“You,” Lola spluttered, so angry she could barely get the word out and didn’t realize she already said that. Visions of that woman standing silhouetted against a backdrop of burning homes in her village was the only thing Lola could see. They were vivid, those visions. She could almost smell burning wood and charred, human flesh mixed with the metallic tang of blood.

The woman did a small, mocking bow, a wide grin on her face.

“Yes. That’s right. Me,” she said. “One point for you, Lola dear.”

In pain, with a broken arm and maybe three to four cracked ribs, Lola let out a primal scream of outrage and attacked. She didn’t care about her injuries. Didn’t care how much pain she was in. This woman had killed people she loved. People she had known her whole life. This woman had come into her village and completely fucked up her entire life. Drake was the mastermind behind all that, she knew, but he was out of reach at the moment.

This bitch, though. She had come right to Lola.

Lola had no weapons. Her blade had been left back at the area she and Russel had met his brothers, and was now, presumably, in the castle somewhere with all their other stuff. Brought there by the servants one of the brothers, she couldn't remember which, had told her would come for it.

She didn’t care. Not one bit.

In her blind fury, she reacted without thinking. If she had taken a moment, maybe two, she would have realized how outmatched she was. Ghouls were one thing. The mindless, disgusting creatures barely had brains to speak of. They weren’t exactly difficult to kill, even without a weapon she surmised. Or maybe that was just her being overconfident. She had, after all, come a long way since her days in Gloucester. She wasn’t helpless anymore.

Werewolves, however, were a different class of monster.

The natural weapons they relied on, claws and fangs, were extremely deadly. Not only that, they also had superior strength and the ability to regenerate. This made them challenging to kill even at a hundred percent and not already wounded.

On the other side of the coin, Nora was absolutely overconfident and had every right to be. She laughed when she saw Lola coming straight at her, fury flashing in her eyes with such intensity; it was a wonder the woman could even think at all.

“That’s right little bunny,” she said, dropping into a relaxed and bored fighting stance. “Come on over.” She laughed again, the sound grating and irritating. “The gods must want your death to be a quick one.

Lola didn’t know exactly what she was going to do against Nora. The only thing she knew was that she had to kill her, somehow. The rage inside her demanded no less and if she was honest with herself, she demanded no less too. She let all that anger take control and let the training from Russel naturally come out.

It took less than a minute for Lola to get within striking distance of Nora and as soon as she was, she lashed out with her good arm. Nora didn’t even try to dodge until the very last second and all she really did was move her head back a bit. The fist went sailing past harmlessly but before she could counter, Lola used the momentum of her punch to spin herself as she dropped to the ground and flung a leg out in a wide, sweeping arc. It connected with the side of Nora’s left knee with enough force to actually hurt. Surprised, she found her leg buckling under the sudden stress and she fell to the ground in a decidedly graceless fall. Out of sheer bad luck, the side of her head smacked directly into the corner of the same stone bench Lola had been sitting on.

Nora’s vision went white for several long minutes. She was so dazed, she had no idea what happened, what was going on, or why she was suddenly on the ground with a splitting headache. She reached up a hand to her temple and it came away wet with blood.

What the hell? she asked herself.

Lola didn’t waste the opportunity. She practically dove on top of Nora and started pummeling her over and over again with her good arm. The anger gave her hits a lot more power behind them and she felt a satisfying crunch as Nora’s nose broke. Then another surge of satisfaction hit her when she split Nora’s lip open. It spurred her to keep going.

Distantly, sounds of guards running around and shouting at each other came to her but she was lost in a haze of combat.