Spitting out a wad of blood, she replied, “Yeah. And you still need an army to take me on.”
His massive head swayed back and forth. Fur hung down from his jawline and a crystalline eye glittered menacingly from beneath the shelf of a ridged brow. His mouth opened with the start of a word but snapped shut at the sound of whining jet engines mingling with the deep thump of heavy machine-gun fire.
“I’ve already taken care of her,” Minh said from somewhere outside of Paige’s field of vision.
Liam crawled down from the roof of the car, looked at the deep bloody grooves in Paige’s right arm and sniffed. When he raised his head again, he was smiling. “Right you are, luv.”
Paige couldn’t tell what sort of gun was being fired, but it was raising hell among the Half Breeds. Before she could become too happy about that, the sound was wiped away by snarling howls and ripping metal. More gunfire preceded the flaring of the engines.
Hunkering down as if in prayer, Liam shifted into a vaguely human form that was covered in thickly matted fur. “They’re leeeavin’ on a jet plane,” he sang cheerfully. “Don’t know when they’ll be back again.”
There was no more pain from getting hit in the face by the air bag. Paige felt no more panic from the ambush or the notion of being abandoned in a town that appeared to be overrun by werewolves. She simply reached for her shoulder holster, drew her Beretta, and fired two shots into the mess of scar tissue filling Liam’s right eye socket.
The Full Blood recoiled and made a sound close to a shriek Paige thought she would never hear from one of his kind. She propped herself up, steadied her aim, and continued to fire. Just as she was starting to get into it, she was knocked down by something that felt like a piece of the car that had come alive to make her pay for all the reckless driving that brought her to the airport. Now that she’d stopped shooting, she could hear the other snarling voices, as well as the wet ripping of flesh being torn asunder.
The Gulfstream was moving away from the hangar and taxiing toward the runway. Half Breeds scrambled across its fuselage, some of them gnawing at the landing gear while scraping madly at the ground, others tussling with lean figures that could have been one or more of the Amriany. Gunari leaned out the side door, firing his assault rifle until it was time to pull his head inside and shut the door behind him.
Liam rolled away from the dented remains of the Mazda and pulled something off his back. It was another shapeshifter, but not a werewolf. Paige had seen enough of the feline creatures to recognize them as Mongrels. Minh was preoccupied with a cluster of blurred figures that could only be seen as a disturbance in the air surrounding her. A familiar scent caught Paige’s attention then. To confirm her suspicion, she pulled in a deep breath that was thick with traces of oil secreted by certain Mongrels, which allowed them to bend light around them until they were all but invisible. Now that she knew what to look for, she spotted at least three blurred figures attacking Minh and the Half Breeds. She didn’t know who they were or where they’d come from, but if Mongrels wanted to take the Full Bloods off her hands, they were more than welcome.
Paige struggled to stay on her feet as she ran from the swarm of flailing claws and teeth behind her. She kept her eyes fixed upon the Gulfstream, hoping one of the Amriany would look back and find her. If the engines let up for only a moment, she knew she’d be able to catch up. Then, like a true miracle, the engine noise died down.
The jet pivoted around at the end of the runway to line up with the strip of pavement. A surge of energy flowed through Paige’s body, carrying her forward until the wind whipped through her hair. Suddenly, her body was dragged to the ground as Kawosa’s lean four-legged form passed directly above her. His claws had been stretched out to sink into her back, but they only caught empty space before he touched down again. Like any shapeshifter, he was more than fast enough to adjust his body for a smooth landing. The moment his paws gripped the concrete, he turned and snarled at his fallen prey.
“Stay down and she’ll get to you,” someone said to Paige.
The voice wasn’t familiar, but she recognized the lithe feline shape as one of the Mongrels that had attacked Liam. It stalked forward, twitching a short tail and letting out a steady flow of snarling obscenities that seemed distinctly suited to its jagged, misshapen mouth. It didn’t take long for Kawosa to set his sights on the Mongrel, and when he did, he was blindsided by another one that was cloaked in the oily sheen of near-invisibility. The blurred shape came at Kawosa from the right, taking him down just long enough for the Mongrel that had tackled Paige to find an opening and join the fray. Within seconds the cloaked Mongrel’s fur was stained by enough blood to give it form and shape.
Paige forced herself to put the fight behind her and run. It was the only option left, apart from tackling the shapeshifters without anything more than her wooden weapon and the few more rounds of ammunition at her disposal. She wasn’t against the idea of going down fighting, but suicide wasn’t her style. If she could just make it to the jet, she could regroup, come up with a better plan, and fight again. If the Mongrels were so ready to help, they might even retake the town.
The Gulfstream’s engines whined loudly, and the ten-seat jet began to roll.
“Hey!” Paige shouted. “I’m here!” She waved her arms frantically and staggered toward the runway. “Right here! God damn it! Look over here !”
Somehow, she still hoped she could catch up to the jet or even make herself seen by someone inside. When she got to the side of the runway, it rolled past her while gaining speed.
Paige stood there, slack-jawed, watching as her best chance at living longer for more than two minutes raced toward the end of the cement strip and left the ground. The entire world became quiet, as though everything connected to her was on that plane and out of reach. Even worse, according to the bone-deep agony slicing through her bleeding arm, it might not be long before she became one of the Half Breeds roaming the streets of Atoka.
“You’d better find Cole,” she said to herself as she checked to make sure there was at least one last round in her Beretta. “Or I’ll haunt you so bad that you’ll wish you died here too.”
A gust of wind moved the cropped ends of Paige’s bobbed hair. It brushed against her face, reminding her of the gentle touch she’d sampled all too briefly before being separated from the man who’d given it to her. The source of that breeze ran on paws that slapped against the ground like slabs of meat, driven by a body encased in wiry black fur with one Mongrel still clinging to it.
Paige could only stand and watch as Liam bounded across the airstrip, effortlessly catching up to the Gulfstream that waggled slightly while gaining altitude. The jet was less than twenty or thirty feet off the ground when he sprung off both legs to meet it. He extended his arms while shifting his body into its upright form. Even from where Paige stood, she could hear the scrape of claws against metal as the Full Blood dug into the left wing. The jet listed dangerously to one side, skewing in the air to correct for the newly added weight. Its engines roared and so did Liam as he tore into the wing, using claws and teeth to rip it away from the rest of the plane.
“Holy shit,” Paige whispered.
As soon as the wing was gone, the Gulfstream launched into a barrel roll that sent it screaming into the ground. Before it hit, Liam jumped onto its tail section and let out a bellowing howl that could be heard even over the sickening crunch of metal meeting earth. She couldn’t tell if it was the fuel tanks or a supply of weapons that exploded next, but it didn’t matter. Anyone on board the jet who hadn’t been killed in the crash now had to contend with a fire that lit up the Oklahoma sky.