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“What?” she said and then flinched when a bullet pierced the front bumper of the SUV.
Wes shoved her around the SUV and pushed her onto her butt. “Stay there, Eleanor. Do not move.”
Her heart pounding, she stared wide-eyed at Wes as he shifted to his lion with a low growl. His clothes burst apart at the seams and landed in a heap at her feet. She stared at him, his lovely yellow eyes and broad nose and the thick dark mane surrounding his head.
“Wes,” she whispered, “be careful.”
He purred to her before racing away. Swallowing hard, Eleanor peeked around the SUV. The humans were all dead, their bodies torn apart and their blood soaking into the pavement.
She clapped her hand over her mouth when her gaze slid to Chad. He was lying only a few feet from the SUV with his throat torn wide open and his eyes staring sightlessly into the night sky.
“Gross,” Eleanor said in a horrified voice.
A scream of pain made her gaze swivel to the right. A cheetah and a leopard fought viciously near Wes’s car. She clapped her hand over her mouth, sour-tasting vomit in the back of her throat when the cheetah raked his claws across the leopard’s stomach, and its intestines fell out with a wet and gelatinous plop.
The leopard collapsed, and the cheetah roared in triumph before chasing down a second leopard. Cooper and Grayson were working as a team to take out three other shifters - two lions and a cougar. Snarling and growling, their fur splattered with blood, they fought violently with the large beasts.
“Wes… where’s Wes?” Eleanor said. She searched the area frantically, her hands clutching at the smooth side of the SUV when she finally saw him. He battled a leopard, rearing up on his back legs and swiping at the beast. The leopard was fast and lean, but he was no match for Wes’s powerful strength. Wes tore open the leopard’s throat and roared in victory when the hot blood flowed down the leopard’s chest.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she watched in horror as Rourke slammed into Boone. He knocked Boone into Wes’s car, shattering the windshield and forcing a strangled whine of pain from the tiger’s mouth. He slid down off the hood, and Boone’s striped body rippled and changed into his human form.
Eleanor could already see the dark bruising forming on Boone’s side as Rourke shifted to his human form and grabbed Boone around the throat. He lifted the big man into the air like he weighed nothing, grinning at him with hot glee as the unconscious Boone dangled in his grip.
“Boone, no!” Eleanor screamed as Rourke raised his other hand. The nails had already turned to claws. Before he could slash Boone open, Wes leaped onto him, knocking Boone free.
Rourke stumbled and fell. He shifted to his lion form before leaping to his feet. As Boone laid limply on the ground, Wes stood over him protectively, snarling and baring his fangs at Rourke.
Eleanor cried out when Rourke and Wes leaped at each other, their big bodies connecting with a hard thud. They fell to the ground, their claws gouging and slashing at each other as their bodies rolled across the pavement.
She looked around frantically for the others, but Chase had joined Cooper and Grayson in the fight against the other shifters, and they were paying no attention to Wes and Rourke.
“Chase! Cooper! Grayson!” Eleanor screamed, but the growling and the screams of the shifters were too loud for them to hear her. She stood and looked around desperately for a gun. Despite how fiercely Wes fought, Eleanor knew that Rourke would best him. The serum streaming through Rourke’s veins made him impossibly strong.
Her gaze fell on Wes’s shredded jeans lying on the ground in front of her. The handle of her pocketknife stuck out from the material, and she snatched it up, clicking open the knife as she ran toward the fighting lions.
Rourke rolled on top of Wes, pinning him down with his paws on Wes’s torn and bitten shoulders. Adrenaline shrieking through her veins, the only sound in her ears the heavy, frantic beat of her own heart, Eleanor skidded to a stop next to the lions.
“Hey, asshole!” she shouted. Rourke turned his head, his teeth coated in Wes’s blood and his golden eyes full of madness and rage.
With a grunt of effort, Eleanor shoved the blade of her pocketknife deep into Rourke’s right eye.
He howled with pain, saliva dripping from his mouth as his body slammed into Eleanor’s and knocked her off her feet. She backpedalled away, her butt dragging across the pavement and the palms of her hand getting torn up by small rocks and bits of broken glass from the shattered windshield.
His shrieks growing louder, Rourke staggered around in a circle, pawing frantically at the knife sticking out of his eye as Wes climbed to his feet. Still in his lion form, he stalked toward the wounded Rourke, his fangs gleaming and blood dripping from his matted fur.
He leaped onto Rourke’s back, knocking the lion to his stomach, and Eleanor swallowed hard when Wes tore open the back of Rourke’s neck. Wes bit into his neck again, severing the spinal cord and cutting off the lion’s howl of agony. Rourke slumped forward, his sides heaving once, twice, and then a third time before going still.
Eleanor stared at the knife sticking out of Rourke’s eye and wiped a trembling hand across her mouth as Wes shifted to his human form and limped toward her. He groaned as he sank to his knees beside her, his body covered in deep slashes and puncture wounds. “Butterfly, are you all right?”
She nodded as a final dying scream came from behind them. She craned her neck, staring at Cooper and Grayson and Chase as the three of them shifted to their human forms, leaving a pile of dead shifters behind them. Chase wiped the blood from his mouth before joining Cooper and Grayson as they crouched next to Boone.
“Boone,” Cooper patted his cheek gently, “wake up, buddy. Open your eyes.”
She could almost see the relief wash over Wes when Boone groaned and opened his eyes. “Fuck me. I think I got hit by a truck.”
“Don’t move yet,” Grayson said as Boone started to sit up.
“I’m okay,” Boone said. “Other than the fact that I got my ass kicked by a lion.”
