But there were more behind me now, too, flowing down the stairs in a stream of matted, ugly, patchy fur; my own little pack of Relics, whom I had drawn out of their skins.I could feel the tethers binding us to each other, and knew I had helped with their Change, although I didn’t know how.But I hadn’t forced it.
They had decided to wake up and come out to play, all on their own.And while my human side was busy screaming for them to go back, to get out of here, to run!My other half, or other third, or whatever the hell was going on, was bellowing a welcome.
And then the fight was on.
It was sudden and horrible and brutal, and my alter ego loved.Every.Minute.
We tore a path through the howling fury on the stairs because most of the Relics were wolves, just like us, only not like us.They were massive and vicious and strong—God, so strong!The stolen pelts or whatever had made them damned effective.
But they were also new to this, weren’t they?
They didn’t know how to fight like a pack, how to work together, how to gang up on one of their enemies as we did—three or four at a time—while the others kept going, pushing back the rest of our opponents and keeping them at bay, while behind us, their friend was ripped apart.And then we did it again, and again, and again.
It sounds painstaking.It wasn’t.The speed with which we carved through the mass of untrained and probably newly turned monsters would have to be seen to be believed, but no one would have been able to see it because the lights were all out now, victims of the carnage.I could see—my wolf eyes worked just fine in the dark—but it didn’t matter much, for my third didn’t go on sight nearly as much as scent.
It was easy to distinguish pack from prey by smell alone, but one scent was missing.The Circle’s fearsome wards, with their vaguely potion-y stench and vicious bite, one even worse than mine, should have been impeding everyone’s path.And that included me, as I doubted I would read as a Corps member like this.
Yet, they were nowhere to be seen.
I raised a gory maw and felt my lips pull back from my teeth, because yes.That answered the question of whether we had a traitor, didn’t it?Those wards were some of the best in existence, but they didn’t work when switched off, and no Relic had known how to do that, or would have had the clearance to reach them if he did.
My fury communicated itself to my wolf, or whatever you wanted to call the creature whose head was brushing against the ceiling of the hall.And for a moment, the emotion overrode whatever tenuous grip I had on sanity, and instinct took over.And instinct seemed to have one and only one mode for her.
“Lia!”
I looked up sometime later, vaguely aware that I had a body dangling from my mouth, and saw a Relic looking back at me from a few inches away.I snarled and dropped my latest prey, ready to go for the new one’s throat, and then paused at a familiar smell.Very familiar.
Good.
Pack.
Mate.
Cyrus.
“Lia!”he said again, and dared to touch me.But it was a gentle touch, and he acted like he had a right to it, which drew my human mind closer to the surface.
He seemed to know it.
“Hargroves,” he growled.“Come.”
He turned and started down the corridor, and I followed; I wasn’t sure why.The name he’d spoken meant nothing to me, but the scent—the pack, forming up around me, brushing me with their sides, telling me through touch and the scents on them that they’d fed and fed well...
Yes.
Good.
And Cyrus, up ahead...his scent was the strongest of all, and she approved.Strong, male, ferocious.Yes.
She followed him down the hall that was so full of bloody fur that it was almost solid, with little room to maneuver.But the pack let her through easily, with no shoving required.Of course they did.
She was Lupa.
We had already passed down the stairs, now running with gore, as slick underfoot as a waterfall, and littered with the remains we couldn’t be bothered to consume.Ahead were some more doors that didn’t last long, and more people who thought they knew how to fight.And then some that actually did.
She felt the change ripple through the pack when they encountered real resistance for the first time.The stairs had been stuffed with cannon fodder; the real soldiers were down here.But there weren’t so many of them.Most were in the next room, busy savaging the tiny knot of war mages clustered around—
Hargroves.The name echoed through my mind again.So that was him?
