Balanced on its hind legs, the wolf’s front claws scrape at my chest. Only the thick boar’s-hide armor saves me from a mauling. Slowly, my knives sink through skin, muscle, and sinew. Black liquid smears my fingers. An overwhelming stench inhabits my nose, coating my senses. My stomach heaves, and I nearly retch.
“Cat!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Griffin frantically hacking at a beast thatjust won’t die.
“I thought she wanted you alive!” he shouts.
“She does!” I think. The state I’m in when she gets me has never concerned her, though.
My worn-out muscles can’t take the beast’s weight for much longer. I want to slam my foot into its rear leg joint and hope it crumples, but I don’t dare shift my balance. My legs are locked, and that’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“Carver!” Griffin’s shout is smoke-ravaged and panicked. “Carver! Get Cat!”
Carver tries. Everyone tries, but the third wolf, the biggest and most ferocious of the three, is between Beta Team and us. It wheels and snarls and lunges, keeping them away. Every move one of them makes toward us is countered by an even quicker, more vicious attack from the beast.
My body has already burned up the last of its reserves. Heat crawls up my spine. A chill slides back down. A numbing weight presses on me, and as if the world took a step forward and left me standing there alone, sound and sensation fade, growing distant.
My back cramps, snapping my consciousness back into place with a ribbon of pain that races from my waist to my neck. I jerk, and the jagged claws of one paw scrape off my leather breastplate and slice into my armpit. The sting is heinous. I cry out, reflexively pulling my arms down.
In the next second, I’m on my back. My head cracks against the ground, and bright spots explode behind my eyes. I blink, dazed. The creature is over me, its front paws planted on my shoulders and the air punched from my lungs.
Griffin’s anguished roar overlaps the wolf’s triumphant howl. A violent shudder runs the length of the creature’s deformed body. Its face twists and pops, moving like there’s something alive and churning beneath the skin. The monster turns into a living nightmare before my eyes, and I finally understand what we’re dealing with.
No wonder injuries don’t affect them, their breath smells of decay, and their skin is the yellow-gray of death. I should have known.
The canine snout, ears, and fangs melt, turning malleable and unrecognizable before sharpening into humanlike features. Leathery skin pulls tight over harshly angled cheek and jawbones. The eyes don’t change. They’re still glowing and soulless.
The heavy paws crushing my shoulders morph into a man’s enormous hands and grab my wrists. Muscles and bones in the creature’s ropy forearms snap into place and weigh painfully on my bent arms, grinding my elbows into the dirt. The torso transforms, narrowing, and then the hind legs trapping mine become thick thighs, calves, and feet. Every part of the monster is hairless and tough, massive and muscled. The Vrykolakas lowers its face to my neck and inhales deeply.
I shudder.The living dead. The wolf-men Charonwon’t ferry into the Underworld for any price, leaving them here instead.
The undead creature’s entire body drops heavily onto mine. Its unnatural eyes flare brightly as it sniffs once more and then groans a guttural sound that sends a bolt of sheer terror through me. Fear and revulsion spur me into action as the creature grinds what can only be a male erection against the juncture of my thighs.
My thrashing only seems to excite it more, and it ruthlessly rams its swollen member against my groin. “She saidalive, Princess. All she said was alive.”
I jerk my head up, catching it on the side of its chin. I can’t move, and that’s as high as I can reach. I’m pinned, powerless, and deeply afraid.
The Vrykolakas bites its lower lip with a still lethally sharp incisor, drops its head, and then smears its disgusting blood across my mouth. Griffin shouts my name. I twist away, gagging.
“Fight me. Yes, fight.” It breathes in quick, harsh pants against my neck as it switches my wrists into one hand and then shoves its other hand between us, getting up under my tunic to grip the fastening of my pants.
A hollow feeling carves a hole in my chest. It can’t end like this.
“Don’t let it do this, Mother.” A pleading note slips into my voice, and I hate myself a little more for it. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill her all those years ago, and she sends methis?
The undead creature barks a canine laugh that mixes with Griffin’s wild shouting. “Mother lost control. But I’ll still sell you for a mountain of gold.”
The Vrykolakas lowers its head and licks my neck, its tongue dry and scraping. Panic spikes impossibly higher when pointed teeth scrape down the column of my throat, pausing over my thundering vein. The creature shudders, grating a harsh sound against my skin. “You’re worth a lot, or I’d drink you dry while I rut.”
Claws score my stomach and fold viciously inward, ripping open my pants. I scream as the Vrykolakas tears the barrier away. Fear and rage blister through me. I see no way out of this.
Griffin suddenly smashes into the creature’s body like a charging Centaur, throwing the monster off me. They both pitch over and tumble to the side. Griffin rolls to his feet first, his face a nearly unrecognizable mask of fury. He lands a punishing kick to the creature’s rib cage, flipping it onto its back. Before the Vrykolakas can move, Griffin’s sword spirals in a tight, deadly arc and severs its head from its body. Leathery skin collapses onto bones, desiccating within seconds.
The monster Griffin was fighting before he came to my rescue surges over me and then leaps on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Griffin twists, but the creature is still in wolf-form and weighs more than he does. It pins him in the ash, its jaws descending with brutal force.
“No!” My heart vaults straight up my throat.
Griffin shields his neck with his forearm, and the Vrykolakas’s teeth latch around his vambrace. I thank the Gods the leather is thick, tough, and boiled into near solidity as the creature snarls and shakes its head, whipping Griffin’s arm around.
