Free Web NovelChapter 33: Battle Wolf
Relief leaves me dizzy, my body folds toward him, desperate to reach the one familiar thing in this nightmare.
River’s face is completely calm as his eyes lock onto the scene over my shoulder, every muscle in his body engaged. freewebnσvel.cѳm
"River?" I barely get his name out.
He connects with me without slowing down. One enormous arm wraps round my waist, with a grunt he lifts me off my feet and spins us. We’re sliding sideways through freezing air, and I’m deposited behind a parked car, the breath knocked from my lungs.
"Stay down." The order is calm, almost gentle.
River disappears and all hell breaks loose.
A deafening boom echoes between buildings, a bomb detonating. The car shudders beside me. Metal groans, glass rattles, snarls and screams. I drop into a crouch, press my back against the rear wheel, and clamp my hand over my ears until my fingers ache. I don’t want to see, my eyes are squeezed shut. None of this is real. The sane part is still trying to argue that point despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Another impact reverberates through the street, the car lurches on its suspension. The bonnet caves inward with a metallic crunch that bounces off the surrounding walls, I flinch so hard my shoulder slams into the wheel behind me.
I can’t breathe, can only cower and listen to chaos unfold on the other side of a few inches of steel.
Each sound is less human, a savage chorus rolling into the city, ancient, dragged from the darkest part of history and unleashed onto the street. I can feel them vibrating through the pavement. They seem to come from everywhere at once, shaking my bones, awakening some instinctive and terrified thing inside me.
Copper floods the air, I can fucking taste it, the universe has the back of my neck and is forcing my face into it. Layered beneath thick blood; wet fur, adrenaline, violence, fear, rage. I smell it all, painting a picture of the horror.
My pulse explodes into a frantic gallop. Another snarl rips through the darkness, followed by the unmistakable sound of brick cracking under impossible force. This force of fear I didn’t know was possible. Fear that somebody out there is bleeding, that River is bleeding.
The sounds keep coming, when wet flesh hits concrete I lose my balance completely, tumbling onto my side on the soaking pavement. Pain shoots through my hip.
Another roar, followed by the sickening crunch of bone breaking.
River.
River is battling. River is out there for me. I’m crouched behind a car like a child, pretending if I can’t see the monsters they can’t see me.
Violent wrongness infects my marrow like poison. Every second I stay hidden is unbearable. Every scream, every snarl, every impact drives it deeper until my ribs crack.
A sharp, tearing agony rips across flesh and folds me forward. Stabbing, burning, visceral pain pulses, then again and again and again. Carves and slices, claws dragging across bone.
I wrap both arms around myself and curl tighter, fingers digging into my sides an attempt to physically hold myself together. The sensation impossible to describe.
Pressure builds beneath the solid architecture of my being. Something enormous has woken and discovered the walls are too small.
"Fuckkkk," The word scrapes from my broken throat.
It’s alive. A beast throwing itself against barriers I cannot see to get to River.
Vertebra crack, my body no longer entirely mine.
Run, fight, get to him.
Save him.
Save him.
Save him.
The force of it knocks me forward.
"Yes," I whisper to the savage part, deep inside.
One moment the world’s ending around me, next there’s nothing.
I stay curled against the wheel of the car for several heartbeats, arms wrapped around my stomach, chest heaving. Whatever had been clawing at me from the inside has retreated enough that I can breathe.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I lift my head above the edge of the car. The sight waiting for me is sickening.
"Oh God," The words barely make it out.
It’s a war zone. Brickwork ripped away in chunks, glass strewn like glittering ice, so much blood. Smeared across concrete, splashed up walls, painted across shattered metal. There are wet chunks of things I can’t identify. Rain falls steadily over all of it, washing red into the gutters.
My hands fly to my mouth, I don’t know if I’m crying because of the blood or because I can’t immediately see him. The fear builds and builds until it’s unbearable.
Arms wrap around me.
I scream a full-throated, terrified sound, as my feet leave the ground. Something enormous lifts me effortlessly against a solid chest. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
"Frankie," he says through the panic. "It’s me."
I make some horrible strangled noise, he’s everywhere. His hand cups the back of my head. His mouth brushes my soaked hair, my temple, my forehead, my nose, cheeks, chin.
"I’ve got you," he murmurs against my skin. "I’ve got you. You’re safe."
Remnants of sanity are lost, ugly sobs consume everything else. I grab fistfuls of his jacket and cling to him with every ounce of strength I possess. Blood and rain and wolf and River. His scent crashes over me in waves, soothing the raw and terrified deep inside my chest.
I press my face anywhere I can reach, breathing him, rubbing and trying to crawl under his skin, smearing tears and snot and desperation anywhere I touch.
"You’re okay," I chant between ragged breaths.
Can’t make myself let go of him. Every blink, I see blood. Every breath, smell death. No, his heartbeat is hammering beneath my cheek. His arms are crushing me against him.
"I’m okay," he murmurs softly.
The held taught, breaks, and I laugh. I’m laughing so fucking hard I can’t breathe, it’s completely unhinged, the laughter of padded rooms.
River pulls back, still holding me, and I notice the blood splashed across his shoulders. There’s so much of it.
"You’re covered in blood." My eyes follow it down his arm and my laugh becomes hysterical.
"I think..." I wipe my face and gesture vaguely toward the wreckage surrounding us. "I think that used to be a car."
My hand is shaking so badly I can barely point. River stares at me for a second, and to my complete astonishment, he laughs too.
We stand in the middle of a ruined street, soaked to the skin, bordered by destruction, laughing like lunatics. I think I’ve got control of myself and another laugh, another tear follows it. I can’t seem to separate one from the other.
Laughter begins to fade, replaced with strange lightness. River reaches up and carefully brushes a strand of soaked hair from my face, what I see in his eyes is overwhelming relief, he’s been carrying the weight of the world and has only just allowed himself to put it down.
The lump in my throat returns, I see everything he’s trying not to show me.
Neither of us speaks, there’s nothing to say, not here.
His thumb traces across my cheek, reassuring himself that I’m real. He leans forward at a glacial pace, silently asking permission, and presses a kiss to my forehead. A sacred gesture, his lips linger for a moment longer than necessary.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t go far. His forehead settles against mine, our noses brushing softly together, I breathe him in. A droplet slides across the tip of my nose, I assume it’s rain and pull back an inch to wipe it away.
A single track of tears is making a slow journey down River’s face. They reach the tip of his nose, slip free and land against mine. River doesn’t seem to notice, or care. I understand.
His mouth ghosts against mine, giving me every chance to pull away. There’s no urgency in it. His lips are cold from the rain and impossibly soft, lingering long enough for me to feel every ounce of tenderness he’s been hiding beneath all that calm. The kiss deepens by fractions rather than force, slow and careful and patient, he’s confessing a hundred things without speaking.
The ruined street, the fear, the last five days, none of it matters. There is only this heart breaking feeling of being found. Of being held.
Of finally being able to stop running.
