The cabin exploded.
The walls and roof of the cabin blew out.
She came to about ten feet lower down, the world whirling, swimming below her in the night, like oil on water. Blinking, she tried to orient herself. Her midsection was sandwiched—part ofthe metal roof structure above and the tree trunk at her waist below. The tree had sheared off and lay horizontal, precariously balanced on another downed tree.
Pretty sure I’m alive. Undead. Ish.
Deaf. Bleeding. She was a piece of vamp-meat dangling from the trunk.
She vamped out again, the darkness gone, her night vision like day.
A werewolf stood directly below her. He was in fighting form, half man, half wolf, eyes gleaming in the night. He leaped.
She jerked her hands, head, and feet up, banging her head against a roof beam. She saw stars and gagged.Concussion much?
He landed on all fours and leaped again.
She pitched her body to the left. Twisting her hands along her sides, she tried to locate a weapon. Nothing was in the right place. She had gotten her hand around a nine-mil and was wrenching it free when the dumbass wolf realized he needed a boost. He dragged up a log. Stepped on it. Contracted his body. And jumped.
Shiloh got her weapon up. Fired. He was dead before he impacted. The shot—and being dead—made him miss his mark. His fangs crashed into the downed trunk.
It shuddered and slid. The metal of the roof cut into her left hammy.
The werewolves had probably detected her during her initial search and had been outside the concussive blast range with their paws over their ears when the cabin blew. Because this was a freaking trap.
She slithered, shoved, and pushed herself out before the gunshot brought reinforcements. She was too slow. Before she freed her feet, she fired at another wolf, this one in full wolf form. No kill shot. The wolf tumbled, floundered, and ran away.Fast. Mighthave been yelping. She was still deaf. But her sense of smell was back. She could smell her own blood and the stench of werewolf.
When she worked herself free, Shiloh fell to the ground in a heap and puked everywhere. She hadn’t even known vamps could vomit. Rancid blood. Coffee. She gagged again and the world swirled. She had to get off the ground and pick a shooting position, because she was in no shape to fight close quarters. She beheaded the dead werewolf first, just in case it could regenerate or something, and stuck the head on a shattered limb. Her trademark now.
The world whirling, she limped to the nearest intact tree, a dying fir, and pulled herself up, hand over hand, maybe twenty feet. Saw a muzzle flash—the gun kind, not the wolf kind. Fred stood in the middle of the clearing, twenty yards from her, near the remains of the cabin. The vamp’s feet were braced to either side of…
She was standing over what was left of Mi-sook. Protecting her. Firing. Firing. Into a ring of three wolves. Two wolves were injured, circling, limping, slavering. The third was closest to Shiloh’s tree, in half-wolf form. That one was holding a gun. His finger configuration was wrong to squeeze a trigger, but he worked the tip of his oversized pinky into the trigger guard.
Shiloh had no time to think. She shouted,“Concretus sanguinis!”
Misshapen magic shot from her. The working hit a scorched log with a flashing bang. The werewolf’s shot went wild. Fred popped in, stabbed the wolf-man in the gut with her silver-plated vamp-killer, wrenched the shortsword up, disemboweling him, and popped back to Mi-sook before the other wolves could react.
The half-form wolf-guy crumpled, trying to shift to human shape, but the silver on the blade stopped the shape-shift. The half-transformed, unhealed wolf writhed on the ground.
Shiloh spoke thewyrdagain, carefully, aiming the working, and the wolf stiffened, his blood turned to stone. The razors and her magic almost waltzed through her, dancing to the music of vengeance satisfied. She didn’t know what the dancing sensation meant, but probably nothing good.
Looking around, she sniffed the air. It stank of pepper spray, explosives, wood smoke, and the stench of regular wolf, silver-burned wolf, entrails, death. Vamp blood, some of it hers. And puke.
Her brain was starting to work. The magic had been instinctive, not prepared. Shiloh vaguely remembered thewyrdworking from her childhood at her mother’s knee. The curse turned an opponent’s blood solid. If she had hit Fred with the first misaimed attempt, the vamp would be dead. That’s why she never usedwyrdmagic.
Hearing began to return. In the clearing, more shots were fired. Five. A wolf howled.
The world steadied. Her internal clock was missing time since she came to. Not good. For the first time—maybe the second?—she studied the surroundings on the ground beneath her.Safe enough. She located and checked her weapons, putting everything where it belonged.
Fred screamed, guttural, coarse. Two wolves had attacked at the same time. One had the vamp’s right calf in its jaws. The other had snapped and managed to get its fangs caught in the bib of Fred’s overall-armor. That wolf hung from her, jerking her off balance.
On the far side of the clearing, Kang stepped out of the trees, a white wolf bitch at her side.
“Well, that sucks,” Shiloh whispered.
Thestasisamulet had been removed. They were in deep doodoo if the two joined the attack.
Shiloh dropped to the ground. Landed wrong. Her anklesnapped. Broke. She righted herself and kicked out, hoping gravity would set it, but she wasn’t that lucky. Blood splashed from the forgotten thigh gash. It must have been deep.
