Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“What the hell?” He stares at me. He’s in his forties, unshaven, hefty and checkered. I wrap my arms around myself and think about running, except I know he might be able to help.
“Do you have a, uh, clothes or something?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Hold on.”
His big rig is parked not far away. He goes back to it, grabs a hooded sweatshirt, and brings it back to me. It smells like beer and god knows what else, but it’s big and warm, it falls to mid-thigh, and it is much better than nothing.
“I got to get back to the city,” I tell him.
He’s not asking a lot of questions, and I’m not telling him a lot of information. He’s got the look of a man who thinks something very fucked up is happening right in front of him, and he is not wrong.
“I’ll give you a ride,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, trailing after him. My brain feels addled from the shift and from the cold, and from remembering what I just did to Rex. I’m being hunted, I’m not fully mentally online, and the easiest way to get back to somewhere I feel safe is to get into this truck.
So that’s what I do.
“I’ve just got to get to the city,” I tell him.
He sets off without a word, offers me a strip of jerky. I take it gratefully. There are still good people in the world. People who will help others in need.
I’m not entirely sure how far away the city is. I’m kind of turned around. Once I see even a single building of the place, I’ll be able to orient myself.
We’ve been driving for twenty minutes or so in silence, when I realize I haven’t even offered this guy like anything in return for his help. So rude of me!
“If I can get you to drop me off anywhere in the city, give me your details, I can get you some money for helping me,” I say, looking over at him. He doesn’t look back. His eyes are focused on the road, where they should be.
“That’s alright, darling,” he says, pulling over into a private leafy layaway. “I don’t need anything from you other than what you’ve got on you.”
“But I don’t have anything on me,” I say, confused.
“Exactly,” he leers.
He unsnaps his seatbelt, turns and reaches for me, big, pawing hands with filthy fingernails trying to lift up the hem of the hoodie. I draw back.
“Don’t be shy, honey,” he says. “I’m not asking much from you. Just let me do what I want and it’ll be over soon.”
I reach for the door handle. The locks click. He’s operated them from the driver’s side.
“Now you’re not going anywhere, pretty thing, not until I’m done with you,” he says, leering as his eyes turn black. I see something in him I did not see before. Shifters are not the only ones who have predators lurking inside them, beasts which want nothing more than to claim their prey.
I smell him. All of him. I smell his sweat, his filth. I smell something else, too. Death. I smell all the endings he’s brought to women who disappeared without a trace. I smell traces of their presence here, little whiffs of perfume and desperation. There are so many of them. Too many of them.
He lays his hand on me. It is clammy with excitement. It leaves a sticky, needy residue of powdered sugar, sweat, and road filth on my thigh.
It is the last thing he ever does.
CHAPTER 13
Rex
She’s been gone for almost twelve hours. The bedroom has been utterly destroyed. The mattress and blankets are ripped and torn, stuffing and feathers coat the scene, mixed with shattered glass. I can smell her here, still. I can smell her, and her fear.
I have come back to the place I made the mistake with the idea I might somehow be able to understand what’s happening now, but I don’t get it. We have seen a great many wolves through their transformations, and while they are often messy, and usually clumsy, I have never seen anyone react the way she did. The power, the intensity, the drive. She was not confused for a moment. She did not shift and whine, and when I took my form, she did not lick at my jaws in eager submission. She did not give out signals of softness, or look to me for the lead.
She attacked me, and she ran. She had precisely the same reaction in her wolf shape as she did in her human one, but she was much more able to act on her wild impulses. I was the one who wanted the shift so bad. She wanted to avoid it. She was trying to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen.
Obviously the full weight of our resources has been deployed. A web of surveillance, human and mechanical is covering a three-hundred-mile radius. She will be found. I know it.