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Not yet, a voice in her mind murmured. Not yet.
That voice, seeming to come from the earth itself, held her captive, urging her to wait. It would have been unnerving if she’d thought to consider it.
Sensing Niko’s growing rage, she sent him reassurance as she gave the makeshift mask one last careful tug.
The rustling to her left was less than ten feet away now.
She lunged.
She ripped out the throat of the first one—that wasn’t the plan, but he lifted a weapon, aimed right at her face. Grabbing the barrel of the plasma-burst rifle, she yanked it from him and used her free hand to grab him by the neck. Her claws sank into flesh and the wolf took over.
Blood spurted. He toppled to the ground as his life pumped out of him in thick waves of red. Both hands clutched at the bubbling red fountain shooting from his throat but he was already dead and Zee turned to the next one, swinging out with the weapon she still clutched and driving it into his skull so hard that bone crunched and buckled inward from the impact.
He, too, fell.
A third came at her. Zee swiped out with her claws, striking him across his face. He screamed and stumbled back, his weapon falling down, saved from hitting the ground only because it was secured to a rig that held it strapped to his chest.
He screeched again. “My eyes, my eyes!”
She wasn’t satisfied he was neutralized—never leave an enemy still able to attack, Zennia, an admonition from her father, his voice rising up from a memory she hadn’t thought about in years. She snapped out a kick to the man’s knees and as he fell, she slashed her claws through the rig holding his weapon, disarming him.
She didn’t want to carry a second one, but she couldn’t leave the foul thing for another to pick up. Staring at it for a split second, she reached out with her senses for Niko and felt him above her. “Niko.”
Not waiting for a response, she threw it upward.
He cursed. But he must have caught it, because it didn’t come crashing back down.
The third human, a woman, stood farther away, her face pale, but her expression set and the weapon trained on Zee.
“You can’t take all of us.”
“You should have taken your shot already,” Zee said.
The woman’s mouth twisted. “Probably. But I’m hoping I can get out of here alive, since I didn’t fire on anybody.”
The answer surprised Zee. This was the last thing—
Her instincts screamed a warning and she dropped to the ground, flattening herself. The high-pitched whine of a plasma-powered weapon’s discharge starting going off, repeatedly.
Zee’s sensitive ears were bombarded.
The scraggly undergrowth around her caught fire under the weapon’s discharge, but it died quickly under the rain’s continuous onslaught. Above the rain, wind and weaponry, she heard the furious, curious howl of an animal that was both feline and lupine. I’m fine, she said again, sending those thoughts to him and hoping he’d understand, the bond between them so new.
Sliding her hands across the ground, she searched, then found a smooth, flat rock. As she closed her fingers around it, the weapon fire ceased.
That ceasefire last for about five seconds. She shoved to her knees, listened for the sound of a woman, struggling to slow and silence her breaths, then she threw the rock, striking the human female in the brow with a sickening wet thwack.
Leaping to her feet, Zee rushed toward the woman. She found her swaying, barely conscious. Without compunction, she reached out and snapped the female’s neck. This woman had come hunting her pack with weapons, crossing into pack lands with the intent to kill. Zee wouldn’t feel guilty about ending the life of a killer.
A burning pain tore through her left shoulder as she dropped the woman’s lifeless form.
Before she could isolate where the shooter was, a strangled shriek came from maybe twenty feet away.
It ended abruptly and a limp body dropped from the branches. As she passed by, she saw the head, wrenched with such savage strength, hung limp. But that wasn’t the only thing wrong. Abruptly, she was what was wrong and she froze—fighting the surge of bile building in her throat.
She was looking at the man’s face... and his back.
An enraged Niko was a savage one.
