Christine? You should have run.
The two creatures rolled along the ground, ripping and clawing at each other in a screeching fury of blood and hate. They squealed and yelped and snapped their teeth until one of the beasts, the bigger one, no longer moved.
Christine rose to her hind legs, victorious. Blood dripped from her snout. The other wergs hesitated, unsure of how to attack and not accustomed to another werg fighting back so effectively. The savages’ confusion helped Christine.
She darted toward Aiden, dug her claws into his coat and some of his flesh, and yanked him from the ground. The savages pounced, spit and snot spraying from their snouts.
As Christine dragged him along the weeds and twigs and dirt, he caught a glimpse of his blood-drenched leg and wondered how much blood a person could lose before they reached the point of no return. He concluded he was about there.
Christine yanked at his coat and threw him over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Aiden gripped her fur tightly, at least as tightly as he was able, and watched the wergs giving chase. Christine was fast, faster than the others, and she pulled away.
Stay awake, he told himself as she weaved through the trees. They neared the edge of the forest and she increased the gap between them and their pursuers. She arrived at Aiden’s truck as if she was programmed to go straight for it. She ripped the door open, almost tearing it from its hinges, and dumped him into the driver’s seat. She hopped into the bed.
The savages exploded from the forest.
Aiden turned the key, roaring the engine to life. The road blurred through his impaired vision as though he were under water, but he could see it well enough. When a savage slammed against the tailgate, Christine howled from the truck bed.
With all of his strength, Aiden pulled the gear-shifter into drive and pressed the gas pedal. Instead of watching the road ahead, he watched Christine in the back from the rearview mirror.
Another savage slammed against the rear quarter-panel, causing the back end of the truck to fishtail. Aiden fought the steering wheel with what little strength he had, righting the truck.
Christine crouched. Aiden realized what she was about to do and hollered for her to stop. But she was enraged and she sprang from the bed, slamming against the nearest savage. Aiden let off the gas in hopes of seeing Christine free herself from her fight and race to the truck again. Instead, she tumbled along the road with her foe while the others continued closing in.
The last he saw of Christine through his rearview mirror was her rising from her battle and sprinting into the forest. Some of the savages chased behind her. The other savages continued after him. Without the pressure holding his tourniquet tight, his life slowly flowed from his leg. He couldn’t help her now. He sped up, silently vowing to return for her if he managed to survive.
The truck pulled away from the savages until they eventually gave up their chase. Aiden’s left foot slipped along the floorboard and he glanced down to see a pool of blood. He was too weak to tighten his tourniquet.
The rearview mirror revealed how pale his face had become and he realized that he had minutes left in this world. He wanted to sleep. He shivered until he feared his teeth would shatter. I’m so sorry, Christine.
His stomach turned. He tried to vomit, but dry-heaved instead, a reminder that it had been hours since he had eaten. He could no longer see the road. His hands slipped from the steering wheel. His head bumped against the side window.
I’ll just sleep for a minute, he told himself. And then I’ll be better.
Though he was too tired to open his eyes, he heard the explosion of tearing metal and shattering glass. He felt weightless for an instant until his chest slammed against the steering wheel with a force to break bones. His neck snapped forward and then back again before he collapsed to the floorboard between the seat and the steering wheel.
For the next few minutes as he lay on the floorboard, he heard nothing but silence. And then the driver’s side airbag exploded into the nothingness where he had been sitting before the wreck. Even as his chest ached from the impact, he couldn’t help but chuckle at the faulty airbag’s delay.
He saw a beautiful white flash between his eyes and his brain before darkness overtook him.
Not long now.
A faint voice calling his name broke the silence in the darkness of his mind. The voice was an angel’s; that much he knew.
“Aiden?” the angel said again. “Wake up.”
He thought he was in heaven until the strap around his leg cinched down again.
“It’s me, Christine,” the angel said, sounding as though she were shouting from the end of a tunnel. “Hold on. I’m going to get you help.” He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of her words, but was too weak. She climbed into the truck and pulled him toward the passenger door.
He built enough strength to whisper, “Wait.” He panted between words, struggling to tell her he wasn’t going to make it.
“Don’t say that,” she said.
“I’ve only got ... one ... chance. You have to ... turn me into—”
“No,” she shouted. “I can’t. I will not curse you with what I have.”
He couldn’t form any more words, though he heard her crying.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.
26
A CURSE FOR A LIFE
CHRISTINE stared at the man she felt she had come to know better in the last few hours than any man she had ever met. He slouched half on the seat and half in the pooling blood on the floorboard.
Although she refused to admit it, she knew he was right about not making it—she had seen plenty of people bleed out in her career, and though her tourniquet had stopped the flow again, he had already lost too much. She didn’t need vital signs or blood tests or doctors—she saw the death on his face.
Tears ran down her cheeks, and she wondered if it was love she felt for Aiden Talik. She swiped her hand across her wet cheeks. The rise and fall of his chest slowed from panting breaths to sporadic, dying gasps. He had minutes, maybe only seconds, left to live.
She thought about his last words. She wasn’t ready to let him leave her, not yet, not this way, but she didn’t want to damn him to the fate forced on her either.
After her father went into the service when she was a child and then never returned home, she didn’t believe she could ever trust a man like she trusted Aiden. She couldn’t let him leave like her father had.
She had no reason to believe changing him would save his life, but she didn’t have any other choice either. She stared as he lay helpless and dying, allowing her sadness to change into anger.
When the increasingly familiar crush in her chest took hold, she no longer tried to stop it. She welcomed the pain. Her head ached like a deep migraine. She watched his eyes go black and gritted her teeth at what they had done to him. The nerves throughout her body stung from her scalp to her toes. Her heart raced like she had run a marathon. She couldn’t catch her breath. Every bone and every muscle in her body burned with pain. Her eyes blurred until the color drained from the nighttime world. Her nose and mouth protruded from her face and formed a snout. Her head smashed against the roof of the truck, hunching her over.
She released a howl that would drive any predators, human or otherwise, into retreat. Her thoughts slowed and her mind filled with static. She looked to her dying friend. An incredible urge washed over her and she lunged for his shoulder. His blood was thick and salty and a distant part of her was horrified at how much she enjoyed the taste. She gulped it down with guilty euphoria, even as her brain begged her to pull away. Though she knew she should stop, her thirst was unquenchable. She couldn’t think of anything but food and survival.
Somehow, over the fuzz and confusion in her brain, over the primal, hungry urges, a faint image of Aiden’s smile broke through. Against her every desire, she pulled her teeth from his shoulder and retreated, ashamed, across the seat.
She saw peacefulness in his unconscious state
and tilted her head in wonder. She tried to remember what it was like to be human, but her mind kept returning to her hunger. Straining to recall what happened before her change, she concentrated on—
An explosion of light filled the cab of the truck. She turned toward the driver’s side window in time to see the headlights of a speeding van. She braced with a roar as the coming van slammed against the driver’s door, launching the truck onto the concrete guardrail of the bridge.
Aiden’s limp body was flung from the seat and back onto the floorboards, face-down in the pool of blood. Her head whipped forward and then crashed through the passenger window with the force of a shotgun blast. The truck teetered on the concrete barrier, threatening to dump them into the water reservoir below.
The smashed headlights of the van backed away from the truck. Two men jumped from the cab of the van while a third sprung from the back, all with flashlights and guns aimed. Christine growled at them as they closed in. The truck rocked with each of her movements.
She climbed across the seat closer to the driver’s door, but it was wedged shut from the twisted metal of the wreck. The three men advanced. Christine grunted and slammed her shoulder against the damaged door; the truck teetered toward the water again. Another crash of her shoulder and the door opened a sliver. She slammed against it again and it bent outward enough for her to squeeze through.
The truck jerked and shimmied toward the edge.
She turned for Aiden, but the truck tilted and slid toward the water. She made a last desperate grab for him and caught nothing but air. The truck jolted over the edge. She jumped toward the street as the truck disappeared over the bridge. The men with the guns started laughing. She rushed to the barrier and reached out as if trying to stop the truck from falling, but there was nothing she could do. It was already in the water and sinking fast.
She crouched, preparing to dive from the bridge, but before she could leap into the water, a stinging pain struck her neck. She wobbled away from the barrier, but staggered back toward it, unwilling to let Aiden die. She brushed her hand at her neck, knocking a yellow dart to the street. Another dart punctured her left shoulder and she fell against the concrete. She struggled to her feet again as the world faded around her. With no more strength, she fell to her rear.
One of the men approached and stood over her with a disturbing smile. “Well, that couldn’t have worked out any better,” he said.
His comrades laughed again.
She fought to stay awake long enough so she could make him pay. Her arms weighed more than she could lift. Her head became too heavy to hold up and drooped forward.
“Mr. Henderson has changed his mind,” the man continued. “He has new plans for you.” He said something else, but Christine could no longer understand him.
And then the world went black.
27
A TASTE OF WHAT THEY WANT
CHRISTINE opened her eyes. She lay on a dirt floor inside a fenced-in corral of some type. She sat up and looked around. The corral sat next to what appeared to be a stable, like at her grandpa’s horse ranch in Texas. She was shivering, wearing nothing but a pair of men’s boxer shorts and an oversized T-shirt. She pulled her knees to her chest and scanned the darkness. Other than the dim light flickering above, the corral was pitch black.
Her nostrils burned with the combined stench of an old litter box and death. She leaned forward, but something tight around her neck stopped her with a jolt. A quick feel revealed a metal collar, maybe silver, chaining her to a post that sat against an eight-foot-high wooden wall. Any hopes of turning into the beast and escaping were dashed by the realization of what the collar would do to her windpipe as her neck grew. Or, if the collar were indeed silver, what would happen if it dug into her flesh. There was a chance, she supposed, that the mere act of changing would break the restraints, but that was an unlikely possibility. Ultimately, she decided she couldn’t risk it.
She sat waiting for someone to tell her why she was there or what they were going to do with her, but no one came. The day dragged on, yet her only company was the whines and howls of creatures throughout the stables. By nightfall she wondered if she had been forgotten and left there to die. She shivered so violently that her body was near the point of convulsions. She curled into a ball in the corner as the moon lurched across the sky.
When the sun rose the next morning, the gate to her prison rattled and opened. Two men walked in and set a pail of water and a pail of scrambled eggs at the edge of her reach. They immediately left and locked up behind them without saying a word. Christine devoured the eggs, temporarily quelling her hunger pains.
The smell of dead, rotting animals lingered in the air, and she feared she was there to join them. The next two days began in the same way. She begged the silent guards for answers, but they ignored her.
Constantly, she fought the recurring crush in her chest, knowing if she allowed her anger to take hold or her change to happen, the collar would choke her to death.
On the third night of her imprisonment, the moon was little more than a sliver, and other than a dim bulb flickering above her, the stable was black.
A grunt in the darkness to her left interrupted her thoughts. That grunt was followed by a snort from her right. She backed against the post that secured her, the chain clanging along the ground. Several of the other creatures hidden within the stables whined and grunted and awoke from their slumber. Within a minute of the first grunt, the night air was filled with howls from the darkest recesses, too many to count. How large were these stables? She realized the creatures had caught her scent. With what Aiden had said about female wergs, she knew this many males would be a serious problem if they were released into the corral with her.
Eventually, the howls faded, leaving only the quiet of the night and the excited panting of the males, which seemed immensely worse than their howling. The single bulb hanging above from the rotted wooden post flickered and went out. The clouds drifted in front of the crescent moon and stalled, leaving a muted glow in its place. The lock at her gate rattled and clicked before the gate squeaked open.
Christine held her knees to her chest and closed her eyes in hopes she could trick her mind into believing it wasn’t as dark as it actually was. Her body shivered and her teeth chattered, not as much from the cold as from the terrifying darkness and animal panting she heard all around her.
Somewhere in the distance, a single clanging sound rang out like another metal gate being closed. She swallowed hard at the realization that it could have been a gate opening instead. To her dread, a second clang followed, sounding closer than the first. The surrounding wergs broke into fresh choruses of excited hoots and howls and snorts. She pulled her hands from her eyes and focused on the dark, but couldn’t see anything but black.
The overhead bulb flickered to life with a dull hum, shining a beam onto the dirt and then snuffing out again. The surrounding wergs began thrashing their bodies against what sounded like cages. She prayed they wouldn’t break free.
The light hummed and flickered on.
And then, just to antagonize her, it went off again.
The thrashing wergs silenced at once as if someone had flipped a switch. The only sound from the darkness was a single, obviously unrestrained creature, snorting and sniffing the ground as it crept closer and closer to her gate. And then those snorts ceased as well.
He had found his prey.
She felt alone.
In the dark.
About to be slaughtered.
The light blazed from above again. This time the light was brighter with a louder hum than before, though it may have simply seemed louder in the deafening silence. She expected to see her death-dealer in the light’s cone, but there was nothing except tiny particles of dust floating in the illumination. Her insides gnawed at her stomach. She gripped the chain that held her to the post and stretched it taut between her hands. She may lose the coming battle, but she was determined to choke as much life from thi
s bastard as she could before she went.
She held her breath. The other wergs, once so excited and bloodthirsty, were now as silent as the dead.
She wondered why her captors brought her to such a place only to let one of their creatures murder her. She wanted to cry out, if for no other reason than to hear something, anything, in return.
The silence and emptiness shattered with a roar, and a thick, slobbering beast burst through the cone of light. She recoiled, smacking her head against the wooden wall. The creature stopped with its snarling snout inches from her face. She fumbled and dropped her chain. The hot stink of the beast’s breath blasted against her face in short, rank bursts. She turned her head away. He rose up to his full, intimidating height.
But death didn’t come. The werg backed away, lowered to all fours, and scraped his front claw in the dirt like a bull about to charge. He howled and snapped his teeth in an excited frenzy. She squeezed her eyes closed.
Instead of attacking, she heard the creature creep forward and sniff the air above her head, along her arm and chest, and down to her toes. She froze, too terrified to reach for her chain. His cold nose touched her leg. She cringed. He continued sniffing up her leg and to her hip. With his snout, he forcefully nudged her to her side.
She told herself to be strong and opened her eyes. Her chain from her collar lay next to her cheek, and she curled her fist around it. The beast shoved his snout against her ass like a nosey dog. She pulled the chain close to her chest. Using his snout, he lifted her oversized T-shirt, letting his cold, wet nose brush her bare back. With her free hand, she yanked her shirt down, knocking his snout away. He grunted as if annoyed. She scooted away from him until the chain pulled at her neck. The beast trailed her. When she couldn’t move any farther, he thrust his snout back beneath her shirt.
She pressed her hand against his nose and guided his head away, but he snorted and pressed harder.
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