Once shifters complete the change they were driven by their animal selves.
Bitsi wasn’t one of the dominant ones who could retain enough of their humanity to control their animal. As close as I was to her glowing eyes I could see the last vestiges of her humanity disappearing by the second.
“Now,” I shouted to Vaughn. “Use weapons.”
What weapons? We were in a gym with kettlebells and a few exercise mats.
I could hear Stone shouting in the background. The screams of my other teammates.
Both my hands encircled Bitsi’s neck, her aardwolf neck—a hyena that looked like a small wolf, and in spite of its size, as lethal as both species.
Only my hands to her throat kept her from ripping out my own.
I rolled back and forth, using my size and weight to keep it off balance while it ripped its claws across my chest. Moving wouldn’t work for long but kept it busy for now.
Someone got smart. The black girl. Serena. I saw her racing toward me with a jacket. A leather one.
She threw it over Bitsi’s head, and slammed against the hyena’s body, catapulting it off of me as they rolled away.
Respite.
I sucked in a deep breath, planting my good hand on the floor, never so thankful for help as Vaughn and Skylock grabbed my arms and jerked me to my feet.
“What now?” Skylock huffed, fear widening her eyes.
Serena rolled over and over with Bitsi on the floor. If the aardwolf got loose, Serena would be in deep trouble.
I glanced around, seeing two other bodies on the floor, blood pooling around them. Chiquita’s team and Stone were circling Rolf as Stone barked orders. Stone had a gun he was pointing. Probably with silver bullets but couldn’t risk firing in an enclosed space with so many merging bodies.
We were on our own to stop Bitsi.
“Kettlebell,” I pointed with my right hand, a limp wrist flick toward a trio of what looked like cannonballs with handles. “Bash her.”
Vaughn caught on first. “Toni,” she shouted to where Dyslexia hid behind a series of bleachers that put her closer to the kettlebells. “Grab one.”
But Toni only shook her head, then jumped forward.
For a second I thought she meant to help. But she didn’t. Instead she aimed for the exit doors. But to get there she’d have to pass Serena who was losing her battle.
“Stop her,” I shouted, watching as three things happened at once.
Dyslexia leaped over Serena, avoiding contamination with a high-flying vault that put as much space as possible between her and the wrestlers.
The movement distracted Serena, just enough for her grip to loosen.
And Bitsi attacked, shaking her short, coarse furry head and lunging forward, her jaws snapping around Serena’s neck.
Vaughn, Skylock, and I all sprang forward but not soon enough.
Like a rabid dog savaging a smaller prey, Bitsi’s teeth dug into Serena’s neck, sending an arterial spray shooting out as neck bones crunched like paper wadded and discarded.
By the time we reached Serena she was gone.
But Dyslexia was still there. She’d slipped on Serena’s blood and sprawled, face forward, across the gym floor.
Acting as the opportunist her hyena form was, Bitsi leapt toward Dyslexia’s exposed back.
I raised my hands, splattering blood and shouted,
“Teleport in the now. Far and fast. To thine own. Be gone.”
A crack of thunder sounded through the gym as a poof of orange-red light caught Bitsi mid-flight.
One second she was there. The next second she was gone.
“Thank God,” Skylock whistled, skidding close, her attention on where Dyslexia was pulling herself to her hands and knees. “Where’d she go?”
“Don’t know.” I shook my head, wishing I had thought of this spell earlier, but it was such a long shot; I stood as much chance of sending all of the recruits to the nether regions as getting rid of Bitsi. “Sent her to Africa, I think.”
“You think?” Vaughn asked, grabbing my right arm. “What do you mean, you think?”
“I sent her to her own kind.” I shrugged, fighting too much pain and too sick at heart to care a lot. “Could be she went back to her human kind, her shifter friends or her hyena mates. Which means—”
“Africa.” Vaughn smiled, the movement slight. Who blamed her? Now was not a smiling time as we stood surrounded by the carnage around us. Serena’s corpse not even cold.
That’s when I heard the boom of Stone’s gun.
The three of us turned as if one. How could I have forgotten about the other shifter?
Stone’s aim was true, the bullet ripping into Rolf mid-chest. In shifter form he was a cougar, one of the most dangerous of the North American cat species and related to the jaguar: large, lethal, and beautiful even as his tawny chest sprouted crimson.
Rolf screamed. A high-pitched death wail splintering my heart.
Yeah, he was a shifter, but he’d been forced to change. He hadn’t meant to kill; he’d been compelled to kill and now he paid the price.
He didn’t die immediately. Instead his cougar form splayed across the floor, his animal eyes seeking explanation, his voice mute.
He knew he was dying. Both animal and human parts of him understood as the seconds passed and his eyes dimmed.
He didn’t have to die. Neither did Serena. Or the other two women recruits bleeding out.
As I cradled my hand, seeing the blood dripping to the floor I made a vow.
Someone was going to pay.