Bite the Bullet

by L. A. Banks

  “It feeds with purpose, strengthening like one lone rogue male. To abandon the hunt here would leave the back door wide open.”

  “Well said, brother,” Hunter replied, his voice calm and yet commanding. “This is why we take a point team to New Orleans while keeping the back door tightly guarded. If it becomes suspected that a Shadow Wolf has become demon-infected and is on the loose, then I’m sure the Vampire Cartel can sway the other voting blocs at the United Council of Entities to allow an open wolf hunt.”

  Jason nodded, his gaze hard. “Our Werewolf cousins could possibly vote with them, given there’s been no love lost between our clan and theirs. It would take the heat off of them and redirect it toward us!”

  “Word . . .” Anwar said, slowly circling. “In Philly, we call that bullshit foul. That’s why I can’t stand Vampires. But I wouldn’t put it past those dead mothafuckas to try it—have all the wolf clans at war with each other.”

  “Yeah, hombre,” Tomas said with a snarl. “Then the Vamp Cartel gets a vote to do open season on any wolf that’s potentially infected, and for the first time in history they can pop us in the streets along with the Werewolves—infected or not.”

  Jason growled. “If it goes there, we might have to call for a coalition between Shadow Wolves and Werewolves.”

  “Perish the goddamned thought,” Jimmy Ray said, and then spit on the ground. “What’s your take, Hunter? How do we play this so we don’t get played?”

  “We have to set up a containment field for whatever’s feeding here, but also keep it from trying to get to the marketplace in New Orleans.” Hunter rubbed the tension from the back of his neck as he spoke. “We have to clean up after our own and keep this from hitting the the Big Easy. That’s just as much of a danger as the one potential rogue hunting in North Country, maybe more, because of all the politics involved.”

  Sasha hadn’t breathed nor blinked. Shogun had said the same thing when he’d approached her in South Korea—his clans had sought the courtesy to be able to clean up after their own. Normal Werewolves wanted to be able to capture, execute, and/or contain the demon-infected members of their ranks without a full-scale wolf hunt. Innocent, uninfected Werewolves had been slaughtered in wolf hunts for years, spurred on by the malevolent intent of Vampires. Humans had also been guided by whispers and rumors of where to find these wolves . . . whispers transmitted through Vampire murmurs and phantoms in their employ. Now that could happen to Shadow Wolves.

  It also slowly dawned on her, what if all this business with bad blood toxin was a very well-orchestrated plot devised by Vampires to wipe out their most formidable opponents—shape-shifting wolves of any breed? Both Shogun and Hunter had said that if the wolf clans stuck together, their Federations would pose the most significant, allied threat to the Vamps’ power structure. The conspiracy theory required time, resources, and proof—something Sasha didn’t have the luxury to employ right now, not with a higher priority threat looming.

  Random thoughts bounced off her synapses, colliding with both her conscience and common sense. Last night . . . what if the huge predator feeding with purpose was the male beside her . . . the one who’d experienced blackouts? Conversely, what if the pack didn’t buy the plan and demanded a hunt prior to heading for New Orleans? Even crazier, what if they went for it? She couldn’t have Fisher and Woods travel with her and Hunter.

  Until she knew Hunter was stable, she had to get her guys joined up with a safe base of operations that the rest of the team provided. Exponentially complicating matters, how in the world could she get to the isolated team in New Orleans to warn them that Fisher and Woods were no longer MIA, but that the brass couldn’t be notified until she had an off the record conversation with Doc? If she broke the airwaves with a sat-phone call, the transmission could be intercepted. Trying to reach Clarissa by shared vision was too sketchy and next to impossible to give her anything beyond impressions that the guys were still alive. The phenomenon wasn’t an exact science like a damned telegram!

  The variables before her made her head hurt, but she couldn’t even begin to focus on that now. At the moment a tense silence filled the glen as the other alphas considered the change in plans Hunter had put on the table. Finally Tomas gave a curt nod, causing a ripple effect in the group.

  “We’ve got enough muscle here to bring down that bitch, Dexter, no matter what he feeds on or shoots up with. Makes sense to tighten the noose here, flush him out, and intercept any courier he might have sent down to The Big Easy,” Anwar said with a rumble.

  “Definitely gotta interrupt his cash flow from this shit,” Tomas said, pounding Anwar’s fist.

  The Great Lakes Shadows gave the nod, too. Detroit and Chicago were in. That rippled assent from the Alaskans, Canadians, all the way to the Appalachian Shadows. Jason gave a shrug and a smile to count his vote as a yes. The Everglades grudgingly nodded, but the Texas range Shadows almost seemed as disappointed as Jimmy Ray that they weren’t going to New Orleans on the first run.

  “We got your back,” a barrel-chested Navajo growled, and then slapped five with Jimmy Ray. “You make us second wave—forty-eight hours, two moons, and we’ll have a pack in New Orleans. That’s definitely our neck of the woods.”

  “You know what they say,” Jimmy Ray added with a sly grin, chewing a twig. “Don’t mess with Texas . . . but I can tell ya what we do with people who mess with clan up in the hills where I’m from.”

  “No, Jimmy Ray,” Jason said with a good-natured laugh. “I don’t think you need to go into all of that in front of the ladies.”

  Sasha just looked around the group in complete amazement. They functioned just like a field military tactical unit. There was no long debate, no Congressional-style filibustering. No decision by committee. The way of the wolf was clean and efficient. Just as soon as everything had come to a head and had been discussed, it was decided and over.

  Chapter 7

  “Can you get these guys some new ID and to a chopper that’ll bring them out of the mountains with some plane tix to New Orleans for tomorrow?” Sasha asked Bear Shadow once they’d pulled up to the small cabin and disembarked from the Ford.

  Her gaze was intense and she ignored the disgruntled expressions Fisher and Woods had. “I don’t want them traveling with me and Hunter during a full moon where we could draw an attack . . . they might have a little wolf in their genes, but if these guys get bitten, it’s over. There’s nothing in their systems to fight the demon-infected Werewolf virus, and most people don’t survive a Werewolf attack, anyway.”

  “Agreed,” Hunter said, looking at the pitch of the dropping sun. “No sense in bringing them this far to have them die on American soil from the same thing they’d been running from.”

  “Your request is not a problem,” Bear Shadow said. “Crow is an excellent lookout and can make sure they get off the mountain with the truck. We’ll get your amulets repaired and you both can head out with supplies in the other vehicle. I’ll join the hunting party the old-fashioned way.” Bear Shadow smiled a very satisfied grin as Hunter pounded his fist.

  “You hunt well, old friend.”

  The two men stared at each other for a brief moment, but soon Woods’s and Fisher’s complaints broke the calm.

  “We don’t get a choice in the matter?” Woods argued. “We just found you again, Trudeau.”

  “And I want to keep you alive and whole, now that we’ve been reunited,” she said in a weary tone. “I don’t want to be searching the forest for your body parts. Understood?”

  “And we wanna have your back,” Fisher said, folding his arms over his chest. “Besides, we don’t even know where we’re headed, where they are in New Orleans, and I’d put money on it that they’re so undercover you don’t either.”

  Hunter looked hard at Woods and Fisher for a moment and then turned his gaze on Sasha. “Home them to the others on your squad.”

  “Do what?” Sasha stared at Hunter, totally confused.

  “They
are familiars. Home them. That is how my men could find them so fast. Their minds are a beacon within a pack.”

  “I am so not following you,” Sasha said, rubbing her palms down her face in frustration. “My men need an airtight way to rendezvous with my team without getting their heads blown off.”

  “I’m all for the last part of that,” Woods said, pounding Fisher’s fist.

  “Yeah, dude. Been there, seen it, done that, and ain’t trying to have another friendly fire incident again,” Fisher said, nervously jamming his hands into his jeans pockets.

  Hunter glanced at the two disgruntled soldiers and then turned his intense gaze on Sasha again. “They’re rare, only a few born during the life span of the pack’s alpha she-Shadow. They are always hers, because she is the one who could be most vulnerable to attack while pregnant and while the pack’s Shadow males are on a demon hunt.”

  “You have got to be shittin’ me,” Woods said, then hocked and spit. “That’s why Doc did this to us?”

  “Of all the low-life, twisted—”

  “Hold it, fellas,” Sasha said, trying to stem a mutiny. “We don’t know that.” An uneasy feeling slithered through her consciousness. Doc wouldn’t have premeditated something like this, would he? She stared at Hunter. Had they both been set up in the ultimate arranged marriage, complete with a pair of familiars? Sasha felt the muscles in her face tighten as she tried to keep shock and horror out of her expression.

  All eyes went to Hunter.

  “He did you a favor,” Hunter said flatly, seeming oblivious to her alarm. “From what I understand, your general Wilkerson wanted every embryo in the experiment infected with Werewolf virus.”

  “This was a better out, if Doc had to do a bait and switch, guys, trust me. Like I told you, Doc’s meds only held the full Werewolf flipout for twenty-five years. Ask yourself, how old was Rod when he really started getting weird?” She was babbling, repeating history for them . . . maybe repeating it for herself so she wouldn’t have to think the worst.

  Woods and Fisher stared at each other for a moment.

  “Right after the birthday party we had for him up at Ronnie’s Road Hawg,” Woods said, relaxing and his voice becoming sad.

  “Seems like it was yesterday,” Fisher said quietly.

  “A familiar is an honorable position in the pack, and a rare one,” Hunter said, lifting his chin. “In the past, legend holds, they were created by the Great Spirit to walk among humans with a wolf’s reflexes and savvy, but without alerting the demons—in order to carry visual messages to the shaman. The goal was to always protect the royal offspring from humans, intrapack aggressors, or the demon wolves . . . future leaders depended on this.”

  “Yeah, well, how come we’ve never heard about any of this shit?” Woods’s voice was strident from emotional fatigue. “Every time I ask a question, you guys say ‘legend has it,’ but what frickin’ legends? I’ve never heard of any of this stuff!”

  “History is replete with legends of these wolf-den-raised human children all the way back to Romulus and Remus,” Hunter replied calmly. “But they were hardly the first.”

  He waited a beat until slow awareness began to dawn within Woods’s and Fisher’s eyes. Crow Shadow and Bear Shadow simply shrugged as though they didn’t understand what the big deal was about it.

  “Early-warning protection is the primary function of the familiars,” Hunter said matter-of-factly. “It’s their job to recall the pack in the event of a double-back settlement attack . . . that, and being excellent advance lookout scouts.” He then turned away from Woods and Fisher and spoke in a low, calm murmur to Sasha. “As you know, my mother wasn’t so lucky to have living familiars available during her pregnancy.”

  Sasha continued to stare at Hunter without blinking, still feeling total outrage slowly simmering within Woods and Fisher. Maybe it was also simmering within her. Could that past history have been enough to make two old men collude to this degree? If she was going to keep her head on straight, she had to jettison the insane thought for now. Just let it go, Sasha, she mentally told herself. You just have to let it go.

  “Close your eyes,” Hunter said and then turned to Woods and Fisher. “You, too.”

  Hunter waited for the anxious threesome to comply before he closed his eyes and slowed down his breaths while Crow Shadow and Bear Shadow stood beside the truck, watching.

  “Envision who you want them to track and locate . . . remember what the others on your squad look like, the sounds of their voices, their scents.” Hunter waited until he heard Sasha’s breaths quiet and slow to steady inhales and exhales. Soon Woods’s and Fisher’s matched hers, and he continued to wait until they were all completely in sync before he spoke again.

  “Can you see them?” Hunter asked, waiting for Sasha’s disgruntled squad members to stop resisting. Little by little he could feel the tense vibrations around them ease.

  “Whoa . . .” Fisher murmured with his eyes closed. “I can literally smell Clarissa’s perfume. She wears that stuff . . . Angel, right?”

  “Right,” Sasha said quietly.

  “Yeah, she does,” Woods finally said. “There’s a lotta garbage on the street where they are, though.”

  Hunter smiled and opened his eyes. “Sasha . . . they’ll be able to find the others now.”

  She opened her eyes with Woods and Fisher. “Now that was cool.”

  “Yeah, but what do we tell Clarissa, Bradley, and Winters when we get there?” Woods asked Sasha, still clearly concerned.

  Sasha gave him and Fisher a big hug. “Tell them that for reasons you can’t disclose, your death had to be staged so you could be more effective. Also tell them that I’m hunting something crazy with my, uhmmm, indigenous guide and that a call to the brass about you right now could be intercepted and thus compromise the operation at this point. You take the image of me hugging you guys directly to Clarissa, understood? As resident psychic, she’ll be able to interpret from it. That’s your calling card to get you allowed in and not shot at the door when you find the hidden team. They’re living like a sleeper cell on our side right now and could be a little edgy, so take standard entry precautions. Wear silver, a blessed religious symbol, you know the drill, so they don’t think you’re an entity using a bogus body image. Let ’em know that I’ll be there within forty-eight to seventy-two hours—and in the meantime, start looking for clues but be careful. Don’t ever split up. You guys move as a unit.”

  Anxiety shadowed relief, no matter which way she turned the plan in her mind. Sure, she’d literally helped Hunter dodge a silver bullet at the interpack clan meeting, but was it the right thing to do? Only time would tell.

  But she’d thought she’d pass out when Bear Shadow had gotten the broken silver chains on their amulets repaired and tried to give them to Hunter, who stepped back from his own man as though Bear were holding a rattlesnake. The only saving grace had been that Bear had misinterpreted Hunter’s response as a forceful command to give the amulets to her, of course to doubly protect his mate who was in heat. The mental replay made Sasha inwardly cringe.

  At least her guys, as well as Hunter’s, were out of harm’s way for a moment. Crow could get Woods and Fisher to a small, regional chopper service by truck; then before nightfall the chopper could get them to the regional airport that would have much lower security than a huge international airport. Even if they had to take a crop duster out of the area, the pack had influence that would ensure her men got in the air before the moon was up.

  Crow would then recognizance with Bear and the two would merge into the larger clan where there was safety in numbers—just like Woods and Fisher would soon be with a small squad again.

  She had to stop worrying. If her guys had precariously made it all the way from the Afghan border, across Russia, and into Alaska, and then down into Canada with relatively no help, they could damn well make it from the Rockies down to Louisiana . . . she hoped.

  Sasha released a quiet rush of air as
Hunter drove in silence. She kept her gaze on the late-afternoon sun, as though staring at it long enough would keep it from setting. For the first time in a long while she found herself dreading the unknown that would come with nightfall.

  Their regional exit plan was slightly modified from that of Woods’s and Fisher’s. Unlike her men, they’d drive to a remote pack-owned guest lodge that the pack had conveniently closed for the winter when the outbreaks began. That would be their temporary base of operation. Everyone involved believed it was a part of their data-gathering strategy . . . they’d hunt by moonlight, pick up on the trail that had a trajectory toward New Orleans, and in the morning push onward to a ranger station that had pack ties and a chopper to get to a regional airport and ultimately out. She would call Doc on the road and meet up with him in a remote location in Colorado before heading south.

  It sounded logical, practical even. But in her heart she knew that her reasons went far deeper than just protecting Woods and Fisher. There was no way she could have Hunter in a populated area if his condition was unstable. That would be like walking through a mall or a small airport with no safety on a gun and firing at random, hoping not to hit anyone or anything. Just plain irresponsible.

  And they couldn’t go to any of the other nine area lodges that were open. Those human vistas that boasted of no TV or Internet connections were magnets for families, honeymooning couples, and elderly retirees who were seeing the broad brush beauty of the country for the first time. Innocents. On the flip side, if anything was tracking its own kind and Hunter turned out to be a magnet, better to be in a location that was vacant but had been set up like a small artillery bunker.

  “You finished gnawing on that bone?” Hunter said casually, no malice in his voice.

  Sasha briefly closed her eyes and rubbed the tension away from her neck. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Pretty much,” he said, but kept his eyes forward as his huge hand enveloped hers. He brought her knuckles to his mouth and hesitated, before slowly releasing it. “I’m sorry . . . about everything.”