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The monster…it’s back!
Wood splinters, followed by the snarling of wolves as people inside shift to face the danger. I’m shifting too, racing for the door mid-change. When I burst through the swinging doors and see the destruction before me, I’m standing as a wolf.
Ryder and Rachel are at the back of the bar, snarling and attacking a monster like before, but this one is smaller. This one is female. This one is leaking breast milk. The black skin of the half woman half wolf monster is crisscrossed with scars. Her crazed red eyes focus on the bar, uncaring as she’s bitten and clawed from the wolves beneath her tall body.
With the head of a wolf she howls, humanesque hands reaching out and tossing Rachel aside like a toy, and loping for the bar. To my horror, a small wolf jumps on the counter and snarls, backing away as Cookie and the baby huddle behind the counter screaming. Cricket’s wolf is as small as her human form, almost more of a coyote than a wolf, her gray and white fur patchy and thin. But her ferocity is nothing short of astounding.
I stalk forward slowly, growling so loudly that the monster looks at me and not my woman. Never my woman. I jump on the counter behind her. She’s so small she doesn’t have to crouch as I step over her, and together we face the beast as it attacks.
This one is different, more than just by gender, she’s more wild. Feral. As if she’s not thinking straight, she lets Ryder and Rachel rip her legs to shreds. Nothing stops her, she keeps coming for Cricket. I snap the thing’s arm, its wrist crushing beneath my jaws as foul blood fills my mouth. With strength I didn’t realize I had, I pull her away from Cricket, dragging her into the middle of the bar while Ryder pulls her towards her back. Between the two of us she’ll split in two before long, shredded by the protective power inside this room.
Except the monster doesn't seem to care.
Instead of clawing at me, or kicking at Ryder, her claws are digging into the floorboards as she tries to pull herself back to the bar. Cricket sees this and looks back at Cookie and the baby with a whimper. She jumps, flying over the beast, and I know she’s trying to take its attention away from the humans. It’s a fruitless attempt because the thing doesn’t even flinch towards her.
The monster screams, crazed, when Cookie stands up and tries to jump over the counter and run out of the bar. She’s after Cookie, after the baby. I stop pulling her hand away from Ryder, and start working with him, both of us dragging and pushing the abomination towards the back door as fast as we can.
Rachel and Cricket see what’s happening, and they put themselves between the humans and the monster. No way in hell will a human be killed by one of these things while we’re still standing. The release of my pressure on the monster gives her the opening she needed, and she twists out of my grip and spirals in the air, kicking off Ryder’s face and launching herself at her prey.
I have flesh in my jaws, sinew draping off my fangs, but it doesn’t matter. The creature feels nothing. Just like last time, she’s as unstoppable as Gabriel was. I watch in horror, unable to move fast enough, while Rachel crouches to go for the beast’s feet and Cricket launches herself off Rachel’s back and sinks her teeth into the thing’s neck. The force of the female wolves hitting the monster sends her staggering back, her ruined legs unable to hold her, and she falls to the ground.
The scream that comes from the creature is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. The only thing I could possibly compare it to is the sound the Dark Moon mother made when she saw her son slaughtered… The realization hits me like a ton of bricks. I look at her, her breasts dripping with milk, and back at the screaming baby as Cookie scrambles backwards out of the bar..
“It’s her baby!”I scream telepathically to the other wolves, hearing the mourning howl of a response.
The human woman taken on the road has returned for her baby. Taken and changed, beaten and brutalized, she’s now a monster with only one thing on her mind. Getting her baby back. Sympathy distracts me momentarily, but I snap back to rage when I register Cricket flying through the air and slamming into the wall of alcohol bottles behind the bar.
There’s no pity left in me, no understanding to give. Anger like an inferno rips through my body and I attack, shoving Rachel to the side and to safety, and launching myself at the thing’s throat.
Boom!
The echo of the rifle shot rattles my brain, and when I land on the beast she’s no longer struggling. With my paws on either side of her body, I watch in transfixed horror as she shifts back into a human. Bob walks up behind me, Cookie cowering in his shadow with the screaming baby. His gun is still smoking, and he looks down at the monster with disgust.
“Not the same one, but I’ll count this as revenge nevertheless,” he sneers and spits on her body, now a naked woman underneath me.
Her hands try in vain to stop the bleeding on her side as her eyes roll wildly back and forth searching for her baby. When she realizes she isn’t going to survive, plain brown eyes lock on me, and human hands grip my scruff as she pulls herself up to face me.
“Don’t let him…Corey…get my baby!” she pleads, her eyes full of tears.
Before I can ask, they glaze over and she falls limply to the floor.
Don’t let Corey get her baby? Why isn’t she afraid of me? Who’s Corey? Why did she plead with me to save her baby instead of lashing out? I sit on my haunches, watching the last of her blood ooze out of her body as the last twitching of life makes her flinch on the floor.
I feel the pressure of a small body push against me, and I look down to see Cricket panting hard as she lays against my side. Besides being tired, she seems to be alright.
“Cookie…” Ryder says gently, now in his human form as he walks towards her slowly with his hands reaching for her.
Cookie sobs loudly and collapses against his chest, cradling the baby between them as Ryder holds her and cups the back of the baby's head with his other hand. He looks down at the dead woman with pity and hatred, his hand knotting in Cookie’s short hair in a way that could seem possessive, but just then Cricket sighs and collapses.
Her body shifts on its own back to a human as she loses consciousness.
Rachel lunges for us, falling on human knees after shifting in mid-air and pulling her sister into her arms. Fear roils through me, real fear, not fear for my life of fear of unseen danger. Fear for someone else, fear for Cricket. I shift without realizing, and reach for her with trembling hands, but Rachel glares at me with such fury that I freeze in place.
“Is she…” I stammer, unable to say the words.
But Rachel shakes her head. “Mysisteris not dead, Jackson!” she snaps. “But had you just left her alone maybe she would have had the strength to withstand this rather than letting it get sapped by an over-eager puppy!”
“What are you talking about?” Ryder’s eyes narrow on me dangerously and I’m on my feet in a flash. I’ve seen what Ryder can do, I know I won't win one on one, but I’m not leaving. I stand my ground, flexing my arms and clenching and unclenching my fists in preparation of having my ass kicked.
