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Another shot, this one piercing my left side, and more footfalls in the distance.
I kept trying to tear the restraints from the wall, vaguely aware of someone moving on my left side. I turned over my shoulder and snarled, stopping just shy of snapping at the glint of silver out of the corner of my eye when I saw that it was Renata. Her eyes went as wide as mine must have been, and all I could do was stare at her, feeling a twinge of betrayal as she raised the blade over her head.
I could have stopped her. She was close enough that I could easily go for her throat and end her life in a split second, as if it was nothing, but I didn’t. Not only was she the first person in this place who had been truly kind to me, but she was Castor’s sister, and I couldn’t do that to him. Not even to save my own life. Not when it belonged to him in the first place.
Instead of bringing the blade down on my neck, Renata used it to slice through the silver chains binding me just before the other hunter with the dagger tackled her and pinned her to the wall.
A sound that could only be described as a roar blasted from my chest as the girl’s head cracked against the stone, and she collapsed unconscious to the floor. Before I could plan my next movements or register the shots fired into my back, the other hunter turned his head to look at me.
He had just enough time for a look of shock to register on his face before I had his head in my hands. I twisted it off in one clean movement. I whirled around and flung it at the other hunter, and it caught the other man off-guard enough that his grip on his gun faltered.
I was on top of him the next instant, my claws digging into his chest enough that I could feel them hitting his ribs. The hunter’s pained scream was like a siren’s song, fueling the bloodlust within me, and the fear in his eyes was just as sweet. My jaws dripped with hunger as I leaned in, a low growl rumbling through me. I wanted that fear to mount so the grit of his bones between my teeth would be even more satisfying.
The sound of more footsteps coming from down the hall followed by gunfire told me I didn’t have the time to play with my prey. I brought my claws across his throat instead, only meaning to cut through his jugular for a swift death, but I decapitated him in the process.
Maybe I was stronger than I’d thought. That thought existed in the background with the remainder of my conscious mind as the beast once again rose to the surface, lured by the scent of blood.
I ran out of the clinic and into the hall, my chains dragging behind me, just in time to meet the other two hunters standing at the end of the hallway. They, too, were wearing red uniforms, and it took me a second to make sure they weren’t Church clerics. It helped that only the Order actually wore red on the hunt, and their military-style uniforms were a far cry from the all-black leather Castor and the others wore outside the Abbey.
As soon as I was certain of my prey, I lunged at the nearest hunter before he had the chance to draw his blade. His throat yielded beautifully to my fangs and I sank them in deep, only vaguely aware of the shots firing from ahead as I took him to the ground. One of the shots hit directly in the center of my chest, but the combination of adrenaline and the euphoria of the hunt rendered me immune to the pain I could now feel, but only in the most detached sense.
The hunter beneath me was dead nearly as soon as he hit the ground. I could feel his pulse cease in my jaws as my fangs sank deeper into his supple flesh and his sweet blood flowed into my mouth. I was still feeding, too entranced by the kill to pay any mind to the others, until I felt a familiar burning sensation in my shoulder as the dead hunter’s partner plunged a blade into my back.
The force of my upper body whipping around was enough to shake his grip on the blade, which remained in my shoulder as I backhanded him across the hall. He hit the far stone wall and his neck bent at an unnatural angle with a less-than-satisfying crunch before he hit the floor.
What a waste.
There were two others who descended on me from either side of the hall, offering themselves as a consolation prize. I could feel my lips peeling back in glee as I caught the one hunter by the throat and flung him into his friend, sending them both flying back across the hall.
I loped toward them on all fours, taking my time as I approached, just so I could see the fear building in their eyes. The one hunter rolled onto his back, scrambling to reach for his gun, which had skidded a few yards further down the hall, stopped only by the corpse of the Church hunter who had left the clinic so recently to fight. I could smell more blood further on, and the mingled scents formed a kind of macabre map of the Abbey’s halls in my mind, since that sense was so much sharper than all the others.
They had killed him and plenty of others. That was justification enough to what was left of my conscious mind to give in fully to the bloodlust.
The other hunter fired into my chest, but after a mere two shots, his gun was empty. And I was just beginning.
The look of realization that came across his face would form his death mask as I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him a few feet off the ground. I let him thrash and struggle for a few moments like a worm on a hook before I crushed his windpipe and flung him aside.
And then there was one…
I let the other hunter crawl just close enough to his fallen gun that his fingertips barely grazed it before I brought my paw down on his back and dug all five claws in as easily as if they were sharpened blades. I clenched my hand, savoring the squish of flesh and organs as I pulled his still-beating heart from his chest and opened my jaws to consume my prize.
The tender, pulsing meat was still sliding down my throat when I realized I wasn’t alone any longer and looked up only to find Castor and several other hunters in the uniforms of the Church, watching me from the end of the hallway.
I had feared that once I’d unleashed the beast, it wouldn’t yield control and I would be trapped as a ruthless, bloodthirsty monster once more. The look of horror on Castor’s face, however, was enough to immediately disabuse me of that fear, even if it sparked another.
I shrank back as he looked down at the corpse of the recruit at his feet. When he looked back up, his eyes steely with spite and disgust, I knew the conclusion he must have jumped to. And how could he not? Here I was, standing in a sea of corpses, having just devoured a man’s beating heart. What else was there for him to assume but that I was responsible for it all?
And I couldn’t exactly explain myself, given the current circumstances. Even if I could shift back, I wasn’t sure how much of my temporary immunity to the effect of my myriad wounds was a result of being in my shifted form.
The fact that Castor was already drawing his katana as he crept toward me while the other hunters behind him kept their guns aimed at my head and heart made the bullet wounds seem like the least of my worries at the moment.
In the end, all I could do was sink to my knees and raise my hands to shield myself, because even if I could hold him off, I wasn’t willing to hurt him. I wasn’t even willing to risk it.
My surrender seemed to give him pause for a moment, and he halted, his blade lifted over his head. His confusion was only enough to make him hesitate for a second, but before he could bring the blade down, a familiar voice cried from behind me, “Wait!”
Renata?
Castor looked over my shoulder in confusion, and I turned to find the girl running toward us. She slipped in a pool of blood and barely managed to catch herself from falling.
