Fair enough. Miki left Conridge to hold the door while she tore through her drawer. She almost cried when she found two loaded Sig Sauer P239s. The P239s were compact and fit her hand pretty well. Both were .357s, so there were only seven rounds per magazine but, bless her, Conridge had extra clips already filled with ammo. She liked this woman more and more.

Miki stuck one gun in the back of her jeans and several already loaded clips in her front jean pocket. Then she stood in front of the door and dropped to her knees. She leveled the weapon in both hands and watched the door as the hyenas on the other side relentlessly pounded away trying to get to her. She watched the movement of the door. The way it buckled and where it buckled. She listened to the sounds they made when they made contact with the wood. Then she waited for that “click” inside her head.

Conridge watched her but didn’t say anything. When Miki finally spoke, she was ready.

“Move.”

Conridge took several quick steps back and covered her ears. Miki took one more second to clear her mind and body and then she shot three rounds through the door. She heard yelps of pain and surprise and then nothing.

After a minute, Conridge stepped forward and listened at the door.

“I don’t hear anything.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “Be ready,” was all she said before she eased the door open and glanced into the hallway.

“Holy shit.”

Miki looked at her professor. It was the first time she ever heard the woman utter anything except “hell” and the occasional “damn”.

“You’re a hell of shot, Ms. Kendrick.”

Miki stood and went to the door. She pulled it completely open, the gun out but at an angle so she didn’t accidentally kill someone important. There were three hyenas dead on the floor. Miki frowned.

“There were six on the stairs that Conall wasn’t fighting,” she whispered. She pulled the other gun out of her waistband. She offered it to Conridge, but the older woman shook her head. “I’m not the best shot.” She gazed at the hyena corpses. “Not like you.”

Miki shrugged. She’d been smart enough to learn to shoot with both hands. Amazing what you can get done when you’re under house arrest.

She had both guns out and low at her sides. Then she stepped into the hallway. She saw them silently moving at her from both directions from the corners of her eyes. She raised both weapons and fired.

Two went down immediately. One kept coming. So she turned and fired, brain and skull splattering the walls.

“We need to get into Craig’s lab.”

“I’ve got keys.” Conridge grabbed her purse and put it over her shoulder. Miki re-traced her steps to head back up to the third floor where she could find Craig’s lab, Conridge right behind her.

She thought aboutConall. She could hear the Pack fighting outside the building. The wolves would be outnumbered. Hyena clans could have up to 40 members. The thought of anything happening to Conall almost sent her skidding into full-blown panic. But freaking out now wouldn’t help him or her.

She knew what Craig kept in his lab. She’d put it there herself. She knew what it could do. Hell, she’d invented it. And if she had time, she’d probably realize that using her invention was the dumbest thing she could do. But she had the feeling she didn’t have time to come up with anything else. Time was something they no longer had.

She walked onto the third floor and stopped cold. Leucrotta. He had only shifted partially and was on top of one of the wolves. A female. She was out cold and it seemed that Leucrotta had been sniffing her.

He looked at Miki and smiled. An unbelievably sharp row of small but deadly fangs revealed. He stood and shifted almost completely back to human…except for the teeth. He walked toward her and she raised both guns.

Conridge was behind her. “He’s human.”

“So?”

“You kill him now, he stays human.” Well, that would be difficult to explain to the cops. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to actually blow a human away. That actually might bother her…at least for a little while.

“She’s right. You don’t want to kill me now, Miki.” His voice was like a hiss. The sound went across her skin and raised the hair on the back of her neck. If she had been wolf, her hackles would have been standing straight up right across her back. “Besides, don’t you like my little congratulations party for you, Dr. Kendrick?”

“Are you working with the Pride?”

“That’ll be a cold day in hell.” He kept moving toward her and she could feel Conridge’s hand gripping the back of her shirt. The woman was having a minor freak out.

“So then what do you want?”

He shrugged. “How should I know? This fight belongs to the females. They tell me what to do and I do it because I like doing it. And they told me to tear your Pack apart and to feed on your entrails.”

Miki snorted. “Melodramatic bullshit.” Then she lowered the gun and pulled the trigger. Twice. Leucrotta went down screaming. Both knees blown out.

She heard Conridge gasp behind her. “Oh, my.”

Miki glanced at the woman over her shoulder. “You said not to kill him. You didn’t say anything about his knees.”

* * *

One of them ripped a good chunk out of Conall’s thigh with their claws and he roared in anger. Especially when he felt the poison began to seep into his blood stream.

Fuckers.

He tore the bitch’s throat out and flipped it up and over his back.