Their heavy footsteps faded and I gasped for air, pressing a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound. As soon as they were out of my immediate line of sight I was running, zig-zagging, losing my sense of direction.
Finally, I found the border of the property, where a rusted chain link fence was lying flat on the ground.
The road was right there.
I didn’t make it that far. Long shadows stretched across the concrete to my left. I ducked behind another building, watching as the kid fell in step with a hulking man.
“I’m tired of this shit!” he snarled, eyes brighter than the setting sun. “Come out, or I’ll drag you out by your hair.”
The air changed as he neared, like another storm was bearing down on me. Electricity crackled off him, a dangerous energy I didn’t understand.
I knew this feeling. I’d felt it with Jay and—
With Isaac.
I couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t think as the man in front of me swelled and stretched, his skin darkening with patches of black hair—no,fur.
Suddenly, there was a monster standing in his place. The type of thing you only saw in a horror movie.
Awerewolf.
The tips of his ears came above the doorway of the nearest building. His body was double the width of a regular man. He lifted his snout high, scenting the air.
Then those eyes, yellow andhungry,fell on me.
He’s going to catch you.
Chapter 17
Fear
Isaac
IknewbeforeIpressedthe key into the lock that she was gone. Her car was missing from beneath the house, her scent distant.
That didn’t stop me from storming through the kitchen, flinging open the bedroom door. Just in case.
She wasn’t here.
Every minute she got further away from me. The bond stretched taut as the distance grew.
Could she feel it too?
Fear whipped through me the way the wind rushed beneath the house, howling and cold. I twisted on my heel, ready to race after her when a scrap of paper caught my eye.
I read the neat, bubbly print three times, an acute pain forming in my middle.
Isaac,
Thanks for a good time.
Those simple words were sharp in the empty, dark space.
I crumpled the paper in my fist.
The next moment I was running.
Eli’s truck was slow to start. The hunk of rust was reliable—everything my brother touched worked longer than its life expectancy—but it moved about a mile an hour.