Round Two

The air was filled with a sweet scent of victory. For a heartbeat, the world felt right. Silas lay pinned beneath Cane’s massive, silver-white paws, the whine of his joints sounding like a dying animal. We had won.

But Silas wasn’t looking at the barrel of my gun. He wasn't looking at the Alpha standing over him with teeth bared. He was looking at the sky, and he began to laugh.

"You think... this is over?" Silas wheezed.

A thrumming began to vibrate through the air. From the direction of the Atlantic, four sleek, choppers crossed the skyline of the Rust Belt. They were ghosts, unmarked, the private shadow-army.

"Viper, get your men out of here! NOW!" I screamed, my voice cracking over the rising roar.

Viper, the king of the streets, looked up, his face pale under the wash of the helicopters' searchlights. He didn't question me. He whistled, a sharp, piercing sound that cut through the engine noise.

"Bail! Scatter to the tunnels!"

The helicopters didn't descend. They hovered like insects, their side doors sliding opened. I expected a hail of bullets. I expected a flash of grenades. Instead, a rain of glowing, amber-tipped darts descended.

They were fired with an accuracy that was terrifying. They didn't target the Silver Moon wolves, and they ignored the bikers. Every single dart found its way to the exposed flesh of Silas and his Iron Claw soldiers.

The transformation was instantaneous and horrific.

Silas arched his back, his spine snapping with the sound of a dry branch. A sound escaped his throat that wasn't a howl, a frequency that made my teeth ache. The amber serum in the darts began to pulse under his skin, racing through his veins. In the harsh glare of the searchlights, I watched his bones. They didn't just grow; they shattered and fused. His muscles swelled, splitting his skin to reveal a luminescent weave of muscle fiber and threaded tissue.

The surgical scars on his back burst open. He wasn't a wolf anymore. He wasn't even a man. He was a nightmare.

"Cane, get back!" I yelled, but the warning was too late.

Silas, or the thing he had turned into, rose from the pavement. He was nearly nine feet tall now. He swung a mutated limb, catching Cane in the chest before he could even process the speed of the attack.

The sound of Cane’s ribs snapping was a crunch that echoed off the brick walls of the garage. My heart stopped as I watched the strongest man I knew get tossed thirty feet through the air like a ragdoll. He smashed through the front office glass, disappearing into a pile of splintered wood and shattered monitors.

"CANE!" I shrieked, my finger tightening on the trigger.

I emptied the .45 into Silas’s chest. I watched the bullets hit the glowing amber veins, but there was no blood. There was no flinch. He didn't even acknowledge me.

Across the lot, the other Iron Claw soldiers were completing their shifts. They moved with horrific speed. One of the monsters lunged at a nearby tow truck, the same truck that had pinned the SUVs earlier. With a roar, the creature caught the bumper and flipped the three-ton vehicle over its head, crushing two of Viper’s choppers and the men still on them.

"They don't feel it!" Vane shouted, his voice thick with a terror I’d never heard from him.

He was locked in a desperate struggle with two of the giants. He bit down on one shoulder, tearing away a chunk of the glowing muscle, but the creature didn't slow down. It simply backhanded Vane, slamming him into a brick pillar.

Then came the true horror.

The helicopters lowered high-tension steel cables, fitted with heavy harnesses. The monsters weren't there to win a fight; they were there to secure the "assets." I watched in paralyzed silence as two of the creatures lunged for the younger wolves hiding near the back.

"No! Not them!" I cried out.

Jax, the youngest and bravest of them, snarled and snapped, his copper fur matted with grease. He bit deep into a monster's arm, but the creature simply grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, its claws sinking into his hide. It hooked Jax into a harness. Jax looked at me, his wide, golden eyes filled with a silent plea for help I couldn't provide.

"VANE! THEY'RE TAKING THEM!"

Vane roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated grief, but he was pinned. He watched as Jax and three others were taken. They were taking the "pure bloods" back to the pits in the Everglades to be drained and discarded.

Silas moved toward the wreckage of the office, his heavy footsteps cracking the concrete with every stride. He reached into the debris, his claws hooking into the back of Cane’s neck. He hauled the bloodied, gasping Alpha up from the rubble. Cane’s silver-white fur was stained a deep, dark crimson. His breathing was low, his eyes clouded with shock.

Silas raised a clawed hand, and he aimed it directly at Cane’s heart.

I knew bullets were useless. My eyes darted to a biker’s discarded leather vest lying near a pool of leaking gasoline from a punctured fuel line. A flare was tucked into the pocket.

I lunged for it, my knees scraping the gravel. I ignited the flare, the brilliant red light blinding Silas for a split second.

"VANE! NOW! GET HIM OUT!"

I shoved the flare into the trail of gasoline.

The explosion created a wall of heat. It rocked the lot, sending a flame of fire and black smoke forty feet into the air, creating a temporary barrier of flame between Silas and Cane.

Vane, sensing the only opening we would get, tore himself free from his attacker with a desperate, bone-breaking twist. He lunged through the wall of fire, his fur catching sparks. He didn't try to fight Silas; he put his entire weight into a low-center-of-gravity tackle, slamming his shoulder into Silas’s knees.

The giant buckled, dropping Cane.

I tried to haul him, his boots dragging in the dirt, toward the back alley where the shadows were deepest.

"Vane! Help me!"

Vane was there a second later, his muzzle burnt and his eyes wild with grief, taking Cane’s other side. We moved as a single unit, stumbling through the dark as the garage began to collapse behind us.

We reached the alley just as Viper’s blacked-out Charger roared into view. Viper didn't wait for us to say a word. He hopped out, helped us shove Cane’s limp, massive form into the backseat, and shoved me in after him.

"Go! Go! Go!" Vane leaped in, his weight making the car's suspension groan.

Viper slammed the car into gear, the rear tires shrieking as they fought for traction on the gravel. We fishtailed out of the alley just as a section of the garage roof came down.

I huddled in the back, pulling Cane’s head into my lap. His blood was warm, soaking through my designer clothes, staining my skin. I looked back through the shattered rear window. The four helicopters were already high in the air, carrying the stolen wolves of the Silver Moon toward the Everglades.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, pressing my forehead against his.

"Cane, I'm so sorry."