We went through a few more items, and then broke the meeting up. Mabel came up a few minutes later with her list; it was heavy on children’s clothes, bedding and baby stuff. “It’s a lot,” I said.
“Let’s take your truck and a trailer, I need some stuff too. We can head for Minot, the Wal-Mart and Babies-R-Us are there, and get most of this,” Olivia said.
“Sounds good.” Everyone else had something to do, so the two of us headed out to the truck. It was about a two hour drive, so we had a little fun. We cranked my iTunes playlist, singing along as we went until we made it.
We parked the truck and went inside, each grabbing a cart. We hit the children’s clothes section first, filling the carts with stuff we would need. We filled both carts, paid for them and took all the bags out to the truck. We went back inside, we needed beds now. We were looking at the bunkbeds when I heard a voice that stopped my heart.
“Ella. I’m SO happy to see you. And Olivia, human now. How fortunate for me. Your asses are MINE now.”
Oh shit. Alpha David Lewis.
***********
I turned around to find that pompous asshole smirking at me. I went to run, but he grabbed my arm. “Don’t make any sudden moves, Ella. You’re surrounded.”
I looked around, sure enough there were four men casually standing around us, but watching us all the same. I could see Olivia was absolutely terrified, the last time she saw David he was beating her to death. She only survived because I called the cops on him and they arrived in time.
“What do you want, Lewis?”
He laughed. “Oh, the list of what I want is long and hard, just like my dick. I’m sure your slut friend here has told you about that.” He looked at her like she was a meal and he was starving, she looked down with disgust on her face. “Now, we’re going to walk out of here and you’re going to cooperate, or it won’t go well for you.”
I pulled away from him, my arm ripping from his grasp. “And why would I do that?”
He pulled out his phone and showed us the screen. He was watching a live feed of the outside of my house… and I could see a rifle barrel in the foreground. I could see Mabel out on the front porch swing, she had one of my boys in her arms and was feeding him. “Because, Ella, you should know that sometimes sacrifices have to be made to ensure the Pack survives. Now move.”
Olivia took my hand and together we moved towards the front of the store. Two of his men walked in front of us, while David and two others trailed behind. The furniture section was near the back of the store, so we had a long walk. He warned us not to do anything stupid, as there were innocent humans around.
As we walked, I looked at her then flicked my eyes down to her belt, squeezing her hand three times. She seemed to understand, so I kept walking. I squeezed her hand once, looking from her to the guys in front. I squeezed her hand again, then looked down at my shirt then back to the guys behind us. We were approaching the entrance, there was a greeter in a wheelchair there but other than that it was clear right now. It was the most open space around, and I didn’t want this fight in the parking lot in case there were others out there. If we were going to make a move, this was the place.
I squeezed her hand five times quickly, then paused. Four times, then pause. Three… Two… One.
Our hands came apart as we reached the lanes where we passed through the loss detectors, and we both reached for our Glocks which were hidden beneath our blouses. I spun and fired twice into center mass, catching David in the shoulder. I didn’t wait to see if he went down, my gun moved right to the next man. I double tapped him, this time both into the chest and he dropped.
I could hear Olivia firing behind me as I swung my pistol back to the left. I wasn’t fast enough to get a clean shot off this time. The man shifted into his werewolf and leaped for me, and was on me before I could aim. I got off a wild shot, but it didn’t stop him from latching on to my gun arm and knocking the pistol loose. Instead of fighting his leap, I used his momentum against him; grabbing his left foreleg with my hand, I spun with him. I pulled hard around and down, his legs flying out away from me before he went down hard. My shoulder followed him to the ground, and I put my whole weight into it. I heard several ribs snap in him as I drove down on him hard, and it was enough to get him to let me go.
I rolled off him and reached for my right ankle, ignoring the pain and the blood on my gun hand. I pulled the compact Glock out of its holster as I saw David shifting behind me. His foreleg was hanging limp, but the other three legs were enough for him to move. He lunged for my throat, his jaws wide open. Firing as fast as I could while I moved to the side and back, I put a couple rounds into him before he collapsed to the floor.
I heard a few more shots from just behind my head, and turned to see Olivia firing on the wolf I had tackled. She pulled me up to my feet. “Come on, we’ve got to GO.” She almost dragged me out of the store, her pistol in her other hand waving around as people scrambled for cover. I couldn’t hear much, my ears were still ringing from the gunfire. I put the pistol in my left hand and pulled my keys out, handing them to her as we approached our truck.
She opened the doors and I climbed into the back. Olivia didn’t wait, she fired the truck up and put it in gear, the diesel pulling hard as we accelerated out of the lot. She made the exit and headed down the highway; we were lucky, no police had arrived yet, but I was sure they would come. We had left werewolves in the entryway. “How’s your arm?”
“Not that bad,” I replied. I pulled out the first aid kit from beneath the seat and opened it up. There was a combat dressing in it, I pulled it out and tore the pouch open with my teeth. I laid it out on the seat, then grabbed a T-shirt from the top of one of the shopping bags and used it to wipe the blood from my arm. There were a few spots where the flesh was torn down to the bone, but much of it was not that bad. The dressing had ties to hold it in place, but I couldn’t do that one handed, so I just held it in place for now. The dressing was infused with a quick-clotting agent, and soon the bleeding had stopped. I resisted the impulse to remove the battle dressing and look, as that would rip the scabs open again. “I’ll live.”
She was looking around. “We have to get this thing off the road. A big red truck towing a trailer isn’t exactly tough to spot, and you know the Wal-Mart people will give a description.”
“So?”
“You shot up the store, Ella, plus you got bit. You know how they look at it. Even if you were defending yourself, you’re a rabid werewolf just waiting to happen. They won’t even wait for you to shift before they kill you.”
Shit.
“You find a place to hide this beast, I’m calling for help.” I felt her make some turns, we were now in an industrial park. I pulled out my burner with my injured arm and called Josh. “Josh, it’s Ella. Things went sideways, I need your help. The Wal-Mart in Minot, I need you to hack into the security cameras and kill the recordings for the last half hour.”