Grimm Wolf - Julie Steimle (fantasy novels to read .txt) 📗

one sweeping up his cheek near his eye. Neither were deep. “Is that the best you can do, Deacon?” Schwitzer shouted at him with bared teeth. “Where’s the wolf I’ve heard so much about?”

Turning from Jordan’s glassy skyward stare, Rick’s chest heaving as he struggled to pull his friend away, he looked to Emory and Rhett. He jammed his hand into his pocket, yanking out his keys and threw them to catch. “RUN!”

Emory caught the keys, shaking as he looked at them. Jordan’s blood was on them.

Rhett grabbed them, yanking up Emory by his collar. Together they plowed their way out from the circle of German freaks to the door. They yanked the huge wooden door open and tore straight into the yard as fast as their burning legs could carry them, eyes scouring the area for the car. Their chests ached as their heart boomed in their ears. They saw trees, lots of space with grass and gravel. The other cars were gone. And where had they parked theirs? That one guy had the key to the rent-a-car right? Why did Rick give him his keys? Emory started to hyperventilate.

“There are two keys to a set,” Rhett said. “Rick had kept one.”

Calming, Emory nodded, scouring under the darkness of the tree cover. It was difficult to see since streams of moonlight through the branches and leaves was their only source for light.

 Behind them, howls, feral in pitch broke into the air. Wolfish. First one. Then several, crying out in a hungry braying chorus.

“Damn,” Emory looked back to the house. “What can you bet that lunatic owns pet wolves?”

Rhett shook his head, finally spotting a glint of chrome. The car was exactly where it had been left, but they had exited from a different door than they had thought. Both of them bolted for the vehicle.

They ran across the yard. As they got closer, looking to open the doors, their eyes went down to the wheels. To their horror all four tires were slashed flat.  

“Oh, crap!” Emory went ashen, as that meant they had no traction. No vehicle. No escape. They were never meant to get out of there alive.

Rhett ripped open the passenger door anyway, shoving Emory in. “We can ride on the rims! Just get in!”

More wolf howls ripped into the air.

Emory climbed across and over the passenger side and gear stick to the driver’s seat, nearly hyperventilating as he crammed the keys into the ignition. He turned the key, dropping into the seat to reach the gas pedal. The engine hummed beautifully to life as Rhett climbed into the passenger seat after him. Emory looked back for Rick. “Where is he?”

Rhett shook his head. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

“We can’t leave him!” Emory snapped, feeling nauseous. His heart raced into his throat. He felt like choking and vomiting. All that blood…. “Jordan is dead! They killed Jordan!”

They looked to the castle, hoping to see Rick escape out to them. But out of the front door came wolves.

Big ones. Black and gray. Rushing toward them on large paws.

Rhett pulled his door quickly shut, locking it before the wolves slammed against it with their claws and teeth. Hot breaths against the glass as they clawed and snarled at the vehicle, baring their white fangs, the beasts tried everything to get in to them. The savage pack snarled louder in express outrage at their failure to feast. But then the most impossible thing happened. The wolf, while mauling the glass on his hind legs, quickly shed his gray and white fur, fleshing out into a tall naked German. That German punched his fist against the glass.

Then more of them changed.  

“WOAAAAAAH?” Emory and Rhett yowled. The naked Germans and wolves tried the car handles to open them. 

Emory slapped the automatic locks down on all doors before any wolf-man could get one open. Panting, gripping the wheel, he looked to Rhett who quite possibly just peed his pants. Sneering, the wolf-man at the window climbed onto the car top, prying at the sunroof.

“Get us out of here! Get out here!” Rhett screamed at Emory, grabbing for the emergency brake.

Emory pulled off the brakes and floored it.

Left with nothing but rims intact, the car spun in the dirt, not quite gripping anything for traction. Pieces of busted tire flew along with gravel and dirt, hitting the wolves and Germans alike who were in their trajectory while the vehicle itself struggled toward the gateway. One wolf got clocked across the head, taking him entirely out. The man on the car roof snarled and became a wolf again, using his teeth and claws to tear at the material to get in. Sparks flew from the metal of the rims, spraying everything around them. A number of the wolves ducked away from it.

Outside, one wolf-man, stormed away from the struggling vehicle, going to the garden near the house. He picked up a heavy rock, weighing it in his hands with an eye on the car.

“Oh, crap.” Emory watched the bare naked German advance. “What do we do?”

“See if there is a jack or something in the glove compartment!” Emory shouted. “Or a gun! We need a weapon!”

Rhett hurriedly reached down to the latch, pulling the compartment open. Out flopped maps, insurance cards, and a flash light. Grabbing the last thing, he weighed it in his hands. The flashlight wasn’t heavy enough to be used as a weapon, though. In panic, Rhett then felt under the front seat where his feet had knocked something when he had climbed into the car, pulling it up. It was the bag Rick had left there. On it were the words: Open in an Emergency.

“Are you seriously thinking about eating right now?” Emory shouted, watching Rhett tear it open.

Shaking his head, Rhett yanked out a huge plastic storage bag, zip locked sealed. Inside the huge bag was a rope of garlic, a bottle of garlicky salad oil, a large bottle of honey and a couple silver knives.

“Damn. He knew…” Rhett said, breathless as he took in each item.

“What is it?” Emory was still trying to steer toward the road, which at least would be partly paved so they could get some traction. Or he thought it was anyway. The rims were slowly taking them forward as the wolves snarled over and around them.

The rock crashed through the rear window.

Almost immediately, two wolves pushed their way in through the gap, clawing towards them with snapping teeth.   

“Rick left us weapons!” Rhett ripped open the baggy, cramming his hand in for a knife. What he got was the bottle of salad oil. He swung it back at the wolf who pounced between the front seats to get at them. As it was glass, it hit hard and knocked the wolf back, but it did not quite break. Not on the first blow at least. On the second strike, as the other wolf tore forward and Rhett fended it off, it shattered in Rhett’s hand.

Pieces of glass and oil went everywhere over the backseat, also embedding shards in Rhett’s palm and fingers. The two wolves who had been tearing towards them in the car fell back, howling, snarling with their paws clawing away the glass and oil in their fur as if it burned them.

The wolf from up top broke through the sunroof. His snarling snout shoved in with claws, pushing the opening further apart.

“We have to get out now!” Rhett shrieked, pulling out a piece of glass from his palm. He grabbed a knife from the bag and stabbed upward at the wolf trying to get to them. “They’re getting in!”

And the car really hadn’t gotten any farther than a few feet. They were starting to dig a hole in the rocky drive.

Two wolves inside with one up top with its head stuck in the sunroof gap, four more wolves were outside, clawing to get in. Was there even an escape?

Rhett grabbed the garlic rope and wrapped it around Emory’s neck. He seized the bag in his other hand and pointed to the driver’s side door. “We go that way! To trees!”

“What?” Emory stared at the trees. He was sure there would be more wolves in the woods.

“We run for the trees!” Rhett shouted, fending off the upper wolf who was still clawing his way in, though feverishly snapping at the silver table knife. “There’s has got to be a way out of this!”

Emory nodded. The car was stuck and they were cornered. It was do or die.

“Ready?” Rhett handed Emory one of the knives.

Taking it, Emory nodded again, breathing hard.

“One…”

The passenger side window shattered under the force of another rock. It landed against Rhett’s lap. A wolf head shoved in right after, mouth open, snapping for anything to bite.

“Go!” Rhett screamed.

Emory slapped open the lock, and shoved his door open, slashing with the knife at anything in his way. Rhett crawled straight after him. He almost got out, but the wolf climbing in the side window sank his teeth into his leg.

“AHHH!” Rhett screamed as those teeth dug in, working to tear his flesh off.  

“Rhett!” Emory grabbed back, slashing his knife at the wolf, then stabbed it in the eye. He pulled Rhett out of the car as the wolf stuck in the sun roof snapped at them. Those in the backseat stumbled out the back windshield, wounded and angry, but not quite up to pursuit.

Limping as fast his bitten leg could carry him, Rhett hurried onto his feet with Emory. Both rushed through the gates toward the woods.

The wolves made chase.

The three non-wounded wolves led the pursuit. They were sneezing though.

“What else is in that bag?” Emory screamed, plowing ahead to anywhere he could get to. “Is there a gun?”

Rhett shook his head, hearing those wolves get closer as they scrambled over logs and rocks to find some escape from the fleet-footed monsters. “No. There is another silver knife and a jar of honey.”

“That’s it?” Emory complained, breathlessly climbing over a fallen tree.

“Tree!” Rhett pointed to an oak which had a branch low enough for them to climb onto. Emory didn’t get it at first, but he did not question Rhett as the wolves closed in on them. They scrambled to it, climbing up as fast as they could muster.

And the wolves pounced.

Emory slashed back at them with his silver knife, the garlic rope twisting around his neck like a bobbly scarf.

One wolf yelped, backing away after getting merely nicked.

But another wolf bit down on Emory’s arm, wrestling to get the knife out of his hand.

Rhett kicked at it with his heel.

Yelping, snarling, it let go.

Emory climbed up onto the branch, pulling Rhett up after him. The wolves snapped at Rhett’s ankles, one biting around his shoe, dragging him down for a better bite. The other wolves joined it, mauling together into Rhett’s leg.

“AAAGH! Emory!” Rhett kicked at the wolves with his free leg, fighting to rescue it as they chewed up the one they had.

“Hold on!” Emory swiped down with his knife, then grabbed the garlic rope. He swung it like a whip, smacking on top of the wolves. A couple bulbs fell off, but they also knocked the wolves down as if it had been a mace. It gave Emory just long enough for him to drag Rhett up onto the branch out of the reach of the wolves. Then he dragged him up further. “We have to get higher!”

Nodding, Rhett clenched his teeth and tried to climb higher into the tree, but his other leg could hardly move. He dragged it as Emory heaved him onto a stable branch out of wolf jumping range.

When they were high enough to catch a breath, they looked down.  Those wolves below—the wounded and the strong—were prowling like they were regrouping. And they started to take human shape again. Brawny German men. The ones not badly wounded attempted to climb the tree with their bare hands and feet.  

“Oh…. Crap.” Emory swore a few