Magic Stars (Grey Wolf #1)(11)

The woman flailed in his arms, trying to rake at him with her claws. He strained, keeping her still. He could snap her neck, but the fear still rolled from Julie. She needed this kill. Once she killed one, everything would fall into place.

Julie pried the tomahawk free and chopped at the woman’s bulging stomach. It split like a water skin, and a half-decomposed human head rolled out. The sour stench drenched him and he nearly gagged.

The woman thrashed, kicking. Julie dodged, jerked a knife out of the sheath on her waist, and drove the six-inch blade into the woman’s chest. The blade sank in with a scrape of metal against bone. The fish-woman screeched, her spine suddenly rigid, and sagged. The mist around them turned red and thinned, melting.

“Heart’s on the right side,” Julie said.

Claws grabbed him from behind and yanked him into the cold muddy water. He went under.

A body rushed at him through the coffee-colored water, long, pale green, clawed hands outstretched, a fish mouth on a human head gaping. A white light exploded in his head. The chain of will and restraint imposed by human part of him creaked, and he let himself off it. A knife was in his hand, and as she came at him, he locked his hand on the rough lip of that gaping toothed mouth and stabbed his knife into her side. He yanked the blade free and stabbed her again and again, driving the knife in with controlled frenzy. She clawed at him. He ignored the sharp flashes of pain and kept stabbing. Her side turned into raw butchered wound. She jerked now, trying desperately to break free, but there was no hiding from his knife or the white burning rage inside him.

Circles swam before his eyes. He realized his body was telling him it was running out of air. The creature floated limp, the right side of her chest a bloody hole. He thrust his hand into it, felt the deflated sack of the dead heart, and tore it out. Never leave things unfinished.

His chest hurt as if a red-hot band squeezed it. The first pangs of drowning panic scraped at his insides.

Darker shapes streaked toward him. Fish, he realized. Narrow and long, as long as his arm, with big mouths studded with teeth. They swarmed the body. He let go of the heart and kicked himself up.

He broke the surface and took a huge, lung-expanding breath. The air tasted so good.

Ten feet away, Julie spun like a dervish, her tomahawks slicing. She rammed the butt of her left axe under the third fish-woman’s chin. The blow snapped the woman’s chin up. Julie buried her right tomahawk in the creature’s exposed chest. Blood gushed.

He pulled himself out of the hole.

The fish woman swung at Julie. The girl leaned back. The claws raked the air inches from her nose. She chopped at the woman’s right side with her left tomahawk. Ribs cracked. The fish-creature dropped to her knees. Julie cleaved her neck. He heard the steel slice through the vertebrae. It sounded sweet.

The thin mist turned red again.

A shadow appeared behind Julie, rushing at her from the fog. He ran, picking up momentum, and leaped over Julie and the prone fish-woman. He rammed into the charging creature and tore into her. She broke like a rag doll in his hands, and he laughed. He snapped her arm, wrenching it out of the socket, her leg, her neck, her other arm, happy to finally release the rage he kept carefully pent up inside him.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I get that this was terribly exciting, but she is dead. We killed everybody.”

He snapped his teeth at her, playing, and broke the woman’s forearm with a dry snap.

“De-rek,” she said, turning his name into a song. “Come back to me.”

Not yet.

“Look up,” she whispered. “Look up!”

Fine. He raised his gaze. The moon looked back at him, cool and calm, glowing, serene. It washed over him, sinking deep into his soul, soothing the old scars and closing the new ones as it rolled through him. He felt the hot rush of fury receding, dropped the corpse, and stood up.

She handed him his knife. He must’ve dropped it during the jump. The parking lot spread before them, the mist a mere memory above the dark holes. He inhaled deeply and caught a trace of familiar blood.

“How bad?”

She lifted her shirt, exposing her side. A long scratch marked her ribs, swelling with angry red.

He opened his mouth.

The water exploded out of the holes, shooting up in filthy geysers. Julie swiped her backpack from the pavement. He grabbed her hand and sprinted to the pillar. They dashed, zigzagging between the water. The evil dark fish churned within the geysers. Dirty water chased them, flooding before them. He picked Julie up and ran. Pillar Rock loomed before them, and he leapt onto it. He ran all the way to the apex and lowered Julie next to him.

Below them, the parking lot became a lake. Long sinuous bodies writhed in the shallow water, feeding or panicking, he couldn’t tell. He and Julie watched them quietly.

“Looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a few minutes,” she said, then gave him an odd look.

“Yes?”

She raised her backpack. “I have food.”

He laughed.



NO MATTER HOW HARD KATE tried to remind him that he was first and foremost human, Derek knew himself to be separate. He was a shapeshifter. He never forgot it, and if he had, things like watching Julie wince as she smeared antibiotic ointment over her scratch reminded him. He could vaguely remember when he was human too, but that memory felt false, almost as if it had happened to someone else. Between it and his current reality lay things he didn’t want to remember. If he reached down to stir them up, like old ghosts, he would recall them, but he didn’t want to.