Page 50 of Haunted By the Shadow of Death

He shifted, positioning me in the corner of the room behind him.

“Stay there,” he said, his voice roughened to where I had to strain to understand. He was about to shift.

He was going to take on all these men alone. I’d seen the creatures he and his pack shifted into. They weren’t like big, furry dogs. They were the stuff of horror movies. If someone had ever dreamt them up and put them on the big screen, it would be an instant R rating. He could handle this. And if he couldn’t, I’d step in—or Death would. For now, I was going to let him take his shot. I’d do pretty much anything to avoid having that feeling inside me grow.

A low growl filled the room. I’d been up front at a concert once, near a speaker where the bass felt like it vibrated through you. You didn’t so much hear the noise as feel it.

That’s what this was like. They’d picked a fight they couldn’t win.

There was a flash of fear on a couple of the faces, but Rex and Trigger didn’t heed the warning, or think there was any way one man could fight them off. It was like they’d disregarded Death Day and what that meant altogether. This wasn’t the good old days, where you could size up your opponent. There were things, creatures like Kicks and people like myself, who’d risen out of the shadows. Death Day had been a line of demarcation, from what the world had seemed to be and the reality of what really existed. It looked as if they hadn’t learned that lesson, but they were about to in the most violent of ways.

It wasn’t until I heard the booming steps that signaled Death’s imminent arrival that I knew for sure I wasn’t going to be the one to kill them, or at least not all of them. For some reason, my killings didn’t happen that way, as if maybe they were unnatural and untimed.

There wasn’t any time to ponder it now, as Trigger moved in first, swinging wildly. Kicks swung back. Before he even completed the motion, his clothes had been shredded off him, and he gained a foot and a half in height, another foot in width, and was all sinewy muscle, claws, and fangs.

I nearly fell on my ass. I would’ve if the wall hadn’t popped up behind me.

Trigger hit the ground, blood spraying out of his neck. The other three were no longer taking chances but coming at Kicks all at once, Rex with a chair in his hand and the other two with guns out.

The bullets bounced off his skin, landing on the ground. Kicks was literally bulletproof?

The rest happened too quickly to track. It was a blur of motion, with thumps as bodies hit the floor until there was silence.

Kicks had said the way I killed was no worse than what he did. I’d thought he was trying to be kind. He wasn’t. It might’ve been worse.

I had trouble breathing. All I could see was blood and guts and a savagery that was, in a way, worse than Death Day. I was surrounded by an utter bloodbath.

One had his gut ripped open. Another had the veins and tendons hanging out of his neck, like spaghetti splayed on the floor.

Kicks, still in beast form, groaned and then slowly shifted back into human form.

“Go get the bags upstairs,” he said. He cracked his neck, turning it this way and that and looking stiff in his skin.

I nodded, heading toward the hall and happy to be away from the wreckage. The only positive right now was still being on track for zero kills myself. I’d have to take the wins where I could.

I caught sight of Blondie ducking into a room on my way upstairs. I shoved the door open, and she jumped back.

“You knew what they were going to do. That’s why the place was empty for breakfast.” I didn’t expect her to admit it, but I wasn’t leaving here letting her think she’d gotten one over on us. I was too pissed for that.

“I didn’t,” she said, quite predictably. She was cute enough that she could probably manipulate plenty of the men who came here. I wasn’t looking to fuck her, so it wouldn’t work out as well.

She backed as far away from me as she could, probably thinking I could shift and kill her at any moment. I didn’t have to shift. If I wanted her dead, she’d get no warning.

I should kill her. Left here alive, she’d talk. She’d tell stories of the monster. There were more humans than shifters. To think they weren’t a threat would be as foolish as what they’d done downstairs, and we’d seen how that turned out. I wouldn’t kill her because I feared that piece of darkness within me worse, but she needed a scare so she didn’t talk.

I closed in on her, not stopping until her back was pressed against the wall and she was breathing rapidly.

“You say anything of this to anyone, and we will hear. Then we will come back and kill you. Do you understand?”

She nodded, a few tears escaping.

“I don’t like you, but I’m allowing you to live because I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t mean for this to happen. You speak, and I’ll know that assumption was wrong.”

She began to cry, and I didn’t care. She’d tried to kill me, and I was losing the capacity for empathy for my enemies. I wasn’t sure if this was life wearing me down or that insidious darkness I could feel infringing on my psyche. What was more terrifying was I liked that I didn’t care. Those might be the only things that were saving her today. Right or wrong, she’d continue to breathe because of my own sense of self-preservation.

I turned my back to her, making sure she knew she was no threat to me. I hadn’t made it out the door when there was the sound of yet another body hitting the ground.

I stopped, sighing, refusing to turn around and see her dead. I went to the other bedroom and grabbed our bags.

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