Cursed To Death

Seung Kwon fell into Shogun’s arms, bleeding. Werewolves that had been in hot pursuit turned on the new human threat. Police vehicle lights painted the air a throbbing blood red. Human voices echoed from a bullhorn. Two brave but foolish officers got out of their vehicle with shotguns raised. Hunter lifted his gun to his shoulder, trying in vain to give them a chance to escape. He pulled the trigger and it only clicked. He was out of shells; the officers were on their own.

Werewolves rushed them, taking the non-silver gunshots into their bodies without slowing down. Seeing the huge creatures of the night under a nearly full moon made the officers hesitate, their minds paralyzed by what they could never understand.

The rst officer’s face was swallowed whole inside massive jaws with a scream. All that was left seconds later was the back of his skull and part of his brain as his body dropped and then twitched on the ground. The second officer was caught between two frenzied beasts and summarily severed in half.

A driver in one of the backup vehicles tried to throw his cruiser in reverse, but a huge wolf crashed through the window, dragging the driver out onto the hood to leave no more than a bloody streak. His partner never made it out of the cab. The entire top, cherry lights and all, was peeled away like it was a tin can, and he was extracted by jaws of steel, screaming. Two thick-bodied Weres rushed the third vehicle, knocking it over onto its side and then raking open the gas tank. The wolves fled as a half-transformed bouncer lifted a shotgun, aimed, and pulled the trigger, setting off a massive explosion that cooked the officers alive in their own car.

Shogun’s men caught up to their position, breathing hard, dirty, naked, and bruised. They all looked in the direction of the human carnage, understanding; six human law enforcement deaths would be impossible to cover up. Humans were now involved.

But they also understood that, as tragic as it was, the brief diversion had afforded them a chance to possibly live. It went without saying-they owed the men who’d given their lives… the i

“In due time we will avenge the humans as a matter of honor,” Hunter said, pulling back into the denser foliage.

Shogun nodded, half carrying his injured cousin.

But then all men stopped. It was amazingly quiet. Too quiet. Each man looked around into the nothingness of the bayou. Instinct kicked in. They were surrounded. Seung Kwon slowly pushed himself away from Shogun to take a fighter’s stance. In extremely slow moves, like a subtle ballet, each man moved into position, forming a ring, bracing for an attack.

A rocket-propelled grenade hit the building; Werewolves came out of hiding with angry roars. Half of them doubled back toward the Bayou House, the other half charged at the small circle of men.

The dead shotgun butt became one with Hunter’s arm as he swung it like a baseball bat to stun one attacker. Halving it, he then rammed the broken barrel through the skull of the wolf behind him. Shogun’s agility was unmatched by the thick-bodied wolves that rushed him. Tree branches, tree trunks, anything that gave him leverage, kept him out of claw range as he ducked, pivoted, and lobbed throat-ripping jabs. Seung Kwon, even injured, was formidable when paired with his brethren. They worked in fluid coordination like deadly synchronized swimmers, using jagged branches to gouge out eyes and spear throats in bloody hand-to-hand combat.

An M-16 gun report ripped through the air. To Hunter, it was background white noise-he was in kill mode, adrenaline making him high. His wolf was caught inside his human, but his human had become a beast. Strength coursed through his hands; necks snapped at their will. His feet dug into the soft earth, holding his ground as he twisted a jaw into an u

The building was on fire. There were still twenty-to-one odds. Hunter and Shogun exited the tree line to join the battle raging in the parking lot.

Sasha’s howl made them both snap. Shogun left the ground, leaping onto the back of a retreating Werewolf, his jaws powerful enough, even in human form, to rip off an ear. When the Werewolf went up on its hind legs with a howl and spun to disembowel him, Shogun quickly dismounted and Woods caught it in the gullet with a single hollow-point silver bullet. Fisher lobbed a grenade into a cluster of attackers, splattering the side of the burning building with ripe gore.

Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow were a killing blur at Sasha’s side while Sasha ran headlong, squeezing off machine-gun rounds. Hunter’s gaze locked with Sasha’s for a moment. It was enough to send pure insanity through his soul.

In a headlong lunge, he went one-on-one with a massive Werewolf male. A head butt left the wolf stu

Sirens in the background, smoke billowing from the building inferno, the Buchanan clan in retreat as the sound of grenades and gunfire echoed in the air, and Hunter threw back his head and howled. Dead cops, a burning building, and dead Buchanan clansmen and clanswomen begi

Fisher squeezed off shots, felling the last of the retreating Buchanan fighters in single shots as everyone piled back into the three available jeeps. No one had to say it; they all knew what had to be done. Before local authorities could arrive on the scene, they had to take the vehicles as far into the bayou as possible and then strip them of any VINs and tags, as well as doing a full fingerprint wipe-down, then pray for a mudhole to screw up any DNA evidence.

The sirens were getting farther and farther away, but as Hunter’s fight adrenaline ebbed, his wolf did not. Shogun glanced at Hunter. The men shared a look as Sasha stared at them both.

Safe haven, Hunter murmured inside his own mind as they pushed a jeep into the black water of the swamp. Great Spirit open up a shadow that will swallow me whole.

Sasha’s cell phone ringing made everyone stare at her. Then her face burned as both Shogun’s and Hunter’s eyes followed the sound to her ass. She quickly extracted the device from her back jeans’ pocket, listening to Clarissa’s distraught message as well as trying to judge the location of the distant sirens.

“They were attacked by Vampires,” Sasha said, sending her gaze around the group of assembled warriors. “Two females went after Winters.”

Angry glares met hers as Woods stepped forward.

“Is the kid all right?” Woods smoothed a palm over his scalp. “Jesus… tell me he’s alive.”

“Yeah, he made it,” Sasha said quickly, landing a hand on Woods’s shoulder and watching him visibly relax.

“But we don’t have to put him down or anything, do we?” Fisher asked in a nervous tone. “He’s… just a kid, man.”

“He didn’t get nicked…” Sasha looked off into the distance and then addressed the question to Clarissa. “Right, ’Rissa-Winters didn’t get nicked.” It was said as a statement, a hope, a prayer, not delivered as a question. The confirmation that her fears had been misplaced made her shoulders relax by two inches.

Sasha turned back to the group. “He wasn’t bitten, just shaken up. The house is secure. Bradley and ’Rissa surrounded it with holy water and brick dust, and Doc and Silver Hawk held down the fort with artillery.”

“Then they’ve gotta get out of there,” Hunter said flatly. He nodded toward the sound of the sirens. “By tomorrow morning, if not tonight, this is going to be on the news-if we’re lucky-as a big drug raid that ended in the loss of the lives of six NOPD officers. Any other gunfire heard in a residential or commercial area is going to be followed up with significant force. If that happens, the only way out of it will be for Sasha to go to her general and start the process of a Paranormal Containment Unit cover-up… which always opens Pandora’s box.”