In Someone Else's Skin, Margo Collins [best books to read for women .TXT] 📗

cells, we save the babies, I get us back to our world, and you tell us everything you know about the wolf pack’s plans for me and my friends and the babies,” I countered. “Then we go our separate ways.”

The werewolf’s mouth quirked up in a grin, clearly enjoying the negotiations. “After that, all bets are off.”

“No—you promise not to come after me or mine.” I had to keep the infants safe until they could protect themselves.

“My pack will rip me to shreds.”

“Come after us again, and I will rip you to shreds.”

Grant threw back his head and laughed aloud. “I know I shouldn’t like you. But I think maybe I do. You got it, snake chick.”

“Fine, wolf boy. It’s a deal.”

An abstracted expression flickered across Grant’s face.

“Before you shift,” I hastened to add, “tell us anything you’ve noticed. Are there any guards or forces that we might encounter in the building? Anyone we might need to fight on our way out?”

“Only the ones around the queen. I think they’re relying on some kind of technology or something down here.”

“Not enough guards to spare?” I guessed.

“Possibly.” Grant shrugged.

Though given the size of this place, that would mean Queen Amalya’s people hadn’t been reproducing for years. Maybe for generations. The city had been in the when we had driven through it—lots of buildings, but no people. Not nearly as many as a city the size of this one should have.

I shook off the thought. As long as I got the babies back, the lack of new lamias in the lamia world wasn’t my problem.

Grant’s shift took longer than I had anticipated—long enough that I wondered if perhaps the dampening magic on the cuffs really was having an effect on his ability to change into his wolf form, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Even through the thick plastic material making up the walls that separated us, I heard his bones popping and grinding as they split and reformed, and my own desire to shift was triggered by the sound. If not for the cuffs, I think I might have shifted with him, just out of sympathy.

I watched in fascination at the slow-motion change going on in front of me. The change of man to wolf—or at least to a form in between—proceeded like something out of a horror movie.

His muscles knotted and twisted, bulking up so much that his shirt split at the seams.

Hair sprouted in tufts at his wrists and shoulders as his ears and snout elongated. His head whipped back and forth, twisting his neck as his canine teeth grew longer and sharper.

The strong muscles of his thighs bulged as his legs bent. The claws that had burst out of his fingers earlier grew even longer.

He strained against the manacles holding him until the bar between them twisted and broke. The metal clattered to the ground and Grant turned a lupine grin my direction.

Coit and Shane watched the change in fascination.

As soon as the manacles popped apart, Shane bent back down to examine the plastic hinges. “I don’t think these can be very strong,” he announced. He put his finger against a particular point. “If you simply put some pressure here—more than a human could, but I don’t think it’s out of your reach—I think they will come apart.”

Grant, now in his half-wolf, half-man form, nodded and punched at the door hinge once, then again. On the third strike, a cracking sound ripped through the air. Grant grunted in satisfaction, and then gave it one more hard hit.

“Hurry up,” Coit muttered, peering up and down the corridor. Not that anyone had come through in all the time we had been here—no guards, no visitors, nothing. That fit with my theory that there weren’t enough lamias to employ any as full-time dungeon guards.

That fit what I knew about my own world, too—that for all the lamias had been feared, had been considered dangerous, there had been relatively few of them.

Grant finally burst through the door, leaving it dangling behind.

Then he repeated the process from outside my cell.

The longer the pounding noises went on, the more nervous I got, until I found myself tapping my foot and muttering. “Come on, come on. Speed it up.”

Ripping my manacles off actually seem be easier for Grant than removing his own had been. But when I finally spun around, free from the handcuffs, I realized Grant’s enormous clawed wolfman hands were bleeding.

I couldn’t help the rush of sympathy I felt for him. As angry as I still was over the kidnapping of the infants, my parents’ training overrode that feeling. I had spent my whole life practicing empathy. Now I couldn’t simply put it aside, even for someone who should be my enemy. I reached out toward him. “Let me help.”

At Grant’s answering growl, though, I pulled my hands back and held them up, taking a step back. “Never mind.”

I turned and stripped quickly, my back turned to all the men.

Shifters were remarkably unconcerned with nudity, given their tendency to change forms between skin and fur (or scales, in my case) at will. But I had grown up with humans and maintained some modicum of modesty.

Finally free to use my shifter abilities, I put them into effect immediately, allowing myself to drop into the space where my own bones popped and cracked. Where the world went from color to black and white as my eyes moved to a slitted serpent’s gaze. Where my legs fused into one long continuous body and my arms disappeared, melting into the rest of me.

I dropped to the floor, coiling my body beneath me, but focusing on the plastic door to Shane’s cell. Although I was strong, I didn’t have the punching power of a werewolf.

I did, however, have some kind of magic. Even here, although I had been unable to open a portal, and the magic felt slippery and thick, I was still able to grab some of it and focus it toward the hinges.

Shane, who had gone back