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“When I say go, jump.”
Jump? Like, into the freezing water jump? Half the lake was still frozen over. It was one of Yordan’s nightmares to be trapped under hard ice and unable to break through.
“Sure,” he said, though his heart was beating like a panicked hamster’s.
“Go wolf. It’ll keep you warmer.”
But it’d seriously cut down on his swimming capability. Though it was probably better not to be frozen. Wolf it was. Unfortunately, since he was a slow shifter, he had to begin the shift ASAP. He unbuckled and reached to unhook McNabb.
“Don’t bother. Go.” The Scot’s brogue was in full force now, but not even that could blunt the terror of what he said.
Still, first things first. And that meant unhooking McNabb. Yordan could already tell The Scot was aiming the helo straight at the acid-spewing monster. Hopefully the blades would be whole enough to chop the thing in half as it went down. Either way, there was no reason for McNabb to go down with the ship.
Without a word, he unhooked McNabb and shoved hard. He would have dragged the guy with him, but he didn’t have leverage. Then it was all he could do to fling himself backward out his side.
Too late. There hadn’t been time.
He crashed into the monster with all the screaming terror of dying machinery and slime monster. Fortunately, he had his own secret weapon.
No one understood the magic of a lycanthropic werewolf. Only that it took thirty seconds of agonizing pain as his body twisted and reshaped itself to a wolf. Thanks to his extensive career fighting scary shit, he knew that he could be broken in half during a shift and his body would still reshape itself according to the rules of a wolf. Which meant his screaming body could take a great deal of abuse and end up whole in the end.
That was exactly what happened. If he hadn’t been practicing these last twenty years, he wouldn’t have had any control during the shift. Turned out that if he focused on using the last of his strength to throw himself out the side of a helicopter, he could get whopped by chunks of decapitated monster and buried in burning acid and yet still reform whole and complete underwater.
The acid was mostly washed away—he was sure he’d have thin furry parts until the next shift—and his bones were solid as he kicked free of the last of his clothes and began doggy-paddling to shore. Even if it was in water cold enough to freeze a man’s balls off.
Where the hell was McNabb?
Yordan lifted his head, searching left and right while still paddling. The decapitated monster was sinking down—crap, that thing was huge—and would quickly dissolve into nothing. That was the thing about monsters created from campfire songs. Every summer, they renewed themselves. And when you killed them, they just dissolved—acid phlegm and all—as if they had never been. That was because the folk song never talked about the thing’s demise, only about it rising from the depths of Torch Lake to eat unsuspecting campers.
So that worry was gone. Acid was disappearing fast under the half-frozen lake. Which meant he ought to see McNabb’s wolf paddling quickly toward the lake’s edge. He ought to see it right now…
Right there…
Right…
Nothing. Damn it, he was sure he’d thrown McNabb clear. He’d shoved the man out with all his strength. There’d been no monster on his side to grab him and no spinning helicopter parts. Or so Yordan had thought.
He looked to the shore where the puppies were gathering. They were all worse for wear but not dead. And there, running along the shore, was Marsha in her slender gray wolf form. She sounded like she was yipping something, but hell if he could hear it.
Didn’t matter. He saw her plunge into the freezing cold water after something. That meant it was important enough for him to go help.
He wanted to change into his human form. God knew he could cover more ground that way, but his naked human body would get hypothermia in ten seconds or less. Best keep with the dog-paddle.
Then he saw where he was headed and had to blink the water out of his eyes to make sure he was seeing clearly. It couldn’t be. McNabb wasn’t that stupid.
Except, apparently, he was.
There was the idiot turning blue in the water, already stupid from hypothermia. He was a naked human man, and he was sinking fast.
Yordan put on a burst of speed. No way was Marsha going to get to him in time. For one thing, there was too much helicopter debris in her way. For another, she wasn’t as strong a wolf as he was, and it took all his strength to get there. Thankfully, he had the help of a dissolving monster leg and a piece of helicopter to provide some momentary traction. And then he was there, diving under McNabb while the guy sank into oblivion.
If he had a human mouth, he would have said something. Probably a long string of curses. As it was, he got underneath The Scot’s body and pushed up. He prayed that the man had enough consciousness to wrap his arms around Yordan. If not, then they were both screwed because he had no way to save the man, short of chomping down on McNabb’s arm and dragging him out of the water.
They’d both have hypothermia if that happened because even timber wolves couldn’t handle the cold forever.
Damn, it was hard to swim like this. He felt McNabb’s arm slip off his shoulder, and he let out a growl. It was the only thing he could think of that might wake the guy up.
Come on!
