“Now, look, Henry," Tackett interrupted. “I'd really like to know what's going on here. Tina just said she was attacked, and - "
“Who are you?" Henry Lemoine demanded, staring at Bill.
Then he sniffed the air.
Jack understood then. “Molly," he said, voice hushed. “Get over here."
But she had caught on at the same time, and she edged closer to the shotgun where she had propped it against the wall.
“Your journal?" Bill said. “That's the book your pack has been killing civilians to get back?"
“What the hell's going on here?" Tackett snapped, a bit of panic creeping into his voice as he glared from Bill to Henry to Tina.
“The old man's the Alpha," Jack explained. “Looks like his journal fell into the wrong hands. All this time they've been trying to get it back, killing anyone who may have had it. The way Tina's acting, my guess is Foster Marlin stashed it here because he figured if anything happened to him, you'd find it eventually."
Jack watched as Tina glanced over at the bookshelf on the other side of the room, confirming his suspicions. The journal was here, in the room with them.
Henry Lemoine began to laugh. “Not bad, young man. That's pretty much how I've got it figured as well." Lemoine didn't look tired or anxious anymore. As he laughed, his voice became deep and throaty, and silver fur began to sprout all over his body.
The sheriff cursed loudly. Though he'd seen a similar transformation a moment before, this was a man he'd known most of his life.
Then Tina began to change as well, tears on her face. “It shouldn't have come to this," she said, but her voice was low, as though she had already surrendered to the conflict she knew must come next.
One of the windows shattered and Jack glanced out to see a crowd of terrifying figures silhouetted in the dark.
The Prowlers were coming in.
CHAPTER 14
It was as though the world hesitated a moment, as in the eerily calm eye of the hurricane, just before the calamitous, primeval force of the storm crashed down upon them.
Molly cursed loudly and snatched up the shotgun. She turned her back to her friends and the two Prowlers who had first come in. She was counting on Jack and Bill to protect her. The two windows in the outside wall of the office were showering glass shards and splinters of frame down onto the carpet, and Prowlers were leaping in through the ravaged openings.
Somewhere nearby, she thought she heard music playing. Light, sweet jazz with a bit of melancholy. It made her want to laugh, crazy as that would have been.
Molly's finger tightened on the shotgun's trigger as the two Prowlers nearest her lunged forward. She fired, and a monstrous face was erased in a spray of blood and fur and bone. The blast killed the one and caught the other in midleap, peppering his torso with shot and dropping it to the carpet.
A third was already inside, and he glared at her warily as she pumped the weapon again. In quick succession, two bullets punched through his chest and slammed the beast back into the opening, blocking the way for a moment.
Molly glanced around and saw Sheriff Tackett standing behind her, eyes dark, expression grim.
“Time to go, young lady."
The growling, that was what unnerved Jack the most. It welled up around him almost as though the ground were ready to split, a volcano struggling to be born.
But it was not that. This was the sound of the wild, the sound of bloodlust.
Bill Cantwell, a man he trusted, a man his sister cared deeply for, stood beside him, snarling with rage and menace. But Bill was not really a man. Only moments ago he had proven it to the sheriff, and now he had changed again. Saliva dripped from his gleaming fangs, his black nose sniffed at the air, and he danced from one foot to the other, staring down the others, ready to break them, to make them bleed, to tear at their flesh with his jagged maw.
The silver-furred Prowler Jack suspected was the Alpha and the dark-furred female - Tina, it's Tina, a voice within reminded him incredulously - started toward them, both snarling with a savagery that stole from him any memory of how benevolent they had seemed only moments before. He had been trying to make sense of Tina's entrance and he was certain now that she had been trying to avoid this moment. But now that it had become inevitable, she stood by her father's side.
Part of the Pack.
“You've caused a lot of trouble, boy!" the Alpha growled at him.
Jack's fingers closed around the nine millimeter he'd slipped loosely into his belt before. Almost unconsciously, he drew it out, aimed, and fired one round between the two creatures.
“It isn't over yet," he said coldly.
The weight of the gun was warm and welcome in his hand. The thing was awful, the insidious power of the weapon, but it was also the only chance they had to survive.
A loud shotgun blast echoed off to his right, but he did not dare turn his eyes. Sheriff Tackett had rushed to aid Molly when the invasion had begun, and he had to rely on both of them to protect themselves, at least for the moment.
The Alpha leaped at Bill, claws slashing down. Henry Lemoine's human appearance was misleading. He seemed slim, slouched, even old. Lemoine was larger by far than he'd appeared, and age had not slowed him. His claws swiped toward Bill's throat and would have torn it out, a killing blow, if Bill had been one second slower.
With a thunderous roar that Jack felt in his gut and his bones, Bill deftly turned the attack aside, then lunged forward, driving Lemoine back. The two of them went down in a tumble, clawing and biting.
With feline grace, Tina moved toward him. Then she paused, not threatening, not attacking.
“I'm sorry," she growled.
Then she lunged at
