He found the source of his problem: he’d landed on a broken piece of shelving, and a jagged chunk of metal had been driven through his armor. Well…damn.
Putting his hand flat against the shelf, he shoved himself up. Six inches of painted steel slid out from between his ribs. The pain was ridiculous. He was thankful for the ringing in his ears, because he was certain that pulling himself off that thing would have made an awful noise.
He flopped down the shelf, rolling onto the floor into a pile of broken glass bottles. Vinegar? At least he could still smell. He’d landed in the pickle aisle. Earl hated pickles.
Keep moving. Blind, he staggered upright. His body was already healing, reordering his cells back to one of its two distinct templates, but healing would take time that he didn’t have. Instinct told him to give in to the pain and the anger, to let the wolf free. But Nikolai had just used a bomb, which meant that he’d mop up with a gun, which meant that Earl needed his brain more than he needed his ferocity. If he was going to change, he needed to find a safe place to do it.
Can’t see. Explosive concussion was hell on the soft jelly of the human eyeball. Hell. Nikolai was coming. He had to get to cover. Despite bleeding freely from his eyes and ears, Earl was perfectly calm as he quickly ran through his predicament. Smell. He inhaled more dust. The truck was smoking, but it wasn’t burning. It was a distraction, but under that…Milk. Meat. Escape. That way. Hurry. Coughing, Earl staggered for the back of the store. He made it three steps, tripped, fell, but forced himself back up again. His right ankle had snapped, so he dragged that boot along behind him.
The blast had crippled him. Earl could feel the blood gushing from his body in great hot rivulets. He’d been torn open in multiple places. Bones ground unnaturally against each other. The pain would have rendered a lesser man incoherent. Groping blindly, Earl smelled milk as his boot dragged through the puddle.
Earl fell against the coldness of the dairy case. The rips in his flesh burned as the skin pulled tight over them, pinching off the leaks. Clumsily, he touched his face and then cringed as he discovered that his cheek was hanging off, dangling slick and wet. He shoved it back over his exposed teeth. Nikolai would smell the blood and track him easily. Blind, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Hiding was out of the question.
Use your head. Earl forced himself up, knowing what he had to do. He needed to be smart. He hit the back wall, smearing bloody handprints across the glass doors. By the time he found the swinging double doors of the stock room, the bones in his hands had reformed enough to make a fist.
Blood. Nikolai’s nostrils flared. Beneath the smoke, thousands of competing food, chemical smells, and dust was the smell of fresh blood. There were dead werewolves and humans inside, and the plow blade had smeared at least one body across half the space, further confusing matters, but Nikolai could smell Harbinger, and the smell was one of injury and weakness.
No fear, though. Come to think of it, Nikolai had never smelled Harbinger’s fear.
Got him. We got him! We’ve finally got him!
The Tvar was eager. Nikolai’s pulse increased, his breathing came faster. The truck was in the back of the store, the dump bed full of sand barely visible beneath the collapsed ceiling tiles. He ran down the open path left by the plow, scanning back and forth, searching for Harbinger. The instant he saw him, Nikolai would put a silver round into his enemy’s head.
It wasn’t sporting. It wasn’t fair. It certainly wasn’t the way that instinct demanded, but there was no time for such niceties. The amulet had been freed, and such a potent device could never be allowed to fall into the hands of a monster like Harbinger.
Before he could even reach the back of the truck, the Tvar practically screamed inside his head. There!
His other half, with its simple animal cunning, often noticed things far quicker than his analytical human mind could. Then he understood the reason for the excitement. There was where Harbinger had landed. A massive smear of warm blood was on a broken shelf and a thick trail of droplets led away from it. Nikolai turned to the utterly demolished cab of the truck and noted how the sheet metal had been peeled and twisted by the explosive. The blast had hurled Harbinger twenty feet. He should have brought more explosives.
A jagged shaft of metal was coated in blood, bits of flesh still clinging to it. A handprint showed him where Harbinger had forced himself up. There were bloody boot prints, but only from one foot; the other was a drag mark. Nikolai couldn’t tell if it was him or the Tvar, but one of them was extremely excited. Harbinger was vulnerable. Revenge was within his grasp. He lifted the Val and followed the trail.
Harbinger had fallen and stopped here for a moment. Nikolai crouched next to a waist-high refrigerator unit filled with butter, studying the signs quickly. So much blood had been lost that Harbinger would be extremely weak, but Harbinger had gotten back up, and the droplets were fewer and farther between. Now there were two boot prints instead of a drag mark. His foe’s healing speed was impressive.
Hurry. Kill him! Kill him!
The Tvar was correct. He had to strike while Harbinger was weak. Nikolai moved faster; the trail was still easy to follow through the debris. Blood never lied. Harbinger had crashed into the glass doors of the dairy case, dragging himself along, and then he’d gone-
He’s hiding in the back!
There were two bright red handprints, one on each of the swinging doors to the stock room, clear as day, as obvious a sign as could be given. Driven by the Tvar, Nikolai kicked the doors open and stepped through…
And saw nothing.
The lights were on. A large generator was in the rear, chugging away. There were rows of shelves on both sides, but the blood trail had just stopped…Fragments were strewn everywhere, and part of the truck’s plow was stuck through the wall, but there was no place for Harbinger to hide.
No! No! Where is he? You should have let me do it!
“Shut up!” Nikolai snapped. He knelt to smell the floor. Harbinger hadn’t come in here. He’d left his smell on the door…and backtracked. The blatant handprints on the door had been a trick. The blood hadn’t lied — Harbinger had. “Yob tvoyu mat!” Nikolai stood, turning back to the store, just as a cloud of grit hit him right in the eyes.
Nikolai was blinded by the fistful of road sand. Earl could still barely see anything himself. His opponent was nothing but an angry red blur, but Earl could see well enough to know that the long tubular thing in Nikolai’s hands was a rifle, so he knocked it away. The rifle clattered across the floor. With a roar, Earl grabbed Nikolai by the coat and hurled him out into the ruined grocery store.
Earl had needed time to regenerate, and that meant a place to hide. After touching the back doors, he’d leapt as far as he could manage toward the truck, hoping the spilling diesel smell would temporarily cover his tracks. He’d found the cold metal of the truck bed and, not seeing any alternative, had climbed in and buried himself in the sand. Most of his bones had knit back together, the bleeding had mostly stopped, and he could hear, and even see a little, but he was still terribly weak, disoriented, and now had sand stuck in every crevice of his body, and was therefore in a really bad mood.
Nikolai hit a shelf and went to the ground on his back. Earl was right behind. He landed on Nikolai and slugged him in the face. The Russian got his hands up, trying to shove Earl off, but Earl knocked the hands out of the way and hit him again. Then he got his weight onto Nikolai’s chest, and Earl’s fists were flying, one after another, slamming Nikolai’s head over and over again, beating his face into a bloody mess.
“Cheatin’ asshole!” Earl roared as he cocked back another right and tried to drive it through Nikolai’s face. Nikolai’s hand shot up, and he managed to hook his thumb into Earl’s eye. The Hunter bellowed as Nikolai gouged it deep into the socket, but he didn’t let up. Earl took Nikolai’s head in both hands, raised it, and slammed it into the floor repeatedly. The second impact cracked the tile; the third, Nikolai’s skull.
Gasping for breath, Earl raised his fist to strike again but stopped as a terrible pain shot up his side. He rolled off, cursing, reaching for the source of the agony, found the hilt of a folding knife sticking from his kidney, and jerked it out in a spray of blood. Nikolai raised one leg and kicked Earl in the chest, sending him crashing against the truck.
Blinking through the blood, Earl stepped forward. His opponent had already risen and had picked up a can of creamed corn. Earl threw the knife and missed. Nikolai threw the corn and didn’t. The can smashed Earl’s nose flat.
Nikolai used the moment to his advantage and charged, throwing his knee. He managed to hit Earl twice in the side while the Hunter’s hands had involuntarily flown to his broken nose. Each hit lifted Earl off the ground
