“They’re dropping on us from the ceiling!” Hale shouted.
Growling, he swung at one of the swiftly moving shadows with a flat length of metal with rags wrapped around the bottom of it. It didn’t look that sharp, but when it hit the ghoul coming at them, the shriek of pain was unlike anything Jenna had ever heard before. It was so unnerving it brought the hairs up on the back of her neck.
“They’re all around us!” Mike shouted over the noise of shrieking ghouls and falling rocks. “This was a frigging ambush! Hannah was right. They used Jenna as bait.”
Jenna almost asked what that meant until the implications of the ghouls tying her to a post in the middle of nowhere hit her. They’d done it because they’d somehow known somebody would come for her. And they’d laid in wait for them. She immediately felt bad that everyone had been lured into a trap on her account, but a moment later, all she could think about was the fact that she had so many people who were willing to risk everything for her. She couldn’t deny how good that felt.
Suddenly, there was a ghoul running straight at her in the darkness, mouth opened incredibly wide to show off more razor-sharp teeth than any creature had a right to possess. Jenna froze, not sure what she could possibly do to defend herself. Then Owen was in front of her, flashlight flailing as he swung his own piece of rusted metal like a madman. The ghoul took several swipes at him,but Owen stood his ground. The creature let out another one of those horrifying shrieks as Owen clipped its arm with his thin club, and the ghoul abruptly backed off.
Way off.
“Here, take this!” Maya shouted, showing up out of nowhere and shoving something into Jenna’s hands. “They’re deathly afraid of rust because it will hurt them.”
Jenna stared at the thing in her hands, having a difficult time making it out in the wavering flashlight. But after a few seconds, she realized it was a piece of bicycle chain that was so rusted that the links could barely move. She had a difficult time believing something like that could protect her, but she nevertheless twisted one end of the chain around her right hand, ignoring the blood staining it, then turned to face the oncoming hoard of ghouls.
Fear immediately overwhelmed her when she saw how many there were. It was impossible to get a clear count because the tunnel they were in was too dark, but there seemed to be dozens upon dozens of the things moving around out there in the shadows. And every few seconds, another one would drop down from one of the holes in the ceiling.
“There are too many for us to fight our way through!” Mike called out even as one of the ghouls that was on their side got dragged to the floor of thecave by his own kind and torn apart. Apparently claws that could tear through stone could also tear through flesh as hard as stone. “Fall back to the wall so they can’t surround us.”
But even with the wall at their backs and all of them arranged in a semicircle facing out, Jenna knew they were screwed. The ghouls were coming at them all at once now, and there were simply so many of them. Maybe if she, Owen, and Maya were werewolves like Hale and Mike, it might have been okay. But she and her friends were about as far away from werewolves as people could get, and given how the ghouls kept trying to get at them first, it seemed clear the creatures knew that as well.
“They’re about to charge,” Mike warned. “Stay close together. Don’t let them lure anyone out away from the group.”
Jenna’s heart sank. She would fight, that was for damn sure, but she had no delusions of what would happen after that. With so many ghouls, the outcome was obvious.
Why the hell hadn’t the ghouls left her in the holding pens with everyone else a little while longer? The outcome might have been the same, but at least then she could have been with Trevor when it happened.
“Here they come,” Hale murmured.
He edged closer to Jenna like he intended to protect her all by himself. She would have glanced overand smiled at Trevor’s friend, but then the mob of ghouls started moving toward them and she forgot about everything but swinging the rusty bike chain in her hands.
Out of nowhere, a long howl suddenly tore through the air, cutting right through the grunts and snarls of the ghouls surrounding them, the eerie noise bouncing off the walls and ceiling, freezing everyone, including Jenna. The ghouls looked around, confused and nervous, grunting and chattering to each other with something that almost sounded like concern.
The howl came again, closer and full of rage, sending shivers down Jenna’s spine. While the ghouls definitely seemed disconcerted now, she wasn’t sure if she was hopeful at the thought of what might be coming or terrified.
Trevor had locked on Jenna’s scent before he even left the large cavern with the holding pens, so tracking it wasn’t a problem. No, the only issue he had now was Jenna’s growing fear. He could smell it clear as day, the scent becoming more and more potent with every step through the tunnels, and it was making his inner wolf pace back and forth like a caged animal. From the scuffs he could make out along the stone floor, it was clear that his soul matehad fought her captors every step of the way. It was equally obvious that her efforts hadn’t done any good. The thought of what those creatures might have done to her was damn near driving him to shift even as he ran.
Trevor’s guilt grew with each passing second. If he’d gotten to the cavern fifteen minutes earlier, he could have stopped the ghouls from taking Jenna. He would have saved her and already gotten her out of these damn tunnels. If anything happened to her, it would be his fault, all because he hadn’t been fast enough.
He had no idea how long he ran, but the sound of fighting abruptly dragged Trevor out of his downward spiral of self-recrimination. He slid to a halt, looking around wildly in an effort to pinpoint the source of the noise. The musty scent of ghouls was so strong it made his eyes water and kept him from being able to smell nearly anything else. He couldn’t imagine how many of the creatures it would take to generate an odor that strong.
He sniffed the air again, finally able to filter out the stench of ghoul after a few moments and focus on the scents he was really looking for. Hale and Mike must have partially shifted because the scents of their inner werewolves were more obvious than usual. Trevor smelled Maya and Owen, too. But stronger than any of those scents was the familiar and soothing scent of honeysuckles.
Jenna was alive.
The realization nearly made him dizzy with relief.
But then the fear that was pouring off her in waves hit him, and everything else faded into the background. The only thing that mattered right then was getting to his soul mate and saving her life.
Trevor heard the piece of metal from the sign pole he’d been carrying clatter to the ground before he even realized he’d dropped it. But before he could wonder why he’d done that, his knees were slamming into the stone floor of the cave, the bones and muscles all over his body beginning to twist as he started to shift.
Undergoing a full shift was uncomfortable at the best of times. With the sheer amount of physical reshaping going on, there was no way to avoid the pain. But going through the change from human to wolf while wearing clothes was frigging awkward.
His boots slid off without too much of a problem, but the belt and pants were the worst. Which was why, at any other time, Trevor would have at least popped his belt and shoved his jeans down. Unfortunately, in the midst of worrying about Jenna, he’d forgotten about any of that. So as soon as his jawline elongated enough to allow it, he dipped his head down and bit right through the leather of his belt and the front of his jeans. Finding something to wear later was going to be a problem,but he’d worry about that burning bridge when he got to it.
His T-shirt tore right up the back at the same time as he shook free of his pants, and then he was focusing on the change to his wolf form, pushing the transformation faster than he ever had. Doing that made it hurt worse, but he couldn’t take the chance that he’d be too late.
Again.
