Page 65 of Fighting Furry

CHAPTER TEN

A vampiress tackled me and knocked me against the fridge. As she bashed my head into the stainless steel, I saw Axel get hit by the other vamp. He managed to hold his ground, but that's all I saw before I'd decided I'd had enough and I punched the vampiress in the gut. She winced, but didn't release my head, so I kicked up with my left leg and nailed her hard in the vag.

That did it, she screeched in pain and let go of my head. I thumped against the fridge a final time, with less force. Pushing the vamp off, I rolled over on top of her and pinned her to the ground. My vision was a bit fuzzy, but I maintained my hold.

Gripping her head in my hands, I lifted it and slammed it against the tile floor. She wrapped her hands around my neck and squeezed as I bashed her head down again. She just squeezed tighter and my blurry vision got blurrier.

If I didn't get her hands off my neck soon, I was going to lose consciousness. I tried to focus on her face, but dark spots formed in my vision. I was going to pass out. She was incredibly strong and I couldn't get breath to try my alpha voice on her, which probably wouldn't work anyway, since she wasn't a wolf. Damn it, think.

I let go of her head, stopped bashing it against the tile, and let all my body weight fall to the left. It was entirely counter-intuitive of what I would want to do in a professional fight, but a professional fight would have been called by now.

The vamp followed my body weight to the ground, straddled my waist and applied more pressure. I was pretty sure that, if I hadn't been a werewolf, my throat would have been crushed already. My lungs were on fire and my vision was more black spots than clear sight, but somehow, I was still hanging on. I bucked under the vamp and tried to throw her off, but it was like her knees, on either side of my waist, were cemented to the floor.

Just when my vision was down to little pinpricks of light, I remembered that I could shift. I wasn't sure I could do it from that position, but the very thought called my wolf to the forefront of my brain. I went furry and the vamp lost her grip on my neck. Growling, I pushed her off me, pinning her to the floor with my paws.

I held her there and panted, trying to catch my breath and get my vision back. It returned quicker than I'd have expected, my wolfy healing capabilities must have helped.

The vamp struggled underneath me, but I held her down. I held her down and wondered what I was supposed to do with her. I really didn't want to chew any more heads off. Besides being gross, I hated the idea of having to kill anyone else.

“Enough,” a regal and cool voice shouted.

Strong arms banded around my chest and lifted me off my paws, holding me up to face a tiny woman in what appeared to be a satin ball gown. A satin ball gown with nothing underneath it, judging by the way her nipples were pointing at me.

I struggled against the arms around me, as I could see Axel and Clarissa doing, but whoever held me was incredibly strong. The woman holding Axel in place was shorter and leaner than him.

“Shift back to human, please. We can't have a conversation when you are wolves.”

I growled. I didn't want to shift and be naked again in front of all these people. The vamp holding me whispered a word in my ear, a word in a language I didn't understand, and I felt my body changing, my wolf retreating. It was forced and it hurt, it felt wrong, but I went with it, hoping the change would force the man holding me to lose his grip. It didn't. Axel was still in his human form, but Clarissa had gone wolf and she also shifted back to human.

The regal woman paced closer and looked us over, a smile twitching her lips. “I'm actually quite pleased you showed up here, Axel dear,” she said. “It saves me so much trouble and work. Dear Darius and his ridiculous council always insist on doing things by the books, preventing an uprising he says, but I am an impatient woman.” She narrowed her eyes and stopped in front of me. She ran a finger down my face and her smile widened, revealing a mouth-full of horribly sharp and pointy teeth. “You must be the monster who killed my mate.”

Aw shit, this was bad, really, really bad. “He was going to…” Yeah, telling her he was going to forcibly have sex with me probably wouldn't improve her mood. “It was self-defense.”

She leaned so close I could see the specks of green in her hazel eyes, could see the nearly pore-less perfection of her porcelain skin. I could picture Jeremiah by her side. They would have been a regal, stunning couple, if not classically beautiful. “I don't care why you did it, just that you did it. You will be publicly executed after we've all had our taste of you.”

Like a snake, she snapped her head forward and her teeth sank into the flesh just below my chin. Her teeth through my flesh hurt, and then she began to suck and pain burned from the site of the bite through my whole body.

Axel roared and then the teeth left my flesh as the vamp was pulled off me. The teeth left my neck, but I felt skin go with them. I clamped a hand to my neck, the man behind me still holding me tight, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility of me bleeding out all over him. In fact, was he licking me? Yep, through the pain I could feel his tongue on me. I shuddered and tried to break free, but he didn't budge. “Let me help you,” he said. “My saliva will close the wound.”

“Let me shift and I'll be fine.”

He ignored me and kept licking. I tried to shift, but my wolf curled up and whimpered, refusing. I couldn't speak to her, but I visualized, like I was watching a movie, what would happen if I shifted while the vamp held me: my two front legs would be in a position so awkward they'd likely break. Three vamps pulled Axel off the vampire queen or whatever she was. They held him while the vamp queen smoothed down her now torn dress and patted her hair. “We should take them to our place,” she said. “It will be easier to restrain them there.”

Shivers shuddered through me and not from loss of blood, from the idea of a dank basement with chains to restrain us. If we went there, we'd be dead or, worse, completely under their control. I wouldn't do it.

I struggled against the arms holding me, but I could get no leverage. We needed a plan. We needed help. I needed help.

“Get them some clothes,” the vampire queen said to Alpha.

Alpha leaned back against a wall watching, showing no interest in getting his hands dirty. “They're our prisoners, Neela,” he said with a bit of a pout.

She stalked over to him and growled in his face. “Are you questioning me, Alpha?” she said his chosen name with a sneer.

I'd expected Alpha to back down, to give in and apologize, but he straightened, his eyes narrowing. “I want my people back.”

Neela smiled. “You give us these three, and we'll return three of your people to you. These three will be much more…Sustaining.” She licked her lips as she spoke and looked us over in an overtly lustful way. This was not good.

Neela was clearly more powerful than Alpha, yet she was willing to negotiate with him. What did he have on her? And how was Darius involved in this? None of it made sense.

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