Page 34

So much weight crushed me that I struggled to move, even to breathe.

Above me, Duncan groaned, his body pressed atop mine, his arms covering my head.

To the sides, nothing but jagged rock poked into my flanks.

The air still smelled sweet and foul, the taint of poison coating my mouth along with the dust from the fallen rubble.

As all the rock settled, it grew silent. The tinks of those strange metal constructs had faded. I hoped they had been destroyed by this rockfall.

Duncan groaned again and shifted, trying to push away from me, to shove the rock off us. But his muscles shook and lacked the strength for the effort. Too much weight smothered us.

I was able to turn my head enough to lick his jaw, to let him know that I appreciated the effort.

“Oh, Luna,” he rasped. “I meant for you to get away. I was going to stay behind and make sure the bugs didn’t kill you. I didn’t mean—” Coughs broke up his words. “I didn’t mean for us both to be trapped.”

I tried to shift, thinking I might have the strength to move the rocks, but that poison had sapped me of strength as well. More, it threatened to stop my heart. In the stillness under the rock pile, I could feel its beats, rapid and strained.

Somewhere in the distance, beyond the remaining walls of this structure, a faint rumble reached my ears. The noise from a human vehicle?

Duncan must have heard it because he growled. “I have one more grenade. If that’s Abrams or Radomir… maybe I can take them down with us. I’d rather you survive though. Damn it, Luna.” He snarled and heaved again, pouring the last of his energy into the effort.

A few clunks sounded. Rocks shifting and falling off our pile? I also tried to thrust upward.

As we combined forces, straining together, magic flared, startling a yip from me. It had been pitch dark under the rockfall, but a glow came from somewhere. Duncan’s chest. The medallion he wore.

It emanated powerful werewolf magic, and I remembered him using it in our last battle. Could it help us again now? Maybe it could fling the rocks aside.

The light and magic from the medallion flowed into Duncan. Some of it crept into me as well, and I felt it zinging through my veins. It rejuvenated me, and my paws tingled, almost hurting, as if they were waking up after falling asleep under my weight.

Duncan’s aura rippled. Was he shifting? When he’d said he couldn’t? The magic of the medallion had to be rejuvenating him too, giving him strength.

Something clunked softly onto the rubble next to me. One of the oblong objects? He’d released it. Alarm blasted through me. Would it cause another explosion?

No hint of tension tightened Duncan’s body.

Instead, his power fluctuated, and he shifted, turning not into a wolf but the bipedfuris, his torso and limbs growing thick and strong with layers of muscle.

This time, when he flexed and heaved, rocks went flying, clattering against whatever walls remained around us.

A hint of fresh air reached my nostrils. I gulped it in eagerly and also pushed, the weight lessening, thanks to Duncan’s efforts.

Rocks shifted away from me, and I sprang out of the rubble pile. I landed on all fours in a hallway, the floor cracked and buckled. The bipedfuris also sloughed off rubble and leaped out of the pile.

The explosive hadn’t detonated. He must simply have let go of it so that he could shift without losing it.

A clattering came from one end of the hallway, bars across a doorway rising. Numerous men stood on the other side, all pointing rifles in my direction.

Duncan grasped the oblong object. Claws scraping at it, he pulled a slender stick from it. As the men at the end of the hallway stepped into the building, rifles raised as they squinted into the gloom, he hurled the object toward them.

It clattered and bounced off the wall and floor, then skidded in their direction. They cursed and ran outside.

Duncan patted my back, then led me in the opposite direction, toward another door. Another way out, I hoped.

The poison lingered in my body, making my limbs leaden, but I kept pace with Duncan, even outpacing him, four legs always faster than two.

One of the mechanical bugs blocked the way. Alone, it did little to intimidate. I sprang upon it and bit down, accepting a jolt of electricity to my jaws, and flung it away. It crashed into a wall and did not pursue us.

We rushed into a cavernous room as an explosion ripped behind us. Someone cried out, but I believed the men had backed away soon enough to avoid being blown up. Too bad. They had been sent by our enemies, I had no doubt.

The bipedfuris raced toward a metal door, but bars had descended in front of it and remained down. He grasped them and attempted to break them. Though his muscles strained with great power, he hadn’t yet regained all of his strength. He snarled and heaved, but the bars remained in place.

Another wall held giant doors meant for human vehicles. Though such things mattered little to a wolf, I’d seen similar doors numerous times. I remembered that buttons could move them. Was one such button mounted on the wall by the door we’d just exited?

As I contemplated the spot, gunshots rang out from the far end of the hallway. Whatever damage the explosion had caused hadn’t been enough to stop those men, and they were charging into the building with their firearms.

I barked to alert Duncan to the button. With hands closer to what humans had than my paws, he could more easily press it. But his back was to me as he continued to try to rip away those bars.

Men ran down the hall, someone yelling, “Are you sure it’s safe?”

I jumped up, attempting to press the button with my nose. It took three tries, my leaden muscles struggling to lift me, but the rumble of a motor finally sounded.

As one of the giant doors rolled up, Duncan whirled away from the bars. Together, we ran for the exit, my lungs gratefully sucking in fresh air.

The ground and walls shuddered, however, as if the opening of the door had removed a support that the damaged building needed. Or maybe the operation of the motor had shaken something loose.

I did not care why it happened, knowing only that, as we sprinted outside, a beam and wall fell behind us. Men cursed as pieces of the structure collapsed on top of them.

There were more men in the walled yard outside. Duncan ran straight toward them, springing upon them before they could shoot.

The gate we’d climbed earlier stood open. A familiar armored vehicle idled out there, an older man in a suit standing beside it. He was pointing not at us but at Duncan’s rolling den. Its doors were all open, bulky men tearing out equipment as they searched for who knew what.

Realizing the older man in charge was one of our key enemies, I ran toward him.

Duncan must have also spotted him—or maybe the defiling of his rolling den—because he roared with indignation. He also raced toward the gate.

The older man—Radomir was his name, I remembered—heard that roar and whirled toward us. He withdrew a handgun from a pocket. Duncan rushed not toward him but toward the van, springing upon those tearing its innards out.

More focused on my enemy—the most important enemy—I sprang over the hood of the armored vehicle. Seeing my snarling visage and my deadly fangs must have worried the man because he fumbled the handgun. Instead of firing, he ducked.

I managed to clip him as I sailed over, biting for his head. All I got was the tip of his ear, but blood spattered, and he screamed.

My momentum carried me several feet past him.

When I landed, I whirled, intending to spring.

He flung himself into the driver’s seat of the vehicle.

Though I didn’t hesitate to leap, his fear made him fast, and he slammed the door shut before I reached him.

Instead, I hit the hard metal side of the vehicle, bounced off, and rolled away.

Tires crunched on gravel as the engine roared.

I jumped to my paws. The vehicle turned toward me, and I crouched to spring away.

A great furred-and-fanged being leaped into view, landing on the roof of the vehicle. The bipedfuris. Men lay dead around the van, weapons scattered and useless, blood seeping into the gravel.

In the vehicle, Radomir accelerated.

I skittered to the side, evading it and ducking between two trees for cover.

Radomir glared out the window at me, and I knew he’d wanted to crush me, to roll over my body and kill me.

I snarled, but he didn’t see it. Right atop him, crouched on the roof, Duncan raked his claws into the frame of the armored vehicle.

Radomir sped up, no doubt hoping a tree branch would knock him off, as it had once before.

Worried the old man would prove wily and get the best of even a powerful bipedfuris, I rushed down the road after them. I leaped and landed atop the vehicle, my claws scrabbling for purchase on the slick roof.

With his human-like hands and fingers, the bipedfuris had an easier time remaining secure on the moving vehicle. As Radomir drove, Duncan kept smashing and clawing the frame, trying to find a weakness in its armor. The windshield cracked under his assault.

“I thought that was bulletproof!” someone inside yelled.

“It’s not wolf -proof.”

“Go faster!”

Radomir turned the vehicle left and right, its movements jerky. He was trying to fling us off.

A window on the side opposite Radomir must have rolled down because a younger man rose into view. Half hanging out the side of the vehicle, he one-handedly lifted a rifle above the roof. He glanced at me but pointed it at Duncan.

Focused on Radomir, roaring and trying to reach him, Duncan didn’t seem to see the new threat.

Though my paws slipped on the metal, the perch made even more precarious by the wild driving, I lunged toward the gunman.

Just before he fired, I knocked my snout into the rifle.

The barrel jerked upward, and the bullet sped into the night.

It left a silver blaze, a reminder that the magical ammunition could harm or kill a werewolf.

Yelling, the man tried to club me with the rifle.

Despite my dubious perch, I managed to catch it out of the air, wrapping my jaws around it.

I tore it from the man’s grip and flung it into the trees, then I bit his arm and pulled.

He screamed and tried to yank away, but I had the strength to sink low and keep my fangs wrapped around his limb.

I wouldn’t release him so that he could draw out another weapon with which to attack us.

A wind swept across the roof, startling me. The trees to the sides had disappeared, and the vehicle was driving onto a narrow road that followed a cliff, a stream visible far below.

The man I gripped pushed farther out of his seat so that he could bring his other arm out.

He attempted to punch me, his face contorted in pain from my bite.

His awkward position made his blow ineffective, and I not only sank my fangs in deeper but pulled.

Fear flashed in his eyes as I yanked him through the window.

He tumbled out, landing on the road, one of the tires almost rolling over him. A great shattering of glass sounded.

I looked in time to see the bipedfuris reach through a gaping hole in the windshield and rip out… a piece of the vehicle. A circle attached to a shaft with broken wires dangling from it. He pitched it into the ravine as the driver—Radomir—screamed.

There was a bend in the road ahead. If the vehicle didn’t turn to follow it, we would smash into the rock wall.

I barked a warning and leaped off the roof, assuming Duncan would do the same. But he reached through the windshield. Trying to pull out Radomir?

I barked another warning. Duncan glanced around and saw the danger. He crouched to spring off the roof of the vehicle before impact, but something long and metal thrust through the broken windshield. It startled him and must have hurt because his face contorted with pain.

He kicked at the object that had attacked him, a bladed weapon Radomir had grabbed, but the vehicle hit the rock wall, and Duncan lost his balance. After smashing into the cliff, it bounced toward the ravine and over the edge. Duncan twisted and jumped as it fell, but he couldn’t reach safety.

Horrified, I stared as the vehicle and Duncan disappeared from my view. Fear gripped me, and I couldn’t move for several seconds. Not until a thunderous crash sounded far below. The vehicle landing.

Dread walked with me as I padded to the edge of the cliff and peered over.

The armored vehicle had stood up to bipedfuris claws, but even it hadn’t been able to endure the fall. It lay smashed at the bottom, Radomir thrown out, the lower half of his mangled body sprawled in the stream.

And Duncan?

He lay on the far side of the waterway, not moving.