flesh. Brienne heard more shouts and the sounds of running feet as more hunters converged on their position. Arn raised his bloody muzzle and his eyes locked onto Brienne’s. The wolf gestured with his head, and the druid could see that he wanted her to go deeper into the forest. She could see from his stance that he intended to go back and distract the hunters, perhaps to kill as many as he could before they took him.
“No, I’m not leaving you to face that alone,” said Brienne as she brandished her shotgun and burning sun.
The wolf’s hackles stood on end and his lips drew back in a brutal and bloody snarl, the mere sight of which put the fear in Brienne’s heart. It was one thing to argue with a man, but another entirely to disagree with a wolf. Brienne let out a deep sigh and nodded, then rushed into the darkness as Arn turned to face whatever was coming.
ACT IV
The door exploded inwards in a cloud of smoke, fire, and splinters as the concussion grenades ripped through it. The force of the blast knocked Roland and Iri to the ground along with the two bikes they’d been tuning. In seconds men in matte black body armor swarmed through the shattered space where the door had once been, pumping rounds from their shotguns into the garage. Roland roared and rolled from his stomach to his back as he reached out for the massive sledgehammer that had been knocked off the wall to clatter to the concrete floor nearby. Iri sprang to her feet even as she shifted to her half-wolf form and tackled one of the armored men. They crashed through a low workbench and soon blood and pieces of armor were flying in all directions from where they’d landed.
Roland grasped the hammer and stayed low as he rushed behind one of the few bikes still standing and managed to stay out of sight long enough to flank the other two men who had entered the garage. The alpha’s entire left side, from his arm down to his leg, burned with a white-hot intensity and he knew that he’d been hit with silver buckshot. Iri howled in pain as the two men emptied their shotguns into her and the dying man she had pinned beneath her. Roland bellowed in rage as he leapt out from cover and swung his hammer with all of his might. The blow caught the nearest hunter in the temple and was so powerful that the man’s helmet shattered along with his skull in a spray of blood and ceramics.
The last hunter leveled his shotgun at Roland’s chest, though before he could pull the trigger Iri’s clawed hand lashed out and tore into the back of his thigh. The hunter’s shot went wide as he fell to the ground. The dying shifter used her claws to climb atop the hunter as they struggled for position. Roland had taken another pellet of buckshot from the hunter’s errant shot and struggled to limp his way over to the two combatants. By the time Roland reached them the hunter had managed to slip a thin silver blade under Iri’s jaws to finish her. Before the hunter was able to get out from under the dead shifter’s body Roland growled and raised his hammer.
“Wait! Wait!” begged the hunter as he dropped the knife and held his hands out in front of him, “It’s a kill or capture, if you just came peacefully…”
The hunter was interrupted in his plea as Roland brought the heavy hammer down on the man. The shifter knew the score, and had been pack alpha long enough to know that there could never be peace between hunter and shifter. No quarter asked and none given.
The force of the blow crushed the man’s faceplate and pulped his skull. Roland leaned up against the engine that hung on chains suspended from the ceiling as he tried to catch his breath. The silver shot was burning its way though him, and the alpha knew that no matter what was happening in the rest of the clubhouse that he had to get the silver out before he would be of any use. The alpha was growing weaker by the second as he limped, then crawled over to the tool chest