“Tell me, Luke,” Gabriel growled as he stalked forward on bent-backward legs. No one would say he didn’t look like a werewolf now, seven and a half foot of slimy black fur and a bony, heavy head with high-set ears and a muzzle with too many teeth. Muscle bulged around his jaw, heavy enough to show the ridges through his skin, and anything human had bleached from his eyes to leave them as gold as coins. “How did you think this would end?”
Like this? Maybe, Took supposed, if he was honest. Six months ago this would have been the perfect result, an out he could deny responsibility for. He hadn’twantedto die, but he basically already had, so why not.
Things had changed—not enough to fix everything, but the easy intimacy of a kiss across his knuckles was something—and yet he’d still walked in here.
Took laughed wetly and spat out blood and chips of metal. He got his feet under him and pushed himself up the door. “Fuck if I know,” he admitted. “You?”
A wolf’s face wasn’t meant to look rueful, but Gabriel still tried.
“Like this,” he said as he padded forward on bare paws, his boots ragged leather strips around his ankles. His huge hand snapped out and closed around Took’s head, cupped around the side of his skull like it wasalmostaffectionate. Sharp claws pressed in against Took’s neck, and Gabriel’s thumb dug in the soft skin under his jaw to force his mouth shut. It pushed his fangs back up into their sockets, which hurt like fuck. “Always like this, kid.”
He started to squeeze.
It wasn’t the pain that disoriented Took—although it pulsed black and static between his ears—so much as the sound of his skull as it creaked. He slid his free hand around behind his back and groped for the sheath on the back of his belt.
Took’s knife, the one he supposed was either on Lawrence’s belt now or back in Philly, had spent his career clipped just under his spine. He’d used it to open plastic seals or jimmy locks. The only blood it had ever drawn was his own the time he tried to pry up a floorboard with it and slipped. He still made sure it was recoated with colloidal silver gel every time he went back to work.
Hopefully whoever had dropped this kit off had been just as exacting.
He slid the blade free, the weighted hilt tucked into his palm, and swung in a wide, vicious arc that cut across the underside of Gabriel’s arm. A spray of skunk-sour blood flicked across the wide, thick-haired chest and then across the underside of his muzzle. The end of the blade scraped over his jaw and flicked under the corner of his lips. It sliced the black flews up to his cheek and up toward his eye.
Gabriel jerked his head back in time to avoid a patch. He snarled as the silver suspension worked its way down into his blood, the edges of the injury pale as the silver tried to undo the curse. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but he’d have that mark for a while.
Blood and slabber splattered as Gabriel shook his head to dislodge the pain. His hand tightened and Took gagged as the claw under his chin pierced up into his mouth. He curled his tongue away from the scrape of it.
“Was there a point to that?” Gabriel rasped as he plucked the knife out of Took’s suddenly nerveless hand. “Did you think this would kill me?”
He flicked the knife away. Took gargled out a laugh around the talon.
“If I could give up,” he said, “life’d be easier. Death would have been easier.”
Gabriel snorted. “It’d have been over anyhow. I guess I get to fix that now,” he said. His fist tightened. “Goodbye.”
The edges of Took’s vision squeezed into a black blur that faded until all he could see was Gabriel’s face. But he could still hear. The low growl of a heavy engine cut through the scrape of his bones as it approached.
Took always took point, even if it made no sense, and Madoc saved the day. A flash of will pushed back the black rim of pressure in his skull.
The matte-black bike, Harley engine under a road-bike paintwork, smashed through the window of the bar.
“Son of a bitch,” someone yelped as the Hounds and their groupies staggered back from the broken glass and the dangerous spin of the bike’s tires as it skidded toward them.
Madoc stepped off the bike as it fell, composed as though he’d just come through the front door, black on black, silver bright against his collar and across his chest. He smiled at Gabriel, no humor in the flash of sharp white fangs and bloody tongue.
“Hounds. Last I heard you were in Montana,” he yelled across the bar. “That’s where I’ve had people looking.”
Gabriel flexed his fingers around Took’s head. It would have been easy enough to end it there or make a good try at it, but instead he let go. Took had a half-formed plan on how to help Madoc, but good intentions weren’t enough to keep him on his feet.
“Maybe he’s not so good at hide-and-seek, then,” Gabriel growled. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble.”
One of the shifted wolves—built along the same lines as Gabriel but blond furred and not much taller than normal—swung a clawed paw at Madoc’s head. He swayed back and caught the wolf’s wrist before the blow connected. His fingers were pale against dark skin and tawny fur as he used the force the wolf had put into the punch to slam him down into the ground. The already scarred planks that floored the bar splintered further under impact. Madoc braced his boot in the wolf’s armpit and torqued the thick, shifted arm off at the shoulder.
The shriek that came out of the wolf was high-pitched and shocked, the death squeal of a farm animal that had just realized it was food. Sudden, unexpected fear rippled out through the crowd as they watched the curse try to stitch the wolf’s body back together. It didn’t get a chance as Madoc pulled his personal 410-bore shotgun pistol out of the holster. His equipment came from the BITER quartermaster, and the saltpeter and silver shot punched the wolf’s skull into the floor.
“I just followed the stench,” Madoc said as he dropped the arm. “Tell me, wolf, are you going to fight me or tuck tail and run away?”
Gabriel chuckled. “Not my—”
Before he could finish, Grey shoved to the front of the crowd. His face was only half-changed, bones sharp as they twisted under his skin and made him twitch, but his hands were still steady enough to jerk the shotgun up to his shoulder.
