The pain helped bring her to her senses. She looked around the mosaic of shattered glass and orange glow. Then, she smelled the smoke.
That’s not good, she thought. Fire. That’s what it meant. She had to get out before the car caught on fire.
Her seatbelt was stuck, and the jacket had been caught when the driver’s door had crunched in on her. She yanked her arm out of it, crying out in pain when she felt a jag of metal cut into the back of her arm.
But she’d managed to loose herself, and then crawled across the console to the passenger’s door which had swung open, the frame now misshapen like a used beer can. She landed on her hands and knees, a mixture of soft grass and crushed glass underneath.
A glance up confirmed multiple figures, making their way down the embankment, coming towards her.
She hauled herself up and stumbled for the tree line, away from the smoke, and the fire.
In the distance, she heard a young girl. The voice sounded too young, like a child. “No, no, no!” the girl yelled. “Clay said she needs to be-”
The girl’s words were cut off with an explosion that blistered the air and stung like a thousand embers, on every square inch of Robin’s body.
After her ears had recovered from the shockwave, now only ringing in a muffled, blocked kind of way, she realized that the fire had mushroomed into massive proportions – much bigger than a car explosion would normally have been. What did he have in there? she thought disjointedly.
Whatever it was, the fire had choked the air with black smoke, thick enough to swallow her up. She saw the outline of a shadow, limping away and calling out to the others.
To her dismay, there were responses. The explosion had only deterred them.
“Shit,” she hissed, stumbling to the trees. Her arm was screaming in a hot, itchy kind of pain, and as she gripped it with her right hand, she felt the sticky blood oozing out. Too much.
She couldn’t see where she was going but remembered enough from various movies and hunting trips to know that she needed to tread lightly, obscure the path, and run in a non-linear fashion.
That was one thing when she was at the top of her game.
Now, though, racing through the woods away from the sinister strangers that had rammed her off the road, she figured distance was the most important thing.
She used the moon as her guide, keeping it to her left and dodging as many branches as she could. The air had cleared now, away from the grease-smoke that seemed to stick in the walls of her lungs. There was a crash behind her, like a tree falling down, and then another crash, getting closer.
In a panic, she afforded a glance back.
Her foot landed wrong on a rock just as she’d looked back into ink-black woods. She came crashing down, slamming into a branch and scratching her hand.
The impact knocked the wind out of her, and she gasped, pushing up as fast as she could.
When she brought her eyes up, she was face to face with a massive wolf, teeth glinting in the night.
Reykon
Reykon had nearly broken out of his restraints. Problem was, it wasn’t enough to just get loose if he didn’t have any of the resources he needed to get away. He was going to have to be creative with this one.
A couple of options: he could kill the wolves, but three on one with the hulk proved to be odds that even Reykon felt skeptical about. He needed to be smart. Muscles could handle one wolf, but brains were his ally.
This was his usual preference, and his go-to strategy; he needed to find a threat that forced the others into paralysis.
Most of his job rested on one simple precipice: apply the right pressure, in precisely the right way, and you could control anybody. Too much, and your threat is questioned. Too little, and they try to push the envelope.
He’d done this with Robin.
If he were to have held a gun up to her, and brandished it like a cowboy, sooner or later, she would have pieced together that the entire trip to Magnus rested upon her heart still beating when they arrived. She would have realized he couldn’t shoot her, and retaliated. The bracelet was a happy middle ground because it was a very real threat that wouldn’t in any way derail the progress of their mission.
It was all about leverage. And with the wolves, he had an advantage.
Above any other group of people, werewolves were ridiculously loyal. They put the pack, and friendship, above all else. Threatening one of them was a threat to all of them.
He could use that.
But it was a tricky gamble; it took ten seconds from start to finish for a werewolf to shift. Once that tenth second hit, you were face to face with a chest-height wolf and outmatched in every respect. It was why wolves were so intimidating.
But, like the taser bracelet, the key was to stop the attack before it started.
Threaten one of the wolves, and he’d have the others in paralysis.
But as soon as the others had realized their power, they’d shift. He needed a way to draw out the threat, to make it real and fearsome, without backing himself into a corner.
Luckily for him, the wolves had overlooked the weapons he kept most concealed. There were three, all contained in his custom made boots: titanium knife tips that jutted out of the front toe, ninja stars wedged under the heel, and a slick razor knife, hidden in the inner lining, directly under the ankle holster that previously had contained his now-confiscated knife. Reykon found that hiding weapons next to obvious locations was the best way to ensure they’d be overlooked.
He waited until they were looking away, and then used the blade to cut
