Chapter 30

“Make it easy on yourself,” Rutger called out, attempting to smile with his fang-filled mouth. It was a grotesque, horrible thing to look at. “Or don’t. That will be a lot more fun. I haven’t had a proper hunt in ages.”

He glared at them, that smile widening and getting worse.

“I always kill ‘em too quickly.”

“Don’t hog all the fun,” the Russel-look alike, or at least that’s who Lola thought was talking, said. It was still somewhat hard to tell them apart now. That one, she realized, was the only one she didn’t get a name for.

“Shut yer fucking mouth, Reid,” Ray, the hairy one, said.

At the moment, they were all hairy, Lola realized but even so, Ray’s amount of fur far exceeded the others. And, thanks to good ol’ Ray, she had all their names now. Or at least, what they called each other. She suspected some were shortened, nickname versions but it was all she had to go on. If or when they got out of their current mess, she was going to make it a point to sit down with Russel and get his entire family history, no matter how ugly it was. And judging by the four so willing and eager to murder them, she was guessing it wasn’t a family history brimming with rainbows, butterflies, and tons of pleasant memories.

“What do we do?” she asked, taking a cautious step backward so that she was closer to Russel. Looking back at him for a quick second showed her that he was more wolf than man now too. His face had sprouted fur and the ridge of his forehead had protruded out somewhat, along with his nose and mouth. Fangs jutted from his mouth and his muscles looked bigger now. His eyes were blazing with amber light and for a moment, it reminded Lola of when he had given himself over to the wolf 100%. His eyes had burned almost exactly like that before. She was already afraid but seeing that made it surge through her body even more, making her feel weak and shaky for a few ugly seconds.

Russel didn’t take his eyes off his brothers and tracked each one’s movements. He brought his hands up in a guard, both of them with fingers outstretched to show off his wicked, black claws. There was blood at their tips and Lola realized for the first time how painful his transformations probably were. Even though he changed a lot more smoothly than his brothers, it still had to hurt like a bitch.

“I’m going to be honest,” Russel growled through his fanged mouth. “I am not sure. I honestly didn’t expect to see them this quickly. I thought we had a lot more time to prepare.”

“Well, it looks like you aren’t getting that particular wish,” Lola whispered back, her voice so harsh it was like Russel had been whipped.

He understood, of course. She was pissed and had every right to be. Not only had he lied but he had been incredibly stupid in bringing her to yet another place filled with a dangerous amount of monsters wanting to kill her.

There has to be a way out of this, he thought to himself but his brain was too on edge. Too drenched in adrenaline from the upcoming fight for him to think straight. Maybe I can outsmart them somehow. It wouldn’t be that hard really. Rutger and Raylan were absolute morons, even dumber than he mentioned. Both spent almost all their time indulging in baser urges and cared little for anything else. Roland was a bit more cunning, true, and savage. He would be a definite problem. It was Reid that gave him the most worry. Reid knew how to play the game, as Russel liked to call it. He knew exactly how to manipulate not only their brothers, but their father too. He was dangerous and cunning.

“I really hate to dump more pressure on you but time is running out. They’re moving to surround us. If that happens, we are definitely not making it out alive,” Lola said.

Her wide, frightened eyes were tracking several of the brothers who were getting much too close to her for comfort. She kept her blade raised and ready. If they wanted to kill her, by all the gods in heaven, she was going to make them pay for it in blood. She knew she wasn’t going to win, not against a werewolf, but that didn’t mean she was going down without a fight. If she got lucky, she might even put one’s eye out or chop off a body part. They would just regrow it, and probably quickly, but she would die with the satisfaction of knowing she did some damage on the way out. That was something at least.

“We can’t run,” Russel told her. “They’ll just hunt us down like animals and slaughter us. Fighting them is no good, obviously. We both know how that is going to go down.”

“I hear a lot of negativity and not a whole lot of positivity and problem-solving,” Lola shouted, She swiped her blade out in an arc when Ray got a bit too close for comfort. The shorter, and much hairier, wolf jumped back out of the way and started laughing at her. The dark, cold laugh filled Lola’s belly with a butterfly sensation she didn’t like at all.

Things only got worse from there.

As soon as she brought her blade back closer to her body, the four brothers attacked in earnest. Russel jumped in front of her while pushing her backward at the same time, sending her tumbling away over the ground. It hurt like hell. Pebbles and bigger rocks dug into her back, arms, and legs, but when she stopped rolling, she immediately jumped back to her feet. The pain was there, sullen aches and stinging cuts in quite a few spots, but they were insignificant against the much bigger, emotional onslaught ripping through her.

“Russel!” she screamed.

Dread knotted up her stomach when she saw Russel being set upon by all four brothers at the same time. They literally tore into him, ripping and slashing and biting at him. Blood flew through the air. Howls erupted from throats.

Russel put up an intense, unforgiving fight despite the fact that it was a four on one battle. Years of bullying and torment kept running through his head and now, all those past rages and anger came rushing back in to mix with the anger and rage of them trying to kill Lola. It gave him a near berserker-level of strength that was as beautiful to watch as it was simply horrifying. Russel lashed out several times, his claws flashing. He raked them over the face of one brother and jammed them into the lower torso of another brother. At the same time, he took hits to his unguarded back and sides. The other two brothers, at this point Lola had no idea who was who anymore, slashed at Russel. One scratched deep, bloody furrows into his back, separating skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter. The other one darted behind Russel and severed the hamstrings of both his legs.

As soon as he did, Russel went down. His legs simply couldn’t hold the weight anymore and all four brothers toppled on top of him, continuing to rip and bite him to pieces.

“No!” Lola shouted, tears filling her vision. She didn’t hesitate at all in what she did next. All that fear she had bubbling underneath the surface was ruthlessly slaughtered by her need to protect Russel. To stop him from being hurt or killed by his brothers. As a human, she knew she stood little chance of actually doing any good, but she wouldn't allow herself to stand by and watch him be killed either. She had to do something.

Russel wasn’t trying to fight back anymore. They were too strong and he was already too weak from the massive blood loss and wounds he suffered. Even now, he could feel his regenerative abilities working overtime to fix his battered body but he was getting weaker and weaker. He tried to throw his brothers off him but that was an utterly useless endeavor. He could barely budge them.

Then he heard Lola shout something and could tell she was coming to try and save him.

“St-stay b-ba…” He tried to get the words out but they were too low to hear. He coughed out a glob of blood onto the ground, took in a shuddering breath, and tried to tell her to stay back again but this time, he couldn’t get any words out at all.

“Look at this here,” Reid said. Russel detected excitement and eagerness in his brother’s voice. “Russel’s little pet wants to have some fun with us too. Let’s be obliging gents, shall we?”

One by one, they got off him. Rutger had him by the throat and as he got off him, he threw Russel to the ground. He turned on his back and looked up at the sky. The dreary, gray sky that always seemed to hover over his homeland.

What do I do? he asked himself, knowing his tired, pain-addled brain pretty much had nothing left to cough up. Nothing except for a last-minute, all-or-nothing, either-die-or-survive, trump card. One he never thought he would have to play.

Fuck it, his mind whispered back. It’s either use it or die. It’s that simple, bub.

He gritted his teeth, grinding them together painfully. Slowly, inch by painstaking inch, he got to his elbows. Then he fought and struggled his way to his feet. When he did, his blurry, lightheaded mind showed him his brothers getting dangerously close to Lola.

“Stop!” he screamed out as loudly as he could.

All four brothers turned to look at him, snarls and growls erupting out of them.

“I call on the Blood Challenge!” he yelled. “My right as a son of Carter Ismael Polver, King of the Oclan Werewolf Kingdom, demands that I be heard and my challenge accepted!”