CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

There were five boxenwolves circling me—none of them as big as Mick’s alpha female friend, and not nearly the size Mick had been when he’d attacked me in my yard. That didn’t mean I could survive them all in a pack, though. If they took me down, I’d never get up again. And I had to get up. I had Peter to take care of.

The first one came at me low. I kicked him in the side of his head, smashing him against the boulders off to my left. He stayed down. Two more sprang at me from either side. I grabbed one by the throat and ripped open his chest with my fangs. Head-butted the other, his mate’s lung and bones dripping from my teeth, and twirled out from under him as he went flying over my shoulder, slashing my back with his hind paws. So much for my silver Narciso Rodriguez. I still had my hand around the second one’s throat. I spit out his ribs and pulled him to my face, took his heart in my mouth, and tore it from his body. This time I didn’t spit. The taste was too seductive. I was chewing and swallowing even as the last two boxenwolves took me down.

One sank his teeth in my neck, the other tore at my stomach. The third, the one I’d thrown over my shoulder, came at my legs. I kicked him off and sliced the claws of my toes across his jugular. Even as his life’s blood spurted into the air, he tried one last time to hamstring me. Again I kicked him away while I struggled with my hands to pry the first wolf’s jaws from my neck. If he bit any deeper, I wouldn’t survive. The wolf at my stomach had backed off to devour the flesh he’d torn from me, but already my body was healing itself. It was my neck I had to protect.

I was gushing blood. Losing strength. The wolf’s snout was buried in my throat. If I took my hands from his jaws, he’d clamp down deeper and I’d die. I tried raking him with my toes, kicking him off me, but I couldn’t get purchase. I felt my strength draining. I’d been right about my evening wrap. I wouldn’t be wearing it home.

I wasn’t ready for my life to end. Not when I was just beginning a new relationship. And not when Peter needed me to save him. Fuck Mick Erzatz and his fucking zoo beasts. I struggled harder to break free.

Two gunshots fired. The wolf with my stomach in his mouth never stopped chewing. The wolf with his teeth in my neck let loose, his jaw went slack, and he collapsed on top of me. I pushed him off and leapt after the gourmand. He was so busy dining that he didn’t know I was there until I ripped off his collar.

“You’re a fucking piece of shit, Diego!” Mick raged over the explosions. In the light of the fireworks, I saw the boxenwolf begin his shift back to human form. I grabbed him by his forearm and flung him over my head, impaling him on a tree branch. He looked like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Mick screamed at his spasming body, “Do I have to do everything myself?!”

And instantly, Mick shifted. It was so fast, I barely saw the transformation. One minute he was a short, fat ex-agent in a brown kimono, smelling slightly feral, and the next he was the rabid werewolf that had attacked me in my yard a week ago, foaming from the mouth with acid saliva, and smelling so rancid that my eyes began to burn.

He advanced on me slowly, snarling, his orange eyes glowing with hatred. His body was muscle and power, but his head was grotesque, with its double row of yellow fangs and mangled muzzle. My vision was so heightened, I could see the veins in his gums, even in the darkness between fireworks. He was no longer Mick Erzatz, but a frenzied beast driven by ancient intincts. He wanted to eviscerate me, disembowel me. To feed on the vampyre who had obliterated his progenitor, the creature who birthed him—the mother of all evil.

It’s not easy to kill a vampyre, especially if we’ve fed recently, and God knows I’d done enough of that in the last few days. Drowning, staking, dismemberment, and decapitation will do the trick. This Mick-turned-werebeast wouldn’t be able to drown me or impale me, but he could tear me apart.

I needed my clan. In the distance behind me I heard them rending flesh, bodies crashing against beasts, teeth crunching bone. Howling, raging, ungodly screams rent the air. The Vampyres of Hollywood had their hands full with the rest of Mick’s weres; they wouldn’t be coming to help anytime soon.

I sprang at him as he crouched to leap. He was stronger than I was, more powerful, but I was faster. I raked my nails across his face and his left eyeball split in two, viscous liquid draining down his snout. I landed to his left, and he had to turn his whole body to track me past his newly blinded eye.

We circled each other, with him lunging in to snap at me and pulling away before I could strike or kick. If I could get my teeth into his neck, I could pierce his jugular, but to do that, I needed to come at him from behind. His snout was too long for me to rush him head-on. One second I was facing him, and the next I took myself to his blind side and prepared to spring.

I felt a searing pain in my calf. The boxenwolf I’d kicked in the head and sent flying against the boulders had slunk in to help his master. He looked dazed and disoriented, but he had his teeth clamped on my right leg. I was wearing chain-link Giuseppe Zanotti ankle straps with four-inch metal heels. Not the best choice for someone who anticipated a battle with beasts, but they worked with my dress, and come on, what’s more important? The advantage was that the ankle straps had kept them on my feet. I slammed my left foot down on the boxenwolf’s head. My heel smashed through his skull like a steel spike. He was dead instantly, my shoe sucked into his brain matter so deeply that I couldn’t withdraw my heel. So when he went down, so did I. I had to push against his skull with my right foot to free myself.

And by that time, it was all over. Mick was on top of me, his front legs pinning my shoulders to the ground. We locked eyes. There was nothing human left in his, only animalistic rage and the foreshadowing of a kill. He raised his head and howled in victory.

I was going to die. Too young for a vampyre. Too young for me, Chatelaine of the Vampyres of Hollywood. Who would look out for my clan? Who would take care of Maral? And what had I done to Peter, brought him into the lion’s den to be killed?

I heard a loud crack and tore my eyes away, searching the sky for the fireworks, the last image I would see in my 450 years of life. The sky stayed dark; I was losing my vision. A second sound exploded past me and that’s when I realized Peter was firing again. His second shot grazed Mick’s shoulder.

Mick pulled away from me, a chunk of my breast in his jaws, and hurtled towards Peter. Peter fired a third time, missing Mick but hitting me. That was twice he’d done that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was Freudian. We’d have to talk about that—if we lived to talk. Pain burned through my arm as I focused my sight on the space between Peter and the were. Mick was twenty feet from him. Peter would be dead in two seconds.

I am Clan Dakhanavar of the First Bloodline. Our nature—my father’s and my ancestors’—is to guard and protect. At that moment, 450 years of instinct flooded my being. I’ve never been so strong or so fast. I was on top of Mick in an instant, reaching around to tear off his gonads. He writhed and bucked, and I rode him like Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy. Then I sank my teeth in his neck and used my claws to rip out his heart. The last of the fireworks exploded.

So much for Mick’s New Year’s resolution.