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Again, this chapter has quite a bit from the book, so diclaimer!
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I raced into the main room.
There wasn't any screaming, at least, not right away.
The first sounds I heard were voices, more annoyed than alarmed.
"What the-"
"Did you-"
"Watch it-"
When I rounded the corner, I saw a path of toppled chairs and tables looping a tipsy half circle from the storage room to the dance floor.
People milled around the overturned tables, collecting coats and purses and broken drink glasses.
I was still making my way toward the dance floor when Trevor roared.
Then came the first scream.
Then the thunder of a hundred people stampeding for the exit.
The stampede really didn't help matters, especially when my goal lay in the exact opposite direction of the human flow.
At first, I was polite.
Really.
I said "excuse me," tried to squeeze through gaps, and even apologized for stepping on some toes.
What can I say, I'm a model citizen.
After a few elbows to the chest and more than a few obscenities shouted in my ear, I gave up and cut my own path.
When one hefty bruiser tried to shove me back, I grabbed him by the collar and showed him the express route to the door.
Things got a bit better after that.
Although I was no longer in danger of being trampled, I was still progressing by inches.
I couldn't see anything.
I'm not too short, 5' 7" to be precise, but even an NBA superstar couldn't have seen over that seething mass of humanity.
If there was a back door emergency exit, no one knew about it.
They were all heading for the main entrance and getting jammed in the narrow front corridor.
Not only couldn't I see, I couldn't hear anything but the sound of the crowd, curses and shouts and cries melding into a sea of noise, nothing clear except the universal language of panic.
People shoved and hammered at one another, as if being one step closer to the door meant the difference between life and death.
Others weren't moving of their own volition at all, but were carried along by the tide of the mob.
I looked into faces and saw nothing there.
They were as white and expressionless as plaster masks.
Only the eyes held the truth, rolling and wild, the instinct for survival taking over.
Most didn't even know what they were running from.
It didn't matter.
They could smell the fear rising from the crowd as well as any werewolf could, and the scent of it seeped into their brains, infecting them with its power.
They smelled it, they felt it, and they ran from it.
They were giving Trevor exactly what he craved.
I was midway across the dance floor when I stumbled over a woman lying in a pool of blood.
Blood still jetted from her neck in a fountain, spraying anyone who came close.
People tripped over her and slid in her blood.
Not one of them even looked down.
I shouldn't have looked down either.
But I did.
Her eyes rolled, meeting mine for a second.
Bloody froth trickled and bubbled from her lips.
Her hand convulsed off the floor as if trying to reach up.
Then it stopped in midair, paused, and fluttered down into the pool of blood.
Her eyes closed.
The blood had stopped spurting and was now streaming.
A man tripped over her, looked down, swore, and kicked her out of his way.
I tore my gaze away and kept moving.
As I stepped over the body, glass shattered overhead.
I looked up to see Damon's feet shooting through a high window near the bar.
He swung in and dropped to the floor.
It was a good twenty foot fall, not something Alaric encouraged us to do in front of a crowd, but considering no one was paying any attention to a dead body beneath their feet, surely no one was going to notice a man vaulting through a window behind them.
Damon climbed onto the bar and surveyed the crowd.
When he saw me, he waved me over.
I pointed deeper into the throng, where I assumed Trevor was.
Damon shook his head and motioned again.
I picked an angle roughly in line with the crowd flow and made my way toward him.
"Loved that entrance," I shouted over the noise, as I climbed onto the bar.
"Have you seen that front door, kitten? I'd need a blowtorch to cut through the crowd. The only other exit is a steel door, locked shut."
I looked above the crowd, "So Trevor's not back in that corner?"
"Who?
"The Mutt. Is he there?"
"Oh, he's there all right," Damon nodded, "But you're wasting your energy trying to get to him."
I spotted Trevor.
As I suspected, he'd fully changed into a wolf.
He seemed to be bouncing between the corner walls, leaping and pouncing and slashing at nothing.
I was about to say that it looked as if the Mutt had snapped.
Then the crowd parted enough for me to see that he was attacking more than air.
A man lay in crash position on the floor, back up, knees to his chest, head down, hands linked to protect the back of his neck. His clothing was shredded and drenched with blood.
He was motionless, obviously dead, but Trevor wasn't leaving him alone.
He leapt at the man, grabbed his foot, and spun him in a circle.
Then he danced back, tail high.
He crouched and mock-lunged, then feinted to the side.
The man now lay twisted half on his side, letting me see more of his injuries than I wanted.
His shirt was ripped open.
His torso was streaked with blood, his stomach solid red.
It looked as if the end of his belt dangled to the floor, but with a more focused glance, I realized it wasn't his belt, but a loop of intestine.
As I was turning away, the body moved.
The man rocked, as if trying to flip back on his stomach to protect himself.
"Oh god," I grabbed for Damon, "He's not dead."
Trevor leapt at his prey again and sank his teeth into the man's scalp.
He yanked him up, tossed him aside, and pranced away again.
"He's not even trying to kill him," I realized.
"Why would he?" Damon hissed, curling back his lip, "He's having fun."
Disgust dripped from every word.
This wasn't killing for food or killing for survival.
That, Damon could understand.
This was, to him, a display of another incomprehensible human trait, killing for pleasure.
"While he's busy, I'll do some scouting," Damon continued, "Give me five minutes. When the crowd clears, make your move. Drive him toward that side hall. I'll be waiting."
He jumped off the bar and vanished into the mob.
I looked back at Trevor torturing his prey.
Again, I didn't want to look.
I didn't want to think about what was going on below me.
That a man was horribly dying, but was still alive to feel the torture, and I wasn't doing a damned thing about it.
I reminded myself that it was almost certainly too late to save him, and, even if he did survive, he'd have to go to the hospital, which we couldn't allow because, having been bitten by Trevor, the man would become a werewolf himself.
Although rationally I knew I couldn't risk going to him, I felt compelled to, if only to end his suffering.
Sometimes, I think it would be better if I could be like Damon, to acknowledge that what Trevor was doing was wrong but equally acknowledge that it wasn't in my power to right that wrong and to walk away without regret.
But I don't ever want to be like that, that hard, that tough.
Damon had an excuse.
I didn't.
I tore my gaze away from Trevor and his prey.
Sick bastard.
No animal would ever do something like that.
As I thought this, something clicked in my brain, a piece falling into place so hard the resonance made me jump.
The room went suddenly silent, the drumming in my ears drowning out the crowd, giving me one moment of perfect clarity amidst the chaos.
I knew where I'd seen Trevor's face, heard his name, and it wasn't in the Pack's werewolf dossiers.
Television.
Inside Scoop.
Matt and I had watched it on the news only a few weeks ago.
The piece on the killer in North Carolina, who'd been caught.
The tape of the police interview flipped through my head, the grainy image sparking to life.
"I wanted to watch someone die," he'd said.
Trevor Ford.
I shook my head sharply.
No, that couldn't be.
That didn't make sense.
A werewolf couldn't survive in prison without being discovered.
Then I remembered Trevor 's scent again, what I'd picked up that night in his apartment.
"He's new."
I could smell it in his scent and I'd assumed.
It had been possible then, as Tyler had suggested, that he was a hereditary werewolf recently come of age.
But this proved he wasn't.
He'd been bitten.
Again, my brain rejected the idea.
According to the news report, Trevor had only escaped from jail a few months ago.
It took longer than that for a werewolf to recover from the shock of being turned.
Or did it?
Was it impossible that he'd recovered so quickly?
I had to admit that it wasn't.
My own recovery had been hampered by my refusal to accept what had happened to me.
What if it wasn't like that?
What if someone wanted to become a werewolf, was prepared for it, embraced it?
That could make all the difference.
Yet there was still more that didn't make sense.
What was Trevor doing here, then?
If he was a hereditary werewolf, that would explain how he knew about us, the Pack, our land.
But how would a newly turned werewolf know that?
Trevor knew.
He'd called me by name.
He'd talked about the Pack, said he'd heard things about me.
From who?
Another werewolf, of course.
An experienced werewolf.
But Mutts didn't do that.
They didn't allow bitten werewolves to live, let alone help them.
Unless Alaric was right, and someone really did have another agenda, and they'd been the one to turn him.
Which put us back to square one.
I couldn't deal with this now.
We had a more serious problem on our hands than sorting out the whys and wherefores of Trevor's existence.
Right now, the fact of his existence would have to be enough.
Ending that existence wouldn't be as simple as I'd thought, though.
He wasn't a careless punk kid, but something far more dangerous.
A true killer.
I looked for Damon, wanting to warn him.
Then I realized it wouldn't do any good.
Trevor was a killer from the human world.
I could tell Damon that he was a chartered accountant and it would have the same impact.
He wouldn't understand.
I hopped from the bar and eased through the last scattering of the crowd.
In the back corner, Trevor was still playing with his food, which gave the occasional twitch of life.
The crowd was almost out of the main room, now jammed in the hallway.
I kept moving.
Trevor skirted his prey, then leapt in for a pounce and grab.
He had his fangs around the man's forearm and was shaking it like a chew toy when he noticed me.
He growled uncertainly, his blood fogged brain taking time to recognize me.
I stopped, and we stared at each other.
I thought about how dangerous it was to face him down in this form.
I thought of Trevor's eyes gleaming with near carnal bloodlust as he talked about killing.
I thought of what he could do to me before Damon could come to my aid.
It worked.
Fear seeped from me like sweat.
That got Trevor's attention.
He dropped his prey and lunged at me.
I waited until he was in mid-jump, then I turned and ran.
Of course he followed.
Fleeing prey is so much more fun than the near comatose variety.
I circled toward the back wall to keep Trevor away from the clogged exit.
Running behind the bar, I headed for the balcony stairs.
As I stepped onto the first riser, I veered and dashed toward the bathroom hall.
Damon was there.
I passed him and slid to a stop.
Behind me, Trevor did the same, nails careering over the linoleum.
He stopped in front of Damon.
His nostrils flared, again uncertain.
His nose told him that Damon was a werewolf and some dimly functioning part of his brain realized this was cause for concern.
He growled experimentally.
Damon's foot shot out, caught him under the muzzle, and knocked him flying onto his backside.
Trevor scrambled to his feet, wheeled, and bolted.
Damon ran after him.
They disappeared into the main room.
By the time I got there, Damon had driven Trevor onto the balcony.
I was almost to the top of the stairs when Trevor leapt over the edge, followed by Damon's resounding "Fuck!"
Before I could turn, Damon was jumping to the floor.
I rushed down the stairs and ran to the exit to head Trevor off if he tried to escape.
The front half of the hall was still clogged with people.
No one was getting in or out.
Trevor didn't head for the door, though.
Instead, he circled back to the rear corner of the room.
Damon was right behind him.
I staked out my post by the exit.
Trevor ran for the corner, maybe because it held some vague sense of familiarity.
When he got there, he nearly collided with the wall.
He turned sharply and veered in a tight circle, tripping over the body on the floor. This time, the man didn't move.
His dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. Recovering from his stumble, Trevor headed back toward the corner as if expecting a door to materialize there.
Finally, he realized he was trapped and turned to face Damon.
For several long seconds, Damon and Trevor stared at each other.
The first flicker of real anxiety sparked in my chest.
Not even Damon was safe against a Changed werewolf while in human form.
As I watched them, I could feel the tension thrumming through me, my instinct telling me to protect Damon, while common sense told me to guard the exit.
Trevor broke the standoff.
He growled and hunkered down, hackles rising.
Damon didn't move.
Trevor growled again as if giving fair warning.
Then he leapt.
Damon dropped and rolled to the side.
Trevor crashed and slid on the linoleum. Before he could recover, Damon was on him. He grabbed Trevor by the loose skin at the back of his neck and threw his leg over the Mutt's back.
Then Damon shoved his head to the floor, pinning him.
Trevor struggled wildly.
His claws skittered along the floor, unable to get a grip.
He snarled and growled, snapping from side to side, trying to bite Damon's hands. Damon put his left knee on Trevor's back and wrapped his hands around his throat.
As he squeezed,Trevor gave one last tremendous buck.
Damon's right foot bounced off the ground just enough to make him shift position.
As his foot came back down, it headed for a puddle of the dead man's blood.
"Damon!" I shouted.
Too late.
His shoe hit the blood and his ankle twisted, shooting out from under him.
Trevor threw himself forward at exactly the right second.
Damon tumbled off his back.
The second Trevor was free, he saw the exit and made a beeline for it.
I didn't bother blocking the hallway.
He could have plowed through me as if I weren't there.
Instead, as he passed, I dove at him and grabbed two handfuls of fur.
We toppled over together.
As we rolled, he snapped at my arm.
I twisted it away, but not quite fast enough.
One of his canines caught the skin under my forearm, cutting into my skin.
I gasped.
I didn't let go, but I did loosen my grip.
It was enough.
Trevor wrenched free.
Damon arrived one second too late.
Trevor was already tearing down the hall.
The far end of it was still congested with people, but they somehow found a way to clear out when they saw Trevor coming.
Damon started going after him , but I grabbed the back of his shirt.
"We shouldn't go out together," I said, hearing the sirens of arriving officers.
"Right," he nodded, "You follow him. I'll go back through the window."
I wasn't sure how this was possible, unless he'd developed the ability to scale walls, but there wasn't time to debate the matter.
I nodded and ran down the rest of the hallway.
I burst through the door to find myself in the midst of a chaos twice as bad as that inside the warehouse earlier.
The crowd had got itself outside the door and stopped.
The entirety of Mystic Fall's police had arrived, and we're in a circle, surrounding the large wolf.
Shit.
Their guns were out, and Trevor was skittering from one side to the other, trying to escape.
Finally, he jumped onto the nearest cruiser.
The officers obviously hadn't expected this, but there were too many people about to just start shooting.
They chased after him, toward the road.
I heard a gunshot ring out, a wolf's whine, then a horn blared.
A sickening thud followed.
Pushing through the crowd, I followed the commotion.
When my line of sight finally cleared, my mouth fell open.
Apparently, Trevor had forgotten the most basic of kindergarten rules.
He didn't look both ways before crossing.
A jeep was pulled over to the shoulder, the driver insisting that "It came outta nowhere!"
The headlights shone out, illuminating the remnants of fur, blood, and body parts.
Trevor must have been running across the road when the truck hit him.
The majority of his body was stuck on the front grill, most of his head gone, other assorted bits flying free as the jeep had stopped, now scattered the road.
It was enough to make me wish the legends were true, that ordinary methods couldn't kill a werewolf.
That somewhere in that mangled heap of blood and gore on the roadway, Trevor Ford was still alive, conscious and unable to scream.
A fitting end for the monster.
Unfortunately, he'd been dead as soon as the first shot had him.
Silver bullets made a nice gothic touch, but they weren't necessary for killing a werewolf.
Most things that could kill a human or a wolf could polish us off just as easily.
A crowd was gathering around Trevor 's remains.
All they would see was a very large, very dead, brown canine.
He wouldn't change back into a human.
That was another falsehood about werewolves.
According to myth, werewolves are supposed to turn back into humans when wounded.
There's a zillion legends that followed similar beliefs.
Nice trick, but it didn't work that way, which was really good for us, or we'd be changing shape every time a Pack brother nipped us too hard.
Damned inconvenient, really.
Truth is, die a wolf and you'd better forget those plans for an open-casket funeral.
Trevor 's remains would be hauled off to the nearest Humane Society and disposed of without ceremony or autopsy.
Trevor Ford, the escaped killer from North Carolina, would never be found.
I spotted Damon a little ways off.
Time to call it a night.
I reached him easily, and he motioned me to the back of the warehouse, where he'd parked.
It was empty now, all the action happening out front.
"You know, I really do hope he gets a proper burial," Damon drawled, "Poor misguided bastard deserves one, don't you think?"
I turned to him and shook my head, "Don't joke."
He narrowed his eyes, "What's wrong?"
We'd reached the car.
"We failed."
"Nah. He's dead. That was the point of the whole mission, right?"
He put his arm around my waist and leaned down to kiss me.
I resisted, "Alaric will be pissed that he can't question him."
Damon shrugged, "He'll understand."
"We should go," I sighed, "He may understand the kill, but he wouldn't like us hanging around."
Damon reached for me again, and I pulled away.
"Don't. We need to get back."
"Are you in a hurry?" He teased.
I swallowed, "I need to pack my things."
He blinked at me, silent for once.
"You knew this was coming," I told him, "I was only here to hunt the Mutt. And I-"
"Got it-" he cut me off, walking towards the drivers side.
I sighed, then got in as well.
Hope ya'll enjoyed!
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