Chapter 1
Into the Belly of the Beast
Blood and fear.
That’s what Nadia smelled as the two giggling thugs pushed her roughly into Gruss’s subterranean “playroom,” with its dirt floor, rough stone walls, and low ceiling strung in naked bulbs.
In the forest, where life and death were two sides of the same coin, these smells were both common and natural.
Here, however, in a basement at the center of State College, with cheery herds of coeds passing obliviously on the sidewalks overhead, the smells of blood and fear were an aberration—a perversion.
As was the leer of sadistic pleasure that twisted Gruss’s face as he bent over his gruesome work.
“You checked her?” one of Gruss’s two main bodyguards asked. Gruss never went anywhere without these formidable bodyguards, a pair of hard-nosed enforcers from Philly, one a half-orc and the other a human so muscular and ugly that he could’ve passed for half-orc.
“Yeah, we checked her,” the taller thug said, and chuckled nastily. “She’s clean.”
The shorter thug giggled. “Real clean. Boss, she-”
“Shut up,” Gruss said. The mobster turned toward Nadia and showed her a smile full of gold teeth.
For the first time, fear skewered her heart.
Not at the sight of Gruss, his bloody shirt, or even the gore-smeared meat cleaver gripped in his pudgy fist.
No, her heart leapt at the sight of the small figure strapped in the heavy wooden chair mottled with stains and bolted to a concrete pad.
Middle-aged and balding, Gruss had a thick neck, burly shoulders, and a gut like a sack of cement. He’d come up through the ranks of the Philadelphia Syndicate, making a name as a hitman before taking over central Pennsylvania. From the mean streets of Philadelphia, he’d brought along a reputation for dismembering those who displeased him.
Now he eyed Nadia like a butcher receiving a side of choice beef.
Today, Nadia had returned to State College from Fire Ridge with three goals: give Dan’s roommate, Willis, a ridiculous amount of money that would more than pay Dan’s share of rent and utilities; sell Roderick’s magical sword and his wizard’s spell book; and avoid Gruss.
She’d achieved the first two goals within an hour of arrival.
Willis’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head when he’d opened the door and seen her standing there in her black bodysuit. The little gnome’s eyes almost popped out again when she dropped ten times Dan’s annual rent on the kitchen table, where Willis and his friends were in the middle of an incredibly boring-looking game called Advanced Drudgery & Dullards.
She’d sold the sword and spell book quickly and for fair prices. Then, as Nadia was leaving the Casters’ Guild, one of her urchins stopped her. Nadia’s eavesdropper, Goldfinch, sobbed out the chilling news.
Gruss’s informants had seen Nadia entering town. And since she had not immediately reported to Gruss…
“Go fugg y’self,” slurred the small figure lashed to the chair. His eyes were swollen shut to either side of his smashed nose. His mouth was a bloody slash across a badly lacerated face painted crimson.
Nadia’s heart leapt again to see the bloody mess at the end of the boy’s right arm. Where was the hand she had taught to pick pockets and wield a sword? All that remained now was a bloody ball of bone and ruined flesh shorn of digits.
But even here, beaten and blind and utterly hopeless, her brave little pup, the hard-ass halfling she had named Badger, remained defiant.
“Fugg y’self all to Hades,” the boy spat and slumped forward, losing consciousness.
Gruss smiled nastily. Not at Badger. At Nadia. “Mother Wolf, you are late.”
“Set him free,” Nadia growled, struggling to control herself. “I brought money.”
“Money,” Gruss said flatly, and his smile disappeared.
One of the thugs who’d patted her down crossed the room, set Nadia’s leather backpack on the table with a heavy thump, and pulled back the flap.
Gruss glanced inside and grunted. “That’s a lot of money.”
“One thousand gold pieces,” Nadia said. “Yours for the boy’s freedom.”
Gruss stared at the money for a second, then lifted lazy eyes in her direction. “One thousand gold pieces for a street urchin? A one-handed street urchin?”
The thugs who’d brought her in laughed, enjoying the show, but Gruss’s bodyguards merely chuckled, eyes as hard as the steel pommels upon which their hands rested.
Gruss snorted. “This kid, you’re willing to pay so much for him. What is he, a prince in hiding?”
“No,” Nadia said. “Not a prince. Just a boy. But he’s one of mine.”
“One of yours?” Gruss said. “One of hers, she says. Nadia, Nadia, Nadia. You are suffering from a fundamental lack of understanding. This boy isn’t yours.”
Nadia tensed, gripped by dread. She had been afraid that things would go this way.
“This is my town,” Gruss said, spreading his thick arms and gesturing with bloody hands at the stone walls, low ceiling, and the bustling, happy university a hundred million miles above them. “The streets are mine. This boy is mine. You are mine.”
Nadia drew breath through flared nostrils and stilled her trembling body.
“You were supposed to come and see me weeks ago,” Gruss said.
“I apologize,” Nadia said. “I was—”
“You ignored me,” Gruss said, his eyes burning with sudden anger. “Avoided me. Disrespected me. Now you come here with money, telling me what to do? You think I care about your money? If it’s yours, I already own it!”
The mobster backhanded the sack, which toppled to the floor and vomited gold onto the bloodstained ground.
Nadia stared at Gruss, breathing hard. She had wanted so badly for this to work. Just pay the mobster, get Badger, and walk out. But now her worst fear was coming true.
“I don’t give a shit about the boy or you or money,” Gruss said, his voice growing angry. “Only one thing in this world matters: power. Once you’re in my chair, you’ll understand that.”
To either side, his bodyguards waited, ready to seize her.
The lesser thugs laughed eagerly, backing away. They thought they knew what was coming next.
Oh Hades, Nadia thought. No hope now, no hope. Everything was crumbling around her.
And that’s when Nadia slipped—and laughed.
Gruss squinted at her, an incredulous smile coming onto his cruel face.
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, reining in her laughter. “I didn’t mean to laugh. But you’re trying to frighten me.”
And I moved beyond fear when I was twelve years old.
She reached up, undid the clasp at her throat, and let her cloak fall to the floor.
The thugs burst out laughing. One of them crowed excitedly, “That’s what we were trying to tell you, boss! She’s fucking naked!”
Gruss looked her up and down, nodding. “Yes, now I see.” He licked his lips. “You want to negotiate. But certainly you’ve heard about my… tastes.”
“Yes,” Nadia said, sudden heat building in her. “You like it rough. Then you have your thugs join in.” She arched her back, lifting her breasts and cracking her spine, her true self coming to life within her. “I’ll give it to you rough.”
Gruss and his thugs laughed. Even the stone-faced bodyguards grinned.
“You’ll give it to us rough?” Gruss said, his face going mean again. “Oh sweetie, you are special. First money, then pussy. Thinking you can buy me.” He nodded at his bodyguards, who started in her direction. “You’re about to learn what rough means, girl. Ready to scream?”
“I don’t scream,” Nadia said and grinned, hearing the low grumble in her voice. “I howl.”
The burly bodyguards jerked to a stop, shocked by her transforming body. The street thugs backpedaled toward the exit, yipping like frightened puppies.
Gruss’s eyes went wide. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
And then Nadia did howl as the wolf roared to life inside her, filling her with pain and pleasure. She had avoided this moment for so long, ignoring Gruss’s threats and extortion, pretending to fear him—like a common thief should fear a big, scary mobster.
But they had pushed her, forced her.
And now, she thought, shifting into her half-woman/half-wolf form, now they have become prey.
One of Gruss’s heavies drew a sword and swung at her.
In her fused form, supercharged with the rage of a mother wolf protecting her pup, Nadia reacted so quickly that her attacker seemed to move in slow motion.
She leaned away from the arc of the sword, letting the attack miss her by inches, not feet. She wanted to stay close.
When the sword passed through the air in front of her, Nadia slammed into the asshole. She wrapped one arm around his waist, one around his shoulders, and sunk her fangs into the side of his face.
She pulped his eye, cracked the orbital, and crunched down on his skull. Then she twisted her head to one side and tossed the screaming thug into Gruss’s other bodyguard. As she released her embrace, she raked her claws across the man’s abdomen, slashing his gut open and releasing a tangle of hot, wet viscera.
The second bodyguard, armed with a club, was quick enough to sidestep his dying colleague but not fast enough to brace himself for her attack.
Growling, Nadia snapped out a jab, keeping her long fingers straight and stiff, and jammed her claws into the man’s throat. Her fingers speared through the windpipe, wrapped around his vertebrae, and yanked sharply, snapping his neck.
The man dropped, already dead. His dying partner knelt on the bloody ground, whimpering as he tried to stuff his guts back inside his ruined belly.
“The fuck?” Gruss shouted. He stood there clutching the bloody cleaver like a child holding a lollipop.
“It didn’t have to end this way,” Nadia growled. She licked her muzzle, thrilling at the taste of hot blood. “You were a pain in the ass, always barking threats, but you were useful in your way. With a loud asshole like you running the underground, I could hide in the shadows. But you involved the boy.”
“Okay,” the blood-soaked mobster said. He was trembling badly now, eyes flicking between her and the stairwell.
Nadia grumbled laughter. “You’re hoping that someone will come to help you. They won’t. Hammerheads like you, you inspire only fear, not loyalty. You have no pack.”
“People saw you coming here,” Gruss said, his voice going high with fear.
His weakness only stoked her bloodlust.
“If you kill me, the syndicate will hunt you down,” Gruss said, and she could smell fear pouring out of him now. “You and your street urchins will never be safe again.”
“None of us have ever been safe before,” Nadia said. “Why start worrying about safety now?”
“Wait,” Gruss begged, a pitiful smile wriggling across his terrified features. “We can fix this.”
“You should have taken the money,” Nadia said.
“What if—”
Whatever the mobster had meant to say whipped away with his scream as Mother Wolf pounced.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
