This chapter contains mature and violent content.

Greg, Always Liked Cats

I'm an idiot. A moron. A thousand times damned fool. Hell itself should just open up and take me already. Welcome me home. I deserved it.

A silver chain, no thicker than a necklace, seared into my throat. It was agony. Cutting and cauterizing all it once. Held taunt by a gloved werewolf snarling into my ear. I so much as twitched the chain cut into muscle. The acrid burning of my flesh perfumed the air.

And yet it was nothing compared to how deeply the fear in Isla's eyes cut me.

One of the mutts pinned her against the brick wall by her neck. She was still. Chin out and defiant. But she was scared and cold. I could sense her pulse. See the way she struggled to keep the shivers at bay. A half-burned cigarette trembled between her fingers.

Cabroni kicked the knife. It skittered down the ice, vanishing from my sight. "Should watch where you point that thing."

"Let her go," I rasped.

The chain sliced deeper. I gritted my remaining teeth and swallowed a grunt.

"Nah," growled Cabroni. He snatched Isla's fallen purse from the ground. "Let us least collect our cash, yeah? Then we can talk. You just sit tight."

He barked at his crony.

Isla gasped. The ugly, growling, slimeball of a wolf pressed his claws into her throat. Her beautiful throat that I nearly ruined. Her pulse beat frantic under his nails. They rested just shy of puncturing.

"We seem to get over our cuts quicker than you. Sick," Cabroni flexed his leg, jeans ripped and stained with blood, but flesh beneath smooth as a puppy's bottom. My face, however, remained bruised and battered. One of my eyes was swelling shut, which was nonsensical and annoying given my all-around lack of blood flow. "But how long you think it'll take you to get over us making the Madame the new pack bitch? All Denise wants is her money. Hate to ruin your date night over it."

"Ew!" She spat. "We do not have that kind of relationship, man."

"A bluff," I said weakly. "You can't turn anyone outside a full moon."

"You want I test it?" snickered the crony. "Cause if you're right, she just going to die."

"Down boy," said Isla.

But his threat was clear. I move, Isla gets hurt.

Cabroni, a deep scowl set in his beard, riffled through her purse without much more conversation. Tossed aside lipstick and her phone. A tiny wallet. Tampons. Subway tokens. A scrunchie. Another lipstick. Pack of cigarettes and her lighter. All these trinkets hit the ground with little grunts and whines from Isla.

The wolf found the envelope. Tore it open. A wad of beer-stained cash fell neatly into his hand. As he counted, Cabroni fanned out the bills, a stack of hundreds, waving Isla's cigarette smoke cloud back into her own eyes.

"Alright, you got what you came for," I said, gingerly testing the other dog's hold on my throat. It was tight. Fangs, that hurt. My skin peeled away in sizzling flakes. As they wafted like dust into the wind, I noticed a tiny medallion hung from the chain, dangling in my peripheral vision. Some kind of saint. Maybe a Pack emblem? Couldn't see it clearly, but the other mutt, the one holding Isla, he also wore a pendant. Cabroni was lacking in jewelry. "Let's call it even and split, huh?"

Cabroni growled. Low and menacing. He tucked Isla's payment into a back pocket. "You undead bloodsuckers should learn to stay in the ground and mind your own business."

His foot collided with my pelvis. Hard. Yeah, should've seen that coming. I doubled over. A throb instantly settled in my gut. But the greater pain came from the burn of the silver against my neck, my own reflexes nearly severing my head off—we heal, but we don't come back from that one. Small tremors coursed through my neck when the chain caught my muscle. Was like an electric shock zinging through me.

Cabroni drooled. I fought hard to stay upright through another onslaught of his fists. Least I didn't need to breathe. He hit me hard. Furious. Till there was no trace of air left to even get knocked out of my lungs. Everything inside me burned and ached. A fist struck my side. Sharp cracks reverberated through my ribs. I coughed. Blood should've come up. Barely a trickle, black and tarlike, dribbled from my lips.

"Stop it!" yelled Isla. "Like he said, you got the money!"

The mongrel kept a firm hold on her throat. Caught his eyes for a moment. Just a single second before Cabroni landed another firm punch to my sternum. He was daring me to move. To fight back. Defend myself. Cause if I did, he'd tear his nasty claws into her.

Cabroni grabbed me by the hair. He yanked my face up to meet his. Could hardly see him, up close, my one eye so swollen. My vision started to double. Suddenly two of his stocky wrists danced in front of my eyes. The scribbled, cursive tattoo on his skin dancing and twirling. Arabella.

He leaned in close.

"Chica's cash flow problem was work. This is personal. You stay the fuck away from my wife, sucker," he seethed into my ear. His breath was foul. "Or I'll fuck you up so bad, you'll—you'll fucking—you'll be so fucked up."

"Eloquent," I managed.

A wolf howled. No, shrieked. In pain.

Cabroni released me, turning sharply.

She did it. Son of a bitch, Isla actually did it. She stubbed her cigarette out in somebody's eye socket.

The injured beast snarled. He clutched his eye. Blood and pus and ash seeped out through his fingertips. Freed, Isla kicked him in the groin, toppling him over.

Cabroni barked and lunged for her.

"Run, Isla!" I shouted.

The garrote wasn't easy to shrug off. I jammed one heel back and nailed the wolf holding me right in the knee. It snapped. Hope he appreciated flamingos. Instead of letting go of the chain, he fell backward clutching it. I grabbed it (shit, shit, shit that burned) and pulled. Hard. Hard enough to save my head, breaking the necklace in half. Hard enough I also managed to nearly sheer off the tops of all the fingers on my right hand. They hung from my knuckles like slugs dangling from leaves.

Fannngs.

I gagged.

But no time to recoup.

I pounced on Cabroni.

His blood was awful. Downright toxic. Didn't care. Wrapping my myself around his back, I fisted his beard in my left – now good – hand and tugged. Opening his neck. I bit down. Deep. Forced my way through his muscle and tendons. Forgetting, of course, I'd already lost a fang.

Cabroni screamed. His blood blistered as it trickled into my mouth. I didn't swallow. Isla would have a joke about that, wouldn't she?

The other werewolf, the one who'd held me before, dug his claws into my back. He tore mercilessly as my flesh. This poor jacket.

I hissed. Released Cabroni's neck from my mouth and spit his blood into the other wolf's eyes.

Cabroni took advantage. He swung an arm around my neck and flung himself backward onto the pavement.

How lucky for him the vampire on his back broke his fall.

My vision shattered when my skull hit the ice. For a moment, everything went black. Pain. Sharp, stabbing, searing. It radiated through my whole body. Every nerve screamed. Every bone crunched sharply. Something in my spine fractured. I felt myself get cleaved in half on the inside like a damned carrot.

Fangs. Fuck. Hell it hurt. Everything hurt. My body was on fire and yet numb in other places. One of my legs, specifically. My vision came back slow and blurry. As Cabroni rolled off me I tried to stand but couldn't. My left leg wouldn't obey. Wouldn't respond to my own will. And when I raised my head, a mere inch, the whole alley spun and tumbled. Nausea slammed into me harder than the bulky werewolf just did.

And then three of his hazy fists collided with what was left of my nose again. New cuts stung as they tore open. My ear hurt. The world became muffled on one side. But through it, through all the fray, I still heard Isla hollering, like every cell in my body was specifically tuned to her.

"Tony!" she screamed and screamed. A goon's name? She did seem to know them. Her voice is begging, pleading. "Tony!"

"What the fuck!" one of the wolves yelled.

Was that one Tony?

Something soft and fluffy brushed my side as the alley erupted in a cacophony of hisses and yowls. Mutt that had been holding me before was fighting with... a ... cat? Oh no. A concession must've been settling into my bruised-up noggin. Looked to me like the werewolf was brawling with a very large house cat. It had wrapped itself around his arm. Tore at hard flesh with claws and teeth. Hair raised. Growling. Spitting.

"Get this fucking thing off me!"

His pal, the one with the burned eye, grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and threw it against a wall. Bones crunched. But the wolf didn't have time to celebrate. He yipped as, what appeared to be two (or three or four oh nelly I could not see straight), more domestic shorthairs leapt onto that goon's back.

The cats hissed.

One sank its front claws into the wolf's eyes, its hind into his neck. Goo and blood gushed out around its fuzzy paws.

Another calico feline, missing patches of fur, crawled up the other's leg, chomping at the wolf's crotch.

"They're just fucking cats, you pussies!" yelled Cabroni.

Huh. I didn't understand what was happening one bit. Must've been a hallucination. My brain inventing junk as it misfired and my vision began to go dark and fucking fuck Cabroni kicked me again in the stomach. Ribs cracked. Something under them burst.

It hurt.

It really hurt.

It hurt and I was hungry.

And Isla was screaming.

I told her to run.

"Their eyes!" screamed one of his cronies, the buffoon that now had a cat viciously clawing at his inner thighs as he hopped about. "Something's fucked about their eyes! They're like, blank or some shit! Fuck!"

One yowled. The hot scent of more blood sprayed the air. My vision was spotty and darkening, but I heard more cats wrestling. Tearing and shredding any flesh they could find.

Cabroni grunted: "Snap their fucking necks—ahh!"

The cat. The big one. The first one. A fat tabby. It slammed into Cabroni's face. Claws flying. Scratching wildly. It chewed chunks out of the wolf's ears.

Big guy sure put up a hell of a good fight. As Cabroni pulled it by the tail and ripped the thing off his face, champ was still swinging like Ali.

I always liked cats.

While they were busy, I braced an elbow against the pavement and attempted to drag myself out the puddle of cracked ice my body made. My left leg was dead weight. Clothes wet and heavy. A sharp, twisting pain radiated down my spine. Where was Isla? Couldn't find her in the chaos of the alley. She ran. She left me. Good. Go. Run, please, run, run, run. She needed to run. To save herself. Get far away and curse me till the sun burned me to ash behind a dumpster for not protecting her.

Me? I needed to get up. To distract to the dogs from going after my girl. Tear them limb from limb even though I couldn't even see straight. Chew them down into a pulp.

As Cabroni pulled at the neck and tail of the flailing cat like an accordion, I threw myself onto one of his legs. Meant to jump a bit higher, actually, but none of my limbs seemed quite capable of fully functioning right then. Lucky I even caught his leg. Three of them spun in my vision, so this could have just as easily been a miss. But I snagged him.

He howled when I dug my nails into the meat of his thigh and hooked my bad hand around his kneecap. That howl cut off into a sickly whimper when I twisted. His knee exploded. Shattered into a multitude of sharp and little pieces under his sweaty flesh. I'd got him on camera on the gym multiple times. I knew, when he was at his most human, he suffered from weak runner's knees. Knew how shitty knee cock ups felt firsthand, too. Take that.

His weakened body wanted to give out. To collapse. From my working knee, I held him upright best I could. He'd end me if we wound up a tangled heap on the ice again. "You leave her alone," I hissed, seething with rage and pain and fear for Isla. "If you ever touch her again I will fucking drain—"

"Kyle!" Isla shouted over me, her voice echoing off the brick walls and dumpster and ice.

I looked up too quickly. A burst of fizziness – like a soda can exploding in the back of my skull – overtook me. Vision swam. Blurred. Just ahead of me, stood Isla. Two Islas. Swirling together. Stupid woman. She should've run. Instead she stood there, bones glowing vibrantly under her smooth skin.

Oh fangs she was gorgeous like that.

A goddess.

One with a switchblade in her hand. Gleaming red with blood. Isla had added a fresh slit to the scars in the meat of her forearm. Her dripping blood smelled like mulled wine and incense and flowers. Droplets of it glimmered in the moonlight. Fell from her flesh and wound itself into delicate, crimson strands of thread. From her body. Thread.

The threads sprawled from her in shimmering arches and tied themselves in little bows around the cats' necks. So many cats. Dozens. Swarming us. Still approaching. Gray eyes, reflective in the streetlamp's weak glow, popped up from the dumpster. Prowled into the alley between Isla's legs. Gathered on the rooftops and under garbage and out gutters.

They growled as one.

Oh. My brain was broken.

Isla narrowed her black eyes at Cabroni squirming in my grip.

"This is for trying to kill my cat, asshole."

And as one, the cats pounced.

A fluffy wall of fury and hisses and sharp claws and teeth surged forward.

"The fuck," grunted Cabroni.

Right before he was forced to swallow a tidal wave of cat fur.

The felines surged forward. Slammed into Cabroni and his goons. Dogs toppled. Barked. Fought back. Think I spotted a few cats go sailing out from the massive pile building, as if thrown, but it didn't make a difference. The critters bounced right back up. Regardless of how crooked their legs became. Wolves were overrun. Claws and teeth pierced arms and legs and bellies and necks and dragged them under. Within seconds, the three flailing werewolves were completely submerged and drowning beneath sea of dozens of cats.

Aside from a few gentle bops and nuzzles against my elbows, the cats left me be entirely.

Isla seemed to find all this very funny.

Had the strangest thought then. Probably because my head was so woozy. And pained. Something wasn't right. Everything in my noggin felt loose. Detached. Couldn't see straight. A pressure intensified behind my eyes. Just like Isla's glow intensified as she pspspspsped at the dang cats and all their fuzzy wuzzy wittle ears perked up. Oh. I was losing it. Could feel it then. My eyes were so heavy I didn't have the strength to keep watching Isla – gorgeous and terrifying – cackle while the herd of cats smothered werewolves in some back alley.

But my thought, the last that really made any sense as the ice rose up to meet my face, was that Phoebe really would like her.