Darkness Unbound by Keri Arthur Page A

wanted to ensure your prey couldn’t escape.
    I flexed my fingers and wondered how I should play it. I could fight—years of sparring with Riley and Quinn had seen to that—but they’d also impressed upon me the need not to fight unless it was absolutely necessary.
    I wasn’t sure yet that it was necessary. It was possible my stalkers intended nothing more than to talk to me. They might even be intending to follow me. Hell, I already had a reaper playing tag, so why not four strange-smelling men?
    But if these men had intended to do nothing more than talk, they wouldn’t have bothered boxing me in so completely.
    They were here to attack. Nothing more, nothing less.
    I reached into my pocket as I neared the bike and wrapped shaking fingers around my keys. Doubt skittered through me, but these men left me with little in the way of options.
    I couldn’t see the man up ahead, but his scent suggested he was standing behind the cars to the left of the bike. The two to either side hadn’t moved in closer, but the one behind had —although he still wasn’t close enough to react to.
    Obviously, though, none of them had any idea I was part wolf; otherwise they would have used a scent-erasing soap. Or, at the very least, eaten less garlic last night.
    The back of my neck continued to crawl with the nearness of the man behind me. I resisted the growing need to turn around, and flipped my keys up between my fingers so that the sharper ends stuck out like little metal prongs. Just about anything could become a dangerous weapon if you had the know-how—and I certainly did. Then I shrugged off my backpack, holding it in my free hand as I walked on. The air was thick with the scent of garlic and the musk of the man behind me. He was human, not wolf. Not shifter.
    I had no idea what the others were. I might be able to smell their body odor, but there was precious little else coming through. And that was weird. If I could smell them, I should have been able to tell what the hell they were.
    Maybe the garlic was deliberate. Maybe they were using it the same way someone might use scent-erasing soap. And if that was the case, it was working.
    Although if this was a chance robbery attempt, why would they reek of garlic? Even humans had noses good enough to catch a whiff.
    And yet, despite my certainty otherwise, what else could it realistically be? Why would these men be sitting here waiting to ambush me when they couldn’t have even guessed that I’d be here?
    No one had followed me from home, I was pretty sure of that. Then again, I might not have noticed given I had no reason to look.
    The garlic stink suddenly sharpened and the air stirred with movement. It was warning enough. I spun on my heel, letting the backpack fly, hoping to distract my attacker as I lashed out with a booted foot. He dodged the pack but saw the second blow too late, and my foot took him high in the chest. He staggered backward, arms flailing to keep his balance.
    As the other three erupted from their hiding spots, I lunged forward, my right fist swinging upward, hitting the human as hard as I could under the chin. I might be only half werewolf, but that still gave me a whole lot of strength. The keys dug deep into his neck even as the force of the blow threw him off his feet. Blood gushed, but I was already spinning around to meet the next man, and heard rather than saw the first hit the concrete.
    The man who’d been hiding behind the car nearest my bike was in the air—literally in the air—his shape shifting, pulsating, becoming something less than human but not actually cat: a panther who retained human characteristics and height. He was grotesque—like something you saw in a bad horror movie—but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.
    I dropped under his leap, but as his body flew over mine he twisted, his arm sweeping down, his thick, cat-like claws slashing through the leather of my jacket and down into flesh. Blood gushed—and pain, unlike