“What’s coming?” The soldier drew his pistol. Rhun respected that he’d had foresight to scavenge extra ammunition clips from his dead team members back in the tomb.
It would help, but little.
An acrid odor cut through the scents of cooling sand and desert flowers, and Rhun shook his head to clear it. He whispered a quick prayer.
“Rhun?” The woman’s brow knit.
“It is a blasphemare,” he said.
The soldier checked his weapon. “What the hell is that?”
Rhun wiped his blade along his dirty pants. “A corrupted beast. A creature whose strength and senses are heightened by tainted strigoi blood.”
The soldier kept his gun up. “What sort of corrupted beast, exactly?”
The howling answer pierced the darkness, echoing all around, followed by the crashing sounds of animals fleeing. Nothing wanted to be near the creature that made that sound.
Rhun gave it a name. “A grimwolf.” He pointed his blade to a nest of boulders and offered them one thin chance to survive. “Hide.”
The man snapped around, a skilled enough soldier to know when to obey. He grasped the woman’s hand and sprinted with her toward the scant cover of the rocks.
Rhun searched the darkness, drawing in his awareness. The howl told him the beast knew it had been discovered. It sought to unnerve them.
And he could not say it had failed.
His fingers tightened on his cold blade, trying to block out the overpowering thump of the wolf’s heartbeat. It was too loud for him to nail it down to one specific spot, so he strove to keep it from overwhelming him, to block it out in order to be open for other sounds.
He sensed the creature, a shift of shadows, circling them.
But where …?
A muted thud on the sand behind him.
He could not turn in time.
The beast shed the night, as if throwing off a cloak, its black fur dark as oil. It charged. Rhun dropped, twisting away from its path.
Powerful jaws snapped shut, catching only cloth. The wolf snagged the edge of his ripped cassock and barreled on. Rhun was yanked off his feet, but the cloth ripped, setting him free.
He rolled, sharp desert stones and thorns slicing his bare back. He used the momentum to push into a crouch, finally facing his adversary.
The grimwolf spun, froth flying. Lips rippled back from yellow fangs. It was massive, the size of bears that roamed the Romanian mountains of his boyhood. The beast’s red-gold eyes shone with a malignancy that had no place under the sun.
Tall ears flattened to its skull, and a low growl rumbled from its chest. Hooked nails, long enough to puncture a man’s heart, scraped the sand. Haunch muscles bunched into iron-hard cords.
Rhun waited. Long ago, when he was fresh to the cross, such a beast nearly ended his life—and then he hadn’t been alone. He’d had two others at his side. Grimwolves were nearly impossible to kill, lithe of mind and muscle, with hides as tough as chain mail and a speed that made them more shadow than flesh.
Few blades could harm them. And Rhun had lost his.
He clenched empty fingers. From the corner of his eye, he caught the glint of silver in the sand, where he’d dropped his blade when he was torn off his feet. He could not recover it in time.
As if the wolf knew this, its lips pulled farther back into a savage snarl.
Then it thundered toward him.
He feinted to the right, but the scarlet eyes tracked him. The wolf would not be fooled again. It leaped straight at him.
A harsh shout exploded out of the desert—followed by a shattering blast. In midleap, the wolf’s hindquarters buckled. The beast’s massive shoulder smashed the sand. Its bulk slid toward him.
Rhun twisted away and scrambled toward his knife.
Beyond the wolf’s hackles, he spotted the soldier running toward him, away from the nest of boulders. Muzzle flashes sparked in the darkness as he emptied his clip.
Stupid, brave, impossible man.
Rhun snatched up his knife.
Already the beast had regained its feet, standing between Rhun and the soldier. The wolf’s head swiveled, taking them both in. Its blood blackened the sand.
But not nearly enough.
The soldier dropped a smoking clip and slapped in another. Even such a weapon could not deter a grimwolf. Its heart thundering in battle, a grimwolf ignored pain and all but the most grievous wounds.
The scarred muzzle wavered between them. A black-ruby cunning gleamed from its eyes.
Suddenly Rhun knew whom the beast would attack.
With a burst of muscle, it leaped away.
Toward the rocks.
Toward the weakest of them.
7:47 P.M.
The monster barreled toward Erin. With her back to a stack of boulders, she had nowhere to hide. If she ran, it would be upon her in heartbeats. She wedged herself farther into the rocks. Held her breath.
Jordan fired. Bullets stitched across the beast’s flank, blasting away spats of fur, but it did not slow. Rhun, too, ran toward her, at incredible speed. Unfortunately, he’d never reach her in time. And he couldn’t stop the creature anyway.
The beast skidded on four massive paws, spraying sand into her eyes. Spittle spattered her cheeks. Hot, fetid breath surrounded her.
She pulled out her only weapon—from her sock.
A claw gouged her thigh, dragging her closer, as its jaws opened monstrously wide.
Erin screamed and punched her arm past those teeth, deep into its maw. She drove the atropine dart’s needle deep into the monster’s blood-rich tongue. Her arm jerked free before the jaws shut.
Startled, the wolf dropped back and spat out the crumpled plastic syringe. Erin remembered Sanderson’s warning: Atropine jacks your heart rate through the roof … strong enough to blow up your ticker if you’re not poisoned.
Corrupted or not, a beast was a beast. She hoped. What if the drug had no effect? Her answer came a heartbeat later.
The wolf shoved back another full step, stretching its neck. A howl ripped from its throat. Its eyes bulged. The atropine had spiked its blood pressure. Oil-black blood gushed from its bullet wounds, pumping onto the sand.
She felt a grim satisfaction as it howled, pictured the freckle-faced young corporal who gave her the dart.
That’s for Sanderson.
But the beast, too, sought revenge. Fury and pain twisted its features into something beyond monstrous. It bared its teeth—and lunged for her face.
7:48 P.M.
Rhun could not fathom what the woman had done, how she had driven the grimwolf back, made it scream so. But it gave him time to reach the beast. Pain and anger blinded the creature, but it still must have sensed his approach.
With a roar, it twisted away from Erin and sprang for his throat.