by Mark Henwick
Where’s Emily?
I could see glimpses of the pursuers, ruddy faces and hands seeming to float from tree to tree in the dark, puffs of hot air streaming behind them as they breathed through open mouths, heads turning back and forth, always searching.
Ursula was to my left. Once I got a good look, her size was unmistakable. Her bulky shadow was misshapen—she was carrying Emily. She was moving the quietest, but that meant she was the slowest as well. They were gradually gaining on her.
The trees were thick and her trackers were still spaced out. I couldn’t get a shot at more than one at a time and as soon as I did, the flare from my gun would give away my position.
More movement, behind the last Naga. The big blur of several people close together. Too close together, what did they think they were doing?
Too many, though. I had to make them chase me and give Ursula a chance of escape.
As soon as I came to that decision, I put it into action.
I dropped the first Naga. Single shot to the head. Lined up the second.
They were turning. Not toward me; to face something behind them.
Shit! Huge! Kodiak bear!
No wonder the Nagas turned that way.
With a roar that seemed to reach down and liquefy the air in my lungs, the bear emerged from the darkness like a shaggy locomotive and struck before the Nagas had even finished swinging around.
The closest Naga was simply tossed aside, with his whole chest caved in.
I hit the other one with a single round as he fired at the bear, and then a massive paw shattered his skull and it was over.
No more Nagas following. The blur I’d seen was the Kodiak.
Even for a Kodiak, he was freaking enormous—a thousand pounds or more. He made a big target and he’d been hit a couple of times in the side, but that hadn’t slowed him down.
Would the wounds piss him off?
It was Gray, wasn’t it?
He slid to a stop, and stretched up on his hind legs to over twice my height, then thumped back down on all fours, spraying snow in all directions.
Freaking hell.
A head that was bigger than my chest swiveled to look at me and his mouth opened.
Yeah, I could fit my head in there, but I wasn’t going to.
I really, really hoped it was Gray.
I slapped him on the shoulder.
“Go,” I said, pointing down to ranch. “Take the lead. I’ll make sure no more are following.”
I caught a hint of Ursula, still moving through the trees, concentrating on her task and trusting Gray and me to get on with my ours. The woman was good. Kodiak-Gray lumbered down to overtake, and they all picked up speed.
Good.
I turned my attention back upslope.
The Naga sergeant had had enough. The TacNet bubbled with terse Fox team South calls as they leapfrogged in alternating groups towards the east rendezvous.
Bug out, boys and girls.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone assigned to come after us, but the forest upslope remained still as I went through my own ‘run and pause’ routine.
The TacNet buzzed me with an emergency communication tone. Not on the Nagas’ frequency, on the frequency the colonel had set for us.
I tuned back in and reset the encryption options.
“Yes,” I said shortly, crouching in the lee of a boulder and scanning the silent, black forest above me.
“Amber, it’s Naryn. I’ve come downtown to help if I can. Update me please.”
I grunted a report in staccato sentences between bouts of running and listening for Nagas. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask for clarification of irrelevant details and grasped the urgent problems immediately. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be in trouble for everything that had gone on in the last few days, just that he wouldn’t do it tonight.
This Naryn, I could work with.
“Get Ursula to bring Emily to me at once,” he said.
“She’s been through enough—”
“And this way, she won’t remember any of it.”
I felt my stomach sink. I’d known there would be a problem. Did it have to end with Emily being damaged?
“I have experience at this. It isn’t as bad as you think.” Naryn sensed my unwillingness. “Firstly, she’s young, and they recover much more quickly and completely than adults. Secondly, her experience today has been extraordinary for her. These memories are so different from others that they’re easier to pick out and erase. When I’m finished, she’ll vaguely remember a day of backwoods snowboarding with you when she had a fall and banged her head.”
“And Werner and Klara?”
“Just a simple blurring. No damage to any of them.”
I bit my lip.
“On my Blood, I swear,” he said.
I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay.”
The snowy forest remained quiet.
Enough. The Nagas were gone. I turned and ran as quickly as I could.
Back at the ranch, I hugged a shivering, bewildered Emily. I tried to comfort her while ignoring the guilt I felt. Eventually, Ursula and I got her into the Hill Bitch. I explained to Ursula what needed to be done and handed over the cell to call Naryn.
“I’ll look out for her,” she said, and drove them off.
It wasn’t till she was gone I wondered what this was going to look like to Felix. Ursula doing what I asked instead of meeting up with Felix’s pack. I groaned quietly to myself. Another problem for Alex and me with Felix.
Where was Alex? He should have been down by now.
Gray was still in bear form, heading slowly back up the trail.
Was he was too shy to change without his clothes? I smiled to myself. More likely, the wound was best left to start healing before he changed.
I trotted until I drew alongside.
“Thank you, Nick,” I said.
The huge head swung around and I got the nerve-wracking eyeball-to-eyeball with him, followed by a little huff, steaming in the cold air.
“I owe you, big time.” I slapped his shoulder. “Now, I gotta go find Alex. Give me a lift up there on your back, will you?”
The head thumped me in the chest and set me on my butt in the snow.
He turned away and shambled off into the forest.
On my own feet then. It would have been so cool to hitch a ride.
I found Alex about thirty minutes later.
There was no sign of the snowmobile. He was walking very slowly, dragging a travois he’d made from pine saplings and strips of what looked like the snowmobile’s seat cover. Noble’s corpse was lashed to it.
“Alex! What the hell?” I rushed to take the weight off him. He should have been lying in bed, not dragging a huge wolf corpse down a snowy mountain at night.
“Ran outta gas half way. This? Gotta do it,” he said. “Gotta show the pack. Come on, we’ll share.”
Chapter 73
An hour later, we had made our painful way down the trail and were within sight of the barn.
The sound of singing drifted across the snow. Half a dozen voices in a haunting a cappella tune that I hadn’t not heard before. Even if I hadn’t already been cold, it would have made me shiver.
“For Kyle,” Alex said in answer to my unspoken question.
A figure was walking up the trail toward us. It gradually resolved into Duane, Felix’s nephew. The shotgun was holstered and slung over his back.
“Give you a hand there,” he muttered, and managed to move Alex out of the harness.
“Thanks,” I said.
He grunted. “Difficult times. You sure need the help.”
We took several steps without saying anything; the squeaking and scratching from pulling the travois in the snow complementing the eerie song from the barn.
“Rogue?” Duane said.
I nodded.
“Heavy bastard.”
I wondered what it took to faze Duane.
He didn’t spe
ak again until we were right in front of the barn. The singing had stopped and it was quiet. Even the wind had eased off.
“Do you enjoy being Were?” he said, lowering his side. “Enjoy running the mountains?”
Huh?
Before I could think of an answer, the door started to open.
The pack knew we were there, of course. The Call didn’t reliably give your location but it was accurate enough for them to know we were right outside. The door rolled back soundlessly, revealing the shadowy depths of the barn lit by hissing, brass hurricane lamps hanging from rafters. The wooden floor had been swept clean of straw, and every inch of space was taken by the pack, except for a central aisle.
At the end of the aisle, Felix sat on his canvas camping chair. Ricky and Silas, in wolf form, sat on either side.
We were being greeted as an outsider pack. Felix had felt the new Call.
Alex took the harness back from Duane, and we pulled the travois into the barn. The door closed behind us.
As we dragged our burden the length of the barn I could feel the shock waves ripple through the pack. They could smell the marque. They knew this werewolf belonged to their pack, and yet they’d never seen it before. And they were all there, except for three: Olivia, Ursula and Noble. They knew who it had to be, all their preconceptions about size put aside.
Alex had been right. We needed this as an introduction, to get this confrontation off on the right foot. Or paw, or whatever.
The pack’s Call was a tangible thing all around us, yet excluding us. It was like the first time I’d felt it, after chasing the Matlal Were through Commerce. I’d been part of it, then shut out. Now it seemed to be digging deep, tapping into the spirit of this place. Building a wall separating them from us. That wasn’t so bad for me, but I felt it cut Alex deeply.
There was nothing to do but to use our own Call, marking us as different and distinct. And our eukori, which was subtle and deeper. I didn’t think Felix’s pack could feel our eukori and yet, it held echoes of the Call.
Denver is my place as well.
I didn’t care if they could feel that attitude from me.
We reached Felix.
“Noble.” Felix’s one word carried the wound of betrayal for the whole pack. Not just the betrayal of the pack’s spirit, but the evil he’d brought in. The pack lived as an entity. They shared the good, but they also had to share the bad. Noble had tainted their marque with his actions, and mixed with their grief over Kyle, the pack’s emotions were running high. I tried to tell myself the smell of tinder was purely in my mind.
We had to convince the pack that we were allies, that we could stay in Denver and work together. The pack’s will was focused through Felix. He was the key.
Alex and I shifted the weight from our aching shoulders and let the travois thump down where it was. The rogue’s huge mouth was open in a dying snarl, pointed at Felix.
We took a couple of steps back.
The Call was like another weight pressing down on me, even heavier than Noble’s corpse.
“One threat to the pack replaced with another,” Felix said, his eyes going from Noble’s body to Alex and me.
“No!” I said. Immediately, I felt Alex’s gentle tug through the eukori, calming me down. “We didn’t replace this threat, we eliminated it.”
“And the soldiers on our land?”
“Dead or gone.”
Felix grunted. “In the meantime, you’ve formed a new pack with Alexander.”
“And sent the surviving Matlal Were and the Confederation back up to Wyoming.”
“Yes, congratulations.” Felix waved it away, dismissing it. “Your new pack is a threat. We do not share territory.” He stood abruptly and started to pace. “We’ve spoken before, Amber, and the options open to us are fewer now.”
I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of some of the pack changing. A corner of my mind wondered if they found it easier to be in wolf form when the Call was running so strongly.
“Leave Denver,” Felix said, “with our thanks for your efforts. Or stay, and we either fight you, or you make a challenge for leadership. Forming your own pack means you can’t join this pack.”
The air hummed with the Call. It shimmered in the air like a desert mirage, liquid, changing with every word spoken, every movement made.
We hadn’t backed down. We were an alpha pair. If we wanted Denver, why didn’t we take it? Felix couldn’t stand against both of us if we challenged. The pack accepted that challenges weren’t fair fights.
I shuddered and screwed my eyes tight shut, trying to block out the thoughts that the Call was whispering in my head.
“Wait,” I said. “Why are we a threat? Why can’t we share territory? Are we animals? Is there a shortage of some resource?”
The Call didn’t like that.
Too much like a lawyer. It’s about feeling, not thinking.
“There’s a shortage of one resource, yes,” Felix said. “Pack members.”
Alex. Olivia. Probably Ursula as far as Felix was concerned.
The silent growl that I felt in my chest built up around me. I tried to ignore it all.
Why was Felix provoking us? Had I misunderstood something he’d said about the Call? He’d told me it was like the combined will of the pack and it could force us in certain directions, but he seemed to be positively pushing for a confrontation. He was deliberately setting the pack on me. What was I missing?
“Olivia wasn’t a member of your pack. Alex is my mate. Ursula will make a decision of her own.” I paused. “Not directly related to the pack.”
Still too much talk.
Whatever he intended, Felix was losing control of them. I could feel the threat from all around. Alex edged closer to me, emphasizing his position.
It felt as if we were balanced on the edge of a blade.
The door opened and closed behind us, the cold wind reaching in.
I was completely focused on Felix, trying to see through the surface at what lay beneath, so I couldn’t turn, but my nose told me anyway. David’s footsteps clicked on the wooden floor.
The Call flowed over him and dismissed him. One more House Farrell wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome.
“Freaking hell, look at the size of that,” David said, brushing past me, ignoring everything that was going on.
A flicker of irritation passed through me before I saw what he was really doing; bringing attention back to something everyone had almost forgotten. He knelt alongside the head and measured Noble’s neck with his hands. “Some bite that was, to kill him.”
But it was more than that; it was a double diversion. David hadn’t ignored anything. He’d been aware of the crisis, probably even before he’d come in. In one simple movement, he’d gotten the pack looking at Noble’s corpse and thinking what it’d taken to bring him down. But David was also on his knees right in front of me, and slung over his back was the holster for my BFG, with the handle sticking out the top, inches from my hand.
It was the Variable Choke Tactical Assault Weapon, to give it the official name: the ultimate shotgun, designed to clear whole rooms like this. Deadly against tightly packed enemy. Three of the supercharged rounds in the magazine.
I wondered how often I’d thought David was missing what was really happening and been wrong.
Felix was watching me.
I stretched my hand down and put my hand on David’s shoulder, gave him a little pull backwards. I was going to do everything I could to avoid a fight. Defending myself would achieve nothing but weaken the pack. I’d rather die than let the Confederation take this territory, and that’s what fighting would do.
Linked through our eukori, Alex hadn’t missed the byplay. I felt the same gentle resolution from him.
Given what we’d done, it was still a fine day to die.
“Olivia. Like Kyle,” Felix said, as if nothing had interrupted. “Trapped.”
The Call tautened again, but with a tinge
of sorrow.
“Unless I can do something,” I said.
“You can’t even change yourself yet. What do you think you could possibly do for Olivia in the short time she has left?”
Felix knew. He was bringing attention to it.
“Who do you think killed Noble?” Alex said.
A jolt of surprise ran through the pack. Attention went back to the wounds on Noble’s neck. Hopefully no one noticed the gaping holes in his chest.
Felix seemed to be encouraging us to go on.
Why?
Through the eukori, I touched Alex’s thoughts. No words, just feelings. Enough.
I’m not body shy at all. Still, shucking my clothes in front of the whole pack did feel a little kinky. It made me feel more vulnerable too, but Alex was right with me.
The pack thought we were preparing for a challenge. I hoped what I was doing was the only way left to avoid it. I hoped it was what Felix intended.
A profound silence fell.
I reached and tangled fingers with Alex. Then I thought of running four-foot through the silent, snowy forest with him; nothing but the sound of our footfalls mixing with our breath and the song of the wind.
It was easier already. I fell forward, limbs twisting, mouth stretching. My paws struck the floor and I pushed up to my full height.
Alex was bigger than before. Being the four-footed alpha, even for such a small pack as ours, worked its strange magic on him.
I would have chuckled, but it came out as a stifled sneeze.
What now?
I scanned the faces watching us. Their faces had taken the strange hard edges and soft glows that came with wolf eyes.
I’d proved I could change. I didn’t think that had anything to do with whether I could help Olivia.
The Call crackled through Alex and me, much more vivid now. They were expecting a challenge. Seeing the pair of us, they were expecting Felix to lose.
If we didn’t issue the challenge, we were just intruding and liable to be attacked.
Was he forcing us to challenge him? What was he trying to achieve? What did he want? Stability and security for the pack. Surely not at the expense of his own life?
