Blood Ties: The Second

“Are you sure this is where it went?” Kendra hissed, trying to keep her voice down. She could feel sweat trickling down her spine from the humid, summer air.

“Shh,” Felix whispered, shooting a warning look at her.

Kendra rolled her eyes and stared at a dark alley in between a CVS and a deli called The Sub Shoppe. Pretty soon they could hear a man screaming followed by the sounds of a trash can being overturned.

“That’s our cue,” Jenna said. She had a huge, eager grin on her face.

“You know your friend is slightly crazy, right?” Conor said, looking at Jenna.

She shot him a dark look.

“I don’t think you really have any business throwing out the crazy coin, Mr. Gave-In-To-My-Blood-Hunger-And-Killed-People.”

He growled angrily at her but Kendra restrained him.

“Quit fighting, both of you,” she whispered. “Everyone needs to be focused.”

“But…,” he tried to say.

“You deserved it, now let’s go,” she commanded.

The four of them moved toward the alley where the screams were coming from. They’d been tracking a wendigo through the city. It was a nearly hairless beast with large, pointed ears, wispy white hair, and sickly yellow eyes. Its grotesquely huge maw was filled with yellowed fangs ranging from an inch to two inches long. From the records Jenna obtained, both its claws and its fangs secreted a clear, odorless neurotoxin that paralyzed its victims so they couldn’t run away as it devoured them.

Kendra shuddered at the thought of a monster hovering over her while she was completely powerless, ready to eat the flesh off her while she was still alive. She breathed deeply for a second, calming herself. Then she looked to the others.

“Let’s get that thing,” she told them.

Then she shifted into her monstrous wolf form. Her auburn fur shone under the light of a streetlamp and her massive paws stretched out on the pavement, her claws making loud scratching sounds. Felix grabbed her clothes and stuffed them into a backpack he was wearing.

Conor morphed into his wolf/human hybrid form.

Jenna whirled a pair of silver short swords.

After Felix stowed Kendra’s clothes in the bag he wore, his eyes flashed with blue light and the wind picked up around him.

With a rough howl, Kendra moved into the alley. The rest of her team followed without hesitation.

The wendigo was a nasty piece of work. It was as horrible to look at as she feared. When it saw them coming, it backed up a step, its mouth opening to show its vicious fangs. At its feet was its potential victim, a limp form on the rainsoaked alley floor.

Its eyes flashed yellow.

“Get awayss,” it hissed as it let its knees bend and its overlong arms drag on the ground. Kendra could see its venom dripping off its fangs and claws and made a mental note not to let them near her. “Thiss iss mine meal.”

Kendra growled.

Conor barked out a terrifying roar.

Jenna went into a casual fighting stance.

Felix’s eyes flashed bright blue again, this time a crackle of electricity sparking from them.

The wendigo stood there, hovering protectively over its meal. They all stood that way for a split second. The air was charged with tension so thick, it practically crackled along everyone’s skin.

Then Kendra charged.

The wendigo was ready for that. It opened its ugly mouth and let out an ear-splitting noise. It pierced Kendra’s skull like razor blades and she stumbled. Her giant paw slipped in a puddle and she went tumbling into the side of a dumpster. Conor didn’t fare any better. As soon as the sound left its mouth, he was on his knees with his hands clamped to the side of his head. His wolf form melted off his features and he was human again. Jenna would’ve been next, but Felix threw a cocoon of magic around themselves, protecting them from the sound wave. When the thing’s mouth snapped shut a few seconds later, he dropped it, reshaped his magic and sent two spinning disks of compressed air at it.

The wendigo was fast, but not fast enough. It dodged one of the disks, but the other one severed its right arm just below the shoulder. It fell to the ground with a meaty sounding thud. Yellow ichor flowed out of the stump and it let out a pain-filled screech. Kendra got back to her feet, but her head still felt slightly dizzy.

Conor’s ears trickled with blood, but he managed to get back to his feet too and shift again.

The wendigo looked from one threat to the next, its stump still dripping ichor, and seemed to know it couldn’t win. It turned and tried to flee.

Kendra ran full out. There was no way in hell she was letting that thing loose in her city. She was almost to it when something flew out from behind a darkened doorway and tackled the monster to the ground. There were several shouts and grunts.

She slowed and stopped, watching events unfold. The thing that just tackled the wendigo was...just a man. Although, judging by the way he fought, a very dangerous and capable one.

The wendigo tried to swipe its remaining clawed hand at the guy, but he nimbly dodged out of the way. Then he clamped a hand on its wrist, twisted with his body, and used the monster’s own momentum against it. In the blink of an eye, the wendigo was sailing through the air until it crashed headfirst into a brick wall. There was a sickening crunch and then it fell to the ground in a lifeless heap. Jenna walked past the guy and over to the wendigo.

Kendra immediately picked up the sounds of crackling pops coming from the creature. She knew what that sound meant. It was healing its broken neck and skull.

She let out a huff of breath.

Why do these things always regenerate? she asked herself.

Before it could fully heal, Jenna took one of her swords out and severed its head. She backed away from it and turned to look at the man. He was staring, somewhat in shock, at the two werewolves in the alley with him.

“W-what’s going on?” he asked, his voice shaky. His eyes went back to the wendigo. “What was that thing? It tried to fucking eat my friend. And what are they?” He pointed to Kendra and Conor, although Conor had already shifted back into his human form.

The man looked at him questioningly, blinking his eyes.

“I mean that?” He looked to Kendra.

“Don’t worry, Mr…?” Jenna asked, waiting for him to supply his name.

“Dr-Drake Harper,” he stammered. “What is that? Am I going crazy?”

“No,” Jenna responded, her voice kind and sweet.

She went up to the man and gently laid a hand on the shoulder of his dirty, ragged shirt. From the way he was dressed, it was pretty clear he was homeless. His shirt was stained and had a number of rips and holes in it. His jeans were nearly shredded, and the sole was coming off one of his sneakers. His blonde hair was filthy and unkempt, and he sported a rough-looking beard.

“You’re not crazy. We can explain all of this to you, if you want, but first we need to take care of your friend. We’re gonna get him to a hospital, okay? Stay here with those two.” She gestured toward Kendra and Conor. “My people will be coming to clean up the remains of that creature.”

The man glanced nervously at Kendra.

“Don’t worry, she’s a big puppy. She won’t hurt you.” Jenna smirked at Kendra.

Felix went over to the injured man the wendigo had originally targeted. He was also homeless and his dark, wrinkled skin was nearly ash grey. His brown eyes were open and staring and he had tears running down the corners of them.

“He’s got a deep laceration to his side and some venom around the wound. We need to move him quickly,” Felix said as he worked to make sure the man didn’t die.

“You ready?” Jenna asked.

Felix stood back up and tossed the backpack to Kendra. She snatched it out of the air and it hung from her muzzle. She walked, almost daintily, behind a dumpster as Felix, Jenna, and the homeless man vanished in a cyclone of air. Drake’s mouth opened in a wide in surprise.

Kendra shifted back to human, opened the backpack, and slipped her clothes back on. Then she walked out from behind the dumpster, Conor coming up beside her.

“I’m Kendra Henner. This is Conor Dewar,” she said, trying to sound friendly. But Drake wasn’t having any of it.

“What happened to the big dog?” he asked. “Was that you?”

He was rapidly getting hysterical.

“It must be the PTSD,” he mumbled to himself.

Kendra raised an eyebrow at Conor.

“We’ll explain everything,” she told him. “Just try to be calm.”

“Calm?” he cried. “I’m losing my fucking mind and you want me to be calm?”

He started advancing toward Kendra, his eyes hard and angry. Conor stepped protectively in front of her.

“I want answers,” Drake told them, becoming openly hostile now. “I’ll get them too, even if I have to wring both your necks to do it.”

He flexed his fists, popping out the muscles in his forearms. Before he could attack, however, Felix and Jenna came whirling back into the alley. Felix immediately saw the look on Drake’s face and knew he had to do something to stop him.

“Sominus,” he said, pointing at Drake.

A blue spark zipped from the end of his finger and smacked into Drake’s forehead. He immediately collapsed to the ground and started snoring loudly.

“What did you do?” Jenna asked, outraged. She ran to Drake, checking his vitals.

“He’s under a sleeping spell,” Felix told her. “It’ll wear off in an hour. He’ll be fine. The only reason I did it was because he looked like he was about to attack Kendra and Conor.”

“He was,” Conor grumbled.

“Well, how would you react if you were human and been attacked by a monster only to be left with two other monsters?” she asked, getting defensive.

“We’re not monsters,” Conor replied.

“Sorry…werewolves,” she shot back, a sarcastic tinge to her tone.

“What are you going to do with him?” Kendra asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she responded. “I can’t just leave him here. Maybe I’ll take him to my dad’s, and we can talk to him there.”

“Just as long as you keep him away from us,” Kendra told her.

Jenna glared at her but didn’t respond. She looked to Felix instead.

“Help me with him,” she ordered.

Felix sighed heavily and went over to her. He bent down, placing a hand on both Jenna and Drake.

“See you guys later,” Felix said.

They vanished again.

Kendra turned to Conor. He smiled at her and hugged her close to him.

“Some date night huh?” he asked, kissing her passionately. She returned it with pleasure.

“I always knew you were a hopeless romantic. Do you always take your dates to such intimate, beautiful locales?” she joked, trying to ease her own exasperation.

This was the fourth date night Jenna ruined, and she was beginning to think her best friend was doing it on purpose. Jenna Bishop was a Defaeco Knight, which was a very secret group of Knights Templar that fought all the monsters humanity said didn’t exist. Conor also happened to be a werewolf and one with a very bad past. Awhile back, he’d given into his blood hunger, the wolf part of his nature that was enthralled with hunting and killing anything it came across. Because of that, he’d gotten put on the Defaeco Knight’s list of creatures that needed killed. However, he managed to avoid confrontation with the shady group of monster hunters. Since then, he’d cleaned himself up and reclaimed his humanity. Now he was Kendra’s boyfriend and Jenna hated it.

“Only the best for my girl,” Conor said, looking around at the dirty, trash-ridden alleyway.

He kissed her again, but it was strained. They knew Jenna was doing her best to sabotage them. All the jokes in the world couldn’t ease that kind of strain on their relationship.

They waited together for twenty minutes before a plain, white panel van pulled up at the mouth of the alley. The doors slid open and two pages, or knights-in-training, hopped out. They were both young, barely in their twenties. One was a male that still showed signs of acne on his face and the other was a cute girl dressed in a fitted shirt with a beach scene on it and stained jeans. She was also stomping around in military-issue combat boots. She strolled up to them, a smile on her face.

“Got another one for us I see,” she said, cheerful.

The guy didn’t bother talking to them. In fact, he was trying to do whatever he could to be as far away from them as he humanly possible. Kendra immediately ran up to the girl and gave her a hug.

“Gwen!” she practically yelled, nearly jumping up and down.

She’d met Gwen only a couple of months ago, just after she’d struck up her new treaty with Elijah, but it felt like she’d known her for years. With her sharp, sarcastic tongue and witty jokes, she’d been really easy to talk to and get to know. It was one of the few friendships in her life that she didn’t feel like she had to work to obtain. Instead, it had been something genuine and easy.

“You didn’t tell me you were back.”

“I got in like three hours ago.” She stretched. “Man, I hate planes. My ass still feels half-numb.”

“How’d you like London?”

“It was pretty sweet,” she responded. “Loved the pubs. And the girls.”

She gave Kendra a conspiratorial wink and they both started laughing.

“Mind helping me with this?” the male asked in a dry, slightly irritated voice. “Or do you want me to report back to Mr. Bishop that you aren’t capable of doing your job?”

Kendra shot the man a dark look and he immediately paled.

“Dick,” Gwen whispered beneath her breath. She hugged Kendra again and stepped back. “I gotta help him. Call me later okay?”

“Sure,” Kendra replied.

They watched the two pages carry off the body, the wendigo’s severed arm tucked underneath the guy’s armpit. After the creature’s body was in the van, they came back and hosed off the yellow ichor.

Gwen said a final goodbye, and then the van drove off.

“Come on,” Conor said. “Maybe we can still salvage what’s left of our date.”

They left together, heading for the closest restaurant they could find.

Drake woke up in a dark room, on a mattress so soft, he practically sank into it. Maybe woke up was the wrong word. It was more like he twitched himself awake, his body jerking uncomfortably. Visions of nightmare creatures with long talon-like claws and ripping fangs, of huge monster dogs, and half-man/half-wolf-like beings rampaged through his mind. When he woke, he could still see them hovering like twisted ghosts in front of his face.

He took deep, calming breaths. He focused on breathing in and out until those wraith-like images disappeared. Then he looked around the room. It was enormous, almost bigger than his apartment had been (when he had one that is). The walls were done in rich wood paneling and expensive, designer furniture was everywhere. He quickly got out of bed, his heart still hammering in his chest.

Where the hell am I? What is going on?

The door opened and a very pretty blonde entered. She flicked on the overhead lights, and Drake squinted a little until his eyes could adjust.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” the girl said.

She looked really familiar, but he couldn’t immediately place where he’d seen her before. Then, a second later, his mind supplied the answer. Her name was Jenna Bishop. She was a celebrity model and one of the city’s social elite. Her father, if he remembered, ran a successful marketing/media company.

“What am I doing here?” he asked, and not pleasantly.

“You should get cleaned up. We have a lot to talk about,” she told him. She glanced at a door off to his left. “There’s a shower in there and some clean clothes. I wasn’t sure what would fit you, so if something doesn’t, let me know and I’ll see what else I can find. Oh, and there’s also clippers, shaving cream, a razor, and some deodorant.”

She left without another word, leaving Drake very confused.

He looked at himself, looked at the bathroom door, and finally gave in. It would be good to get clean. Being homeless was depressing on so many levels, but the biggest thing he hated was not being able to get clean. The grunge of living on the streets seemed to seep into his pores, like it stained him. No matter how many gas station sinks he used to clean it off, it never seemed to be enough. It was always there.

He went over to the door and opened it. The inside looked more like a five-star spa than someone’s bathroom. He walked over to the stand-up shower, took his dirty, ragged clothes off, and stepped inside. He put the water on as hot as it would go and just let it run over his head and shoulders for a while. It felt like heaven.

He stayed in there for over an hour, cleaning and scrubbing at himself. When he got out, he toweled himself off and wrapped it around his waist. He swiped a hand over the fogged-up mirror and looked at himself. His blonde hair was too long, and his beard was thick and scratchy. He wasn’t used to that. He was used to his military haircut and seeing himself like that was unsettling. He didn’t even look like himself.

He grabbed the clippers and took them to his beard first. He watched the hair fall lazily to the sink. Then he grabbed the shaving cream and razor and shaved the rest off. He looked at himself and after a little hesitation, grabbed the clippers again and took them to his hair. It wasn’t exactly his high and tight, but it was definitely better than his long blonde hair and he looked more like himself than he had in years.

His eyes traveled to the warped, twisted skin of his shoulder and side. The scars came from a severe burn he’d gotten in Afghanistan while on tour there. He rubbed his fingers over it and all he could remember was the pain. The pain of knowing that he was burning alive. The pain of seeing all his friends dying around him.

He slammed a fist on the counter and turned away from the mirror. He found the fresh clothes in a neat pile on a chair. He put them on. They were somewhat tight. He was bulkier across the chest and shoulders than their original owner, but it didn’t bother him. They actually looked pretty good. The shirt was a soft, maroon button-down that he left open at the throat and the pants were a pair of khaki slacks. He laced up the expensive leather shoes and walked out of the bathroom.

He planned to just glide out unseen and leave the over-luxurious place, but as soon as he opened the door, the girl (Jenna, he reminded himself) was there to meet him. As soon as she saw him, her eyes widened a little and she looked at him appraisingly.

“You look…,” she paused, searching for the right word, “really good.”

“Uh…thanks,” he replied, embarrassed.

Jenna just stood there for a moment longer, looking at him. She seemed to realize she was staring and snapped herself out of it.

“Um…come with me,” she said, grabbing his hand. “There are some things we should probably talk about.”

The pale, talon-clawed creature shoved itself to the front of his mind, making the bomb blast he’d been in seem like child’s play by comparison. He shuddered slightly, wishing that it had been some weird, elaborate hallucination instead of reality. Judging by how serious Jenna was being, though, he doubted his mind had made up the whole thing. Strangely, that made him feel a little better. At least he knew he wasn’t going crazy.

She led him through the enormous house and into what looked like a den. Sitting on a leather sofa was Jenna’s father, Elijah. He knew the man only by reputation and what he read in the newspapers. Apparently, cutthroat businessmen were even afraid of the guy. As soon as Drake entered the room, however, Elijah got up and walked over to him. He held out his hand.

“Drake Harper, I’m Elijah Bishop. It’s a pleasure to be in the presence of a real American hero,” he said.

A surge of anger hit Drake at the comment. He wasn’t a hero. The only thing that made him one was being the only survivor in a blast that had killed all his fellow soldiers and friends.

“Been reading up on me, Mr. Bishop?” Drake said, his voice dry.

“I like to be aware of who my daughter brings home,” he replied casually. It was meant to be a joke, but Drake didn’t laugh.

“Why am I here?” he said instead.

“To the point, I see. I like that in people. Not many of your type left these days.” He gestured to a chair next to him and Drake sat down.

“Would you like anything to eat? Or something to drink?” Elijah asked.

Drake ground his teeth angrily, trying to quell his rising impatience.

“If you have something you want to talk about, talk. I wouldn’t waste your time and I would appreciate it if you didn’t waste mine.”

Jenna looked at her father uneasily. He smiled reassuringly at her though.

“Of course,” Elijah said. “You’ll have to excuse me. The nature of our conversation is somewhat delicate. I thought easing you into it would be more practical. I apologize.”

“What did I see tonight?” Drake asked. “I thought I was losing my mind, but the way you people have been acting is telling me that it was all real. Right?”

“I’m afraid so,” Elijah replied, his voice weirdly calm. “Humans have fought hard to make themselves believe that the monsters in the legends and myths of old are all fake, made up fairytales. It makes them feel better. That lie, however, is a somewhat poor defense against those that would prey on them. My organization, for lack of a better word, was formed to take care of these monsters. We’ve been around for centuries.”

“Monsters are real?” Drake asked. He would’ve loved to disbelieve the man or to write him off as some eccentric millionaire, but the things he saw (and couldn’t stop remembering) confirmed Elijah was telling the truth. “And your organization fights them?”

“I belong to the Order of the Defaeco Knights, a very ancient sect of the Knights Templar. My daughter is one as well. We protect people, Mr. Harper. It is an old calling, but everyone that joins is dedicated to our mission,” Elijah explained. He looked very seriously at Drake. “You asked me if I’ve been reading up on you and you’re right. I have been. You were a Gunnery Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. You’ve received numerous commendations and medals, including a Purple Heart. You’ve done two tours of duty in Afghanistan, but during your last one, your platoon was caught by an IED. You were the only survivor. Since returning to the States, you’ve held several different jobs but none of them for more than a week. You have no current address and, judging by your appearance when my daughter brought you here, no means to support yourself.”

“What exactly are you saying?” Drake asked. He was angry that this man knew so much about him, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot he could do about it.

“You are a hero, Mr. Harper, whether you want to admit it or not. When the wendigo attacked your friend tonight, you fought it. Not many people would do that. You have training. You have courage. You have everything we look for in a new recruit,” Elijah said. “I want you to join the Order.”

Drake looked from Elijah and then to Jenna.

“No,” he promptly said.

He got up and started walking out the door.

“I’ll pay you back for the clothes,” he told them as he walked out of the room.

He was almost to the door when Jenna caught up to him.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes sharp and narrowed. “My father is giving you a chance to make a real difference. You can change your life and you’re just going to throw that all away?”

He ripped his arm out of her grip and got right in her face.

“Why should I protect humans?” he shouted. “That thing I fought doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. Humans.” He laughed mockingly. “Humans are the worst monsters on this planet. Humans trick children into blowing themselves up. They will murder, rape, torture, or slaughter other people just for kicks. Why the hell should I try and save humanity? We’re a virus that won’t stop consuming and ravaging this world until nothing is left.”

He opened the door and was in the hallway.

Jenna spoke and he froze in place, listening to her.

“You’ve seen people do bad things and I’m sorry about that, but there is still hope for people. They are still good. They don’t deserve to be hunted and killed by things they have no protection against.”

Drake paused for a long time, thinking on her words. All the horrors he’d witnessed in his life seemed to jump into his mind, disgusting him even further.

“Yes,” he replied, “they do.”

He walked away from her and didn’t look back.

Jenna walked into the large, roomy den where her father was still sitting. She was angry with Drake but more than that, she was disappointed. It went beyond recruiting him. Obviously, his skill set would’ve been a great addition to the Order but what she really wanted was to help him. Anyone that would put themselves in harm’s way to protect somebody else was worth saving. But she could only save the people that wanted to be saved and Drake apparently didn’t want that.

“What did Mr. Harper have to say?” her father asked. He poured himself a little whiskey from the bar and quickly drank it, his back to her.

“He just wasn’t interested,” she responded.

“I see,” was all he said. He turned around and looked at his daughter. “What happened tonight, exactly?”

“I got a lead on a wendigo terrorizing the city. Felix, Kendra, Conor, and I tracked it down. You know the rest.” She poured herself a shot of whiskey and threw it back. Then she went to the chair that Drake had been sitting in and sat down.

“How was she doing?”

Jenna let out a frustrated sigh.

“You know you can ask her yourself. It’s not like she hates you…anymore, anyway. You lied to her, kept things from her, almost destroyed her pack, but she’s forgiven you. Why don’t you tell her who we really are to her and we can all move on? You know I’ve always hated keeping things from her.”

“She won’t understand,” Elijah responded, hotly. “If it were that simple, I would’ve done it years ago. Besides, she’s been through a lot already. This truth would be too much for her.”

“She’s stronger than you know,” Jenna remarked. “Besides, it’s not like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is if you take into account the fact that she had to grow up in a rundown orphanage alone and afraid.” He sat down across from his daughter.

“I’m lucky that she’s still talking to me. I lied to her too, on your orders. The longer you wait, the more you risk losing her altogether. You and me both,” Jenna said. She got up and gave her father a hug. “I’m going to stay here tonight. I’m exhausted. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, sweetie,” he responded, watching her head down the hall to her room.

Jenna closed the door behind her and sat on the edge of her bed. Her floral pattern comforter was messy from where Drake had been sleeping in it, but she wasn’t really paying attention. Her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of him. She’d been surprised at his appearance when he came out of her room before. He was very attractive, but his eyes had drawn her in the most. There was so much depth in them. He looked like a man that had lived ten times longer than his actual age. The worse thing, however, was seeing the pain there.

She couldn’t stop herself from wanting to erase it, even though he clearly didn’t want her help. She replayed their conversation in her mind. The look on his face as he talked had been one of the worst things she’d ever seen, and that was coming from a girl who faced down monsters on a regular basis. To see his lack of hope and complete dismissal of humanity staring back at her was disquieting.

After all, she risked her life for humans.

Is it really all for nothing? Are humans the worst of the monsters?

She knew Drake was wrong but she couldn’t get his words out of her mind, regardless.

Kendra sat across from Conor in a tiny Italian restaurant they managed to find, watching him closely. A lot happened in the six months since she realized her father was a werewolf and had not only turned her into one as well but tricked her into becoming the Alpha as well. The one good thing from the whole mess (other than her newfound beauty and confidence) was that she’d met Conor Dewar. He was everything she wanted. Caring. Protective. Loving. And hot.

Definitely hot.

She smiled to herself and reached out to grasp his hand.

“You’ve taken to this new life remarkably well,” he told her as he squeezed her hand in return. She felt a wave a warmth flow through her at his touch. It flooded her entire body with pleasure.

“I think that has a lot more to do with you helping me and…” she paused for a second, “and being the Alpha, I suppose. I’ve never felt stronger in my whole life. Everything is just sharper. It’s clearer. But…”

She stopped, her hesitation giving away her fear and she nervously rubbed the red symbol covering her palm. The three-spiraled pattern of the Alpha mark almost looked like it was staring at her, mocking her weakness.

“But you’re afraid you won’t be a strong enough one to protect the pack?” he guessed, looking at her with his deep green eyes.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” she whispered, almost ashamed to admit it.

Before she’d been turned, she was a quiet, awkward girl that never stood up for herself. Fear was not just a constant in her life, it was the rule. She’d been afraid to speak up. She’d been afraid to come out of a shell she’d spent a lifetime building. She’d been afraid to let anyone truly in. More than that, however, she’d been weak. She saw that now and she never wanted to be weak again. Especially in front of Conor or any other wolf in her pack. She wanted them to see her as a strong leader.

“I’ll say it again, even though I’ve said it a million times to you already,” Conor replied. “You are strong. You defeated a man that had gained control of your brother and even the big bad Defaeco leader, Elijah Bishop. That’s no small feat. Your strength swept away his magic, Kendra! Yours alone.”

He smiled hugely and it made her melt. She loved his smile. However, she couldn’t help but squirm a little at his words.

He said she did it alone, but he was wrong. She never told him that her mother had been there too, locked inside Jonah’s mind. Trapped there. He’d tried to use his magic to enslave her, to force her to kill her own child. He’d nearly succeeded too. If it hadn’t been for Kendra’s grandfather, her mother would’ve murdered her all those years ago. But the act of forcing her mother to do something so completely against her nature had an unintended side effect. Her mind fractured and then dissipated. The magical link that Jonah created to control her acted as something like a net. It captured the broken pieces of her mother’s mind and reformed them inside the twisted mage’s own. There she’d remained, trapped and helpless, her physical body wasting away in a mental institution. When Jonah came for Kendra, trying the same trick, her mother finally managed to break free. Together they were able to bounce Jonah’s magic back onto himself, searing his mind into uselessness. He was the empty shell now.

Her mother, however, was far from recovered.

Kendra had been to see her as often as she could. A full-time job as a graphic designer in a huge and well-respected marketing firm combined with being the Alpha of a pack of monster-hunting werewolves didn’t leave her with a lot of free time.

It was insanely frustrating. She’d been alone almost her entire life. After her mother got locked away and her grandfather died, no one had ever been there for her. Her father, Merle, had come close, but he never told her the truth of who he really was until it was too late. The only other one that came close was Jenna and even she had lied to her for their entire relationship.

There was a chance her mother would come back to herself now, and she found herself anxiously waiting for that to happen. She wanted someone that just simply cared about her. No hidden motives. No secrets. No psychotic friends that can wield fire and invade people’s minds and take over their bodies.

Was that too much to ask?

“You okay?” Conor asked, concerned. “You seem really lost in thought.”

Kendra jerked somewhat, blushing deeply. She hadn’t realized she’d zoned out so completely.

“Sorry,” she said, lamely.

“You have a lot on your mind. It’s okay,” he replied.

The waiter arrived, carrying two steaming plates. He set her food down and it smelled so good, her mouth started watering. She’d gotten a three cheese, baked ziti. She looked over at Conor and saw a mound of chicken Alfredo in front of him.

She watched him load on the pepper and then dig in. She ate with a little more reservation, but barely. As it turned out, monster-hunting was a calorie burner and most times, her stomach was growling out its dissension at constantly being ignored. It was worse when she smelled blood, though. Then the baser instincts of her wolf side threatened to take over and sometimes it was really hard to force it down.

That really scared her, but she kept it to herself.

“Have you heard from Merrick lately?” Conor asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He set down his fork and looked forlornly at his plate. It was empty. He grabbed a breadstick and started chewing on it, leaning forward slightly.

“No,” she responded, feeling sad.

As it turned out, she’d gone from an orphan to finally having a father, only she was forced to kill him. Then she found out she had a brother, but her brother had been doing his best to try and kill her and take the Alpha power from her. Come to find out, though, Jonah had been controlling him too, although a little less overtly. Mostly, the bastard had switched on Merrick’s blood hunger and turned him crazy. He barely managed to snap himself out of Jonah’s control before he was able to savagely kill her. When he realized what he’d done, he ran. Kendra managed to talk to him one time since then, and it was mostly an unending series of apologies from him. She could barely get in enough words to tell him she understood and that she didn’t blame him for anything that happened. He didn’t want to hear it though. He exiled himself. She had no clue where he was or when, if ever, he would be back.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Conor asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. She finished up the last of her ziti half-heartedly.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” he suddenly said.

She looked up at him.

“What’s not my fault?” she asked.

“What happened to your father. And Merrick. I know you blame yourself,” he responded.

“It’s kind of hard not to. Jonah came after Merrick and used him to kill Merle. He used my mom to try to kill m...” she stopped herself suddenly.

Conor’s eyes widened.

“Your mom tried to kill you?” he asked, shocked. “Jonah…”

His voice trailed off. He looked at her.

She nodded slowly.

“He made your mom try and kill you?”

She nodded again.

“That’s sick. How’d you find out?”

She hesitated for a second and then decided to tell him the truth.

“Her mind was locked inside Jonah’s. It was some kind of side effect of what he did to her. When he came after me, she helped me turn his power back on him. You think it was my power that saved me, but it was her…somehow.”

Conor was silent for a long time.

“Does that mean she’s going to get better?” he asked. “Did stopping Jonah free her?”

“I keep hoping it will but when I get the chance to see her, she looks the same. I don’t really know what it means. I’ve never had any real experience with magic before. Sometimes, though, I think I can see her move. It gives me hope.”

He got up suddenly and sat next to her in the booth, hugging her closely.

“I think anyone that can survive in that maniac’s mind for as long as she did has an excellent chance to come back from what he did to her.” He kissed the top of her head, taking in the scent of her hair. It smelled like honeysuckle and jasmine.

“Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

“Why thank you, kind sir.” She laughed, glad that she could still laugh after the craziness her life had become.

She shoved her dark, depressing thoughts aside and got up. Conor held out his hand and bowed to her like a 19th century gentleman. Which wasn’t far off the mark considering he was alive in the 19th century. That had been somewhat hard to wrap her mind around. Apparently, thanks to a werewolf’s regenerative abilities, they lived for quite a long time. She was still coming to grips with the fact that Merle had been almost six centuries old before he’d been killed while Conor himself was going on 178 in August. She took his hand and he kissed the top of it. Then he pulled out his wallet and laid a couple of bills on the table.

They left the restaurant and headed outside. It was still humid and sticky, but some of the heat had been leeched away as the night deepened. A silvery, crescent moon hung in the air.

She breathed in through her nose. The scents of the city around her filled her nostrils. In the time since she’d become a werewolf, she’d learn to control the overwhelming sensations her heightened senses brought. She found she could turn them up or down at will. She tuned her sense of smell up as well as her hearing. It was a defense mechanism Ian (Conor’s father) had taught her. The senses of a werewolf were so powerful, they were very nearly precognitive. All of the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and even tastes were taken in and processed on a subconscious level and could alert her to potential threats long before they showed up. Six months later and she was doing it on pure reflex now.

The walk home was uneventful. They talked and joked, even holding hands like love-sick high schoolers. Considering she’d never had a boyfriend in high school, she found she enjoyed the experience immensely. She enjoyed the walk home but was glad to finally get up to her apartment. With work and her after work activities, she was beat. She unlocked her door and Conor followed her inside.

“Jenna?” Kendra called. Her apartment was dark, and no one answered her. She turned to Conor. “Where is she?”

She looked around and spotted the phone on the kitchen counter. There was a tiny red light blinking on it, signaling they had a voicemail. She pressed the button and Jenna’s voice filled the empty apartment.

“Sorry, girl. I’m exhausted. I’m staying the night at my dad’s. See you tomorrow.” The phone went silent.

Before she could do anything else, Conor grabbed her around the small of her back and pulled her close to him. He kissed her, his soft lips molding against hers. His desire was intense, and she reveled in it. She kissed him back, her hand tangling in his thick, dark hair.

He growled low in his throat, a deep rumble that sent waves of pleasure running through her. His hands flowed down her back like water and gripped her butt. He hoisted her up and she wrapped her legs around him. Then he carried her like that to the bedroom and they collapsed on the soft mattress, both of them breathing hard.

She didn’t so much yank his shirt off as completely shred it while he pulled hers up over her head, revealing her lacy black bra. He leaned in and planted a line of kisses on her neckline while his expert hands undid the clasp of her bra.

All the stresses of the day melted away and everything else just disappeared.

For those few, wonderful hours, they were the only two people in the world.

Kendra was sleeping very peacefully, wrapped in a cocoon of bliss. Until a noise woke her up. Her eyes snapped opened, revealing her pitch-black room. She concentrated, trying to figure out what woke her up. A second later she heard it again. The doorknob to her apartment was rattling like someone was trying to break in. She looked over at Conor and found him sound asleep.

The rattling sound became louder and more insistent. Her instincts surged forward in a rush, putting her on edge. She quietly got out of bed and shivered when the air conditioning blew cold air across her naked body. She quickly slipped into a pair of pajamas and then headed to the door to her bedroom. The darkness around her suddenly flared into brilliant hues of amber gold. Seeing in the dark might prove useful if whoever was trying to get in meant to hurt her, she reasoned.

She nudged the door open slowly, peering through the small crack that opened up. Her apartment appeared empty, but the rattling noise was getting even louder. Whoever was out there wanted in and they definitely weren’t going away until they did. She wondered briefly if it was Jenna, deciding to come home after all only to realize she’d forgotten her key. She dismissed the idea though. Jenna wouldn’t make such a racket, knowing it might set Kendra’s wolf alter-ego off.

She glided through the living room, her eyes changing to burning yellow orbs. Her teeth lengthened into fangs and claws sprang out on her hands. When she was next to the little bar in the kitchen, she flared her nostrils.

And regretted it immediately.

A thick, disgusting scent pummeled her sense of smell, threatening to make her hurl. She had to fight hard not to gag. It smelled like rotting, hot garbage mixed with sewage.

Her wolf overrode her rational, human mind. It jumped to the forefront and took control effortlessly. It was clear that whatever was out there wasn’t stopping by for a cup of sugar or to chat about the latest building gossip. In fact, Kendra was a hundred percent sure that the thing wasn’t even human.

Anger filled her when she realized that.

Her apartment was her sanctuary. It was her safe haven.

Now, some creature was violating that. In recent months, she found out the hard way that Lycaon City was not what she thought it was. It was home to some amazingly vile, and terrifying, things. And now one of those things was trying to break into her home.

She took a deep breath and without hesitation ran at the front door. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to live long enough to tell its friends where she lived. She was about to fling the door open but before she could, something pierced the skin of her neck. There was a sharp, biting pain and a couple seconds of confusion. Then her entire body went slack. Her limbs felt heavy and weak. Her legs wouldn’t hold her weight anymore. She collapsed to the ground, unable to move. She tried to call out to Conor but her mouth wouldn’t open either.

The rattling on her doorknob quit. She watched as the deadbolt slid open and the lock unlocked itself. Then the door opened and a creature that looked no taller than three or four feet strolled inside.

It was easily the ugliest thing she’d ever seen. Even uglier than the wendigo, and that was saying something. It had a giant head which was vastly disproportionate to the rest of its squat, hairy little body. Its feet were five or six times bigger than they needed to be. Each gnarly hand had three fingers that ended in wicked-looking claws and it peered at Kendra with beady, red eyes. It tilted its head at her as it came in; a smile full of sharp teeth cracked its face. It watched her for a minute or two, rubbing its hands together like a praying mantis.

Kendra struggled to get up, but whatever poison she’d been injected with kept her paralyzed.

“Good,” the thing in front of her said. “Good, good, good. Wolfie there could’ve been more trouble. More trouble, trouble, trouble, Jarwink.”

“Indeed,” a voice said. It was a distinctly nasally voice. “She will be pleased with us. Pleased. Very much pleased.”

Kendra felt a wash of cold fear spread through her as she realized what happened. The rattling door had been a diversion. The real threat had already been in her apartment and she missed it. The one called Jarwink bent down until its ridiculously huge head was in front of hers. The smell of garbage and sewage became even more powerful.

“We will have so much fun with you, Wolfie,” Jarwink exclaimed, rubbing his hands in that weird praying mantis way again.

Without further comment, the two bent down and picked Kendra up. She struggled uselessly as they carried her out of her apartment and to the stairs. The worst thing was being completely powerless. She never thought she would have to feel that way again.

It made her angry.

Suddenly, the palm with the alpha mark on it started to itch furiously. A sensation of warmth flowed out of it and up her entire body. Within seconds, some of her muscles that had felt dead and lifeless before sang with life and energy. She didn’t let on though. Not yet. She kept her body limp and loose, waiting for the right moment to strike. It presented itself as the…things…were nearing the fifth-floor landing. They broke out into a heated argument over who got to do what to Kendra. They both set her carefully on the stairs and started shouting at each other.

“No,” one said, forcefully. Apparently, its name was Sputnick. Sometime during the trek Kendra had picked up on it. “No, no, no, no.”

“Yes,” the other one, Jarwink she remembered, said, although the two looked so alike it was hard to tell them apart.

“It was my plan. Mine. I get to have the fun. Me!”

“No!” Sputnick cried. Literally too. Greasy, fat tears travelled down the pockmarked skin of its cheeks. “You always get to have the fun. It’s my turn. My turn!”

Kendra waited, trying to be patient. She realized she didn’t have much time, but the last of the paralyzing drug was still wearing off. She could feel the alpha power inside her pushing the drug’s effects away. It surged down her veins like lava and eradicated her paralysis. A couple more seconds was all she needed.

Thankfully, Jarwink and Sputnick were more than happy to give them to her. Their altercation progressed from shouts to physical combat.

Jarwink stepped on Sputnick’s huge foot.

Sputnick rammed his enormous head right into Jarwink’s nose.

Jarwink bit down on Sputnick’s shoulder. The wound immediately started drooling a dark, nearly black, blood.

Sputnick grabbed Jarwink’s lopsided ears and yanked as hard as he could.

They continued on like that for a minute or two more before they realized that their prey was no longer lying awkwardly on the stairs. When they did notice, they stopped in their tracks. They looked like the world’s ugliest statues.

Sputnick gulped deeply.

Jarwink let out a pathetic meep sound.

Kendra stood taller than them even as a human. In her alpha state, she might as well have been a giant. Her huge, humanoid, wolf form regarded the two creatures. Her muzzle wrinkled in on itself as she growled ominously. Her red-auburn fur shone a bright copper in the stairwell’s lights.

“Meep,” Sputnick spluttered.

“Run!” Jarwink shouted.

Kendra shot forward, reaching out with her huge, clawed hands. She almost managed to nab Sputnick by the foot as he bounded off the walls, the railings, the stairs, and pretty much anything else he could jump off of in his efforts to escape the big scary werewolf. Jarwink avoided a devastating blow from Kendra and jumped straight up. He turned around in mid-air and landed feet first on the underside of the staircase above them. He promptly started running, (still upside down), heading back up the building instead of down. Sputnick managed to evade Kendra again, this time shooting underneath her legs, and made his way up the stairs too.

Kendra started after them, her clawed feet clacking on the cement stairs. She had to give the little creeps their due. They were incredibly fast.

But she was fast too.

She raced after them and five or six minutes later, all three burst onto the roof of her building. A thin layer of gravel covered it, making it hard for Kendra to slow down. Jarwink and Sputnick looked at her with overlarge, wide, and very terrified eyes. Realizing they had nowhere else to go, they dropped to the ground and started bowing to her.

“Don’t kill us,” they muttered over and over again, bowing each time.

Kendra stalked toward them, ready to rip their throats out. She was confident that she could deal with them quickly and still get a little sleep before she had to wake up for work.

“We’re sorry, sorry, sorry,” Sputnick spluttered.

“She made us,” Jarwink added.

That made her pause.

“Who made you?” she growled, her voice thick and rough.

The two of them both flinched at the sound of it.

She remembered them mentioning a mysterious she before, but the information hadn’t sunk in. Now that she had them trapped, she figured she might as well get something for her troubles. Info on a mysterious entity out to get her seemed like a good trade to her.

She walked a few steps closer, noticing that the two little creeps were watching her avidly. There were weird looks of anticipation on their faces. They looked almost eager. She took another step forward and stopped. A blinding flash of light appeared. When it disappeared, she blinked in confusion. Spots danced in front of her eyes for a minute before she was able to see clearly again.

The creeps abruptly quit talking. They stopped bowing too and the fear they’d shown before suddenly vanished. Broad, toothy grins appeared on their hideous faces. They got up, holding out their hands so that their scarred palms were pointing o the sky. Each one was glowing with soft white light.

“We’re lucky,” Sputnick commented. “This Wolfie is stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Yes,” Jarwink replied, eerily confident. “Walked right into our trap.”

Kendra tried to back up, but her feet felt glued to the roof. She struggled harder but no matter how much she tried; she couldn’t move. The ugly creatures approached her again and there was nothing she could do about it.

“You’d better kill me now,” she spat at them, her words more of a growl than anything else. “Because when I get free, I am going to murder you both.”

Jarwink walked up to her with no trace of fear. He peered up at Kendra’s massive head.

“She wouldn’t like that,” he laughed. “She wouldn’t like that at all.”

His hand started glowing again and he reached out to touch Kendra. She tried to back away, but she was still glued to the floor. The creep’s hand touched the fur of her left leg and the minute it did, she felt a deep, pervading weakness. It flowed through her in less than a second, crashing into her head like a tidal wave. Her alpha state melted off her and she collapsed, naked and unconscious, to the gravel rooftop.

Sputnick joined Jarwink as he regarded the slender, pale wolfwoman.

“This Wolfie was much stronger than she said,” Jarwink noted.

“No matter. No matter at all,” Sputnick declared. “She is ours now. Yes, she is, is, is.”

With that, they bent down and picked Kendra up. They took her to the door leading to the stairwell and started climbing down it, arguing again about who got to have fun with the wolfwoman.

“Wake up,” a voice said. It was low and quiet, like it was coming from a great distance. “Wake up. Kendra’s in trouble.”

Conor jerked awake, his body covered in cold, clammy sweat. He wiped it off his brow. He tried to focus on the room around him, but his mind was still heavy with sleep. He felt weird, too, like a thick cloud was blanketing his head, making it hard for him to get up.

He blinked rapidly, waiting for a weird bout of dizziness to fade. When his mind finally cleared, he looked around. There didn’t seem to be anything off at first. Then he looked over at Kendra and icy fear filled him.

Her side of the bed was empty.

“Kendra?” he called out.

He got out of bed fast, throwing his clothes on in a rush. He grabbed his shirt off the bed, and something clattered to the ground, falling from underneath his pillow. He bent down and looked at the object, his fear rising to new levels. It was a rune. It looked like a coin, but it was made of clay and had a strange, twisty letter on it. It didn’t take him long to realize what the letter meant.

Sleep.

His head jerked up as his nostrils flared. The scent of garbage and sewage came to him.

“Goblins,” he snarled.

He ran to the phone and dialed Eli Bishop’s private number.

Kendra drifted in and out of consciousness for several minutes before she finally came all the way awake. She heard low, muttering voices and her hope that she’d dreamed the creepy little creatures imploded on itself. She recognized them without trouble.

She looked around, trying to get a sense of her surroundings. She was in a small room. The walls were damp and had spots with mold growing on them. A single, overhead light dangled from the ceiling, but it was weak and left most of the place in dark shadows. There was a dank, musty odor to the air that mingled disgustingly with the creatures’ garbage and sewer scent.

“Wolfie there is the right one,” Jarwink was saying. “Wolfie there is definitely the one she wants.”

Kendra let out a huff of breath and went about trying to escape the ropes binding her hands and feet.

“What if she’s not?” Sputnick whimpered. He sounded like a scared dog. “If we got the wrong Wolfie, she will hurt us. She will hurt us bad. Bad, bad, bad.”

Kendra tried to focus on them, but her head was still messed up. She felt waves of fatigue mixed with a deepening nausea. Her throat was dry, and her mouth tasted like rotting meat. She needed to shrug off the effects of the…magic, she guessed…the creeps used on her. If she couldn’t do it quickly enough, she knew she was going to be in a world of trouble. She was pretty sure they weren’t out to kill her, at least not outright, or else they wouldn’t have bothered with kidnapping her.

No, she thought. They have something else in mind for me.

She shuddered at that very unappealing thought.

And who is this she they keep talking about?

She was fairly certain she didn’t want to find out.

“Will she come?” Sputnick asked. “She will, won’t she? We did good. Good, good, good.”

Jarwink didn’t answer him. He stopped talking, his deformed ears cocking in Kendra’s direction. She stopped struggling to get out of the ropes and sat as quietly as she could, her eyes closed and her breathing even.

“Wolfie,” Jarwink said in a singsong voice. “I know you’re awake.”

She opened her eyes and glared at the two malformed monsters.

“What do you want with me?” she barked.

Sputnick flinched at the sound of her voice, which made her feel very satisfied.

“Who are you little creeps working for?” she asked again.

“She will not be happy if we told you that,” Jarwink replied.

“She is not going to be happy when I find her and rip her throat out,” Kendra shot back, trying to keep them talking long enough to saw her way out of the ropes with her claws.

“Wolfie,” Jarwink said, mockingly. “You’re even stupider than I thought if you think you can even get near her.”

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Sputnick laughed.

“I am going to kill you both,” she replied, viciously.

Jarwink came closer to her, his jagged, pointed teeth flashing. She turned her head at the disgusting sight, but he reached out with his dirty hand and yanked her head back around to look at him.

“Be happy that she doesn’t want you dead,” Jarwink told her. “But maybe, after we’re done with you, you might prefer it.”

Jarwink bounced back as Kendra’s jaws snapped closed on the spot where the creep’s nose had been a second before.

“You will be fun to break,” Jarwink told her, laughing. Then he turned to Sputnick. “Bring her in.”

Dread and fear worked inside Kendra, making it hard for her to focus. The smug way Jarwink was acting told her that the next few minutes were not going to be pleasant. She worked harder on the ropes with her claws, but the escape effort was going torturously slow. The ropes were thick, and she couldn’t get enough leverage to do it very effectively.

“This is going to be so much fun, Wolfie,” Jarwink said, clapping his hands together. “Just wait and see. For centuries now, your kind has been hunting mine. You wolfies think you’re better than us. Better! But you’re not. You’re all monsters, just…like…me.” He smiled his jagged, toothy grin at her again. His red eyes gleamed with manic happiness. “I am going to prove it. Yes I am!”

The door that Sputnick went through suddenly opened again. Kendra’s fear exploded anew as she thought about being confronted with her mystery enemy.

What Sputnick brought in, however, was much worse.

It was a girl, no more than fourteen at most. Her face was red and puffy from hours of crying. Her sweaty brown hair was plastered to her skull and she looked around with wide, frightened eyes. She cried out and bucked against Sputnick, but the little creep was too strong for her. She couldn’t get away, no matter how hard she tried.

“What are you doing to that girl?” Kendra shouted, pushing with all her strength against the ropes. The tendons in her neck were stretched taut and her eyes glowed with amber fire. The alpha mark on her palm burned and itched. She reached for that power now, hoping to use it against the little creeps and get the girl out safely, but the second she tried to reach for it, her concentration splintered, and she felt it flow out of her grasp.

Her eyes flashed to Jarwink.

“What did you do to me?” She struggled against her ropes, but it did her no good.

“Trying to tap into your power, eh?” Jarwink replied.

“Won’t work, Wolfie. Not with the wards we put around you. Now you be a good doggy and sit. We have a treat for you.”

“Yes, we do! We do!” Sputnick chimed in, laughing as he dragged the girl over.

The full realization of their plan finally hit home. The outright terror she felt was like an invisible wound that sapped all her strength. Her body suddenly felt weak.

“Don’t,” she tried to say, but it came out as a whisper. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s already happening!” Jarwink replied. “I told you that we’re going to show you that werewolves are monsters too. What did you think I meant? Silly, Wolfie.” He talked to her as if she were a child now. “Don’t worry, though. As soon as it’s over, you won’t care about anything anymore.” He paused for a moment, as if considering something. “Well, except hunting and killing more humans. And more. And more. And more.”

“More, more, more,” Sputnick echoed.

The girl cried out again and her harsh sobs were loud inside the small room. They filled Kendra’s entire world until it was just her and those cries. They were desperate wails of fear, terror, and pain. Kendra wanted to help her, but she couldn’t. She was too weak. Her claws were even returning to normal now and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She felt hope dwindle and die inside her. They were going to make her kill that girl and ignite her blood hunger at the same time. A shiver of revulsion slithered over her entire body and cold sweat popped up on her brow.

“P-please…,” the girl said, her voice hoarse. “Help me.”

Tears flowed down Kendra’s face as she saw the girl’s pleading eyes. Sputnick yanked her closer to Kendra. He grabbed her chin and jerked her head roughly to the side, exposing her slender neck. Then he took a knife into his free hand and slid it slowly across her skin. A shallow cut opened up that spilled blood in a line. A few seconds later her neck was covered in the stuff. The little girl cried harder and struggled like a cornered animal but Sputnick’s hand gripped her jaw and chin harder, his grimy fingers dimpling her skin.

“Stop, stop, stop, girlie,” Sputnick hissed. “Hold still!”

“Stop it!” Kendra yelled. “Quit hurting her!”

“We’re not the ones that are going to hurt her,” Jarwink told her. “You are.”

Kendra watched the disgusting creature walk over to the girl. He dragged one of his fingers through her blood and brought it to his nose. He inhaled deeply.

“Smells good,” he said. He turned to her and smiled crookedly. “You’ll think so too in a moment.”

He took a few steps closer and hovered over her. The shadows the overhead light cast made his face look more sinister and gruesome. His blood drenched finger came closer and closer to her.

She could smell the blood, even though she didn’t want to. It was a disgusting scent and it churned her stomach sickeningly.

At least, that was her initial reaction.

There was something darker lurking just beneath the surface of her mind. That part liked the smell. That part wanted to inhale it deeply and breathe every particle of it into her body. It wanted to revel and lose itself in the intoxicating aroma. And worse yet, it wanted to not only taste it, but devour it.

She shuddered visibly, forcing the increasingly overwhelming sensations away.

“Stay away from me,” she said as menacingly as she could.

Jarwink, however, didn’t seem impressed. With her powerless and tied to the chair, there was little she could do stop to him. His dirty finger was almost to her lips.

“Open wide,” he snarled.

Kendra clamped her mouth shut, refusing to budge.

Jarwink’s anger surged forward and the hand without the blood on it lashed out. His fingers clamped onto the sides of her face and dug in painfully, but she still wouldn’t give in. The girl’s screams and cries gave her added strength. If she failed and Jarwink accomplished his goal, then the girl was as good as dead.

She held out for as long as she could. Her mouth didn’t pop open until she could physically hear her jaw cracking and breaking. The pain was more intense than she could’ve imagined.

She cried out and, in that moment, she knew everything was lost.

Jarwink let out a happy shout.

Then out of nowhere, a blinding, brilliant light lit up the entire room. It was pure white, and Kendra reflexively shut her eyes against it, although the light was so bright it only offered her minimal protection. Her pain, however, was nothing compared to Jarwink and Sputnick. She could hear them both howling as if someone were clawing their eyes out with a dull spoon.

Sounds came to her next. The girl’s cries suddenly ceased, and Kendra could no longer smell her blood. Her best guess was that whoever blasted the room with light had gotten the girl out first. She struggled against her ropes again, but she still couldn’t break free. A sudden noise caught her attention, even over the commotion that Jarwink and Sputnick were still making.

They were footsteps.

They were coming toward her and she had to work hard to beat down her fear. Whoever was there probably wasn’t out to kill her, she hoped. The fact that they took the girl out first told her they were most likely there to help, not hurt. Unless they killed her once they got outside the room. That thought sent another wash of fear through her. The footsteps stopped right next to her. Kendra couldn’t help but hold her breath, her heart racing with anticipation. The light hadn’t gone away yet, so her eyes were still shut. She couldn’t see who was there.

Please be Conor, she told herself. Or Jenna. Or Felix.

She breathed in and realized that her rescuer’s scent belonged to no one she knew.

“Hello?” she tried.

She heard footsteps again, this time heading in the direction of the two wailing creatures. Kendra was pretty sure neither one had any clue there was someone else int he room with them now. Whatever pain they were experiencing was consuming them. It was almost pitiful, really. They were crying miserably now. They were big, harsh sobs that sounded like the cries of a baby.

“Who’s there?” Kendra whispered. “Who are you?”

Whoever the person was, they never said a word. Instead, there were sounds of a struggle. The mystery man (Kendra was 90% sure that it was a man) grappled with one of the creeps. A high-pitched scream filled the air. Then came ripping sounds. There was a thunk, like the sound of something meaty hitting the floor. The sounds repeated themselves with the remaining creep. She wasn’t sure if it was Jarwink or Sputnick and didn’t care either way. When there was only silence again, Kendra knew one thing for certain. Jarwink and Sputnick were dead.

There was a weird popping sound and the light suddenly went out.

Kendra tentatively opened her eyes, expecting to see her rescuer. Instead, the room was empty. The only thing left in it were the headless corpses of Jarwink and Sputnick. From the jagged, torn skin and tissue of where their heads separated, Kendra figured her rescuer had simply ripped them right off their bodies. There was no sign of who did it and no sign of the girl either.

“Thank you,” Kendra said, mostly to herself. “You could’ve at least cut the ropes.”

Her voice echoed back to her as she sat there. Alone. In the dark.

“Ok. Now what?”

She didn’t know. She sat there for a second or two, trying to come up with a plan. After a few minutes, she decided to try tapping into her alpha power again. She figured with Jarwink dead; the wards he’d placed might be gone too. She took a deep breath and focused. She found the well of power inside her easily enough. It was so big, it felt like a vast ocean. When she immersed herself in it completely, she let it take control.

Her body humped and bulged. Fur sprouted along her arms, torso, and legs. Her face lengthened and formed a muzzle full of giant, ripping teeth. Her feet expanded to five times their normal size and deadly claws sprouted out of their tips.

With a roar, she snapped the ropes holding her to the chair and got up. She saw the world in beautiful hues of amber gold. She sniffed, taking in the scents. She smelled blood, human and from Jarwink and Sputnick. She smelled the faint aroma of her mystery rescuer, but when she tried to follow it, it abruptly vanished near the fall wall.

She let the power of the alpha state dwindle away until she was human again. She shivered from the cold and wrapped her arms around her naked body for warmth.

“Great,” she told no one. “Now I get to walk home butt naked. Could this day get any worse?”

As if on cue, the door to the room was smashed open and Conor came running in.

Followed by Jenna.

And then Felix.

Conor’s face flushed red while Jenna tried to hide a smirk.

Felix gaped at her, his mouth hanging slightly open.

“I don’t suppose someone brought clothes?” she asked.

They ended up having to wait in that filthy room for twenty minutes while Felix did his magical teleport trick to the nearest clothing store so he could grab her some stuff for Kendra to wear. They weren’t even close to fitting right and were embarrassingly mismatched.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, exasperated. “I’m not exactly a fashion guru or anything. Besides, it’s the thought that counts right?”

Kendra looked at her bright pink, chevron patterned top against her green and red plaid pants. She eyed Felix coldly.

“Really?” she said. “I think even you would know these don’t match.”

Felix mumbled something about ingratitude while they made their way back to street level. Then they walked a block and a half to a local coffee shop that opened early, found a booth, and sat down.

“What did they want with you?” Conor asked after everyone got settled.

Kendra gazed out the window, her thoughts distracting her. She was thinking about the night’s events. She wondered who was after her and why they wanted her to give in to her blood hunger. She wondered who her mystery rescuer was. Lastly, she wondered if the girl was okay.

It took her a few seconds to realize that Conor even said something.

“What?” she asked.

“What did they want with you?” he asked again.

“They wanted me to kill a girl,” she said.

“What? Why?” Jenna asked, shocked.

“They wanted me to give in to the blood hunger. They wanted to make me a monster. They said she told them to,” Kendra explained.

“Who’s she?” Jenna asked.

“I don’t know,” Kendra responded. Now that the danger was over, she felt very, very tired. Insanely hungry (which was a side effect of regenerating injuries like cracked jaws), but exhausted.

“A shadow enemy might not be our biggest threat,” Conor said.

“That seems pretty threatening to me,” Felix replied.

“He’s talking about my rescuer,” Kendra told him.

“Someone comes in and saves the day and you guys label him a threat?” Felix asked. “I think you both need to look up the meaning of the word grateful.”

“Someone we don’t know, who went out of his way to hide who he is from Kendra, went down there and took care of two goblins by himself,” Jenna explained. “He used some kind of light grenade and then ripped their heads off their bodies with his bare hands. What does that tell you Felix? And take your time. Make sure you really understand.”

Felix scowled at her but thought it over. His eyes widened when he realized why the other three were so worried.

“Exactly.” Jenna patted him on the back.

“He used light as a weapon against goblins. He knew their biggest weakness. He also knew enough to incapacitate them quickly before they could use their magic against him. What does that tell you?” Conor asked.

“That he’s a hunter,” Kendra said, looking at each in turn.

“And whoever he is, he’s not Defaeco, mage, or part of my pack. I’m pretty sure he’s not even human.”

“Which makes me wonder,” Conor said. Everyone looked at him. “Why is there a new hunter in town and what does he want?”

Two women stood in the room where the goblins Jarwink and Sputnick died. Their bodies were no longer there but the blood was. Goblin blood tended to stick around for a while and stain whatever it touched.

One of the women, a slender, hauntingly beautiful woman with streaks of grey shooting through her dark hair, bent down and examined the blood. Her emerald green eyes were narrowed in anger and she trailed her delicate fingers through the already drying blood. She brought their tips closer to her nose and breathed in deeply.

The other woman stood there watching with evident boredom. She twirled her long, blonde hair in her fingers and waited impatiently for her companion to be finished doing whatever it was she was doing.

“What are you doing, My Lady?” Deanna Shade asked, curious despite herself. The next question she asked, she asked mostly out of a sense of self-preservation because the woman in front of her had a very nasty temper that could flare up for any reason, no matter how trivial. “Do you require my assistance?”

The other woman didn’t respond. She didn’t even seem to hear Deanna. She was too focused on finding out who had the audacity to murder her subjects.

She breathed in once more and finally caught a whiff of a different scent. A scent she was all too familiar with. Her eyes widened a bit before narrowing with her anger. The answer she found only fanned the flames of her rage.

She took another deep sniff to ensure she was correct but there was no mistaking that earthy musk.

It belonged to him.

She hissed loudly and her eyes flashed a cold white color. Traces of black, spidery veins sprouted from the hollows of her eyes.

She got up and stood with her back stiff and rigid. Her hands clenched into tight fists, the pale skin of her knuckles going almost bone white. Her pretty, youthful faced turned to Deanna, who had to work hard not to show any fear.

“Lady Bendis? Is everything all right?” Deanna asked in a very nervous voice. She’d been on the receiving end of one of Bendis’ tantrums many times and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

Bendis didn’t respond. Instead, she stormed out of the creepy, dank room. The door slammed hard enough to knock it off its frame. It fell to the ground in a loud, ear-splitting crash that caused Deanna to whimper.

“Come with me!” Bendis shouted from outside the room.

Deanna jumped slightly but hastened to follow.

Kendra walked out of an elevator, thoughts of goblins and mystery saviors still running through her head. It didn’t matter that the goblin attack happened two days ago. She couldn’t stop thinking about how close she’d come to losing who she was to the wolf.

She stepped through a pair of glass doors and into her office building’s spacious cafeteria. She stopped there for a second and looked around. She spotted Conor, Felix, and Jenna with ease near the middle of the room, talking animatedly while they ate. She grabbed some food and joined them.

Her friends were deep in conversation about the newest episode of Supernatural. Conor and Felix loved the show while Jenna constantly called them idiots for liking it.

“Come on,” Jenna said, exasperated. “You fight monsters like that all the time and on top of that you are a monster. You can’t honestly sit there and tell me it’s that easy to kill a wendigo? That’s way beyond ridiculous.”

“It’s not about accuracy,” Conor replied. “It’s about the fact that the show is badass. You can’t hate something just because they get the facts wrong. Then you won’t like anything. And again, I’m a werewolf, not a monster.”

“Whatever,” Jenna responded. “TV rots your brain anyway. I think spending my free time training is much more productive.”

“Well, maybe you spend a little too much time training and not enough time just having fun,” Felix replied. “You’re too wound up. All the time. It gets irritating after a while. I should know. I’m your partner.”

Jenna threw a French fry at Felix. He flinched as it smacked dead center on his forehead, bounced off, and then plopped into his pop.

“Really?” he asked, sarcastically. “That was real mature, Jenna. Now my damn pop is gonna taste like French fries.”

“So? Suck it up. Not the end of the world,” Jenna smiled broadly, which made Felix even angrier.

“What about you Kendra? How do you feel about the show?”

Kendra looked up from her half-eaten food. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the conversation. Her mind was still wrapped up in the mystery of the goblins. She wanted to know why they tried to force her to kill a scared little girl to awaken her blood hunger. She remembered almost every detail and kept coming back to the she the two goblins had been talking about. Obviously, whoever that was had a mega-sized grudge against her. She couldn’t think of why or who would hate her that much though.

“Kendra?” Jenna said, snapping her fingers in front of her friend’s face.

Kendra jerked out of her thoughts. She looked up at Jenna.

“Huh?” she asked.

“What do you think of Supernatural?” Jenna went on.

“Cute guys on that show. That’s about it,” she replied absentmindedly.

“Hey?” Jenna asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Just thinking about what happened. Can’t seem to get it out of my head,” she told them.

“We’ll find out who sent the goblins. Don’t worry about it, okay?” Conor reached over and grasped her hand, trying to comfort her.

Kendra didn’t look convinced, but she nodded her head in agreement anyway.

“Did my dad give you any answers?” Jenna asked.

Kendra shook her head. She had talked to Elijah Bishop, the head of the Defaeco Knights and her boss, but he didn’t have any clues. He’d told her that goblins were mostly solitary, reclusive creatures that stuck to their subterranean lairs. The only time they came out was to hunt for food. The fact that they could use magic made them dangerous and very hard to control. He couldn’t figure out how anyone would be able to manage it.

“He didn’t have a clue,” Kendra told her.

“Give him some time, maybe he’ll find someone that knows something,” Jenna said.

“Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath,” Kendra picked at her food some more. Thoughts of blood and killing innocent people made her stomach uneasy. She just sat there staring at it, trying to muster enough of an appetite to actually eat something. She gave up a second later, pushing her food away.

A pair of scents suddenly drifted over to her through the thousands of other smells in the cafeteria. Her eyes widened slightly in alarm. She looked to the cafeteria’s entrance and spotted the source. Conor smelled them too and they both got up, leaving Jenna and Felix at the table. They walked over to where a pretty, red-haired woman was carrying a small baby strapped to her chest with one of those baby backpack contraptions.

“Deirdre?” Kendra asked.

“What’s the matter?” Conor chimed in.

“Nothing, nothing. I just thought me and Patrick could stop in and say hi. He gets so fussy in the afternoons and the only thing that calms him is a walk,” Deirdre answered. She had a slight British accent to her voice. “The park Pat loves to play at is only a couple of blocks away. Say hi to Auntie Kendra and Uncle Conor, Pat.”

The baby gurgled and then burped. He stared at Kendra and Conor with eyes the same exact shade as his father, Patrick Dugan Sr.

“Hi, Pat. How’s my favorite boy?” Kendra cooed, letting the baby grab hold of her pinky. She smiled happily at him, but guilt still tore at her every time she saw him.

Patrick Sr. had been brutally murdered by Merrick, her older brother. It hadn’t really been his fault because a fire mage named Jonah Washburn took control of Merrick’s mind and forced him to awaken his blood hunger. In the end, Kendra had been able to take Jonah down, but the damage had already been done. Merrick was so wracked with guilt that he refused to come anywhere near his former pack, Kendra included.

“Did you miss me?” Kendra asked the baby.

Pat smiled big and sort of clapped.

Kendra laughed.

Deirdre smiled happily but then her face turned serious. She looked at Kendra and Conor both, her lips pulled down in a slight frown.

“Have you found her yet?” she asked, a hard glint to her eyes.

Kendra took a moment, trying to phrase her response appropriately.

“No. Everyone is looking for her but your sister is really good at staying hidden,” Kendra responded. “But don’t worry, she can’t hide forever. We’ll find her and we’ll make sure that she pays for her part in what happened to Patrick. Okay?”

Deirdre’s eyes glittered with angry tears.

“No, dammit. It’s not okay. Because of her, my boy doesn’t get to know his father. She’ll live to regret the day she betrayed us, even if it takes me centuries to find her,” Deirdre said.

“She’ll be found. It’s only a matter of time,” Conor said, reassuringly.

“How’s the rest of the pack?” Kendra asked.

“Fine, I guess. Most still don’t agree with your treaty with the knights and mages but some of them are coming around. I thought it was a mistake at first too, but Carson and George are actually good company, once they got past the fact that I’m a werewolf,” Deirdre explained. “George will even use his magic to build sandcastles for Pat sometimes. You should see Pat’s eyes just light up.”

“I’m glad things are starting to smooth out now,” Kendra replied.

“It was a great idea,” Conor told her as he rubbed the small of her back, his hand even going underneath her shirt. Kendra wriggled away from his inappropriate groping and shot him a questioning look. The only response she got was a vague shrug and a weird look in his eyes.

Deirdre looked at Conor, took a quick sniff in Kendra’s direction, and then started laughing.

“Uh…what’s so funny?” Kendra asked.

“Oh, you’ll find out. I’m sure,” Deirdre replied, giggling some more. She stepped in and gave Kendra and then Conor a hug. “Will I see you guys at the mansion tonight? Your dad’s cooking, Conor.”

“Maybe we’ll just grab some take out then. If you were smart, you’d do the same. Dad’s been known to burn water, so be careful,” Conor advised as his hand reached over to caress Kendra’s back again. This time, his fingertips found their way underneath the tops of her black dress pants. Kendra jerked like she’d been shocked and smacked Conor on the shoulder.

“Stop that! I work here,” she hissed.

Conor didn’t look apologetic at all. In fact, as he looked at her, she could see a burning lust lurking in the backs of his eyes.

Deirdre watched them and laughed softly again as baby Pat gooed and gawed incessantly, smiling the whole time. She turned and was about to leave when something made her pause. She turned around and looked questioningly at Kendra.

“Do you feel that?” Deirdre asked.

Kendra didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. It was written all over her face. Conor’s too. They both felt it.

Every instinct Kendra had was screaming fiercely at her.

Something was coming.

She turned and searched the cafeteria. She didn’t find anything out of the ordinary but when her gaze swept over Jenna and Felix; she could tell they felt something too. Both of them had gotten up and were walking over.

“There’s something in the air,” Conor said, his voice gruff. He narrowed his eyes and searched the building.

“It’s some kind of magic,” Felix said when he got to them. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in and out in measured, controlled breaths. “Ancient, very powerful magic. More powerful than anything I’ve ever felt before.”

“Should we be worried?” Jenna asked.

As soon as the words were out of Jenna’s mouth, all the bustling, busy, and loud people in the cafeteria went completely still. Each one froze, like they all decided as one to impersonate statues.

“What’s going on?” Kendra asked, worried.

“I think we’re under attack,” Deirdre commented. She hugged Pat closer to her, trying to offer what protection she could.

“As sharp as ever, sister,” a voice rang out.

They all turned toward the far side of the cafeteria to a pair of double doors that led out onto the patio. A figure stood silhouetted there, her back to the midday sunshine.

“Deanna,” Deirdre growled. She reached around and undid the baby backpack. She kissed the top of Pat’s head and then turned to Felix. “Hold my baby.”

Felix gaped at her, shocked.

“Hold…?” he asked, dumbfounded as Deirdre slid the straps over his shoulders and buckled the baby in.

“You let anything happen to him, I’ll kill you,” Deirdre commented. Then she turned and exploded into her wolf form, bits of her clothes still clinging to her reddish fur.

“Now, now sister, control your temper. We haven’t even started the festivities yet,” Deanna admonished.

Deirdre howled and charged forward. Her massive form weaved around tables cluttered with statue-like humans and barreled completely through the empty ones in her eagerness to rip Deanna’s throat out.

“Deirdre, stop!” Kendra shouted, her voice ringing with authority.

The giant red wolf suddenly halted in her tracks, her claws scraping and scratching over the tiled floor. She came to a stop about ten feet away from Deanna.

Deirdre’s huge wolf head turned around, her luminous amber eyes glowing with rage and hate.

“Get back over here, now!” Kendra commanded.

The big wolf obviously tried to resist the urge to obey Kendra, but in the end, she failed. She stalked back over to her Alpha’s side and shifted back into her human form. She turned to Kendra, anger and rage twisting her usually beautiful features.

“Why’d you do that?” Deirdre asked.

“Because it was obviously a trap,” Kendra replied, calmly. She shrugged out of the shirt she was wearing over her halter top and handed it to Deirdre so she could cover herself up.

“I could’ve taken her, and you know it,” Deirdre replied, still not wanting to let go of her anger.

“I see Kendra’s quite the smart little cookie,” Deanna mocked, walking further into the cafeteria. “Hello Kendra, dear. We haven’t formally met but I believe you’ve heard of me?”

“What are you doing here?” Kendra said.

“Under orders. You see, you’ve managed to piss off a very powerful, scary person. Not really your fault, though. It’s because of where your blood comes from. Quite unlucky to have had Merle Bane as a father,” Deanna explained. “She doesn’t just want you dead, Kendra, she wants to unravel you. She wants to make you suffer and suffer until you are begging for death.” Deanna paused for a moment, glancing around the room. “I think I’ll start the torture by killing every last human in this disgusting place. Of course, you can spare them by surrendering yourself to me.”

“You won’t last two seconds against us,” Jenna yelled. “You really think you have the power to make good on your threat all by yourself?”

“It was stupid of you to come here, Deanna,” Conor added.

Kendra would have agreed, except she knew Deanna wasn’t that stupid. A cold feeling washed through her body as Deanna’s lips twisted into a cruel, vicious smile.

“Did I mention the nice benefits package from my employer?” Deanna asked sarcastically. “Silly me. I must’ve forgotten.”

She stepped forward slightly and lifted up her right hand, the palm facing them.

“Shit,” Jenna hissed.

Conor sucked in a breath of shock.

Kendra growled, her mouth pulled into a vicious snarl.

Sitting in the middle of Deanna’s palm was a three-spiraled, red tattoo.

“The alpha mark,” Kendra whispered.

Elijah sat at his desk, poring over business reports, projections, and sales sheets when he felt the first stirrings of magic hit him. He stiffened. His back turned rigid and his hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist.

He looked up as a swirling whirlwind of sand appeared in the middle of his office only to coalesce into the form of a thin man wearing a designer three-piece suit. He had a pointed silver goatee with grey hair styled professionally.

“Abraham?” Elijah asked. “What’s going on?”

“Something breeched the building’s defenses,” Abraham responded. “I came to warn you.”

“Do we know by who or what?” Elijah responded, getting up from his chair and heading over to a full-sized, disturbingly real, suit of armor sandwiched between two bookcases.

He reached behind the suit to a hidden button on the wall and pressed it. The armor suddenly slid back and to the right soundlessly, revealing a small hidden room. White lights came on and revealed roughly fifty different weapons ranging from handguns to ridiculously huge broadswords. There were even a few grenades inside. Elijah went inside and came out with a Glock in his left hand and a gleaming broadsword with a well-worn leather hilt in his left.

He turned and looked at Abraham, waiting for an answer.

“At this point, all we have are conjectures. None of them good,” the mage replied.

“Where is the breach’s point of origin?” Elijah asked.

“From what I can tell, the cafeteria.”

Elijah was in the middle of buckling the huge sword onto his hip. He looked up, his eyes narrowed.

“Kendra,” he said. “She went down there ten minutes ago.”

“We’ve gotten reports that she was abducted last night. It seems someone came to finish the job,” Abraham commented.

“Jenna told me about it this morning and Kendra asked me some questions about goblins. Apparently, someone was commanding the pair that kidnapped her. This, as you know, is practically unheard of. Goblins are not easily controlled.”

Elijah holstered the gun and started walking toward the doors to his office, Abraham following behind. He pushed them open and went into the hallway beyond.

Natalie sat at her desk, her hands hovering motionlessly over her keyboard. Her eyes were focused on the computer screen. She wasn’t moving at all. Elijah spent a couple of seconds trying to snap her out of whatever trance she was in but it did little good. Eventually, he gave up and went into his firm’s main room. Every single person there was as still as Natalie and in various poses of whatever they had been doing at the time the spell hit.

There was Johnny Milligan laughing soundlessly on the phone.

Janice Tompkins and Anna Banowitz were discussing thumbnails of various logo concepts.

Jong Ok Lee was writing code for a website.

Monica Smith was drawing different versions of a tiger mascot.

Tyler Dawson was clearly turning on the charm for Carrie Vega.

Carrie Vega loved every frozen minute of Tyler’s attentions.

Everywhere they looked, people were just…stuck.

“What is this?” Elijah asked, waving one hand in front of Jong Ok’s face.

“It appears to be a massive immobilization spell. The amount of energy needed to pull something like this off is staggering,” Abraham responded.

“Why aren’t we affected by it?” Elijah inquired. He pushed through the doors which led into the hallway outside Bishop Media Solutions’ offices.

“From what I can tell, you aren’t affected because whoever cast the spell doesn’t want you to be. I’m not because I am currently expending valuable energy to shield myself. The question is why does our mystery attacker want you walking around?” Abraham countered.

“Let’s go find out,” Elijah answered.

He pushed open the door to the stairwell.

“Very good, Kendra,” Deanna mocked. She acted like she was talking to a child. “I wonder. Did anyone tell you that not all wolf packs fight to protect humanity? Some of them, the ones that are more fun if you ask me, have indulged in their more…. basic natures.”

Deanna’s eyes were intense and filled with anticipation.

“My employer was kind enough to present me with the opportunity to kill the alpha of one of those packs,” Deanna told her. “There’s nothing better than killing, Kendra. To have blood soaking my claws and fangs. Of feeling the rush after I gulp it down. Killing an alpha is like that, only on a much bigger scale. His pack was little more than animals. They preyed on anything with a heartbeat. They’re feral, ferocious, and quite lovely. What more could a girl want?”

As soon as she was done talking, fourteen people filed into the cafeteria and stood next to her. They all looked dangerous and wild. Their eyes glittered with insanity.

Kendra stared hard at Deanna, her hands clenched. She could feel that immense swirl of energy whirling around inside of her, eagerly waiting for her to release it.

“Then what are you waiting for? I’m right here, Deanna. Come and get me,” Kendra snarled.

She finally let the power warring inside her take control. Her body expanded and fur sprouted out of her skin. Her mouth and nose elongated into a wolf’s muzzle while her mouth filled with fangs. Her eyes pulsed and glowed with amber fire. She reached up with a clawed hand and ripped her torn clothes off as the alpha state transformed her from a beautiful woman into a terrifying monster.

“In due time, dear girl,” Deanna laughed. “I’m just waiting on the last guest. Another one that has irritated my employer.”

As if on cue, Elijah and Abraham burst into the cafeteria from the building’s main lobby. Elijah had his broadsword in one hand, the silver so bright it practically glowed.

Abraham was poised and ready, his eyes glowing a steady, constant green. His head flicked in the direction of Deanna and without another thought, he thrust out a hand. A chunk of concrete underneath the wood flooring was ripped out of the ground with a hideous screeching sound and launched itself at the woman.

Deanna laughed riotously as the projectile came hurtling toward her. Her eyes flashed bright yellow. She slashed a clawed hand through the air as the concrete got closer and closer to her. Her hand connected with it and the cement chunk shattered into dozens of smaller bits and a cloud of dust exploded into the air.

“Come on now. Is that the best you got?” she asked, mockingly.

“Well, at least the real fun can start now. Welcome to my party, Mr. Bishop. I’ve been waiting for you. I hope you didn’t think your crafty pet could help you get out of this building alive.” She turned and looked at the rest of the group. “Or any of you. They can’t help you. No one can. All of you will die. And, my lovelies, it will be very painful.” Her eyes went to Kendra next and her smile widened. “Except you of course, dear. Your end will be much slower and more...torturous. I have my orders on that regard. But I’m sure it will be so very exciting to watch all your friends writhing as their blood gushes from their torn throats.”

“Has she always been this crazy?” Jenna asked Deirdre.

“Never this bad,” Deirdre replied.

“Destroy them! Kill everyone!” Deanna shouted. Her voice morphed into a howl as her body exploded into a giant, blonde-haired wolf that charged through the cafeteria, intent on ripping anything human apart.

The other fourteen people shifted too and let out simultaneous howls of their own. They ran toward whatever unfortunate people happened to be the closest to them.

“Protect as many people as you can,” Kendra said, her voice deep and frightening.

Conor morphed into his hybrid wolf features. He let out a roar and ran full out toward a tawny-haired werewolf. It was getting ready to tear into a table full of motionless people. It leaped into the air; its insanely long claws stretched out. Saliva dripped from its open maw and its eyes gleamed. Conor hurtled into it when the wolf came within inches of striking one of the humans. He wrapped his arms around its torso in mid-air and slammed it into the ground, putting all of his strength and effort into the hit. The wolf whined piteously as its ribs creaked and then snapped with loud cracking noises. Then Conor slashed at it with his claws, his mind lost in a berserker rage of fury and battle lust. Blood sprayed out as his claws tore through major arteries.

He could feel that blood soaking his face and clothes…and he loved every minute of it. Part of his mind cried out in horror and screamed at him to stop but it was lost in a haze of red.

“Conor!” he heard someone yell his name. It evoked the humanity lurking in his soul and he snapped out of his trance. He looked around and spotted Jenna and Felix (who was still holding Pat Jr.) coming toward him.

“Snap out of it!” Jenna yelled.

“We need you focused,” Felix added.

Conor gave them a shaky nod. He took a breath, trying to center himself. Then his head jerked up and he abruptly came at the two of them with his claws out.

Jenna’s gun sprang to her hand like magic, its barrel pointed at a spot dead center on Conor’s forehead. Felix’s eyes widened in fear and he hurriedly whipped up a cyclone of wind around his slight frame. The baby gurgled happily as the playful wind tugged at his sparse hair and the clothes he was wearing.

Before the two could react, however, Conor squeezed between them and jabbed his claws into a black-furred wolf sporting numerous scars. It was less than a foot away from Jenna and Felix and was just about to rip into them with fangs and claws.

Conor let out a grunt of effort, lifted it up, and then threw it into a wall. The wolf smashed against it and crumpled to the ground.

“You’re welcome,” Conor said to Felix and Jenna, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Felix abruptly thrust out a hand and sent a spinning disc of compacted air sailing forward. Jenna’s pistol barked out three loud shots. Then a thud sounded from behind Conor. He turned his head to look and found a still-twitching wolf lying in a pool of its own blood.

“You’re welcome,” Jenna had a self-satisfied smile on her pretty face. “Now let’s go.”

Conor gave her a slight nod and then took off, heading for his next target.

He fought hard to control his darker side. The smell of the blood around him was…hard to deal with. It brought back flashes of past memories he preferred stayed buried forever.

He tried to push those thoughts out of his mind. Felix was right. He had to be focused.

Kendra needed him.

Elijah’s first instinct when the insane wolves attacked was to run to Jenna and try to protect her, but he knew that was foolish. His daughter was a full-fledged member of the Order of the Defaeco Knights. It was something she had sought to obtain, completely on her own, since she was old enough to know the stories. She’d gone through extensive training. She went through the hours-long process of desensitizing herself to the natural fear all humans have of the kinds of creatures they fight. It was one of the more brutal trials of being a knight, but she had handled it with surprising ease. His daughter’s immense force of will simply refused to bow down to fear. He knew she could take care of herself.

The frozen, defenseless humans on the other hand, were a different matter altogether. They had no way to protect themselves and so they had to be his first priority. It was, after all, why he had become a knight in the first place. To protect those who didn’t have the means to protect themselves.

“Try to contact the Order, Abraham. Do whatever you have to do to get through to them. We need backup and we need it now! I’m going to bring as many of these beasts down as I can,” Elijah ordered.

“They’ll tear you apart!” Abraham argued.

“Just go!” he yelled as his silver sword whipped out in a broad arc. The tip cut a line across a charging wolf’s face, slicing open part of its skull and one of its eyes. The wolf’s roar of pain was loud, but not loud enough for Elijah to miss the satisfying sound of its flesh burning from the silver in his sword.

Another one attacked right on the heels of the first, but he lopped off a chunk of its muzzle right before his other hand shot a semi-automatic pistol filled with silver bullets directly into its face. It slumped to the ground and didn’t get back up.

The air stank with the smell of burnt fur.

Elijah waded into the fray, trying to get closer to his daughter, Kendra, and the rest. The wolves, however, weren’t making it easy. They circled him at one point. One would come at him, its jaws snapping viciously. While he tried to fend that one off, another would attack him from the back. He gained several slashes to his legs and his back before he threw down a flash grenade while covering his eyes.

The whole cafeteria lit up with bright light and the wolves howled in pain. With his vision unimpeded, Elijah was able to pick off each of the three wolves threatening him. He put a bullet in two of their heads and lopped the third one’s off with his broadsword.

Before he could even catch his breath, another wolf launched itself at him. Elijah got off a hurried shot but the bullet went slightly wide. Instead of hitting the creature in its head, it just blew off a chunk of its ear. Elijah backed up as the werewolf slashed at him with its claws. Its slightly yellowed fangs dripped thick lines of slobber onto the floor.

Its claws dug into the floor, then it let out an ear-splitting roar and sprang forward. It slashed with claws or threatened him with its snapping maw, but Elijah dodged each attack or blocked them with his sword. The wolf, however, was amazingly strong. It was only a matter of time before either the claws or the fangs were going to find their mark.

It retreated a few steps and then launched into an even more frenzied attack. Its massive claw-tipped paws were so fast they were little more than blurs.

To his credit, Elijah managed to deflect 90% percent of them, his movements fluid and graceful. But that remaining 10% finally became too much. He was bleeding from several slash and bite marks, most of them deep and very painful. The loss of blood was sapping his energy and it became increasingly difficult to keep his focus.

Sensing the weakness in its prey, the werewolf went in for the kill.

Elijah wearily watched the thing come at him, both hands gripping the hilt of his sword. Somewhere along the way, his gun had been knocked out of his hand. He didn’t remember how or when that happened.

When the werewolf was about three feet from Elijah, it jumped at him, intending to bear the knight to the ground and sink its fangs into his neck.

Elijah yelled out harshly, his screams rising above the sounds of battle.

Jenna heard her father’s cries and turned to look at him.

“Dad!” Jenna shouted just as a wolf jumped at him.

Abraham retreated to a much quieter section of the cafeteria. He needed a lot of concentration for the spell he was attempting. He wasn’t even sure he could do it. He had to spend most of his valuable energy warding off the spell that was keeping everyone in a continued state of suspended animation. On top of that, whoever was creating that spell was incredibly powerful. Their magic was like a blanket made out of titanium that was reinforced with carbon fiber. It was hard to get his magic to punch through.

But he would give it his all.

He closed his eyes, tuning out the distracting sounds around him. He focused on the magic welling up inside of him. The very power of the earth itself. Immeasurable. Infinite. It was as steady as a mountain. It was as strong and unyielding as a diamond. It was life.

A series of low growls brought him out of his meditations. He slowly opened his eyes, his heart rate speeding up a bit. He’d undergone the knights’ desensitizing training too, but he’d never quite lost that primal fear of monsters that humans had been born with since the dawn of time.

He gulped noticeably, his sharp Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. His hooked nose twitched.

“Stay back,” he told them, waving his arms in front of him. His hands were glowing. Then the light traveled up both of his arms.

The wolves looked frightened for a couple of seconds, but their need to kill overrode their common sense. They came at Abraham all at once.

“I warned you,” he muttered.

He slammed his open hands onto the ground. The green light he had wreathing both arms seeped into the cafeteria floor. Veins of that same colored light flowed through it for a second or two before large, deadly spikes sprang out like a twisted mind’s version of a Jack-In-The-Box.

All the wolves trying to attack him were impaled and left there to wail out their pain.

Abraham turned his back on them and returned to what he’d been doing, trying to go a little bit quicker this time.

With any luck, I can get through to someone before I become puppy chow, he thought to himself.

Already he could hear other wolves coming toward him.

He shoved those thoughts out of his mind. Instead, he concentrated on what he needed to do. He let his magic build and build until the spell was sufficiently strong enough, in his estimation, to breach the blanket of magic covering the building.

With a string of archaic words, he let the spell flow out of him.

There was a brief second of weakness followed by a bout of nausea, but that was something Abraham had grown used to. It was a side-effect of wielding magic. One of the greatest rules of using magic was that energy couldn’t be created from nothing. It had to come from somewhere. For mages, it came from the element they were in tune with. Air. Fire. Water. Earth. When that wasn’t enough, the mage could draw on the energy from deep inside of themselves.

It was a risky move. If you took or used too much, then you died.

As simple as that.

Game over.

Abraham knew enough to not let it get that far, however.

He reached out with his senses and felt the magic of his spell hit the magic barrier. He thought all was lost when it appeared his magic wouldn’t be strong enough to break free. He felt agonizing defeat. He pushed harder, though, using every bit of power he could muster, from the strength and unflinching power of the earth to the well of energy inside himself. He came very close to the point of no return and just as his vision started to dim, he felt his spell break free.

He breathed roughly for a second or two, his head dizzy.

Good, Abraham said to himself with a feeling of pride.

“It’s done,” he shouted to Elijah.

But Elijah didn’t hear. A wolf landed on the big man’s shoulders and chest, bearing him to the ground. Abraham lost sight of him. There were too many people and too many tables for him to get a clear look.

“Elijah!”

Abraham sprinted over, running as fast as he could.

Kendra didn’t see where her friends went. She heard a couple different commotions as several battles broke out. She forced herself to concentrate on what was really important. Taking Deanna down. With their alpha incapacitated or dead, the other wolves would be weak. They would scurry back to their holes with their tails between their legs. Kendra was more than happy to help with that.

For Merle. For Merrick. I’m gonna kill you, bitch, Kendra thought. The dagger-like claws on her feet dug inch-deep gouges into the wooden floors while her bright, amber hued vision picked out Deanna in exact detail.

“You’re going to think twice about attacking me here, Deanna. I promise you that,” Kendra said. Her voice came out harsh and terrifying.

Deanna didn’t respond. She was already in her wolf form. It was huge. Much, much bigger than the other werewolves that Kendra had become accustomed to. Becoming an alpha made a werewolf stronger, faster, bigger, and exceptionally deadlier. As if that weren’t enough, it also made their pack 100% loyal to them. They would obey orders without question. They would die to protect their alpha. And they would viciously attack any and all threats. On top of that, Deanna had specifically killed the alpha of a bunch of blood-hunger-driven psychopaths. They would attack her friends and the humans in the cafeteria with narrow-minded focus until either everyone in the place was dead or they were killed or crippled themselves.

It wasn’t a situation Kendra wanted to be in, but she was an alpha. She was a leader and she wasn’t going to let some crazy bitch with a gang of lunatic werewolves come in and take her or her wolves out.

Kendra let out a howling roar that echoed through the room. The rushing energy inside her filled her entire body with unbridled power. This might not have been a battle that she’d sought out, but she sure as hell was going to finish it.

Kendra and Deanna ran at each other almost at the same time. They collided in the middle of the cafeteria in a titanic boom of noise and sound. Both of their claws flashed out and it quickly became apparent they were pretty well-matched.

For the first ten minutes, no one was able to draw any blood. Kendra would block an attack and then lash out with her own, only to have Deanna stop it cold. Then Deana would explode toward Kendra in a flurry of barely visible slashes and snapping bites that were batted away by Kendra.

The minutes ticked by with no one being able to best the other until Deanna actually managed to draw blood on Kendra. She went straight for Kendra, snarling viciously. At the last second, she dashed to the left side and swiped out a huge paw. Her claws sliced into Kendra’s thigh. Kendra went down on one knee as pain flared up in her left leg. She could feel the familiar itch of her body healing itself already, but it wasn’t fast enough.

As soon as Kendra went down, Deanna jumped onto her back, her claws digging through fur, skin, and muscle. Her muzzle snapped down on the side of Kendra’s neck and bit down. Immediately, blood began to flow, and Deanna felt it sing through her veins. Her body flushed with an overwhelming sensation of warmth and vitality as the predatory instincts of her wolf nature overrode everything else. The only thing she cared about was killing and guzzling down more of her prey’s precious blood and flesh. She needed it, not just wanted it.

And she would have it.

Kendra fought hard to throw Deanna off her back, but the bitch-wolf was tenacious. Her teeth were clamped onto her neck and shoulder with the crushing strength of a crocodile and her claws were buried a couple inches deep into the muscles of her back. The harder Kendra tried to shake her off, the harder Deanna dug in.

She felt her body losing more and more blood. And the more she lost, the weaker she got.

She gave one more enormous effort but instead of simply trying to shake Deanna off, Kendra decided to go a different route. She bent down, the muscles of her legs bunching up. The pain in her thigh was already gone, but her neck, shoulders, and back were riddled with more injuries. She could feel each one’s pain as if they were all clamoring for attention, but she ignored them.

When she was ready, she hurled herself straight up into the air. The two of them rose a good eight or nine feet before gravity set in and they started coming back down.

Deanna was lost to her blood hunger and was barely aware of what was going on. She was gulping blood and chunks of flesh down her throat and was only vaguely conscious of the fact that Kendra had even jumped into the air. If she had more control over her blood hunger, she would’ve jumped to safety. Instead, Kendra let her body go almost completely horizontal. With the added weight of Deanna on her back, it wasn’t all that difficult. Picking up speed, they both hit the unforgiving floor a couple of seconds later. Kendra let out a yelp of pain as the claws in her back dug in even deeper. She could feel them working their way through her muscles and it was probably one of the most horrifyingly painful experiences of her life.

But whatever pain Kendra felt, Deanna got it about twenty times worse. The full, crushing weight of Kendra’s massive alpha state landed squarely on her. The air rushed out of her lungs while most of the bones in her body snapped like dry twigs. A fragment of her ribcage tore a massive gouge through her heart. The bones in her muzzle shattered and several teeth popped out. They clattered onto the floor when Kendra got up.

Deanna lay there, gasping for air, whining pitifully. Blood oozed out of multiple wounds. Her legs were bent in unnatural positions and her eyes were glazed over. Her wolf form slowly melted away until a naked and mutilated woman emerged.

Despite all of her horrific wounds, however, Deanna was still alive.

Kendra’s sharp ears could already pick out the familiar creaking and popping sounds of Deanna’s body healing itself. Each broken bone popped back into place. The tear in the heart mended itself. The broken off piece of rib traveled back to its rightful place as if drawn by a magnet. In a few seconds, Deanna would be up and fighting again.

But Kendra wasn’t about to let that happen.

She stalked over to the fallen woman, her footsteps loud. Her clawed nails dragged across the floor. She stopped next to Deanna’s prone, inert body and reached down with a massive hand, grabbing her by the neck. Deanna mumbled weakly, her blonde hair matted with blood and grime. It hung in clumps across her face. Her eyes fluttered open and widened slightly in fear.

Kendra could smell it. And it made the howling beast inside her rush forward. Her hand squeezed tightly, the claws digging into Deanna’s neck. She let out a high-pitched scream of pain but then she started laughing.

Kendra yanked her closer, her giant head and glowing yellow eyes only a few inches from Deanna’s.

“You’re done,” Kendra snarled. “I beat you. So why are you laughing?”

Deanna tried to speak but the only thing to come out was a series of gurgling, choked sounds and more amused laughter. Kendra let her grip ease somewhat. Just enough so Deanna could talk.

“Try again,” Kendra commanded.

“So…focused on…d-destroying me,” Deanna said, her voice barely above a whisper. A smile broke out on her face, showing off her blood-stained teeth. “Didn’t realize how…the fi-fight…goes for your friends.”

Jenna lowered her pistol as Conor gave her a slight nod of thanks. She watched him run off, feeling slightly worried. She could see the pain of trying to fight the blood hunger written clearly on his face. But she couldn’t worry about that now. Right now, she had to protect the innocent people around her.

People that were completely defenseless.

Jenna had known, of course, of the blood-thirsty packs roaming the world. Strangely enough, there were relatively few of them. Driven insane by their blood hunger, these dangerous packs would kill any living thing they came across. And the ones Deanna had brought along seemed worse than most. They looked more than eager to slaughter a building full of people.

“You ready?” Jenna asked, casting a glance behind her to where Felix was standing, his face stern.

Jenna could see the fear there, but he was getting better at pushing it away. He gave her a firm nod of his head, his eyes glowing bright blue for a second. Felix had barely passed his own fear trial back in training and Jenna was worried about him. Pat Jr. sat across the mage’s chest, sitting happily in the baby backpack contraption.

“You better not let anything happen to that baby either. If you do and these guys don’t kill you, Deirdre will. And I don’t think you want to find out what a pissed off mommy wolf can do to a human body,” Jenna said, smiling broadly.

“Thanks for that. As if I wasn’t worried enough already,” Felix commented dryly.

“She’s right. I’ll tear your head off,” Deirdre responded as she ran up next to Jenna. “And that will happen if he gets so much as a scratch. Just imagine what I’ll do to you if you let him get hurt or killed.”

“Seriously you two? Give it a rest,” Felix replied, fully irritated now. The fear he’d been showing gave way to anger. “I got this, ok? I realize the baby’s your kid, but that doesn’t give you the right to threaten me. Besides, you’re the one that dumped him on me in the first place.”

Pat Jr. laughed happily, clapping his little baby hands together.

“It’s because you’re just so trusting, mage,” Deidre replied with a smile. And then she winked at him.

“Uhh…ok,” Felix replied, his cheeks blushing somewhat. Deidre was, after all, extremely attractive and women that good-looking didn’t generally wink at him.

Jenna laughed and edged closer to Felix.

“I think somebody likes you,” she whispered.

“Really?” Felix asked, completely serious, which drew a hearty laugh from Jenna. The red in his cheeks deepened when he realized that she was just screwing with him. “Why do you always have to mess with me?”

“Cuz it’s so easy,” Jenna responded.

“Are you two going to joke around all day or are you going to fight?” Deidre said with her head tilted back so she could look at them.

“After you,” Jenna told her. “After what happened last year, I think you deserve first crack at them. Go. Vent.”

Deidre gave her a nod, a half-smile on her lips. She turned away from them as the beast inside her emerged. A few seconds later, she was a beautiful wolf with reddish fur. She ran headlong into a cluster of werewolves that were running toward a table of frozen humans. She fought savagely, ripping and slashing with teeth and claws.

Jenna stared in awe for a few seconds, appreciating Deirdre’s savage beauty. Then she went over to the table where they’d been sitting before all hell broke loose and rummaged through her designer purse. She ripped open a secret compartment and pulled out an eight-inch knife made of pure silver and a new clip full of silver bullets for the gun she still carried. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. If she knew she’d be facing down a werewolf pack, she would’ve brought more effective weapons.

“You gonna be ok?” Jenna asked Felix.

He gave her a silent nod. Pat Jr. stared blankly at her.

“I’ll do what I can from here. I’m not taking the baby into that mess though,” Felix told her.

“Stay safe,” Jenna told him, serious now.

“I’ll do my best,” Felix replied with a small smile.

Jenna turned away from him and headed toward the nearest werewolf. There were two close by, both of them salivating as they eyed a bunch of humans. They started loping forward with unnatural speed.

Jenna wasn’t worried. She knew the focus of their attention was on their next victims, instead of on the immediate threat of a Defaeco Knight heading toward them. Jenna used that to her advantage. She stopped running and brought up her gun. It didn’t have the take down power of most of the guns she owned, but it would get the job done if she hit the beast in the right spot.

One of the werewolves was about three or four paces in front of the other, its huge, luminous eyes locked onto the tasty morsels directly in front of it. If it knew Jenna was there at all, it didn’t act like it.

Which was fine with her.

She pulled the trigger. The gunshot was lost in the sounds of battle erupting throughout the cafeteria, but the effect was immediate. The bullet entered the lead werewolf’s skull, right below its left eye socket. Due to its lack of power, the bullet didn’t exit out the other side. Instead, it careened around the inside of the creature’s skull, the silver searing and destroying its brain.

The werewolf crashed to the floor, its entire body going suddenly limp. It died almost instantly. The werewolf that was trailing behind got tangled up in the first werewolf’s abruptly lifeless body and crashed to the floor as well.

As soon as Jenna fired the shot, she started running again. She’d only been a couple yards away from the second werewolf when it tripped and fell. She managed to get in front of it and watched as it tumbled directly toward her. As soon as it was a foot away, she did an aerial cartwheel over it, her gun pointed down. She pulled the trigger twice, shooting directly into the wolf’s head, and watched it go limp and crash into an empty table.

Jenna landed on one knee and quickly sprang back up, looking for her next fight.

It found her first.

A werewolf roared from right behind her. She turned around but it was already too late. Before she could get away, it was on top of her, its enormous size and strength bringing her to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She screamed breathlessly, her body going into panic-mode as she fought hard to get air back into her lungs. Her weapons fell out of her hands and she was completely defenseless.

A blast of violent wind caught hold of the wolf and flung it into a wall. It collided with the drywall and a puff of dust flew into the air.

Jenna got to her feet, feeling somewhat shaky. She picked up her weapons and looked around. She caught sight of Felix, his face a little red and sweaty from the exertion and gave him a slight nod. He returned it and went back to devastating whatever members of the rival wolf pack he could with his magic.

A sudden noise rose up, even louder than the chaotic sounds around her. It was the piercing cry of someone in pain.

Jenna’s blood ran cold as she recognized it. It was her father.

Her head jerked toward where she the sound came from. She saw a wolf jump on him and bear him to the ground.

“Dad!” she yelled.

The first wolf was quickly followed by more. She counted four, possibly five, of them jumping onto him. He put up a huge struggle, but eventually, his strength gave out and she couldn’t see him anymore.

Her heart hammered inside her chest, bouncing off her ribcage. Her mind yelled at her that she was already too late. That he was dead. She refused to believe that, however. She broke into a sprint and hurdled whatever obstacles were in her way. A wolf unwisely decided to block her path, so she shot it without thought. It slumped to the ground with a groan and Jenna jumped over it.

A second later, she reached the pile of wolves that were doing their best to kill her father. She could barely see him, but her heart filled with relief because from what she could see, he was definitely still alive. There was a faint, green glow all around him. When she saw that, she looked to Abraham.

His face was pale and getting paler. Beads of sweat were popping up on his brow. His eyes were concentrating solely on the pile of wolves attacking Elijah.

“Get him out!” Abraham yelled, breathing hard.

Jenna nodded and immediately went to work.

The wolves were trying to bite and slash at Elijah but whenever they did, their fangs and claws would hit that green glow and stop or be turned away completely. It was an impenetrable barrier of Abraham’s magic. That didn’t stop them from trying to get through though.

Most of them were so intent on their current prey they didn’t even recognize a new threat. Two of them, however, did.

Jenna saw their nostrils suddenly go wide. Their ears swiveled toward her direction, as if they were picking up her heartbeat. Or her breathing. They slid off the pile and looked at her, growling sounds coming out of their throats. One had grey fur while the other was a mix of black and brown. Both, however, looked equally eager about prey they could actually sink their teeth into.

“Yeah. That’s right. Come and get it. The Jenna Bishop buffet is now all you can eat, bitches!” Jenna yelled and then crouched into a fighting stance.

The grey-furred wolf launched into an attack followed a second later by the brown-and-black-furred one.

Grey tried to slash at her legs in an effort to immobilize her with one of its huge paws, but Jenna whirled to the side, lashing out with her silver blade at the same time. The paw came off in one clean shot, the air filling with sizzling sounds and the smell of burning fur and flesh.

Grey cried out in agony, its wolf form melting off of it as the pain overwhelmed it. A couple seconds later, a woman that looked like she was in her early thirties sat on the blood-drenched floor, her eyes wide with shock and a loud scream coming out of her mouth. Her ash-grey hair fell across her eyes. The stump of her missing hand started to heal itself over. New skin formed and the bleeding abruptly stopped. A few minutes later and it looked as if she’d been missing her hand for years. Her screams died down and her eyes flashed toward Jenna. They were cold and filled with yellow fire.

“You bitch!” the woman screamed. “You bitch! Don’t you know what you did? Don’t you know what you just did to me?”

Jenna didn’t really care. She had her hands full with Brown/Black, the other wolf left. It was just getting ready to attack when its nostrils went wide again. It stopped suddenly, leaving Jenna confused. Then it turned around and looked at the woman with the missing hand, its eyes full of hunger. It sniffed the air again.

The other wolves, the ones still piled on top of Elijah, smelled the blood too. One by one, they all got off of him, which couldn’t have happened sooner. The green glow surrounding him was growing pale and starting to fail.

Jenna watched as the wolves converged on the woman. She was trying to back away from them, a look of complete terror on her face as she tried to shift back into her wolf form. Before she could fully change, however, the other wolves attacked.

It was one of the most horrific and disgusting sights Jenna had ever witnessed, but she felt no pity. They let the blood hunger in. They let it take control. To them, the woman was weak. And weak equaled prey. She ran over to her father while the wolves were preoccupied with slaughtering one of their own.

He was hurt pretty bad. He had several deep gashes, some bruises, and dozens of other, more minor injuries. But he was still alive. Jenna put an arm underneath his shoulder and helped him up. It was rough. Her father was a big man and built with a lot of heavy muscle, but eventually she was able to get him to his feet.

“Can you walk?” Jenna asked.

“Well enough,” he commented. “Let’s go before they get done with her and come back for us.”

Jenna didn’t respond but started walking with her dad over to where Abraham was. The older mage looked tired and worn out. There were dark circles underneath his eyes and his skin was chalky white.

“Do we have a plan?” Abraham asked, panting.

“Don’t die,” Jenna and Elijah responded together.

Snarls erupted from off to their side and all three turned and looked. The wolves were done devouring the woman and were focused on them again.

And they were coming in fast.

Conor was slashing and hacking his way to where Kendra was fighting Deanna. He left a trail of wounded werewolves behind him. Some of the more severe wounds he inflicted caused the other blood hunger crazy wolves to attack their own. Conor shuddered when he saw that, the ghosts of his past blazing across his memory in painful detail. He shook his head to clear the memories away and continued fighting his way to Kendra.

He was almost to her when a werewolf stepped in front of him. It had beautiful chestnut brown fur. When it saw Conor, it cocked its head to one side, sniffing toward him. Then it changed back into its human form. A slender, brown-haired woman stood looking at Conor, her arms folded across her breasts.

“Conor,” she said.

Conor’s heart beat quicker as he saw her.

“Adriana,” Conor said, his voice quiet.

More memories rampaged through his mind. Memories of a time when he let primal instinct and the thrill of the hunt overcome who he was until there was virtually nothing left. Adriana had been his during those times. He could still remember the…things they did together. But mostly, all he remembered was blood.

“Leave. Get far away from this city and stay away. Don’t force me to kill you.”

Adriana walked seductively toward him. Her hips swayed and her long hair drifted from side to side. There was a sultry look on her face and her lips twisted into a mocking pout. She stopped several inches from him and ran her hand through his dark hair.

“Don’t you remember all the good times we had,” she asked. “Don’t you remember the things you used to say me?”

“That wasn’t me,” Conor replied. He took her hand and shoved it away from him. His claws drew deep scratches through her skin.

Adriana hissed slightly in pain, but she was smiling too. She brought her hand to her mouth and licked the blood from the wounds. Her eyes fluttered slightly.

“You went back, I see. I always wondered what happened to you. One day I woke up and you weren’t there. That…,” she said as her eyes flashed amber and claws sprang out of her fingernails. Her face twisted in sudden rage and she attacked with a vicious blow to the side of his head.Conor lurched to one side, his face a sheet of blood.

“Wasn’t,” Adriana continued, slashing him again. This time she struck the other side of his face.

Conor grunted in pain. His face felt like it was on fire but at the same time it itched like crazy as the wounds sealed themselves shut.

“Nice,” she finished as she rammed her claws into Conor’s gut.

Conor went down on his knees with Adriana’s hand still inside his abdomen. He looked up at her as blood dribbled down his mouth. Then he laughed weakly.

“Why are you laughing?” Adriana hissed, digging into his stomach even deeper.

Conor shouted out in pain before he resumed laughing.

“Tell me!” Adriana yelled. The hand inside him suddenly clenched tightly. Organs, muscle tissue, nerves, and blood vessels were shredded like paper.

Conor started feeling dizzy. His vision blurred and then things went dim. But he heard her. He heard her and he wanted to answer.

“I’m…laughing…” He coughed harshly and spit a wad of blood off to the side. He turned his head back around so he could look her in the eyes. “B-because…you’re as stupid now as you were back then.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Adriana’s eyes went wide. She tried to back away from Conor, but she was too late. He clamped one of his hands around the arm still writhing inside him and surged forward, his other hand gripping the back of her neck painfully. Then he yanked her down, his mouth gaping open. His fangs clamped down onto her slender neck before she could even think to shift into her own wolf form.

Then he ripped her throat out.

Conor felt the blood hit his system like a jolt of electricity. His body and mind cried out at him, screaming one thing over and over again.

More!

He yanked Adriana’s arm out of his stomach and then pounced on her now limp form. He buried his fangs into the devastated ruin of her neck. He wanted so badly to lose himself. He wanted to feel that rush again. He wanted to feel that high. All he had to do was let go.

All he had to do was…

Become a monster again. Lose everything I’ve gained.

Lose Kendra.

It was that last thought that really rang out inside him. While the memories of Adriana were a crushing guilt on top of his soul, Kendra was different. The memories of her were filled with…light. They were filled with happiness.

They were filled with love.

He moved away from Adriana like she was something diseased. The wolf-features on his face and body melted off as the pain of his injuries truly sank in. His face had already healed. The wounds there had been superficial at best. The wound in his stomach, however, was much more extensive. It would take a little time to heal all the way.

He dragged himself over to a table and tried to hoist himself to his feet, but he was too weak. He slumped to the ground, breathing heavily. The gaping wound in his stomach was still pouring out blood but with each passing second, the blood slowed more and more until it was barely a trickle. His vision started to dim until that dimness expanded. Then all Conor saw was darkness.

One of the members of the rival pack suddenly sniffed at the air. It turned its cavernous head and spotted the limp, unconscious form of Conor by the table. Cautiously, as if wary of some trick, the wolf walked over. The smell of blood drew it to Conor like a carcass draws out buzzards.

Deanna laughed harshly, her voice rough and damaged. Flecks of blood and spit flew out of her mouth and splattered across Kendra’s wolf-like face. She could barely breathe and then the hand around her neck tightened even harder. The sensation of Kendra’s claws digging deeper and deeper into the skin and muscle of her neck was unpleasant and painful, but she didn’t care. All she felt was cold joy as Kendra finally realized who the real targets were.

Killing humans was always fun, but watching Kendra be tortured by the deaths of her friends and loved ones? That was worth walking through the fires of Hell to see.

It wasn’t personal. Not really. She wasn’t fond of Kendra Henner. Not after escaping Bendis’ carefully laid plan six months ago. The goddess took her pound of flesh out of Deanna and Deanna still held onto a grudge because of it. But this attack wasn’t about revenge or payback.

It was about fun.

It was about the joy of seeing someone’s soul being crushed firsthand. It was just an added bonus that the someone happened to be Kendra.

“G-go on then, love,” Deanna choked out, her smile widening again. “Kill me. D-do it. G-give in...to the...the beast.” Her breathing was labored now, and her vision darkened. “Let the wo-wolf...take you. I p-promise it will...will be fun. L-let your friends d-die….”

Her voice dropped off as she lost the energy to even finish her sentence. Her body felt strangely weak, which was a sensation she didn’t have a lot of experience with. Her body always felt powerful and strong, even stronger since she had taken the power of an alpha. She didn’t like feeling weak. She could feel the panic start to gnaw on her mind. It ripped and tore at it as the world grew darker and darker.

Kendra could feel the howling voice of the wolf inside her. It snapped at her to end it. To kill. It was hungry. A large part of her was horrified of that wolf. She wanted it to go away and leave her alone. She never wanted to hurt or kill anyone. She knew that if she gave in she would lose her soul in the process. But another part of her mind did want to kill. It was small in comparison, but it was still there. She could feel it inside her like a hideous tumor.

“G-go on then, love,” Deanna choked out. “Kill me. D-do it. G-give in...to the...beast. Let the wo-wolf...take you. I p-promise it will…. will be fun. L-let your friends d-die…”

Kendra still had her hand on Deanna’s throat. She held her off the ground with ease, as if the sadistic bitch didn’t weigh much more than a bag of feathers. Blood flowed down the sides of Deanna’s neck where Kendra’s claws dug in brutally. She pulled Deanna in close. Her muzzle pealed back in a snarl.

“I’m not a beast. I’m not a killer,” she said, disgusted.

She threw Deanna and watched her roll across the floor. She came to a stop when she slammed into a pillar and didn’t move again.

Kendra turned and looked around at the large room. She found her friends in big trouble. The other wolves had them all pinned down. Jenna was with Elijah and Abraham as a group of three wolves spread out in a semi-circle and edged closer to them. They were cautious. Several of them already sported wounds from silver weapons. They learned their lesson the hard way and weren’t anxious for a repeat lecture.

Jenna, Elijah, and Abraham all stood there, facing the wolves and showing no fear. Jenna had a short silver dagger in one hand and a pistol in the other. Elijah hefted a huge broadsword in one hand with ridiculous ease. And Abraham’s hands glowed with soft green light. Sparkles of lighter green drifted into the air and she could faintly feel the ground trembling beneath her feet.

She looked around and found Felix shielding himself, Pat Jr., and Deirdre from a tenacious wolf hell bent on ripping them apart. Arcs of static electricity zapped the brainless werewolf every time it hit the magic shield Felix was using, but it just kept coming back for more and more.

Kendra looked around again, trying to find Conor. Her heart sped up with fear when she couldn’t spot him right away. When she finally did, an icy spike of raw terror filled her mind. He was lying on the floor, not moving. One of the rival wolves was stalking toward him. Anger surged through her, powerful and strong. Her vision went hazy for a second as the emotion burned through her. She fought to rein it in but ultimately it was a losing battle.

So instead, she gave in to it.

She loped over to where Conor was lying on the floor barely breathing. The wolf stopped in its tracks. It swung its enormous head toward her, snarling and growling. Saliva dripped from its fangs and its claws gouged long scratches into the floor. As soon as it saw her, it lunged. It tried to take her out by sheer power alone, but Kendra was too strong for it.

She snagged it out of the air and smashed it into the ground. Then she picked it up and slammed it into the ground again. Then she did it again and again after that, howling with rage the whole time. When she was done with it, she tossed it aside like trash.

She sat there in her alpha state, breathing heavily. Her huge chest bellowed in and out while a growl flowed steadily out of her. She turned to Conor and the anger finally left her. Her alpha state withered away, and her humanity reasserted itself. She ran to him and propped his head on her lap. She was crying harshly and whispered his name several times. At one point she couldn’t hear him breathe anymore. She pounded on his chest.

“Wake up!” she shouted. “Conor! Wake up!”

He groaned slightly as Kendra sat there and watched him like a hawk. He had some really horrible injuries, including one to his stomach that looked like someone had ripped him completely open. It was still bleeding but the bleeding had nearly stopped. She looked around for something she could use to help it along. The only thing she found was a tattered bit of torn cloth from someone who had shifted into their wolf. Kendra folded it as best she could and applied it to the wound. She pressed on his stomach with the makeshift pad.

Conor’s eyes popped open and he let out a muffled yell of pain. He blinked a few times to clear his head and saw Kendra.

“I’m not really into the whole s&m thing babe, but I think I’m willing to make an exception for you.” He laughed which quickly turned into a hacking cough. Flecks of blood flew out and coated his lips and chin.

Yells and shouts filled the cafeteria. Kendra turned and saw the ring of wolves start their final assault on the tired and exhausted group of Jenna, Elijah, and Abraham. They were still up and fighting but Kendra knew they weren’t going to last long. They might be able to take out one, maybe two wolves if they were lucky, but time was not on their side.

Kendra felt a surge of raw power flow through her as the primal energy of her wolf reasserted itself. It was sluggish this time as her own exhaustion took its toll on her. She’d never pushed herself this hard before.

She got up slowly and wobbled from the effort. She breathed, closing her eyes, and then let the wolf out again. Instead of the enormous form of her alpha state, however, she could only manage the polar-bear-sized wolf. Regardless, she bounded over people, tables, and chairs. In less than a minute she was behind the wolves attacking her friends. She grabbed one by the back of its neck with her teeth, picked it up, and threw it into the other two. They crashed and thrashed around, their limbs completely entangling with each other. When they couldn’t get themselves separated, they started snapping and biting one another.

Kendra suddenly roared. The sound was earsplitting which made all the wolves howl with pain. They clawed at their ears and rubbed their heads into the ground. Then she ran for them, her deadly claws swiping through the air. Blood flew out, followed by a yelp of pain. The wolf she just injured went down and she turned back into a wide-eyed girl with dark eyes and hair that didn’t look a day over nineteen. She writhed on the ground and cried.

The other two wolves were cautious now. They came at her from multiple angles, trying to keep her off guard and off balance. One would distract her while the other would attack. It was a tactic Kendra had grown very familiar with and one she’d been expecting. She crouched down and waited for her opportunity.

One wolf snarled and snapped at her. Its luminous yellow eyes were locked on hers. It bared its fangs and lunged in quick little jerks. The other wolf managed to get behind her again and waited for its chance.

Kendra let them believe she was stupid enough to fall for that trick. She let their minds buy into the deception completely. She even threw out a couple swings of her massive paws. She made it just convincing enough to fool them.

Then she sprang her trap.

The wolf behind Kendra jumped at her and tried to sink its claws into her back so it could latch on to her and snap at her neck. She heard the sounds of its muscles bunching. She heard the sound of its breathing quickening. She heard the subtle sounds of its claws scratch against the concrete floor. She heard its heart quicken in anticipation of its attack just seconds before it actually did.

It flew at her so fast that it was nothing but a blur. Despite that, however, Kendra had no trouble dodging it. She dashed to one side and the wolf went past her. Her giant paw flashed out, so fast the wolf had no idea what was happening. She swatted it to the ground and pinned its head to the floor. She could smell its blood as her claws ripped into its skin. It struggled madly to get away. Its limbs flailed around, and it twisted and thrashed its body.

But Kendra was too strong for it.

She held it there with one paw while she growled and bit at the other wolf, who was still trying to run in and either bite her or slash at her.

She let that wolf come at her one final time. When it was close enough, Kendra bounded straight into the air. She came back down on the wolf with the force of a runaway train. She heard bones pop and snap as they broke like dry sticks. Then she slammed her paw into its head. She did it twice more before she was sure it wasn’t getting up again. Then she repeated the process with the other wolf, the one she had pinned. She yanked her claws out of it and droplets of blood fell from their tips, hitting the floor near her feet. Her breaths came out in rugged half-growls as she looked around and surveyed the cafeteria.

There was a lot of broken furniture and damaged tables. There were claw marks almost everywhere. Naked wolves in their human forms were strewn around the place like garbage. Underneath most of them were puddles of blood. They all looked badly hurt. Maybe even dangerously injured, but she could already hear the sounds of various wounds sealing themselves shut or bones snapping back into place.

She turned around and faced Jenna, Elijah, and Abraham. All three looked exhausted and beat to hell.

Kendra shifted back and in moments she was her human self again. Elijah found a jacket someone left on the back of a chair and handed it to her. She took it and put it on.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

Kendra looked down at herself. She had a couple of scratches and bruises, but they were already starting to heal.

“You could’ve saved me one,” Jenna said with a tired smile.

“Sorry but I was having too much fun,” Kendra replied. She gave Jenna a shaky hug. She smiled lightly and then took off.

“Can you guys make sure no one is hurt?” she yelled behind her as she made her way through the cafeteria to where she’d left Conor. She found him just starting to get up from the floor.

The hideous wound in his stomach was mostly healed now. He had his hand covering it but Kendra could see the blood seeping through his fingers. She put an arm under him and lifted him to his feet.

“Are you gonna make it?” she asked.

“What? This?” he asked, looking down at his stomach. “Just a flesh wound, love.”

“Is it over?” Jenna asked. She half-ran, half-walked up to her and Conor with an exhausted Elijah and Abraham right behind her.

“I think so,” Kendra answered.

“Then why is everyone still like that?” Felix asked as he walked up too, looking at the people still frozen around them. Pat Jr. was draped across his chest and stomach still. The little baby’s cherubic face was smiling and happy.

“A good question. Why aren’t things back to normal?” Deirdre asked. She took Pat Jr. from Felix but not before she gave the mage a quick kiss on his cheek and a whispered thank you.

Both Kendra and Jenna had to stifle laughter when they saw his face turn a bright shade of red.

“Somebody is still maintaining the spell,” Abraham said. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was steady and even. Felix was watching him closely before he closed his eyes too. They opened again a second later and flashed light blue. He glanced at everyone; his eyes filled with fear.

“We need to get out of here. Now,” Felix said. His voice was filled with urgency.

“Why?” Kendra asked.

“Because whoever is behind this spell is coming and they’re almost here.”

“Wrong little mage. I have already arrived,” a woman said. There was a certain smug tone to her voice.

Kendra turned toward the sound of the strange woman’s voice. She found a hauntingly beautiful woman with black hair streaked with grey.

“Well, Bane-blood. You have proven yourself quite tenacious. Irritatingly so in fact. I have gone through so much trouble to arrange your destruction. The least you could do is be gracious enough to cooperate,” the woman said. Her voice was soft and sweet almost. There was a musical quality to it as well that Kendra found very unnerving. “Look at how much fun your brother had after I destroyed everything he was.”

Kendra took that comment in and then almost flew at the strange woman as rage and anger rose inside her. She’d known about Jonah being behind her brother’s fall but to hear the woman say she was the real puppet master caused a surge of raw hatred to boil through her.

Felix actually had to reach out and restrain her. He threw out an arm and wrapped a cocoon of wind around her, binding her and stopping her from going any farther.

“Let me go!” Kendra screamed. Her voice roughened toward the end as it merged and then morphed into the gravelly, hoarse sounds of a beast. Her head whipped around to glare at Felix and her eyes blazed with intense, yellow light. “She destroyed my life. She ruined my family. I’m gonna rip her throat out!”

The woman laughed at Kendra.

“Hardly, child,” the woman responded. She walked a few steps closer to Kendra and then snapped her pale fingers. Instantly, the winds holding Kendra died out and she stumbled forward a bit. She heard Felix let out a gasp of pain.

Without thinking or wondering why Felix was so adamant about stopping her, she leaped forward. Her claws and fangs sprang out. The instincts of her wolf took control and all she could think about was killing the woman.

“Kendra!” Both Felix and Abraham were yelling at her.

She didn’t care.

She was only a couple of feet from the woman. A second later, she halved the distance. Then she was close enough to actually attack. She jumped into the air, her wolf form exploding out of her as she did, and then landed on the woman. The sheer weight and power Kendra had should’ve been enough to bear the woman to the ground.

But it didn’t. She still stood tall and proud. And laughing eerily.

Kendra knew something was wrong but in her current blinding rage, she couldn’t pull back. She just attacked even more. She slashed and bit. She swiped her claws across the woman’s face. She did everything she could think of and more. She kept it up even though she knew it was useless. Finally, her exhaustion overwhelmed her, and she staggered back a bit. That’s when Jenna and Conor stepped in. Or at least they tried to.

“No!” Felix yelled out. He swept a hand out in front of him. A gale force wind slammed into Jenna. It picked her up off her feet and tossed her into her father. Elijah caught his daughter effortlessly and then set her down.

“Get back you fool!” Abraham shouted to Conor. He jerked his fist out only to pull it back quickly. The ground right in front of Conor humped up and then sped quickly at him. It knocked him off his feet and sent him spinning to the ground. “Stay away from her.”

“Why? What’s going on Abraham?” Elijah asked.

Abraham looked at Elijah, his eyes wide and afraid.

Kendra heard her friends. She heard their warnings. She heard them stop Jenna and Conor from coming to help her. She heard all of it, but it was immediately buried under the anger she still felt. She didn’t care that something about the strange woman was scaring the crap out of not one but two powerful mages. She didn’t care about the terror she heard in their voices. She only cared about killing. She only cared about murdering the woman.

“Kendra, stop it! Just stop and look at her. Really look,” Felix shouted.

Kendra was about to attack again, but something in Felix’s tone gave her pause. Her human mind resurfaced, much to the wolf’s displeasure. She focused on the mysterious woman. She stared hard at her marble white skin. She looked at her dark, grey-streaked hair. She looked at her elegant silver blouse and black pants. She even looked at the woman’s expensive, beautiful shoes. At first glance, she had no idea what Felix was talking about. To her, the woman looked like any other.

Looking harder, it suddenly dawned on her.

The woman’s clothes were immaculate. Not one thread was out of place. There were no rips or tears. The woman looked like she was on her way to some upper tier social function. Her hair looked just the same. Her face was calm and unafraid. There were also no wounds. Kendra had hit her with everything she’d had. She even felt her claws slicing through the woman’s flesh, yet she was perfectly fine. Her skin was smooth and unmarred. Even her clothes were fine.

The woman’s eyes flashed with cold, silver light as she smiled broadly.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Bane-blood!” the woman said, her voice quiet and terrifying.

Kendra tried to back up, suddenly unsure of herself. The woman seemed to blink out of existence for a second. When she reappeared, she was standing only inches away from Kendra.

She snapped her fingers again. The sound was impossibly loud.

Without warning, and not by her choice, Kendra shifted back into her human self. She stood there feeling suddenly alone and vulnerable. Her breathing came in harsh, ragged gulps. Panic quickly set in when she realized that no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t get enough air into her body.

“Breathe, Bane-blood. I’ve only just begun. You’ll ruin all the fun if you faint.” The woman was staring at Kendra intensely.

Kendra was still breathing raggedly. Dark spots seemed to explode across her vision, but despite that she could still see something strange in the seemingly all-powerful woman’s eyes.

Fear.

“W-who are you?” Kendra gasped. The spots seemed to condense into each other, and she was afraid she was about to pass out. A second before she did, though, her lungs started cooperating again. They pulled in sweet air and her heart slowed down a bit as oxygen was restored to her deprived body.

A weird flash of relief swept through the woman’s cold eyes. It was only there for a split second and Kendra almost missed it entirely.

“I believe you would know me by the name Edolie,” the woman replied.

Kendra’s eyes widened.

“Yes. I thought the wolves would fill you in on the history lessons. I am the evil bitch that cursed your grandfather to change into a beast and devour any living creature he came across, including his beloved human family. It was a delicious bit of revenge. I was enjoying it immensely until he met the Old One, who managed to change the nature of the curse. Quite frustrating. But it doesn’t matter now. I’ve moved on. Now the only thing I care about is destroying the lives of his scions. His son, Merle, was always a tricky one. He managed to thwart me for centuries. I was overjoyed to learn that he was murdered by both his son and daughter. A fitting end.”

“I didn’t murder him! He...he...” Kendra’s voice gave out on her as she remembered that horrifying night. The way the knife had scraped against Merle’s bones before sliding into his heart. The way his eyes looked right before he died. She never hurt a single person in her entire life...until that day. “He...made me.”

“Kendra,” Conor whispered. “Get away from her.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Jenna added.

Kendra looked back at them, at her allies. Her friends. They stood only a couple of feet away, their eyes locked on her and Edolie. Elijah took a couple of steps forward, as if he would race out to rescue her.

“Now, now, Mr. Bishop. I will have my fun with you soon enough, no need to be impatient,” Edolie said. She tossed a hand lazily toward Elijah, as if the entire gesture had been beneath her to begin with. He suddenly shouted in pain. His voice was loud and filled with agony. He collapsed to the ground, holding his head as blood streamed out of his nose, his ears, and his mouth. His skin suddenly turned bright red.

“Stop it!” Jenna shouted.

She rushed to her father’s aid but there was nothing she could do. Whatever Edolie was doing to him she couldn’t stop it. The only thing she could do was hold him and watch as he suffered.

“Leave him alone!” Kendra shouted.

Edolie waved her hand again and Elijah let out a breathless sigh. His eyes rolled up into his head and he passed out.

“That, my dear Kendra, is how easy it is for me to kill everyone you care about. In seconds I could rip them all from you.” Edolie walked around Kendra several times. With one long, slender hand she tugged playfully at a lock of Kendra’s hair. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, “And I will. I will take their lives and I promise you, Bane-blood, you will be there every single time I extinguish their pathetic mortal existences.”

Kendra was so angry there were tears in her eyes and her entire body was shaking.

“Maybe I’ll start with your mother,” Edolie continued.

The anger surged even higher when she heard that. It was so bad, she thought she would literally be torn apart. She could feel the wolf inside her fighting to break free. The energy was consuming her, but something else was happening too. Something inside her mind. Something like a wall seemed to crumble and collapse.

And when it did…there was a memory that surfaced.

She was only three years old. She was in the living room of her grandfather’s house. She recognized it immediately. It was just her and her grandfather there. Her mother was gone. So was her father. They’d still been together back then. She remembered that much. The memory was extremely vivid but felt like a dream or maybe a hallucination. She was sitting on the couch next to her grandfather watching cartoons. A doll was on the floor.

Her doll.

It was her favorite doll.

She wanted it.

“Doll!” her three-year-old self exclaimed. “Doll, pease!”

“Go and get it sweetie,” her grandfather had said.

That didn’t make three-year-old Kendra happy. She didn’t want to get up and get it. She tried throwing a fit and crying about it, but her grandfather was adamant. He refused to do something that Kendra could do for herself.

“If you want it, just go and get it,” her grandfather went on. “You’re a big girl n...”

His voice suddenly cut off as if someone had flipped a switch. His eyes went curiously blank. Without saying a word, her grandfather got up, went over to the dollie, picked it up, and then brought it over to his granddaughter who was holding up her hands with a huge smile. Her grandfather sat down awkwardly, his body stiff and jerky.

Kendra hugged her doll as her grandfather’s eyes returned to normal. He blinked a couple of times and then focused on Kendra. He saw the doll, and something changed about him.

He looked almost weary. The muscles in his jaws clenched and unclenched. He gave Kendra a kiss on the top of her head and walked toward the other side of the room. He picked up a phone off the table and dialed a number.

“I need you to come here,” he said. “She’s fine but we need to discuss something. Ok. See you soon.” He hung up the phone and just stared at the wall thoughtfully.

The scene suddenly jumped forward. Now it was dark outside.

Three-year-old Kendra was sitting on the couch kicking her little feet back and forth with a somewhat scared look on her little face. Next to her was her mother, Helen.

It was weird to see her mom as she had been instead of as the wasted shell she currently was. She’d been very beautiful. She was young and looked so vibrant and full of life. Seeing her like that made tears spring to Kendra’s eyes as she watched.

“This won’t hurt honey, but it will make you safe. Ok?” Helen put her hands on the sides of her daughter’s head. “Sleep,” she whispered gently.

Instantly, three-year-old Kendra’s eyes closed, and her breathing settled into the comfortable rhythm of someone sleeping very peacefully. Soft snores came out of her every so often.

“What are you going to do to her?” her grandfather asked with a certain amount of apprehension. “Will it hurt her?”

“I’m doing what I have to in order to keep my daughter safe. Exhibiting these kinds of signs this early will only bring the wrong kind of attention down on her. If there was another way, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Right at that moment the front door opened. Kendra watched Merle walk in, his face bearing a very real, fatherly concern.

“Is she OK? What happened?” he asked. His head turned to Kendra and Helen. “What are you doing to her?”

His expression quickly shifted from one of concern to one of anger.

“What I have to in order to keep our daughter safe. It’s the only way I can protect her,” Helen responded. “How did you know to come here?”

“I called him,” Kendra’s grandfather said. “He has a right to know.”

“You shouldn’t be here for this,” Helen told Merle. “There’s nothing you can do to make me change my mind. This has to be done if we are to keep her safe.”

“By erasing her memory?” Merle asked. He knew instantly what Helen meant to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen his wife use her strange abilities. “That’s your answer?”

Adult Kendra watched the memory unfold but as an outsider. She stood apart from it instead of in it like one would expect. She wasn’t sure how that was possible, but it did allow her to take everything in like she was watching a movie.

She turned her focus on Merle now. It was strange to see her mother but just as strange to see Merle so overtly fatherly. Ever since she’d first met him, all he’d portrayed himself as was a friend. Seeing him in the role of her father left her feeling conflicted all over again about the things she’d said to him moments before he forced her to kill him. On top of that, he looked almost exactly the same. He didn’t look any younger at all.

Kendra suddenly wished she could talk to them both. She desperately wanted answers and advice from real parents that had loved and cared about her. But this was only a memory and nothing more. All she could do was watch.

“There has to be something else. Some other way,” Merle told her. “What if she gets hurt?”

“This will keep her safe. I can keep her abilities locked away, Merle. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” She stared at her husband for a second and then turned her back on him. He went to Helen and knelt down beside her. He grabbed her hands gently.

“Let me turn her then. Let me give her the tools she needs to protect herself. No one will be able to hurt her,” Merle said vehemently.

“No,” Helen replied sharply. “Elijah and the other knights will never leave her alone. They’ll never stop looking at her like she’s a monster. Even...” She stopped talking. Tears choked off the rest of what she was going to say. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “This is my decision and it’s final. Kendra will live a long, and normal, human life. It’s already too late for me and for you but it isn’t for her. This is the gift I want to give her.”

Merle stared quietly at his wife while Kendra’s grandfather stood a few paces away, his face stony and without expression. Finally, Merle gave her a slight nod, got up, and then went to stand a few paces away.

“It’s the right thing to do, Merle,” Kendra’s grandfather said. His voice was soft and calm.

“No, it isn’t, Hershel,” Merle replied. “It’s a band aid, that’s all. One day, the band aid will come off. And I can only hope whatever power is underneath it doesn’t come out in a destructive wave.”

Hershel didn’t respond.

They both turned their attention to Helen as she concentrated on what she needed to do. Her eyes were closed and there was a frown-line marring the spot right between her eyebrows.

Her hands still rested on the sides of Kendra’s head.

Kendra watched everything as a passive observer but that didn’t stop the pain of seeing everything she’d lost firsthand. This was a world she knew nothing about. She’d had a real family and they cared about her and truly loved her. And all they wanted was to protect her. Knowing the real truth of why her mother tried to kill her lifted a huge weight off her shoulders. It wasn’t her mother at all. A psychotic fire mage had been controlling her.

What the truth hadn’t done was convince her that her mother actually did love her before all that happened. Seeing it now, live and in person so to speak, was overwhelmingly joyous. It filled her with a rare happiness that she’d never felt much in her life.

She watched her mother get back up but not before she kissed the top of three-year-old Kendra’s head.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she whispered to her daughter. “Always and forever.”

Kendra cried softly when she heard that.

Merle came to stand next to Helen. He pulled her in and hugged her in his huge arms. He grabbed her chin with his thumb and index finger so he could look her in the eyes.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked her.

“It’s done now,” she told him. “She’ll be safe. Can you promise me that? Can you make sure she is always safe?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes, don’t you worry about that,” Merle responded. “Whatever it takes.”

The memory suddenly went dark, like the lights just got turned off and she found herself facing Edolie again.

Edolie took a step back from Kendra as if she just caught some outrageously contagious disease.

“What manner of creature are you?” Edolie asked.

Her voice had a tiny undercurrent of curiosity in it. She’d felt a raw surge of power coming off the girl like she’d never felt before. It had nothing to do with the wolf inside her or with magic. It was something else entirely.

“You will not lay a hand on my mother,” Kendra whispered. “I’ll kill you before I let that happen.”

“You dare threaten me?” Edolie asked. Her eyes flashed with silver white light. “You are nothing to me. All of you. I could snuff out your lives with just a thought.”

“Kendra,” Felix said warningly. “Don’t make her any angrier.”

“Come here, Kendra,” Conor said. He was getting worried now. He didn’t like the anxiousness and fear in both Felix and Abraham. If the mages were scared of Edolie, then it was for a good reason. “Get away from her.”

“Yes, girl. Listen to your mate,” Edolie said, laughing cruelly. “What chance do you really think you have? I am ancient, you pathetic mortal. I am all-powerful!”

Kendra realized something in that moment. Edolie might very well be all powerful. She certainly convinced Kendra of that. But there was definitely one thing she didn’t believe. For all her talk, Kendra didn’t believe that Edolie could “snuff out” her life as easily as she claimed she could. In fact, she was pretty sure the woman couldn’t physically harm her at all. Facts flew through her mind, fitting and piecing themselves together like a puzzle. The attack on her by the goblins. The Jonah incident. Even Merrick himself being used by the fire mage instead of being outright controlled by the so-called all powerful Edolie. These events all had one thing in common…

Edolie had used someone else to do Kendra actual, direct harm.

Which meant...

For some reason, she can’t touch me herself.

Kendra took a deliberate step forward. The alpha state swelled over her until she loomed over the other woman. There were lingering doubts in the back of her mind about her plan, but she pressed forward anyway.

“Kill me then,” she growled.

“What are you doing!?” Conor yelled.

“Kendra stop!” Jenna cried. She still had tears in her eyes and Elijah’s head was in her lap.

Both Felix and Abraham took steps toward her.

“Stay back!” she snarled. She turned her attention back on Edolie.

The cafeteria was eerily silent. The humans were still frozen like statues. Her friends were standing behind her, motionless. The blood-thirsty pack members were strewn across the floor. Some were just starting to stir as their injuries finished healing.

“Go on then, Edolie. Or should we skip the lies all together.” Kendra walked up to the woman and stared hard into her eyes. “Should I just call you by your real name, Bendis?”

Bendis’ eyes widened and then quickly narrowed in anger.

“Don’t presume to humiliate me,” Bendis said harshly. “You won’t live long enough to even comprehend your mistake.”

Kendra laughed. The sound was terrifying as it escaped her distorted human/wolf throat.

“I’m waiting,” Kendra sneered, her voice heavy with an insulting derision. “Kill me then.”

Bendis bristled with anger. Her eyes spewed silver sparks, but she never actually laid a finger on Kendra.

“Let me tell you what I know,” Kendra stated, still staring into the ancient goddess’ eyes. “You can’t touch me. You can’t actually kill me. If you could, then I doubt I would still be here. For whatever reason, if you try anything to harm me, it happens to you as well. A mirror action. If you kill me yourself, then you die as well. Have I got that about, right? I mean, it’s why you keep sending other people to do your dirty work. My mother. Jonah. Merrick. The goblins. Deanna and her crazed pack. Not once did you do it yourself. And I bet that just drives you even crazier than you already are.”

Bendis didn’t reply but Kendra could tell that she was right. Everything made sense. All of the goddess’ actions had been through manipulation and indirect means. Then there was the fear on her face when she used her enormous powers on Kendra. The fear was simple and something that humans have seen in each other time and time again.

The fear of impending death.

“Take your broken toys and get out of here. You’ve lost,” Kendra said coldly. She let the alpha state melt off her body again so she could face down Bendis as a human. Even though she was naked, she faced the goddess with nothing but confidence.

“I will not forget this,” Bendis stated coldly. “And I, Kendra of the Bane clan, have a long memory.” Then she leaned in closer and whispered. “Remember this, little darling. You might be protected from my power, but they are not.”

Her cold eyes swept over the cafeteria, indicating all the humans inside that they’d been trying so hard to protect. Before Kendra could even react, a cold surge of power came flowing out of Bendis. It washed over the entire room.

Every single human inside suddenly collapsed, and every last one of them was clearly dead. Their flesh turned almost instantly grey and dead. Men, women, and children. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. People that had lives. People that had been loved. And a selfish, vindictive goddess murdered them all with barely a thought. Kendra felt the weight of their deaths crush down on her. A twisted, gut-wrenching feeling sank into her stomach. Bendis looked at Kendra, pleased with herself.

“That is the cost of your arrogance. Their blood now stains your hands,” Bendis said. Then she snapped her fingers.

The crazed wolves that weren’t already dead got up from their spots on the floor. There were only six including Deanna but that was more than enough to get the job done. All their injuries were gone. Not only that, but they looked refreshed. Invigorated even. And they were all staring at Kendra and her friends like they were Big Macs from McDonalds.

“Another parting gift for you, dear Kendra,” Bendis said as she turned and walked away. “Enjoy it.”

Then there was a flash of silver light. It was so bright that Kendra had to look away. When she glanced back at the spot where the goddess had been, she was already gone. The only thing Kendra could think about was the mass murder Bendis had committed. Her anger flared up as hot as ever. She knew she was exhausted. She knew her friends were exhausted too. Elijah hadn’t even recovered yet.

She didn’t care.

She might not know how to hurt Bendis yet, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take out her pain and anger on her pet wolves.

Conor ran up to her and tried to get her to back down but she shrugged him off like he wasn’t even there. Instead, she focused all her attention on the rogue wolves. She darted forward, leaving Conor with a look of concern mixed with anger on his face. The only thing she thought about was making sure the wolves didn’t hurt any humans ever again. And now, thanks to her hidden memory, she knew how it could be done.

She continued forward, confident in what she knew she had to do. It was like a new instinct she had. Something that was apart from the instincts that came with being a werewolf. A second later, she was facing down the pack. They surrounded her in a loose ring so they could bring her down with sheer numbers.

And as this was happening, Deanna snuck out. No one was paying attention to her as she left the building.

Kendra stood inside the circle the crazed wolves made, her back to her friends. Even so, she could hear them start walking toward her to try and help. She turned her head, her eyes flashing amber as she looked at them.

“Get out of here,” she yelled. “The cops will be here any minute now. I can handle them.”

Conor and Deirdre, being members of the Bane Pack, obeyed without question even though their expressions said they would rather do anything else but that. Kendra watched them run out the doors leading outside.

Jenna was a different story. She wasn’t going to leave. She was going to fight. She was pissed at what Edolie or Bendis or whatever the hell her name was had done to her dad and for killing so many innocent people. The werewolves were an excellent outlet for her aggression.

Before she could take two steps, she noticed Kendra focusing on someone behind her.

Jenna whirled in anger.

“Felix, don’t…“

“Felix, Abraham, get them out!” Kendra yelled.

Jenna tried to get away from Felix, but he grabbed hold of her before she could shake him loose and the two of them disappeared in a cyclone of wind. A second later, Abraham grabbed hold of Elijah. Then they both turned to sand and collapsed into a pile that shrank and shrank until it was gone altogether.

Now she was all alone. Just her and the other pack.

They attacked as one, but Kendra stood firm. She wasn’t afraid or nervous. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, focusing all of her incredible will power on her task. Nothing happened at first and a tiny grain of fear blossomed in the back of her mind. Then she felt an amazing surge of something she wasn’t sure how to describe. It felt like her mind slid and shifted. It was as exhilarating as it was uncomfortable.

[STOP!] she commanded. She said it inside her mind, but she felt the force behind it escape her and envelope the other wolves like a cloud.

She felt her mind take control of each of theirs, all at the same time. She felt what they felt. She experienced what they experienced. She heard, smelled, tasted, and saw what they did. The sensations crowded into her mind, causing a large spike of pain to hit her in the middle of her forehead. She grunted for a second before the sensation faded.

The worst of it, however, was feeling their insane blood hunger. Each mind she touched with hers was the same. It felt like a living creature was inside of them and each one had a never-ending drive to hunt and kill. To taste blood. Disgusted, Kendra exerted more of her control over them.

Each wolf stopped in their tracks. Their movements became wooden and their eyes glazed over.

She didn’t want anything to do with the parts of their minds tainted by the blood hunger. It was like touching pure, insane chaos. Like touching evil. But she knew she didn’t have a choice. So she steeled her resolve and reached out to their awful, diseased minds. It revolted her beyond anything she’d ever experienced before but she knew it was the only way to permanently stop them.

She completely enveloped that part of their minds and then shoved with all her strength, which was being supplemented by the primal energy of her alpha power. Her hands were clenched into fists. The pain in her head returned but more intensely this time. It grew and grew until she thought it might explode. At the same time, every single wolf she was connected to howled in pain. She kept pushing and exerting more and more power, heedless of the pain it caused her. She thought she was going to pass out at one point. Her vision was growing dim. The edges darkened, slowly at first and then more rapidly as the seconds ticked by. A second before she would have lost consciousness, she felt the blood hunger in each of the wolves start to get smaller. Then it got smaller and smaller until nothing was left of those disgusting, diseased parts of their minds.

She suddenly released her hold on them and let out a slight gasp as she did. Her knees weakened for a moment, but she was able to stay on her feet.

The glazed-over look in the eyes of the wolves intensified for a few long seconds before they returned to normal. And then one by one, they all shifted back. Five naked men and women were staring around in confusion.

In the distance, they could all hear sirens.

“What did you do to us?” the oldest of them asked. There was no hate or anger in his voice though. In fact, he sounded almost grateful. “What happened here?”

There were murmured questions from the others as well, but Kendra focused instead on the man that spoke first.

“It doesn’t matter. The police are going to be here in a few minutes. All you need to know is that I freed you. So, get out of here and just try to live as normally as you can,” Kendra told them.

They still looked at her as if they couldn’t comprehend what she was saying.

[Get out of here!] she thought-yelled while at the same time mentally pushing them as well. They scattered in different directions after that, abandoning the building like cockroaches scurrying away from a light.

Kendra watched them leave with mixed feelings. She wasn’t sure of her decision to let them go unpunished for the heinous things they did under the influence of their blood hunger. At the same time, however, she knew if she gave them a chance, they might be able to pull themselves up and regain their humanity. All they needed was someone to believe in them. Like her father had believed in Conor.

Winds suddenly kicked up from out of nowhere and Kendra turned around to find Felix hastily shifting his gaze away.

“Get some..uhh...clothes on and I can get us out of here. We need to be gone before the cops get here,” he said, his cheeks red. “Where’s the other wolves?”

“Too hard to explain,” Kendra replied. She ran to a bag that Felix slid to her and pulled out a simple grey shirt and a pair of jeans. She hurriedly slid them on and grabbed hold of Felix’s hand. Suddenly, all her pain and exhaustion smacked into her at the same time and it was all she could do to stay standing.

Felix put her arm over his shoulder to help keep her up as the police sirens started getting louder. Just as they were about to teleport, ten other mages appeared. One of them, an older woman with hard, brown eyes, walked up to them.

“About time,” Felix muttered.

“What happened here? We got a summons from Abraham, but a spell was preventing us from getting through,” she said, looking around at the devastation.

“We were attacked. I’ll go over it with you later. Right now, you need to get the bodies of the werewolves out of here before the police come. I’m taking Kendra home,” Felix said. The bodies of werewolves would not be easily explained to the cops, which made them the priority. As for everyone and everything else, there would just have to be a very convincing cover story to explain all that. There was no time to do anything else.

Kendra was only half paying attention. She was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open. She looked at Felix and let out a tired sigh, her eyes sad as she stared at all the dead people.

“Go, take her away. We’ll deal with the situation,” the woman with the brown eyes said.

Felix concentrated and then a whirl of wind swept over and swallowed Kendra and himself.

When the winds died down, they were gone.

“Everything all right with you?” Jenna asked. She was on the phone with Kendra. Lying next to her in a bed was her father. He still wasn’t completely recovered from his injuries and what Bendis did to him, but he was improving. The color had come back to his face and he didn’t look so pale or red anymore.

Jenna listened halfheartedly to Kendra. Most of her focus was on the big television mounted to the wall in front of the bed. The volume was low, but she could still hear the news reporters talking. In the background were a bunch of police cars with their lights flashing, ambulances, and even fire trucks. People were milling about like frenzied ants. The most disturbing thing was the nearly endless parade of gurneys toting ominous, black body bags.

“Authorities have very little to go on at the moment, but sources say that the office building of Bishop Media Solutions has been the target of a poison gas attack. It has not been confirmed as of yet, but there have been claims that terrorists might be involved.” The reporter looked very serious and professional, but Jenna could see the fear lurking in her eyes.

She reached out and grabbed the remote off the table next to the bed. She turned off the TV.

“He’s doing better,” she said to Kendra. “I don’t think she did any permanent damage. How are you feeling? Felix said you were pretty exhausted.”

Before Kendra could answer, a buzzer went off in loud, irritating fashion. Someone was on the ground level and signaling they wanted to come up.

“Hey, I’ll call you back in a minute. There’s someone buzzing in,” Jenna said. Kendra started talking and Jenna waited patiently for her to finish. “Yeah, I’ll be careful. Okay, mom?”

Kendra laughed on the other end, but it was a sad sort of laugh with no real joy in it.

Jenna put her phone down and snatched up a tablet. She tapped an icon and a screen showing the lobby of the plush apartment building where her father lived popped up. The video showed a man waiting patiently by the security desk.

Jenna recognized him.

It was Drake.