The final door loomed up ahead of him as he crept towards it. Pushing it open slowly, his breath caught at the sight of Miller slumped on the floor, propped up against the side of a sofa. Five slashes across his chest bled far too quickly for Michael’s liking.
So Whitehadchanged.
Where the fuck was he then?
Miller’s eyes drifted open. As he slowly focused on Michael, they widened in alarm, his gaze darting to someone else in the room hidden from Michael’s view.
If it was White, he’d already know Michael was there.
Figuring he had nothing to lose, he raised his gun and pushed the door open wide and ran in.
“SCTF!” he yelled, taking in the room with one practised look.
Another body lay face down on the floor, a few feet away from Miller, not moving. Blood pooled out from underneath him, spreading across the wooden floor. The rest of the room was empty, so he hurried over to Miller, crouching down in front of him.
“Help’s on its way.”
Miller blinked at him, eyes struggling to focus. “Blake…,” he whispered, then pointed a hand towards the dead body. “Think… killed… W-white.”
“What?” Michael glanced over at the body on the floor. “Why the fuck would he kill his—”
“Because he was as good as dead anyway.” Blake appeared in the doorway, his approach so silent, Michael almost dropped his gun again.
His gaze shot to what Blake held in his hand, mouth falling open.
No way. “Is that how you killed them?”
Grinning, Blake lifted the two metalhandshigher, then slipped his own hand inside one. “Amazing what you can make these days with the right tools and a captive shifter.” They were exact replicas of a shifter’s hands—claws fully extended as though half-shifted.
Without taking his eyes or his gun off Blake, he gestured to White’s body on the floor. “Is it how you killedhim?”
Blake’s grin faltered as he glanced at White. Guilt maybe? “No.”
Tyres screeched to a halt outside on the road.
“It’s over, Blake,” Michael said, Blake’s choice of words registering too late.
With a roar that shook the walls of the cottage, Blake half-shifted. His jaw bone lengthened, fangs dropped down, and razor-sharp claws slid out, turning his hands into weapons.
“I didn’t need them to kill him.”
No, because he had the real fucking thing.
“Surprise,” Blake slurred around enormous fangs and tilted his head to the side showing off his almost-healed bite mark. He moved with shifter speed towards Michael, but Michael still had his gun raised, and he got off two shots before Blake grabbed him. “Fucking yes!” he yelled as his body began to heal where one of Michael’s bullets had grazed him.
The other had wedged in his left shoulder, but Blake ignored it, not even slowing down. His claws dug into Michael’s side and his shoulder, finding purchase, and Michael screamed as Blake dragged him through the house away from the shouts of the police coming in through the front.
“White was never a shifter, was he?” Michael gritted out, the pain from Blake’s grip almost unbearable. Blake’s claws sank deeper as he blasted through the back door, cracking it in two.
“No.”
“You killed him and forced Wilson… to… to bite you. Why?”
Blake skidded to a snarling halt in the back garden and tossed Michael to the ground at his feet. “Because Smith made it sound so fucking appealing, I thought why the hell not? Why should I do his fucking dirty work when I could be the one with all the power?” He growled low and menacing and grabbed Michael again, pulling him against his chest, claws pressed against the vulnerable flesh of his exposed throat. He turned them to face the darkness behind. “One more step and I’ll rip him to pieces.”
Michael couldn’t see who he was talking to, but he didn’t need to.
He felt Aaron’s presence like a tingle under his skin.
