Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

There was no time left. I was already sprinting up the last switchback.

  I heard the rasp of a zipper.

  Maybe I could get him to panic. Maybe I could make him forget about Emily and concentrate on me.

  I felt a spike in Alex’s emotion through the Call. He sensed my emotions. He was coming.

  Noble had to have a weapon in that bag.

  I jinked and leaped up the last couple of paces onto the summit’s flat space.

  Still no weapon pointed at me.

  Instead, bizarrely, he had pulled his coveralls back so he was practically naked. His hands were thrust into the bag, gripping Emily’s throat and pointing a gun at her head.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  Despite knowing it was wrong, I skidded to a halt. I couldn’t kill Emily like this. We had lost.

  “It’s all over, Noble,” I said. Anything to distract him. “Petersen will kill you.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you think, I’ve got you here. You can’t fight me. You can’t escape me. I’ll take what I want and go. Petersen won’t find me out on the mountain.”

  The green flare behind the cabin caught me completely by surprise.

  Gray!

  But that was the signal that he had Emily. How?

  Noble twitched, but all he did was sneer and lower himself into the opening of the body bag. It was obscene.

  Without thinking, I was running again. It wasn’t Emily in the bag.

  The gun dropped from his fingers. It had been nothing but a way to slow me down.

  The woman struggled. She was bound and gagged; there was nothing she could do—but as the bag slipped back I saw it was Noble’s receptionist. The poor woman who’d been hopelessly in love with him.

  And my skin started to burn with the pull of energy.

  Faster.

  All in the heartbeat it took me to get there, a ball of eye-searing blue light exploded from the bag and I half-tripped as Noble’s body distorted in front of me.

  I crashed into him, pushing him away from her.

  A red flare exploded against the cabin.

  Nagas! Right here!

  I’d caught Noble off-balance and his wolf fell away, but I was too late for her. As he’d changed, he’d used the energy to tear her body apart and feed his transformation. Her whole front, where they’d touched, was just gone. The sharp edges of her ribs and chest bone stood out starkly. Nothing was left of her abdomen but blood.

  We struggled to our feet.

  Behind Noble, the cabin had caught fire.

  He was huge, his fur mottled with blood and filth from the murder he’d just committed. As he stretched to his full height, his wolf’s eyes were level with mine. They blazed—not golden, but red, charged from the woman’s dying fear.

  And at the same time, I felt him reaching for me with his sick mind. The cold tide washed around me, freezing me in place with its grip.

  No.

  He needed me to lower my defenses. Tricking me into thinking he was Alex hadn’t worked, but fear was doing the job for him even better.

  He took one slow step forward.

  Fear can paralyze you. Fear can sap the strength from your limbs, and rise up, crackling through you like water abruptly turning to ice, until even your brain stops.

  I’d never met anything that scared me like this.

  But fear means you’re still alive.

  Run! I shouted in my own head.

  Over that, his bleak, binding monologue hissed through my mind like poison. There’s no way you can escape. It’s over. There’s no point in running. Give up. It’ll stop. Make it shorter.

  Alex was running. He was too far away.

  The Call. Take strength.

  I managed a shaky step backwards. And fell over the edge toward the trail switchback.

  The shock cleared my head, broke the connection with Noble. I had enough time to register what was happening and relax before the deep, soft snow puffed out around me. The forty-foot drop I’d fallen over was more than half snow. The worst was that it tumbled me, so I had to figure out which way was up.

  Then I was running.

  I couldn’t help Gray and Emily. The best I could do was divert Noble.

  No. Change! Fight!

  It wasn’t Tara in my head. That was silent Hana, my wolf.

  But I couldn’t change now; I had no idea what would happen if I did. When I killed the Naga I’d blanked out completely. Surely that would mean I’d forget about what I had to do here? Would I even know how to change back?

  Who do you think got you to change back last time? Hana.

  That was Tara speaking.

  But I can’t trust changing.

  He’s catching you, was the simple reply to that.

  What came from Hana then was a jumbled image rather than words, as if words would take too long.

  Noble was huge. I mustn’t let him catch me in his jaws. So obvious. But the size was a mistake. It made him slow in a fight. It made him clumsy. It wasn’t his normal size. He had to adjust for everything. He would tire quickly. Just so long as I kept away from his jaws.

  But I’ve never been a wolf. I’ll be even clumsier.

  That’s why you must let me.

  Do it, said Tara. Trust her.

  I leaped down a section of the switchback.

  Noble ran to the end and turned.

  He did look slow to turn.

  But he was frighteningly quick on the straights, and I’d run out of switchback eventually.

  Without my really thinking any more about it, my clothes were falling off me. Skin was rippling. A gasp became a howl.

  No time.

  The world blurred and I fell towards the trail. Hana sizzled through me as if my veins had caught fire. I became we.

  We leaped up, back up the switchback, right past Noble’s frustrated, snarling jaws.

  Up. Up.

  Noble chased, going the long way. We could jump further than him. He was slower going up than he had been coming down. Either he knew we didn’t have anywhere else to go, or he was conserving energy.

  Could this actually work?

  I wasn’t blanked out. I wasn’t controlling my body, but I was experiencing everything, like some kind of weird fairground ride that you didn’t dare fall off.

  He came closer. We let him. He lunged and we were a spinning, snarling knot that unraveled and we broke away and jumped again. Up.

  He was even slower. He’d not gotten so much as one tooth on me.

  But at the top, there was nowhere else to go. The flat space in front of the cabin was about twenty yards across and twelve deep. No space for anything fancy. No way down but the trail. Too long a drop on the sides or the back. Alex too far away. And I had to keep Noble from going around the back and helping the Nagas.

  Shots were fired somewhere behind the burning cabin. Shouting. Gray was in trouble. He wasn’t armed.

  He had to look out for himself. We had to defeat Noble.

  Noble stalked us, trying to herd us one way or the other, cut down the options.

  We feinted and darted in front of him, but he knew his strengths. He wasn’t trying to fight. He was concentrating on getting one good bite, a grip on me and then I’d be facing that cold strength seeping into my head again, shutting everything down.

  We got too close. He raked our side with his jaws, drawing blood, only just unable to close on flesh.

  Hana! I called.

  I couldn’t talk to her. I could see the way out of this. A way that Hana as a wolf wouldn’t see. A way using my human knowledge and Hana’s control of my wolf body.

  Images! Tara said.

  How to translate years of martial arts and half-remembered physics lessons into pictures?

  Hana saw.

  Noble thought his size was his overwhelming advantage. He hadn’t studied the martial arts. He might know his vulnerabilities in his mind, but he didn’t have the feel of those lessons, deep in his body. We did.

  Hana dodged as if w
e were running for the trail. He turned, and we straightened, sprang at him like an arrow. Our jaws fastened on the side of his throat, fangs sinking in.

  It was the wrong place. The back of the neck, biting down on the spine, or the front, tearing at the soft arteries; those were killing zones. Not the side. But it hurt him all right.

  Noble’s wolf screamed and twisted. His sheer bulk allowed him to throw us. And we let him.

  We landed, already scurrying backwards to the side of the landing, frightened by his incredible strength and invulnerability. We were cowering. Our tail was between our legs and we were whining with fear.

  Noble’s eyes shaded to the same red as the fresh blood on his neck, and he charged.

  Back. Back.

  He was like a tidal wave bearing down on us. He accelerated the short distance between us like a shell from a cannon. He was impossible to escape. He would crash into us and knock us onto our back.

  Down!

  We couldn’t get out the way completely. I had anticipated that.

  Roll. Kick!

  We didn’t have the strength to kick him clear and we weren’t small enough for him to pass over without tangling.

  Noble flew over the edge, but he’d still hit us in passing and we went with him.

  Not the front with the trail and the gentle, twenty-foot fall into the snow.

  The side. Straight down.

  Chapter 71

  A fine day it may have been, but it wasn’t my day to die.

  I was in a white fog. Was I looking up or down? I didn’t think I was dead. I didn’t think I was back in restraints and under sedation in the Aurora Center, but it felt a bit like it; nothing seemed to work the right way.

  Ah! Still four-legged. Okay, that makes more sense now.

  My mind cleared and I could feel Alex’s frantic searching through the Call. Unfortunately, all I could communicate was that I was alive. Our Call tingled with his relief and love.

  He’d be going up the trail. There wasn’t a direct route from there to wherever I was, other than the way I’d taken, and I wasn’t going to recommend that.

  I worked my way around until my muzzle popped out of the snow.

  I was on a ledge with further to fall if I wasn’t careful.

  I’d hit a bank of snowdrift at about sixty feet, started a small avalanche and been carried down with it.

  Noble was bigger and had been traveling faster. He’d fallen further. There was no sign of him, but there was a huge fantail of disturbed snow below me, a much bigger avalanche than I’d caused. He could be anywhere under that.

  His real problem was he was so much heavier than me. The old problem of the difference between a cat falling twenty feet and a cow falling the same. Splat. With any luck he’d broken his neck, but snow is tricky to predict. I wasn’t going to be happy until I’d seen his dead body, but in the meantime, there was something more urgent.

  Emily.

  I scrabbled along the ledge, working my way toward the back of the mountain, behind the cabin which was now well ablaze.

  Hana and I relaxed. It was easier to let my wolf’s instincts feel out a way, sometimes burrowing into a mound, sometimes stepping tentatively out onto the gleaming slope. Left to their own devices, my big paws were sensitive to every nuance of weight and shifting in the snow. Despite a few heart-stopping moments, we quickly got to the edge of the steepest section and then slithered carefully down toward the base.

  There were no more shots, but I could hear movements coming from the pine woods ahead.

  Alex was above me. I caught a pulse from him as he saw me slinking toward the trees and I could feel him edging out over the lip and starting to work his way down. I could feel the tension in his body, his focus on the feeling through his paws.

  The Call was like a sweet shot of brandy, spreading its warmth through my body. We were hunting together.

  Another shot. There was a cry and a heavy body thrashed through the brush below.

  There were Nagas, out there in the pines below me. They’d come here—my territory, my wolf said—and they wanted to harm my friends.

  Kill.

  I felt the anger rising again, my vision locking down; I felt the strength of the Call flooding into me and began to creep down with more urgency. I needed to taste the intruder’s lifeblood.

  Kill.

  “Amber.” A high voice rang out below me. A voice I knew. I had to stop.

  She broke away from the pines.

  She was scrabbling on the rock, trying to climb back up to the top where she must have seen me before Gray rescued her from the cabin. Something had happened in the dark forest below and she was returning to where she knew she’d be safe. She was looking for me.

  Except I wasn’t there. And what she was climbing toward wasn’t me. It was a wolf.

  Stop, I tried to yell. The wolf’s throat wasn’t made for that sound.

  Change. Help, Hana.

  Nothing. The wolf was ascendant. It was the utmost I could do to hold still. My body was quivering with a need to kill. I’d drunk too deeply of the Call.

  Some noise must have escaped me. Emily stopped looking over her shoulder and instead she looked up the slope.

  She froze.

  Don’t run, Emily, please don’t run.

  But she did and that broke the little control I had over the wolf.

  Prey! Kill!

  It was all I could manage to slow myself down. My wolf was about to launch herself forward just at the moment I was hit by a hard-centered avalanche from behind.

  Everything crashed down the slope, tumbling and turning, snow exploding out in all directions until we hit the first of the trees and I bounced off the stiff branches, landing upside down.

  All the snow in the tree shook loose and fell on me in one huge, freezing dump.

  I thrashed around wildly, trying to get purchase.

  The growl from above me stamped down on my chest with an almost physical force.

  The wind scoured the snow clear and I was looking up at Alex’s bared fangs.

  Fate has a way of turning around and handing you your ass when you least expect it, and always in the way you least expect it.

  It didn’t matter a damn what our positions were elsewhere. As an Athanate, I was House Farrell and Alex was my kin. As a pack, on two legs, I was the alpha. That didn’t make any difference here. On four legs, Alex was my alpha. I could barely breathe, he was so dominant.

  With all my attention fixed on my lord and master, I barely noticed, but my berserk wolf had evaporated. Control and sense had returned.

  That’s what the right alpha does.

  I peeked up at him.

  Some mistake, surely?

  No. No mistake. I whined in submission and dropped my eyes.

  He took a step back and I rolled upright, keeping my head and tail low to the snow.

  The shock of what I’d been about to do as a wolf flooded into me, and immediately, the Call seemed to press down on the feeling and rob it of its strength. There were no words in the Call, but I could sense Alex telling me that it wouldn’t happen again now.

  And the whole world felt different. Instead of all my energy spilling out and fighting in different directions, I felt calm and focused.

  That’s what the right alpha does.

  In the cover of the trees, about forty yards away, Gray emerged, blood trailing down the side of his face and an MP5 slung around his neck.

  He swooped down on a sobbing Emily and picked her up.

  “Okay, my girl,” he said. “The men are gone. Time for us to go too.”

  “Wolves,” she stammered tearfully, peering around him.

  “Friends,” he replied.

  He looked up at us, his eyes missing nothing. He nodded and then tilted his head back downhill. We understood. There were more Nagas for him to get past down below. We needed to help. Then he turned and dived into the shadows of the pine forest, Emily clinging to his back.

  Alex and I wave
red. As wolves, we could flank Gray like scouts, but we had no method of warning him about Nagas other than howling. Not a safe option. If we changed back and could get back to the ranch, at least we would have weapons.

  Up at the cabin, there was a snowmobile.

  We climbed in wolf form. It was steep, but not a technical climb, and both of us felt that four legs were better than two.

  Once Gray had disappeared, the forest behind us was silent. As we approached the summit, we heard the noise of gunfire from the trail, a chopped-off scream and more gunfire.

  Wrong direction for Gray, too close for Ursula. That meant Noble was alive and fighting Nagas.

  As it turned out, we made the summit at the same time he did.

  I was shocked all over again at how big he was. He hadn’t been badly injured in the fall, but his side was streaked with blood. A bullet wound. There was no difficulty in seeing how he’d responded. His muzzle was slick with blood.

  As soon as he saw me, he attacked.

  I couldn’t push him over the edge; he wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, but we didn’t need that. Two wolves are better than one.

  Alex and I split and circled, darting aside as he feinted a rush, one way then the other.

  Whatever his lack of capability as a fighter, Noble was cunning. He could guess that Alex was more tired than I was. While I had walked up the trail from the ranch, Alex had been forging a path through the snow. When I had fought Noble, Alex had run to help me. However good his stamina, it would all be taking its toll. Noble was probably also thinking that with Alex out of the way, I would be an easier target.

  He quit the feints and launched himself at Alex.

  They vanished into a snarling, spinning ball of fur and fang. Keeping it like that was Noble’s best tactic, because I couldn’t interfere without risking getting in Alex’s way. I wasn’t sure it was down to any judgment on his part though; the slightest hesitation and Alex would be on him.

  They kept rolling, each trying to find an opening for a strike against an unprotected throat.

  I felt Hana’s control leaking back into my limbs. She might have the confidence to attack where I didn’t.

  And at the edge of my awareness, there was someone running up the trail. I doubt that Alex or Noble heard them. It could only be a Naga.

  Time to do something.