Hale dove one way, Carter going the other. But even as they both moved to avoid being shot, they still made sure to keep themselves between the Balauri and the direction Karissa and everyone else had fled. With all those scared and shaken people to herd toward the exit, Hale knew he had to give his soul mate more time to get away.
Training and instinct had Hale pulling his M4 up to return fire, even though he knew it would do little good against the Balauri’s impenetrable scales. But until he had time to figure out how to use those two test tubes of pink goo, there wasn’t much else he could do. Bagley was still standing in the same place he’d been since arriving back in the bay, watching the scene in front of him play out with an amused expression on his face. But Hale had no time to worry about what the asshole of dread might be up to as Tamm charged straight at him, rifle chattering away on full automatic. Hale dove and rolled across the floor, closing the distance between himself and his attacker.
A rage-filled snarl came from Hale’s left and he chanced a glance in that direction to see that Carterhad completely lost control—again. His pack mate’s eyes had changed from their normal yellow-gold to vivid blue. His claws and fangs had extended farther than Hale had ever seen, and somewhere along the way he’d lost his weapon. He’d shoved the other Balaur twenty feet across the floor, pinning him up against one of the assembly robots, and was going at the guy ferociously with his claws and fangs. The Balaur barely had a chance to get his arms up to defend himself.
Hearing Tamm reloading, Hale turned his attention back to the threat in front of him. Cursing, he lunged forward as the man fired at him on full automatic. Several of the rounds sliced across his back as he tackled Tamm to the floor, but he barely felt them.
Even though he’d fought the guy twice before, Hale was still stunned at how strong the Balaur was. The two of them rolled across the floor, exchanging kicks and punches as they both tried to get their weapons pointed at the other.
Hale got lucky, knocking the Balaur’s assault rifle aside long enough to get the barrel of his own weapon twisted around so he could fire half his magazine into the guy’s chest. Tamm slid back a few feet, grunting in pain, but as expected, the bullets failed to penetrate his skin.
Still, it gave Hale time to dig one of the tubes of goo out of a pocket on his tactical vest. Praying he wasn’t making a huge mistake, he lunged forwardand smashed the glass vial against Tamm’s face, slicing the palm and fingers of his own hand but succeeding in smearing the pink potion all over the supernatural’s face. The Balaur stumbled backward, free hand swiping at his eyes, growling as he tried to get the oily mess off.
Hale had no idea if the stuff was working, but before he could even try and make a guess, he heard another loud snarl from Carter’s direction.
Carter was still upright and fighting, but from the rage twisting his face, Hale doubted his pack mate even remembered his own name, much less anything else. The Carter he knew was gone and in his place was someone Hale didn’t even recognize. He’d heard of omega werewolves losing themselves in a rage, but he’d never personally seen it before. Simply put, it was terrifying as hell.
Carter was holding a length of metal wrapped in some kind of shiny plastic, and it took Hale a moment to realize it was the arm off the assembly robot that was now spinning slowly around in circles with nothing but a ragged composite-covered-stub sticking out. His pack mate was using what used to be the robot’s arm to batter his opponent over and over, growling and snarling the whole time. But no matter how ferocious his friend fought or how hard he struck, the results were still the same. The Balaur’s scale-covered skin was simply too tough to get through.
Unfortunately, Carter’s skin wasn’t the same, and even though he fought with an intensity the likes of which Hale had never seen, he was still taking one injury after another, blood running everywhere from multiple gunshot wounds. But sooner or later, one of those bullets would hit Carter in the head or heart, and it would all be over.
Hale couldn’t let that happen.
Being too far away for anything else, Hale had no choice but to reach in his vest for the last tube of potion that would hopefully weaken the Balaur’s invulnerable skin and sent it flying across the room.
The tube impacted exactly where Hale had aimed it, the glass shattering against the side of the Balaur’s head, pink oily goo splattering everywhere.
The Balaur staggered back a few steps, reaching up to run his fingers through the liquid running down his neck and into the back of his shirt. From the way the Balaur’s eyes widened, Hale suspected the creature wasn’t enjoying the feel of the stuff on his skin.
Then Carter was wading back into the fray, swinging that makeshift metal club again, but this time the results were drastically different. This time Carter was actually causing damage.
A lot of damage.
Hale’s mind refused to comprehend what he was seeing. The Pack had been fighting the Balauri for weeks, unable to do much—if any—damage to asupernatural creature impervious to any weapon they could name. Yet here was Carter, with a simple piece of metal, doing more damage than he would have ever thought possible.
The potion had worked. The Balauri were no longer invulnerable.
He looked over to see Tamm glancing back and forth between him and Carter, his dark eyes wide in alarm. A split second later, the Balaur let out a roar of anger and charged at Hale again, weapon coming up on full automatic. Hale met the other man halfway, wincing as bullets punched through his torso. Ignoring the instinct that told him to pull the trigger on his M4, he spun it around instead, slamming the butt into Tamm’s forehead as hard as he could, hoping to replicate the effects of that tree branch at the hunting preserve.
Hale was actually surprised when Tamm flew backward and dropped like a rock. He took a cautious step forward to make sure the guy was actually out, but movement from the corner of his eye had him snapping his head up to look that way. He expected to see Bagley coming his way with those damn swords of his twirling. Instead, the armor-clad hit man was disappearing once again into one of those inky-black portals.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that the asshole was going after Karissa again and that he’d only been waiting around to see the Balauri kill him andCarter. He turned to Carter, praying his pack mate had regained enough control to be able to help go after Karissa and the others.
The chances of that seemed good. The second Balaur was lying on the floor in front of the still-spinning robot, apparently out cold. Carter walked slowly toward Hale, his hands empty. While his eyes were still glowing slightly blue, they were growing more tranquil by the second.
Then the Balaur that Carter had knocked out was moving again. Before Hale could shout a warning, the guy grabbed his weapon and fired at least half a dozen rounds right into Carter’s back at near point-blank range. Carter stumbled forward as the bullets tore through him. In a single heartbeat, his eyes went from almost calm to filled with rage, the blue glow flaring so bright that people probably would have been able to see it two rooms away.
With a vicious snarl, Carter spun and charged at the Balaur, who was already trying to aim for another shot. Carter ignored the weapon completely, slamming into the man and shoving him back so hard he would have flown twenty feet through the air if there hadn’t been a heavily damaged assembly line robot in the way.
The Balaur smacked into what was left of the robot’s tattered arm, a length of steel support beam going right through his midsection. Hale stared, shocked. Carter seemed stunned as well. For amoment, he simply stood there looking at the carnage he’d caused. When he finally turned to Hale, his eyes were no longer blue. But before Hale could say anything, Carter took off, running away from him, into the darkened building.
Hale was torn. He wanted to go after Carter, but he had to find Karissa before Bagley did. He paused long enough to slap some cuffs on the still-unconscious Tamm, shoot a superfast text to Mike about the potion, and then ran in the same direction Karissa and her brothers had taken.
But he’d barely gone a dozen strides when his nose told him that Karissa was too far away for him to reach her fast enough this way. He needed speed—a lot of speed.
He needed to shift into his wolf form.
Only he’d never done it before.
