Jack flowed up the steps with unnatural grace; his insanity overshadowing any remaining human flaws.   My eyes shifted completely and hardened; I pulled Loki behind me though the ruined window and dead-on into the sea of panicked people trying to escape and not knowing what direction the threat came from.   Faces I recognized, and names with them; Jeremiah, Rebecca, Morgan; none of them showed any more than the most base of human instincts: survival.   The humans were abandoning their reason and falling back on their herd mentality to save themselves.   They would be of little help more than a herd of stampeding cows, and only marginally more intelligent.  

It was like swimming upstream; I grit my teeth and grunted with every blow I took, elbowed, kneed, and punched by the onrushing mass of students.   When I looked behind me though, my plan seemed to be working as our hunter fell back from the onslaught of humanity as well.   The grim satisfaction in my eyes was mirrored by the fanatical frustration in his.

I heaved harder, lowering my center of gravity to pull us through the mob; the muscles of my left arm burned from their deathlock on Loki’s hand.

Shots cracked through the air, creating a wave of screams bouncing around the crowd; the upbeat dance music still blasting incongruous to the events unfolding in the lobby.   After the screams I heard familiar voices yelling; and glancing back I saw Bo locked in a match of strength with Jack, the back of Bo’s suit jacket was stretched taut with strain as he fought to overpower his old friend.

The crowd was momentarily cowed by the gunshots and I seized my chance to pull Loki out of sight and around the corner.   Kat cowered there, and I grabbed her too, virtually lifting her over my shoulder with an incongruous show of strength.   My ears remained trained behind us on Bo though, bellowing at Jack to stop, and my skin crawled as Jack answered with a high keening laughter that betrayed the demon inside him, an absolutely inhuman shriek of glee.

My eye flashed down and latched onto a door handle, which thankfully opened when I turned it.   I pulled Loki and Kat inside and locked the door as soon as it was closed.   Even with my eyes fully shifted, it was difficult to make out the interior other than it was some sort of janitorial closet, and I felt over the walls for the light switch.   Loki clung to me panting heavily, the back of my shirt was damp from sweat and I had to clench my eyes shut about to flip the light switch.

“Jimmy… I feel cold…” her voice was so faint, a wave of fear staggered me as I flipped the switch.   Hot pain pierced my eyes as I opened them too soon, but swung around to look at Loki; she seemed to be fine, aside from a few places where sweat had soaked through her dress, and her unusual pallor.

“What…” I was about to ask her; and I put my hand on her side over a patch of sweat.   But the spot was hotter than it should have been, and looking down at my fingers, a thin film of crimson colored them.   That stain wasn’t sweat, and it was getting bigger…

“Oh no, Loki no!” I yelled as her knees collapsed and I caught her from falling.   Kat seemed frozen, and useless; looking around with the wide deer eyes of weak prey.

“Jimmy…   Jimmy it hurts, it hurts so bad!” She moaned as she hyperventilated.   I tore my vest off and wadded it up behind her.    “Jimmy, I love you!” she cried as I pulled her forward to prop her up against the wall to hold it in place.   ‘Stop the bleeding, make her safe, stop the bleeding, make her safe’ recycled over and over again through my head like a mantra.

“Okay Loki?   Loki?   Listen to me, Loki?   Here’s what we’re gunna do, okay hon?   Here’s what we’re gunna do.   We can’t stay here, you need help.   I’m going to draw him away; wait a minute or two and then come out, okay?   Do you think you can walk?”

She grimaced, “I can drag my ass if I need to…   No…   No, Jimmy, don’t leave me!   Don’t go out there, he’ll kill you!   I’ll be fine, but… I can’t live through losing you!   Please baby, don’t go!” her slender hands fluttered, clenched onto mine, then reached for my collar; the pain was too much for her to hold still.

I grinned as wide as I could, “Don’t worry hon’, there’s no way I’ll lose!” I said with forced cockiness.   “Kat?   KAT!” I shouted, and finally shook her out of her shocked reverie, “Kat, I need you to get her out of here safely, and get help.   If the coast is clear, I’ll come and get you; if I don’t, then wait for me to draw him away, and get her out of here to help.   Do you understand?” She nodded shakily, and I made her repeat my directions back to me before I turned back to Loki.   “Loki, you simply do not have the option of dieing on me, got that!   I’ll come find you when I lose him.”   I grabbed her face and stole a kiss from her; a kiss like no other before, because I didn’t know if there would ever be another after.   “I love you!”

Her choked cry of loss cleaved my heart as I quickly ducked back out the door, locking it behind me and quickly surveyed the hall.   People were still screaming in the Gym, so I knew not everybody was out yet.   My ears shifted, and identified a few trampling victims nearby mewling with pain.   I eased around the corner and looked back out into the Lobby, a couple people were on the ground.  

A grinding squeak shot through my jaw as I clenched my teeth together.   Bo was lying facedown in a dark pool that was soaking into the industrial weave carpet.   Another one…   One after another this fucker was trying to destroy all that I held dear in my life.

The faintest click behind me and I was in motion; pushing my muscles to the point where they instantly screamed in acidic protest.   Jack was still in the motion of raising his rifle when I blurred backward and around to rake my fingers against his face; realizing too late that I lacked anything as effectual as claws to back the intention of the attack.   I made out a blossoming splotch of red and purple on his opposite jaw as his head whipped around.   Bo must have landed at least one good hit.   Too bad anything that could have been knocked lose had come undone a while ago…

Too close to Loki…   Jack was standing almost directly in front of the closet I’d hidden them in, so instead of standing to continue the fight right there, I dashed past him and around the corner that led to the hallways; all mostly darkened.   For the briefest of moments, I had actually entertained the delusion that I would do just as I’d told Loki I would; lead him away and double back for her, but in a flash of realization I knew.    This fight would end tonight; and I would end it, either with my life or his.

“Fuck!” as I rounded the corner, I nearly ran right into the security fence that had been pulled across the hallway to keep students out of the hallways.   Praying my skull was just thin enough to make it between the vertical poles, I shoved myself into the gap.   It felt like one of my ears got partly ripped off, and I popped several of my shirts buttons off as I shoved through; but I made it, thankful again for the thin rangy build of my lupine self.

Jack came around the corner and snapped off a shot at me as I tried to pull my other foot through.   Sparks showered over me as it ricocheted off the steel fence, but then I was through and running.   Jack’s broader build would make the fence a much greater obstacle than it had been to me.

My body screamed in protest from its exertion, and demanded I rest.   My legs almost buckled, the acid build up was so extreme that my limbs almost felt numb from it; and my chest heaved in a struggle to get enough oxygen to my starving cells.   When I saw a shadow detach itself from the others at the end of the hallway; I lurched to my feet and started running; hearing our footsteps echoing around the corridor.

I could hear the difference when he came into the hallway behind me, and I knew I couldn’t risk staying within line of sight of him and I threw myself into the hallway toward the Library.   Wolf’s instinct liked that; the Library would give me cover, and deeper shadows to hide within.   Finally, a chance to turn the hunt on the hunter…

I slowed down a little bit to make sure Jack knew where I was heading, and then slammed against the bars on the Library doors with enough force to instantly bruise my shoulder.   But I succeeded in forcing the doors open; I instantly dove over and underneath the computer desks and pulled the shadows over myself.   Jack could have easily shot me through the windows as he passed; but I couldn’t stay here because this would probably be the first place he would look when he entered.   I crawled under the table and rolled under the gap on the bottom.   Hugging the bookcases by the windows and keeping their shadows pulled around me like a velvet cloak, I loped on all fours past the windows into the actual heart of the Library, and the concealing forest of eight-foot tall bookcases.

As soon as I was in the shadows of the tall shelves, I heard click of the door mechanism opening, and my breath caught.   As I’d guessed, the first thing he did was crouch down and sweep his gun across under the computer desks, searching.   Upon confirming I wasn’t under there he popped the magazine and loaded in another clip; how many shots did he think it’d take to kill me!

“You know Beast, none of this was necessary…”   ‘Beast’?   “If you’d just made yourself an easy target like you were supposed to; none of this would have happened.”   He began searching through the audio/video and copy rooms, methodically isolating my location.

“Well, excuse me for not wanting to die as flippantly as you seem to want to murder!  If I was the one you were after, why did you hurt all those other people; why did you murder Fen?”   I felt confidant enough in the concealment of my shadows that I could draw out the answers to the questions that burned inside me with hate for this monster.

“I told you!   His was a wrongful death!” he shouted, “I was up on the ridge waiting for you, I didn’t even know if I had the strength to do what God told me must be done; but when he stepped out and looked right at me through the scope, I… I panicked!   He wasn’t the one I was meant to kill; the demon inside you was all that needed to be exercised!” From the tone of his voice; I realized that this was probably where the rot of his insanity had taken hold.   The cold hearted murder of an innocent.

“And you call me a monster!   Is that how you’ve justified the blood on your hands?   That it was God’s will?   That you murdered a child in his name?   Somehow I don’t think that’ll endear you to Him at your judgment.”   He was about to enter the rows of bookshelves, and I covered my hand with my mouth to direct the sound away from myself.   I knew he couldn’t see me in passing, but I didn’t want him looking too hard at where my voice was coming from.   I’d never tested my shadows under that much scrutiny before, and this was not the time to experiment!   I needed a way to take him out in ambush; remove the advantage his weapon gave him…

“Be silent demon!   I lost everything because of you!   My friends, my reputation, my grades… My fucking pride!   You took it all from me!”

“Oh, you poor blameless soul; of course none of that could have come at you from your years of sin, from attacking a six year old boy, or from treating your so called ‘friends’ like peasantry that must obey oh-mighty-you!   I bet you even think that I made you pull that trigger don’t you?”

“’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”   He recited the quote as though it was his shield and sword all in one, I could help but shake my head in disgust.   He walked by the end of the aisle, looking down with his rifle poised at her shoulder ready to spit out its deadly contents into my flesh, and then thankfully past and out of eyeshot.   I slipped out of my shadows and crept silently down the aisle.

“That’s really fucking pathetic you know that?   You’re an embarrassment to Creation, blaspheming the children of God’s design to fit your own flawed assessment of good an evil.   You’re so twisted that you don’t even realize that you are the evil one!”

“You’re a freak!   An abomination!” his voice cracked, and I could almost imagine spittle flying from his mouth in fervor.

“Oh, on the contrary; I’m far more natural than you are!   At least I don’t decay my soul trying to be something other than the way God made me!   You’re the reason some mothers eat their young!”   He snarled wordlessly and slammed a fist into some shelf

“Just show yourself already!   I’m tired of this!”   His talking had masked any noise my shoes made.  

“Aww, poor baby tired of loosing the argument?”   I had to stop him!   I had to do it for the pride of our pack, for the lives of my friends, no!   My family!  The urge to run, the instinct of self-preservation, was slowly devoured by a rising anger, all my vengeance, waiting like a patient devil, just when I needed it most.  

I prepped myself, and then selected a hard-back book from the shelf.   I opened it to make sure it made a loud enough noise that even a human could hear it then dropped it, whispering “Shit!” and then dove around the end to the next row of bookcases as both he and I silenced our breathing.   I laid down on my stomach and watched his shoes move underneath the bookcases.   Wolf was struggling to surface as hard as he could, but again I could feel that thin but unrelenting membrane that held his power back.  

As predicted, he walked down my previous aisle toward the lure I left for him, the sound of his breathing feeding his location to me through my sensitive phantom ears.   The sound of his too human, too loud footsteps while he tried to stalk me, made it laughably easy to triangulate.   When he was in position I picked myself up silently, took a deep breath, and made a silent prayer for protection.   And then I braced myself and slammed all my weight into the shelf between us.

Several hundred pounds of paper come crashing down, the sound of a panicked gunshot and his startled cry seemed lost in the roar of cracking, splintering wood and falling books.   I went down with it, carried by my own inertia.

            The billowing cloud of dust and debris began to settle, and I tried to regain my senses.   As my stun faded, I registered a metallic clicking noise to my left.   I froze, a cold shock running down through my belly like mercury, and I slowly forced my head to turn.

            Jack stood just outside the pile of rubble, with his rifle aimed at my head, a smirk on his face, the cross on the chain around his neck glinted incongruously in the darkness.   In a sinking moment of horror, I realized that I had waited just a hair’s breadth too long and missed him.   Now it was his turn…

            And my last…

            The barrel of the weapon was only a couple feet away from me; there was no way he could miss that close.   Jack’s face was a mask of triumph, with the fire of religious zeal burning with insanity out of his eyes.   In a defiant last reflex, Wolf’s rage flared inside me.   My hand seized one of the books underneath me, and flung it at his face just as a crack of thunder flashed out of the muzzle and the sickening sensation of tearing flesh and cracking bone registered in my shocked brain.

            I love you Loki, I’m sorry!

            I watched my own crimson blood spray over the books, my snarl cutting off in a sharp yelp.