From far out in the trees, they rushed us. The ground underneath me vibrated with their approach. Branches crashed and leaves crunched. They were so close.
And then, one by one, they were stopped. Pulled to a halt and then dragged backward into the foliage again by jaws full of jagged teeth. I knew it was my pack from the grim satisfaction they took in sinking their teeth into flesh.
I had no more time to ponder it as teeth snapped near my face. Wes and George stayed close, keeping themselves between me and whoever. It was sweet—and utterly annoying. I took advantage of George’s distraction and moved to Chris’s side.
Together, we took down the rogue he’d been eyeing since the beginning of our exchange. When the enemy hybrid was still beneath us, his eyes open and unseeing, I turned to Chris. “Get out there with the pack,” I said.
“But you—”
“I have George and Wes. I’m fine. Get out there and help the pack. No one dies.”
His shoulders slumped then straightened as he accepted the order. “All right,” he said.
“I mean it, Chris,” I called after him. “None of them.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said before leaping away.
In the space he left behind, one of Steppe’s hybrids appeared. My jowl curved into a wolfish grin as it approached me. The animal in me would enjoy this.
I approached slowly, one paw, then the other. It did the same, both of us wanting to draw it out.
Halfway there, I doubled over in pain.
My midsection felt like it was being ripped in two. I dropped to my belly and howled.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Wes react. He faltered and cast me a sideways glance. It was the opening his opponent needed. Teeth sank into the fur below Wes’s neck. He yelped and jerked sideways. By then, my view was obscured by my opponent, hovering over me, jaw slack and ready to bite.
I snarled.
It didn’t flinch.
I tried to pick myself up off the ground but another wave of pain hit. This time, my head felt as if a brick had been smashed over it. My front left paw seized and cramped as a new pain hit. My breath whooshed out of me. Someone had gotten the wind knocked out of them.
The voices in my head howled. My head thrummed with the vibration.
The Werewolf standing over me lunged. I met it with jaws opened and instead of moving, I let it come to me. When it did, its teeth sank into my shoulder at the same time my own jaw closed over its throat. I barely had time to feel the burn of my own injury before my teeth broke the skin and its blood fill my mouth. I’d hit a vein.
I bit harder.
Ten seconds later, the Werewolf quit writhing and went still. I let it fall over me and then shimmied backward, belly scraping the dirt until I was clear of it. I whined, the sound building and then bubbling from my throat against my will. It was a whine borne of my mental pain more than anything physical but it was hard to tell when the two were so much like the same thing.
A few yards away, George and Wes still scrapped with a group of hybrids. Wes was bleeding from the bite I’d witnessed earlier, but otherwise he seemed okay. George looked winded but he was holding his own. Beneath his light coat, muscles bunched and rippled as he rose on his hind legs and sent his opponent sprawling. It looked almost like a tackle. Any other time I would’ve smiled. George, ever the sports jock. But this time, I watched in muted concern. Something was happening. Something I didn’t understand, nor did I think was possible.
With each breath, the pain dimmed. Awareness receded. One by one, the voices in my mind were snuffed out. I cast about, unsure what it was I expected to see but convinced there must be some visible proof of the extraordinary thing happening in my mind.
But there was nothing new to see.
The others were oblivious, and the fight raged on. George got his teeth around his opponent and dug in, twisting and turning this way and that until the other wolf went quiet. Its body jerked a few times after George let go. I knew it wasn’t dead, but it didn’t get up when George left it alone.
I whimpered.
George glanced left. I tracked his gaze and found Wes involved with the last of Steppe’s creatures that remained between us and whatever was happening in the woods. Steppe himself was nowhere to be seen. George made his way toward me, head cocked sideways.
From what I could tell, ours was the only connection that hadn’t changed.
More voices disappeared. The pain vanished with it. Until slowly, all that was left was my own. It made me numb.
I was alone.
The bite on my shoulder hurt less than the void left behind in my mind.
From somewhere in the trees, I heard a muffled voice, distinctly human and cruel. I had no doubt it was Steppe. I couldn’t make out the words but it must’ve been an order of some kind. The hybrid Wes had been engaged with suddenly turned and sprinted into the trees. Wes took off after it, but he wasn’t prepared for such an abrupt departure and I could tell he was too far behind to catch up.
I listened as paws moved over leaves and branches in retreat. I expanded my senses. Farther out, I heard what sounded like car doors being slammed. Then rumbling—engines, maybe?
Then nothing.
Wes returned. His chest heaved with labored breaths. He stared down at me in concern, his eyes widening when he saw my bite. “It’s fine,” I said, moving to get up. “Find the others.”
My body grew heavy underneath the weight of my panic, and I struggled harder. I had to get to them. I had to know if they were out there.
Neither of the boys moved.
“Go,” I shouted, startling both of them. They backed up as I rose and advanced on them.
“Are you—?” Wes began.
“I need to know if they’re all right,” I said, cutting him off. He hesitated another second. When no one moved, I tore out of the clearing without bothering to see if either one followed.
I ran, casting a wide circle and then an even wider one when I backtracked. Nothing. The woods were empty.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I heard George call from somewhere to my left.
Minutes. Hours. How long had they been gone? The quiet inside me felt as if it’d been there forever.
I kept running.
My sides ached. The bite on my shoulder burned. I didn’t care.
“Here!” Wes called. “I found one. No—two!”
I sprinted toward the sound of his voice and then stopped short. In front of him lay two Werewolves—Janie and Emma. The sisters. Neither one moved.
“Are they breathing?” I asked.
George ran up and stopped short when he saw who I meant. He didn’t say a word as Wes bent low and nudged each of them in turn, pressing his ear to their slack mouths.
“They’re breathing,” Wes said.
I sighed in relief but it sounded more like a strangled growl. George looked at me strangely. “You didn’t know? You can’t sense them?” he asked.
“I can’t—” I swallowed. Saying it aloud made it real. “I can’t sense any of them except for you.”
Both boys stared at me.
I blinked against the itch in my eyes. If I were human, tears would’ve already fallen. “Say something,” I demanded.
“They’re all gone?” Wes asked.
The unmistakable note of hope in his words was too much. I let out a long, high-pitched whine and backed away, thrashing my head side to side. There was no explanation for my freaking out, except that my wolf didn’t know how to handle all these human emotions. Or the aloneness it felt at the quiet. It needed its pack.
I couldn’t believe that’s what losing them had done to me.
I wondered if I’d cope differently if I shifted back to human. Then again, when the bond had been in place, being human amplified the discomfort. I wasn’t willing to shift and find out. Not yet.
As I backed away, George and Wes watched me with matching looks of concern and alarm. Through our connection, George tested my emotional stabil
ity. I let him in. He needed to see how apart I felt.
It must’ve been bad because neither one approached me or tried to quiet me down.
“Is she all right?” Wes asked George in a low voice.
“I … don’t know.” His worry came through in a growl.
“Tara?” Wes asked. He took a tentative step and I crumpled into a heap, my head resting sullenly on my front paws.
“They’re gone,” I said simply.
“We’ll get them back,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if I believed him. In that moment, it didn’t matter. The absence of noise was like a void swallowing me up.
I didn’t answer and they let me sit.
Wes backed off, giving me space but keeping me in sight. At one point, he said something and George darted away. He came back a few minutes later with a bag clutched in his teeth, dropped it near one of the girls, and left again.
Wes—back in human form, though I hadn’t noticed when that’d happened—rifled through the bag’s contents and pulled out a small packet of something. I watched in detached interest while he cleaned whatever wounds Janie had sustained. She stirred and moaned and he whispered to her, coaxing her back to whatever state of sleep she’d been in before.
He did the same for Emma. Both of them came out of it enough to nudge the bond between us. Our connection was caught somewhere between awake and asleep. It made me feel marginally better to know it was there. But two—compared to four dozen—wasn’t enough.
Wes left them alone again and began pulling clothes from the bag George had brought. He cast glances at me here and there but I ignored him. Part of me knew we couldn’t stay here; we had to move, to take some sort of action, but I couldn’t make my limbs move. I’d never felt so completely empty of everything that mattered. Or so incapable of describing the sensation to someone else.
From inside the bag, Wes pulled the phone Grandma had given us. I listened as he called her and relayed what’d happened. It relieved me to know he’d warned her. I suspected he knew that would’ve been my first priority if I were myself. I was grateful, but still…
I sat.
When George finally returned the second time, Wes looked at him expectantly but George shook his head. Wes looked relieved. Neither spoke. They resumed watching me.
Darkness fell, thick and complete in the unlit forest. My eyes adjusted so well, it looked like daylight to my wolf sight.
After what could’ve been hours, Wes spoke. “Tara, we need to go.”
I lifted my head from my paws and shook it side to side. “I can’t leave them.”
“You have to. Steppe will come back here. He knows we’re alive.”
Even in the darkness, I could see straight into his irises. “What if I can’t sense them because they’re all dead?”
“They aren’t. He wanted them for something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but we have to go if we want to live and find out.”
I let that sink in. He was right. I knew that, but I hated the prospect of more quiet. More than I’d hated the noise before.
“If not for yourself, do it for Janie and Emma. They’re still here, still your pack. You need to protect them,” Wes said.
Through the bond, George urged me to listen even as he disappeared behind a tree with a pair of cargo shorts clutched in his teeth.
I forced myself to think past sitting here. Think past the quiet. Finally, I nodded at the two girls. “How will we get them out of here?”
George stepped out from behind the tree, human again and clad in shorts. He gestured to Wes. “We’ll carry them until they wake.”
I took a deep breath and pushed unsteadily to my feet.
“Do you want to shift?” Wes asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s easier this way.”
He didn’t say anything else before scooping up a she-wolf in his arms and leading us away.
My paws were silent as I followed the boys out of the woods. The quiet fog that enveloped my mind was an almost tangible depression. Even when I saw the dilapidated tour bus parked in the field behind Jack’s house, the numbness didn’t change. I was empty.
I had no concept of what I was headed toward, only what I left behind.
Chapter Eight
The stolen tour bus, courtesy of Benny, was made-to-order. Someone had removed all but the first six rows of seats, leaving the rest of the space free for transporting creatures much more animal than human. Creatures no longer a part of our group.
I swallowed a whine.
Once on board, I walked directly to the farthest dark corner and curled into it.
George and Wes boarded slowly, each carrying a groggy Werewolf. The girls had woken enough that the bond between us had returned, but they still weren’t very steady on their feet.
Behind the last row of seats, Wes stopped and bent forward to lay Janie down, but George shook his head. “Back here, man,” George said. One by one, they each laid the girls down beside me. I cuddled up to them and laid my head on my paws.
I looked up at Wes. In the grainy darkness filtered by sputtering yellow streetlights, I saw him work a muscle in his jaw as he stared down at me. Then he crouched beside me and laid a hand on the top of my head.
“We’ll get them back,” he said.
George echoed the sentiment through the bond.
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say to that. I still didn’t understand the desolation. I should’ve been happy. Getting rid of the bond was what I’d wanted. But not like this. It was like ripping off a newly formed scab—over and over.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Wes asked. His eyes were glued to mine; I knew he was trying desperately to read my thoughts—something that only worked for him on a full moon. Oh. What was today? I peered out the window at the chunk of moon hanging. It was big but not full.
I sighed. This would’ve been so much easier if he could pick it out for himself, no talking required. “It’s … empty,” I said, trying to put the pain into words he would understand.
He didn’t respond and I knew what he was thinking. This is what she wanted. What we wanted.
I looked away.
After a moment, George clapped a hand over Wes’s shoulder.
“Do you want me to drive first leg?” George asked, shifting the energy between us to something more normal. Less tense.
“Sure,” Wes said. “I need to update Edie.”
He rose and walked to the front of the bus. George settled himself in the driver’s seat and Wes sat on the last row, closest to my end. I knew he hated seeing me this way, but I couldn’t help it. I scooted closer to Emma.
The bus rumbled as it chugged to life underneath me. The gears creaked, objecting to whatever process George was putting them through. Then, with a lurch, we rolled forward. City lights tracked a pattern over the darkened windows and ceiling as we eased onto the street from the grass lot Benny had hidden the bus in.
On the main road, I didn’t bother watching Frederick Falls fade behind us. Knowing we were headed so far from where I’d last seen—and felt—my pack made my stomach clench. More than once, a whine built in my throat and I shoved it back. The pain had faded but the emptiness was an ache that couldn’t be erased or ignored.
We hit a bump and the bus bounced heavily. We were picking up speed, merging onto the interstate. Up ahead, Wes spoke in a low voice into the phone. I could’ve listened in but I didn’t. If there was anything to know, he’d tell me.
Beside me, the girls slept. Their breathing had evened into a steady cadence and their wounds, like mine, had healed themselves thanks to being in wolf form. I concentrated on the pattern of their breathing. Inhale. Wait a beat. Exhale. Wait a beat. Inhale.
The bus’s engine hummed beneath me, sending vibrations through my belly.
Before long, my eyes drooped. In the absence of action, my desperation had dulled from acute to numb.
Somewhere around Richmond, I slept
.
***
I awoke to the bus sputtering so hard I slid forward several inches before the momentum caught me and I swayed back. The engine hissed, echoing with the sound even after George had shut it down.
“What the hell, man?” Wes called.
“Sorry, but we’re running on fumes. She doesn’t like being thirsty,” George said.
He climbed free of the driver’s seat and hopped out the door, leaving it open behind him. Wes followed behind. I could hear him asking where we were. He sounded sleepy.
I heard a pop somewhere along the left side as the gas tank came open.
“Kansas,” George answered.
That jolted me fully awake. Kansas? Already?
I rose and stretched, extending my fingers up to the ceiling and not quite reaching it. Somewhere around St. Louis, Wes had convinced me to shift back to my human form. I’d done it partly to see if it improved the void in my mind and partly to eat. The void had remained but my stomach revolted against the idea of changing back again. My appetite as a wolf was considerably different from my appetite as a girl. And raw meat was scarce on a tour bus.
After stuffing my face with greasy drive-through fare, I’d felt slightly more myself. Enough that I’d finally become interested in where everyone else was and how they were doing. Wes filled me in.
Jack, Fee, and the others had made it out fine. They were safe inside Lexington Manor with no hiccups or run-ins with Steppe—or anyone else wishing them harm.
Grandma was furious at Steppe for misleading her, but she’d stayed. A fact that terrified me. Steppe had to know she was helping me. And my mother. They’d come to the house with official paperwork explaining the treaty was over. The house was searched and torn apart. Dresser drawers emptied, clothes strewn about. They left without finding anything to use against her—or apologizing. But my mom was safe. For now.
Then the human police came. They’d questioned my mother politely over glasses of sweat tea while leaning against the kitchen’s center island. They’d used hushed voices and syrupy manners and left with the same thing CHAS had: nothing.
Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) Page 12
