Chapter 43

“You,” Lola spluttered, so angry she could barely get the word out and didn’t realize she already said that. Visions of that woman standing silhouetted against a backdrop of burning homes in her village was the only thing Lola could see. They were vivid, those visions. She could almost smell burning wood and charred, human flesh mixed with the metallic tang of blood.

The woman did a small, mocking bow, a wide grin on her face.

“Yes. That’s right. Me,” she said. “One point for you, Lola dear.”

In pain, with a broken arm and maybe three to four cracked ribs, Lola let out a primal scream of outrage and attacked. She didn’t care about her injuries. Didn’t care how much pain she was in. This woman had killed people she loved. People she had known her whole life. This woman had come into her village and completely fucked up her entire life. Drake was the mastermind behind all that, she knew, but he was out of reach at the moment.

This bitch, though. She had come right to Lola.

Lola had no weapons. Her blade had been left back at the area she and Russel had met his brothers, and was now, presumably, in the castle somewhere with all their other stuff. Brought there by the servants one of the brothers, she couldn't remember which, had told her would come for it.

She didn’t care. Not one bit.

In her blind fury, she reacted without thinking. If she had taken a moment, maybe two, she would have realized how outmatched she was. Ghouls were one thing. The mindless, disgusting creatures barely had brains to speak of. They weren’t exactly difficult to kill, even without a weapon she surmised. Or maybe that was just her being overconfident. She had, after all, come a long way since her days in Gloucester. She wasn’t helpless anymore.

Werewolves, however, were a different class of monster.

The natural weapons they relied on, claws and fangs, were extremely deadly. Not only that, they also had superior strength and the ability to regenerate. This made them challenging to kill even at a hundred percent and not already wounded.

On the other side of the coin, Nora was absolutely overconfident and had every right to be. She laughed when she saw Lola coming straight at her, fury flashing in her eyes with such intensity; it was a wonder the woman could even think at all.

“That’s right little bunny,” she said, dropping into a relaxed and bored fighting stance. “Come on over.” She laughed again, the sound grating and irritating. “The gods must want your death to be a quick one.

Lola didn’t know exactly what she was going to do against Nora. The only thing she knew was that she had to kill her, somehow. The rage inside her demanded no less and if she was honest with herself, she demanded no less too. She let all that anger take control and let the training from Russel naturally come out.

It took less than a minute for Lola to get within striking distance of Nora and as soon as she was, she lashed out with her good arm. Nora didn’t even try to dodge until the very last second and all she really did was move her head back a bit. The fist went sailing past harmlessly but before she could counter, Lola used the momentum of her punch to spin herself as she dropped to the ground and flung a leg out in a wide, sweeping arc. It connected with the side of Nora’s left knee with enough force to actually hurt. Surprised, she found her leg buckling under the sudden stress and she fell to the ground in a decidedly graceless fall. Out of sheer bad luck, the side of her head smacked directly into the corner of the same stone bench Lola had been sitting on.

Nora’s vision went white for several long minutes. She was so dazed, she had no idea what happened, what was going on, or why she was suddenly on the ground with a splitting headache. She reached up a hand to her temple and it came away wet with blood.

What the hell? she asked herself.

Lola didn’t waste the opportunity. She practically dove on top of Nora and started pummeling her over and over again with her good arm. The anger gave her hits a lot more power behind them and she felt a satisfying crunch as Nora’s nose broke. Then another surge of satisfaction hit her when she split Nora’s lip open. It spurred her to keep going.

Distantly, sounds of guards running around and shouting at each other came to her but she was lost in a haze of combat. Vaguely, she thought she remembered alarm bells ringing as well. But for the moment, at least, she was still alone with Nora. The guards running around didn’t know where she was and hadn’t thought to check the small park. It was out of the way and not usually patrolled by them.

Nora felt the punches slamming into her and they actually hurt, which she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around. Lola was just a human. She should be too weak to do anything to her. But already her face was healing. The nasty gash she’d gotten when her head hit the stone bench was nearly gone. The pain had dissipated as well and she could think straight again.

“Die!”

Lola was screaming that word over and over again.

Nora felt all the humor at the situation suddenly evaporate inside her. The fact that she’d gotten into Oclan so easily, made her way across the country to the capital, and then into the castle itself only to almost immediately find Lola had been extremely funny at the time. What were the odds of that? She’d barely had to kill anyone on her way through Oclan. Maybe one or two unfortunate souls that saw her and four guards that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other than that, there was barely any resistance.

Except for the oni.

Those had been a surprise for sure but she sacrificed Zac and Alana to them. It had been a calculated risk but one that paid off in the end. The oni focused on those two and she made it through.

Now here she was, finally at the end of her goal, and the weak, sniveling, human bitch had the audacity to punch her?

No way would she allow that to keep happening.

Once the last bits of disorientation from her fall and the punches left her, she lashed out with most of her strength and pushed Lola away. The girl went tumbling backward, unable to do anything to prevent it. The sudden shift in balance along with the shove was enough to overbalance her. She was a fighter though, much more so than when the two first met. That version of the girl had been a coward, willing to run away while everyone she knew and loved was killed. This Lola, however, had evidently learned some moves. She kept her center of gravity lower and while one arm wasn’t working, she held the other one up in a guard position. Since Russel Polver had been the one to rescue her, Nora assumed he also taught her a few things.

Good, she whispered to herself. At least now she would have at least a little fun before she ripped Lola’s throat out. She liked it when they fought back. It was much more satisfying than the weepy ones that begged for their lives right before she killed them.

She had to be careful though. Time was not a luxury she had a lot of at the moment. The guards running around the castle would find them eventually and if Lola wasn’t dead by then, her entire mission would be a failure and she would have thrown her life away for nothing.

Before tangling with Lola again, she let more of the beast out and felt her body start to change in response. Her brow ridge protruded outward and she felt fangs itching to come out. The claws on her fingers got longer and more pointed. Then she ran straight for the bitch.

The two met in a clash of claws against a single fist. Despite all the pain of her injuries, Lola still kept up and was able to hold her own. For the most part. She took a few brutal slashes to her arms and legs but while they were painful, they were mostly shallow, superficial cuts. She kept herself back and away from those swinging claws but Nora was also persistent and didn’t give Lola any breathing room.

I need a weapon of some kind, Lola told herself. She looked around but couldn’t find anything. She wished she had her blade with her. That, at least, would have given her a fighting chance. But as she glanced around, she saw nothing useful. The only hope she had now was to either knock Nora unconscious and kill her or deliver a killing blow in one shot. The first might be doable but the second was almost definitely not. She was already injured and even if she wasn’t, she didn’t have the raw strength to kill a werewolf in one blow.

She dodged out of the way of one of Nora’s blows and then dodged again. She was happy that the limb that got broken had been her arm and not one or both of her legs. There would have been nothing she could do to get away if that had been the case. At least now, for the moment, she could move around.

“I thought you wanted to kill me!” Nora shouted and then laughed. “Quit running scared, little bunny! I’m right here.”

“Fuck you,” Lola screamed back, dodging another swipe of Nora’s claws.

The rage started to fade as she realized with dawning horror that she was not going to get out of this. Not unless something or someone intervened. That was a hard thing to swallow considering everything the wolf-woman had done to her but she had to be realistic now.

She was too weak and too hurt to kill Nora.