Nope, so not a kinky sex scene.
“Drop him!” Trey shouted.
As Trey moved toward them, the woman immediately released her victim, the man’s body falling limply to the ground. She spun around, taking a half dozen steps toward Trey in a blur.
Shit, she is fast.
Her strides put her directly in a halo of light coming from a nearby streetlamp, giving Trey his first clear look at the woman.
Who…maybe…probably…wasn’t a woman at all.
Lidless eyes the size of baseballs, solid black and glossy as glass, dominated a pale face framed in dark hair that seemed to flutter in a nonexistent breeze with an energy of its own. The creature’s nose was little more than two slits above a pair of colorless lips, and when it opened its mouth to hiss at him, Trey saw dozens of short, ragged teeth.
But even with the huge eyes and manic hair, possibly the most disconcerting part of the creature’s appearance was the fact that it was wearing clothes. There was something unsettling about a creature this scary-looking wearing a miniskirt, silk blouse, and high heels. It was just wrong.
Another groan from the guy on the ground distracted Trey for a fraction of a second. That’s when the creature attacked. One second, she was hissing at him, the next she was on him, both hands slamming into his chest hard enough to crack ribs and send him flying fifteen feet through the air. He vaguely felt his SIG tumbling into the darkness and decided he might be in a little bit of trouble.
Something in his back broke on impact, a spike of pain ripping down both legs to leave them throbbing and partially numb. But Trey didn’t have much time to worry about how bad the damage might be as the creature came at him again. Apparently, the thing didn’t like Trey interrupting whatever it had been doing to the guy on the ground.
Trey scrambled painfully to his feet, claws and fangs extending with a low growl, ready to face the thing this time. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t ready for how fast the creature was. He barely got his hands up before she was hitting him with a combination of punches and shoves that had him stumbling back step by step.
Pissed, Trey let out a snarl and slashed at the creature’s face, hoping to at least back her off. Amazingly, his claws connected somehow, ripping four deep gouges across the left side of the thing’s face and down its neck. The thing shrieked and stumbled back, falling to the ground, clear, watery liquid that Trey assumed was blood gushing out. The wound was gruesome, and Trey wondered if he’d somehow managed to kill the creature.
He wasn’t that lucky.
The creature slowly got to its feet, a bizarre sound coming from its throat. Crap, was the thing laughing? Freaky beyond description, the sound made his skin want to crawl away and hide in the nearby dumpster.
The slashes on the creature’s face healed within seconds, disappearing without a trace. Even the clear liquid that had been running down its neck was reabsorbed until there was no sign he’d injured the thing at all. Werewolves healed fast, but not that fast.
Damn, he might very well be fucked.
Trey tried to slash the creature’s face again when it charged at him a second later, but it blocked the blow, both hands clamping down on his arm and yanking hard. He panicked, thinking she was going to rip the damn thing off, but then he was flying through the air again. He had about half a second to contemplate how much this was going to hurt, then he was slamming into the side of the big construction dumpster. The metal gave under the impact. Unfortunately, he felt parts of him give, too.
He hit the ground a few feet from the woman’s victim. The guy looked like shit, eyes closed, his face haggard and exhausted. Trey could hear the man’s heartbeat, so he knew he was alive, but it was a lot slower and weaker than it should have been. Whatever the creature had been doing to the man, it had nearly killed him.
A blur of movement out of the corner of his eye made Trey realize he should have been a little more concerned about the creature killinghim.Then the thing was on him, long, narrow fingers wrapping around his throat to crush the life out of him at the same time she picked him up and slammed him against the side of the dented dumpster.
Trey punched, slashed, and shoved at the creature, air running out as he was once more stunned she could be so strong. The creature ripped open his shirt, its cold lips pressing against the bare skin of his chest right where his wolf head tattoo was. Pain ripped through him, as if the creature was pulling his soul out right through his chest.
The pain shoved Trey’s shift further than it already was, fangs and claws fully extending, muscles across his back and shoulders twisting and contracting, bones beginning to crack and lengthen as his body fought to assume a shape more conducive to this fight. The pain in his chest lessened and Trey threw every ounce of his strength into breaking free, slashing and ripping at the creature’s throat and chest in rapid succession.
He knew he was hurting the creature because it was shrieking and hissing like mad, but he was weakening at the same time. It was a toss-up as to which one of them would collapse first.
In the distance, he heard the rapid thud of approaching boots, too fast to be a regular human. Connor’s scent reached him just as Trey finally succeeded in shoving the creature away. It stared at him for a moment before its head snapped around in the direction of those footsteps. With one more quick hiss at Trey, the creature was off, running as fast as hell across the park toward Main Street. A second later Connor was hauling ass after it, his handgun out—along with his fangs and claws.
Trey stayed on his feet for all of five more seconds before he slowly slid down the side of the dumpster and onto the ground, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. He knew he should get up and help his pack mate chase the thing, but he was too damn tired.
A glance at his chest showed no real wound beyond some redness, as if the creature had been trying to give him a hickey. That thought was actually more repulsive than the idea of the thing biting him.
Giving up on the idea of going after Connor, Trey instead crawled over to the guy on the ground, getting him flipped over and hopefully in a position that would make breathing easier. The guy’s heart rate wasn’t any better than it had been before, but at least it wasn’t any worse. Looking closer at the man’s skin, Trey realized it looked severely dehydrated. Not nearly as bad as the body they’d found at the landfill, but obviously well on the way to that condition. Trey wondered how much longer the guy could have survived whatever the creature had been doing to him.
The sound of heavy footsteps in the grass drew his attention away from the man and he turned his head to see Connor racing across the park toward him. A few seconds later, his friend was at his side, asking if he was okay. Trey couldn’t do much except nod.
“What the hell was that thing?” Connor whispered, moving over to check the other guy on the ground. “I heard you yelling from a couple blocks away and came running, but she was already on the move by the time I got here. I tried to chase her…it…whatever the hell we’re supposed to call the thing, but it was too damn fast. I almost caught up to it until it ducked into an alley and ran right up the side of a frigging wall.”
“I’m not sure what that thing was, but it’s definitely the same thing that’s responsible for the bodies in the landfills,” Trey said weakly. “She was well on the way to draining this poor guy when I arrived.”
“Draining?” Connor prompted, curious.
