Page 5 of Wolf Cursed
I blinked.
The bit of hope I’d let myself feel drained away.
“What kind of idiot loans ten thousand to a guy with no collateral?”
The words were out of my mouth before I could think them through.
Vorack’s eyes narrowed. He took a step closer, and I curled around, bracing myself for a kick or a punch or something equally painful.
He leaned down, and I squeezed my eyes shut, preferring not to see it coming.
“Take the five hundred as a down payment,” my father said quickly. “I’ll get you the rest tomorrow.”
Vorack shook his head. “We’re way past down payments, Joe.”
My father didn’t answer. I could hear the defeat ringing in his silence.
“Have it your way then.” Vorack reached down and grabbed my wrist, squeezing painfully as he pulled me to my feet. With his other hand, he yanked my long hair back so I was forced to look up at him.
“How about it, princess?” he drawled. “Want to help save your daddy?”
Panic clawed at me as I realized my worst nightmare was about to happen. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop them. The worst part was that this had nothing to do with the actual reason we’d been running all these years. All of it for nothing because, in the end, my father had fallen apart.
If I wanted to survive, it was up to me now.
Knowing it would only make things worse, I pulled my leg back and shoved my foot into his groin.
Vorack groaned and doubled over, stumbling away. “Bitch,” he roared.
The guy who’d hit me, Frank, chuckled. “She sure has some fire in her.”
“I like a good firecracker,” Vorack said, his expression twisting to something cruel and sinister as he straightened.
He reached for me again, and this time, whatever struck him, it wasn’t me.
Thunder boomed, and the trailer shook. Windows shattered, sending glass flying in all directions. I closed my eyes and shielded my face as tiny shards landed in my hair and against my forearms.
The men around me yelled and rushed at my father.
I opened my eyes and froze at the scene before me.
My father had . . . transformed into some sort of monster.
Either that, or the demons we were always running from had caught up and taken over his body.
His skin was broken open with bones sticking out at unnatural angles. Blood leaked from the wounds, but the worst was his eyes. Glowing and without a hint of humanity left, they were trained on Vorack. He hopped up onto all fours and bared his teeth—canines that had elongated to look like fangs.
Fear gripped me, unlike anything I’d felt before. My father was gone. In his place was a demon from Hell. And I couldn’t be sure he didn’t want to drag all of us—me included—back there with him.
Chapter Two
My father—or the monster inside him—snarled while thick drool dripped from his sharpened teeth. At the sight of him advancing toward them, Vorack and his men fell over one another in their scramble to get out.
“Go,” Frank screamed, shoving past the others.
Glass crunched underneath their boots, and I watched, unable to tear my eyes away, as my father—or the monster he’d become—moved slowly toward the open door. He watched as Vorack and his men raced into the yard and across the driveway toward their car.
I took a slow step backward, terrified of whatever that thing was. Fur had sprouted in some places, obscuring the protruding bones. And his mouth was elongating into a kind of snout. He looked like a demon straight out of a horror movie.
