the noise. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘We need to land,’ I said.
‘We got nothing for another seven minutes.’
Ares yelled, ‘Anita!’
I moved back where he could see me more easily, but didn’t offer my hand to hold. ‘I’m here.’
‘Shoot me.’
‘What?’
‘Shoot me, before I shift.’ He writhed on the stretcher, and screamed in pain again, and then said, ‘There’s nowhere for you to run in here.’
‘Seven minutes, just seven minutes, hold on.’
He screamed, and the gibbering call filled his throat. ‘I will attack you. I will not be me … I can feel it. Oh, God! God! Shoot me!’ He turned wild eyes to Lawrence, pointed at him. ‘Shoot me!’
Lawrence shook his head. ‘I’m here to save your ass, not kill it.’
‘Anita!’
‘I’m here, Ares.’
‘Don’t let him … use me … like this …’ And he just started screaming over and over again as fast as he could draw breath. His body began to jerk and convulse. I could see the muscles and ligaments under his skin popping and moving in ways that they were never meant to move. He was fighting the change, which meant it was slower and a lot more painful. He was trying to give us time.
Lawrence asked, ‘Does it always hurt this much?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s fighting it.’
‘To give us time,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Can you move the other men farther away from him?’
‘To where?’ he asked.
He was right. There was nowhere to go. Travers was trapped above Ares, and the third wounded man whose name I hadn’t even caught was strapped in the middle of it all. Shit, shit, shit!
The screaming gave way to that skin-crawling gibbering, laughing sound. Fur flowed, bones shifted, and it was as if some giant hand crushed the human form and remade it by pulling it apart. I’d never seen anyone change like this, as if they were being dissected and put back together. It wasn’t just clear liquid that ran out of Ares. Blood poured from his body and spattered across the inside of the chopper as he fought to hold on. They only bled like that when they fought the change. Blood was hitting the man on the floor of the chopper, and I had a moment to worry about the lycanthrope blood getting in his wounds and then we had other things to worry about.
Ares popped the straps that held his body down and tried to sit up, but there wasn’t room with Travers above him. He rolled so his back was to us and the blankets they’d put on him and the shadows hid most of him. We could still see the muscles and bones of his body moving under the blanket like a nest of snakes. I heard the copilot on the radio yelling, ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday!’
Lawrence strapped himself into the seat. I stayed standing, got a death grip on the edge of one of the stretchers, and used the other hand to unholster my Browning BDM. Yeah, the AR or the shotgun would be a surer kill, but they would also go through Ares and through the helicopter. The Browning would just shoot a hole in Ares. I didn’t want to do that, but I’d had the air marshal training so I could carry on planes, and they’d covered helicopters. They didn’t like being shot, even more than airplanes. No matter what the movies showed on screen, damage the rotor blades and it’s coming down. You damage the motor and it’s coming down. Planes could fly on only one engine, or glide with no engines for a while; once the blades stopped rotating, helicopters just crashed. If I was going to have to shoot Ares anyway, I’d just as soon not kill us all while I did it.
The Black Hawk shuddered and started down. The pilot yelled, ‘I found a clearing, but it’s gonna be tight. Strap in!’
I debated on sitting down and strapping in, but I wasn’t sure I could shoot Ares before he took out the pilot and copilot. The space was that tight. I had assured them that he wouldn’t lose it in the air, and I had been wrong, so I stood between them and what was lying on the stretcher in the dark. A low, evil growl trickled through the cabin.
I tightened my grip, braced my legs as best I could, and aimed into the shadowed pile that was Ares. The only comfort I had was that in hyena form Ares was too big to move well in the close