Page 16 of Awry
Breaker is still shrieking.
Then Chains suddenly trips, stumbling backward.
While he’s trying to break his fall, and with my feet only barely anchored in the sand, I slam my shoulder into his chest.
We fall in a tangle of limbs.
Presh shrieks in pain behind her gag.
My weight is enough to drive Chains all the way down, head first into the stone wall.He goes still.
I perch on his chest, panting and clutching at the gun still in his hand.
Presh has her legs wrapped around Chains’s ankle, tears streaming down her face and soaking into the gag.She crawled close enough to trip him.
With a roar, Breaker finally screws up the courage to slam a meaty fist into Muta’s broad, flat head.
The bushmaster releases his hold on Breaker’s dick, falling into the sand, momentarily stunned.
I’m shocked that Breaker has managed to hurt Muta at all.Then, as the shifter turns his red-eyed gaze on me, I see his face.His furred face.Slightly elongated snout.Flattened brow.Sharp canine teeth puncturing his bottom lip.
He’s taller and wider than before.Arms longer and viciously clawed.
Seemingly half-transformed, Breaker lowers his head and bellows at me and Presh.Energy blasts over me, though it’s the sound itself that freezes me in place.
As it’s supposed to do.
My right eye has swollen shut.
There is something really wrong with my left arm.
And ultimately, I’m only human.
Even whole and healthy, I’m no match for an enraged shifter, let alone the creature Breaker is transforming into.
“Run, Presh!”I cry.
And she tries.Gagged, with her hands behind her back, and something clearly wrong with the leg she used to trip Chains, she tries to run.
She isn’t even going to make it off the beach before Breaker reaches us.She’ll never get to the other side of the stone wall and back to the car.
I wrench the gun out of Chains’s grip, snapping his finger as I do so.Praying the weapon doesn’t have a safety and that it’s loaded, I fire it at Breaker.
The half-transformed shifter doesn’t even bother trying to avoid the shots, taking three to his chest.And since he gets close enough that I can’t miss, two more to the head.
Because he isn’t just a bear shifter.
He’s a berserker.A meld of man and beast created by the consumption of human flesh— usually that of an essence-wielder.
Fire and steel have no effect on him.
But my blood will.
If he drinks me down, if he eats my innards, he will slaughter … everyone.For miles.
Starting with Presh.
I won’t die.Or, more specifically, I won’t stay dead.But everyone else will.
