Page 59 of Venomous as a Snake

“What about Kody?” I ask.

“And Collin?” Forrest adds.

“She told Collin to get to his car,” Drew tells us. “So they have the same plan. If she leaves, then we can follow them.”

A masked man rounds the back of the car Collin is hiding behind. The kangaroo holds his hands up, then drops flat to the ground as Kody steps into play.

She loops the shoelaces around his neck, twisting and hunching to lift him off his feet. But she’s a touch too short for this to work as it should. Collin notices too and bounds up to grapple the gun from the struggling man’s hand.

“Got it,” he says.

Kody bends to the waist, hoisting the man up. His full weight rests on her back as she chokes him to death, but we don’t have time to wait for that. She’s easy pickings while she’s standing.

Collin steps around her, then grabs the shoelaces above her hands, holding the pressure. And Kody tucks the gun against her side and twists her body from underneath the man as she pulls the trigger twice.

The body slaps the pavement.

She checks the clip to see how many rounds are left in the gun. When she pops it back into place, she nods at Collin, and he bolts for his car.

Drew changes his plan on the fly, dropping the set of keys in his hand as he shifts into the grouchy honey badger. He scoops the keyring into his mouth and weaves his way toward the Suburban.

Gunshots ring from both directions as Kody shoots at a second attacker. She jerks back, blood oozing from her arm, and I see red.

My Komodo dragon takes over, shifting before I can strip out of my clothes. I lumber beneath three cars, catching the scent of the blood of another man. Walker creeps along the back of the cars, peeking under to stay with me.

My mouth fills with venom as I silently hunt my prey. And when I find him, I lunge, wrapping my jaws around his bare calf, sinking my teeth into his skin. Internally grinning, because there is no antivenom for a komo bite.

He shrieks, and Walker tackles him to the ground, wrestling the gun from his hands. Engines growl and rumble to life. Tires squeal. And the crocodile chuckles as he releases my victim, watching him flee the scene.

“She’s safe,” Walker tells me. “She and Collin just left. Forrest has your clothes.”

I crawl the rest of the way from beneath the vehicle and shift, careless of nudity at this moment. “They shot her.”

“The bullet grazed her arm,” he corrects. “She’ll scar, but she’ll be fine.”

Drew pulls the Suburban up beside us. “Are we chasing them down or following Kody and Collin home?”

“Let’s see if we can chase them down,” Walker says as we jump into the back seat. “We still have one more to kill.”

“But there were two,” Forrest argues.

“One will be dead in six hours or less. I bit the shit out of him,” I explain. “Unless he’s hacking his leg off right now and risking bleeding to death before they can get him to a hospital.”

The rhino nods, tapping on his phone screen. “I’ll watch the databases for incoming patients.”

Drew hits the main road, driving nearly double the speed limit as we search for the minions of the insane swan. All I need to do is roll the window down… As long as we get close to them, I’ll be able to smell my scent on the bleeding man.

Can smell the way my dragon’s venom is warring inside him, turning his veins into a battleground.

It won’t take him six hours to die.

He’ll be dead well before sunrise.

My arm stings like hell as we walk into my house… But it didn’t hurt until Collin pulled into my driveway, and I opened the door to get out. That’s when he pointed out I was bleeding on his car.

Not in it.

On it.