He was getting darker with black hair, and larger all over. His breath was hot and he grunted like a rutting beast. He was turning from a man and into something even the most potent drugs could only hope to replicate with their paranoia or hallucinations.
"Get off her!" yelled Rita, but she only drew the attention of a nearby man—no, another thing from hell, just like Grave had become.
The other man-beast called out to Rita. "Hey, come here!" it said through a mouthful of fangs.
Pinned down by the throat and wish the hulking Grave-wolf on top of her, Melody could only watch from the corner of her vision as her new and vulnerable friend screamed and ran off into the woods, only to be chased by what could best be described as a werewolf. They could be heard all around, coupled with the sounds of forced intercourse and screaming from the hapless women who had only wanted to get on that bus to party. Just like she had.
"Rita!" Melody tried to call out with her tightening vocal cords.
"Shut up," commanded Grave, continuing to force his pulsing cock up into her. He tightened her claws around her throat.
Melody felt she would never breath again, but quickly took in breath as Grave loosened his grip back up. He wasn't trying to kill her, but silence her into obeisance.
She flattened against the grass, attempting to squirm away but failing completely. It was tempting to cry, but that would be giving him even more than he was already taking from her.
Closing her eyes, the vision a baby werewolf rapidly gestating inside her brought up sick, acidic gas from her stomach.
Grave fucked her harder and Melody grew numb, inside and out.
Chapter Four
Melody wanted to cry but she wasn't used to giving up so easy. She no longer had her legs wrapped around this disgusting beast as he had his way with her. The heels of her uncomfortable-to-the-point-of-hurting, but so damn cute, shoes dug into the clotted dirt. She tried to push herself back and away but her neck was pinned by Grave's monster hand.
He grunted like a dog each time he pushed himself onto her. The sadistic expression made his beastly face even scarier. Thick hair covered it and masked most signs of humanity. He frothed at the mouth like a rabid animal, like a rabid dog. The eyes were eager beyond looking human, full of one intention only, to finish the job, to come inside her.
A low sound was felt, not heard, barely perceived. Until it grew loader. It was like the roaring hogs of an invading army of bikers, although there was nothing strictly mechanical about it. It was an animal, it had to be.
Grave stopped in mid thrust. Melody was almost sure she felt his dick twinge and shrink noticeably inside her.
"What was that?" barked out one of the nearby werewolves. Melody couldn't see him, or any of them. Most of the other sickening action was taking place away from her.
"Just some stupid animal," said another werewolf.
"No," said Grave. He looked around madly, trying to find the source of that sound.
Melody knew she might not get another chance to escape, but was still pinned. She needed a weapon, something sharp, recalled the way she'd at first had trouble walking on those overly tall pumps of hers. She wrenched her right leg around. It hurt, but she was able to slip off the shoe.
Drawing in what could have very well been her last breath, she turned the shoe around in her fingers so that heel was between them like a bizarre dagger. The thought of what repercussions might result from her next move made her whimper. It was now or never, as Grave turned his head back to look at her.
She exhaled violently. Drove her weapon up at Grave's face, closing her eyes and wincing as the heel plunged into his eyeball.
The hideous face grimaced in pain. His other eye--wide from shock-- looked like a miniature of the moon above, which reflected light down around the expanding pupil. The creature raised its unnatural snout high and let out a howl that shredded Melody's nerves to ribbons.
Grave's whole body shook and pulsating veins that stuck out around its thick muscles, pumped blood ferociously. He had let go of her, clutching at his face around the injured eye. Dark blood and clear liquid slicked down the shoe as it wobbled with the werewolf's movement.
The phantom sensation of forcing the heel of her shoe into Grave's eyeball was too real, and made Melody's stomach churn. But she forced the urge to vomit away, taking her chance to escape. She pushed her legs out and slid out from under the assailant, scrambling so hard that her other shoe came off in the dirt. That was fine. It would have only stopped her from doing what she needed to next.
Run. Almost out from under him, Melody made the mistake of looking into Grave's remaining eye. Such hatred had never seemed possible to her up until that moment. It was a mistake to look up, because it made her panic and push back on the long grass too hard. She slipped.
Grave thankfully did not grab her. However, he raised a hand--a claw--filled with lethal nails.
Melody tried to roll to the side, sure she was dead. The maneuver failed miserably. Her punishment for such a lack of agility was Grave's claw coming down, hard, into the flesh across her chest. The whole area around her left breast and central chest was engulfed in pain and she screamed.
Grave ripped again at her but this time he only caught her shredded top as it flapped with the night air and Melody's movement. He seemed to be largely distracted by the shoe, because he stopped trying to kill her long enough to pull the thing out of the cavity of gore in his head, where his eye used to be.
Seeing her chance to get away, Melody pushed back farther and was out of his reach at last!
Almost ...
But he grabbed her ankle and wrapped his fingers around it. They were long enough that his sharp claws overlapped and narrowly missed her thin ankle. His hand was hot and seemed to pulsate. He was still shaking all over with rage and possibly the onset of shock.
One by one, barks and howls rose up from the nearby werewolves around them, as they realized what had been making the low growling sound that approached.
A massive bear, that was the best way to describe it, fast and blurred by the night's haze, had crossed the shadowed tree line.
"NO!" screamed Grave. He released his hold of Melody's ankle just as the bear-thing collided with him in a horrid fury of fangs, claws, and thick fur. They sheared devastating blows just feet away.
But Melody didn't wait to watch, as time was far too short for her, with her wound making her feel faint already. The pain was searing. Something was going wrong with her body and for the first time in her life—she was fearful that she might die.
She headed directly into the trees where the bear had come from. It was hard to run with no shoes, and she could feel the blood flowing out of her body far too quickly. Melody needed to hold up against a tree, just for a moment, just a second, just to catch her breath and then get away. Away to the road, and someone was sure to find her and rescue her ...
Another deep roar came from the fire lit clearing. Melody peered through the trees, holding herself up again one of them and trying to find the strength to keep fleeing.
That horrific bear-thing was doing the roaring, followed by the yelps and howls of the werewolves it was attacking. It was rampaging directly through the open space. They circled around the bear, and it took them on one, two, or even three at a time. Many were unwilling to go near it.
They're afraid of that thing, thought Melody as she looked on in amazement. It was awe-inspiring how huge this new beast was. It honestly was like a bear but so much bigger, and sometimes it got up on two legs to run for a bit as a man would, seemingly without any trouble doing so. The bear thing tore into one wolf, and the rest circled and tried to find an opening to take it down. They might have been more of a match for it if they hadn't been taken by surprise in mid-coitus. And if they weren't so very afraid.
Women cowered near the turmoil, scrambling out of the way when fighting beasts got too close. Some of them had run off and been chased by werewolves. The bear did not harm any of the women.
It was clear that the thing was intent on stopping what these werewolves were up to.
Finally, Grave, their wounded and humiliated leader, called out at the others and motioned to the bus. Melody could not hear anything they were saying, but they began to cajole and even drag their female victims away from the clearing. "Get on the bus!" barked the one-eyed leader just before he ducked onto the vehicle with his tail between his legs.
The werewolves who straggled, stuck in combat with the bear, tried to get around the behemoth and to the bus. One of them cut around it through the trees, and the bear vanished as well after it. This unfortunately gave the others free reign to move to their bus.
Melody lost sight of the bear and imagined the werewolves finding her and dragging her onto that bus. She pushed herself off the tree she'd been leaning against, and got to a half-speed jog, despite how faint she felt. The pain was getting worse as well.
There were still hellish sounds come from behind her, many from tormented women. But Melody tried to focus on moving forward away from them.
Before long, the woods seemed to grow quiet. There were more trees now, and the ground was thicker with grass and moss. It was darker too, as the moon couldn't pierce through the dense treetops.
The air seemed lighter too, and Melody's found her head growing light with it. She kept moving through the still night.
The small woodland animals and insects carried on with their business, altogether making a humming chorus that soothed Melody's nerves. Her adrenaline must have made her injury feel better, or maybe it wasn't so bad after all. It was difficult to inspect in the dark.
Either way, she was unable to make herself move any more. So, she sat herself up against a mossy log where it seemed she would be reasonably hidden from anyone, anything, that did come looking for her.
She closed her eyes and hoped that this would not be the last time she fell asleep.
Chapter Five
Hallard didn't pay much attention to the smell of all that blood and death, until the rage subsided. He'd changed back into human form shortly after the bus had left and he'd dispatched of those werewolves left behind by their callous fellows.
Now a man again, he felt a terrible shame for what these other shifters had done. Those poor women, girls really some of them. Such a horrible scenario had taken place so close to his home. He wondered if there were any good shifters out there at all.
The scent had brought him out there at first. He couldn't get back to sleep after being woken by that vivid dream. So, he walked around to try and pick that scent back up and see if it was real. He figured there was a slim chance that his mind wasn't just playing him for a pathetic, lonely fool.
As soon as he'd heard the women calling out in despair, and heard those filthy werewolves forcing themselves upon them—he shifted into bear form and went berserk. He did not regret it one bit, but he had lost sight of her during his rage.
Approaching the clearing with the big fire, Hallard saw the monstrous, black werewolf on top of her—the woman from his dream, he was sure of it. The idea still seemed silly and maybe it was just his waking mind trying to make sense of his subconscious desires, but he felt a connection with her the moment he saw her underneath that despicable werewolf.
By the time Hallard had fought them off, taking many down, and the rest had fled on their bus, the woman from his dreams was nowhere in sight. It was hard to track her with all that blood and gore, not to mention the sexual fluids. She very well might have been taken back onto the bus.
He even found a mashed eyeball wrapped around the slender heel of a woman's shoe. Thankfully, it seemed to belong to a werewolves. It made him curl his lips back in disgust. Yes, he'd just ripped the guts and flesh out of some nightmarish monsters, but he still considered himself human. He wiped the remains of the eye on the grassy ground and sniffed the shoe.
Hallard was still naked, and his erection stuck straight up as soon as that scent hit him. It's her, he though. It was the breathtaking woman from his dream, the one whose scent had somehow woken him and drawn him in from so far away. He didn't actually buy into such fantasy, but it was difficult to deny what had happened.
With his human sensibilities now in full hold, apart from the animal lust never truly left him, Hallard focused on tracking her scent. He went over the tracks that lead to where the bus door had been, but decided that she had not gotten back on.
So, she was still there somewhere--had to be. Maybe not alive anymore--don't think such a thing. Walking around the edge of the clearing, he almost stepped on the werewolf that had tried to circle around him through the woods, to get back to the bus. In total, he counted five werewolves who had met their matches that night. Astoundingly but happily, there were zero dead women among them on the cold ground.
It didn't take much longer to find her. She had gotten quite far into the dark woods. The poor thing was unconscious with her head resting against a mossy log. And in terrible condition. It almost wrenched his heart out at first to see how she'd been torn by the claw of that infernal werewolf. He imagined her plunging her high heel into its eye. That would explain why she'd been so viciously attacked. It was a miracle that she was still in one piece.
Hallard did his best to stop the sleeping beauty's bleeding. The flow of blood had almost stemmed itself and that was nothing short of another miracle all over again.
"Too many damned miracles for me," he mumbled. Speaking made him realize that his teeth were still stuck with the bits of raw meat and fur he'd taken out of those werewolves. She wouldn't seeing Hallard like that when she woke up—if she woke.
For the first time, the reality of the situation hit him. There was no way to get her to a hospital or doctor. Hallard didn't have a car parked out back behind his cave and carrying her very far at all was unwise. He looked at her and thought for a moment. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
Hallard shut in eyes and braced himself against the unwitting power of her scent. She was wearing some artificial smelling perfume, but it didn't cover her primal body odor. He wished that he could rip out his sense of smell, just long enough to get his head together and think this through without his emotions, and urges, controlling him.
He couldn't bring the woman back to his home, his cave. It didn't matter how helpless she was. Or that she would probably die there without someone to take her in or at least watch over her while she convalesced. She might die.
Hallard had never figured himself as a soft touch, but he'd also never come across someone who he so strongly wanted before, or someone who needed him like this.
Evolution--whatever bastardized version of it had spawned shape shifters like himself and those werewolves--told him that if he knew what was best for his genes, he'd mate with this woman. Biology was grabbing him by the ears and slapping him in the face, bellowing with hot breath and flicking moisture: this is the one, you moron.
He'd been drawn from his slumber by her before he'd know she was real. That had to mean something special was going on in his brain, even though he didn't believe that dreams had any meaning. Hallard knew better than most that the fear of rejection, like the way he'd been treated by 'civilized' society since he was born, was a powerful thing. Still, the fact that he was even considering not taking her in was deeply shameful.
Sure there was no one else out there who might follow him, Hallard very carefully scooped the fallen woman up and carried her to his cave, one cautious step after another.
"It looks like I've got a house guest," he said. Talking to himself was just one symptom from being alone so much, for so long.
Hallard laid the unconscious beauty on his bed. There wasn't anywhere more suitable, and he didn't mind the idea of having a woman where he slept. Then, he went to make sure that his tracks were covered, and to bury the slain werewolves. The last thing he wanted was every hunter and conspiracy theorist in the country coming down right around where he lived. He was sure the werewolves themselves would be out for revenge soon
enough, once they'd had time to lick their wounds and figure out what in the hell had really happened out in the woods.
When Hallard got back to his cave, the woman was starting to stir. He looked down at what she would see if she did wake up: a naked man who was covered in blood. He rushed to rinse himself off at his water basin and throw on some shorts.
She opened her eyes a little, slowly at first. Then, she sprung them wide open and said, "Where am I?"
Glad he was looking more human now, Hallard replied, "You're safe."
Chapter Six
"Safe from who?" Melody asked, unsure about where she was and what had happened to get her there. She wasn't on the ground any more. Was she in a bed? Could it have been some messed up dream? Yeah, a fever dream maybe, from her injury—from that thing. She was suddenly aware of the shadowy figure lurking in the room near the bed.
"I have a gun right here. This is the United-fucking-States. You don't I do? Try me!" Sounding scary was hard and it made her cough something up that tasted like rusty snot, which she spat over the edge of the bed. Yeah, I'm a fucking hard ass, man. Ironic, she'd never felt so helpless.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said the shadow, a male voice.
"That's not a cliché," she said. "Don't touch me. I'll shoot you right in the head. Right in your ... cock!" Melody held up her hands and tried to make them look like the gun that didn't exist. It was dark enough that he might believe her and get the hell out of there.
He didn't move though.
"Hey! Get out of my room!"
"You're in my bed," he said. "This is my home. I found you in the woods. Don't you remember what happened out there? Maybe you're hurt worse than I thought ..."
"Huh? Oh, shit," said Melody as she remembered being out in the woods at some party, and a bus. She went to get up and run, but her body hurt too much. The effort of even trying forced her to sagged back down on her elbow.
Shifting Solitude (Outlaws, Fangs and Claws Book 1) Page 3