Was he dealing with some kind of supernatural?
For the millionth time, Hale wished that his nose worked as well as all the other werewolves’ in the Pack. If it did, he’d have known right away whether the guy was a werewolf or not. But his nose hadn’t worked since he was seventeen and some asshole had broken it. Even becoming a werewolf years later hadn’t fixed the damage.
The two of them rolled and tumbled across the floor of the club as they fought, smashing through tables and chairs, people screaming as they scrambled away. While Hale couldn’t bear to even think about pulling his sidearm in this crowd, his opponent didn’t have that problem. In a blur of motion, the man’s hand came up with a large-frame automatic handgun.
Hale had no choice but to let the claws on his right hand extend. Hoping the darkness and strobing lights would keep anyone nearby from seeing anything too clearly, he slashed his claws across the guy’s forearm. He wasn’t aiming to inflict seriousdamage, but he couldn’t let this guy start firing off rounds in the club. Hopefully, he’d be able to explain the claws marks away as a byproduct of all the smashed furniture. It was a risk but worth it to disarm one of these killers.
His claws struck true, digging into the man’s forearm. But instead of drawing blood, his claws merely scraped across the skin with a grating sound like nails on an old-school chalkboard.
That didn’t make sense. A werewolf’s claws could rip through wood, concrete, and even steel in the right situation.
Okay, it was starting to look like this guy definitelywasn’thuman.
The man yanked his arm back a little, glancing down at the scratches Hale’s claws had left instead of the bloody gashes Hale had expected. The man lifted his head to regard Hale with an expression that was part anger, part curiosity.
Hale tensed, expecting the guy to put a bullet through his forehead.Thatwould be bad. A werewolf could survive damn near any amount of damage, but a bullet to the head or heart would be enough to kill him.
But instead, the man lunged to the side and grabbed the first person within reach—a woman with dark, curly hair who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one years old. She screamed as he put a heavily muscled arm around her neck and draggedher in front of him like a shield as he backpedaled, angling toward the back of the club. He was no longer pointing the gun at Hale; he was aiming it at the woman.
Hale bit back a growl and finally drew his own weapon. “Freeze right there! Let the woman go. No one needs to get hurt here.”
The guy never slowed, heading for what was most assuredly a rear exit with the woman in front of him as a human shield.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hale saw that Carter and Mike still had their hands full with the other four shooters. There’d be no help coming from that direction.
In the fraction of a second Hale had wasted glancing at his pack mates, the guy with the hostage had moved all the way across the club, regardless of how hard the terrified woman was kicking and struggling. Hale hurried after them, worrying about what would happen to the hostage if he lost sight of them. Being forced to fight his way through the throng of people still in the club looking for a way out slowed him down, and by the time he raced along the dark corridor behind the DJ’s booth, the back door was already swinging closed.
Hale slammed through the metal door, darting his head left and right as he found himself in a trash-strewn alley. When he spotted the woman on the ground, his stomach plummeted, but then hepicked up her heartbeat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sliding to his knees besides the woman.
Besides her tousled hair and clothes, she seemed fine. She was definitely dazed though.
She pushed herself upright, nodding and pointing down the alley. “He let me go the moment we got outside. Then he kept running that way. He was so damn fast.”
Hale looked in the direction she pointed, expecting the man to be long gone. Which was why he was stunned to see the guy standing at the end of the alley returning Hale’s gaze with a look that could only be called challenging. Then he slowly turned and took off.
Any thought Hale might have had about not going after the man disappeared the moment he started running. There was a part of Hale that insisted he was simply doing his job as a cop by chasing a dangerous bad guy. But there was another part—the bigger part—that saw the man running away and couldn’t help but think of him as prey.
And as a werewolf, Hale simply couldn’t ignore chasing down prey.
Within three blocks of dark, trash-filled alleys, Hale was surer than ever that the man he was chasing was some kind of supernatural. There was no way a human could run this fast, leaping over walls and dumpsters like it was nothing. Hale was oneof the faster alpha werewolves in an entire pack of alphas, yet he was still fighting to keep up with the man ahead of him, much less gain any ground.
He must have chased the man for two damn miles, pretty sure the guy was purposely staying just out of reach instead of leaving him in the dust. Hale’s gut told him that he was being lured into a trap, but when he finally decided to pull up and end the pursuit, he rounded a corner to find the man standing in the middle of a dimly lit alley, three-story buildings on the left and right, and dumpsters blocking a good portion of the far end.
It was a natural ambush site.
Hale whipped his head around, looking for snipers on the roof and accomplices in the shadows. In all of the previous attacks, there had only been five suspects reported, but there was no reason to think there couldn’t be another—or even more than one—waiting for a cop dumb enough to let himself get lured out here to the middle of nowhere, far from backup.
Since he didn’t have a nose he could trust, Hale was forced to depend on his eyes and ears. Surprisingly, he neither saw nor heard anything that even suggested there was anyone else out here with them. Only the one silent assailant standing in the dim light coming from a single nearby filth-covered bulb, waiting patiently. Like he was allowing Hale to reach some kind of decision. The guy didn’teven have his weapon out.
Having no idea why he did it, Hale holstered his own weapon and began to move forward. He wondered if he should say something about the guy being under arrest but ultimately decided against it. Something told him the man was never going to come peaceably. This was going to come down to who won the fight that was about to start.
The man swung a mind-blurringly fast punch toward Hale’s throat, one that would have crushed his larynx if it connected. It didn’t. But the next one aimed at his floating ribs sure as hell did; the crack of bones breaking was probably loud enough to hear a block away.
With his martial arts training combined with his werewolf speed and strength, Hale had always thought he was the most dangerous fighter in Texas, but maybe he was wrong. Because now that they were out of the club and free to do whatever they wanted, this guy he was up against was violent AF.
Within sixty seconds, both of them had landed at least a dozen blows each, breaking skin and bones, all in complete silence. The man didn’t let out a peep even when Hale broke his collarbone.
