I pulled the nine-mil and took two shots into the black wolf’s side. He squealed and broke free, rolling from the fight, making an awful arrarrarr sound of doggy pain and surprise.

I aimed at the bitch. Eli raced into the line of fire, shouting my name. Just as something snared my boot and hauled me back into the water. And under.

The dire wolf had my ankle in his jaws and was backing through the mud. His coat and eyes were the color of the muddy water, and all I could see was his teeth. And my combat boot in his jaws. My heart hit like a jackhammer.

I don’t have nightmares of drowning. Or suffocation. Until he yanked me hard and my head went under. The mud and water was a thick, slimy consistency and if I gave in and took a breath, I’d be full of mud. And I’d die.

I could shift, but Beast would be underwater too. And would die.

The wolf pulled me deeper, placed a paw on my belly, pushing me down.

I fought. Struggling to get away.

I needed to breathe. I needed to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathebreathebreathe. There was no air. The water was deep and dark and sluggish. I had mud in my eyes and ears, and my butt was buried in it, dragging a trail deeper. There was no light. Werewolf claws pierced my belly.

Give in. Stop fighting, Beast thought at me. Pull body to paws and fire.

It was not an intuitive action. And I had no idea if the gun would work in muddy water. But I did it. I stopped fighting to get away and drew my body tight, crunching down toward my feet. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I shoved the muzzle of the nine-millimeter semiautomatic into the first hard thing I found that wasn’t me. And fired. The wolf let go.

It was too dark to see and I wasn’t sure which way was up or sideways, disoriented by the cloying mud. Once again I had to let go and stop fighting. Hardest thing in the world. Hardest thing ever. Harder than fighting. Harder than dying. To not move and not breathe. Panic clutched at me with suffocating fingers.

But I let my body relax. And I started to float. I was ready to breathe mud long before my butt broke the surface. I was facing bottom and had to writhe upright. The breath I sucked in then was part slime, part air, and part water. It was glorious. I coughed, sputtered, coughed some more. Spat mud that left a grainy coarse film in my mouth and nostrils. My teeth ground on it like fine sandpaper. And it tasted like rotten leaves and clay and dead fish. I wiped my eyes, blinking against the filth that coated them and scraped my corneas.

Eli was standing ankle-deep in mud onshore and he tossed me a rope. Mr. Prepared.

I wrapped it around my left wrist, because I was still holding the nine-mil in the right, and I let him haul me ashore, which mostly meant him dragging me through a trough of mud until I was far enough on what passed for dry land to crawl out of the watery furrow and struggle to my knees. Again. Eli started laughing, and I looked down at myself in the dusky light. In the sunset and moonrise, I was covered in a slick, slimy layer of dark brown mud. I coughed and sputtered some more.

Brute trotted up, laughing at me, tongue lolling. Behind him lay two dead wolves, one reddish and one black. They had died in wolf form and showed no signs of morphing back to human, which was a good way to keep Eli out of jail for murder and Brute off an animal control officer’s death list.

I made it to my feet, Eli not offering a hand up, holding on to his rifle, which was a good thing.

I was standing in six inches of mud and water, trying to find my balance, when the werewolf lunged out of the canal straight at me. Eli screamed, “Down!” bringing his weapon up toward me. I dropped, rolled, and brought up my handgun. Eli fired. I fired. My weapon didn’t. Misfire. The werewolf was directly over me. Jaws reaching.

Brute collided with him. Midair. I heard the thud of bodies over the gun blast. They fell, jaws locked around each other. And landed with me in the middle. Paws shoved me down, deep into the mud. Claws slicing me, them dancing on hind legs. One paw landed on my solar plexus and the last of my air ooffed out.

The water was a frothy, muddy mess all around me. I rolled, pushing deeper into the slick slime. Pushed away from the fighting weres. I came up within arm’s reach of the combatants. My lungs full of mud. I threw up muddy water. Breathing between each retch with a frantic, rubbery, tearing sound. I tasted blood, gagged, and vomited again.

Eli held his weapon, ready to fire, the night-vision scope doing nothing to help him differentiate the two mud-covered werewolves. I caught my breath, staying low to the surface of the water, and crawled through the canal, back to shore, again, still, miraculously, holding my useless, mud-caked weapon. I fell, gasping, on the beach. The roar of the wolves made my eardrums shudder.

They fought in hip-deep mud and water, two enormous wolves. Wrestling like grizzlies, biting, fangs raking, claws trying to keep purchase on wet fur, jostling in the water with supernatural speed as the sun set behind them. I smelled wolf blood and heard their harsh breathing, like broken bellows. I was shivering, hard shudders bashing through me. It was still winter. And I’d been in the winter-cold water too long. And I’d nearly drowned in mud. Twice. My body was reacting to the stress with a case of shock.

The werewolves fought onto shore, Eli backing slowly, not daring to take a shot, unable to tell the two wolves apart. Then one broke away. Rushing toward me. Jaws wide. Eli fired, the concussion echoing across the still water. The wolf stumbled. And Brute landed on top of him. Sinking his fangs deep into the back of other wolf’s neck. With a wrenching motion, he snapped the enemy wolf’s spine with a crack that rebounded across the black water.

Together, the wolves fell, slowly, to the beach. Brute didn’t let go, but worried the wolf’s spine, tugging, tearing, until there was no way that even the accelerated healing of a were could recuperate from the damage. Eli came closer, moving with the careful step and determined stance of the warrior. He placed his weapon against the skull of the dire wolf and said, “Now.”

Brute leaped back.

Eli fired. And fired. And fired.

When there was nothing but pulp left of the dire werewolf’s head, he stepped back. The wolf’s blood flowed into the canal water. Brute lifted his snout and howled, long and lonely. Again and again. No one answered. No wolf replied.

* * *

But across the canal I saw a silhouette framed in the sunset, the bloody, setting sun on one side of him, the bloody, rising moon on the other. It was another werewolf. Silent. Controlled. Watching. He met my eyes across the water, letting me see him, letting me know him. It was the lone wolf, sitting in the shadows of the trees, downwind, absolutely still. Beside him was a dog I recognized, her gaze as intense as the wolf’s. I thought about telling Eli, about getting him to shoot the wolf. But . . . the wolf wasn’t a threat. I knew that. He was a lone wolf, watching, living among humans in perfect harmony and control. I lifted a hand to acknowledge the gaze, and his place in the swamps. He dipped his head to me and turned slowly, trotting into the quickly falling night, PP at his side.

Half an hour later, I heard the whine of the airplane engine, and the coughing-thump as the propeller turned over. Moments later, from a mile away, a plane skimmed over the trees, rising into the air, flying beneath a bloody moon. I had no idea how he had masked his scent, but I figured Sarge was a wily old wolf and knew a trick or two.

* * *

It took the equivalent of a fire hose to clean us both off, Brute and me. The mud was caked to us, thick and dry, by the time we got to the hotel, and colder than a winter death, even huddled together in the floor of the pilfered wolves’ airboat. Which we stole with impunity. But finally Brute was white in the moonlight and I was . . . at least clean, though shivering so hard I couldn’t talk, even with Beast heating my blood. I managed to climb to my room and stand, fully clothed, under the scalding shower until I was warm again.

It was only then, as the memories of the battle recurred again and again, that I realized that Brute had saved my life. If the werewolf had landed on me, in his leaping attack, jaws open, he’d have caught my throat in his fangs and ripped my head off.

I owed the werewolf my life.

“Well, c-c-c-c-c-crap,” I said to the shower walls.

* * *

I was asleep beneath a mound of covers when I heard my door open. “Don’t shoot. It’s me,” Rick said, his voice a croak. He sounded worn to the bone, and when he crawled into the bed beside me, he was feverish hot, barely strong enough pull the covers over himself after he fell against me. Pea scampered between us, nestling into the angle of hip and thigh.

“Your virtue is safe,” Rick murmured, “this time. I honestly just want to . . . cuddle.”

He crawled in beside me and fell asleep against my shoulder. I curled my body around him, breathing in his cat-scent, absorbing the heat of his cat. Together, we three fell asleep.

Note from Faith: I hope you liked Beneath a Bloody Moon. I fell in love with the gulf years ago, and have wondered for years about the canals. For research on this subject, I talked with John Jensen, and was given privy to some of his groundbreaking research on the area. If you are interested, take a look at his forthcoming books, to be released from this site: www.EarthEpochs.com

The first of five books in the Earth Epochs series is Ancient Canal Builders of North America—Florida and Louisiana Harbors and Canals.

The second Earth Epochs ebook out in about November is Ancient Canal Builders of North America—New York Harbors and the Ancient Inland Waterway.

The third book is the disaster mechanism, cause and effect, due out in April next year: Earth Epochs—The Last Great Cataclysm—7,000 Years Ago.