by Star, Amy
That didn’t make her position any more viable. Connor was normally cool and collected, but he had just run. She had to assume that Gavin and Sarah had rescued Blake—which meant that they had the evidence against Connor with them, and were probably trying to appeal to the gangs. No wonder Connor was spooked. Everything and everyone was turning against him.
On his rock perch, he suddenly seemed to remember the human and glared at her. He reached in his pocket and took out a flap of matches and tossed it onto the needles in front of her. “You’re a human, you’re weak—I suggest you make a fire, if you don’t want to freeze to death,” he muttered.
Lily took the matches and gave him a mischievous look. “I’ll need to go look for firewood. You aren’t worried that I’ll run away?” she taunted.
Connor shrugged and picked up the rifle and patted it fondly like an old friend or a familiar pet. “It’s almost night. We’re at about three thousand meters already. Even if you managed to make it back down to the valley floor, and I don’t think you have the energy in you, you’d still freeze to death. It’s up to you, bitch. Make a fire, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“That’s not true,” she said, glaring at him through her glasses. She took them off and saw that one of the lenses had been scratched. The frame on one side was also bent. Damn. “You’ve kept me alive and prodded me all goddamn day, so obviously I mean something to you. Otherwise…”
Lily let the thought peter out, but regretted it suddenly. She didn’t want to provoke him, especially if he was undecided at the moment. “I’m counting on you not being a complete idiot,” he murmured. “If you try to take off and think you’re brave enough, keep in mind—I’m a bear, and I can smell you for miles. You’re right, I need you alive… for now. But you can still be alive with a bullet through your leg. Keep that in mind.”
She gulped and clutched the matches closely as she got to her feet shakily. It was all bravado—Connor was right, she didn’t have the energy to try to escape. It was all she could do to scavenge the surrounding area in the growing darkness for some dry kindling. She stacked it in her arms and carried it back to the clearing. Connor was still there, hunched over with his rifle. He was like a statue, or one of the trees, completely motionless. But as she got closer and began to stack the kindling into a pyramid with palsied fingers, she saw that he was actually staring into the distance. The first stars were turning on above the blue horizon, and she caught the glare of his eyes like a cat’s.
He really is afraid Blake will follow, she thought, lighting a match until it started to glow. Which makes me a hostage. The fire began to eat at the wood and soon an orange blaze was being nurtured by her feeding it sticks. She scooted up against the giant boulder and put her back to it with the fire in front and began to warm her hands. She was so tired, she could barely keep her eyes open, and not having eaten had taken its toll. How can Connor still be so wary? she wondered, daring to close her eyes for a moment.
He was a shifter. Of course. It was so easy to forget that these humans had other forms. She had seen just how mighty they could be, how terrifying. Then, her eyes flashed open and she realized that the fire, even though it was small, was serving as a beacon. In the pitch black, it could probably be seen for miles off as a dull orange flicker. When she looked toward the rock again she saw that Connor was gone. Terrified for a moment she scanned the clearing, but there was no sign of him, or of his rifle.
She rubbed her chin.
He wanted me to set a fire, she thought. If someone was looking for her, or tracking Connor, then the fire was the perfect way to lure them. She stood up and was about to kick it out when she stopped. Connor had let her act as one of his weapons—but it was still a double-edged blade. Sure, the flames would lure and attract Blake. But Blake was smart; it was a gamble whether or not he’d fall for such an obvious trap.
The lynchpin came down to one thing. Me, she realized.
Carefully, she took her foot away and started at the flames crackling again, and grinned. No doubt somewhere close Connor was waiting with his rifle, scanning the surrounding area and hoping for an easy shot. It’s up to me—do I destroy the beacon and with it any hope of Blake finding me, or do I count on Blake seeing through Connor’s trap?
Lily sat back down and hugged her knees as she stared into the flames. She closed her eyes again, the veil of fatigue rushing over her. I’ll lay my bets on Blake every time, she thought before falling into a light and restless sleep.
***
Several miles off, Lily’s suspicions were correct. Blake had been running for hours, and though he’d fallen into a steady jog and covered significant territory, it had also run him ragged. All the same, he felt a renewed energy in his muscles. All the exercise had increased his blood flow, and with it, his healing factors. He could literally feel joints and muscles knitting under his flesh, and the added endorphin boost left him giddy as he sprinted over grass and leapt straight across creeks. Evening had dipped fast, but slowly his bear vision had come alive, and he sniffed deeply, relying on his other senses to follow the trail.
It was quite easy. Even if Connor was an expert woodsman and knew how to cover his tracks, he couldn’t worry about making ground and eliminating the tracks of his prisoner. Here and there, Blake could easily pick up a deep footprint or a broken branch, and there was the constant smell of Lily, as if she’d made an effort to brush against the bushes and trees in order to leave her scent behind. Smart girl, he thought. It had become so obvious that he came to expect certain footsteps in certain places. Truly, Connor must have been desperate and his mind elsewhere to have missed such obvious hints that she had left behind.
It wasn’t until he’d made it through a small quagmire in the middle of the woods where the earth was sodden and grasses and sedges had overpowered all other plant life that he looked up against the black silhouette of the mountain range and saw it. It was well into the night now, with its many blues and blacks in spectrum across the sky, but there—like something burrowing out of the dark—was a red mark. He quickly recognized it as belonging to a campfire, halfway up the mountain side in a patch of trees.
It had to be Connor and Lily.
“What are you planning?” he whispered out loud, eyeing the distant glow of embers with suspicion. Surely, Connor wouldn’t have let her build such an obvious landmark for him to follow and bear down on? Unless, of course, that was the point.
Clever, he smacked his fist into his other open palm. A trap, yes, but it was a carefully plotted one. It wasn’t meant to appear as anything other than a trap—both he and Connor knew it was a trap. That, in fact, wasn’t the trap at all. The trap was whether or not Connor’s bargaining chip, Lily, was valuable enough to Blake. “A devil’s wager,” Blake growled. He ran to the other end of the quagmire and looked up again.
Somewhere, Connor was waiting for him. Probably with a weapon. Knowing his enemy, it wouldn’t be something clumsy like a shotgun. Probably the Alpha had made off with a rifle of some sort, something that could pick off enemies at a distance. That made things more difficult. On the other hand, it also limited his scope of vision to his weapon’s sights, while Blake had the freedom to move and attack from several different angles.
“Okay, then.”
At the edge of the forest, he unloaded two shells from the shotgun, and in the moonlight that began to glance over the mountain, he used his pocket knife to unscrew it and scraped the potassium nitrate into two leaves. Next he ripped both sleeves off his shirt. Sorry Jimmy, he said, vowing to buy the kid a new shirt.
It took him another quarter of an hour to set up two identical apparatuses. Using only the finest kindling and dead lichen, he built two fire starters. The little stacks of wood and dead plants would ignite immediately if introduced to flame. Next he made crude pouches out of the shirt sleeves and filled them with fine, sandy dirt embedded against the moraine of the hillside. The device was ingeniously simple. The bags were anchored with his shoelaces to co
unterweight stones above the salvaged gunpowder. If he pricked the bag with his knife it would slowly sink, and make the rocks sink. Then, using an old style sapling trap he had long ago used to snag rabbits, he fixed it under the rocks. Once the rocks set off the trap, it would spring down on the gunpowder, igniting both fire starters.
“Here’s hoping I know what I’m doing,” Blake said to himself, and pried a hole in one of the bags. Next he sprinted several hundred meters to the other side of the grove of trees and pricked a hole in the second one. Now it was a matter of time and cunning.
Breathing hard, he ran up the scree slope, following old animal trails. Occasionally, through a hole in the trees, he would spot the glow of the campfire again. He was like a moth to a flame, except this moth was bringing firepower. Finally, he reached a space below the campfire. He still couldn’t make it out, but he’d have to wait here for his diversion to actually take effect. He took the time to scan the surrounding area—if I was Connor, where would I position myself for maximum view?
There was a small opening in the cliffs to the right where the hillside rose sharply into a perilous drop below on the stones beneath. But it would be possible for someone to fix themselves into a sniper’s nest. It was pretty ideal. From that vantage point, Connor would be able to see almost all the way down the hill, all the way to the campfire. There was one small conduit of tiny trees growing on bare rock that was less in view, but Blake had to believe that Connor, a seasoned hunter, had seen it also and was counting on his quarry to try and use it.
“All right, let’s heat up the game,” Blake said and looked back down the way he’d come. There was still nothing. Time seemed to stretch on forever, and he feared the worst. What if his fire-starters had failed to ignite? It would all be for nothing. More time passed, and he tried to count the minutes but lost it after a few moments—his heart was beating too fast.
He considered running down to check the apparatuses, but restrained himself. If he left his position now, he would be too far away to make use of the distraction. All he could do was wait, and pray.
Blake didn’t have to wait long. He heard the snap of one of the traps being set off, and looked down. In moments, he saw another glow, dancing like a candle between the trees, and then it began to crackle and grow. At the same time, another echoing snap of wood and the ignition of gun powder set off in the opposite direction, and this one caught on even faster.
The dry summer had made the forest a dangerous fuel source. In less than thirty seconds, the fire-starters had caught the nearby undergrowth and low lying tree branches. On this steep an angle, the flames carried upward even faster, and he smelled smoke and the acrid aftertaste of flame and burning. It was now or never!
He sped forward, using the abrasive glow of both fires on either side to flank his approach. Even if Connor had been looking directly at his path of attack, the interfering glare of the growing flames among the trees below would have made Blake almost invisible. I hope, the Beta remarked to himself as he left his hiding spot and raced forward. His heartbeat was in his ears as he ran uphill and dived behind the bushes and then made his way up the side of the mountain. There was no shot given, and for a minute, it seemed like things were going too well.
Blake made it to the top of the flat area and rolled into the cover of some dark trees opposite the campfire. Breathing hard, he dared to look around the trunk. Only his lightning quick reflexes saved him from getting his head blown off. A shot rang out, but Blake was already ducking back behind the tall pine by the time a bullet tore a bite off the bark inches from his face. He’d found Connor—and Lily.
“I know that’s you, Blake!” a voice shouted. “That was clever. I should have expected as much from you. You’d set the whole mountainside on fire if that meant giving you an advantage. Well played!”
Blake risked another glance around the tree and saw that Connor was standing on the other side of the fire and had Lily gripped in front of him like a shield, a knife against her throat. She was shaking, but her eyes were still as furious as ever, looking for an escape. Son of a bitch, he thought.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Blake grumbled from the darkness.
“Just you?”
“Just me. What were you expecting?”
Connor seemed to smirk at this and raised his rifle with one hand toward the tree again. Lily squirmed against the knife’s edge, but didn’t say a word. She looked as worn and ragged as Connor, her black hair was frayed and mussed, and there were smudges on her knees and hands and on her cheek. She carefully pulled off her glasses again and held them in one hand.
“Come out, Blake, it’s over,” Connor warned. “You thought you could trick me, and you failed. Now come out, or I’ll empty this broad right here and now. You know I’m not bluffing… move!”
Blake hunched down and rubbed his head. All of that running and diversion for nothing. He took the bat off his back and set it on the ground. Then he looked at the small firearm, tucked it into the back of his jeans, and held up his hands as he entered into the clearing. When she saw him, Lily squirmed again, her eyes wide—part of her hadn’t wanted to believe that he had actually come for her. Now they were both at the mercy of Connor, who was merciless by nature.
Connor had an evil grin on his face as he watched his adversary step into the light of the campfire. “I’m here,” Blake said, “now let her go.”
“And why would I do that?” Connor said, raising the muzzle of the rifle again.
“Because she isn’t a threat to you, Connor—she’s a human. She has no say in the tribe, and there’s nothing about her that should make her an enemy to you. We’re Ursas, remember?” Blake said. “What are you doing? Have you even thought this out? Why have you taken a human hostage?”
Connor was caught off-guard, just for a moment. Neither Lily nor Blake seemed to offer any recognition of the other. “She was at the house, she had a gun, you’re telling me she’s not part of your little attempted coup d’état, Blake? Bullshit! I don’t know who she is, but she knows you, and you’ve come all this way for her, so—”
“I came all this way for you,” Blake said defiantly, and his voice was a scalpel. “You’ve disappeared, and even your mother has sent out scouts for you. What’s going on, Connor? Why are you doing this?”
“Shut up!” Connor said, and took a step back toward the rock boulder.
“If I’m already dead, you might as well tell me what the hell is going on—you owe me that. Me, I get it; you want me out of the picture. Not going to contest that. But why are you threatening her?”
It was a dangerous gamble, but having Blake at gunpoint must have made Connor feel a strengthened sense of arrogance and pride, and he spat vehemently into the campfire and let out a low uttering chortle. “You really are something, Blake!” he admitted. “When you showed up at the town hall and started talking, I was worried, let me tell you. Of course I would be. Everyone else, the gang, even my mother, they’re all idiots when it comes to leadership, to understanding what it takes!”
“And I take it you aren’t?” Blake said, challenging him. His eyes brushed lightly over Lily, who met his gaze and squinted. He saw her glasses in her left hand, hanging limp, and gave the subtlest of nods.
“Of course,” Connor said, “I’m doing what my father couldn’t have imagined. Or dared.”
“Which is?!” Blake shouted.
Connor shook his head and pulled on the hammer of the rifle. “We’ve been living in a vacuum, Blake, all of us, for longer than any of us can remember. We’ve grown stagnate—brokering peace with the other tribes was the worst decision my father ever made, and it’s stymied us ever since. I won’t let the Ursas dwindle! No, so I invited all the tribes—we’ll align ourselves to the Blue Devils, to the Eaters of the Dead, and then we’ll be a match like no other. We’ll be out to overwhelm all the other tribes that stand in our way!” Connor was gnashing his teeth now, and Blake did his best to try to hold his ground. The Alpha really was
mad. He had never wanted peace at all; his reasons for creating a new alliance wasn’t to hold the peace, but to enforce it by wiping out all the other shifter tribes. “Once we’ve taken over all the other areas, our dominion will be enormous!”
“And what happens when your ‘allies’ decide they want more power?” Blake asked.
“The Blue Devils, the Eaters of the Dead, they’re all old school, like father—the Ursa Majors were always designed to be the rulers of the shifter world. It would be easy to get rid of the other leaders when the time was right,” he snarled.
That was the break Blake had been looking for. “Is that what happened to Damian? He got in the way so you had to get rid of him?!”
The fact that it wasn’t just Lily who had made the connection caused Connor’s face to warp into a grim and grotesque expression of horror. “He was old,” Connor said, after a moment, his voice low and set. Blake didn’t let the change in tone go unnoticed. Connor was slowly coming to terms with the fact that his plans had been ruined, and that there was no way back from it—now he was thinking in terms of his own survival, and his hand on Lily’s throat tightened. The sharp knife nicked her neck and she made a restrained hiss as a drop of blood ran down the smooth pale stretch of flesh. “This ends now,” the Alpha said, and raised the rifle one-handed.
Blake and Lily acted as a unit. Seeing his intent, she slammed the edge of her glasses hard into the hand holding the knife against her throat. The force of her attack broke the glass and it neatly entered his flesh, severing the tendons on the back of his hand. Connor screamed in pain as he dropped the knife and threw her to one side. At the same time, his finger on the trigger went off—the bullet went wide as Blake ran forward, and he felt the ozone and compression of air as it zoomed past him.
“Enough!” Blake yelled, barreling into the shifter. Both men wrestled on the ground, kicking up dust and pine needles as they punched at each other. Connor may have been a good warrior, but he was the type of hunter that liked his prey to be far away—up close and personal combat was not his forte, and it was clear that he was at a disadvantage.
