would hold, but they did. Fenrir let out a choked scream as Kevin cut off his breath. He released the
panting Fenrir only to lift him up off his feet and drag his face close. “You will not hurt my family!” he
roared before throwing him the length of the hall.
Fenrir skidded along the floor and crashed into the wall beside the broken window. Kevin hoped it would
be enough, but Fenrir jumped to his feet and glared at Kevin, panting breath and drooling blood onto the
floor. He looked at the broken window beside him, at the shattered glass. He grabbed up a long shard in
one hand and pounced forward, trying to drive it into Kevin’s exposed belly.
Kevin dodged, and as Fenrir flew by, he picked up a folding chair and cracked it over Fenrir’s head.
Fenrir turned, unfazed, and sank the shard of glass into Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin screamed in rage and
pain, but before he could retaliate, Fenrir lunged.
Their combined weight carried them out of the window, still tearing and snarling at each other. It was a
short, first-floor fall, but they landed atop a car parked in the delivery alley behind the church. Their
combined weight crushed the car like a tin can and blew out every window in a spray of glass that littered
the dirty alley.
The two werewolves rolled over in the alley, clawing and scratching. Fenrir got atop Kevin, pinning him
to the ground. He wrapped both hands around his throat and began squeezing the breath from him. He was
stronger than Kevin expected. Kevin coughed and scratched at Fenrir’s giant, clawed hands, but they were
like bands of iron. He could not budge them.
Just as darkness began seeping into his vision, he spotted a shadow standing behind Fenrir. He recognized
it immediately as Hannah. She was scraped and bruised from climbing out the broken window and letting
herself down into the alley. She wielded her white walking cane, and, with a grimace of determination on
her face, lifted it high and brought it down soundly atop Fenrir’s head. “You leave my brother alone!” she
cried as she broke the metal cane over the werewolf’s thick skull.
Fenrir let go of Kevin’s throat to turn and face this new menace. He started to growl.
“No!” Kevin roared. Still choking, he reached blindly for any weapon close at hand, closed his furry fist
around an errant piece of rebar, and brought it around, knocking Fenrir’s legs out from under him. Fenrir
went down hard in the alley. He turned to Kevin, foaming saliva lashing his fanged jaws. Kevin brought
the rebar around and jammed it in his open mouth.
Choking, he withdrew just enough for Kevin to find his feet. Furious, Kevin reached for the only other
weapon available—the crushed car. It was heavy, huge, but his strength, he quickly learned, was
enormous, and rage fueled his determination. As Fenrir prepared to lunge at him once more, Kevin picked
up the twisted piece of metal and flung it at Fenrir.
Metal screeched and twisted, knocking him far back in the alley. The crumpled car rolled over and over,
finally ending up on its roof, its wheels spinning. By then, though, Fenrir had had enough. He turned tail
and disappeared quickly down a long alley, vanishing into the city like a silvery ghost.
Kevin thought about laying chase, but pain and exhaustion drove him to his knees. He hunched there in the
alley in his tattered clothes, panting, blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder. He whined deep in his
throat and Hannah rushed forward to help him, ignoring the fact that he was quite obviously a monster like
the one that had attacked them. “Kevin,” she cried, and took his giant, bloodstained hand.
Her touch soothed something deep and primal inside him and he found himself letting the wolf go. He
shrank down into his human form, the shard of glass falling from the wound in his shoulder. Hannah put
her hand on his seeping wound, but it was already in the process of mending. “Oh god, Kevin,” she cried,
tears in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he managed. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I…” Sirens in the distance made Kevin stiffen. Matthew and the
Reverend must have called the police. They would be here in only a few short minutes. He didn’t know if
Hannah would help him, but he had no one else to turn to. “Can you get me to the car?”
“Of course,” she said as he struggled to his feet. She dug her shoulder under his arm, and together they
started back to Kevin’s car.
***
Chapter Nineteen
A crash from the kitchen sent Kevin scrambling from bed. “Hannah! Hannah, are you all right?”
She stood at the counter, making a sandwich for herself, a broken bottle of mayonnaise on the floor at her
feet. “Dammit,” she breathed. “I’m such a klutz! I should have gotten a guide dog when I went to that
school for the blind.”
Kevin smiled, relieved it wasn’t anything serious. “How would a guide dog make you any less of a klutz,
sis?”
She put her hands on her hips and stuck her tongue out at him.
“Lemme help you before you step on any glass.”
Hannah swatted him away. “I’m blind, not a baby, goddamnit!”
“Hey, I’m just concerned!”
“About what? That something in the refrigerator will jump out and eat me?”
Her words made him pause. “More like we’ll wind up in Emergency while a doctor pulls glass out of
your foot.”
She rolled her eyes but dutifully jumped up and sat on the counter so Kevin could sweep up the fragments
of glass. “Are you going back to work soon? Because you’re driving me batshit crazy being home all
day.”
“Tomorrow,” Kevin said, retrieving the broom and dustpan from the kitchen closet. “Jolene said they’re
reopening the club tomorrow.”
“Well, thank god for small favors!”
Kevin sighed, didn’t know what to say, so instead started sweeping glass while Hannah fetched a bucket
for the mop. As they cleaned up the kitchen together, Kevin said, “I’m sorry if I’m being difficult and a
little…overprotective. I just thought you might still be shaken by yesterday. God knows I still am.”
“Yeah, well, we did almost get eaten by a werewolf. Who wouldn’t be rattled?”
Kevin grimaced as he dumped broken glass into the kitchen garbage. They still hadn’t talked about that
little detail.
Hannah stopped mopping and watched him with her blind eyes. Kevin squirmed. He knew, intellectually,
that she couldn’t see him. But that didn’t stop the insinuating feeling that, somehow, she could, that she had
some secret inner sight.
“So when were you planning on telling me your little secret?”
“What secret?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
“Kevin,” she said in a low, soft voice. “I know what you are. I’ve always known, I think. I just somehow
convinced myself that I was crazy. But after what happened in the church yesterday, I just know I’m right.”
Kevin felt his pulse jump in his throat. “The police are calling it a pack of dogs.”
“Yeah, the same kind of ‘dog’ that killed that pedo and put him in the Dumpster behind the club. The kind