Bound by Forever (True Immortality #3) - S. Young Page 0,14

like a water droplet. It flickered and there was a city. A mountain towering over it. A garden. A water garden. A Japanese garden. The images kept coming, one after the other, each like a mallet to her head.

Self-directed frustration and irritation held Kiyo immobile for a few seconds.

He’d followed Niamh’s scent down the highway, across traffic and down a road that led him under the railway bridge to a park.

And scattered across the road by the entrance to the park were three vehicles. One smelled of Niamh.

The other two of vamps and wolves.

The Garm.

They’d found her.

For a moment, Kiyo wondered why the hell she had led them to a park instead of traveling, and that’s when he realized that she probably couldn’t.

Kiyo’s trick with the iron had depleted her strength.

And if she died today, Fionn would make the rest of his eternity a living hell.

Biting back a curse, Kiyo took off into the park.

He was faster as a wolf, especially in snow.

So as he ran, a blur through the wintry darkness, following Niamh’s scent and the fresh footprints, he called on the change.

Not many wolves could run and change at the same time, but as Kiyo liked to remind himself, he wasn’t like normal werewolves.

Usually, he had time to enjoy the transformation. Changing was like a satisfying pleasure pain. Like a deep stretch of a knotted muscle. Bones cracked and muscles contorted and it all sounded horrific but … it wasn’t. Kiyo, however, didn’t have time to feel any of those things.

He slowed, kicking off his boots, just before he began to run on all fours. Eventually he skidded through the snow, halting in the density of the woods to let the transformation take over. He pushed it. He didn’t savor it. And in a flash, he was staring through the eyes of his wolf with his wider peripheral vision.

He contained the growl he wanted to unleash but didn’t for fear of losing the element of surprise. Kiyo instead left behind his tattered clothes and ran.

He soared through the woods with such speed, even if it had been daylight, all anyone would have seen was a blur so fleeting, they would be sure they imagined him. The wind whipped through his fur; the snow barely had time to soak his paws he was so light across it. He felt the violence building within him at the thought of The Garm harming Niamh Farren.

She was his charge.

She was his job.

His to protect.

And Kiyo did not like to fail.

Hearing voices ahead, his ears twitched as a male voice asked in a thick Russian accent, “What do we do with her?”

“Kill her,” another grunted in exasperation.

“But she’s … she’s seizing or something,” a female said. “Maybe she’s already dying.”

Seizing?

The word caused Kiyo more than a flicker of unease.

Rose said Niamh’s visions physically incapacitated her. She said she resembled someone in the midst of a seizure.

Niamh couldn’t even protect herself.

“Take that piece of iron and kill her!” the exasperated male ordered. Kiyo could see the man through the opening ahead. Tall. Burly. Another wolf.

Kiyo leapt out of the trees at his back, jaw open, and clamped his teeth into the man’s neck. The force of his hit took them both to the ground. He tore out the wolf’s throat, hearing the surprise from his companions as he rolled off to face the others.

His eyes darted to Niamh. She was collapsed in the snow, eyes wide and staring unseeingly at the night sky as her body convulsed.

Rage blasted through him as he turned his attention to the two vampires and two werewolves who bared their incisors and canines at him. Only cowards with no honor would take down Niamh while she was in no state to fight back.

He would enjoy this hunt.

The female wolf came at him first. Kiyo lunged to meet her. She was so distracted by his open jaws, she missed his claws. As she triumphantly punched him with impressive force in the muzzle, Kiyo pushed the change, his front forelegs shifting back to his human arms as he slashed her across the belly with his wolf claws.

As her howl of agony lit the air, momentarily disconcerting her companions, Kiyo made the full shift. Uncaring of his nakedness, he spun back to the female as she dropped to her knees, retracted his claws, and punched through the solid cage of muscle and bone in her back.

The force of the hit shuddered up his arms as his hand clamped around the hot, wet