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“Jase,” she called. “Can you get the van?”
He lifted a hand to indicate he’d heard, and changed his course from the barn to the garage.
Gina returned to the porch. “I’ll get Amberleigh. Teo.” She took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, which seemed to work better than her smile, because his frown smoothed out as soon as she touched him. “Can you help with the bags?”
He nodded, and Gina went into the house, trotted up the stairs. She was so preoccupied with Jase’s bizarre about-face, along with everything else, she’d opened the door to the As’ room before she registered the strange sounds coming from the other side. Then she stood in the doorway and stared.
The place was trashed. Clothes strewn everywhere, most of them shredded. The curtains hung in tatters; the bedspread wasn’t much better.
The strange sounds, which had morphed into gurgles, grunts, and growls, emanated from the bathroom along with the splash of running water.
“Amberleigh?” Gina called, crossing the floor and glancing inside.
The girl leaned over the rim of the bathtub, mouth directly under the gushing stream as she greedily guzzled. The smooth, golden perfection of her naked body was marred only by the seeping, bloody mess of one ankle.
No wonder it had hurt.
“Hey,” Gina began.
Amberleigh’s head whipped around, spraying water across the tile.
She didn’t look like Amberleigh anymore.
Gina slammed the door. What had once been Amberleigh hit the other side with a thud that cracked the casing.
She should run, but she wasn’t going to turn her back on that … thing. No way in hell.
A hand smashed through the wood. Those doors were pure oak. How had she done that? Perhaps the claws that had sprouted where her fingers had once been had helped.
Amberleigh’s face appeared in the hole. Her hair hung in hanks; her eyes had gone feral. Were her teeth getting bigger? Or was her nose getting smaller?
“Shit,” Gina muttered. Amberleigh was changing.
Gina no longer cared about turning her back; all she cared about was getting gone. She ran from the room, down the hall, trying not to scream, afraid to bring the others. Most of them would only be bait.
She tried to think. Where to go? What to do? How to keep Amberleigh in here until Gina could get to the gun out there?
The scritch of claws across the hall floor sounded like a dog trying to gain traction on hardwood. Gina reached the steps and glanced back.
Big mistake, because what she saw made her stiffen, lurch, and then she was falling, grasping at the railing, catching it just enough so that she didn’t die, though by the time she reached the bottom she almost wished she had.
The wind was knocked out of her. She couldn’t draw a breath. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
It got even worse when Amberleigh landed on her chest.
If the dirty-blond werewolf—guess Amberleigh bleached her hair, big shock—with the big baby blues had gone right for Gina’s throat, she’d have been done for. But apparently Amberleigh liked to play with her food.
Her lip pulled back in a snarl. Foam flecked her snout. If it hadn’t been for the human eyes, Gina would believe a rabid wolf had crept into the house. But the eyes were human, and they were Amberleigh’s.
The creature leaned slowly forward, waiting for Gina to panic, to squirm, to beg. Gina might have, if she’d yet been able to speak. However, the hundred-plus pounds of beast on her chest prevented her from doing anything but gasp.
Amberleigh quickly became bored—another thing the wolf and the girl had in common besides their eyes. She reared back to strike and—
Flames shot out the top of her head.
CHAPTER 22
Gina shoved the howling, fiery, dying mass of fur and fangs from her chest, then scooted away. Her back ran into something solid, and she gasped, whirled, then went into Teo’s arms as he fell to his knees and caught her.
