Filed to story: The Healer and The Wolf PDF Free
I was donezo. There were a lot of things I would tolerate, but that wasn’t one of them. I tried to rip my wrist out of his grip, but he was freaking strong.
“Let me go! I’ll get my things and leave. You will never have to see me again!”
“Leave now, and miss out on the party?” His tone flipped right back to overly sweet and grossly charming. It was all so fake.
“I’m sure if you stayed, you’d have a good time. I know I always do.” His smile grew far too toothy for my liking. “Then again, I’ve always been lucky that way.”
His companion huffed a laugh, but I didn’t get the joke. It was too much, and if he wouldn’t let me go, then I’d make him.
“Get off me!” I screamed before pulling my free hand back and punching him right in the face.
“You bitch!”
Several things happened all at once. Chadwicke let go of my wrist. I stumbled back several steps. His companion rushed forward, pulling a weapon out of his jacket. Meanwhile, the warlock held a hand to his bleeding nose and began muttering words that sounded a lot like Latin. Was he about to cast a spell?
I didn’t really get to find out about the spell or the weapon because a giant wolf leaped out from a line of trees and bounded toward us.
Leo.
I would recognize his wolf form anywhere. After all, saving him in the woods had started the whole thing I had become embroiled in. Leo let out a truly terrifying howl as he charged, and both men whirled around, paying no attention to me.
That was my cue.
“Security! Where’s my security?” Chadwicke cried as I raced for cover. I had no idea where I was going, but I hoped the fight would be short enough that hunkering down behind the massive tea bush would be sufficient cover.
I still tried to position myself so I could see. Leo tackled the armed guard, barreling him over hardly even a pause. No, his eyes were set entirely on Chadwicke, who was beginning to rise off the ground and crackle with an electric sort of energy.
Whatever the warlock was planning, however, didn’t quite pan out. Because one moment Leo was racing toward him, paws galloping and his muzzle opened wide in a snarl, and the next, the wolf shifter was leaping through the air, his jaws snapping around Chadwick’s throat.
God, there was so much blood. I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t escape the sound of the visceral tearing and resulting gurgle as Leo completed his revenge. It really was awful, but balance needed to be restored.
It was hard to stomach, but I did the best I could, waiting until there was quiet before creeping out of my hiding place. Sure enough, Leo was still standing there as a wolf, his face and parts of his body completely covered with the incriminating crimson.
“You did it,” I murmured quietly, only barely straightening up. As much as I told myself that Leo would never do anything to hurt me in any of his forms, it terrified me to see him in such a grisly scene. It was a blunt reminder that he came from a different world-a world that had different rules than mine. One with a lot of savagery I wasn’t used to. “It’s done now. Let’s go find Ricky before anyone catches us.”
I should have known it was naïve to hope, but I was new to this whole assassination thing. Before the words were really even out of my mouth, several security guards rushed toward us, their weapons fully drawn. I’d thought that once they saw that their employer was dead, they’d all run for the hills.
Apparently, I was wrong.
“Encroaching shifter, three o’clock!” one shouted before they began to fire.
I dived right back behind the tea bush as Leo went even wilder than he had when he’d attacked Chadwicke. He spun on his hind legs, racing toward the closest guard, closing the distance to them in mere seconds despite the hail of bullets. It was like he didn’t even feel them. Once more, I was struck by how fast he could move. One moment he whirled to charge at his attacker, the next he’d reached his target, his jaws closing on either side of the man’s head and ripping it clean off.
“Oh, my God.” I slapped my hands over my mouth.
It didn’t stop there. Leo made quick work of all five the security guards, his blood and theirs spilling all over the ground. His wounds healed right before my eyes while theirs were certainly more permanent.
I hoped his massacre would stop with those five, that it would somehow manage to stop word from spreading, and we could infiltrate the zoo portion of the estate and get Ricky.
I was very foolish.
Because no sooner had he defeated the last one when another wave appeared, seeming to pour out of everywhere. And this time it wasn’t only human gunmen. A few moved forward with unnatural speed, streaks of their uniform trailing behind them, and even still others who were mid-shift into different animals.
The massacre I had been so afraid of was actively happening.
I needed to get people to safety. Judging by the screams and shouts of alarm coming from all over, the security didn’t care about any sort of crossfire. Considering that Leo was in front of me, and we didn’t have any other allies, I figured the security going on full alert, securing and locking down whatever section they were in.
How did everything go so wrong so fast?
I didn’t know, but my thoughts went immediately toward Haelena and the other staff in the orchard. It was quite a distance away, but if I could make it past the tree line, I could use it as cover all the way to the front gate.
I didn’t even make a conscious decision about it. One second I was cowering behind the tea bush, horrified at how many people might get caught in the crossfire, the next I was sprinting toward the tree line.
I heard maybe one of the guards shout about me-and that was a maybe
-before I was barreling my way past the thick line that delineated the area of the compound. It was a meticulously cultivated span of trees, and I raced between them, staying low in case anyone took a shot at me. All the while the background music to my escape was the screams of those who went up against Leo, and his animalistic snarls and howls as he tore them apart. It was far too easy to imagine what was happening in my mind’s eye, so I shut it out as best I could. Luckily, I didn’t have the enhanced hearing, so a lot of the finer details quickly faded out of what I could pick up.
But the gunfire, the shrieks, and other animalistic noises coming from the shifter guards followed me. Sometimes it sounded like it was right behind me.
Despite all the odds, I made it to the orchard, where I found the two I was looking for huddled besides the golf cart.
“Haelena,” I hissed.
“Valencia! Oh, my God. What’s happening? Are the feds here?”
That was as reasonable a question as any other. “Something like that,” I said. “Come on. I’m getting you out of here.”
“What? But if it’s the feds, they’ve got to have the whole place surrounded. All our exits would be cut off!”