It was an illusion of control, the same as the one the naked practitioners chased on the grass, but it was all he had. He couldn’tnotshift, and he had no idea what he’d do once he was a wolf. Any more than the wolf could influence what he did the rest of the month—otherwise a lot more contract negotiations would end with his teeth in someone’s throat.
“Mr. Deacon?”
The sound of his name was unexpected. It wasn’t a secret that Cade came here on full moons when he wasn’t out in the country, but it wasn’t somewhere people came to talk to him either. He turned and stared at the red-haired woman who picked her way over the uneven grass toward him. She was a cop, he could tell that from the uniform, but not Night Shift.
“You’re Cade Deacon, right?” she said. Her eyes were wide and wet with anxiety, her pulse visible in her throat. The moon was high enough that the thought of blood—salty and hot as it spilled from the vein like soda water from a tap—made Cade’s mouth water. “Officer Marlow’s… friend.”
“That’s one word for it,” Cade said. “Who are you?”
She swallowed and took another step toward him. Cade resisted the inexplicable urge to take a matching step back as a growl scraped at his throat—impatient to get out.
“I’m a Night Shift clerk,” she said. “In the Armory. I… someone’s altered my records to make it look like Marlow stole silver. I don’t know who, but it had to have been someone on Night Shift, and if I can’t trust them—”
Someone screamed. It was from pain, not fear. There was a difference in the timbre of it. Cade glanced around and saw the Tai Chi group stagger away from each other as the wolf pushed out of them. He felt the poison-ivy itch of it on his skin as thick, coarse patches of wolf fur sprouted from his skin.
His bones felthot, as if the wolf was in the marrow, and his vision was suddenly filmed with blood as his brain was pulled apart to be knit back together.
“You—” He doubled over and spat out a tooth on the ground. He’d swallow some of them; he always did. Mostly they got broken down between now and the morning, but not always.
It was hard to think. His nerve endings were on fire as his body pumped out adrenaline like candy, and the recognition of the red-haired clerk as a person frayed. She was just meat and rich, healthy organ meat to shred between his teeth and fill his gut.
“R… run,” he snarled through teeth that didn’t feel like his anymore. The sharp edges shredded his tongue, and even the taste of his own blood made him hungrier. “Stup… stupid…”
“No,” the clerk said. “I’m the one who stayssmart.”
She pulled a stun baton from behind her back, heavy-duty Night Shift kit some wispy bit ofCaderecognized, although he didn’t have any control over his muscles and feet anymore. She screamed in a mixture of panic and adrenaline as she rammed it into his neck.
The wolf convulsed as the electricity ripped through it and disrupted muscles and nerve endings that weren’t quite functional yet. It hit the ground hard as its limbs spasmed and twitched against its will.
Still screaming, the red-haired woman hit the wolf with the shock baton again. And again.
“I’ve done it,” she yelled, her voice high and shrill in her throat as she looked around. “Come and help.”
It was angry.
It was hungry.
It hurt.
Mostly it was hungry.
The wolf tried to lunge at the woman, jaws agape. Its legs, weak and jerky still, wouldn’t cooperate, and it flopped back down onto the ground. Then the rest of the woman’s pack ran up, sticks in hand, and pinned it in place until they could sting it with the sticks again.
“You know where to take him,” the leader of the pack said.
He smelled like something the wolf wanted to eat. Everything did, but him especially. The wolf snarled at him as the world went soggy around it and lashed out blindly. He wasn’t quite close enough to reach.
“Yeah,” the leader made the noise with his mouth. He pulled his gun and shot another wolf—old wolf from the smell. The wolf could have killed it if it had needed to. “Not my first rodeo. Muzzle him and get him into the truck. Now. Move.”
Rough gloved hands rolled the wolf onto its back and tangled it in something that bit at its wrists and ankles. It panted, hot and wet, as it fought against the sluggish pain in its head.
“I’ll do it,” the woman said. The fear had almost left her voice. Out of the corner of the wolf’s eye, it saw her bring a thing toward its face. Even before it touched skin, the wolf could feel theitchstingpainof it on its tongue and behind its eyelids.
It snarled and snapped at the thing. This time it caught meat between its teeth. The woman shrieked in shock and snatched her bloody hand away. The wolf swallowed the three fingers in its mouth. Then the pack hit it with their sticks again and shoved the thing on its face.
It took all of them to lift the wolf’s limp weight.
The leader had to shoot two more wolves to get them back to the truck. The woman, her bloody hand clutched to her chest, cried the whole way.
