Broken Heart 09 Only Lycans Need Apply(9)

“Holy shit!” screamed Dove. “Holy fucking shit!”

I shot at him again, but he swooped toward us, a blur of furious motion. I shoved Dove to the side and started shooting randomly. Yeah. That worked out well.

Then I was shoved to the side, and I flew backward, landing next to an outraged Dove. We both watched, openmouthed, as a huge black wolf leapt into the air, howling in triumph.

We looked at each other, and then we both scrambled forward. We stayed on our knees, crouching at the edge of my flimsy cot. The vampire (yes, I said “vampire,” all right?) was moving fast, very fast. Hell, I couldn’t really pinpoint his location, but it was obvious the wolf could. He howled, and then leapt—seemingly at random—landing on the bastard’s chest. The fanged Indiana Jones squirmed on the ground, unable to dislodge the big black-furred brute.

The fight was short and violent, ending when the wolf clamped its jaws onto the vampire’s neck and tore out his throat.

“Oh, crap,” whispered Dove.

We huddled closer together, creating fearful solidarity against our so-called rescuer. Was he merely dealing with the biggest threat in the room before he turned his attention to the shivering girly girls? My philosophy was that the glass was always half foe. I sat up and leveled my gun at the wolf.

Dove clutched the Tikka T3 rifle. She wouldn’t shoot it, even if she’d taken me up on my invitation for lessons. She had a thing about guns—as in, she hated them. But if push came to shove, she could use the rifle to whack the shit out of the wolf. For some reason she had no problem with bludgeoning.

Both of us were on high alert. I couldn’t take my gaze off the dead vampire, and I noticed that Dove was also riveted to the spectacle. Black blood pooled in the sand around the ravaged neck.

It was a gruesome scene that seemed right out of a horror movie. Except horror movies didn’t have smell-o-vision, and dead vampires smelled like feces wrapped in burnt cheese. As in, they smelled like deep-fried death. You know, like corn dogs at the state fair. A vampire showing up in my tent was fantastical enough—not to mention a supersized undead-killing wolf. (Weren’t vampires supposed to take wolf form, or something? I was rusty on preternatural mythology.) But oh, no, my night was about to get weirder. Our furry pal padded to a nearby space and morphed into a man.

It wasn’t like a transformation you might see on a late-night werewolf flick, with snorting and snarling and breaking and sprouting. It was sorta . . . magical, I suppose. His fur rippled into skin, his limbs stretched and plumped into human arms and legs. And long, silky black hair fell over his shoulders. He didn’t seem stressed out or in pain from the experience, but I would think that shifting from one being into another wasn’t exactly a pleasant sensation.

“I’m dreaming, right?” I asked Dove.

“Well, if you are, you have some fucked-up dreams.” Dove blinked, then said, “Whoa.”

“Whoa” was an understatement.

Werewolf man was naked.

Very, very naked.

He walked over to the guy bleeding in my tent and knelt down. He grabbed the guy’s head and twisted. An ugly snap echoed in the tent as he wrenched the head off. The fedora fell off and rolled toward Dove’s cot. The man tossed the head next to its body.

The vampire—body, head, and blood—turned to ash. All that remained were the fedora and the duster.

Dove and I shared a holy-shit-did-that-just-really-happen look.

While my heart tried to claw its way out of my chest, I watched the wolf—er, the man—claim one of my discarded T-shirts lying near the foot locker and rub his face. I realized he was wiping off the vampire’s blood.

“I call the duster,” said Dove in a strangled voice.

“Fuck you,” I said, my voice hoarse with disbelief. “That baby’s mine.”

“Then I want the hat.”

“Whatever, Indiana,” I muttered. Like either of us would even deign to wear the duster or hat. How was one supposed to get vampire ash out of those clothes anyway? I mean . . . OxiClean can do only so much.

“Are you all right?” The naked man walked toward us, then stopped on the other side of the cot, his expression a mask of concern as he studied our faces. He had the most amazing jade green eyes. I didn’t even know eyes could be that color.

He was gorgeous.

I probably should’ve mentioned that before, but I was distracted by all the morphing and the vampire killing. But now that he was less than a foot away, looking at us with a mixture of curiosity and empathy . . . well, I could focus on him.

He was huge, well over six feet tall. And muscled. And beautiful. Blood that streaked him from neck to. . . .