by Anne Bishop
Bang! The gun went off as the man fell.
Kane savaging the man, closing his teeth on the man’s throat at the same time the man got his hand under the Wolf’s belly, and—
Bang! Bang!
Silence.
Silence and . . .
There was a hole in the screen door big enough to let in the flies. Why was there a hole in . . .
* * *
* * *
The moment he heard the gunshot, Tolya knew what would happen. What had to happen.
He and Yuri shifted to smoke and raced to the nearest tree a heartbeat before Parlan and the other men started shooting.
A Raven flew toward them.
A shot from the direction of the livery stable. The Raven fell.
Gunshots at the far end of the square, where Saul and Joshua had been keeping watch. More of the enemy must have slipped into town and would surround them.
He didn’t call to the other Sanguinati. Some of them wouldn’t answer, and he didn’t want to know. But he felt a hatred for humans that ran deeper and blacker than anything he’d ever felt before.
Staying close to the ground, he and Yuri raced across the street and wove through the low-growing plants that dotted the area between the stable and the blacksmith’s. Reaching the stable, they flowed around the building and over the sill of an open window in the back wall.
The two men with rifles who were using the stable doors for cover never realized the Sanguinati were there until Tolya and Yuri shifted to human form from the waist up and tore out the humans’ throats.
* * *
* * *
Scythe heard the first gunshot and abandoned the napkins she’d been folding—a useless human activity that Candice Caravelli had assured her would give the impression that she was occupied by a necessary task if someone should come into the saloon. After ordering Candice to go to her dressing room and stay there, Scythe had taken up a position at the end of the bar.
Now, underneath the sound of gunshots in the square, she heard the faint sound of a boot on the wooden floor, coming from the saloon’s rear exit.
Her hair turned solid black and coiled as she silently moved into position.
The gun and gun hand entered the main room first. Then the arm. Finally the rest of the man came into view—and he caught sight of her.
She looked him in the eyes and absorbed every drop of his life energy before he hit the floor.
Dead. Completely harvested. Still . . .
Remembering how it was done in frontier stories, Scythe stepped on his gun and moved it out of reach.
She was sated—a sensation she hadn’t enjoyed in a long time. It felt delicious, but . . . Maybe she was a little too sated? If more prey crossed her path, she wouldn’t be able to absorb enough life energy to do more than a little damage, and there were many enemies out there fighting with the Wolves and Sanguinati.
She looked at the gun. Six-shooter just like in the frontier stories. She pulled back the hammer, aimed at the already dead man, and fired.
The sound hurt her ears, but the action was simple enough.
As she moved to the front doors of the saloon, her black hair gained a few threads of red. She was too full to be instantly lethal if someone looked at her, but she could still take enough life energy to confuse her enemy—and the gun would do the rest.
* * *
* * *
Jana turned onto her street and hit the brakes as Kane burst through the door of Maddie’s house and attacked the armed man.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Throwing the gearshift into park, Jana scrambled out of the vehicle and used the car door for cover as she drew her own weapon and shouted, “Police!”
No sound. No movement. Nothing.
Abby was on the ground too, but Jana ran to Kane and the man, needing to disarm the assailant in case he was wounded but still alive.
Maybe her presence was perceived as a signal that it was all right to come out. Or maybe so little time had passed that people were just now shaking off fear-freeze. Either way, by the time she reached Kane and saw that the assailant had bled out from a torn throat, Hannah and Sarah Gott were running toward her, and Evan and Kenneth were rushing to check on Abby.
Holstering her own weapon, Jana touched the Wolf’s shoulder as she looked into unseeing eyes. “Kane?”
Already gone.
He went down in the line of duty. She wasn’t sure that would be any comfort to anyone—and it occurred to her that the first time she had to notify next of kin, she’d be telling Virgil that his brother was dead.
After pulling Kane off the man far enough to secure the weapon, she looked at Evan and Kenneth. “Abby?”
Evan shook his head.
Something wasn’t right. More than the three dead bodies. Something . . .
Rusty’s frantic barking finally got through to her. “Barb?” she shouted. “Barb!”
How many shots had been fired?
Jana ran to her own house, pulled open the screen door, and . . . “Barb!”
Arriving just behind Jana, Hannah pulled off her apron, swiftly folded it, and crouched beside Jana, saying, “Use this for the wound. It’s freshly washed.”
She pressed the fabric against the wound. “We have to get Barb to the doctor’s.” Except the medical building was on the town square, smack in the middle of the fight.
Evan rushed up. “We had a feeling, so Barb called the doctor just before all this . . . At least one of the doctors will be at the hospital today.”
The dead would have to wait. “Help me load her into my vehicle. We can’t wait for the ambulance.”
Evan and Kenneth carried Barb while Jana kept pressure on the wound as best she could.
“I’ll go with you,” Hannah said. “Sarah will take your pup and the bird to our house, and clean up . . .”
“Anything we can do?” Evan asked after he and Kenneth got Barb settled in the back with Hannah now applying pressure on the wound while Jana wiped her hands on her jeans, smearing them with blood before she got behind the wheel.
“Call the neighbors and make sure nobody else was hurt,” Jana said, putting the vehicle in drive. “And stay inside until this is over—unless you have to run.”
Then she put the vehicle in park again and stepped out shouting, “Air! Air, I need you to send a message!”
Air appeared. She looked at the Wolf in the street. “Virgil is fighting.”
“You don’t need to tell Virgil anything.” Jana pointed toward the Elder Hills. “Can you get a message to them?”
“Yes. But they are dealing with humans who are in their territory. They are not fighting inside the town boundaries.”
“You tell them . . .” Jana struggled to breathe past a sudden flood of anger at beings who ignored boundaries whenever it suited them but couldn’t be bothered now? “You tell them if they don’t want the rest of the Wolves to die, they’d better . . . ffffffuck the boundaries and get in the fight!”
She jumped in her vehicle and drove off.
Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. Did she really say that? Well, the Elders wouldn’t know the F word, right? And what difference did it make if they did? They needed to stop sniffing their own tails and do something!
As she raced to the hospital, Jana realized Virgil wasn’t the only notification she would have to make that day. She’d have to tell Kelley about Abby. And as she drove, she prayed she wouldn’t have to send that kind of message to Lakeside police officer Michael Debany.
* * *
* * *
Their footsteps filled the street with an odd and terrible silence as they moved unseen toward the bodies, Wolfgard and human.
They hadn’t needed Air to deliver a message. They had been close enough to hear the howling of that . .
. female . . . who dared to challenge Namid’s teeth and claws. They didn’t understand all the words, but they understood the tone.
The female didn’t want boundaries? Then there would be no boundaries. And the first human they would deal with . . .
The terrible one sniffed around the bodies and breathed in that female’s scent. They didn’t need to follow the trail of the metal box, so they would join the fight in the center of the Sanguinati and Wolfgard territory. Sooner or later that female would come to the watering hole—and he would find her.
* * *
* * *
“We’ve got company.” Tobias took his foot off the gas and tapped the brake.
“We don’t have time for this,” Jesse snapped. Then she saw what Tobias must have sensed moments before—the horse and rider in the middle of the road.
“We make time for him.” He stopped the truck and rolled down his window.
Yes, Jesse thought as she watched Fire and a brown horse with a storm-gray mane and tail move up alongside the truck.
Fire leaned down to look at both of them. “You don’t want to go to Bennett today.”
Jesse leaned across Tobias. “We have to. A fight is going to happen today.”
“It has already started.”
Oh gods. How much of Hope Wolfsong’s drawing is going to come true?
“Where are the other humans coming from?” Tobias asked. “Which direction? North or south?”
“Both. The Sanguinati and Wolfgard are too few to fight so many humans.”
Jesse studied the Elemental. “Can’t you help?”
Fire met her eyes. “If we are asked, we will help. That was our agreement with the Elders.”
This was about saving Prairie Gold—not just the town but the ranch and the farms that were part of it. It was about saving Bennett and the friends who lived there. It was about making a choice that would claw at her heart and shred her sleep for years, if not forever.
“A red flare means we need help,” she said quietly. “That’s correct, isn’t it?”
Fire nodded. His steed moved to the side of the road to let them pass.
“Why did you ask him about the flare?” Tobias asked a minute later as he turned down a street that was a couple of blocks away from the Universal Temple, then parked in front of a house. “Mom? What are you thinking?”
Jesse said nothing, just loaded the red flare before slipping the flare gun into her daypack. Then she picked up her rifle and got out of the truck.
Giving her a worried look, Tobias chambered a round in his own rifle as soon as he joined her.
“We have to stop the reinforcements from reaching the town square,” she said.
The briefest hesitation. “Then we’d better get moving.”
He headed for the temple, and Jesse wondered if her boy knew what she was about to do.
* * *
* * *
Tolya flowed along the branches of the trees, searching for Parlan Blackstone. The humans had scattered, hiding in doorways and along the sides of buildings, firing their guns at random at every furred or feathered being. Ravens, Hawks, and Eagles had been turned into bloody mist and feathers. At least one Coyote was dead near the pond.
And the outlaws kept coming.
He didn’t know where Virgil was, or Saul, but he’d seen some humans trying to crawl away from the square with their bellies torn open or their hamstrings sliced by sharp teeth. He didn’t know where Yuri was either. Nicolai wasn’t answering him. Neither was Stazia. Dead? Or too focused on the hunt to respond?
Spotting one of the males who had stood with Parlan Blackstone when the human had made the challenge, Tolya flowed down the shadow side of the tree trunk nearest his enemy. Then he hesitated. Why would an enemy simply stand there unless . . .
Reversing direction, Tolya flowed back up the tree—and saw one of the other humans waiting for one of the terra indigene to try for the man acting as bait. The human with the rifle was so focused on shooting whatever came for the bait that he didn’t notice the smoke at the base of a tree, didn’t notice it moving up his leg—moving into a long tear in the man’s jeans.
The human didn’t notice anything until he staggered from rapid blood loss.
That was the moment Tolya flowed down the tree, formed solid hands and forearms, and snapped the bait’s neck.
A shot. A sting.
Tolya released the body and rushed up the tree to take cover in the branches—and saw part of his finger lying in the grass below.
* * *
* * *
Fucking vampires, Parlan thought as odd pockets of fog began filling the square, turning a fight that had gone on longer than it should have into a bullet-filled game of hide and seek. They had to finish this, had to take control of the town. All they needed to do was kill the mayor and the sheriff—and he couldn’t find either one of them.
And they needed to end this fight before they became so befuddled by the fog that they started shooting each other by mistake.
* * *
* * *
Jana drove away from the hospital. Both doctors were there, as well as the nurse/midwife. There had been other cars in the parking lot, along with a van that belonged to Fagen.
She hoped those cars didn’t belong to people who had been injured. She hoped Barb wouldn’t need more help than the doctors could provide.
Then she stopped hoping about things she couldn’t influence and put all her energy into getting to the town square in time to help Virgil.
* * *
* * *
Tobias ducked behind an abandoned car and opened and closed his hand four times.
Twenty men in the parking lot behind the Universal Temple and the community center, ready to move out and join the fight in the town square.
Twenty men. Twenty lives against the fate of two towns—and all the other humans who depended on those towns existing.
Jesse took the flare gun out of her daypack.
“Mom?” Tobias whispered. “What are you . . . ?”
Her son was a good man. She didn’t want this on his conscience, and she didn’t want him to stop her. This is why they were here. This is what would make the difference.
She popped to her feet, aimed the flare gun at the community center—and fired the red flare that was a call for help.
She dropped to the ground as some of the men started shooting at her. Then they stopped shooting because . . .
“Get down, Tobias. Get down!”
Jesse pressed herself to the ground and held her son’s hand. She wept as they listened to men scream.
As they listened to men burn.
* * *
* * *
Leaving the car near the stable, Jana raced to the town square. Sporadic gunfire meant either there weren’t many of the outlaws left in the fight or they were hesitating because the drifts of fog that were concentrated in the square made it difficult to tell friend from foe.
Was that a familiar snarl? Drawing her weapon, Jana moved toward the sound.
* * *
* * *
As he ripped and tore the enemies’ flesh, the terrible one caught the scent of that female. A faint scent, but not one he would forget.
Tossing aside the meat, he entered the town square.
* * *
* * *
Finally—finally—he’d cornered the challenger, the reason for all this misery.
Snarling, Virgil shifted to his Wolf form because he wanted this enemy to see what would tear out a throat. He approached Parlan Blackstone, who dropped his guns and backed away.
John approached on Virgil’s right, and the two Wolves focused on pushing the enemy back and back and back.
Then the wind shifted, bringing the scent of an enemy behind them.
Trap!
one side as Parlan pulled out a little gun and fired.
Virgil circled tight around a tree and ran straight at the short man who had been in the saloon with Blackstone and had howled about giving up his guns. He hit the man with such speed and force, when his jaws closed on an arm and he used his own weight to throw the prey to the ground, he felt the prey’s shoulder tear.
Two guns fired in rapid succession. One bullet hit the ground right next to his right front paw. The other . . .
He saw another enemy fall, heard Jana shout his name.
And heard another shot.
* * *
* * *
That little derringer could blow the leg off a horse—or a Wolf. Parlan watched the Wolf struggle to get up on its remaining three legs.
He was out of ammunition, but the fight was over. Had to be over.
Then he saw that fucking sheriff bring down Eli Bonney, saw Frank Bonney’s shot miss the Wolf as Frank took a bullet in the chest.
Then he saw the smoke, caught a whiff of something that made him think of country fairs when those huge grills were fired up to cook up loads of meat.
Parlan knew then. He had to get out of this fucking town.
He turned, intending to run to the car rental place next to the train station—and stared into the black eyes of a female with coiling black hair that held thin streaks of red. Then a sudden exhaustion brought him to his knees.
* * *
* * *
Jana saw Virgil knock a man to the ground. Saw another man aim at the Wolf.
As she raised her weapon and fired at the man, she shouted, “Virgil!”
Something hit her in the side, knocked her off her feet. Knocked the gun out of her hand.
She tried to reach for her gun, but her body wouldn’t move right. Gasping, she looked at the man who approached her with a smile on his face and a gun aimed at her heart.
