The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) (34 page)

He leveled
his gun on the tangled knot of werewolves as he stepped through the doorway.
The werewolves all noticed his presence. Roaring, two werewolves charged him.
Mitch fired six rapid shots, three into each werewolf’s head. The shots slung
the werewolves into opposite walls.
 
When
he turned his attention back to the other two werewolves, Jared and Alec were
standing in the corners naked. “Mitch?” Alec asked.

Mitch
kept his gun leveled on them. He turned his eyes to the two locked doors and
the snarling from inside. “Lucy in one of those rooms?”

“What?”
Alec said.

“Clearly
I know about you. Let’s not play games.”

“Yes,”
Jared said. “We lock her up every full moon to keep her from hurting anyone.”

“And
the other door?”

“Once
we open it, we’ll all know what’s going on,” Jared replied. “Are you going to
shoot us?”

“Shooting
you in the head only knocks you out for a couple days. Don’t think I don’t know
that.”

“So
what’s your plan?”

“Burn
all the bodies while they’re—asleep.”

“Does
that include us?” Jared baited.

Mitch
snorted. “I hope not.” He kept his gun trained on them. “So you can control
it.”

Jared
smiled. “Apparently. This is the first time I’ve ever turned.”

Mitch
nodded. “Okay. Open that door.”

“Are we
sure we want to?” Alec asked. Low, under the growling, they heard Maxwell
screaming. “Oh, shit. Open it.”

Jared
unlocked the padlock and flung the door open. As toxic smoke filtered out into
the hallway, Jared choked and stepped back. Through the smoke, a werewolf
darted from the room. Burns encrusted its face; blood poured from the sockets
where teeth had been. It stopped in the middle of the hallway, turning in
circles, looking from Alec to Jared to Mitch. The werewolf scratched at the
ground, nervously, seeming to calculate its position. It turned toward Mitch.

It
charged.

Mitch
fired repeatedly until the werewolf fell to the ground. Alec, Jared, and Mitch
watched as the beast slowly morphed back to Nadia. Jared turned to Alec,
confused.

“A
little help?” Maxwell called as he tried to crawl under the animal gate. Alec
and Jared rushed to him and yanked him under the gate. “She was never on our
side,” he explained. “Neither was Helena.”

“Haley?”
Jared asked.

Maxwell
shook his head, tears washing down his cheeks.

“How
did you—” Jared gestured toward Nadia.

“I had
a premonition that I would be locked in a room with a werewolf. That’s why
Haley made you buy a lithium flashlight.”

“When
the werewolf bit the flashlight, it exploded in her mouth. Smart,” Mitch conceded.

“So now
what? What do we do about the city?” Maxwell asked, looking from face to face.
They looked at him quizzically. “Oh, God, you don’t know.”

“What?”
They insisted.

“Werewolves
are all over the city.”

“What
do we do?” Mitch asked, seeming for the first time to trust his unlikely
allies.

“My
parents are out there.” Tears welled in Alec’s eyes.

“And
Haley.”

Jared
looked Mitch in the eyes. “We can’t stop a city full of werewolves.”

“So...”
Mitch scowled. “We do nothing?”

“There
will be plenty to do in the morning,” Alec muttered. “Until then, I have to
keep an eye on my sister.” He walked to his discarded clothes and dressed as
Jared did the same.

Dressed,
Alec slumped against the wall, dangling his hands between his knees. He turned
his eyes toward the ceiling—and the heavens. “Please let my Mom and Dad be
safe.”

Nigel
Rathborne sat behind his desk watching monitors reporting from around the world.
Screens filled with news reports. Tickers across the bottoms of each screen
screamed new, horrific headlines. Other monitors shouted progress reports from
operatives in the field: assassinations, casualty counts, military bases
overthrown, power stations blown up, and communication towers disabled. The
largest terrorist strike in all of history happened simultaneously, around the
globe, because it was committed by neighbors, friends, and loved ones infected
with the same virus.

“We’re
blasting humanity back into the Dark Ages,” he laughed. “And we’re the new
feudal kings.” He craned his neck, listening to the symphony of sirens bleating
in the night. “They can’t nuke us, because we live on their soil. They can’t
bomb us, because we stand too close to them. They can’t kill us because we are
their loved ones.” Nigel stood, spinning in victory with his hands in the air.
“The human cattle are ready for the slaughter.”

“Tonight
was a complete success,” Griffin gloated. “Casualties were high but no one
important.”

Nigel
turned his attention to the monitors again as the screens blared.

Around
the world bridges exploded. He watched the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges
tumble into the ocean; the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark snapped, and its pylons
sank into the abyss; an explosion on the Pearl Bridge in Japan flared in the
daytime sky; the metal of the Sydney harbor Bridge twisted as the metal arch
fell toward the water.

“Airports
around the world will be offline in a matter of minutes,” he announced. “By
this time tomorrow, humans will be so stunned, in such chaos, they will have no
idea whom to trust. They will turn on each other, neighbor against neighbor,
corralling each other straight into our butcher shops.”

Nigel
nodded. His eyes turned to the final monitor. On the screen a werewolf thrashed
madly in a room. It roared and clawed at the walls. “The Runes,” he said,
trailing out a sibilant s. “Jason has had no idea how important
his
DNA has been to all of this.”

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The
morning sun glittered on the broken glass from the shattered windows in the old
building as Alec awoke. His breath came out in white clouds in the cold air.
Jared rested against him on one side and Maxwell on the other as they huddled
to keep warm overnight. Mitch leaned his back against the opposite wall, his
butt on the floor and his hands dangling between his legs. “Did you sleep?”
Alec asked.

“No.
Didn’t need to.”

Alec
nudged Jared and Maxwell. Maxwell awoke with a start and then realized Alec was
merely waking him.

“Wonder
what we’re waking to,” Jared stated.

“When
you let Lucy out, I’ll have some explaining to do,” Mitch contended.

Alec
stretched. He rapped his fingers on the door to Lucy’s room. “Lucy?”

Silence.

“Unlock
the door,” Mitch ordered.

Alec
fumbled with the lock as worry coursed through him. He pulled the door open. An
empty room greeted him. “Fuck! Where is she?” Alec panicked. He flung the door
open so they could all see the empty room.

Mitch
strode into the room. “The back gate’s open.”

“I
locked it,” Alec declared.

“It’s
open now.”

“Did
she get out?” Alec questioned, but Mitch didn’t answer him. Alec, Jared, and
Maxwell followed Mitch as he passed through the animal door to the outside cage.
Discarded bars littered the ground outside the cage.

“Someone
cut these with a blow torch,” Jared pointed out.

Mitch jabbed
his finger at tire tracks in the dirt. “Someone corralled her and took her.”

“The
attack was a distraction.” Alec fell to the floor. “Where is she?” Jared consoled
him as Maxwell and Mitch stared at each other, wondering what to do next.

“I want
to know
who
took her and
why
,” Mitch whispered to Maxwell.

A car’s
engine revved to life around the side of the building. They jumped through the
opening in the cage and tore around the corner in time to see a car retreat
into the distance.

“Who
was that?” Alec asked.

“Back
inside,” Jared commanded. When they entered the hallway where they had spent
the night, Nadia’s body was no longer among the others. “So they came back for
her.”

Alec
turned his eyes into the distance where the car had absconded. “I’m going to
get that bitch and make her pay.”

Dear reader,

Thank you for joining me on this journey along with all the
characters in The Runes Trilogy. I am currently working on Book Three: The Wolf
at War!

With so many books out there, books like The Runes Trilogy
aren’t always easy to find. But you can help your friends find The Runes
Trilogy. Just post about The Wolf at His Door on
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Reviews also help readers on sites like
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other readers think. If you take the time to leave a review, I sincerely thank
you.

I have many more adventures in my head, and I plan to keep
sharing them for years to come. If you have questions or comments, I’d be
delighted to hear from you. Here are some ways to reach me:

Facebook:
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www.adrianlilly.com

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Email: [email protected]

Take care and many happy reading adventures,

Adrian
W. Lilly

The Devil You Know

A haunting in October...

Seventeen-year-old Julie Collins has moved to an isolated new
world that is as haunting as it is beautiful. She and her mother are spending
their final days with Julie’s dying father in his boyhood home in the isolated
woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

But the ghost of a teenage boy walks the halls of the old
mansion. He appears from flames and shows Julie horrible visions of murder.

A sacrifice on Halloween...

As the days of October slip past, Julie realizes the
murderous visions are real. She has no way to escape—so she must fight to save
her life...or become the next victim of a century-old demonic ritual.

Red Haze: Toxic Friendships Book One

Some
nights the woods on the edge of campus glow with a spectral, shimmering red
haze. Marne Montgomery knows—she’s seen it.

She
also saw a figure in the haze. He beckoned to her and then vanished.

Marne
shrugs off the incident until her roommate, Sara Murdock, shows her a picture
of a student. The one Marne saw in the woods.

But
he’s been dead for more than a year.

Suddenly,
Marne and Sara are tangled in a secret that threatens their college careers—and
their lives. Their only hope is to find the cause of the red haze…

Before
someone else dies.

Red Haze
is a
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obsession, justice and revenge.