Before she could slip out one of the rear windows, the wall beside her exploded in a shower of concrete fragments, throwing chips and dust everywhere. Crap, they were shooting at her with silenced weapons. Who the hell were these people?
She stopped thinking and simply ran for her life as one bullet after another smacked into the wall, pulverizing the sheetrock and the concrete blocks underneath. The acrid odor of smokeless powder filled the air, stinging her nose. She’d gone shooting with her dad enough times for the smell to be unforgettable, only now it was way more pungent.
But when a bullet smacked into the wall only a few feet away from her face, she picked up another scent. It wasn’t nearly as familiar as the stench of gunpowder, but she recognized it all the same. It was the damn perfume Boyd had spritzed on her. It even burned her nose as she breathed it in.
She tried escaping out a back exit, the door long ago ripped off the hinges and cast aside. But the moment she turned in that direction, two men stepped through the doorway and started shooting at her with silenced automatic weapons. It was surreal to run screaming from a hail of gunfire she could barely hear. If it wasn’t for the impact of the bullets hitting the wall, she’d have thought this was all some kind of game.
Lana had no choice now but to run up the sagging metal stairs, toward the upper floors, even as every horror movie she’d ever watched screamed at her that she was making a big mistake. Footsteps echoed behind her, heavy boots on steel reverberating in the concrete stairwell. They were right behind her.
Gunshots pushed her higher and higher, past the second- and third-floor landings. Not that there was anywhere to run on those levels, because most of the flooring had either fallen through or been ripped out. Only a monkey could have escaped across the remaining grid work of metal beams and rotten wood slats.
She raced up the last flight of stairs, praying there’d be a fire escape or some other way off the roof. But when she reached the top level and saw the heavy chain running through the space in the door where the knob used to be, then snaking back through a hole that had been drilled through the brick and metal of the doorframe, she knew her luck had run out. There was no way she was going to get through that chain and the big padlock holding it in place.
But whatever instincts had kept her alive this long refused to give up. Refused to let her mind consider how devastated her parents would be—how devastated Max would be—if they found her beaten and tortured like Denise.
Letting loose a growl, she ran across the last few steps between her and the door, lifting her leg to kick the door with her foot as hard as she could. The chain going through the door held, but the rusted hinges on the left didn’t. They snapped with a shriek of metal and the door tumbled out of its frame.
Lana braced herself for the pain of broken bones to come screaming up her leg, but she got lucky. Either that or she was so high on adrenaline she couldn’t feel anything. Either way, nothing hurt as she climbed over the remnants of the door and sprinted across the roof.
She heard the loud thump of boots nearing the top of the stairs just as she reached the far side of the roof and discovered there wasn’t a fire escape. She gaped at the ten-foot chasm between the roof she was on and the one on the building next to it. But it wasn’t the gap that scared the crap out of her. It was the fact that the far roof was at least two floors lower. If she tried to jump over there, she’d have to throw herself hard enough to cross the gap and pray she’d survive the landing. She’d have to be insane to try it.
She turned and hurried toward the left side of the building, hoping for better luck over there. But she barely made it halfway there before the sound of boots announced she’d run out of time. Boyd stood in the doorway of the stairwell. He was holding a small automatic rifle in his hands, a sick, demented smile slowly spreading across his face. The other men chasing her would join him soon enough, but for that moment, it was just the two of them.
She glanced in the direction she’d been running, calculating the possibility that there might be a fire escape on that side of the roof. But with Boyd there, it was a chance she couldn’t take. If she ran over there and found nothing to help her, she was going to die up here.
Lana spun and went back the way she’d come. The gravel and tar of the rooftop exploded around her at the same moment she heard the Pop! Pop! Pop! as Boyd shot at her with his silenced weapon. She ignored the near misses, running faster as she approached the far edge of the roof.
She didn’t slow and she didn’t think. She simply held her breath and jumped as hard as she could.
Bullets zipped past her as she sailed across the open gap between the buildings. How she continued to be so lucky was a mystery to her, but she’d easily cleared the chasm dividing the two rooftops. She had no time to marvel at the feat because the far rooftop was quickly rushing up to meet her. She braced herself for impact but envisioned so many things breaking she couldn’t imagine walking away from this. But when her feet hit the gravel, the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be. Those amazing instincts she was coming to trust with her life tucked her into a ball and rolled her twice across the roof before propelling her right back to her feet.
She almost let out a whoop of excitement as she regained her balance and raced for the far side of the building she’d landed on. Bullets continued to slap into the roof around her, but she ran even faster now as she realized she could really get away from the men chasing her.
Lana threw herself off the roof of the two-story building, far less concerned about how she’d handle the landing this time. The hail of bullets disappeared before she even landed, replaced by the sound of angry cursing. She almost laughed as she landed in the tall grass of a long-abandoned building and took off running again. It would take the men a little while to get down from the roof, and she wasn’t going to be around by the time that happened.
She ran at full speed toward the more populated part of town, where the stores and clubs were. When she got there, she slowed to a fast walk, not wanting to attract attention. As she passed a darkened storefront, she caught her reflection in the glass, and the image stopped her cold.
Lana stepped closer, her instincts telling her the threat from her pursuers had passed. Stunned by what she saw in the glass, she lifted her hand to touch her face simply to convince herself it wasn’t some kind of trick.
But it wasn’t a trick. She was really seeing her reflection in the glass—except in this particular reflection, she had half-inch long canines protruding from her upper jaw. The canines on the bottom were longer than normal, too. And her eyes were glowing green. She touched one of her fangs and was shocked not only to realize it was sharp as hell, but also that the tip of her finger was now graced with a slightly curved claw half an inch long. A quick glance down confirmed that all her fingernails were similarly equipped.
Crap.
She had claws and fangs and glowing eyes.
She gasped for breath, barely able to stand. Max had been telling the truth all along. She really was in danger, there really were people after her, and she really was a werewolf.
A werewolf like Max.
The fact that Boyd and his crew had been trying to kill her didn’t seem important right now. The only thing that mattered was getting to Max and telling him she was sorry. There’d been something special between them, and she’d walked away in a heartbeat rather than trust him. She had to fix that horrible mistake.
The instincts that had saved her life were screaming at her again, except this time, they weren’t telling her to run away from something. They were begging her to run toward something—Max. At that second, the need to find him and tell him exactly how she felt about him was so overwhelming she couldn’t have resisted it if she’d wanted to.
She gazed at her reflection in fascination as her fangs and claws slowly receded. It felt so normal she couldn’t imagine why she’d been so hung up about seeing those same weapons on Max.
One more thing to apologize for.
Lana pulled her phone out of her purse as she walked toward the nearest intersection. There were several text messages from Brandy and Miriam, asking where the hell she’d gone off to. She thumbed back a quick reply, saying the music had gotten too loud and she’d grabbed a cab.
