Free Wolfen by Alianne Donnelly Page B

eyes.
    One of the abandoned cars opened, and Bryce turned to cover
the new threat, but what came out was a small, filthy-looking older blonde
woman. She held her hands up high, eyes as wide as saucers. The scents shifted,
but not enough to distinguish between them. There wasn’t enough airflow through
here, and after so much time in the wide-open clean air, Bryce had
trouble sorting through it all.
    “P-please help us,” the woman said. “I have a son.”
    “Was he the one who howled?” Aiden asked, keeping the men
covered.
    The blonde shook her head, gaze darting to the blind corner.
    Bryce looked to his brother, and Aiden nodded. “Everyone
take a nice, big step toward the back wall.”
    The blonde woman complied at once. The men took some
convincing in the form of Aiden taking a shot at that yellow X. He hit the wall
in the exact same spot Bryce had, and the men took the hint.
    Once Bryce was sure Aiden had their attention, he moved in
unison with his brother, coming forward so Aiden could keep an eye on the men
and cover Bryce’s back at the same time. He saw the blood before he saw who it
belonged to. Another man sat on the floor, broken glasses askew, holding a
pretty, brown-haired female in his arms. He was sobbing quietly, fear rolling
off of him in sickening waves. But the sight of the female sent a chill through
Bryce.
    “I think she’s dead,” the man holding her said. He was
covered in her blood, hands wet with it as he clumsily tried to stave off the
flow that was already down to a trickle. A pool of it had spread around her,
soaking him. She was as pale as death, unconscious.
    Bryce growled and set his weapon aside to pry her out of the
man’s arms. He laid her onto the floor to check the injury. Gunshot wound,
clean through and through. It was a small enough hole that it should have
closed in seconds. Bryce poked at the edges, which usually triggered a lagging
regeneration response, but it only irritated her wound into bleeding more.
Bryce didn’t understand. There were no foreign objects inside to keep the wound
open. An anticoagulant would leave a scent trail; he’d have smelled any sort of
chemical or natural toxin, not just metal and gunpowder residue. Why was she
not healing?
    He gently manipulated one of her eyelids up. Her eyes were
the color of moss, pupils dilated in the dark. Her face was cold, full lips
bloodless. She was too thin and visibly dehydrated, which could have made
matters worse, but even so, she should have been able to heal herself by now.
    Could it have been a reaction to the bullet itself, then? It
must have been a small caliber; definitely not the work of the assault rifle GI
Joe carried. A handgun lay on the ground nearby.
    The sobbing man was ranting about a fight over a bracelet,
and the gun going off by accident. Deciding against his gut to give the whiner
the benefit of the doubt, Bryce checked the female’s hands for defensive
wounds. Her left wrist sported a thick silver cuff fitted so tight there were
less than five millimeters of room between it and her skin’s surface. A long,
thin scar on the inside of her forearm ran from under the bracelet almost to
her elbow in a line too straight and even to be anything other than a surgical
incision. He filed that away for later investigation. She had no wounds or
bruises consistent with someone trying to take the cuff. In fact, the only
discoloration was on her right hand and index finger. There’d been a fight, all
right, but not over the bracelet. Someone had attacked her specifically for the
gun, and when she’d refused to yield it, they’d forced her to pull the trigger.
This had been no accident.
    Furious, Bryce flared his nostrils, seeking gunpowder
residue. It was all over the female, but only one other male.
    The blademan.
    Bryce looked over his shoulder at the man who, even now,
stared at the female, wearing an expression Bryce was intimately familiar with:
satisfaction. The blademan liked inflicting