Page 55 of Ruthlessly Mated
It takes my animal mind a moment to filter the information, but then I hear the rumble of a motor and I realize someone is shooting. At us.
I look in the direction of the sound, and see a big open top vehicle rumbling around. There’s a driver and the shooting passenger, and the shooter seems to be taking shots almost at random. The closer they get, the more I can see how erratic their driving is, and how unsteady the man with the weapon is.
A bottle rolls out of the footwell and smashes on the ground and the smell of alcohol travels on the wind. They are drunk, bored humans looking for trouble. The worst kind.
The shooter keeps firing; bullets are hitting rocks and ricochetting at random. That is dangerous enough.
And then we are spotted.
“Dogs! Get ‘em!”
There’s no real cover out here. Just tussock, dirt, and rocks. There’s nowhere to shift back into human form and our clothes are miles away.
We run. As hard and as fast as we have ever run. Well, as Kita has ever run. She is smaller and slower and I could easily outpace her, but I do not want to.
I try my best to keep myself between Kita and the bullets, glad that her body is so much smaller than mine.
The humans shout with bloodlust as they give chase, but they have made a mistake. They’re not hunting us.
We are a lure.
They are the prey.
“Slow down, gimme a shot on these two. Looks like a mama and a baby!”
Another mistake.
As they pass our campsite, Conroy is in motion faster than the eye can see. Not quite vampire blink fast, but faster than all people and most shifters can move. He is a born fighter, a consummate alpha, and he is on the shooter in an instant, flowing from human to beast, jaws locked on the neck of the man who dies screaming in a most satisfying way.
Tailor follows, leaping from the shade of a rock, almost making it look like the shadow itself came alive. His attack is no less bloody and just as devastating. He locks on the arm of the driver, pulls him from the vehicle, and savages him on the ground.
In the meantime, the vehicle comes to a slow halt because everybody who was in it is dead and there’s no longer a driver.
Conroy stretches up into his human form as we all do the same. I grab Kita and hold her close, comforting her as she trembles against me. I am sure if she was in her human state she would not have been so scared, but she was in her animal state, more vulnerable.
It takes her a moment to recover, but she does not take long to join the other two who are walking around the vehicle, which they have of course immediately claimed.
“We’ve got a car,” Conroy says casually. “This will be useful.”
“That was the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Kita enthuses. “That was incredible! You’re so good at killing!”
I am glad we are alive, and possibly even more glad that there’s some way out of here. Conroy would have us live in the dirt if he could. He is thrilled now, naked, bloody, and grinning broadly, but also aware that this stretch of land contains the sort of people who drive around shooting things and is therefore obviously completely unsuitable to raise pups.
Kita runs toward him and throws her arms around him. He picks her up and kisses her and twirls her around the open top vehicle and for a moment they look like the perfect feral couple.
For one shining moment, I am convinced everything is going to be okay.
CHAPTER 10
Tailor
Everything is not going to be okay.
Finally everybody has agreed to go and get the insurance and find somewhere safe to live. But doing those things is not as easy as it seems.
The insurance is buried fifty or so miles from the old port site. Far enough away to be accessed without drawing too much attention—in theory, at least—but close enough that we are all tempted to go look at the damage. It was our home, our stronghold, the seat of our power for many years.
I drive, because I am the only one who knows where the insurance is. Damon is beside me, and Conroy and Kita are in the back seat doing god knows what, but the occasional sound of giggling makes me suspect it is absolutely filthy.
