I pushed myself back until I reached the wall, then stood up on shaking legs, my muscles screaming. The wolf roared. I literally saw my life flashing by in front of me at the sight of his large crooked canines.
Then, I threw my gun at his face.
It hit its mark, but other than making the wolf turn his head to the side for a second and angering him more, it didn’t do any damage. Behind him, I could barely see that Dominic was still fighting—two of the men whom I’d shot outside in the corridor, and another from the ones we’d found in the room. He was bloody, his leather jacket torn and burned in several places, but he was still standing.
Meanwhile I…
The wolf came for me fast. My body moved on instinct, and I fell down on all fours, hoping to slip between his large legs, toes tipped with claws. As soon as I hit the floor, my right hand landed on one of those plastic wraps full of syringes. And the wolf wrapped his claws around the back of my neck before I could slip under him.
He pulled me up, and I screamed, my feet dangling in the air when he roared right in front of my face then threw me against the wall again.
“Teddy!” I faintly heard Dominic calling when I landed with my ass on the floor again. The wolf went down on all fours, too, opened his jaw wide and swung his claws at my face. I moved to the side but not fast enough. Three of his claws caught me on the left cheek. They stung like hell, and I feltallof it. I tried to move, but there was nowhere to go. He snapped his jaws and slashed my thigh with his claws next, as if he were playing with me. Playing with his food before he ate it.
Screw you, Mr. Ugly Wolf.I dug my nails into the transparent wrap of the syringes until they all spilled on my lap. The wolf grabbed me by the throat, pulled me up and almost all of them slipped from my fingers.Almost—but I caught one. The wolf brought me closer to his face, and his teeth bit into my arm, making me cry out again. Almost pass out, too.
But I was not about to die as food for a werewolf. My survival instincts were intact still, even if I didn’t even know what I was thinking anymore. My teeth wrapped around the cap of the needle, and I pulled it off just as the wolf let go of me and made to bite the side of my neck next.
I stabbed the needle into his shoulder and depressed the plunger on the syringe.
The werewolf froze immediately, as if someone had suddenly cut the life out of him. The claws around my neck loosened, and I fell to the floor, my legs too weak to hold me up.
He howled and growled and whined, pulling the needle and empty syringe from his shoulder. A second later, he hit the floor on his knees, while strands of his long fur shed from his skin, like he was being shaved by some invisible razor.
The next second, Dominic appeared right over his head, and stuck a large piece of wood right through the back of his neck.
Blood everywhere, spraying on my face. My arm hurt like hell. My thigh, too. And my cheek was throbbing.
The half-shifted wolf fell to the floor right in front of my feet. The silence was only disrupted by Dominic’s and my heavy breathing. I blinked and looked around, sure that the others were coming, but…they were all on the floor, motionless.
I looked at Dominic—what was left of him, really. His clothes were in pieces, his skin almost completely covered in blood, but he was standing.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then we heard footsteps in the corridor coming our way. I was way too overwhelmed to try to figure out how many of them there were. It didn’t matter, anyway. Dominic was by the door, slamming it shut one second, and he was in front of me the next, pulling me in his arms like I weighed no more than a feather. I wrapped my arms around his neck and locked my ankles around his hips. He ran, and glass broke, and before I knew it, the night air filled my nostrils a split second before my body sank into ice-cold water.
Air.
I couldn’t breathe.
Instinct took over once more, and I let go of Dominic, unable to think clearly about anything else but to reach the surface. I pushed my right arm as fast as I could because the left one where the wolf had bitten me was practically paralyzed.
It felt likehoursbefore I was able to breathe again, but it must have been mere seconds. The dark night sky was over me, water just as black all around me, and Dominic broke the surface a second later.
The first gunshot drowned me in panic all over again, and I looked up at the gigantic ship at our side to see the men in front of the window we’d broken on our way out.
“Get down!” I called, and after drawing in a mouthful of air, I dove underwater again.
The dock was to my right, and my arm felt like it wasn’t a part of my body at all, but I still moved. The water was my friend—I grew up swimming all my life. All it took was a few moments to remember what it was like. The bullets couldn’t reach me here. I wassafe, though it was dark. It was just water, and water would carry me whichever direction I wanted to go as long as I showed it.
I came out for short breaths every minute, and every time I did, I made sure Dominic was still swimming behind me, too. Just a little longer. Just a few more feet.
Finally, I touched a moss-covered pillar that held up the dock and wrapped my good arm around it tightly. The ship was far away from us now. The gunshots had stopped long ago.
And Dominic was alive.
He came to the surface and pushed himself behind me, wrapping both his arms around me and the pillar, keeping us pinned to it until we caught our breath.
“It’s over,” I kept saying to myself, my body shaking from head to toe. It was over. We weren’t dead.
For now, that would be enough. The rest would work itself out.