Black Wolf's Revenge (7 page)

“I’m calling the pack. Bring her home safely,” she pleaded, removing the traitorous key and shutting the door. The lock clicked. Good little wolf.

He ran after the trail, nose down, through the alleyway that separated the backs of the next row of houses. The breeze held animal but no new exhaust fumes, so they must be waiting for a car to pick them up somewhere. He had to make it to them before their escape vehicle did. The back ends of houses and garages whizzed by him and the smell of oil and gasoline and garbage mixed with everything. Another block more and the trail ended. As he doubled back, a man jumped out from behind a bright blue garbage bin. Two other men, one tall and lanky and one built like a freight train, were huddled in an open garage packed with moving boxes in the back of a house. The thin one held Lana with his hand over her mouth as she kicked and screamed, tears streaming down her face. He let her mouth go and a wail escaped her. The man who’d jumped out at him looked like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world and backed away, but the burly man closest to Wolf gripped a silver knife.

Wolf pulled his lips over gleaming teeth and let his fury fuel a bellow deep in his chest. He’d kill them all and they’d spend their last dying breath full of regret.

Lana looked so scared, and every instinct told him to get the men off her first, but if the man with the knife had his way, he would kill Wolf long before he could do any good for her. Silver flashed as he slashed the knife downward, but Wolf ducked out of the way, drawing him closer. The man rode his forward momentum and came at Wolf again, and this time he connected blade with flesh as Wolf latched onto his arm. Wolf pulled him into his body as the man lodged an ill-placed silver knife in Wolf’s shoulder. As the man toppled forward, off-balance and covering his face, Wolf latched on to his throat and clamped down. He was made to break bones. A second passed and it was enough. If he wasn’t dead now, he would be soon, and Wolf tossed the man’s limp body to the side. The weight of it thudded dully against a wooden fence as Wolf’s gaze drifted to the face of his next target.

Lana’s attacker was hurting her. He was pulling too tightly on her mouth, hurting her neck, and her eyes were large with fear and pain. As Wolf lunged, the man dropped her, and Lana landed on her backside and yelped in pain. That tiny noise was all it took to turn everything red. They’d hurt his little girl and a roaring sound filled his head.

The knife had gone into his shoulder at an odd angle and was still in place, buried almost vertically in the thick muscle there. He paced closer and turned his head far enough to pull the knife blade out and toss it closer to the man, tempting him to pick it up. Wolf could smell his silver-seared flesh but couldn’t feel it. Not yet. All he felt was fury.

The man dove for the knife as Wolf tensed. He dove for the back of the man’s neck that was so neatly presented for him. The man thrashed wildly, but Wolf would die before he let go. He clamped down harder with supernatural jaw strength to match teeth made for tearing and crunching through bone and then pulled back. It wouldn’t be enough, but he needed to get the man’s neck muscles out of the way first.

The man roared as he reached over his head and grabbed Wolf by the scruff of the neck with both hands and threw him into the fence the first man was lying under. Digging his paws in, he jumped up and launched himself at the fleeing man’s back, catching his injured neck in his jaws and snapping his spine.

Before the body had even landed on the unforgiving concrete, Wolf scanned the ally for the other man. Lana sat in the garage crying, her wide gray eyes fixed on him. She had never seen him in his monstrous form and he regretted she’d seen him for the first time like this.

His words sounded garbled coming from Wolf’s throat. “Stay there, Lana.”

He picked up the retreating man’s scent and followed it around a corner, but he couldn’t tear himself away from Lana. He circled back and whined. She was so small. She was hurt and crying and scared and he couldn’t leave her alone in the alley, no matter how important finding the other wolf was. A growl sounded behind him.

He wasn’t able to turn around fast enough before the other wolf was on him. The last man hadn’t run after all. He had Changed. From the weight of the animal as he sunk his fangs into Wolf’s neck, he was large. Wolf instinctively curved his body inward to latch onto the others shifter’s front leg. The bone went
snap.

The wolf yelped and loosened his grip. Wolf used his powerful neck muscles and yanked the other wolf under him by his crippled leg and then he latched on to his muzzle. The bones crunched between his jaws. Wolf was tired of clean deaths. This man had taken Lana, his tiny baby Lana. He held on to the scrabbling wolf until blood rattled in his lungs--until the kidnapper slowly suffocated from his crushed face. He held his mouth and nose closed as he struggled wildly. A whistling sound came from the wolf’s muzzle as the last few molecules of air tried desperately to make it to drowning lungs. He didn’t let go until the animal went slack and its eyes glazed over.

Lana stood frozen against the side of the house. Not the way he had wanted to introduce her to his animal form. His belly brushed the ground as he crawled to her, slowly whining. He licked her face clean of tears when he got close enough.

Three wolves. That was all he had seen and smelled, so she should be safe. He jerked his head in the direction of Morgan’s house. They were two blocks away, at least. His instincts screamed to stay as a wolf to protect her, but it was a long walk for the child. He needed to carry her.

“Stay right here,” he said before he slunk around the corner to push his Change as fast as possible in the open garage. He hated her being out of his sight for even a moment. A stack of boxes leaned crookedly against the left side of the garage, and he scanned them until he found one that sounded promising. It read
winter clothes
. He ripped it open and grabbed a pair of dark gray sweats from the top and pulled them on as quickly as he could.

Darkness was setting in, and he didn’t want them in the back of this alleyway any longer than they needed to be. He dragged the two bodies by the fence into the garage and ran out to grab the other, which had already Changed back to a human corpse. Grey piled him on top of the other two and shut the garage behind him. He noted the house number over the door and ran around the corner. As recognition lit Lana’s face, he picked her up and crushed her to him.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” he murmured as he checked her for injuries. She seemed shaken but wasn’t hurt.

He took off at a brisk walk back to the house, head swiveling and keen wolf eyes scanning for danger. Lana squeezed her arms around his neck and cried. The place he was stabbed in the shoulder had shifted when he Changed and was now in his back, open and bleeding freely. Warmth trickled down his back in a steady stream. The last thing he needed was for someone to see them like this. He jogged, the ill-fitting sweats pulling irritatingly as the too-short legs bunched around his calves.

“Morgan!” he yelled as he reached the back door to the house.

She should have heard him from there. He bolted, a feeling of unease hitting his gut again. The back door was wide open.

“Morgan!” he called again. Even to himself, his voice sounded frantic. Shutting and locking the door behind him. He put Lana in the closet and turned on the light.

“Lana, stay right here. I promise I’ll be right back. Be quiet as a mouse, okay?”

She nodded and the movement loosed a tear that slid down her cheek. Grey shut the door and jerked the handle, forcibly jamming it.

Grey stilled himself and listened. The latch of a car door clicked from somewhere outside. He ran through the house and straight through the open front door. A man was shoving Morgan’s limp body into the trunk of a black Honda Accord. A rental car from the look of the license plate.

He bolted for the man. A flash of fur came from the right and landed on him so hard it knocked the wind out of him. A gray wolf latched on to his arm and shook hard enough to rattle his bones. He let go as Grey tried to right his balance and went for his neck. Desperately, Grey threw his arm up and into the wolf’s throat. He stood, reckless to get to the car as the man shut the trunk. The kidnapper hesitated and shot a glance at the gray-colored wolf.

The wolf leapt for Grey’s shoulder, but Grey caught him by the neck and slammed him to the ground. The wolf scrabbled, viciously raking sharp nails down Grey’s chest and the tender skin on his belly. He took his knee and rotated it over to where the wolf’s body and legs faced away from him as he choked the life out of him. The screech of tires sounded as the car sped away. With an angry jerk, Grey snapped the wolf’s neck and jumped the creaky gate. The best he could do was memorize the license plate number as it pulled farther and farther away from him.

“
No!
” Grey roared.

The air stank of blood and he pulled his hand away from his stomach. His flesh was torn wide open and he was holding himself together with his blood-soaked hand. He pressed harder, grunting with the deep pain that pierced his body. Had Morgan had time to call the pack before she’d been taken? He stopped at the dead wolf and bent and tried to drag the body to a less-conspicuous location. He groaned with the effort. It wasn’t going to happen. Not with his injury. The deceased wolf was already turning back into a man, and the dead weight was too heavy for him to drag anywhere in his condition. All he could hope for was that no one looked too closely behind Morgan’s crepe myrtles until help arrived. Grey shook his head and cursed as he rushed inside the house. He grabbed the phone and dialed Dean as he stumbled down the hall to get Lana out of the closet. He broke the handle completely and pulled her onto his chest as he sat down heavily against the opposite wall. She clung to him as he readjusted his hand to keep pressure on his open stomach.

“Dean. I need help. Morgan. They took Morgan. I’ve got Lana safe. There are bodies in a garage near her house and one out front. All werewolves.” He gave Dean the address of the garage and the license plate number before he forgot them. “Dean, I’m hurt. Who is closest to here? I have Lana--”

“Jason is out your way. He’ll be there in a few minutes. Let me give him a call and I’ll call you right back. We’re all coming. We’re on our way. Hold on, Grey,” Dean said before he hung up.

He tried to wait for Dean’s call, but the light in the room collapsed on itself until there was nothing left. If Dean called back, he wouldn’t hear it. He’d be unconscious, clutching onto Lana and bleeding all over Morgan’s favorite rug.

Reason number two hundred and forty-seven it sucked to be a werewolf: When you are hurt, fellow werewolves want to hurt you worse.

Jason held a constant growl as he worked over Grey, staunching the flow of blood from his open chest and stomach. Jason was helping, but he wasn’t being gentle about it. Sweat dripped down the enforcer’s face and lightened gray eyes stayed riveted on the warm blood pooled on his torso.

Grey wished Brent had found him first. He was submissive and wouldn’t have to fight that instinct to best a more dominant injured wolf. As it stood, Jason didn’t have an ounce of submission in him, and the strain from attempting not to fight him was evident in the tight tendons of his neck. The smell of the rapidly expanding puddle of blood underneath his half dead carcass probably wasn’t helping Jason’s resolve either.

“Lana?” Grey rasped.

“She’s fine. I have her set up in the living room. I didn’t want her to see you like this anymore than she already has.”

Jason’s voice sounded deep and gravelly, like it hurt him to speak.

He’ll fight and we’re in the worst position to defend ourselves. Wolf’s snarled warning filled his head.

The fine hairs rose on his body as he thought of the pain he’d endure if Jason couldn’t control his instincts. “We got a problem here?”

“It’s been a while since I Changed. I’m not the best one for this job, but I was closest. The others will be here shortly, but I didn’t want you bleeding out before they got here.” The growling resumed.

“I guess I should tell you I was stabbed in the back with silver also.”

“Shit,” Jason hissed, rubbing sweat from his forehead with the back of his blood-soaked hand. “I don’t know what to do here. I’m supposed to be the cleanup man, you know, stashing bodies and stuff.” Another snarl ripped through him and he retreated by inches. “Sorry.”

Grey couldn’t stand being on his back in this situation anymore. Jason was a burly man, thickly muscled, but Grey could take him on his worst days. If Jason attacked him in that position with the injuries he had sustained though, he would be at a colossal disadvantage.

Move
, Wolf howled.

He shifted slightly and the pain from his injuries burned like he’d been set on fire. At the faint scent of smoke, he glanced at the open flesh on his stomach, but he couldn’t find any. It was either his imagination or the silver knife wound on his back was still sizzling and charring his flesh. From the pain radiating through it, he wouldn’t be surprised.

Okay, like a Band-Aid then. He lunged upward until he was staggering on his feet, and Jason flew backward into a defensive stance. At least from this position, he had a freaking shot at surviving his rescuer.

“I’m hurt. But if you come at me, I’ll kill you, Jason. I’m at the end of what I can handle today.” He didn’t have time for battle right now, not with Morgan missing. He needed to plan and hunt. Bringing her back was the only thing that mattered, and this jackhole was standing in the way of his mission.

Jason stepped toward him, testing.

“Don’t test me.” Grey shook his head slowly as he bit out the words.

The corner of Jason’s lip curved up as he circled, and his eyes went completely vacant. Blood dripped from his hands as he tensed to attack.

The front door flew open, slamming against the wall with the force, and Jason hesitated.

“Get out,” Marissa yelled.

Jason looked at her with a dumbfounded expression, fists still clenched from the bloodlust. Marissa reared back and slapped him across the face and then pointed to the door again. “Get out,” she repeated, snarling deep in her throat.