The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(100)

A moment ago I was despondent, ready to let Joe end me. Now . . . fuck that. I’m a GODDAMN LOCOMOTIVE READY TO TEAR THROUGH HIM.

Some part of me is saying that this is the drugs talking.

FUCK THAT NOISE.

I’M GOING TO RIP HIM TO PIECES.

Way to go, hotshot. Now think for a moment. Maybe you should pick up that shotgun by Glenn’s body? He might have one or two rounds left.

I grab it and jog into the woods. There’s a break in the trees he probably took her through.

I check the chamber. One shell left.

MAKE IT COUNT.

I run down the hill and jump the last few yards.

My leg buckles, but I keep going.

He wants me to chase after him. He saw me wounded in the ambulance and wanted to see what I was made of. Would I let him drag my girl off? Or would I find the strength to be a fucking man?

I stomp through the bushes, using the shotgun barrel to swat away branches.

I reach a small clearing.

A large shape is standing at the other end. Jillian is kneeling on the ground, blood trickling from her lip and a bruise around her left eye. Joe has one hand around her throat and another with his claws ready to puncture her jugular.

He looks my way. Silent, yet full of rage.

I contemplate trying to take a shot but notice how the barrel is shaking in my hands.

I’m too high to aim straight.

I’d be just as likely to shoot her as him—and he has body armor.

I toss the shotgun to the ground.

Fast, really fucking fast, Joe shoves Jillian to the side and sprints toward me.

He wants to show how fast he is. He wants me to see that he’s really some animal spirit in possession of a man’s body.

He wants me to die knowing that he’s not just a depraved whack job.

He wants me to believe he is a demigod.

For a fraction of a second, I believe him. I think no man his size should be able to move that fast. I think that no human could react that quickly.

Then I remember that I’m a scientist.

AND I JUST INJECTED MY BODY WITH A LOT OF POWERFUL SHIT THAT’S GOING TO KILL ME.

BUT FOR ONE BRIEF MOMENT . . . I’M A DEMON-POWERED SOLDIER OF VENGEANCE.

And I have a fistful of syringes he doesn’t know about.





CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE


ADAPTATION

I had a friend who was a marine biologist who tagged great white sharks. I asked her how the hell she did that.

First, she explained, you get a long pole and stick your tranquilizer on the end. Then you chum the water and get the shark really close to the boat. When the shark is chomping down on the chunks of fish, you stab it. After it goes limp, you keep it stationary in the water using a special hammock. Someone counts out the minutes left on the dosage and you go about your work.

The real problem, she said, wasn’t the great white sharks.

It’s what happened after the thing was immobilized and lying helpless in the water harness.

You had to protect the shark from dolphins.

The clever little bastards didn’t waste any opportunity to strike at the sharks. They’d come flying out of nowhere and ram their noses into the great white’s gill slits, trying to fuck it up.

I can’t blame them.

The researchers had to watch their backs and make sure there wasn’t an eight-hundred-pound torpedo aimed at their patient.

Sharks have been swimming around in the ocean for more than four hundred million years—dolphins less than a tenth of that time. Yet, in that short period, dolphins adapted to become their fiercest enemy.

While dolphins have blunt baby teeth compared to a great white, they have one advantage a shark doesn’t—their brains. Dolphins are incredible improvisers.

Sharks have millions of years of preprogrammed strategies. Dolphins have cheat codes.

I’m not a fighter, despite Gus’s best efforts. But neither is Joe. He’s a killer. He’s a great white shark on two feet, and like a shark, he uses the same strategy over and over again. He preys on the frightened and the weak and the vulnerable. I have to think like a dolphin.

Joe bears down on me, and I drop to my knees. His arms swing out over my head, slicing the air with his claws. Moving too fast to stop himself, his right leg kicks into my shoulder, and he stumbles.

I roll to the side.

Before I can gather myself, Joe has already spun around.

Goddamn, he’s fast.

Four scimitars come at me. I duck my head and feel them slice into my back. I’m high, so it’s not painful so much as a curious sensation of being carved open.

I shoot my arm out with a syringe and aim for his calf. I loaded enough sedative in the syringe to stop the heart of a grizzly.

The needle goes into the leather. I start to squeeze the injector, but Joe jerks his leg and the tip snaps in half.

FUCK!

This is the last time he’ll let me get this close.

I use the distraction to jump back and out of his reach for a second.

I hold another syringe in front of me with my left hand.

He pauses for a moment and watches me. I can’t see anything behind his mask, but I can tell he’s assessing me.

I have to try a new tactic.

I need to do something his victims have never done.

“Bad night, Joe?”

I know his only response is to attack, so I leap to the side as soon as I finish the sentence.