Golden Bonds

Shock

He was the grotesque hybrid that Bradley became when he and his wolf fought for control. Elongated palms that stayed somewhere between a hand and a paw with horrific claws at the ends of fingers that were partially separated but couldn't spread apart, they went for Zeek first. They were followed by a jaw with a wide gap because the top and bottom row of fangs didn't line up properly.

Thick sockets stuck out around his eyes hooding them in shadow but the wolf yellow iris shown like headlights. His dirty clumpy hair grew up and away from his short pointed ears in a mohawk that continued down his spine and into his tail. The rest of his body was red raw skin except for his hands and feet which had red fur socks. He stood on his hind legs like a man but the knees bent wrong and his feet were deformed standing him up on his toes.

Zeek had two seconds to grab me and throw me towards the front door as the glass rained down around us before Bradley was on him. Two seconds that he needed to protect himself. Bradley's jaw locked down on Zeek's neck as I was flying backwards, arching into the air as a human projectile. The smell of Zeek's blood and the rotting sickness from Bradley filled my nostrils before I slammed into the bench seat.

The carved backboard cracked when I hit before I crashed onto the bench snapping the hinges and the lid to the compartment in half. The momentum pushed me further rolling backwards over the side I sent Bash's shoes and the river rocks inside the doormat flying around the entry way slamming my side and head into the floor.

            My elbow collapsed out from underneath me when I tried to put my weight on it. Pushing myself up with my other hand the smooth stones caught under my feet and knees sending me sprawling when I tried to get up. Making a break for the door on three limbs was awkward and painful.

Four seconds. Four seconds since Bradley broke through the window before he landed on my back sending my jaw into the floor and one of Bash's steel-toed boots into my abdomen with enough force to knock the wind I already didn't have right out of me. I didn't have time to fight.

Still in motion and trying to gain footing after being thrown across the cabin and I was slammed back into the floor. I was going to fight. I wasn't about to run, landing hard and at a horrible angle I was about to get to my feet and use every dirty rotten trick I knew to fight back. There wasn't time.

            Five seconds. It took Bradley five seconds after my laugh incapacitated my own guards to eliminate Zeek and capture me. Five. A backhanded fist to my temple and I was out.

o  

            I woke up groggy and the sense of déjà vu was overwhelming until I figured out why. It was like waking up in the cage for the first time. When I didn't know I was a werewolf and I thought my worst problem was a case of dissociate identity disorder. I surged forward before I knew what was happening; Gem and I both fighting to reach the surface.

The burn is what cleared my head and allowed me to push Gem back down so we stayed in my form. Chained to a chair we were sitting in the middle of a cabin, an older one that was probably built during Roosevelt's presidency by the first forest service men if the smell of decaying tree trunks was any way to guess. That and the packed dirt floor and aged roots growing through the timbers.

None of that matter as soon as I saw the body. It was so mangled I would never have been able to guess who it was if his smell hadn't been infused into the cabin until he was just as much a part of the scents as the pine and the tree wax.

This was Charlie's home.

Old Man Chuck had survived hundreds of years of wars and strife only to end up alone hanging from a game hook in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere skinned like a trophy kill. Judging by the amount of blood underneath his body he was skinned alive, allowed to heal and then skinned again. That or there should be more bodies but there was only one. The silver hunting knife embedding in Charlie's neck meant he would never have to suffer through that again.