Gearteeth (#1 in the Trilogy) Preview

Chapter 3

A bolt of sheer agony shot up my right leg and nearly made me pass out. The werewolf's teeth bit into my upper thigh, at a thinner section of chain mail.

At first, I thought the beast had torn the flesh free. I realized though that it had latched on in a death-grip, intending to take my entire leg off. Looking down, I found its malevolent red gaze boring into me, the fully-healed eyes locking onto mine with a dread promise in them that mesmerized me for a second. The beast was crazed with pain at being trapped again, its arms convulsing uselessly where they had been pinioned, but its teeth were deep in the meat of my thigh. It shook me like a rag doll, ripping through both chain mail and skin.

"Let go, you furry bastard!" I yelled, and brought my left boot up high to crash down on its head again and again.

Henry leaned over with a broken pipe and beat on the creature as well, both of us raining down blow after heavy blow straight into the wolf's muzzle and head. Its grip slackened, and Henry pulled back hard on my tether.

I felt a chunk of my inner thigh rip free with an awful tearing sound that would have given a butcher nightmares, and then suddenly the pressure was gone. I nearly blacked out from pain as Henry grabbed my harness and manhandled me up the slope, out of the reach of the furious werewolf. It struggled twice as hard for freedom, the blood in its mouth egging it on. The furback had tasted its prey, so very close, and it was driving the wolf insane with hunger.

This time it was freeing itself much faster.

"Stop, stop," I mumbled to Henry as he dragged me up the slope. I was leaving behind an obvious blood trail, and the light-headedness clenched it.

Henry needed to get away—had to get away—before the thing caught us. I was just weighing him down.

"No, you're all right, it was just a small bite, sometimes it don't turn people, you'll be fine, you'll be okay," Henry babbled, tears streaming down his face.

But we both knew better. Even now I could feel the flesh puckering up around the bite mark, and the blood flow tapering off. The disease was in my bloodstream and racing through me under the full moon. I didn't need a doctor to tell me that I was a goner. There was nothing that could stop it.

"I got bit!" I said, grabbing Henry by his shoulders and shaking him. "Run, damn it; I'm good as dead already!"

"No!" Henry shouted back in my face. With a burst of desperate strength, he dragged me over the lip of the slope and into the ruined building whose foundations the Shrieking Sally had come to rest in. The mortally wounded structure groaned around us, promising that soon the whole thing would collapse in on the impact crater. For a second I held hope it would, trapping the wolf down there.

But this just wasn't my lucky day. Below, I heard the sickening sounds of the werewolf wrenching itself clear of its impaling prison. The beast gave a long, drawn-out howl of victory, a throaty roar of freedom, rage . . . and hunger.

"Get up, Eli! Come on, we've got to get away from here!" Henry was wild with anxiety and denial.

"Leave me be," I snarled, pushing him away and grabbing a broken board that lay nearby. Hissing with pain, I used the wood as a crutch to prop myself up.

Putting my weight on the board, I hobbled forward a step. The bleeding from the bite had already stopped, and the blood was clotted up and sticky. That wasn't good at all. I'd been gushing like a fountain only seconds before. It wasn't natural. My belly growled in warning, letting me know that there was a price for such unholy healing.

Something was off. In all the stories, I'd never heard about the disease spreading so quickly, healing a victim so rapidly. It took days, weeks, before bites would be on the mend; sometimes folks were laid up the entire month after. What was different for me? Was it because the moon was high, forcing the infection to burn through me faster? No, it couldn't be; it wasn't like those first folks bitten by howlers weren't dying under a full moon. I shook my head to clear it, trying to concentrate on the here and now. It really didn't matter; the important thing was that there was no denying the situation.