Page 30 of Cursed to Be Mine
“Angle your camera so it’s pointing out. I can only see your feet, over.”
Camera six jerks up and down a bit before focusing on a group of three heavily armed men in front of her.
“Is that better, over?”
“Thank you. Out.”
I lean forward as the four teams of four move through the woods and swamp surrounding us. “Why are we out here if the mutt’s still in St. Augustine?” I ask.
“We don’t have the manpower to take them at their compound. We have to wait until they come out for a hunt. They split up then.”
“And you’re certain he’ll come this way?”
“No. That’s why teams three and four are south of the city.”
“Why couldn’t we have watched everything from the house?” Scarlett asks as she hugs her arms, glancing warily out the windows.
“We’re also the medic van,” he says without looking away from the screen.
“Do people often get hurt?”
“No, but we want to be prepared,” I lie. Anytime we don’t successfully kill or capture, someone dies. If not that night, then in a couple when the sups hunt usdown for knowing about their world, tracking us through our scent or circadian rhythm or some magical voodoo I don’t yet understand.
Shifting uncomfortably, I think about the newest thing I don’t understand: the monster in the mirror.
“Hey, Henry,” I say casually, not wanting to pull his full attention away from the monitors. “Have you ever heard of a charred humanoid monster coming out of a mirror?”
He glances at me. “Have you seen one?”
And there’s something in his eyes and tone that makes my skin crawl. Makes me want to jump out of the van and run away screaming.
“No.” I shake my head. “No… a child at the hospital mentioned seeing one. She really seemed to think it was real.”
He holds my gaze for a moment longer, and I make sure not to waver despite the strengthening of my pulse urging me to run. Sweat glistens on the back of my neck, raising each individual hair with the cold trickles of its touch.
“They’re signs of death,” he finally says, glancing back at the monitors.
Cold torment lances through me, and I swallow hard as I stare at the side of his face. My pulse intensifies, screams in between my ears as it pounds around my skull in denial.I’m too young to die.“Signs of death?” I push out.“What does that mean?”
Praying that it doesn’t mean what I think it means.
Already knowing that it does.
“Like reapers.” He shrugs. “They don’t seem to hurt people themselves, but everyone who sees them dies within twenty-four hours of them coming all the way out of the mirror. It makes sense for them to lurk insidehospitals.”
My eyes dart to the handle of the van’s side door. But despite my urge to run, I know such an attempt would be futile. You can’t outrun a werewolf. You sure as hell can’t outrun death.
“Has there ever been a case where it doesn’t come out all the way?” I ask, reaching down to find comfort in the hard steel of my Sig P365. Even though I know I can’t shoot death either.
Another shrug. “I’ll have a look in the books when I get ho– What the?” He jerks forward, his eyes pinned to the screen as he grabs his radio. “Nicole, Nicole, Nicole, this is control base. Turn left. I want to check –”
Scarlett screams as he maximizes the camera just in time to see a man’s head go flying across the screen. Nicole falls back as she raises her gun, and the two other men panic with her. Bullets spray into the woods as a massive body of fur blurs through the trees. It darts forwards on two legs, its teeth locking around one of the men’s shoulders.
“Nicole, run!” Henry shouts into the radio.
I pull out my gun, my fingers white as they grip it. My eyes wide on the screen, I watch as the werewolf, eight, nine feet of towering muscle, rips the man’s arm off before turning to lunge at the other one.
Bullets tear into its hide, but it doesn’t seem to feel them. Nicole’s gun clicks empty.
