Page 62 of Banished From the Pack

A branch snaps nearby, and Warrick straightens, already on alert. He makes a gesture with his hand, and Callan and Ethan nod.

Another crack snaps into the air.

Warrick slides me off his lap and stands, popping his knuckles and grinning. “It’s been too quiet lately, boys. Let’s go smash some skulls.” He heads down the steps, the others close on his heel. I follow, feeling more scared than brave, though I’m not about to let it show.

Outside, as dawn washes the darkness from the sky, several men emerge from the woods, carrying bats and metal bars.

Warrick grins wider. “Vampires,” he confirms in a low growl, since he probably thinks I don’t know the scent yet. “You know what to do, boys.”

“Go for the heart or the head,” Ethan says. “Get some blood to make us stronger as we fight.” He spits on the ground and then punches his fist into his other palm.

“Baby girl,” Warrick says, glancing over his shoulder. “You stay behind me if you need to. I’ll be your cover. Whatever you do, stay safe.”

“I got this,” I say, puffing out my chest.

“Yeah, you do,” Callan says, chuckling and affectionately ruffling my hair. “We’ll get ‘em, pet.”

“Let’s move,” Warrick says.

As one, my three men shift into wolves and race toward the vampires. I shift, too, but I pause for a moment, studying their attack. I’m not skilled in fighting anything but catfish and an occasional gator, and I don’t want to get myself killed or act without strategy and get the men killed. They fight as one, though their attack seems simple enough. They avoid the bats and bars, lunge for the male’s necks, and tear their heads off with their sharp teeth and powerful jaws.

Callan shifts back to human, seizes one of the bats, and swings it overhead, bringing it down on an injured male’s ribcage. “Here you go, Warrick. Eat your fill!”

The ribcage splits open with a sickening crunch. Blood spews from the opening. For every vampire they take down, a handful more appear. They leap onto Warrick’s back, moving so fast they’re a blur as they slash and bite, barrel into the wolves, and beat them with their metal weapons. One of them charges into Ethan and sends him tumbling across the clearing when he goes for the dead vampire’s heart. Seeming unfazed, Callan proceeds to the next downed vampire. Grabbing one of the metal bars from the ground, he plunges it straight through the guy’s heart with such force that blood and organ bits shoot into the air.

“This one’s mine,” he roars, thrusting his hand into the chest cavity and seizing the bloody heart. He tears it apart with his teeth. Another vampire rushes toward Callan, the bat in his hands at the ready.

I want to scream, “Look out!” but I’m in wolf form, so only a woof comes out. Callan spins my way and sees the guy coming in for an attack. In a blur, he shifts back to wolf and leaps at the vampire, knocking him to the ground.

I’m half their size as a wolf as well as a human, but I’m still bigger than the vampires. I lunge for one and clamp my teeth down on his throat, the way I see Warrick doing. I brace my paws against him, shake my head and rip out chunks his neck until he goes limp. He falls to the ground, and a sense of pride fills my chest. It feels good to be a part of this fight.

A force like a tree flying in a hurricane slams into my side, sending me sprawling. I howl and jump to my feet, swiping at the vampire. She grins and ducks aside when I charge her again. Then she leaps onto my back, her arms wrapping around my neck in a stranglehold. I howl, and a second later, Ethan lands beside us in a single bound and rips her from my back, sending her head rolling and her body sailing into the trees. I send him a silent thanks and dive for another vampire, ripping into her middle to take her out of the fight before killing her.

When I bite into her neck, I can feel her cold, dead blood run over my tongue. I want to spit it out, but I remember what the guys said. I swallow it instead, and a few minutes later, I feel the strength they promised. It’s like coffee. It takes terrible, but it comes with an excited, shaky, charged feeling that runs through my blood like it did the first time I had coffee, when the guys laughed at me when I freaked out after drinking a full cup. But they were nice, too, and Callan took me for a run in the woods to help get the energy out.

Now, the way to get energy out is to kill. Mama taught me that you should only kill to survive. In the swamp, that meant killing something to eat. Even when we killed one of the poisonous snakes that would slither under the walls, we always ate it. Out here, it’s no different. I kill so that I can live, and if I eat a little of the kill, it’s all the more justified.

There are so many of them, but we’re winning. They keep coming out of the woods, but the stream of reinforcements has died to a trickle. I’ve killed a handful of vamps, and many more bodies litter the clearing. Ethan is feasting on a screaming woman while Warrick tears the head off another vampire while two more cling to his back. Callan has gone into the woods a bit, but I hear the snarling and see pieces of vampires flying through the air as he tears them apart. There’s blood everywhere. It bathes the stones and the sand and spatters across the tree trunks. It coats the bushes and the leaves which lay scattered across the ground.

I’m pumped with adrenaline and vampire blood, ready to take down my next victim. I start for a short male, but he sprints into the woods when he sees me coming. I give chase. I’m just behind the house, diving for the man under a sprawling oak, when something heavy falls over my body. I stumble, caught in folds of rope, trying to figure out what happened. It’s a net! Wrestling and snarling, I struggle to get free. I shift into my human form and claw at the netting, searching for a knot to untie so I can climb free.

Strong arms wrap around me from behind and lift me in the air. A male laughs quietly as I squirm and kick in his embrace. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?” he says in a familiar voice.

It’s Evan, the bastard who tricked me into thinking he was a friend and then stole wolf secrets from me while I was drugged. The man responsible for the ache in my heart and the shame in my blood that never goes away. He’s the reason I was banished from Axel’s pack, the reason he severed our bond.

I start to scream, but he slaps his palm over my mouth. I try to bite him through the net, but the webbing prevents me from connecting with his flesh. I start to shift back into a wolf, but before I can, something sharp and quick bites into my hip. It’s small but deep, like a honey locust thorn I got lodged in my calf one time. Evan chuckles, the sound oily and sinister in my ear.

“Don’t go wolfing out on me,” he says. “That’s no way to have a conversation. Plus, you smell so much better as a human than a mangy, wet dog.”

Two other vampires rush from the woods in our direction, calling in whispers to each other. I struggle and kick, whatever I can to get free, but it’s useless. I feel groggy like I did after drinking his water, my limbs uncoordinated. I call to my wolf to help, but she’s even more disoriented than I am, and I can’t seem to remember how to pull her forward to take over.

A female vamp cuts the net free, and Evan tosses me over his shoulder. We start moving, so fast it makes me almost vomit the coffee I had this morning. The wind blows into my nose so hard I can’t breathe, like when I was on Warrick’s bike and stuck my head around him to see. Trees and marshes blur by so fast I can hardly make them out. Suddenly, we skid to a halt beside an orange van.

My heart sinks into the ground like an anvil.

The vampires bind the netting around my ankles and gag me with a foul-smelling cloth that makes my eyes burn and water. I’m deposited on the hard floor of the van and guarded by the largest of the three vampires, a scary looking male with no hair on his head, eyeglasses, and the longest fangs I’ve ever seen.

Evan disappears and reappears in the driver’s seat.