nearly hidden in the shadow, a huge form took shape. Bigger than anything he could have imagined, the giant specter loomed over the surrounding brush like the main character in a horror movie.
On that fateful night, the thing had moved so fast, Gavin hadn’t seen what was coming. But he saw something of its outline now and his inner alarms went off like a string of firecrackers.
This was no mere man-wolf combination. Nor, as he’d guessed, was it anything remotely like him, at all.
Its massive shape left little for Gavin to appeal to, speak to, reason with. Thoughts of getting close to it with any kind of hand-held weapon were absurd. Killing it with a spray of bullets seemed equally as unlikely. He hadn’t really expected this abomination to allow him another close-up this soon—he had meant to chase it away from the cabin. Hell, seeing it now, he wanted to run the other way.
No doubt this monster would be faster.
“So here we are,” he made himself say to ease a small portion of the fear knotting up his insides. “Should I call you family?”
There couldn’t be more than one of these beasts, he hoped, because where’d be the justice in that?
“It had to be you who did this to me. Can you recognize another freak?”
His nemesis didn’t move, making this potentially deadly scenario all the spookier.
“What are we to do now, since I can’t let you go around killing and maiming people?” he asked, having to talk though this creature could strike at any moment. Talking seemed necessary. He felt like shouting. One more night, and he would have been stronger, at least. He would have had claws and speed and double the muscle. Though his humanness danced on a thin thread of control tonight, there was no full moon to help him.
“I was supposed to protect those people who died. That’s my job. Now what? You do whatever the hell you like?” he said. Then he paused to regain the strength in his voice. “If not exactly like you, I’m no longer like them, either. Not like those people.”
Like the aftershocks of an earthquake, a series of low growls shook the ground beneath him. Darkness wavered. Leaves rustled. This beast’s rumble was terrible, threatening, ominous, but the monster stayed in the shadows.
When Gavin let loose a responding growl, the creature stepped forward on legs the size of a grizzly’s. Transfixed, unable to get a handle on the creature’s exact size and girth, and fairly sure he didn’t want to, Gavin jumped back. This was a damned nightmare.
“Son of a...”
Gavin tried to ignore the tingling in his hands. Angling his head, he heard a crack of bone on bone. Licks of white-hot fire made every joint ache as a wave of lightheadedness washed over him, twisting his stomach into fits. He knew this feeling, recognized these sensations, and they came as a shock.
The beast in front of him was able to call forth Gavin’s beast, and maybe even set it free early. Was that because what stood across from him had created him? Blood calling to blood?
Through a slowly revolving whirl of turmoil, Gavin heard his own growl of angry protest. “I’m not like you!”
And though it seemed impossible for anything else to get through the pain and shock of what he was experiencing, something else nipped at his attention, dragging him away from the outrageous situation at hand. Too riled up to put a name to that distraction, and feeling too ill to respond to it, Gavin kept his focus riveted to the beast less than ten feet away from him. He was close enough to hear it breathing. He heard its giant canines snapping, and the memory of teeth like that tearing into him, ripping the flesh from his bones, made his stomach turn over.
This was no werewolf. This truly was a demon. And Gavin’s mind warned that he might not be able to get out of this in one piece. Not this time.
When the creature’s growls suddenly ceased, the world went deathly quiet with a silence that seemed surreal. Though Gavin’s muscles ached to transform and his fingers stung with the threat of popping claws, the grip this specter had on him loosened. It, too, had noticed the distraction, and turned its mind elsewhere.
The enormous werewolf, which could have squashed him like a bug, advanced no farther. After waiting out several hundred of Gavin’s thunderous heartbeats, it turned away from him. Uttering a low roar of grumbling displeasure, it drifted away as completely and swiftly as if it had merely melted into the night.
Sounds from behind made Gavin spin around, afraid the creature had reappeared at his back. Lunging forward, taking the advantage, he rushed toward the sound, striking an object hard, taking it to the ground.
His breath whooshed out. His muscles screamed for the strength necessary to do some damage to the thing that had damaged him so very badly.
“This ends here, one way or the other!”
The moment he said those words, Gavin realized it wasn’t the beast he’d tackled. The body beneath him was small, fragile, and it squirmed beneath his weight, smelling like soap and the soft fabrics covering it.
Closing his eyes, Gavin fought back an oath. This wasn’t the monster. Not even close.
When he reopened his eyes, he found a familiar face looking back. A small white circle of features that were pale enough in the moonlight to be almost transparent.
“What the hell?” was all he managed to say between deep, rasping breaths of mortified relief.
“You can get off me now.”
Breathless from the momentum of the attack, Skylar shook so hard, she stuttered.
Without being able to see Harris’s expression in the dark, she felt every racing beat of his heart through the chest pressed to hers.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Following you.”
“I asked you to stay inside.”
“About that. I seem to be going through a rebellious streak that makes me impervious to reason. I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“Hell, woman, my warning must not have been nearly strong enough to convince you of the danger.”
“I was pretty sure you could handle one lone wolf.”
“Lone wolf? You have no idea...”
Maddeningly, Harris didn’t finish the statement as he fought for his breath.
“I thought you heard me coming,” she said. “You were speaking to me, weren’t you?”
“I was talking to myself.”
“Is that a habit rangers often pick up?”
“Yes.” He took some time to go on. “It’s not safe here. Not safe anywhere near here. It was foolish of you to ignore me.”
“Yes, well, right now the problem is being able to breathe.”
