Free Howl for Me by Lynn Red Page B

it over, in the other direction.
    It took about a half a second before he noticed that the jacket sticking out from underneath the frame was empty.
    And then, before he could blink again, a roar filled his ears, and a shoulder slammed straight into the small of his back.
    Damon went down into the dirt, face first. His brother’s heft drove all the air out of his lungs, and he gasped, hard, trying to suck air.
    “I swore I wouldn’t let you get away with what you did, brother ,” Devin hissed, flipping Damon over on his back, and ramming a fur-covered fist into his teeth, busting his lips wide open. “You didn’t believe me! You pulled that holier-than-thou Skarachee bullshit, and you threw me out! Like you had the right.”
    He pulled back his arm and swung wildly. That time, Damon turned, just as the fist that would have probably broken his nose and loosened a tooth or two, whizzed past and slammed into the ground.
    Throwing his knee up into Devin’s back, Damon flipped him over and reversed their positions. He pinned his brother’s arms, and threw his head back, roaring savagely at the barely-visible moon.
    Off in the distance, motors hummed. The wind still blew, and those awful, damn grains of sand still stung him, as the cold wind beat against Damon’s back. Devin swung a fist at him, but Damon just turned his shoulder and deflected the blow.
    He caught his brother’s fist, as Devin recoiled. Damon squeezed so hard that the wolf underneath him whimpered a bit. The hair on the back of Damon’s neck, running down his spine, grew hard and stiff and wiry, and he felt waves of power course through him.
    Damon’s muscles swelled, his fists twisted and elongated, and the next time Devin threw a wild, poorly aimed, but jaw-shattering punch, Damon answered. First, he countered with a slash across the chest, then a head-butt that broke Devin’s nose, and finally a brutal shot to the ribs.
    Behind them, those motors still hummed. The wind still blew, but it didn’t matter. Damon and Devin both had waited for this – to settle whatever differences they had – for so long that letting it out was pure, delicious catharsis.
    Damon landed two hard jabs before Devin finally drew up his arms and deflected one. The slick, black-furred wolf on the ground rolled left, and then right. He managed to unbalance Damon then got enough leverage to get out from under him.
    Moving backwards, into the wind, Damon steadied himself. He grabbed the part of his jeans that split around his swelling thighs and ripped it off. He wasn’t going to let his brother get any advantage he could control.
    For a moment, they just stood, staring at one another. Devin’s eyes shimmered in the yellow moon, and Damon’s burned green and gold. Both wanted a piece of the other, but neither man wanted to make the first move. They both knew better than to lunge, but someone had to go first.
    Damon flinched his shoulder and feinted a charge.
    Devin took the bait.
    Completely out of control, the black wolf snarled and slashed at the air, expecting to catch his brother in the throat with his claws. Instead he caught only air. In the split second between Devin swinging wide, and his realizing what happened, Damon pounced.
    He drove his fist into Devin’s jaw, twisting his brother’s lupine head around in a terrible whiplash. Then, before Devin recovered, Damon cracked his other cheek with an elbow, grabbed the back of his head and brought it down to his knee. Devin screeched as his lips broke. He turned and spat a tooth onto the ground, never taking his eyes off Damon.
    All the wounds, both of them knew, would heal. But damn, did every single one of them hurt.
    With both of his lips split open, Devin smiled a grisly smile. A trickle of blood ran down his teeth, down his chin, and dripped to the desert beneath his feet, where it immediately soaked in.
    Those motors in the distance kept right on humming.
    But, as Damon watched his brother, and wondered what the