Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Suddenly, there were teeth everywhere, going for her ankles and calves, her lower body, her arms. She stabbed what she could, knowing she had to stay on her feet, but they anticipated her every move—and she was lost in this knife fight between their sharp canines and the camping blade that she’d taken with her on a whim—
The bite locked on her Achilles tendon, and pain lanced through her whole body. Howling, she twisted around and tried to go after the mottled flank with her “weapon,” but her balance tilted and she started to fall.
Pinwheeling her arms, she couldn’t catch herself, especially as the coyote yanked back and took her foot out from under her. The world spun as she lurched off the platform, and there was plenty of snow to receive her, the pack zeroing in instantly as she hit it.
Mahrci landed badly on her arm, and lost her breath. Trying to stay conscious, she flopped onto her back and fumbled with the knife. As she looked up, all she saw were the bared teeth in those muzzles, the rapt eyes, the greedy, licking tongues that were tasting her flesh already. With a weak hand, she waved the blade around, and she gasped for air to reinflate her lungs.
She screamed one last time, into the darkness, into the blizzard—
No, wait. That sound was not coming from her.
The coyote who was closest to her face, the one who was the most aggressive and had attacked first, was suddenly gone. Yanked backwards into the storm.
And then—he somehow went flying over her? Like . . . airborne?
The pack wheeled around, those deadly muzzles swinging away from her.
That was when she heard the growling. Deep and low: A bigger, far more dangerous beast altogether.
The snow was falling in such heavy sheets it was hard to see, but something was looming—and then it was attacking.
Another coyote was dragged out of sight, and the yelping was loud enough to carry over the wind.
All at once the whole lot of them growled at something she could not see—and surged in unison out of view.
Mahrci didn’t understand what was happening, but funny how your survival instinct kicked in and didn’t ask a lot of questions. She needed to get off the fucking ground. That was the only thing that mattered.
Dragging herself back to the platform, she grabbed on to the rough boards and hauled her body upward.
As the wind relented for a moment, what she saw . . . made no sense.
A tremendous white wolf was attacking the coyotes, tearing into them, ripping their throats open, clawing at them. Blood, tufts of mottled fur, and flying chunks of snow kicked up by the fight marked what became a battlefield.
Except it was no contest.
That wolf dominated the lesser predators, the clap of its jaws like lightning cracking across the sky, its eyes glowing with vengeance that pierced through the lashing snow.
Mahrci looked around. The clearing where she’d put the feeding station was about thirty feet in diameter. If she made a run for it, she might be able to reach one of the pines and climb up—
Two shots sounded out. Pop! Pop!
The wolf raised its head to the sounds, and just as it did, one of the coyotes got him good, launching at his rear flank and biting him on the back leg.
Bad move. The wolf spun around and . . .
The carnage was immediate—and a reminder that she was about to be out of the fire, into the firing pan. Iron pan. Fire—fuck it. As soon as that wolf was done eating her initial attackers? It was going to have her as the entrée.
Except that had been a gun. And animals didn’t shoot.
“Help! I’m over here!” she called out.
Two figures stepped free of the ring of pine trees, and she recognized the one on the left.
“Praise Fates,” she whispered as she started to sag.
The next thing she knew, her eyes were rolling back and she was out cold. Her last thought, as she lost consciousness . . .
What the hell was her father’s head of security doing here?
To get to the coyote attack, Apex had re-formed every fifty yards through the dense pines, triangulating the sounds of the high-pitched, excited barking and the occasional scream. On the last leg, he started to smell all the blood, but he was too distracted to bother parsing out how much was vampire and what part was coyote.
The shit was fresh, there was a lot of it, and that was all that mattered.
He already had his gun up as he became corporeal for the final time, and he pulled the trigger at the sky once, twice, as he tried to make sense of the scene: There was a female vampire up on some kind of rickety platform, and a dogfight in the snow below her. Not that it was much of a fight.