Free RawHeat by Charlotte Stein Page A

the unease Connor’s
presence created.
    And it got worse when he suddenly turned his head and stared
right at him, right into him, as steady as anything.
    “You shouldn’t look at me, wolf,” Reddick said, and his
voice kind of wavered. As though he understood, but didn’t.
    He didn’t even understand when Connor said, “Will you be
upset, if I kill them all?”
    Though she knew why. Because Connor spoke while looking
right at Reddick, as though he was asking him. As though he was really asking
him something so strange and impossible, when any fool would know what was
actually happening.
    He was asking her. He was asking her, and her heart reached
right up through her body and got her around the throat. Did he mean it? She
couldn’t imagine he did—he simply wouldn’t have the time. They’d put a bullet
in his back before he’d moved an inch, and the thought made her hold tight to
his hand.
    Or at least, she did so until every light in the room quite
suddenly went out. And then after that, she simply whispered into the darkness.
    “No.”
    * * * * *
    When they emerged into the corridor, the emergency lighting
didn’t reveal anything good. He had blood all around his mouth and blood all
down the front of the stupid mismatched jersey she’d given him, and he looked
more animal than man, she had to say. He had hair where no hair had been
before. He had rows of thorns on the backs of his hands.
    But she didn’t pull away when he grabbed hold of her, and
forced her to run in the direction of the south entrance.
    He didn’t stop to ask her if she was okay, though she
understood why. Her ears were ringing from gunfire and screams and that awful
tearing sound, and something had grazed her ear and made it bleed, but she knew
what kind of signals she was actually giving off.
    Relief-filled signals. Let’s-escape-before-the-wolves-come-in-and-get-us
signals.
    She’d meant that no. She’d absolutely meant it. It had
almost been satisfying to hear Tara beg for her life—for just that one short
second before Connor had cut her short. And it was terrible, it really was, but
some dark part of her had almost wished the lights had stayed on, so she could
have seen him slice her in two.
    “Stop,” he said, and she did—pulling up short just before
the intersection that led north, south, east and west. Somewhere far off she
thought she could hear screaming, but it could have just been an echo left over
from the trash room.
    It could have been anything, until Connor turned and grabbed
her, suddenly.
    “Hold on to me,” he said—almost whispered, in fact—but she
couldn’t fathom what he meant. Hold on? Hold on to what?
    And then suddenly they were moving up, actually upward
toward the ceiling, and she didn’t have a choice about the holding on part. She
just wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck, tightly, and watched him
climb the wall in a blur of nails and pushing limbs and other things—all of
them completely insane.
    She couldn’t even fathom how he’d managed it, not even with
her back pressed to the actual ceiling and her gaze suddenly on the ground over
his shoulder. Somehow, he’d pinned her to the thing most typically above their
heads. Arms and legs shoved up against the walls to brace himself. Nothing
about him suggesting that such a move put a strain on him.
    And then she saw the reason why he’d done it. She felt it,
rushing by beneath them and just ever so slightly to their left.
    A great train of wolves, rolling and stampeding and snarling
their way from east to west, stepping over each other and biting each other in
an effort to get at whatever they were going to get at first.
    She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Her stomach clenched
around nothing and then even worse, oh most awful of all she felt the blood
from her grazed ear start to wend its way down, down over her face.
    She couldn’t swipe it away. Both of her hands were needed to
clutch on to him with every bit of strength