Page 688 of Love Bites

The sheriff had already started directing everyone else to go out and search. Billy Bob walked over to me. He stood disturbingly close, leaned in and peered into my eyes. “It’s really you.”

“I think so.” I licked his face leaving a large slug’s trail of saliva along his cheek and over his nose. “Turnabout’s fair play, Doc.” I laughed. It sounded strange. “I don’t know how to get back to human.”

“Then I will be a wolf with you.”

“I’m bigger than you.”

“I have a thing for big girls.” The left corner of his mouth tugged up. “Why do you look like Brother Wolf?”

“I don’t know. The bastard won’t talk to me.” Having Billy Bob near me eased my fear, but I still didn’t feel safe. Not with Randy out there. “His mother. Their mother. She warped them. I think she made them believe if they could access the spirits, that Randy could be a shifter.” I recalled how he’d talked about her bathing him with sassafras. “Their rings are eight point stars. Not two overlaid cubes. I’m pretty sure they’ve been messing with forces on the other side for a long time.”

“Being a non-shifter in a shifter home has consequences.”

Was he thinking about baby Jude? “Sunny’s human. It won’t be the same for her and Babe with their children.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that it would, Chav.” He stroked the fur on my neck. “Come back to me.”

“I should be out there hunting him down.”

“You’ve done enough.”

“You should be out there, too.”

“I’m not leaving you. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

About that time, the kitchen door flew open. Randy Lowry stood there—his eyes wild with madness as he trained a 9mm gun at Billy Bob and me.

“You’ve destroyed everything!” I saw the flash of the muzzle, the deafening blast as he pulled the trigger, the bullet ripping through the air heading for me as if in slow motion.

“No,” Billy Bob shouted. He shoved me aside, and I watched as the deadly projectile slammed into his chest.

I roared, a frenzy of emotions overwhelming all my senses. Billy Bob had thrown himself in front of a bullet for me, and I would not let it go unanswered. Randy turned, the skins sliding off his back exposing his hideous eight-point star tattoo, the one I’d seen in Sunny’s vision. I leaped on top of him, his screams barely penetrating the red rage coursing through my veins. In this form, I had him easily pinned to the floor.

“No,” he cried out. “Please!”

I leaned in close, my breath mussing his hair. I opened my mouth, my jaw unhinged, widening like that of a man-eating python.

“Wait. Wait!” he exclaimed as my saliva dribbled on his face.

“I’m going to transform you, human. I’m going to grant your wish.”

Okay, the words came out of my mouth, or rather the big black wolf’s mouth, because I hadn’t said the words. Apparently, I’d stopped being in charge of the body I’d inhabited. I tried not to gag as we, because I was definitely awenow, swallowed Randy Lowry down like a bitter pill. In less than a minute, he was…in my belly.

He tasted like chicken.

Not really. I hadn’t tasted anything. It was as if I hadn’t really been a part of Randy’s demise at all. I heard a moan, and it brought me back to the present. Billy Bob! I ran to him, sliding the last couple of feet until I could cradle him in my arms.

I didn’t feel afraid for myself anymore. Chance Lowry was in prison, and well, we won’t rehash the whole people-eating trick I’d just performed on his non-shifting twin. Now, I was only afraid to lose Billy Bob.

“Hang in there, Doc.” I put my hand over the wound in his chest. God, there was so much blood. “Stay with me. Please, stay with me.”

He put his hand on mine. “You’re you again,” he said, his voice raspy and weak. “You’re so beautiful.”

I looked at my hand, all skin and no fur. “I hadn’t even noticed. Can you shift? Will that help?” I was still in my clothes, which meant it hadn’t been a traditional shift, and the eight-point star was still in my hand. I pressed it over his wound, hoping the energy from it would help stop the bleeding somehow.

“I don’t know. I’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said.

He was so pale my heart wanted to seize. “You’re strong. Too strong to die.”

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