Nightshifter by L E Horn

Author:L E Horn [Horn, L E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988431116
Publisher: Sherrington Publishing
Published: 2020-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

I smelled Dillon the moment I stepped off the deck. Sniffing, I walked to the steps leading to my cellar door. The entire entryway reeked of him, and I snarled when I realized why.

Dillon had pissed all around my doorway. He must have been doing it for days—likely from the time I left.

The rage rose within me, primitive and wild. I spun, took a step, and my foot kicked something in the grass—a baseball bat. Peter’s bat, the one he kept behind his kitchen door. I bent to lift it and saw blood on the end. It smelled of Peter; someone had belted him with it. Hard. My stomach twisted, thinking of the way the bones had shifted beneath my fingers.

Why would Dillon bother with a bat? The man’s fists were weapons all on their own.

My second discovery was another shock. Just outside the entrance to the trail lay a half-eaten body. My heart stopped when I saw the shapeless, crumpled form surrounded by a metallic scent cloud of blood. Peter’s, but most of it belonged to something else. I stepped closer, and my brain continued to make olfactory connections. An image popped up—the body was a sheep, or what was left of one.

I clenched my teeth as I entered the woods and sniffed. Every branch along the trail was rank with Dillon. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that madness had a scent, but it did. It caused me to curl my lip back over my emerging fangs and made my heart pound until I thought it would leap from my chest. For the first time that evening, I could unleash the wulf that had been shredding me from the inside out. The truth was, I could not have stayed behind without losing more than just my mind. I’d held on by a thread while Peter needed me, but now, the wulf wanted Dillon.

So I ran while the blood dripped from my gums and my toes pushed against the confines of my runners. My skin itched all over, and I paused long enough to pull off my shoes. My claws clicked against the steel of the gun as I pulled the strap over my shoulder, letting it drop down my back. For a second, I stood, spreading my toes into the trail’s soft mud, and sniffed. I tracked Dillon to the entrance of the six-miler. Then I ran.

This time, the wulf came with me. I embraced it. My jaw ached as it lengthened, the teeth sliding into place with what seemed like relief, my tongue licking the blood from my lips. My head shifted forward from my shoulders, the muscles expanding, arching from my skull to my back. Coarse hair in all the shades of blond tossed in the wind of my passage.

I battled to stop the changes there, and won. Even long-fingered paws could not handle a gun, and I needed to be able to run. I knew nothing of running on four legs, and now was not the time to learn.

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