“I think I can manage that. Is the rifle empty?”
“Behind the bar I found a box of bullets… or shells… or cartridges, magazines…whatever the hell you call them.”
“Why the heck would you want to read a magazine right now?”
Oh, goody, someone who knew less about guns than I did.
“Never mind,” I told her.
With Kat knocked out, we abandoned being stealthy and exited through the backdoor instead of the hole I had crawled through. I was feeling a lot more confident now that we each had a weapon to protect ourselves, even if I was the more experienced one and I barely knew shit.
We were outside maybe five seconds before we heard a whimpering of an animal. It sounded like a dog that was injured and then I realized it wasn’t any dog.
Staggering down the tree covered hill behind us was a nude Daggett. He was, surprisingly, back in human form, but his body was profusely bleeding from a gunshot wound in his side. He wrapped his arms around the base of a tree to keep himself standing, and then when he had seemingly lost all strength, he let go and came tumbling down the hill toward us.
I ran to him and dropped to my knees, quickly checking to see if he was still breathing. He was.
“Daggett? Daggett, can you hear me?”
His eyes crossed as he looked up at me, and a long, strained burst of air leaked from his mouth. I could tell he was about to pass out.
“Why doesn’t he look like a werewolf? There’s still a full moon,” Melanie commented. She was keeping her distance and I didn’t blame her one bit.
“Because he’s dying,” I trembled. It was just like Owen. When he had died and his body was carried away, he had reformed into his original state. Seeing Daggett like this, I knew instantly he was going down the same path.
“We have to help him,” I said.
“No way. I’m not getting bit.”
“Look at him, he’s not a werewolf. He’s not biting anyone. Come on.”
I attempted to lift him up from under his arms, but he was practically dead weight. It took help from Melanie before we were both able to lift him up off the ground, swooping one of his arms around my neck and the other around hers. Managing to carry his body while holding onto a rifle proved a daunting task.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we turned the corner around the bar and saw the parked delivery milk truck. The back end was windowless and spacious inside, so it’d be a perfect place to hide while we escaped the city. We just needed the keys.
I directed Melanie to the back of the truck and together, we popped open the doors and laid Daggett down so we could catch our breath. The blood had run from his wound all the way down to his leg in one long, crimson streak that made me almost lose my lunch. His whole body was sweaty, yet he was shivering like he was freezing. Before I even had the chance to ask her, Melanie tore off her jacket and covered him with it.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Keep him in here where he’ll be safe while we drive to the hospital.”
“You have the keys?”
“No. You don’t happen to know how to hot-wire a car, do you?”
Melanie looked offended. “Why would I know how to do that?”
“With your history…”
“Okay, let me clear this up. The car I drove on school property was mine. I didn’t have to hot-wire shit, all right? You’re the one that lived in Detroit, anyway.”
I threw my head back. “What does that even mean?”
“Isn’t knowing how to jack someone’s car mandatory?”
“Yes, Melanie, Detroit is one giant battlefield,” I said sardonically. “Can you run to the front seat and see if they left the keys? If they didn’t I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do.”
“Fine,” she said and ran off.
While she was in the front scavenging for the keys, I checked on Daggett. He was still bleeding, but the flow had appeared to slow down just a little bit. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign and he’d be able to pull through, or if the blood had stopped because he had bled everything he could.
Poor guy. His curly brown locks were drenched with perspiration, and I kept wondering if he could even see all that well without his glasses.
“I got it!” Melanie shouted.
I ran up to the front of the truck as quickly as I could and shushed her. “Don’t yell so loud,” I warned her.
“Sorry. I found the keys in the visor.”
“Okay, good,” I said and then put my hand out for her to hand me the keys.
She stared at my hand, perplexed, and then said, “I’m driving.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Do we really have to run through your driving history?”
She rolled her eyes. “That was a long time ago. Besides, there is no way you’re convincing me to sit in the back with a guy who could turn into a werewolf at any second.”
“So, you’d rather I sat back there and be turned into a werewolf?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed honestly.
“I’m feeling the love, Melanie, truly.”
“One of us has to do it and he is your friend.”
“Fine, I’ll stay back there, but next time could you at least pretend you’re worried about my well-being?”
“I’ll try.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, and then slammed her car door shut.
The engine revved up as I jogged to the end of the milk truck, and I knew the sound would alert Travis to our whereabouts in no time. I pushed Daggett in further and then crawled into the back with him, using a few extra crates to stack around his body so he would stay in place in case the trip got rocky.
The truck began to take off, but the back doors were still hanging open, so I yelled to Melanie to slow down while I walked on my knees to the back of the truck and reached for the door. But as we were pulling out of the bar’s driveway, I saw a dark figure peeking out from around the corner of the building, and it was not human.
“Oh, God, drive faster!” I screamed to Melanie.
“What?”
“Drive faster!”
This creature began running at top speed after us, quickly catching up as Melanie pressed her foot down on the gas.
To this day, I don’t know how I knew, but one look into this crooked faced werewolf with spazzy white streaked hair on the top of its head, and I could tell it was Kat. Melanie knocking her out had, no doubt, put her in an even more violent mood, and her werewolf form was the perfect way to extract some revenge.
We were the ones in the vehicle, yet there was no struggle for her to keep up with us.
The truck was going so fast that the doors were swinging out of control. One side would slam shut and then open again, each taking turns until the back of the truck looked like it was blinking furiously. I knew getting these doors to close as we drove down the road was bordering on impossible, but I also knew Kat was seconds away from climbing right in here and offing Daggett and I.
I grabbed for the rifle and began firing at her. She was quick, swerving side to side to avoid getting hit, but I never relented and fired nonstop. My aim was shit, but I wasn’t going to let her killing us be an easy task. If we went down, she was going to have to earn it.
Like some kind of ballerina, Kat pounced and took flight, landing on the roof of the truck and making a big bang.
I dropped to my knees and began firing the rifle at the ceiling, hoping that the limited space she had up there would raise my chances of getting one of these bullets to connect.
A long, furry arm punched through the ceiling and slashed at me. Her nails were white and long, and looked horrifically sharp. I attempted to fire at her one more time, but she pulled her arm back up through the hole and rolled to another spot.
“Oh, shit, she’s on the roof, isn’t she?!” Melanie yelled. She didn’t wait for me to answer and began weaving the truck in and out of the lanes. Maybe it was hurting Kat’s balance, but it was having a terr
ible effect on me as well, because with every twist and turn of the truck, I went sliding across the floor like egg yolk on a pan.
“Melanie, I can’t shoot her!” I said loudly.
“I’m trying to help!”
“It’s not working!”
Kat’s fist busted a new hole through the roof and she dipped her hand through and grabbed a hold of the rifle’s barrel, grasping on tight and then pulling. She was trying to take the gun! I held on for dear life, knowing this rifle was my only real defense against what was out there, but she was so damn strong, she ended up lifting the gun in the air with me attached. My feet were literally off the ground as she pulled me toward the hole through the roof like she was reeling in a fish. I planted my feet against the wall for some kind of leverage and used the strength of my entire body to maintain my position in a fight for the gun.
She must have felt the resistance because she flashed her electric blood moon eyes through the hole at me and snarled. Her gaze was so large and expressive I gasped out of sheer terror and felt my hold on the rifle weaken. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I had never seen a werewolf’s face this close to my own. She took advantage of my slip up and yanked on the gun, only this time, she thrashed it around with me still holding on, sending my body colliding into the wall, and then she flung me straight up, banging me against the ceiling over and over again like I were a dusty living room rug that needed the dirt shaken out. She was trying to get me to let go. And it worked.
My hands slid right off the gun and I fell to the floor, face first. I could hear the sides of the rifle scraping against the tin roof as she pulled it through the hole. I was screwed. What was I supposed to do?
I flipped over onto my back just in time to see Kat’s entire head and neck pouring in. Her body was much too large to squeeze herself all the way through, but it didn’t stop her from trying. The ripped up metal of the roof pierced through her flesh as she pushed and pushed to get closer to me, chomping at the space around my face. I could feel the heat of her breath soaking into my skin, smell the stuffiness of her fur, and I turned my face away and lay as flat to the floor as I could so she was unable to scathe my flesh with her teeth.
That’s when I noticed this peculiar noise. It sounded like a muffled coughing emanating from her throat, yet her mouth was open wide with her tongue hanging out as she panted excitedly. It’s when I realized she wasn’t coughing at all. The crazy bitch was laughing. It didn’t sound human, but it was definitely laughter.
I frantically felt around in the dark, looking for a possible screwdriver or box cutter to jab into her face, and that’s when I felt the cold, synthetic material of a recoil pad belonging to a shotgun. Kat’s shotgun.
I placed the shotgun on my chest, placed my finger on the trigger and then aimed, praying that there was still ammunition. The gun went off right in her face, and a sea of red exploded into the truck. Her body went limp and then rolled off the roof of the truck and spilled onto the street. Melanie stopped the car, put it in reverse, and then ran her corpse over for good measure.
Neither of us looked back, but we were pretty confident she was dead.
Killed by her own gun.
As she drove forward, Melanie sarcastically remarked, “Does that count as murder if she was in werewolf form?”
I was so relieved to be alive, I actually laughed.
I got to my feet, wiped the blood off my face with the edge of my shirt, and then checked on Daggett. I pressed the back of my hand to his face and stroked his cheek with my knuckles softly.
“We’re going to be okay, Daggett. Just hold on.”
Our good fortune didn’t last very long, because not even five seconds later, I heard the shrieking of a beast, and in the blink of an eye, Travis appeared, latched onto the driver’s door of the truck. He roared and broke the glass with the end of his snout and then chomped down into Melanie’s neck. There was blood everywhere.
“No!” I screamed.
Melanie was frantic and struggling for her life, causing the vehicle to swerve violently to the right, heading directly for a building.
Oh, God.
We were going to crash right into it. I knew it. And there was nothing I could do.
I screamed and tucked my head between my legs.
And then there was blackness.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I was alive.
The truck tilted on its side from the harsh impact, and Daggett and I had been flipped around and swirled in the back like a load of laundry, but we were breathing. Everything felt so topsy-turvy, I wasn’t even sure if I was lying on the wall or the floor anymore.
I felt a horrendous ache in my shoulder from the crash, and I checked my body for any injuries. Nothing had impaled me, but I was hurting pretty bad.
Daggett had fallen off the bench where I had placed him and was now lying on his face, straining to breathe. I flipped him over and scoped him out for injuries as well, but everything looked good, aside from the bullet wound he had already suffered.
“You all right?” I asked him.
He moaned and groaned, but the fact that he was, at least, trying to respond to me was a good sign in my book.
I glanced over at the front seat to look for Melanie, and let out a horrible shriek when I realized she was gone. Worse yet, the windshield was completely smashed, like something had been thrown right through it.
No doubt it was Melanie.
My heart pounded violently beneath my chest, horribly afraid of getting out of the truck and finding Melanie dead in the street. But I had to find her. I didn’t know what was still out there and what kind of danger she could still be in.
I placed my hand to Daggett’s face, hoping my cool touch would focus him, and said, “I have to find Melanie. I’ll be back. Just stay low, okay?”
I kicked the back door of the truck open and crawled out. There was glass everywhere and I could feel it crunching into the knees of my jeans as I wiggled out of the flipped vehicle. In that moment, I was thankful I had decided against a skirt earlier in the evening.
I didn’t even let myself think about what I could potentially be facing as I entered the streets. My adrenaline must have been going wild, because on reflection, I realized just how dangerous it was me being out there with no backup. At least I had the common sense to go searching through the back of the truck for the shotgun and take it with me. I had no idea how many shells were still in it, but it gave me a level of comfort knowing anyone approaching might think twice when they saw it in my hands.
The streets were quiet and empty, like the aftermath of some zombie apocalypse in a horror film, with the street light flickering as bugs bashed their bodies against the dying light. It looked like everyone had up and left the city, leaving it an abandoned, dark place that made me feel so terribly, terribly isolated.
I searched for any sign of Melanie, and within seconds, I spotted a lump of blonde hair and clothes lying on the cement, maybe thirty feet in front of me. The crash had launched Melanie right out of the vehicle and into the street. Thankfully, because the city was deserted, there was no oncoming traffic to run her over.
I was weak, but dragging my legs as quickly as I could toward Melanie’s body while the shotgun dangled in my hand. My vision was foggy, but I was seeing red, lots and lots of red, pooled around her. I’m not sure if I called out her name or not, due to the ringing in my ear, but my lips were moving and I was terrified. There was so much blood and she wasn’t moving.
Once I got close, I dropped to my knees beside her and felt a warmth soak into my jeans—it was her blood from the pavement. There was so much of it, I could smell it, nearly taste it, and there was no question in my mind how bad this situation was.
The source of all this was a giant gouge on the side of her neck. There was such an immense amount of thick crimson oozing out of the wound that I couldn’t see how deep it went, but knew that if there was this much flowing out of her that it had to be bad. But she was alive, and awa
ke.
I took her hand into mine and she felt like ice—almost corpse-like. “Hang on,” I told her desperately. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I was still woozy, the truck had been flipped, and she was bleeding out in the middle of the road while werewolves were still hunting us.
Overwhelmed didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling.
“He—he bit me,” she hiccupped as her body violently trembled. The color was fading from her face quickly, and the redness of the blood sprinkled all over her skin made her look even paler in contrast. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”
“You’re not going to turn,” I lied to her. Truth be told, I had no idea what was going to happen. “We just need to stop the bleeding.”
“I’m dying, aren’t I?”
“No. We’re making it out of here.”
“Travis is still out there. You need to run. Leave me.”
“I’m not abandoning you. Just help me help you to your feet, okay?”
“Cora,” she said very calmly.
“What?”
“I can’t feel my body.”
Her words passed through me like a ghost. There was no fear or anger in her voice, just a matter-of-fact honesty. Melanie was bleeding profusely and now she couldn’t feel anything.
The lump was so heavy in my throat I felt ready to choke.
The realization that I was in over my head and could do nothing hit me all at once, and my eyes stung from the tears. She was dying and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. I didn’t even have the strength to pull her someplace warm and comfortable.
“What can I—” I choked back tears. “What can I do for you?”
“Hold me for a while. I don’t want to go alone.”
I placed my hands under each of her arms and pulled her into my lap. With her body limp and clothes soaked in her blood, she was dead weight. I cradled her in my arms like a baby and peered down at her face as she looked at me, her eyes barely able to stay open. She was fading fast.
“You’re crying,” Melanie noted, sounding surprised. “That’s… nice. I didn’t think you liked me.”
“You’re my family, Melanie. I love you.”
Lunar City Page 34