Bitten (Otherworld 1)

I tore my gaze away from Brandon and his prey. Sick bastard. No animal would do something like that. As I thought this, something clicked in my brain, a piece falling into place so hard the resonance made me jump. The room went suddenly silent, the drumming in my ears drowning out the crowd, giving me one moment of perfect clarity amidst the chaos.

I knew where I'd seen Brandon's face, heard his name, and it wasn't in the Pack's werewolf dossiers. Television. Inside Scoop. The piece on the killer in North Carolina. The tape of the police interview flipped through my head again, the grainy image sparking to life. "I wanted to watch someone die." Scott Brandon. I shook my head sharply. No, that couldn't be. That didn't make sense. A werewolf couldn't survive in prison without being discovered. Then I remembered Brandon's scent again, a nuance I'd picked up that night in his apartment. "He's new," I'd told Clay. I could smell it in his scent and I'd assumed it meant he was a hereditary werewolf recently come of age. But he wasn't. He'd been bitten.

Again, my brain rejected the idea. Brandon had only escaped from jail a few months ago. It took longer than that for a werewolf to recover from the shock of being turned. Or did it? Was it impossible that he'd recovered so quickly? I had to admit that it wasn't. My own recovery had been hampered by my refusal to accept what had happened to me. What if it wasn't like that? What if someone wanted to become a werewolf, was prepared for it, embraced it? That could make all the difference.

Yet there was still more that didn't make sense. What was Brandon doing here? If he was a hereditary werewolf, that would explain how he knew about Bear Valley, the Pack, and Stonehaven. How would a newly turned werewolf know that? But Brandon knew. He'd called me by name. He'd talked about the Pack, said he'd heard things about me. From who? Another werewolf, of course. An experienced werewolf. But mutts didn't do that. They didn't allow bitten werewolves to live, let alone help them. It was impossible. No, I corrected. Not impossible. Just so incredibly unlikely that my brain refused to consider the implications.

I couldn't deal with this now. We had a more serious problem on our hands than sorting out the whys and wherefores of Brandon's existence. The fact of his existence was enough. Ending that existence wouldn't be as simple as I'd thought. He wasn't a careless punk kid, but something far more dangerous: a true killer. I looked for Clay, wanting to warn him. Then I realized it wouldn't do any good. Brandon was a killer from the human world. I could tell Clay that Brandon was a chartered accountant and it would have the same impact. He wouldn't understand.

I hopped from the bar and eased through the last scattering of the crowd. In the back corner, Brandon was still playing with his food, which gave the occasional twitch of life. The crowd was almost out of the main room, now jammed in the hallway. I kept moving. Brandon skirted his prey, then leapt in for a pounce and grab. He had his fangs around the man's forearm and was shaking it like a chew toy when he noticed me. He growled uncertainly, his blood-fogged brain taking time to recognize me.

I stopped. We stared at each other. I thought about how dangerous it was to face him down in this form. I thought of Brandon's eyes gleaming with near-carnal bloodlust as he talked about killing. I thought of what he could do to me before Clay could come to my aid. It worked. Fear seeped from me like sweat. That got Brandon's attention. He dropped his prey and lunged at me. I waited until he was in mid-jump, then I turned and ran. Of course he followed. Fleeing prey is so much more fun than the near-comatose variety.

I circled toward the back wall to keep Brandon away from the clogged exit. Running behind the bar, I headed for the balcony stairs. As I stepped onto the first tread, I veered and dashed toward the bathroom hall. Clay was there. I passed him and slid to a stop. Behind me, Brandon did the same, nails careering over the linoleum. He stopped in front of Clay. His nostrils flared, again uncertain. His nose told him Clay was a werewolf and some dimly functioning part of his brain realized this was cause for concern. He growled experimentally. Clay's foot shot out, caught him under the muzzle, and knocked him flying onto his backside. Brandon scrambled to his feet, wheeled, and bolted. Clay ran after him. They disappeared into the main room. By the time I got there, Clay had driven Brandon onto the balcony.

I was almost to the top of the balcony stairs when Brandon leapt over the edge, followed by Clay's resounding "Fuck!" Before I could turn, Clay was jumping to the floor. I rushed down the stairs and ran to the exit

to head Brandon off if he tried to escape. The front half of the hall was still clogged with people. No one was getting in or out.

Brandon didn't head for the door. Instead, he circled back to the rear corner of the room. Clay was right behind him. I staked out my post by the exit. Brandon ran for the corner, maybe because it held some vague sense of familiarity. When he got there, he nearly collided with the wall. He turned sharply and veered in a tight circle, tripping over the body on the floor. This time, the man didn't move. His dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. Recovering from his stumble, Brandon headed back toward the corner as if expecting a door to materialize there. Finally, he realized he was trapped and turned to face Clay.

For several long seconds, Clay and Brandon stared at each other. The first flicker of real anxiety sparked in me.

Not even Clay was safe against a werewolf in wolf form. As I watched them, I could feel the tension thrumming through me, instinct telling me to protect Clay while common sense told me to guard the exit.

Brandon broke the standoff. He growled and hunkered down, hackles rising. Clay didn't move. Brandon growled again as if giving fair warning. Then he leapt. Clay dropped and rolled to the side. Brandon crashed and slid on the linoleum. Before Brandon could recover, Clay was on him. He grabbed Brandon by the loose skin at the back of his neck and threw his leg over Brandon's back. Then he shoved Brandon's head to the floor, pinning him.

Brandon struggled wildly. His claws skittered along the floor, unable to get a grip. He snarled and growled, snapping from side to side, trying to bite Clay's hands. Clay put his left knee on Brandon's back and wrapped his hands around Brandon's throat. As Clay squeezed, Brandon gave one last tremendous buck. Clay's right foot bounced off the ground just enough to make him shift position. As his foot came back down, it headed for a puddle of the dead man's blood.

"Clay!" I shouted.

Too late. His shoe hit the blood and his ankle twisted, shooting out from under him. Brandon threw himself forward at exactly the right second. Clay tumbled off his back. The second Brandon was free, he saw the exit and made a beeline for it.

I didn't bother blocking the hallway. He could have plowed through me as if I weren't there. Instead, as he passed, I dove at him and grabbed two handfuls of fur. We toppled over together. As we rolled, he snapped at my arm. I twisted it away, but not quite fast enough. One of his canines caught the skin under my forearm, ripping a path to my elbow and tearing through my injuries from that morning. I gasped. I didn't let go, but I did loosen my grip. It was enough. Brandon wrenched free. Clay arrived one second too late. Brandon was already tearing down the hall. The far end of it was still congested with people, but they somehow found a way to clear out when they saw Brandon coming.

Clay started going after Brandon, but I grabbed the back of his shirt.

"We shouldn't go out together," I said.

"Right. You follow him. I'll go back through the window."

I wasn't sure how this was possible, unless he'd developed the ability to scale walls, but there wasn't time to debate the matter. I nodded and ran down the rest of the hallway. I burst through the door to find myself in the midst of a chaos twice as bad as that inside the warehouse earlier. The crowd had got itself outside the door and stopped. Some people looked like they were in shock. The rest weren't moving because they didn't want to miss anything. Added to that, the entire Bear Valley police force and a battalion of state troopers had arrived. Most of the police were still half asleep, milling around in dazed confusion. Sirens howled. Cops barked orders. Nobody listened. Brandon was gone.

I paused to get my bearings. Finally, I was able to filter out the garbage and zero in on the clues. To my left, a barricade had been toppled over. One of the partygoers was waving toward the road. Three cops were jogging over to him. I followed. When I slipped past the fallen barricade, I found that another group of cops was in pursuit, fanned across the roadway, shouting instructions and motioning at an alleyway. When two officers started to run forward, someone stopped them, yelling that there was no need to rush, it was a blind alley. Brandon was trapped.

I scouted the area, trying to determine the likelihood of getting to Brandon before the cops did, and preferably without intercepting any stray bullets. As I stepped off the curb, someone grabbed my arm. I turned to see a middle-aged state trooper.

"Back behind the line, miss. There's nothing to see."

As he tugged me onto the curb, he looked down. The blood from my cut arm trickled over his fingers.

"Thank God," I gasped. "I've been trying to find someone. No one's paying attention--everyone's--" I stopped and gulped air. "Inside. There's people. They're still in there. There was this dog, this huge dog-- They're hurt. My boyfriend--"

The officer swore and dropped my arm. He turned to a group of cops heading out onto the roadway.

"There's still people in there!" he yelled. "Has anyone checked inside?"

One of the cops said something I didn't catch. I inched backward as the two officers yelled and gestured. Apparently, neither one knew who was in charge or whether ambulances had been summoned or whether anyone had gone inside yet. Several ran off toward the warehouse. More decided their time and energy was better spent arguing. I slipped across the street. No one noticed.