Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

45; {Tisper}: scratch

Tisper hated these hallways.

The floors were too slick and every sharp turn sent her grappling for balance, slinging into walls until the rubber of her shoes found a grip on the waxed linoleum. The red lights had faded—the purple walls had turned white. She didn't know where she was, just that the wolf was a lunge away.

But the floors seemed a worthy adversary for the beast as well. His long claws struggled for purchase, and she'd heard a sharp yip when he'd slammed into a corner on her last spur-of-the-moment left turn. He was back on her heels now, but she could outrun him. Until she found an exit or a safe room to lock herself away in, she could stay ahead of the wolf.

But Tisper didn't know her way around this place. Every hallway she'd stumbled into led to another like the veins of a complicated labyrinth. Her shoes scuffed the ground, the rubber screaming, echoing through the hall. She threw herself around a hard right corner, slamming into a door handle. The forearm went numb from the pain, but her heart was beating through all the bones in her body and it made every other sensation so small. She took a hard right next, the wolf scrabbling against the floor somewhere just behind her—but then Tisper stopped. A dead-end. The hallway she'd staggered into couldn't have been more than ten feet long, office doors at each side and a window at the end, washing the floor in blue moonlight. She moved quickly from one door to the next, wiggling desperately at the locked handles.

A reading chair sat beside the window, an end table to its left with a small vase of roses on top. There was nothing else to hide under. No emergency exit, not even a vent in the ceiling—as if she had time to unscrew it anyway.

Then Tisper heard the spatter. Hard rain on an umbrella.

When the wolf rounded the corner, he was not as a wolf, but as man. Blonde hair with buzzed sides, bathed in blood, a tungsten metal shimmering from his pierced ears. Strange snake tattoos ribboned around his wet shoulders. His feigned look of surprise was exchanged for a grin and he moved closer on bare, bloody feet. Tisper slung her bag from her shoulder in search of her beloved arrows—but only to find the zipper wide open. Empty, down to the bare threads of the fabric. The arrows had fallen out in her escape.

"Uh oh," Zachary said with a grin. "Lose your toys?"

Tisper grit her jaw. She had nothing else to defend herself with. She should have listened to Matt when they were boarding a plane to Maine—they should have brought guns and mace and pocket knives. She would've taken anything right now.

"Hey, it's alright," said Zachary, slinking closer. "An arrow ain't gonna do much. You know we're werewolves, right?"

Tisper rose slowly, her knees bowing and buckling. She reached to her side, fingers curling around the neck of the rose vase. God, she hated roses.

"Was a good shot though," the man said. "Right through that guy's throat. You must practice, huh?"

Tisper swallowed. The man moved forward, wiping the fresh blood from his face like he was pushing away cool rain.

"Wonder how that'll go when you're missing a few fingers. How's three sound?" he said. "Enough to get ya' by, right?"

He took another step and Tisper's fingers tightened around the neck of the vase. The roses pricked into her fingers.

Zachary threw his head back with a groan. "Don't look at me like that. I hate when they look at me like that. Breaks my heart."

Tisper whipped her arm forward, slinging vase with all her might. The wolf stepped easily out of the way and the glass went crashing through the office window just beside him. Pieces crumpled to the floor like slow melting ice.