Howl for It (15 page)
Authors: Cynthia Shelly; Eden Laurenston
“Stop calling me that!”
“—you’re the one who keeps involving herself with these cult types.”
“Gee, I wonder what in my background”—Darla hit the gas and tore away from Francine’s house—“would attract me to large groups who have nothing in common but hanging around each other constantly, sleeping on the floor in large people piles, and hunting innocent strangers? Really, I have no idea how I could be comfortable around that sort of thing!”
Eggie waited on top of the hill while his brothers stripped off their clothes. They were going hunting on orders from their daddy. He wanted venison for dinner. Fresh venison, not a frozen slab from the shifter-friendly grocery store. It had been a while since he’d sent them out to do that for him, but it gave the brothers something to do while their females were out racing and baking.
If they could get the venison quick enough, then Eggie could track down some wild boar for Darla. She’d told him she loved fresh boar. He could barbeque it for her the way he’d learned when he was in Korea for a while.
He snapped at his brothers, trying to get them to hurry up rather than stand around chatting like a bunch of old She-wolves.
His brothers shifted to wolf and ran off down the hill. Eggie looked out over Smithtown territory—the one place on earth he loved more than any other.
Truly happy, Eggie charged after his brothers.
The rules had been set when they’d first arrived. A clean, fair race in this open land where wolf, bear, cat, and hyena territories all butted up against each other.
It was a Monday so most folks were at work or being responsible in some other way. Plus, this was Lewis sisters against cats in this race, not Smith She-wolves, so there’d be no audience for this event because no one really cared beyond whether they won money or not. In the end, it was just the Barron sisters, the Lewis sisters, and two grizzlies from Collinstown who would be the refs. They’d decide who was the winner if it was a tight race and they’d be able to keep the maulings down to a minimum if it came to that—which it probably would.
Now here Darla was, making a tight turn, far ahead of the pack. The Barron sisters were getting cranky about her lead, too. Getting more and more aggressive as the number of laps wound down.
When they hit the last two laps, Darla knew that the Barrons were gunning for her. Since any of the three Lewis sisters winning meant they all won, Darla made a split-second decision to pull back and let Roberta fly past her. She did. Of course, it was just as one of the Barrons shot across the makeshift track—and took out the tail end of Roberta’s car.
Darla watched her sister’s car spin toward the center of the track, almost taking out one of the grizzlies, who dived for cover.
Janette, the family hot head, rocketed past Darla and rammed into the side of one of the other Barron sisters, sending that one airborne.
“Shit!” Darla burst out, not caring she was cussing because she knew this was about to get damn ugly. She downshifted and quickly pulled up next to Roberta’s wreck. Lord, Frankie Ray was going to lose his mind when he saw his car.
Darla jumped out of Eggie’s car and ran over to her sister’s. She went to pull the driver’s side door open but the handle was missing. So she ran around the other side just as Janie Mae got there. She pulled open the door and reached in, dragging her sister out. When she had most of her head and shoulders free, Janie Mae grabbed hold too and together they laid Roberta out on the grass.
“Those bitches,” Roberta snarled from her spot on the ground. “What happened to clean and fair?”
Darla put her hands on her sister’s shoulders to stop her from getting up. “Just rest a minute, darlin’.”
Janette drove her car up and jumped out. “Are you all right?” she asked two seconds before one of the Barron sisters tackled her to the ground.
Janie Mae started to go over there, but Darla grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “Don’t you dare, Janie Mae.”
“She’s outnumbered!”
“You’re pregnant!” Darla took a breath. “Just stay here. I’ll deal with it.”
Darla rushed over to the three She-lions on one wolf fight. She tried to pull one of the She-lions off but they were on her sister like ticks on a hound dog.
As she tried to reach in again to get a good grip, one of the grizzlies was there. He caught Darla’s arm. As he lifted her up and away, Darla heard a popping sound and the grizzly stumbled back. He dropped her and Darla landed hard on her knees.
“What the hell . . .” she heard the grizzly gasp.
Darla looked up and saw blood pouring from two holes in the bear’s shoulder. He’d been shot.
Moving fast, she caught hold of his arm and using all her strength, yanked him down just as seven or eight more shots rang out.
“Down!” Janie Mae screamed out. “Now!”
Everyone who wasn’t already down, dove to the ground.
Eggie and three of his brothers had a good grip on the buck’s body while Bubba Ray had him by the throat. Bubba pushed the animal to the ground, trying to suffocate him before the rest of them lost their grip.
But instead of finishing him off, Bubba suddenly stopped, his head lifting, his nose casting for a scent.
Since Bubba was never one to go off a kill, Eggie released the buck and backed away. He turned, lifted his head. That’s when he heard it. Rapid-fire shots. No one used automatic weapons inside Smith territory or in any of the nearby shifter towns. Not even the hyenas used them.
Which meant only one thing . . .
Eggie took off, instinctually knowing that his brothers were right behind him.
Darla hid behind Janette’s car with the bear as more shots hit the vehicle.
“What’s going on?” the bear demanded.
Darla lifted up his T-shirt, trying to see the wound. “They’re here for me,” she admitted. “They’re trying to kill me.”
“Using guns?” It was the unspoken rule among their kind that in a physical fight, shifter challenged shifter with claws and fangs only.
“They’re full-human,” Darla admitted.
The bear chuffed and Darla stared down at him.
“Move,” he told her.
Still crouching and keeping her head down, Darla moved back and he shifted to his bear form. Roaring, he turned, slipped his front paws under the car and tossed it like a toy.
Darla charged back over to Janie and Roberta, hiding behind Roberta’s car. “You two, shift and go.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Janie, you’ve gotta protect your baby. Go.”
“She’s right.” This came from one of the Barron sisters. “Protect your pup and get help. We’ll handle—”
Shots from another part of the nearby woods came at them, Darla barely moving in time as bullets riddled the ground.
At that point, they all shifted. Janie and Roberta charged off and Darla ran after the wounded grizzly. Bears had the best noses and he was so pissed off, she knew he’d go right to one of the shooters.
Eggie heard more shots and changed his direction, heading straight for Darla. But Bubba ran into his side, pushing him off course. Eggie snarled, snapped at his kin, but Bubba didn’t back down. While they all kept running, Bubba kept pushing.
Thankfully during that little bit of time, Eggie’s years of military training kicked in. Although he wanted to run right to Darla’s side and swoop her up, his battle-ready side knew he couldn’t. He had to be smart; Darla was depending on that. So Eggie ran beside his brother, quickly figuring out that Bubba was going wide around to where the shots were coming from.
The firing continued but now they were hearing screams. Eggie decided to believe all that noise was from the full-humans. It made it easier to keep doing what he needed to do.
Suddenly Bubba made a hard left and charged forward. He was fast and Eggie had to race to catch up. His brother leaped onto a big rock and launched himself off. He caught hold of the leg dangling from a tree branch and yanked. The full-human flipped forward, landing hard on the ground. An M-16 flew out of his hands, but he was already reaching for another weapon attached to his ankle. Frankie ran up, opened his muzzle, and wrapped his jaws around the man’s throat. Ignoring the screaming, Frankie snapped the full-human’s neck and went off looking for more.
Eggie was about to follow when bullets riddled the ground at his feet and he took three steps back. When Eggie stopped, he looked up into the face of a human male—and the automatic weapon he held locked on him.
Darla followed the bear to one of the big trees. The shooter sat on a branch, busy reloading his gun while he made a panicked whimpering sound, his eyes constantly straying to the grizzly charging toward him. The full-human hadn’t been expecting shifters. Then how the hell had he found them? Smithtown, like most shifter-only locations, wasn’t on any maps and was protected by shifters involved in different divisions of the government, military, and National Guard. So the attackers hadn’t just tracked Darla down here.
The grizzly went up on his hind legs and pressed his front paws against the tree trunk. At his full shifted height, this bear was ten feet long but he still couldn’t quite reach the human on the branch. So Darla ran up the bear’s back, launched herself from his hump, and crashed into the human as he was raising the gun to shoot her. She hit him with her full weight, knocking him backward off the branch. He screamed, the rifle knocked from his hand and his arms pinwheeling. Darla went down with him, the ground rushing up. She waited until the last second to jump from his chest and flip forward. She rolled across the forest floor until she landed flat on her stomach, her front and hind legs spread out. She knew she looked ridiculous but she was alive and unhurt. That’s all she cared about.
Darla heard more shots, more screams, and she knew this had to be stopped. She got to her feet and shifted back to her human form. The bear was busy tearing the now-dead full-human to pieces, which seemed kind of a waste.
She rushed up to him. “Hey. Hey!” Unfortunately the bear was still focused on the man at his feet. So Darla tapped the bear on his shoulder.
As grizzlies were wont to do, he was startled and swung his big forearm at her. Darla squealed and ducked, her arms over her head. Her shifter body could withstand a lot, but she’d rather not spend the next week recovering from a bear mauling.
“Wait, wait, wait!” she yelped.
She heard chuffing, felt bear-breath on her raised arms. She peeked up and saw the bear inches away from her.
“I was just going to suggest,” she squeaked out, “that maybe you and your friend could push the full-humans to the center of the track. That way we could just finish them off all at once.”
The bear gave one more big chuff, making Darla yip, before he lumbered off. She let out a relieved breath.
It was official, grizzlies were the worst!
Darla shifted back to wolf and headed toward the track. It was time to end this.
The human’s gun had jammed. Eggie wasn’t surprised. He knew the weapon and refused to use it because of the jamming issues. Eggie also knew how long it would take the full-human to clear the weapon to make it useable again. So he charged forward, but he never reached the man. A grizzly barreled out of nowhere and ran over the male, then came back and picked the screaming man up by his head, giving a good shake while crushing the human’s skull.
Eggie ran toward the clearing where he guessed the race had taken place. There were two cars in the middle of a rough-hewn track and another car . . . perched in a tree.
Assuming one of the grizzlies had something to do with that, he saw the Barron sisters run down two men and tear them to pieces. He stopped, his gaze searched the track, looking for Darla.
“Run!”
Eggie watched five human males run toward him. Two were taken out by Eggie’s brothers, another blindsided by a She-lion. But the last two ran past, bears hot on their asses.
Too bad they were heading toward a half-circle made up of a few of Eggie’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, in their shifted forms, who had come out of the woods next to Smith territory. Someone must have gone for help.
Eggie scanned the area one more time, then headed after the last two men.
Eggie’s family ran past Darla and she knew that Janie and Roberta had sent them. Once they were past the trees, they fanned out into an arc and they waited. A few seconds later, she heard screams and shots and saw men running from the other side of the clearing. They were so busy looking back at the bears—who could have easily overtaken them by now but hadn’t bothered—they had yet to notice the ones waiting for them.
They’d passed the cars in the middle of the track when one of them finally looked forward and saw the wolves waiting. He slid to a stop, grabbing the other one’s arm, and yanking him back.
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