Page 102 of Throwing Shade
Jude stiffened. “You.”
My pulse spiked but there was no one else here. “Who…?”
Jude levitated the human-sized metal strawberry sculpture with her animator magic and hurled it at Laurent.
It ploughed into him, pitching him halfway across the parking lot.
My fingers tingled with icy pinpricks and I got a sour taste in my mouth. Jude’s shadow looked normal, and more than anything, I longed to take it at face value, but I couldn’t. Cursing softly, I sent my awareness into it.
I jerked back at the faint feeling of a seething violent cry, and buried my face in my hands. My worst-case scenario of a reckoning with my friend over what she’d done to the Banim Shovavim with necromancer magic hit a new rock bottom.
Jude was enthralled.
I took a deep breath. She was still alive, but if I didn’t figure out how to get the dybbuk out of her, it was a death sentence nonetheless. The entity would take over and then Laurent would kill the dybbuk left in her body.
Laurent. I gasped and snapped my head up.
He hadn’t moved, his body immobile in a crumpled heap on the concrete. I rubbed my hand over the pinch in my chest, pulled apart by this succession of disasters falling like dominos, and silently screaming at him to move, because I couldn’t get the words out.
A hand landed on my shoulder and I jumped, whirling around with my fists up.
Jude looked at me with the same confusion that Rupert had before he’d turned violent. She scrunched up her dirty red curls, swaying slightly. “I don’t feel so great. Can I sit down?”
I nodded, unable to answer her, and dug my fingers into my palm, wishing I could wake up from this horrible dream. See, I had trouble running in dreams. My feet were always weighted down and I could only lift them with an enormous effort. I had the same problem now, except this wasn’t a dream. It was a horrific reality where time dragged while I pushed past my friend and crossed the parking lot to where Laurent lay, glancing back at Jude stumbling to the car.
Where did I get to vent my anger? On Laurent for getting hurt?
On myself for not protecting him?
On my best friend, the root cause of all this, even as she faced death?
Give me a target, universe, because my skin felt like it was splintering.
I dropped to Laurent’s side and pressed my fingers to his neck.
His pulse was thready, but there, and his neck didn’t appear to be broken. I was about to call 911 when a ripple ran up his right side, ending in a punch outwards from his bicep.
I dropped the phone. He was shifting from an injured, unresponsive state. Would he be aware of who I was when the transformation was complete, or would I be fodder to be taken out before he killed Jude?
Laurent’s ears shrank to nubs that crawled up the side of his head and grew into furry triangles. He let out a pained cry, his bones visibly rearranging themselves in his torso with a grinding noise.
Headlights swept into the parking lot and over my car and I moved protectively in front of Laurent, like anyone pulling in could miss the sight of a man transforming into a wolf, even if they were a Sapien, but the car backed out, having used the driveway to turn around and go the way it had come.
My sigh turned into a yelp as Laurent’s shirt tore off him, then he screamed, and I pressed a hand against my mouth, scrambling back on my ass because his knees were reversing direction to the steady beat of snapping bones and ripping denim. He shook his shoes off, freeing his hindlegs with their sharp claws.
His face bulged and contorted, his muzzle popping out with a crunch. His eyes snapped open, a green supernova of fury, and he threw back his head and howled.
It was grotesque and oddly beautiful and mesmerizing, especially when white fur blossomed over his body like a snowfall.
Laurent pushed up onto all fours, his arms turning to forelegs. His muscles readjusted themselves and he shook off the tattered remnants of his clothing.
“Miri!” Jude was half out of the car.
“Shut the door!” I yelled.
The car door slammed and the wolf bared his lips at me.
“Laurent.” A swirl of sickening fear rolled through my veins, my gaze lowered like the yippy dog’s had been, but I held myself steady on the cold concrete, my knees drawn into my chest and my hand outstretched. “You can trust me. I won’t hurt you.”
