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“Interesting. You will tell me exactly how later. Now, we should move on.”
“I’m not leaving Gina behind.”
“The owner?” Edward peered around. “Where have you hidden her?”
“In a wolf suit,” Matt muttered.
“Ah.” The old man nodded. “That explains your misbehavior with the gun. But she has become a demon werewolf. There is nothing you can do.”
Panic fluttered in Matt’s chest, nearly choking him. “You said there was a cure.”
“I did. However, it is nothing you can do. I have sent for my granddaughter. Unfortunately, she is busy elsewhere at the moment. She will arrive as soon as she can. Let us hope that in the meantime your Gina does not force me to put a silver bullet through her brain.”
“I doubt anyone could force you to do anything you didn’t want to do.”
“If I again discover her inches from killing you, I will very much want to do it.” Mandenauer stared out over the now-sunny terrain. “Gina is no longer Gina but werewolf. The virus strangles her humanity; the demon burns within. She will kill. She will not be able to help herself. Even now—” He waved a battered, emaciated hand in the direction she had disappeared. “She is stalking her first victim.”
“She wouldn’t—”
“She has to. The bloodlust is maddening. All that pounds in her lupine brain is hunger. Until she satisfies it with a kill, she exists for nothing else.”
Matt rubbed his face. “She did it for me.”
Mandenauer set a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Tell me everything.”
* * *
The wolf that had once been Gina O’Neil followed the men. She made certain not to let them know it.
The tall one with the long stick that smelled like death and fire was dangerous. He would have killed her if the other one—
She tilted her head. There was something about the other one that made her more uneasy than the dangerous man with the silver-filled weapons. She’d wanted to kill him, needed to with a desperation that had left little room for anything else. Yet still she’d hesitated and nearly lost her life. That maddening scent of fruit and warmth and her—
Gina growled. She didn’t like it that he smelled of her. It was confusing.
The slowly spreading madness hadn’t yet obliterated all sense. She understood that the other one had saved her life. What she didn’t understand was why.
Hunger roared in both belly and brain, the pulse red-hot, excruciating. If she didn’t appease it, she would split in two from the pain. Or maybe it was the being split in two—woman and wolf—that was causing the pain in the first place.
Along with the hunger and the flashes of memories that were not hers alone came knowledge—bite and make others like you, devour, and kill.
Giii-naaa!
On the horizon stood a man, naked, bronzed, and gleaming in the newly born sun. Her maker. He had gifted her with a whole new world. One where she was stronger, faster, better. She would never again think herself less than. From now on she would always be more.
Gina loped in his direction. In moments she stood on the hill at his side. He laid one hand on her head, then lifted the other to point back in the direction she’d come. In the distance two familiar figures trudged across the land.
“Take your pick,” he said in a voice that no longer held even a hint of Jase McCord.
* * *
“Let us talk as we walk,” Mandenauer said.
“Walk where?” Matt asked, though they were already doing just that.
“You must show me the cavern that contained this beast.”
“Why?”
