Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,88
doubt, one of the most powerful werewolves I’d ever met. He was exceptionally dangerous in the best of circumstances, but having to decide whether or not to hurt my best friend before he could hurt me was one of the worst things I’d ever had to do.
“Tommy,” I said softly. “Man, come on, you know me; you’re my best friend. I’ve spent the last year trying to get here to get to you. I’m so sorry it took so long.”
Tommy, eyes on me, moved slowly toward me. In his werewolf beast form, Tommy was a foot and a bit taller than as a man and weighed maybe a hundred pounds more.
“Naaaaaaaaaaate,” Tommy said, as if the word couldn’t quite leave his mouth. “Paaaaaaiinnn.”
“Tommy,” I said softly. “Come on, let me get that collar off you, and then we can go home. You can see Olivia and your children. They’ve missed you.”
“Naaaaaaaate,” Tommy said before snapping his jaws toward me. “Deeaaath.”
He dived toward me, all muscle and power, and I blasted him in the chest with air, dropping to the side and rolling away. Tommy fell to the ground and sprang back toward me, forcing me to wrap myself in a dense shield of air or risk being eviscerated by his razor-sharp claws. Even with the shield, he drove me back, forcing me to reapply the magic as he punched and slashed away at it, tearing through my magical shield with no regard for himself. He just wanted me dead. Nothing else mattered.
I turned the shield into a battering ram and smashed it into his chest, throwing him back, away from me. He collided with a tree, but he was soon back on his feet and charged at me once again. I dropped to my knees and smashed a torrent of air into his legs, tripping him and throwing him into the darkness of the forest beyond. He hit something hard and howled in pain.
Tommy was soon back in the clearing, looking at me with hatred.
“Tommy,” I said. “Please don’t do this. Please.”
Tommy roared at me before charging once more. I wrapped tendrils of air around his arms and legs, stopping him in place, but he roared again and charged forward, snapping the air and forcing the feedback up my arms. He was only a few paces from me when shadows leaped out of the ground, dragging Tommy down to a kneeling position.
“I don’t want to do this,” I said. “I need you to come to your senses. I need to know that whatever they’ve done to you, you’re fighting it. I need to know my best friend is still in there. Please.”
Tommy’s jaws snapped over and over again as I walked toward him, making sure that the tendrils of shadow were intact, that he wasn’t about to break free.
I stood before Tommy, trying to figure out how to snap him out of whatever had been done to him. It had taken Mordred’s death to break him free, but I wasn’t about to kill Tommy to test out if it would work with him.
“Naaaaaaate,” Tommy said. “Kiiiilllll yooooouuuu.”
“No,” I said. “You’re still in there somewhere. I know it.”
“Ennnnnnd yoooouuuu,” Tommy said. He snapped forward, testing the bonds of shadow.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told him.
Tommy roared and took a step back before springing forward, his incredible strength snapping the shadows. He tackled me and threw me back across the clearing. I hit a tree hard and dropped to the ground as Tommy sprinted into the darkness again. I got back to my feet, my head spinning from the smash into the tree, only to be punched in the jaw by Tommy as he ran back into the clearing. I’d only just managed to put a shield up in time, but even so, it was a hard enough punch that it spun me around on the spot, and my shield vanished.
Tommy picked me up by the back of my armor and slammed my head into the tree, over and over again, before he drove his knee into the side of my head and threw me casually into another tree.
I felt blood pouring down my face from an untold number of cuts. I got back to my knees and felt a kick in my ribs that the remaining runes on my armor absorbed, but they flashed once and went dead just before I got a second kick that lifted me off the ground and broke my ribs.