The Better to Bite(74)

But, I did have my own skills.

Lost. The knife. Valerie had dropped it. It was—

I jumped forward, scrambled five feet to the left and picked up the knife. My blood was still on the blade.

Rafe was changing, shifting as fast as he could as he fought Valerie.

Brent groaned. Still alive. I managed to get to his side. He was back to being a boy, not a beast. Blood had darkened his skin, but I couldn’t see any wounds. Those wolves, they could heal so fast.

“S-sorry, Anna.” He shook his head. “Didn’t think she was…so far gone.”

I slid my shoulders under his arm and helped him to stand. Rafe and Valerie had both shifted fully, and they were a tangle of dark fur, claws, and rage.

The fight was vicious as growls filled the air. They bit. They clawed. Blood flowed.

“You have to…get out of here,” Brent told me. “Leave me. Go find…your dad.”

But I shook my head. “I can’t—”

Just then, one of the wolves sank its teeth into the other’s throat.

“Rafe!” I screamed because I didn’t know which wolf was—

The wolf yanked its teeth back and turned toward me. The yellow eyes locked on me, and the rage in that burning stare seemed to dim as the beast stared at me.

I looked deep into those eyes, falling into the wildness, falling into…

Rafe.

Too late, I realized the wolf beneath him was attacking. With a swipe of her claws, Valerie went right for Rafe’s unprotected throat.

“No!”

I yanked away from Brent. He swore behind me, and I heard him hit the ground. The wolves were rolling, twisting, and too much blood was flowing.

A tangle of black fur. Fangs. Fury.

Don’t go into the woods.

Blood and death.

Nightmares.

Reality.

I lifted the knife. Only one chance, only one.

But I knew my wolf. I knew. The same way I could never get lost. I knew my wolf. Something clicked in me.

I shoved the knife deep into Valerie’s back. The wolf’s body stiffened and a long, mournful howl broke from her throat. Then she shuddered, and her body slumped to the side, falling onto the ground.

Rafe. The wolf stared at me, body quivering with rage and bloodlust. But he didn’t attack. He came closer to me, and he used his body to push me away from Valerie.

She was shifting, the fur melting from her body. Not a terrible monster anymore. Just a girl, one with a knife in her back and with a broken body that lay sprawled on the ground.

I hadn’t been in time to save Valerie.

But maybe that was the point.

Maybe.

Rafe began to change. Slower, harder than before. The sound of his bones reshaping should have horrified me.

But I was far past horror.

I barely even noticed his nudity. His arms came around me. I knew he was still hurt. I could see the claw marks on his throat, but he only seemed worried about me.

Not such a big, bad wolf—at least, he didn’t seem that way to me.

He picked me up and carried me away from Valerie, and I realized that I’d just been staring down at her body. She wasn’t moving.

I’d killed her.

I’d thought it would be harder to kill someone like her.

“Val…” Brent’s broken voice. He dropped to his knees before her. She lay face down on the ground, her long mane of hair covering her face. “Val, you should have come to me, you should have—”

And she spun over in an instant.

So not dead.

She was just like one of those movie monsters that wouldn’t stay down.

“Why?” Valerie snarled and her claws were still out. She wrapped those claws around Brent’s throat, and literally threw him into the air.

Oh, crap.

“I should have told you my plan?” She yelled after him. “So you could stop me? So you could try to protect her?”

She smiled then, and the sight almost stopped my heart. A smile shouldn’t hold such evil.

“It’s the blood, you know.” Now she said this in her chirpy VIP cheerleader voice. Not the psycho wolf voice that she could use. Her hand reached behind her, and she yanked the knife from her back. “I’ve learned that human blood makes our kind much, much stronger.”

Dad, where are you? The cry was only in my mind, but the answer came to me immediately as I pictured him running through the woods, with wolves at his side.

He’s coming to find me.

“Valerie, this isn’t you.” Rafe was trying to be calm. I didn’t think calm was going to work so well with the psycho who was apparently flying high on human blood. “You aren’t a killer,” he said.

She blinked at that and looked rather confused. “Of course, I am. Just like you are—just like Brent is. I saw you, you know…”

She walked toward us. Rafe’s arms tightened around me.