Blood and Silver - 04 Read Free

honey bounced around his leonine face. They had grown out into a thick mat of a mane.
    Back turned to me, he had the dog’s chain again. His arm lifted, making the dog dangle. Pawing at the air, it struggled to breathe through the choking collar. Blood dripped from its fur, spattering the ground at his feet in a crazy pattern of swirls. High-pitched yelps of pain were choked by the collar and still cut over the low growl that was thrumming from the Were-lion.
    Violence coiled inside me like a spring, tension tight, waiting to be unleashed. Anger coursed through my body. My old friend rage washed away the pain in my back with a tide of adrenaline. Eyes squinted, my vision narrowed to a laser-fine focus; only the Were-lion was in my sight. The skin on my fingers scraped as they closed on two of the cinderblocks next to me. They weighed nothing in my anger.
    One in each hand, I charged, closing the space between us in the blink of an eye. Fury tore from my throat in a scream as I slammed the two cinderblocks together against his skull.
    They shattered into shards of concrete and dust from the impact, falling apart in my hands.
    The dog fell from the lion-man’s grasp, yelping as it hit the ground and immediately curling into a ball of blood-slicked fur. The lycanthrope dropped to his knees, bonelessly slumping to the side. I was on top of him in a second, fists pounding against the side of his face. Anger drove my fist again and again, trying to batter my way through bone. He was still conscious. He stayed half man and half beast, even though his face was slack and his eyes were closed. If he had passed out, he would have shifted back into a human. I kept beating on him, not giving him a chance to recover. Not even one damn second. One second would be too much. Give him even one second of respite and he would recover, and I would lose the slim advantage I had.
    There was a flash of motion to my left. I jerked toward it. Something struck me in the side; then I was tumbling across the ground with a wolf trying to eat my face.
    Two-inch-long curved yellow fangs snapped viciously at me. Fetid canine breath left the skin on my cheeks moist, and hot spittle flew as I fought to keep that mouth away from me. Everywhere my hands fell on the wolf to hold it back found muscle vibrating with power. Coarse fur rubbed along my arms, feeling like cotton candy made of steel. I was on my back with the wolf on top of me. My mind registered its size because we were pressed against each other. It weighed a ton as it pressed over me, the wolf was damn near as big as I was.
    My hands scrabbled, trying to find a weak spot to exploit. Digging, I found the wolf’s trachea under a thick ruff of fur. It felt like a softball in my palm. Squeezing with all the strength I had, I clawed my fingers under it, trying to crush it. My arm was burning with effort when I felt it give and pop in my grip with the wet, hollow sound of dislocating a joint.
    With a yelp that strangled out in a gurgle, the wolf pushed off, leaping away. It swung its head from side to side, coarse fur ruffling around its neck. It shook from snout to tail, gagging on its own blood. Black nails had dug long red furrows across my thighs and chest. The denim of my jeans gapped open atop the slashes. Thin, hot streaks cut across where the skin was broken, blood soaking out to the edges of the cut jeans.
    It hurt like a bitch.
    I didn’t try to get up. In a fight, you are at your most vulnerable when trying to stand up. Instead, my hand closed on the gun under my left arm and pulled it out. The grip filled my hand with a comfort. My heartbeat slowed and my nerves stopped jangling. I always feel better with my gun in hand. It slid out of the holster like a nickel-plated messenger of death, glinting in the afternoon sun. Colt .45 model 1911, made by John Moses Browning and standard issue for our troops for near a hundred years. The 1911 is as reliable and intuitive as a semiautomatic handgun