The butcher knife flashed above her and Higgs loomed over her, breathing hard, his face dark green with fury and his silver eyes glittering.
“I tried to be nice,” he spat. “I gave you chances. But you had to go and act all stuck—up, all better than me. Well, nobody’s better than me in my own place.”
Kiera twisted and kicked at him as he came down on top of her.
“Get off me!” she gasped, breathlessly.
“Don’t think so.” He caught her bound wrists and pushed them above her head, driving them into the floor so hard her fingers went numb. The knife in his other hand came up, its rusty blade glinting under the harsh freezer lights.
Kiera stared up at it, every instinct in her screaming. Thoughts skittered through her head, almost too fast to catch.
This is it. This is how he killed the others. This is what happened to all of them and I’m next–I’ll be hanging on a meat hook in less than an hour!
Her breath came too fast…her vision narrowed.
No, she thought wildly. No, no, no?—
Then a roar shook the freezer, and it wasn’t a sound any human throat could make. It was a deep, savage, furious roar that seemed to vibrate through the hanging carcasses and the steel rails and the frozen concrete under her back.
Higgs froze above her and so did Kiera.
And then Brux hit him.
32
KIERA
The big Monstrum came out of the maze of hanging canthors like a living nightmare—huge, fast, and terrifying. His eyes had gone blood—red and as Kiera watched, his face changed in the span of a heartbeat. The sharp, human angles lengthened–bones shifting beneath skin and fur until the face above that broad, powerful body was no longer truly a man’s at all.
It was a wolf’s.
A great snarling wolf’s face with blood-red eyes and fangs bared, but somehow he kept his bipedal form.
Kiera had never seen anything so frightening in her life…or anything so beautiful.
Brux hit Higgs so hard the bigger male flew off her and crashed into a row of hanging carcasses, sending them swinging wildly on their hooks. Metal shrieked and frozen meat slammed into frozen meat. Green—black blood flakes and frost rained down.
Higgs yelled and lashed out blindly with the knife.
Brux was on him at once, growling and snapping, half man and half beast and wholly enraged.
Kiera scrambled backward across the freezing floor, boots slipping, bound hands scrabbling for purchase on bloody ice and concrete. She could do nothing but stare in horror as the two males battled.
Higgs fought harder than she would have expected. For all his potbelly and his stink and his disgusting slovenly appearance, he was still big and strong from ranch work and butchering. He swung the knife in vicious, desperate arcs, trying to keep Brux at bay.
“You freak!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the frozen walls. “You mangy fucking freak!”
Brux answered with a roar that made the hanging carcasses shudder. He knocked the knife aside once, twice—then Higgs ducked low and drove the blade forward with a grunt.
The rusty knife went into Brux’s side.
Kiera screamed in horror, but Brux barely seemed to feel it–or if he did, the pain only fed the terrible red fury burning in his eyes.
He slammed Higgs back against the steel butchering table so hard the whole thing rang like a struck bell. The rusty butcher knife came out in a wet jerk and hit the floor with a clang. Dark red blood ran down Brux’s side, startlingly bright against his fur and skin, but he didn’t even glance at the wound.
Higgs did and for the first time, Kiera saw real fear in his face–fear and the knowledge that the half man/half beast attacking him couldn’t be stopped.
Brux’s wolf muzzle pulled back from his fangs in a snarl that promised nothing but death.
