Wolfman Tales (Box Set)

Wolfman Tales (Box Set)
Brannan Black
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2015 Brannan Black
Excerpt from Blind Passion

It'd been a week since I'd started venturing out of my burrow, slipping along the side of the building, checking out what I could around it. A lot of weeds, but some flowers grew in the bright Colorado sun, too. I pulled some of the weeds in hopes that more flowers would grow. It lifted some of the dark depression from my soul, just being in the sun again.

Mostly, I heard only birds, squirrels and the wind. Occasionally something would rustle somewhere near, and I would scamper like a frightened bunny back into my burrow. Around the far side of the shed, I'd found a nice spot of shade to sit and enjoy the air, dreaming of days gone by or a future where my sister Jian returned.

Maybe she'd found a refugee camp that would take us. Or others who would come here to live.

Sometimes, far more often than I dared admit, I would imagine a man coming to save me like some prince in a fairy tale. Knowing I was alone, I played out these fantasies wherever I was. After all, who would see me lying naked in the grass with my fingers in my lonely pussy? Surly if anyone, even beasts, were around they'd have come for me by now.

A snap of sound pulled me from my dozing. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, and I jerked up, fully alert. I heard a sound, a rustling in the grass, too constant to be the wind, from around the left side of the shed. The breeze carried a musky odor unlike any animal I knew.

Every time I went out I took the rifle Jian had left me. Not that I could hit a damned thing with it, but maybe it would make whatever was out there pause long enough for me to get back inside. I threw the bolt, chambering a round.

"I'll shoot if you don't back off!" I put all the confidence I could muster into my vain warning.

A deep, growling voice chuckled from far too close. "I should warn you that getting shot pisses me off." His voice sounded almost normal, almost human. Almost. Which meant a beast had found me. He'd stopped moving. I could hear his breath now, just around the corner.

I backed away toward the other corner, ready to make a dash for the door. Over the pounding of my heart I heard the grass rustle. I threw the gun at him, whirled and ran. Straight into a hard wall that shouldn't have been there.

Confusion sang through my mind for the few seconds it took the wall to move. I screamed as a hard body twisted me around and slammed me face-first into the ground.

Growls seemed to come from everywhere around me. I struggled to crawl out from under the beast that had me but I knew it was futile. Strong claws tore into my clothing, holding me fast. Sharp fangs closed on the back of my neck. I sucked in a sob. This was it. The end. If I were lucky it'd be quick. An odd peace swept over me. I'd have died when the food ran out, anyway. I let out a deep breath, and the peace deepened. It was over. At least I wouldn't be alone any longer. At that moment, death seemed just fine.

I rested my head on the ground, a slight smile curving my lips as I let out another deep breath. Time seemed to slow, and everything magnified in that instant -- the brush of his beard on my neck, a fall of lank hair brushing the side of my face, the smell of his breath, oddly sweet, and the musky male smell under the need for a shower. Every rock under me and the smell of sun-warmed grass -- all seemed amplified in those last moments of my life.

The fangs on my neck released. Shock flooded my already overwhelmed nerves. He rubbed his head along my turned cheek, surprising me with the softness of his beard and hair.

"Good, very good. Not prey. Knew you weren't prey."