I opened the door. The stairwell was pitch-dark. My eyes adjusted quickly; enough light bled from the upstairs to let me see, a little. I should have brought a flashlight. Keeping my hand on the wall, I inched my way down, until I felt the stairwell give way to open room.
The room looked like all the other bedrooms, a typical hotel setup with a king-sized bed, a bureau, a desk, a couple of armchairs, and a bathroom. A couple of suitcases stood by the closet. Fully dressed, Anastasia sat at the edge of the bed, facing me. She was ghostly pale, her skin grayish, lips thin, eyes half-lidded. She looked like a wax figure. Like a corpse.
“Something’s happened,” Anastasia said.
I swallowed. My eyes teared up again. “It’s Dorian.”
She bowed her head and nodded. “I could tell. Something woke me—I could just tell.”
“He fell when the porch railing gave way. It looks like… Odysseus thinks it was rigged. Anastasia, I’m so sorry.”
She sat very still. After a long pause, she said, “Stupid, fragile mortals.” A trembling hand wiped her cheek, though nothing was there. She took a deep breath, which was odd, because vampires didn’t need to breathe. They only drew air to speak. But she seemed to need to gather herself. The breath seemed to help her straighten and regain control.
She looked over her shoulder to Gemma, who was asleep, a still, waxen figure under the covers.
“Are you going to wake her up?” I asked.
“No,” Anastasia said. “Let her have a few more hours of peace. She’ll find out soon enough. The railing—you said it was rigged?”
“The power’s gone out, Provost has vanished, and—and part of the crew’s been murdered. The airplane’s sabotaged. We’re isolated here. Worst-case scenario—”
“Conspiracy,” she said. “Someone wishing to get at me would do very well to strike at Dorian. I always kept him close because of that. Do you understand?”
We could all probably agree that some conspiracy was afoot. But it was amazing how different such a conspiracy could look depending on your perspective.
“You think this is all about you?” I said.
“I think someone may be taking advantage of an opportunity, yes. Your magician friend, for instance. He’s taking charge, isn’t he? He’s guiding the actions of the group now.”
I shook my head. “I know him. He doesn’t work like that.”
“Do you know him, really?”
And I couldn’t say that I did.
She turned to look at Gemma again and said, “If you could please leave us alone. We’ll be up at nightfall, as usual. There’s nothing I can do until then.” I turned to leave, when she called. “Kitty. Come nightfall, we’ll have to face the issue of sustenance.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“It doesn’t have to be difficult.”
I couldn’t think about it. We’d have to cross that bridge tonight. “Yeah. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
She was still sitting at the edge of the bed, unmoving, when I went back upstairs.
I got back to the living room the same time Grant and Jerome did.
“We checked on the generator and batteries,” Jerome said. “The fuel’s been drained and the wiring cut.”
“Someone should go for help. Didn’t someone say that?” Jeffrey said.
The sooner the better, in my opinion. I said, “Jerome and I can travel fast. We won’t have to stop.”
Jerome said, “If we shifted—”
I shook my head. “We need to be conscious and able to speak when we get there. This may be slower, but it’ll be fast enough. If we leave now, we can be there by dusk.”
“But it’s thirty miles!” Conrad said. “That’s impossible.”
“They’re werewolves,” Lee said. “It’s not impossible. I wish we were on the coast. I feel useless here.”
“Just keep your eyes open,” I said. “Use your nose. You can be lookout.”
“We should get going,” Jerome said, already at the door. I went to join him. Hesitating a moment, I took off my shoes and socks. Jerome was already barefoot.
Grant studied me. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
I smiled thinly. “This is simple. We run to the next lodge and call for help. With any luck we’ll be back here by morning.”
“It’s a plan, then,” he said. “Be careful.”
“Likewise.”
We went outside. I could feel the others gathering by the window, watching us. The wreckage of the porch railing still lay scattered on the ground, along with the stain where Dorian’s blood had soaked into the ground. It smelled ripe and rotten in the morning sun, and a few flies buzzed over it. Apart from that, the area was still, quiet.
Jerome wasn’t close to shifting, but something wolfish looked out of his eyes. His breaths came slow and deep, and his attention turned outward, far outward, searching the farthest range of sight and hearing for danger. I knew how he felt—I wanted to get away from here, to run off some of this anxiety.
“You ready to do this?” I said.
“Yeah. You think you can keep up with me?”
“Probably not. But I don’t think anyone should be alone right now.”
His expression turned wry. “You might convince me to start liking this pack thing.”
“I told you, it’s all about having someone watch your back.”
He pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it to the porch. His body was sleek, molded with well-defined, powerful muscles under smooth, dark skin. The guy worked out, but more than that, his body rippled with power. His muscles were natural, hard-earned, and he knew how to use them. He rolled his shoulders, flexed for a moment, then set off, from stop to run.
I bounced, testing my feet against the gravel, feeling earth under me and air around me. Then I set off after him. We took the hiking trail that led from the lodge and to wilderness—thirty miles to the next bit of civilization.
Chapter 12
The Wolf had strength, agility, and stamina that the human side didn’t. The Wolf could run all night when she Changed under a full moon. I wasn’t as strong as that right now, but I didn’t stumble when a normal human would have. My lungs didn’t sear with hard breathing, I didn’t fall over after a mile. I found a rhythm, and my muscles flowed. My strides were long, steady, smooth, and my breath came easily. Letting the animal side fill me, I could keep this up for hours.
I became as much Wolf as I could without shifting entirely. If someone had spoken to me then, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. I’d have had to pull myself back from that edge first.
Jerome was stronger and faster than I. He pulled ahead, but only by a few strides, then adjusted so that he could see me by looking over his shoulder. We kept to the edge of the trail; the ground was softer and trees offered some shade. We probably couldn’t continue this all day, but we could slow to a trot during the heat of the afternoon, pick up the pace again after resting, and still make good time. My vision collapsed, focused on the way ahead of me, while my other senses expanded. I tasted the air, which was filled with scents of pine sap, insects, heat; and sounds roared around me—wind in trees, birdsong, our steps padding on the road.
I was still in that zone when Jerome pulled up suddenly, backpedaling to get away from something ahead. I nearly collided with him, but stopped myself and knelt. He also ducked to a defensive crouch and stared ahead, as if making a challenge. I took a breath through flaring nostrils, and smelled something out of place, metallic.
Crossing the trail a few yards ahead of us, a shiny object. I focused on it as a human rather than a wolf.
“Is that what it looks like?” Jerome said.
It looked like three coils of razor wire strung on hastily planted steel T-bar fence posts. Like someone had tried to rope in a prison in a hurry. I crept closer for a better look. The stuff was so shiny it gleamed, even in the shaded forest.
I put my finger on a section of wire, well away from the protruding sharpened spikes. In
a few seconds, my finger started itching. A few more seconds, the itching was painful enough I had to pull my hand away. An allergic rash reddened my fingertip.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. “Silver,” I said, glancing back at Jerome.
“Shit.”
Someone hadn’t just wanted to rope in a prison—they’d wanted to make a prison for lycanthropes. We couldn’t make our way over or through the fence without risking cuts and scrapes, and if the silver taint entered our bloodstream, we were dead. I looked one way and the other, trying to see how far the fence went. From here, I couldn’t see the end of it.
“It can’t go on that long,” Jerome said. “You know how expensive that would be, stringing this whole place up with silver wire? Someone’s just trying to keep us off the path.”
That mysterious someone again. When I got my claws on that someone…
“Which way?” I said. “Left or right?”
Jerome considered, then started walking to the right. Right was downhill, a little easier. I followed him. Even though we followed the silver fence line, we kept a respectable distance between it and us.
Vagrant breezes carry information to a wolf’s nose: what’s going, what’s coming, what passed this way before and how long ago. How to find food, water, friends; how to find your way home. A sudden, intrusive smell can cut across the normal tapestry like a razor, sharp and sudden. Destructive and wrong.
I stopped cold and turned into the slight breeze, trying to catch hold of what I’d sensed for only a second. I turned in place. My feet throbbed; my muscles ached at being wrenched out of their rhythm. I’d lost track of time, but the sun was high, probably well past noon. Several hours at least had passed. We’d run maybe half the distance.
Jerome stopped a few paces ahead of me and looked back. His body heaved with deep, steady breaths. He didn’t speak, just gave me a focused look, then turned his own nose to the air, looking for what I searched for.
Skin, sweat, clothing, rubber—human. Just a glimpse. Maybe hikers, maybe a mountain biker. I’d caught only a hint. It was gone now. Maybe moving away, maybe gone downwind.
I looked at Jerome. He shook his head.
A sound like a whip cracked past us; Jerome twisted, dropped to one knee, and clapped a hand over his shoulder, where a rod, maybe ten inches, protruded. Blood dripped in a thin line from the puncture wound.
Breath left me in a gasp. I knelt beside him and touched his arm. At the same time I looked out, toward the direction the arrow had come from. Where I’d sensed a trace of human hunter. When would the next one strike?
Jerome’s breaths heaved, and his face twisted with pain.
“Jerome?”
“Get it out, get it out—Jesus, get it out!” He bared his teeth, and his skin prickled under my hand, rippling with newly sprouting fur. His face was changing, stretching. Pain was pushing him over the edge, making him shift.
“Jerome! Hold on, keep it together!”
“Get… it… out!” He screamed.
I braced my hand on his shoulder, grabbed the arrow, and yanked. Jerome arced his back and howled—part human shout, part wolf cry of anger.
The wound was shallow, the arrow stuck in the outer layer of muscle. It wasn’t even bleeding much. But Jerome was shivering, wracked with pain. I looked at the arrow in my hand, short and sleek—a bolt for a crossbow. The tip—smooth, not barbed—gleamed, even through the sheen of blood. I touched it, held my finger against the metal—and my skin started itching, burning, in an allergic reaction.
Silver. The point was silver.
When a silver weapon struck lycanthropes, the wound didn’t kill them. The silver poisoning the blood did. Jerome was dying. His wolf was trying to take over, trying to battle it. As if it would help.
“Jerome!” I cried, clinging to his arms, trying to meet his gaze. My heart was racing, a howl building in my throat.
Another arrow ripped through the air. Jerome lunged into its path—between it and me. It struck his back.
“No!” I gave a full-throated scream.
He looked at me. He was trembling, his eyes wide, glazed, inhuman. Black streaks marked his veins, crawling from the wound in his shoulder, poisoned blood flowing through his body.
“Kitty. Run,” he said through gritted teeth. He had fangs now, in a long mouth.
“Jerome.” My voice was thick with despair.
“Run!” he said, and it was a growl. He twitched, convulsed, pushed me away.
I ran.
I took off through the trees, hoping to get some cover. Didn’t look back, sure that the next silver-tipped bolt would strike me. The thought pushed me over an edge—I couldn’t handle this situation, not like this. Not as a human. I could run fast on two legs. I could run faster on four, I could hide better, and right now that was all I cared about.
I pulled off my T-shirt, my bra, and didn’t fight it. When I wanted it, when it came fast like this, it didn’t hurt so much. I leaned into it because this time, it could save my life. My back rounded, a wave passed through me, my body turned liquid, bones and skin melting, re-forming, fur prickling. Shoved my sweats and panties down in the same moment—
S he shakes herself and keeps going, can’t stop. A hunter has attacked and she’s alone now. Run, that’s all she thinks of, legs pumping, taking deep breaths, scenting for danger. Catches traces of an enemy and moves away.
She tastes the air and feels the wind like fingers through her fur. Nothing can catch her like this. Nothing. But she keeps running, trying to outrun fear. At this moment, speed is the greatest strength she has, and she uses it.
But she can’t keep running forever. She has to go somewhere, so she heads toward safety. She knows that smell, where she’s been sleeping, where she has friends. She has no place else to go. Too far away from her own pack, this will have to do. Though she would run to her pack if she could.
Time passes.
She slows to a trot as she approaches the den where she hopes to find safety. Strange smells—too many people, the two-legged ones, have passed here. Some of them may be hunting her. She whines, because she can’t trust where she is. Can’t trust any of these smells. But the human side, the two-legged self, nudges her. There are friends here. At least, there should be. She has to hope.
The trees end, opening to a wide, exposed clearing, and the large human structure in the middle of it. Full of danger. Her fur bristles, her tail is stiff, her head hangs low. She circles, tracking every smell, every hint of danger. Searches her memory, finds the area smells much like it did when she left. Nothing has changed; the hunter has not followed her. The blood in front of the structure is old, from this morning.
She paces slowly, carefully around the building, spiraling closer. Ready to flee the moment the air feels wrong.
The den draws her in. A noise startles her—she flicks her ear. Footsteps sound hollow, and a two-legged figure stands before her, looking out. She stops, stares. He doesn’t stare back. Drops his gaze, doesn’t offer challenge, and she feels better. He smells familiar. A friend. He has helped her before. She remembers. Her throat whines, because she’s been afraid for a long time now and wants to rest.
More footsteps, more people, too many, and her ears pin back, her hackles go rigid, and she braces, ready to run, ready to fight.
“Stay back. Go back inside, all of you,” the first man says. The one she wants to trust.
“What is it? Oh my God—is that—”
“It’s Kitty,” he says.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, you don’t seriously expect—”
“Conrad, shut up!”
“What happened?” another says. A female.
“I don’t know. We won’t know until she turns back. We need to get her inside, to safety.”
“And how do you propose we do that? It looks… she looks… I mean…”
The first one, the male, acts like an alpha. “Everyone needs to get back inside and give her space. She’s spook
ed. Go upstairs. I’ll take care of this.”
“Odysseus, are you sure?” Another male, an odd-smelling one—he smells like fish and rivers—says this. “If she bites you—”
“She won’t. I’ll be fine.”
Then the doorway, the whole front of the den, is empty, and he turns his back to her and walks inside, leading her in. Head low, hesitating, she follows. The hard, artificial ground feels wrong, harsh against her feet. Her claws click. If she goes inside, she’ll be trapped, no way to get out, no wide spaces to run in. But to her other side, it smells safe. Her other side trusts.
She slips inside and keeps to the wall so nothing can sneak up on her, surround her. She stays by the entrance, just in case. She keeps her eyes on the man, who sits nearby, quietly, watching.
Then, because she’s been running all day, she folds her legs under her, curls up tight so her tail brushes her nose. She hopes the world is safer when she wakes up.
The bed was hard, but I was warm. My mouth was sticky. I’d had nightmares.
Not nightmares. Memories.
I gasped a breath and sat up. I had a blanket over me—someone’s kind thought. I was against the wall, right next to the front door. This was how far they’d been able to coax me inside. I was amazed I managed to make it this far. Part of me thought I should have just kept running until I made it back to Colorado. Except for that fence, trapping us.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me and scrubbed my face, trying to wake up. My muscles ached, my head throbbed. I wanted to go home. I glanced out the window; the sky was dark. I didn’t want it to be night. Inside, several candles burned, on the coffee table and the kitchen counter. A low fire flickered in the fireplace. The light was warm, full of rippling shadows. Terrible, terrifying.
“Kitty.” Odysseus Grant sat on a sofa, watching me.
“Déjà vu, huh?” I said, smiling weakly.
“Are you all right?”
Screwing my face up to keep from crying, I shook my head.
“What happened?” Grant asked.
I swallowed, to clear the tightness in my throat. “Jerome is dead. We’re being hunted.”
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