by Helena Shaw
“I’m good,” he said as he eyed her, but Dawn kept her mask strong. She’d gone from stoic to seductive, and she wouldn’t be beat so easily. She’d faced worse than him, werewolf or not, and she had fought too long to go out with nothing but a whimper.
“Just me, then.” She pouted at him. “Can’t I convince you?”
“I’m good,” he said as he narrowed his eyes at her, studying her, but she knew there was nothing he would find.
When he was satisfied with his inspection, he released her, though she felt his eyes on her back while she strut into the kitchen. She was careful not to overdo it; too much and he would be suspicious, too little might be worse. She walked a very fine line as she moved into the kitchen and took a glass out of the cupboard before she grabbed the whiskey.
Dawn worked slowly. She needed him close if her plan was going to work. He needed to be impatient and come up behind her, within arms’ reach, or she’d never catch him. He might be bigger than her, stronger too, but if for only a second she was faster than him, she might just win.
It was when she heard his feet behind her that she knew her plan was working. Slowly, she poured her glass and she listened, her ears tuned on each of his footsteps and she waited until she could feel the heat of his body on her back.
Like lightning, she struck. In one sharp move, she smashed the bottle on the counter, breaking the body and leaving the jagged remains of the neck in her hand. Broken glass scattered at her bare feet, but she didn’t care if she stepped on them. With the broken bottle in her hand, she spun and lunged at Gavin, her own teeth bared like a wild animal.
Dawn was quick, but Gavin was faster, and he caught her wrist and squeezed so hard she dropped her makeshift weapon with a yelp. The bones in her arm ached, and she swore they were about to break, but just as they felt about ready to snap, Gavin easily tossed her backwards onto the couch and laughed.
“Idiot,” he laughed at her. “Did you really think that would work?”
Terror rippled over her skin as she clawed her way backwards on the couch, but all that left her mouth was indignance. “Yeah,” she spat at him. “I thought it would.”
“Stupid girl,” he laughed, but something about the sound wasn’t quite right, wasn’t quite human. Outside her kitchen window, Dawn could see the sun as it set, the last orange rays of the fall day lowering and leaving only the night behind. “You know,” he growled at her, “we could have made this so easy.”
“And how’s that?” she hissed at him.
“I would have made it painless, mostly,” he said. “I could have given you the best night of your life before I ripped your throat out. None of the other girls seemed to mind too much, at least. They all went so willingly into my bed, though it didn’t take much. A little charm, a smile, it was easy. You, though, you’ve been a bit of a challenge. First I played the charmer, then the soulful loser. In the end, it was the naïve idiot approach that wore you down.”
“Fuck you,” Dawn hissed at him as he moved closer to her.
“You missed that chance,” Gavin snickered. “Although, I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a little fun now. Your friend Courtney didn’t seem to mind much, until I bared my teeth, of course. Too bad I never got to finish that meal.”
Dawn felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “What?”
“Your FBI buddy. He got so close, yet still failed. I had to leave my dinner when he came sniffing around, and when I finally got my chance to finish up, some buzzards must have gotten to her. No matter, she was a mistake, anyway. Being seen with her was a rookie mistake, but I was so hungry.” As he spoke, Dawn could have sworn that he was starting to drool.
“Do you know how hard it is for someone like me to keep a low profile?” he asked her, though he wasn’t exactly looking for an answer. “Some bitch turns up dead in the same city you’re in, well, people start to wonder if it’s someone on the team. Even the worst of cops can follow a trail when someone famous might be involved. I got out of the game before I got caught, you see. Figured settling in some bumfuck nowhere mountain town would be best. Hikers get lost in the woods all the time, and no one would know who I was. It was perfect, but then I got greedy.
“But I just need to space out my meals,” he laughed. “Besides, you’re just some drifter bitch. No one will give a shit after you’re gone. And I am so very hungry. It’s been weeks since I last ate, and you’re going to make quite the meal.”
As he spoke, the last of the sun dipped below the mountains. In the yellow light of her lamp, Dawn’s eyes went wide as Gavin’s teeth began to change in his mouth. No longer perfect rows of white squares, they grew long, sharp, and deadly as he stepped closer to her.
“Now, let’s get to the fun part,” he said as his skin shuddered.
Dawn watched as Gavin grew larger and fur burst forth from his skin. The gold flecks had transformed his eyes into amber globes, and where his fingers had been were now long, sharp claws.
She wanted to scream, but all she could hear were the low rumblings of Gavin’s growls.
Chapter Nineteen
Dawn had never felt so powerless, so paralyzed as she watched Gavin’s body bend, his bones crack, and his flesh transform. He was a monster inside and out, and she was trapped in the house where she had once felt so safe.
She didn’t want to give up, but she was out of options. There was nowhere to run, no way to fight, and as his glowing yellow eyes met hers, he dropped to all fours.
Just as he moved to attack, something loud exploded to her right. In all her shock and disbelief, Dawn couldn’t even be sure she’d really heard anything, but when the monster that Gavin had become turned his focus away from her, she knew it hadn’t been just a dream.
Somehow, Dawn forced herself to look in the direction that Gavin was now snarling. She saw her own door kicked in, the lock now broken and useless, and in the doorway stood Jase.
He was different. He was a shadow of the man who had kissed her goodbye in the alley behind Jim’s bar. Even in a heavy flannel and down jacket, she could see he’d lost weight. The hollows of his cheeks were only barely hidden by the beard that grew along them, and he was covered in dirt.
But his green eyes still burned, and most of all, he was there.
“Dawn!” she heard him yell, and it was like music to her ears. “Get down!”
Her paralysis still held her like a ghoul, but somehow she broke free and forced herself down on the floor. A shot rang out, and for a brief second, Dawn prayed that it was all over, but she wouldn’t be that lucky. When she looked up, she saw the gun in Jase’s hand, but Gavin was still snarling, and she could only watch as the hulking beast sprang forward and knocked Jase across the room.
Dawn had always pictured werewolves as just that, wolves, but now she realized that wasn’t exactly true. Gavin’s face had the features of a wolf, but his golden eyes looked human, and the snout he’d grown was somehow wider, larger, and held bigger teeth.
If he had just become a wolf, Jase might have easily been able to overpower him, but that wasn’t the case. Though clawed and covered in fur, Gavin didn’t have paws, but instead large, muscular hands that easily knocked Jase backwards once more.
Even worse, Gavin didn’t charge on all fours, but on powerful back legs that left his hands free to claw at Jase as he avoided the monster’s next attack.
Jase wasn’t totally outmatched, though. He might have been smaller than and not nearly as strong as Gavin, but he was smart and fought dirty, As Gavin moved to attack, Jase’s fingers dove toward his eyes and sent the monster howling with pain.
It only served to distract Gavin for a second, for he was on Jase again, knocking him to the floor and pinning him down. Jase managed to catch Gavin by the neck and hold back his snapping jaws, but from across the room, Dawn could see his arms shaking from the strain.
She didn’t know what she could do, what she should do, but she forced her eyes to sweep across the room until she spotted the discarded neck of t
he bottle she’d tried to use to defend herself.
Gavin was too busy trying to catch Jase with his teeth to notice as she scrambled on hands and knees across the kitchen floor. He was too focused on Jase to see her roll the broken bottle neck toward them, praying that Jase would see it.
Mercifully, he did. In one quick move, Jase grabbed for the weapon, and with an arcing sweep of his arm, he slashed at Gavin’s face and sent the monster stumbling backwards.
“You bastard,” Gavin growled from behind a clawed hand, his voice hollow, deep, and horrifying.
When he moved what had become of his hand from his face, she saw the reason for his unbridled rage. Jase hadn’t just cut him, but slashed him deeply with the bottle. Thick, oozing red blood spilled from the deep slashes, and flaps of skin hung from his snout as he snapped and snarled.
Though the wound was deep, it only slowed Gavin down for a second. Even with blood pouring, he was on the attack again, and Jase only had the bottle to defend himself.
Gavin clawed while Jase slashed, and the two seemed hell-bent on destroying Dawn’s house as they fought. It was nothing like Dawn had ever seen before, nothing like the wrestling matches she’d watched as a kid. One of them wouldn’t survive this fight, and Dawn’s fate was in the hands of the winner.
Part of her wanted to run for the door, to escape and take off, just like she always had. Something inside her pleaded with her to dive out the door and run into the dark night.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave Jase to the monster.
No more running, a voice in her said, this one louder than all the others. She forced herself to look for something to help, and that was when she saw it: a tiny glint of silver sparked in the lamplight.
Jase’s gun.
There was no more thinking, only instinct as Dawn dove for the weapon. She landed hard on her shoulder and pain exploded behind her eyes, but she blocked it out as she picked up the gun. It was still warm from the first shot Jase had fired, and she fumbled with it. She’d never fired a pistol, but it was time for her to start.
As she picked up the gun, her eyes met with Jase’s. He looked like he was about to say something, but the words never came as Gavin sprang at him.
His teeth only missed Jase’s face by an inch at most, but he knocked Jase against the wall and pinned him there. In the chaos, Gavin had lost sight of Dawn, and in that lucky stroke, she knew the advantage was hers.
“In the heart!” Jase screamed as he held back his attacker. “Shoot him in the heart!”
As she raised the pistol, somehow the chaos that surrounded her went deathly quiet. It had been years since she’d fired a gun, but somehow it all came back to her.
Just breathe, her father’s voice whispered in her ear. You can do this. Just breathe.
The world moved slower and slower as Dawn raised the gun. Only the sounds of her own breathing echoed in her ears as she aimed. From her vantage point, she had a clear shot at Gavin’s right side, and as he used his powerful arms to lift Jase’s feet off the floor, she knew she had her shot.
With his arms raised, the sides of his ribs were left completely exposed. He was so focused on his prey that the gun pointed at him had no value, no notice at all, and Dawn had ceased to exist.
“Just breathe,” Dawn said aloud as her finger gently squeezed the trigger.
All the sound in the room came back to her as the gun came to life in her hands. The explosion rang in her ears, Gavin’s snarling filled her house, and Jase’s screaming all came back in a horrible cacophony all at once.
But as the gun fired, a new sound came alive. A horrible, wailing howl erupted from Gavin’s horribly fanged mouth as his monstrous hands released Jase, who fell hard to the floor.
The howl never stopped, only changed and grew worse and worse as Gavin wrapped his arms around his monstrous body. For a second, Dawn thought she’d missed, that she’d only grazed him, but then she saw the blood as it poured from the wound she’d inflicted on him.
Stumbling backwards, Gavin’s body began to change again. He grew smaller and his fur melted away as he dropped to his knees. Only as he fell did his eyes meet Dawn’s, but she didn’t see the remorse she expected there, only disbelief as he coughed and choked on thick, black blood.
With a hard twitch of his body, Gavin collapsed. His chest rose and fell one last time as Dawn looked on, and with one more weak spasm, he stilled.
“He’s... he’s dead, right?” she finally whispered while she kept the gun pointed at Gavin’s body.
“Yes,” Jase said as he leaned back on the wall of her house. “Now, where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“My dad,” Dawn said as she dropped the gun. “My real dad, he taught me.”
“He did a damn good job,” Jase said. “Thanks for saving my ass.”
All at once, the realization of what had just happened crashed over Dawn and her whole body began to tremble. Without thinking, she ran to Jase, finding him beaten and bloodied.
“Oh my God!” she screamed. “Were you bit? Tell me he didn’t bite you!”
Even though he was covered in blood—both his own and Gavin’s—Dawn didn’t care. She put her fingers to his face and looked for what might be bites. She wanted to know if he was okay. She needed to know he was okay.
“I’m fine” he assured her as he took her hands in his. “He didn’t bite me.”
“How do you know?” she asked, her eyes still searching him as he held her hands.
“They sting like hell,” he said. “When... when Addy was bitten, she kept going on about how much the bites stung her.”
“Wait,” Dawn said as she pulled back from him. “What do you mean? I thought you said the werewolf killed her.”
“It did,” he said, but then he looked away from her. “But... not directly. The bitch got the drop on us, but she didn’t get the kill, not really. She only managed to bite Addy’s arm. We hoped that maybe there was something we could do, but the stinging set in almost immediately. After a couple days, we knew she was changing. Dawn... I’m the one who killed her.”
“What?” Dawn breathed. “You didn’t...”
“I had to,” he said, still refusing to look at her. “She begged me to. She didn’t want to become the thing we hunted. She didn’t want to hurt people. The full moon was only days away, and she didn’t want to be a monster. So... I shot her and buried her body down by an old church. I figured she’d like that bit.”
“Oh, Jase,” Dawn said. He looked so ashamed, but she could only feel sympathy in her heart. Gently, she let her fingers move to his face again, but this time not to look for scrapes or scratches. There, on the floor, she kissed him. She was tender with him, careful not to make his wounds worse, and she let herself begin to believe that he had really come back to her.
“Jennifer,” she whispered to him as her lips left his. “My real name is Jennifer.”
“Why are you...?” Jase asked as his eyes examined hers.
“Because I want to trust you,” she said as she kissed him once more. “And I want you to trust me, too. I don’t think I’m ready to tell you everything. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell anyone everything. But I want to try.”
“I think it’s a good place to start,” Jase said as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
Chapter Twenty
In the cold and dark of the moonless night, Dawn worked with Jase to dig a shallow hole in the small bit of earth that made up her backyard. Though she was hot and sticky with sweat, Jase told her to keep his coat on, lest the chill freeze the sweat on her skin.
He’d started the hole on his own with a shovel from the back of his truck while Dawn scrubbed the blood in her house. The shot through Gavin’s heart had drained most of the blood from his body, and Dawn had scrubbed with bleach for an hour just to remove the pool his body had left, but then she had to move on to the walls.
No matter what she scrubbed, how much she swept and tid
ied, some of the evidence was going to remain. Jase assured her that they weren’t working to hide the evidence of what had happened there forever, but long enough that they would be far out of town before it was discovered.
When she was done, she’d joined Jase in digging. The grave didn’t need to be deep, but the ground was cold and hard and they had to move in shifts, each taking turns until finally they had enough of a hole to hide the bulk of Gavin’s body. The man, the monster, had been so tall and muscular that they were digging well into the night to hide the evidence.
“How long until they find him?” Dawn asked as she grabbed Gavin’s heels and Jase took his body by the shoulders.
“If we’re lucky?” Jase asked. “Maybe a few months. Depends on how many people are looking for him. With no bear or wolf found, chances are when people do notice he’s missing, they’ll be looking in the woods, not in your house. With the snows coming, it will hide the grave for a long time, too. Really, the biggest danger is some dog digging him up.”
“But you... we... we’ll be long gone, right?” Dawn asked.
“That’s up to you,” Jase said as they carried Gavin’s body, his dead weight almost more than Dawn could handle. As they dropped his corpse into the hole, she couldn’t hide the strain she’d been holding on to.
“You willing to take me along?” Dawn asked, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
“It’s rough on the road,” Jase said, and Dawn braced herself for the blow of his rejection. “But having someone there beside me will make it a little easier.”
“You mean it?” Dawn asked, unable to hide her smile.
“A hunter’s life isn’t easy,” Jase said. “And our life expectancy is low.”
“My life has never been easy,” Dawn said. “At least not for a long time. Let’s do it.”
“Good,” Jase said as he handed her a shovel. “Now, let’s get him covered up.”
It was after two in the morning by time they got the body covered in the loose dirt they’d dug up. Quietly, they marched over the ground to try to hide the rise in the soil, but still, the arch remained, making it hard to truly hide what they’d done.