The blonde shook her head, gaze darting to the blind corner.
Bryce looked to his brother, and Aiden nodded. “Everyone take a nice, big step toward the back wall.”
The blonde woman complied at once. The men took some convincing in the form of Aiden taking a shot at that yellow X. He hit the wall in the exact same spot Bryce had, and the men took the hint.
Once Bryce was sure Aiden had their attention, he moved in unison with his brother, coming forward so Aiden could keep an eye on the men and cover Bryce’s back at the same time. He saw the blood before he saw who it belonged to. Another man sat on the floor, broken glasses askew, holding a pretty, brown-haired female in his arms. He was sobbing quietly, fear rolling off of him in sickening waves. But the sight of the female sent a chill through Bryce.
“I think she’s dead,” the man holding her said. He was covered in her blood, hands wet with it as he clumsily tried to stave off the flow that was already down to a trickle. A pool of it had spread around her, soaking him. She was as pale as death, unconscious.
Bryce growled and set his weapon aside to pry her out of the man’s arms. He laid her onto the floor to check the injury. Gunshot wound, clean through and through. It was a small enough hole that it should have closed in seconds. Bryce poked at the edges, which usually triggered a lagging regeneration response, but it only irritated her wound into bleeding more. Bryce didn’t understand. There were no foreign objects inside to keep the wound open. An anticoagulant would leave a scent trail; he’d have smelled any sort of chemical or natural toxin, not just metal and gunpowder residue. Why was she not healing?
He gently manipulated one of her eyelids up. Her eyes were the color of moss, pupils dilated in the dark. Her face was cold, full lips bloodless. She was too thin and visibly dehydrated, which could have made matters worse, but even so, she should have been able to heal herself by now.
Could it have been a reaction to the bullet itself, then? It must have been a small caliber; definitely not the work of the assault rifle GI Joe carried. A handgun lay on the ground nearby.
The sobbing man was ranting about a fight over a bracelet, and the gun going off by accident. Deciding against his gut to give the whiner the benefit of the doubt, Bryce checked the female’s hands for defensive wounds. Her left wrist sported a thick silver cuff fitted so tight there were less than five millimeters of room between it and her skin’s surface. A long, thin scar on the inside of her forearm ran from under the bracelet almost to her elbow in a line too straight and even to be anything other than a surgical incision. He filed that away for later investigation. She had no wounds or bruises consistent with someone trying to take the cuff. In fact, the only discoloration was on her right hand and index finger. There’d been a fight, all right, but not over the bracelet. Someone had attacked her specifically for the gun, and when she’d refused to yield it, they’d forced her to pull the trigger. This had been no accident.
Furious, Bryce flared his nostrils, seeking gunpowder residue. It was all over the female, but only one other male.
The blademan.
Bryce looked over his shoulder at the man who, even now, stared at the female, wearing an expression Bryce was intimately familiar with: satisfaction. The blademan liked inflicting pain.
Noticing he was being watched, the man met his gaze.
Bad idea.
Bryce’s muscles contracted, and his claws dug into the concrete floor, animal instincts screaming at him to destroy the threat, protect his pack. The female was Wolfen, which made her theirs—Bryce’s and Aiden’s—and that disgusting son of a human whore had hurt her. He would die.
The blademan dared a glance at the rifle Bryce had discarded.
Bryce could see the wheels turning in the man’s head, read the intent clearly in his mole-like eyes. He deliberately turned away. His ear twitched when the blademan dived for the weapon and, faster than the human could move on his best day, without thought and without even looking up, Bryce snatched the handgun, aimed off to the side, and fired. It was a cleaner execution than the bastard deserved, but the female didn’t have time for him to waste on proper punishment.
The blonde woman shrieked as the blademan’s body hit the ground, and a fresh wave of blood scented the air. The rambler lost control of his bladder, shocked into absolute stillness.
Through the panicked screaming, the rifleman came to his senses. “Drop it!” he yelled. “Drop it now!”
Bryce ignored him. Aiden hadn’t fired yet, so the rifleman was not an immediate threat. He did lower his gun, but only to press his fingers to the female’s neck in search of a pulse. It was very weak, her breathing almost nonexistent.
“Get the fuck away from her, or I’ll blow your brains out.”
“With what? A puff of air and your swinging dick?” Aiden had a knack for knowing exactly how to push people’s buttons.
“You think I won’t?”
“If you planned to, my brother would already be dead. He’s not, which means either you’re a pussy, or you’re out of ammo. I’m thinking both.”
The blonde woman was wailing her head off; a sharp pitch that made Bryce’s eardrums hurt. Bryce turned on her, face contorting into an animal snarl, and roared her into silence. She went so pale, he expected her to fall dead at any second. She stubbornly stayed standing. Damn.
“Talk to me, B,” Aiden said. With the blademan down, he’d calmed some, but though his voice sounded more normal, he’d stay on edge until he got to assess the situation on his own. Aiden hated not knowing. “What’s the status?”
Deep fucking shit. “She’s bleeding out,” Bryce said, and the words felt rough, unfamiliar on his tongue; he wasn’t used to talking so much. But if the female survived past the next five minutes, he had a feeling more talking would be required. Best start getting used to it now.
Bryce slid his arms under her shoulders and knees and picked her up, shocked by how little she weighed. Her head lolled back, blood dripping in a steady rhythm. Without another word, he took off toward the mule. All that bloody commotion would bring the converts running back, and he didn’t feel like mowing through them to get out of here.
“Wait!” the blonde woman cried. “You can’t!”
“Oh, God!” the geek whined.
The rifleman started forward with an authoritative, “Stop!” and Bryce turned in time to see Aiden check the man with a solid blow to his chin. It sent the human sprawling, but he was still conscious. The rifleman struggled up onto his elbows and looked him straight in the eye. “Sinna was an accident.”
“Sinna?” Bryce repeated. Was that her name?
The geek came crawling out of the corner, shaking so much he couldn’t stand. “Please,” he said, “Connor was the one who pulled the trigger, and y-you killed him already.” He gagged, but continued. “W-we have a kid here.”
At that, the blonde woman waved frantically to the car, where a defective-looking teenage boy came out, clothes too small on him. He wouldn’t raise his head, and went straight into his mother’s arms to hide there. “Please, you have to help us! Save him, at least,” the blonde woman said fiercely.
Bryce growled. They didn’t have time for this!
“Your call, bro,” Aiden said.
A pathetic ragtag group, not one among them Bryce would waste bullets on. “Let’s go.” He resumed walking, Aiden close behind.
The humans rushed after them. “Wait, you can’t just leave us here!”
“We’re out of bullets, and we have no more food,” the rifleman shouted.
“There are Grays everywhere! If you leave us, we’re dead!”
Aiden looked at the female Bryce carried, getting a much clearer picture of her condition as they climbed the ramp toward light. His eyes sparked dangerously, and he flexed his jaw, a hint of fang peeking out from under his upper lip. “Good,” he growled.
They left the humans behind.
5: Bryce
The rifleman Pretty Boy refused to leave well enou
gh alone. He ran to follow them, his companions closing in after him. As they came up to the mule, Pretty Boy took one look at it and lost his shit. He made an opportunist’s mistake, attacking Aiden from behind, assuming he wouldn’t see it coming. All Bryce heard were rapid impacts of fists on flesh. He let Aiden sort it out, not interested in pissing contests, and carefully laid the female—Sinna—down onto the back bench inside the mule. He checked her pulse again and arranged her body so she wouldn’t roll off, then went back out to snarl at the rest of the opportunists trying to load themselves as cargo.
The blood-soaked geek was climbing into the truck bed, headed toward the big gun. Bryce drew a pistol—he’d left his sniper’s rifle back inside the garage—and pointed it at the human’s head. “Off,” he said. “Now.”
The geek swallowed, adjusted his bent wire frames, looked at the gun, then out to where the converts were. He seemed to realize one loud noise would bring them running. Still, he stubbornly shook his head. “No.”
The blonde woman, meanwhile, had managed to herd her damaged get into the cab with Sinna. Snarling furiously, Bryce reached in from the other side and pulled the boy out by his collar.
“No—No!” The woman clawed for him, but she was too short to reach. By the time she’d run around the front, Bryce had the sniveling brat on the ground, gun to the boy’s temple. He wasn’t deficient—Bryce would have smelled it on him—but his mother’s coddling had rendered him subhuman, with no regard for anything but mommy’s tit. Even now, with a gun barrel pressed to his head, he reached out for her to save him instead of fighting on his own. The whelp was useless; convert fodder. The world wouldn’t miss him.
“Don’t do it!” Pretty Boy called, drawing Bryce’s eye to the scuffle that had somehow ended with Aiden on the ground beneath Pretty Boy, who now pressed a gun to his forehead. What part of “she’s bleeding out” had his brother failed to understand? They didn’t have time for this shit! “Just let him go, nice and easy, or Mr. T gets it.”
“And then what?” Aiden grinned. The idiot was enjoying this. “You’ll die in short order, and the rest of them will follow.”
“Aiden!” Bryce snapped. Move your fucking ass!
Pretty Boy shook his head. “You wouldn’t kill defenseless people.”
Aiden snarled, his face contorting into a mid-shift. “Try me.”
“Oh, God, don’t hurt him!” the blonde woman sobbed. “Pleeease, don’t hurt my boyyyy!”
“Let Matt go,” Pretty Boy ordered. As if he had any bargaining power.
The geek looked outside again. “Guys? The Grays are…um…they’re coming!”
Bryce pointedly raised an eyebrow at Aiden, who rolled his eyes and muttered something about him being a killjoy. He twisted Pretty Boy’s wrist until bones snapped, and in three deft moves, reversed their positions, slamming the rifleman’s head on the ground with enough force to knock him out. That done, he strode around the mule to pull the geek off the truck bed and shove him toward Pretty Boy.
The blonde woman was still screaming her head off. Aiden cuffed her just hard enough to get her attention. “Shut up,” he said. “You want your boy to live?”
She nodded, sobbing hysterically.
“Then you listen and do exactly as I say, ‘cuz I’ll only say it once. You see that girl bleeding out in the truck? You owe her your pathetic lives.”
Bryce put the gun away and half-dragged, half-shoved the whelp back into his mother’s arms before he went outside to check the situation. The horde had split up, and seven were headed back toward the garage to investigate the noise. He whistled to Aiden, motioned for him to hurry the hell up.
Aiden nodded and pointed a finger in the geek’s face. “You stay here and don’t move. And you”—he turned back to the mother and son—“you idiots left guns behind. Go get them. And while you’re down there, get the girl’s blood on you. It’ll cloak you from the Grays for a while. When he wakes up”—he pointed to Pretty Boy—“you will walk—walk, not run—out of here, and head south out of the city. Understand?”
The blonde woman nodded, wide-eyed.
“Then what the fuck are you still doing here? Move!”
They did.
“W-what do we do once we get out of the city?” the geek asked, gaze darting between the mother and the unconscious commando.
“Keep moving south, and don’t stop.” Aiden inspected the truck bed, detached the big gun, and secured it down. Bryce already sat in the cab, checking on the female again, waiting for Aiden to get his ass in gear. If he stalled much longer, Bryce would leave him behind. “Once the scent of her blood wears off,” Aiden said, “you’re on your own. I suggest you find shelter before then.”
“How long?”
Aiden got behind the wheel and raised an eyebrow at the human. “A day, an hour, who knows? Makes life interesting, yeah?”
Flipping them a bird for send-off, Aiden backed the mule out of the garage, directly into the seven converts, who bared their fangs and shrieked something awful. “Remember,” Aiden called to the wide-eyed geek, “walk, don’t run. No matter what.”
With that, they were on their way, as fast as the cluttered, weather-beaten roads would allow. Bryce braced Sinna on the back bench, one hand on her pulse, the other applying pressure to her wound. The bullet hadn’t hit her digestive tract—a small miracle—but it must have hit something important or she would have healed by now.
Aiden glanced back at her, then faced forward. “Are we doing this, or what?”
“Do we have IVs in here?”
“IV—what is this, 2001? You know what to do, B, so just do it.”
Bryce pulled Sinna’s left sleeve up to her elbow and inspected her scar. He’d been right about it being a surgical incision; only a scalpel could have cut so cleanly, rendering the scar almost invisible. He raised her arm, searching for something to indicate a need for such a procedure, but her arm was healthy and whole. The cut had been made for its own sake; she’d been one of the original den spawn. No one else got tested this way. There was no reason for it. Once a child transitioned, their future offspring were no longer born inert, but either fully Wolfen or convert, depending on the parent’s disposition.
Sinna must have been on the cusp of transition to Wolfen; more than halfway there, but not quite all the way. She had the chemical markings of one of their kind, but so far none of their physical ones. Her teeth were human; her body, thin and frail. And she couldn’t heal herself.
Aiden was right. Only one thing would push her transition to completion: introducing full Wolfen blood into her system. Full Wolfen blood could act as a booster shot and teach her body, on a molecular level, how to evolve to become stronger. It would be a simple matter of slicing his finger to allow his blood to drip into her open wound.
But Bryce hesitated. There were some back home who believed doing this bonded the donor and the recipient in some inexplicable way. He knew for a fact it altered the recipient’s scent to be more like the donor’s, thus identifying them as familiar. Couples used it as a crude wedding ritual; among their kind, a scent marker worked much like a wedding band. It was a bold, unmistakable proclamation that the couple belonged to one other and were off limits to anyone else.
The mule bounced over some debris, jarring Sinna out of position, as they headed up an on-ramp for a freeway going south. “B, come on, man.”
Bryce growled, readjusting Sinna. “Just give me a minute.” He checked the wound to see if she’d started healing yet. The bleeding had almost stopped, but in her case, that was a bad thing. She was running out.
Aiden rolled his eyes. “Oh, give me a break,” he moaned. “You don’t really believe that superstitious bullshit, do you? We’re talking a few drops of blood. It’s not going to steal your soul, or make her a zombie, or whatever.”
Glaring at his brother, Bryce pulled a throwing knife out of his boot, but paused with the blade poised over his palm. Doubt.
Aiden swore, swerved the mule to the c
entral divide and stopped. He twisted around to face backward; an awkward position for someone his size. “Fine,” he said, “don’t do it. I will.” And he grabbed for the knife.
Red hazing over his vision, Bryce caught Aiden’s wrist and snapped his fangs in his brother’s face, making him go utterly still.
There was a line between Wolfen and unthinking beast for many males of their kind. Bryce had been pushed over the edge so many times, that line had now blurred into nothing. He was a perpetual ticking time bomb; anything could set him off, and once it did, Bryce no longer distinguished between friend and enemy. He fought and killed anything he perceived to be a threat, until either everyone in the vicinity was dead, or someone knocked him out.
“Pull it back, Bryce.” Aiden deliberately used his name to get through to him as he eased away. “She’s dying,” he enunciated in a soft, low voice. “Listen.”
Bryce did. He could hear her breath catch, her heart stuttering, fighting so hard to pump what precious little blood she still had through her veins. Most humans would’ve had trouble picking up on the sounds, even with a stethoscope pressed to her chest.
“She’s pack now,” Aiden said, “and she needs you to be you.”
The haze slowly cleared, one of Sinna’s heartbeats at a time. Aiden didn’t rush him. If he had, Bryce would have lost control and ripped his brother’s throat out. Not that Aiden would have gone down that easily; as the older sibling, he was the only one strong enough to subdue Bryce when a rage hit, but they might have lost Sinna in the process.
Her heart beat, then paused for so long, Bryce’s eyes went wide, hand squeezing Aiden’s wrist almost to the breaking point.
Aiden didn’t twitch an eyebrow. “The knife.”
Bryce looked at the blade, and it took him a moment to comprehend what it was for, why he’d taken it out to begin with. When he did, he quickly let go of Aiden, sliced open his palm, and pressed his bleeding wound to Sinna’s before his skin could mend itself.
The cut tingled and itched, and it closed moments later. Then they waited.
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