Red River Docks

How long does it take five liters of blood to drain through a three-millimeter puncture?

In paramedic school, the instructors called that a trick question. The answer depended on systolic pressure, vessel diameter, and whether the casualty was thrashing. If the heart pumped hard enough, a severed femoral artery could empty a human dry in ninety seconds.

I didn't know the exact math for a two-hundred-pound werewolf. I was about to find out.

I stood on the narrow iron catwalk twenty feet above the warehouse floor, pressing my back against the corrugated tin wall. Cold river draft seeped through the rivet holes, smelling of diesel exhaust, wet creosote, and sulfur. In my right hand, the pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun felt heavy and solid. My left palm held three spare red-hulled shells, the brass bases biting into my callused skin.

Below us, the ground floor of Pier Four lay quiet. Too quiet.

"They're at the south gate," Radek murmured from the shadows five paces to my left.

He was crouched near the hoist engine, his canvas coat discarded on the floorboards. His dark flannel shirt clung to his broad shoulders, damp with mist and river grit. He had his heavy skinning blade resting across his thigh. Even in the dim gray light filtering through the high clerestory windows, I could see the rigid tension in his neck. He was favoring his left side. That cracked tenth rib hadn't healed yet, no matter how fast his supernatural metabolism worked.

"How many?" I whispered.

"Four," he said. His voice was low gravel. "Maybe five. They brought accelerant."

My pulse hammered against my throat, rapid and sharp. Did five armed shifters think they were clearing a pair of cornered strays? Or did they already know Tibor's second-in-command was standing in their way?

I slipped one shell into the loading port beneath the receiver, pushing it forward until the spring catch snapped shut. The mechanical click sounded deafening in the hollow vault.

Down on the street, two miles away, an ambulance siren wailed its distant, lonely minor third. It was the same six-tone wail I had listened to for four years from the passenger seat of Medic 4. On a normal Tuesday morning, I would be finishing a double espresso at the diner on 8th Street, complaining about paperwork.

Now, I was waiting for men with yellow eyes to burn me alive.

A dull thud vibrated through the concrete pilings beneath the pier.

The south roll-up door buckled inward with a shrieking tear of sheared iron. A blinding white flare erupted across the threshold, hissing and spitting magnesium sparks that lit the oily floor in harsh, stark white. Thermite. They weren't trying to pick the lock. They were cutting the hinges to drop the whole bay.

Heavy boots hit the timber staging.

"High ground," Radek ordered, his voice dropping into that raspy, guttural register that made my skin prickle. "Stay behind the hoist."

"I have the stairs covered," I said.

He shot me a dark, sideways glance. "Don't get pinned, Lenka."

"I'm not the one with broken ribs."

The ruined iron door slammed flat against the concrete with a concussive boom. Three figures stepped through the thick curtain of white smoke, moving in tight tactical formation. They carried short-barreled pump shotguns, but they didn't look like private security guards. Their coats hung open, revealing thick tactical vests strapped over bare, muscular chests.

The man in the lead was broad-shouldered, with cropped bristle hair and a jagged scar splitting his left eyebrow. His jaw hung slightly slack, revealing elongated canines that gleamed in the thermite glare.

"Kolar," Radek muttered under his breath. "Tibor's kennel master."

Kolar lifted his chin, testing the air with a deep, wet inhale. The sulfuric stench of our mash slurry was thick in the warehouse, but it couldn't hide the scent of fresh sweat and shotgun oil forever.

"Krizsek!" Kolar's voice boomed off the iron rafters, harsh and mocking. "Tibor wants to know why his Second is sleeping in a grease trap with a dead alpha's stray."

Radek didn't answer. He didn't rise to the bait.

Instead, Radek shifted his weight, vaulting over the catwalk railing without a sound.

He dropped twenty feet like an anvil.

Before Kolar's wingmen could raise their weapons, Radek slammed into the nearest tracker. The impact sounded like two freight cars colliding. Radek didn't bother shifting entirely; he drove his left shoulder into the man's sternum, snapping bone with a sickening crack, then drove his carbon steel blade up through the man's collarbone.

The third enforcer shouted a curse and leveled his shotgun at Radek's head.

I didn't think. Paramedic protocol flew out of my skull, replaced by the violent, territorial roar waking in my chest.

Protect.

My wolf surged forward behind my eyes, amber light bleeding into the edges of my vision.

I brought the shotgun stock to my shoulder, centered the bead on the enforcer's chest, and squeezed the trigger.

The recoil punched hard into my shoulder pocket. The deafening blast ripped through the warehouse, spraying heavy buckshot across the third man's tactical vest and arm. The blast threw him off balance, his shot discharging harmlessly into the ceiling joists above Radek.

"Catwalk!" Kolar roared from below.

A fourth man, who had slipped in through the side loading dock, began sprinting up the rusted spiral staircase toward my perch.

I racked the slide. The empty red plastic hull spun through the air, clattering onto the zinc grating.

The tracker was fast. He took the metal stairs three at a time, his nails extending into thick black talons that scraped against the handrail. His face contorted, snout pushing forward in a violent, half-shifted snarl.

Why did they always assume an unshifted woman was easy meat?

I didn't waste another shell on his armor. I aimed straight down through the open spiral, targeting the rusted iron tread right beneath his lead foot.

I fired.

The buckshot tore through the oxidized iron brackets holding the step to the central spindle. The steel gave way with a screech. The tracker's foot punched through empty air, and his forward momentum threw him sideways over the broken railing. He fell twenty feet, his skull cracking against the concrete edge of the bilge basin below. He didn't get up.

"Lenka! Behind you!" Radek's shout cut through the ringing in my ears.

I spun.

Kolar hadn't stayed on the ground floor. The massive kennel master had scrambled up the exterior cargo netting on the east wall and vaulted onto the catwalk behind me.

He landed six feet away, blocking my only route to the roof ladder.

He was huge. Up close, his skin was flushed dark red, veins bulging against his neck as his wolf pushed to the surface. The stench of stale beer, wet fur, and sour adrenaline rolled off him in waves.

"You're the little bitch that shocked Otakar," Kolar hissed, circling slowly across the narrow catwalk. "Tibor wants your head in a bucket. But he didn't say it had to be attached to all four limbs."

I raised the shotgun.

Kolar lunged before I could center the barrel.

His heavy arm swept out like a club, striking the shotgun barrel and knocking it from my grip. The weapon clattered over the railing, tumbling into the dark bilge below.

The sheer force of his charge slammed me back against the corrugated tin wall. Pain flared across my shoulder blades. The breath rushed out of my lungs in a sharp gasp. His massive hand locked around my throat, fingers digging into my windpipe, lifting my boots two inches off the zinc floor.

Black spots danced across my vision.

Fight.

My inner wolf didn't cower. She didn't whine. She bared her teeth and demanded blood.

I didn't panic. Panic was a luxury for people who had time to die. In an ambulance bay, when a combative psychiatric patient pinned you against the wall, you didn't wrestle their arms. You attacked the anatomy they couldn't protect.

I stopped clawing at his iron grip around my neck. Instead, I let my left hand drop to my belt.

My fingers wrapped around the textured grip of the eight-inch carbon steel skinning knife.

Kolar grinned, his yellow eyes wide with sadistic pleasure. He tightened his grip, crushing my trachea. "Nothing but human trash," he sneered.

He had braced his left leg forward on the catwalk to support his weight while choking me. His stance was wide. His inner thigh was completely exposed.

Every paramedic knows the femoral triangle. Inguinal ligament superiorly, sartorius laterally, adductor longus medially. Right in the center lies the femoral sheath, carrying the largest arterial supply to the lower limb under massive systolic pressure.

I didn't hesitate.