Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Code Wolf

When more chills arrived, along with a sudden awareness of being stared at, Riley slowed to glance at the man who leaned against the side of an open doorway. His face was half-hidden by the shadows of an overhead awning that spanned most of the sidewalk, and yet Riley knew he was looking at her in a predatory way. Not man-to-woman stuff. Something else. Something more.

With a tight grip on her cell phone, she passed by him, careful to avoid any kind of contact that might have been misconstrued as an invitation. She’d been fed those kinds of self-defense tips for breakfast in the Price household and knew them all by heart.

Show no weakness.

Be a predator, not someone else’s prey.

Almost able to hear her dad say those words, Riley smiled, which would have been the wrong thing to do if she hadn’t already put some distance between that creep by the bar and herself. Nevertheless, she took one more quick look over her shoulder...just before she felt the firm grip of a hand on her arm.

Derek silently counted to five, nodded and took another step forward, hoping to taunt the vampires that were hiding here into showing themselves. Possibly they were going over their options for getting away, as if they actually had some.

Another step took him closer to the cans lining the walls. The stench of rotting food was unbelievable. And this was taking too damn long.

He kicked the closest can with the tip of his boot, providing more incentive for the fanged abominations to make an appearance. Vampires had sensitive hearing and didn’t like noise.

He kicked the can again and it rolled sideways, spilling what was left of its contents—unrecognizable stuff with an unbelievable odor.

The challenge worked.

One of the vamps dropped from above the trash cans as if it actually might have been half bat, as the old wives’ tales suggested. Its partner followed. They were a pair of completely colorless creatures whose dirty and tattered clothing suggested they might have recently crawled up from the grave.

A ripple of disgust rolled over Derek.

Both of these guys were drenched in blood that was now darkening. Tiny red rivulets of what had been some human’s life force ran in tracks down the sides of their white faces. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at him with dull, flat, lifeless gazes. Whatever kind of voodoo had animated this pair remained one of life’s great mysteries.

Derek didn’t waste any time in going after them. In this instance, their newness to the vamp bag of tricks was in Were favor. The dark-eyed pair had speed, but he and Dale far outweighed them. When their bodies collided, the two vamp fledglings shrieked with anger, yellow fangs snapping, but couldn’t escape the claws that snagged their rotted clothing.

After spinning his bloodsucker around in a circle, Derek tossed his opponent against the brick. The bloodsucker quickly rallied and was on him again in a flash with arms and legs flailing. The creep was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked.

Derek’s muscles corded as he fought to send this ghastly creature back to its natural state of death. Actually, he was doing these monsters a favor, because who would have wanted to end up in such a sorry state?

He felt the breeze of snapping canines that had gotten too close to his face and he roared with displeasure. The sheer menace in that preternaturally wolfish sound temporarily stunned the vampire in his grasp.

That’s it. Those teeth of yours won’t harm anyone else in this city. You won’t accidentally make another bloodsucker in your image, and further contribute to the pain in my ass.

Dale had maneuvered his vampire to the back of the alley, where there was an even slimmer chance for it to escape. Derek danced his flailing abomination in the same direction, whirling, ducking, lunging to the side to avoid the sucker’s uncanny ability to recover.

The only way to keep those pointed teeth from making contact with his flesh was by taking a firm hold on the bastard’s neck. But since vampires didn’t actually breathe, a good squeeze wasn’t going to suffocate the creature into submission.

The vampire’s spine hit the wall with a thud that shook the brick. The wily creature brought up its filthy bare feet and straddled Derek’s body with legs made mostly of brittle bone and strings of sinew.

Fine little hairs on the back of his neck lifted as Derek shoved off the creature. With a fresh round of strength fueled by disgust, he finally got the vampire on the ground, on its back, where it fought like it had five limbs instead of four. When the sucker gurgled with anger, black blood bubbled from its lips.

“This is the end. I’m sure you’ll thank me later. And really, there is no pleasure in this, and only a necessary kind of justice.”

Dale, close by, tossed him a stake, which Derek caught in one hand. With one final burst of energy, he stuck that wooden stake deep into the vamp’s chest, in the spot where its heart had once beat.

Go in peace, vampire.

The creature exploded as if it hadn’t been actually composed of flesh and bone at all, but merely a bunch of musty pieces that had been glued together. Seconds later, a rain of nasty, odorous gray ash swirled through the area like a twister.

A second explosion rocked the area moments after that. Amid a flurry of ash that was temporarily blinding, Derek turned his head to see Dale smiling back at him.

“Mission accomplished,” Derek messaged to his packmate. Or so he thought before the soft, muffled sound of a human in trouble reached him from the street beyond.

Across the filthy, ash-strewn alley’s crackled asphalt, above the musty gray dust that had quickly settled to the ground, Dale’s eyes again met his.

Riley was no weakling, but the guy was extraordinarily strong and fast, using his other hand to spin her around. He now had her by the waist with a hand clamped over her mouth.

Despite her rocketing pulse, she got one good kick in before he pulled her into the shadows so fast, it happened between one blink of her eyes and the next. Still, she wasn’t going to play dead or be reduced to a teary mess, and managed to connect with the guy’s shin with a second kick. When his hand fell away from her mouth, Riley shouted for help.

The fight she put up had surprised her attacker. His hold on her waist loosened enough for her to pull back and spin sideways. They were near the entrance to an underground restaurant and yet no one had seen this happen because the asshole’s timing had been impeccable.

She heard her phone hit the sidewalk and didn’t have the opportunity to retrieve it. Hands came at her again as if the guy was half octopus, and as if he had more at stake here than she did. He clasped her throat to choke off a call for help.

“Bastard!” she shouted.

A filmy blur of movement danced around her, reminiscent of a storm system moving in. The whirlwind was so strong, she flew backward, stumbled and almost lost her footing. The jolt of hitting a wall knocked her senseless. Her head snapped back. Stars danced in her vision and her stomach turned over.

That’s when things really got fuzzy.

Did the ass who had manhandled her have accomplices? There were now three moving blurs of speed in the area. Mere streaks of movement. Nothing defined. And she had a concussion. Either that or these new guys were larger than any humans she had ever seen. The sounds they made were fierce, threatening, and similar to sounds animals made in the wild. Each grunt and growl added to the pressure in her skull.

It occurred to her that she had been dropped into the middle of one of those horror movies she had been thinking about. Strange sounds under a full moon reinforced the thought.