Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (31 page)

“Oh, right. Better make sure you kill me in front of your wife, right?” I want to cower again, but I hold my stance and I grin. “Speaking of which, you’d better make sure she knows you aren’t messing around behind her back, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he says, slapping my face again, right on the burn from his last strike.

I hit the ground hard. Ouch. The slap leaves me dazed, as if my brain is still rattling around my skull like a rogue Ping-Pong ball. Carmine’s eyes dart over to the camera again.

He doesn’t tell me to get up. Instead, he starts to pace, taking slow, controlled breaths. He grabs the bottle from the counter, cracks the lid, and in a single guzzle, drinks all the water—the whole bottle.

He also drinks fifteen grams of dissolved ketamine; fifteen times what it took to knock the moustachioed fighter out cold. Now in Carmine’s stomach is enough to kill any man, five times over. Any second, he’ll be on the floor, foaming out of his mouth, eyes, ears, nose…

Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #316: Always know where to find the local drug dealer. An easy tip in a city like Lemuria, where there’s a drug dealer in every alleyway.

Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip # 92: always stay relaxed and absorb any and all information. Even when some brawny asshole is yelling in your face, make careful note of everything. What is he saying? What is he wearing? The little things are especially useful—things like, do they have a quick temper? Or, do they snatch any water bottle they see?

And finally, the newest addition to the Survival Guide…

Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #498: Every fight is fixed. No exceptions.

Any second now, the ketamine will kick in. Any second… “Get up,” Carmine says again.

I don’t—at least, not on my own. He grabs my arm and lifts me to my feet. He’s done putting on a show for the camera. I try to resist, but it’s useless. I’m weightless to him. Once the ketamine starts to kicks in, I’ll be able to break free. Any second now…

Maybe I bought the slow acting stuff. Maybe the stuff I bought is bogus. No—it can’t be, I have too much riding on this—my whole life is riding on this. Of all days, I did not get ripped off today.

Carmine kicks the door open.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

DESOLATE STREETS

The moment the bar doors closes behind us, Carmine throws me into the street. He spares no time, reaching under his coat and revealing a handgun with a long silencer screwed onto its barrel.

This is it. This is the end. I close my eyes and see Freddie’s face. Will he realize what I did? When Pesconi and his men never shows up at the caravan, and when he finds his wallet in his trailer, next to the sac of territs, will he put it all together? Whether he does or doesn’t, it makes no difference. He’s alive. His family is alive. Maybe I’ve lost my mind, but that’s enough for me.

Carmine doesn’t shoot. I peel my eyes open and see that he’s distracted, looking around the streets with a crooked grimace. Maybe the ketamine is finally kicking in. Once it kicks in, it won’t be long before he hits the ground. But it’s not the ketamine that’s distracting him.

It’s the street; it’s dark and silent, save for a gentle whistle of the breeze. None of his men are anywhere in sight. Maybe the cops came, and they ran. It’s as if the cronies were plucked from existence. A black hat floats in a puddle on the street, next to an crossbow, still armed as it lays abandoned. A dozen men, erased from the world.

A dark blur pounces out from the shadows, tackling Carmine, taking him down to the cold street. A growl echoes down the street as the creature is thrown into the air, fifteen feet down the road. Carmine stands up, though no longer in human form, but in that of a fifteen hundred pound grizzly bear. I wasn’t hallucinating down in his Vianna dungeon. He roars a dense plume of humid breath.

His front paws shake the earth as he lands, facing his aggressor—a grey timber wolf, a tenth the bear’s size. I scurry off the road, my brain still registering the attack. I need to act quickly… But how?

Despite its size, the wolf stands confidently in the eyes of its monster opponent. I only know one therian with that kind of ego, one therian that stupid: Freddie. And I don’t need to think twice about it—I know—in my heart, I know it’s Freddie.

He circles the bear, crouched low, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. What is he doing here? How did he find me? Wolf-form or not, Freddie doesn’t stand a chance against the beast. He’s going to get himself killed for nothing. So much for me dying with no blood on my hands. Carmine stays in his place, turning to keep his eye on the circling predator. With impossible speed, Freddie lunges, catching his foe off guard. He sinks his teeth into Carmine’s throat and digs the claws of four of his paws into Carmine’s skin.

I reach for the abandoned crossbow. I have no idea how to shoot the thing, but it can’t be too complicated. Like any gun, it probably has a safety somewhere on it—a little switch that you flick to unlock the trigger. I spin the weapon around.

Snap!
A bolt fires from the weapon as I flip a switch. The bolt skims past my face, nearly killing me. Now is
not
the time to accidentally kill yourself, Olivia. I look down the alley where the bolt fired. On the ground is one of Carmine’s men, coat torn to shreds, and body ravaged, lying in a pool of blood. Down the adjacent alley is a similar scene—two men, ravaged, dead, piled against the wall.

Thing about wolves is, you never see ‘em comin’. I can hear Freddie’s voice echoing in my head. One dozen men, and not one of them saw him coming, not one called out for Carmine while we were in the bar.

Carmine throws Freddie down with force. As Freddie’s body hits the ground, Carmine swipes, like a golfer driving a ball four hundred and fifty yards. Freddie’s body slams against a brick wall, smashing the brick face. I can hear the snap of his bones breaking. He’s slow to get up, and Carmine’s taking advantage, galloping towards the injured wolf. You idiot, Freddie—I did this so you didn’t have to die.

I fire a bolt into Pesconi’s side. He grunts and stumbles. His skin is too thick, too tough; the bolt hardly penetrates an inch. I’m going to need more than a bolt to take the beast down. He doesn’t even look over at me, as if he hardly noticed a thing. I fire again. This bolt connects too, but again, it does little. He swats the bolts with his paw, snapping them, leaving the tips in his body. His eyes find me and he huffs before turning back to Freddie, as if to say, I’ll get to you. He’s not worried about me; he knows I can’t hurt him. That won’t stop me from trying. I fire the remaining bolts into his body—six bolts in total. He hardly flinches until the last one, which drives into his neck. He roars and spins around.

Freddie still struggles to rise to his feet. His legs shake. As he takes a step forward, he nearly falls, unable to bare any weight on one of his front paws. I wish he would just turn around and run—run away. He’s not going to do any damage like this. With this empty crossbow, neither am I.

Carmine continues to toss, swatting at his neck. Finally, he manages to snap the bolt free. A temporary inconvenience. His attention turns back to Freddie. I
can’t
let him kill Freddie. I came to Lemuria so the prick could live, so he didn’t have to die for what I did. If he dies, we both die for nothing. No.

I dive for Carmine’s silenced handgun. It’s heavy, difficult to lift with a single hand—even difficult with both hands. In Carmine’s giant hands, it looked like the kind of pistol a prostitute keeps in her handbag. In my hands, the thing looks like a cannon.

I shoot. The unexpected strength of the blast knocks me backwards and sends a shooting pain down my arms. Carmine screams, blood spraying into the air as the bullet grazes his side. The silencer on the gun does little to quiet the handgun or the loud echo that bounces down the streets. I take aim and shoot again, this time firing off rounds in rapid succession. I unload the whole clip into the beast. I lose count after ten shots.

Still, he stays on his feet, inching towards Freddie, as if nothing’s fazed him—as if eight crossbow bolts, a dozen bullets, and fifteen grams of ketamine were only a minor setback. I have nothing left to throw at the beast. If Carmine’s hand-cannon isn’t powerful enough, nothing will be. My teeth and nails are all I have left, and I know they won’t do anything.

That doesn’t stop me from trying.

I jump onto Carmine’s back and use the last of my energy to do any damage I can, pulling out tufts of hair, biting, digging my claws into his skin. He shakes me off and swats me away without even looking, as if I were no more than a pesky mosquito. The force of his paw is crippling, cracking my bones, leaving me breathless.

Carmine steps towards Freddie. “You stole from my family,” he growls

I try to pick myself up, but the pain in my muscles is too great. I’ve failed. I’ve let Freddie down. I’ve let all the gypsies down.

“I stole nothin’,” Freddie says, still trying to stand on his broken leg. His hair is patchy and matted with blood. “Those territs were never yours. They were ours—you took them from us.”

“I only took what you owed me.”

“Owed you for what?”

“Services. We gave your people protection—a chance to be something more than a bunch of dirty gypsies.”

“We never wanted your protection. Before ya, there was nothin’ to protect against. You’re a crook, just like your piece ‘a shit daddy.”

Carmine growls and leans forward, preparing to transition into a charge.

“Fuck you,” Freddie finishes. He staggers. Run, Freddie—you can outrun him. He doesn’t have it in him to run.

I want to scream to Freddie. I want to tell him how sorry I am, but I can’t. I can hardly breathe. I think one of my lungs is collapsed—punctured by one of my broken ribs. My plan backfired with a vengeance. Not only am I going to die, I’m being forced to watch Carmine kill Freddie first.

Carmine springs forward. He takes a few long strides and then, he hits the pavement. The ground shakes on impact. What just happened? I wipe the tears clouding my eyes to make sure I’m seeing straight. Carmine, nearly two tons of grizzly bear, is now a motionless lump of fur, five feet from Freddie.

Even Freddie doesn’t look too sure of what just happened, staring down at the fallen beast, still in wolf-form, still crouched defensively, as if the bear will pop up and attack at any second.

White foam dribbles out from Carmine’s nose. The ketamine—it finally kicked in—and it kicked in hard. My plot to kill Carmine, despite its hiccups, actually worked. Carmine is dead. Freddie is alive and is now stumbling towards me, in human form.

“Olivia,” he says, dropping down next to me. “Y’ okay?”

I look up at him, still too sore to sit up. “Hi,” I manage to say. I don’t answer his question in the slightest. He helps me over to a nearby wall and props me up. He keeps one eye on Carmine, still suspicious of the sudden collapse. I tell him about the water bottle and the ketamine.

He breaks into laughter. Somehow, I feel like the laughter is at my expense. “Ya honestly thought that was a good idea?” he asks.

I know it was a good idea. It worked, after all. His plan, to bite first and ask question later, wasn’t exactly a winner. “And what would you have done?” I can hear the thick sarcasm in my voice.

He laughs some more before responding. “I dunno. Not that, that’s for sure. What if he didn’t drink the water?” He stares at me with a grin, as if I never thought about that. Of course I thought about that, but what other choice did I have? He continues laughing. Prick.

Once he’s over it, I ask how he found me and he tells me that he followed me. When I ask how, he laughs some more, and then reminds me that he’s part wolf. He doesn’t explain any more than that, but I assume he means he could smell me, or something. I don’t really care how he found me, I’m just happy he’s next to me. I’m happy he’s alive, and that it’s finally over.