“If you approve, we will send some of the Saviors here to show you how to ferret out these creatures. Those of you who wish to join our fight, to take the battle to the werewolves directly, you are welcome to.” Where? Where can I find this Zee, who knows so much? “We’ll stay here for another day, and then we’ll be heading back south, showing as many people as we can the truth of our enemy.” Robertson looked at the wagon driver, and the tarp was thrown back over the cage. Nowen began to work her way back out of the crowd. It looked like the show was wrapping up, and she wanted to check on Sage. I think I’ll pay Robertson a little visit later tonight..
The squeal of the electronic megaphone swept over the crowd again. From behind her Nowen heard Robertson speaking again. “I want to thank you all for your hospitality. I have one last thing to ask. Zee and the Saviors are looking for a particular demon. She is the worst of them all, a true sergeant in Satan’s army, as she has shown a particular disregard, even contempt, for humans in the past. I would ask that you keep your eye out for her. In human form, she is tall, with dark skin - maybe American Indian or Hispanic - black hair, and yellow eyes.”
Nowen slowed, the edge of the crowd right behind her, and turned to look back at the stage. Robertson was reading off a piece of paper. “She’ll be stand-offish and not prone to hanging out with people. She is incredibly dangerous, and would just as soon kill you as look as you. We’ve heard that she passes as human more often lately, because she’s traveling with other people.” The Savior leader paused and squinted at the paper in his hand. “She goes by the name of ‘Nowen’.”
A murmur swept over the crowd, growing louder with each passing second. Dempsey had pulled himself up to the flat-bed and was talking animatedly to Robertson. Heads were turning, looking around, and Nowen knew in a moment that someone would see her. She turned to run.
A heavy hand sunk into her shoulder and she was wrenched around violently. “Here! Here she is! I’ve seen her in her demon form!” the man holding her shouted. A flash of memory speared Nowen at the sound of the man’s voice. The strangers back at the RV - Everett called the wolf by my name -damn, damn, damn! Fingers were sliding over her arms, hands were grasping at her clothes. In another moment she would be at the mercy of humans who wanted to hurt her - NO!
Nowen roared in the voice of the wolf. The savage, feral sound stilled the people around her long enough for Nowen to throw herself backwards and free of the man holding her. She whirled and ran blindly, the shouts of the crowd ringing in her ears. They’ll be after me - I need a distraction!
One of the fire pits came into sight and an idea burst into Nowen’s mind. She raced by the smoldering fire and snagged an arm’s-length piece of wood. Cherry-colored sparks kindled and blazed on one end of the make-shift torch. Nowen trailed the fire across the ground as she ran. Flames bloomed in her wake, eagerly consuming the dead grass and racing over a nearby pile of stacked logs.
Smoke and the smell of burning wood was everywhere. A woman lunged out of the haze, shouting and grabbing at Nowen, and she slammed her torch into the woman’s face. Her attacker screamed, her skin turning black beneath the flames that were eating away at it. Nowen shoved her away and kept running.
Shouts, screams, the squeals of the panicked livestock - chaos roiled the Fort as Nowen made her way for the Education shed where, she fervently hoped, Sage and Everett were waiting for her. She slipped from one building to another, holding her breath at every voice raised in her direction or every person that looked her way. At last her destination lay before her and Nowen charged at the closed door.
The metal door flew back with a bang. Everett looked up at her with a startled expression. He was crouched on the floor next to Sage, who seemed to be slowly changing back to human. Nowen darted over to them and dropped to her knees. “We’ve got to go. Now. The Saviors are looking for me.” More shouting was audible now from outside. “Well, everyone in the fort is.”
Everett stood and crossed to the doorway, staring out at the smoke and fire for a moment before looking back at her with an incredulous gaze. “I take it we’re not walking out of here?” he said.
Nowen shook her head. “We need to go faster. Change.” She looked down at Sage and placed her hands on both sides of the girl’s head. The dark eyes peered back at here from a russet-furred face. “Sage, you need to change. If we don’t get out of here now we’re going to die.” The girl whined. “I trust you. You can do this. Everett and I will take care of you, ok? We’ll make sure you don’t lose yourself.”
A shaggy, gunmetal-grey wolf head leaned in over Nowen’s shoulder. Everett nosed Sage’s ear. The girl closed her eyes, tears dampening her face, began to change. Nowen went to the door and closed it, listening to Sage’s groans and cries with a heavy heart. When the soft sounds ended she glanced over her shoulder to see two wolves staring back. “I’m going to open the door - you guys go left, and wait behind the building. I’ll change and head back to the crowd, get them to follow me.” Everett bared his teeth at this. “No!” Nowen hissed. “You get Sage to safety. I can take care of myself.”
The shed door opened.
Nowen leapt back, one hand shifting to a taloned paw, as she swung around to face whoever was coming in. Everett growled, but it was the sorrowful whine from Sage that slowed her motions.
Benjamin stood in the doorway. His eyes ticked over the wolves and then came to rest on Nowen’s face. She could smell the fear rising off him in waves but he stood there and didn’t flinch, even when Nowen raised her clawed hand. There was an audible gulp from the young man, and then he spoke.
“I told Dempsey I saw you three heading for the gates. Come on, I’ll show you another way to get out of here.” Benjamin stepped back from the door. Nowen looked at the two wolves; Sage was the first to move, slipping past Benjamin without a look. Everett and Nowen followed.
The noise of the hunt was distant but still rising. White streamers of smoke snaked around the buildings and trees. “It won’t take them long to start heading this way.” Benjamin said. He pointed to the left. “This way. There’s a section of loose fence there.”
“How do you know?” Nowen asked.
“I reported it this morning. It’s on the duty roster to be fixed tomorrow. Come on, there’s not much time.” The young man took off at a run, the wolves in his wake. Nowen spared a glance back at the Fort before she started running too.
Soon the fence rose up before them. This area was near the forest, not far from where Nowen patrolled. Benjamin stopped in front of a section marked with a purple ribbon and fell to his knees. He started digging in the dirt while the wolves watched him. Nowen saw what Benjamin was trying to do; at the base of a log, where another log butted up against it, the earth had caved in, creating a shallow space under the log. The two logs and the wire that joined them were starting to bow outward, and as the tops fell toward the forest the bottoms were pulling free of the ground.
She nudged the young man aside and looked at Everett and Sage. “You guys can dig faster.” The grey wolf moved up first and the russet wolf joined him a moment later. Clods of wet dirt started flying through the air and the space grew steadily larger. In the space of less than a minute Sage was able to pull herself under the fence. She didn’t pause but took off straight for the forest; Everett was right behind her. Nowen watched them disappear into the copse of trees before she turned to Benjamin. “Why did you help us?”
Benjamin kept his eyes trained on the woods as he shrugged. “Dempsey’s crazy, that Robertson guy’s sadistic, and I believe the Fluxers are still the biggest problem facing us.” He paused and looked up at Nowen. “And I love her. Take care of her, ok?”
Nowen studied the young man’s face for a moment. “Thank you, Benjamin.” She turned away and let her wolf out.
The black wolf burrowed under the fence. She knew where the other members of her pack had gone and headed in that direction. At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back at the Fort. Humans were ru
nning everywhere behind the fence, shouting and waving weapons, but her eyes searched and found the one human she was interested in. The young male with skin as dark as the earth was looking at her. He raised a hand and waved.
The wolf turned and vanished into the woods.
Chapter Twelve
The black wolf crouched beneath a cattle truck and watched the highway ahead. I-90 divided itself at this spot, calving I-25 to head directly south while I-90 continued on a more easterly course. At this junction were a few abandoned vehicles and scattered bones, some weathered suitcases and rain-warped books -the usual and all-too-familiar junk that marked humanity’s passing. The wolf’s attention was not on the detritus of civilization, however. The group of humans mounted on horseback were much more interesting.
There were five of them, men and women and armed to the teeth. They conferred from the backs of their mounts, talking and pointing and arguing. As the wolf watched three more riders came from the far side of the highway and joined the group. The new arrivals had dogs with them, rangy hounds that milled around the horses and nipped at each other.
We’ve got to move. The wolf growled. The wind’s blowing from behind us. We can’t hear what they’re saying, and those dogs will get our scent. The wolf wriggled backwards from under the truck, keeping a wary eye on the dogs as she did. She turned in a tight circle and slunk away through the tall grass. At the urging of her human the wolf took a circuitous way back to the rest of her pack, moving through bushes, undergrowth, and stands of trees in an effort to confuse any followers. The late afternoon light was fading quickly, and as she moved the wolf glanced at the darkening sky more than once. Heavy grey clouds were piling up over the western mountains and the wind brought the promise of rain.
With a shared sense of relief the black wolf approached the temporary den of her pack. She halted a few hundred yards away, eyeing the tumbledown shack that had probably been in this spot on the prairie longer than she’d been alive. The simple one-room building stood quiet and still in the high grass. Half of the timber-framed house had collapsed in on itself, spilling shake shingles and rotted wood to the ground. The wolf’s nose scented the air and found nothing unexpected. Still, she moved with caution to the collapsed end and entered through a small space in the debris pile.
“Hey, how’d it go?” The human male with grey fur asked her from the semi-gloom of the shack. The wolf responded with a low growl. “That well, huh?” She turned her back on him and moved to the darkest corner she could find. With a small grunt of discomfort the wolf drew into herself, feeling the strangeness of her human’s mind and body take over, re-shaping her compact and efficient form into a tall gangly thing that moved on two legs.
Nowen stretched until her joints popped, letting her mind adjust to moving the human body around. She pulled on a ragged pair of shorts and a t-shirt that hung to her knees. The clothes had come from a car Everett had found upside-down in a ditch. The driver of the car was nowhere to be found, but old blood stains on the brown cloth seats hinted at something unpleasant.
Nowen crossed over to where Everett was. The grey-haired man sat on the lip of the rough rock fireplace, the pale yellow sweatpants and sweatshirt he wore helping distinguish him from the gathering darkness. She took a seat next to him, sighing and stretching again as she did.
“There’re still out there. More, even - I saw eight mounted riders, and they have new dogs.” she said.
Everett shook his head. “Damn. I’d really hoped that killing the first set of dogs they set on us would discourage that tactic.”
“These people are so well trained. Everything about them is organized and efficient, and their sole purpose seems to be to track us down. I’d love to know how they knew which way to go.” Nowen glanced at the corner where Sage had been when she left - and stilled. “Where’s Sage?”
“She’s taking a walk.”
Nowen shot to her feet. “You let her go out there by herself, with those Saviors everywhere?!”
Everett looked back at her calmly. “She can’t go far.”
“What do you mean?”
“She went as a human.”
Nowen was speechless. In the week since they had left the Fort Sage had stayed in her wolf form. She had ignored Everett’s entreaties and Nowen’s glowering looks. As Sage had moved with them, eaten with them, and slept with them, Nowen had decided to give the girl the chance to change back on her own. And it seems she did. She looked at Everett. “When did this happen?”
“Right after you left on your reconnaissance mission. She got up from where she was lying, changed, and told me she was going for a walk.”
Nowen felt her anger rising at Everett’s calm tone. “And you didn’t stop her, or offer to go with her.”
Everett rose to his feet. “Hold your horses. I did, in fact, stop her. I got her dressed, gave her the last of our water, and went with her. She doesn’t have shoes, so we didn’t go far. I left her at the edge of the woods, sitting on one of the logs that makes up that deadfall. I watched her from the window, and it was only when I saw you coming back that I stopped watching her.” Everett’s voice had been rising while he talked, and by this point he was almost shouting. “So, please, stop accusing me of something I haven’t done!”
Nowen fought the urge to bare her teeth. She kept her eyes on Everett as she spoke, trying her best to keep her own voice calm. “Ok. I apologize. But I don’t want Sage or you wandering off alone while these people are after us.”
Everett crossed his arms and glared at her. “But it’s ok for you to go off alone.”
She frowned. “Yes. I can take care of myself.”
“And we can too.”
Nowen shook her head. “Humans are dangerous and can’t be trusted. The Saviors are searching for our kind, and you as well as I know what they would do to us. Torture at the very least, carted around as an exhibit, killed and tossed aside. I don’t want Sage to go through that, and I don’t want you to.”
A thoughtful look came over Everett’s face. “You’re referring to people as ‘humans’ again, as if you were a separate species. I don’t feel that way.”
Nowen was confused. What’s the point of this? “Well, good for you.”
The grey-haired man continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “I know you had a couple of bad experiences in the past, but not all ‘humans’ are bad. There were a lot of good people back at the Fort. Like Harmony. And Benjamin.”
“ ‘A couple of bad experiences’.” Iron bars. Cold water. The crack of a whip, and the blue shower of electric sparks. Her wolf, maddened and wild, a hurt animal with no escape from the pain that the humans brought. And herself, trapped in the wolf’s mind as the wolf was trapped in the cage. Nowen shook her head again, roughly. “I’m not interested in having this conversation right now. I’m going to go get Sage.” She tried to brush past him but he grabbed her arm. She turned her eyes on him and let her anger come through.
Everett paled a little, she thought, but in the gloomy shack it was hard to tell. “I mentioned this to you before, and I just want to say it again: Sage is not you. She remembers life the way it was before. And while she may run as a wolf her heart is human.”
Nowen opened her mouth to retort but a rolling boom of thunder cut her off. The light outside went a shade of bluish-white that hurt her eyes, and then the lightning was chased by another crack of thunder. In the ringing stillness that followed she heard something from outside. It was Sage, calling her name, and there was a palpable fear that colored the girl’s voice.
Nowen was at the door in an instant. She flung it open on another blue-white glare of lightning that blinded her for a moment. As the flash faded and her vision returned she saw Sage and her blood froze. The girl stood about twenty feet away, flanked on both sides by men with guns. The guns were pointed at Sage’s head.
Nowen growled. Get ready - we’re going to have to move fast. The wolf was there, pushing at her skin, eager to tear free and attack.
Something cold and hard pressed against her back, just between her shoulders. “Easy, now. I bet I can kill you faster than you can change.” Nowen swallowed her growl. The man who held the gun spoke again, and she heard nothing but calmness and power in his voice. “Ok, I want you to relax. And by that I mean push that animal way down.” She forced her wolf back, letting the tension drain out of her body. “Good, good. Now, I want you to take a few steps forward so your boyfriend can come on out, too.”
Nowen moved away from the shack. She could hear the creak of wood as Everett came down the steps and then she could sense his presence next to her, but she kept her eyes on Sage. The girl stood as still as a stone between her captors. Her hands were behind her back. There was something around her throat that glinted like metal. An LED lantern had been placed on the ground not far from where Sage was, and in the wash of light Nowen could easily see the fear in the girl’s eyes.
The gun barrel dug into her back. “Ok, now I want the boyfriend to go stand next to that cutie.” Nowen watched in impotent anger as Everett walked over to Sage. He attempted to give the girl a hug but another gunman emerged from the trees and pulled him away. In the space of a few seconds Everett’s hand were cuffed behind his back and a loop of chain placed around his neck.
“Now it’s your turn. Put your hands behind your back.” the gunman next to her said. The man was just far enough back that Nowen couldn’t see him. She entertained the thought of whirling on the stranger and tearing his throat out. As if he could read her thoughts the man pressed a little harder with the gun. “No funny business. There are more of us out there. You could kill me, and your friends would still die. Hands behind your back.”
She did as he said. Cold metal loops closed around her wrists. She swayed a little at the wave of panic that washed over her. With my hands bound I can’t change. I’m helpless. I can’t fight. I can’t fight! That calm, even voice came from directly behind her now. “Forward. Let’s go join your friends.”
Wolf Hunting (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book Book 3) Page 11
