“Damn,” he said then ran for the door. He unlocked it and headed
out to be with Mason.
* * * *
Detective Ryan Miller was having a pretty shitty day. First he had that conversation with Officer Decker, a conversation he didn’t much
feel like thinking about right now, and then he watched Officer Decker get shot in the back of the head.
The poor bastard was currently lying facedown in a muddy pool of his own blood, and even as Miller fought for his life thanks to the gun wound in his own lower abdomen, he couldn’t help but think of
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the time he and Decker spent together. Christ, it was only two days ago that they’d―
Fuck! Miller shot off his gun again, catching one of those kids with a rifle in the neck. The boy couldn’t have been older than twenty, and he dropped his weapon and grabbed at his spurting neck wound. His eyes were wide, but he was still alive and determined.
He was set on taking Miller out before he died, and he pulled a pistol out of a holster at his hip and pointed it straight at Miller.
He prepared for the shot, at least knowing it would take him out of this fucked up alternate universe where people changed into giant wolves and his ex-lover was dead on the ground.
The bullet never came. Another one of those giant wolves leapt
onto the boy with all the speed and grace of a diving hawk picking off
prey.
The boy screamed. At least, Miller assumed that the gurgling cry that came from his mouth a split second before those teeth took his head off was a scream. Either way, he couldn’t help but wince, and though he was a detective and had seen some strange shit, even he had to turn away from the sight of that wolf chomping down on the severed head. The crunching of bone under those massive teeth was enough to make him shiver consistently. His body would not stop. Every crunching sound felt almost like tiny grains of sand popping between his own teeth.
Fuck.
The wolf swallowed the head then belched. Miller looked up at the massive animal, and in turn, it was looking back at him with a fixed expression. Its head was down and bloody mouth was open as it panted.
Miller didn’t want to go like that poor bastard had. He hated using his gun, and had never killed anyone before, but it would have been better if that boy had died by his bullet rather than through those terrible teeth.
The wolf came forward, putting one hesitant paw out, tail
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twitching slightly.
The rest of the gore and chaos vanished as panic overcame him.
He liked to think of himself as an adrenaline junkie. It was part of the
reason why he was able to do his job without going completely insane, but getting his head taken off by that thing was way the fuck out of his comfort zone.
Miller put the barrel of his Glock to his temple. It was hard and cold and just about everything else that was usually described in the novels he read. He was almost disappointed to realize that there was nothing about it that was different. Maybe that was just because this would be the last thing he experienced before he died.
The wolf whined and lunged. Miller pulled back on the trigger.
The fucking thing…the stupid mother fucking piece of shit Glock jammed on him. He couldn’t lower his weapon to get the spent case out of the slider and try again because the wolf transformed and was suddenly a naked human.
The man, wolf, whatever, the guy grabbed him by the wrist that held the gun and pulled his hand away from his head. He squeezed until Miller was forced to release the weapon, dropping it with a dull thud onto the ground next to him.
“What in the bleedin’ fuckin’ hell did you think you were doin’?” he asked, his accent strange and something Miller couldn’t quite place.
That question, and the fact that his head wasn’t being swallowed down the throat of the giant wolf right now, was enough to make Miller feel pretty stupid. “Hoping to keep you from doing that to me,” he said, nodding toward the headless corpse.
The man looked back at his handiwork, as though he could have forgotten about it and then sneered down at the gun, batting it away with his hand as though it were a bothersome toy.
“Bah! Strange weaponry of today. Loud as a bitch in heat. Don’t know why you’d want to put somethin’ like that near yer ear.”
What the hell was this guy talking about?
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Whatever it was, it hardly mattered that the man had saved his life because Miller was intelligent enough to know that he was dying anyway. His body was already cold, and everything on him shivered. No longer because of that disgusting crunching sound, but because his body was trying to produce some heat for him.
He must’ve closed his eyes without realizing it because the next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake.
“Rhyan! Rhyan! Stay awake, man!”
The stranger said his name in an odd manner, rolling the R and drawing out the syllables, but Miller didn’t recall ever telling him his name to begin with. How did he―?
A hard slap on his cheek pulled him out of his drowsy thoughts. “I said keep your wits about you! Stay awake!”
This guy could go and fuck himself for all Ryan cared. He just wanted to clock out already. He was tired. Whatever it was that had been happening here, it had been so much bigger than insurance fraud, and he and Decker hadn’t been even remotely prepared for the shit storm that came onto them.
Suddenly, Ryan felt pretty weightless. That man with the strange accent had picked him up and was taking him somewhere. He couldn’t help but think about how kind it was for him to risk his
