CHAPTER 26

Gray light filtered through the opening. When had the sun gone down?

Matt hurried back in the direction he’d come. Even if Mandenauer was still alive, they had no time left for discussion. Matt would have to move forward with his theory without confirmation. Right now, he didn’t have much choice.

Setting the lantern down, Matt tore through the knapsack. But where the old man kept every type of weaponry on his person, in his knapsack not so much. The sharpest thing Matt found was the broken end of a paintbrush. How had Mandenauer planned on making a blood sacrifice with nothing but that?

Matt scanned the ground. Snatching up a likely rock, he dragged the jagged edge across his arm. Blood welled; he dabbed a finger, then began to paint.

“Not enough,” he muttered. He was going to need a bigger hole.

A soft thud, followed by the pitter-patter of wolf feet, had him grasping at the first idea that flitted through his head. Matt ducked behind the stone door, then pulled it as close to his body as he could. He was trapped in the small space, but at least the Nahual couldn’t rip out his throat.

A snarl erupted, and something slammed into the door on the other side, driving the stone into Matt’s chest and his chest seemingly through his shoulder blades and into the wall at his back.

Matt fought for breath as he gathered his thoughts. He needed blood—a lot of it and fast. He didn’t have a knife, but he did have fangs. Or at least the Nahual did. According to Mandenauer there was a cure for lycanthropy. He’d take the man up on it.

If they survived.

Before he could think any more about it, Matt offered his leg, and an instant later the creature’s teeth sank into his calf.

Matt cried out, his fingers clenching around the edge of the door. The Nahual tore free a bite-sized chunk of flesh and blood sprayed. Matt yanked his leg back where it belonged.

Then he saw the gap in his plan that loomed as large as the one in his calf. How was he going to paint a circle around the tableau if he was holding on to the door to keep the Nahual from latching onto his throat?

“I never said it was a foolproof plan,” Matt murmured.

Burning pain shot through his veins. His vision flickered. For an instant he was somewhere else, running across the range, chasing a herd of—

Bam. Matt was back in his body, still clinging to the door as the Nahual paced and snarled on the other side.

Had those been teenagers?

Matt shook his head. “I never chased any kids. I never ran on four paws.”

Yet.

“Mandenauer!” Matt shouted.

He hadn’t heard any shots or any screams. Just a thud. Maybe the old man had merely dropped his gun.

As if that would ever happen.

Another muffled thump in the distance had Matt’s spirits lifting. The old man wasn’t dead. He was—

A second snarl reverberated down the stone hall. Matt risked a peek just as the reddish-brown wolf with Gina’s eyes emerged from the gloom.

*   *   *

Gina smelled blood and she wanted it, needed it, craved it like she craved the moon. She was half-mad with the pulse of hunger. When she caught the scent of the man who smelled like oranges what was left of Gina’s control snapped.

How dare anyone take what was hers?

She charged, crashing into her maker, who stood between her and the kill. She relished the battle. The crunch of bodies, the snap of teeth, the rip of flesh, then the splatter of blood against the dirt like rain. Fighting kept her from remembering the siren call of insanity, which made her want to howl at the moon, scrape at the ground, and whine until the voices shrieking in her head went away. They were loud, those voices, and they hurt her ears, even as the agonizing hunger pierced her stomach with razor-sharp claws.

Beneath those screams something whispered that she couldn’t kill her maker—literally—that this was foolish, suicidal, wrong. But the hunger, the smell of oranges and blood, and that flicker of memory—a man’s laughter, his kiss, his touch, the way he made her feel. Every time she thought she knew who she was, another memory would surface and confuse her, increasing the lure of that madness.

However, violence, blood, pain—they grounded her in this body, solidifying her as the wolf she knew herself to be. Her maker would never die? Fine with her. That only meant she could hurt him again and again and again. He was the perfect toy.

She didn’t even notice when her prey stopped hiding and began to move.

*   *   *

This was his chance.

Matt let go of the door, swiped his fingers through the bleeding mess that was his leg, and got back to work. It was the race of a lifetime.

Would he finish the job before one of the werewolves won the battle over who got to kill him?

Would he complete the circle of blood around the drawings before he passed out?

Or would he become a werewolf first and have no fingers for painting, let alone enough humanity left to care?

Would what he was doing even work?

It didn’t matter, because this was all that he had.

Matt’s hand trembled. Precious droplets of blood ran down his arm, fell to the floor. But there was more pouring from his leg—so much that the dirt beneath his feet had gone dark and muddy.

“Shouldn’t have made the damn vista so big,” he muttered.

His teeth were beginning to chatter or perhaps just to change. They seemed too big for his mouth. They kept clacking together, distracting him.

Snarls, growls, the rending of flesh, the thud of bodies, continued behind him. Matt ignored it all. It was when the sounds stopped that he needed to worry.

Then, suddenly, they did.

Matt risked a glance. Gina lay on the ground, broken, bleeding, breathing, but barely. He had to force himself not to run to her. There was nothing he could do, and she wouldn’t know him anyway.

A rumble trilled across the damp air. Matt lifted his gaze from Gina’s inert form to the Nahual’s eyes. They were still Jase McCord’s eyes, and they hated Matt.

The creature stalked forward, tongue lolling, fangs dripping. He made sure Matt had time to see his coming bloody, painful death—and to be afraid.

Instead, Matt brushed his fingers over his leg one last time and sealed the circle.

The sleek black wolf’s ruff lifted. He turned his head, tilted it in confusion; then, an instant too late, he knew.

A single yelp escaped, and then an unseen force drew him backward, claws digging into the dirt, making furrows all the way into the crypt. The door slammed shut, cutting off his desperate howl. The silence that followed was both eerie and welcome. Then a low growl rumbled through the gloom as Gina rolled to her feet, ravenous eyes fixed on Matt.

Matt didn’t move. He had nowhere to go, even if he could take a step without falling. However, she lifted her nose, sniffed once, snarled, and turned away.

He was like her now, or near enough, and she needed human blood.

Gina had taken a single step toward the opening when a figure staggered from the shadows.

She leaped; a gun fired. She fell.

Matt lifted his gaze to Edward Mandenauer, and the old man shot him, too.