CHAPTER 39

  Cait threw herself through the underbrush, blood rushing in her head as she pursued the fleeing Ironhide. Faintly, she knew the team was calling her back. Vividly, she knew Kennedy and Breastman needed her. She felt a heart break as her link to Kennedy snapped, and she didn’t know whether it was Kennedy’s or her own.

  None of that mattered. She’d let this bastard, or his fucking twin, get away last time and now they were down another Guardian. That dog didn't hunt. Things got better, now that Cait was a Guardian. All those dreams of changing things would not dreams.

  It was lucky that the metal motherfucker was shiny. Even in the night, the moonlight glinted off that fur well enough that Cait could keep track of the beast. Flashes of silver, barely visible in between trees, or through walls of brush. She couldn’t see anything else, but while the monster might be able to take one of her punches, nothing else out here could, and tree after tree fell in her wake as she pushed forward. She screamed vitriol after it, her Altered lungs easily able to spare the air.

  She knew it could bleed. She and Breastman had made the other one bleed, and the raw red flesh that Fingerguns had exposed on this one meant it was the same. She kill it. She kill it.

  Cair had always been single minded to a fault. It was why she'd excelled. In school, in athletics, in sex. It was also why she'd so often conveniently forgotten Jess when a new pretty young thing stirred her hunger.was why a week ago she'd been alone. And it was why she was currently running away from a found family she'd already grown to love.

  With a body no longer tired, it was far too easy to lose track of time as she chased the beast. Dawn had broken, and she hadn’t even noticed. What she did notice, was when the treeline began to give way. Subtle, at first, the foundation of a few outlying houses rotting among the vegetation reclaiming then. Then quick, the forest falling away to concrete rubble and the detrius left behind when civilization ended in a place.

  , Cait’s mind noted the ruins and assigned a name, but spared it no more attention. Instead, she was laser focused on the monster that stood in the middle of what had been a main thoroughfare, mocking her with its very existence.

  Cait roared, and charged, never breaking her stride as she bounded down the street. She crashed towards the beast, more runaway train than woman. It stood there, arms folded, eerily human in posture and air. A lot of Cait’s mind screamed at her that that was wrong, but the logical parts of her weren't what had control. The part that had control was the Fuckboi, the unstoppable force that had always gotten her into trouble.

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  As her foot hit the pavement for the last step before she made contact with her target, silver flashed in her peripheral.

  A heavy, growling weight slammed into her side, and together, Cait and a third Ironhide plowed through a wall on the side of the street.

  Cait let out her own growl, not the sound of a thinking womam. An uppercut pulled her to her feet as she sent the new attacker flying. Again, the rational part of her was screaming. Again, the Fuckboi laughed it off.

  What are they gonna do, kill me?

  Cait snarled, smashing back through the wall. She found she was seeing double.

  , she reassessed, as rubble across the street shifted and the monster she’d sent flying rejoined its brothers.

  It didn’t fucking matter how many of them there were. These stupid beasts didn’t understand what they were up against.

  She shot herself forward again, finding enough extra gas in the tank to take one by surprise, taking it in the chest and sending it flying towards the river. The other two fell on her then, snarling and slashing.

  Cait laughed. The monsters yelped as their claws shattered against her skin.

  “I ain’t prey, motherfuckers!” she yelled, taking one in the side of the head with a left hook that sent it tumbling back into the rubble it had just crawled out of. The remaining beast didn’t look as scared as it should have. Even with the raw red wound in its side that marked it as the one Fingerguns had gotten a piece of.

  “Didn’t learn your fucking lesson, huh?” Cait asked, grinning at the beast. It returned the grin, eerily human. A crunch from behind her, and Cait spun, pulping an ordinary Coonbeast. When she looked back, Ironhide was gone.

  “Don’t fuckin' run!” she yelled into the sky. “C’mon, 3 on 1 is more than fair!”

  Rubble shifted on the side of the street, and Cait remembered the one she’d sent that way. She rushed over, arriving in time to slam a fist into the things chest, arresting its rise with force. She pounded it a few more times, before letting out an ‘!’ as one too many blows finally proved too much, and the pair broke through the floor into the basement of the building that the rubble had once been. Time slowed as she fell, and she saw the raw red of the beast's throat like a glowing weak spot on a boss mob.

  Chance.

  She angled a fist down towards that soft flesh, and as they landed, her hand found itself buried in concrete as the monster’s last breath gurgled out around her arm.

  Triumph sent frisson cascading down her spine, and she roared it into the sky. As the red cleared from her vision, she saw the two other Ironhide beasts, holding something that looked hauntingly familiar, something she recognized from some sad newscasts. Then all Cait heard was the deafening rush of water as the monsters dropped the core of the Risen River into the basement.