . just like Cameron. Zander would die if we didn’t get him medical help. I had to get Zee. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

His furry hand grabbed mine and yanked me back down. Big sad eyes begged me to stay. He was scared. Scared of being left alone, scared of dying. I covered his hand with mine. I knew how it felt to face what you believed were your last few minutes on this earth.

“It’s going to be alright. I’ll make sure of it.” I pulled his hand from mine and dashed for the door.

Snapping sounds of cracking timbers shattered the quiet like gunshots. Skidding to a stop on the deck, movement to my right caught my eye. A huge tree came at me, getting bigger as its broken top half fell. It seemed personal, as though this one tree really didn’t like me and would like to flatten the porch with me under it.

“Adam!”

Zee’s shout came half a second before the world turned into a hail of whipping branches and cracking timber. I buckled, driven to my knees, arms over my head, and waited out the pummeling onslaught. When the chaos settled, I lifted my head and shoved broken branches and snapped timbers aside, then climbed out of the wooden carnage.

Zee’s wings flapped, whipping up a storm of pine needles. “Oh my fuck, you scared the pretty right outtah me. Don’t ever fuckin’ do that again. You alright?”

My arms were cut up some, but no broken bones. “I’m fine. Next time I’ll ask the tree not to fall on me.” Reaching out, Zee plucked me from the pile of broken branches onto the large tree limb next to him. “We need to get Zander to a hospital, or somewhere with medical supplies,” I told him, shaking twigs from my hair. “He’s cut up bad.”

“The motel?” he asked.

“If they don’t have medical supplies, Jenny will know where to take him.”

“I got Zander. You help Fancy Fangs. He’s busy pretending to be a squeaky toy for the fuck-off rabid wolf man.” Zee jerked his chin toward the broken tree stump and the storm of splintered wood to indicate the figures wrestling in the gloomy mist. “Be careful, Kitten. I’ve never seen a werewolf like it.”

I nodded. “Victor and I will stop it. Save Zander.”

“Aye aye, General.” Zee saluted, then threw himself off the ruined porch like a shot from a gun. A few moments later, I spotted Zee’s wings unfurling from the clearing behind the cabin. Those sparkly purple expanses of leather whipped the air, and with Zander draped in his arms, he vanished through the canopy, disappearing into the mist.

With Zee gone and Zander out of harm’s way, my thoughts turned to the sounds of snapping trees, snarling growls, and vampire grunts coming from the fog.