I shook my head. “Look, let’s deal with one thing at a time. The wolf that went rogue, where is he now?”
“I’ve been trying to track him, but I keep losing his scent around the park,” he said. “It’s like he tracked over and back on the same path to deliberately throw me off.”
That didn’t sound like the actions of someone who had completely lost his mind. A true rogue didn’t have the sense to cover his tracks.
“What happened to the three who are dead?” I asked.
“Ash stopped them from shifting completely and their hearts gave out,” he said, and I could see the toll their deaths had taken on him.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“They’re not suffering now,” he said curtly.
I caught his arm, and my hand came away sticky with blood. “What happened?”
“I helped Ash…” He kept his gaze turned away from me.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I said softly. “You stopped them from shifting.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to—I saw the truth in his eyes. His brother was an alpha, but he didn’t have the power to prevent his pack from shifting when under the influence of the sickness, which didn’t exactly bode well for the other pack members.
“Let’s go and hunt the rogue,” I said, changing the subject.
Byron gave me a grim nod and took off at a trot, leaving me no choice but to hurry to catch up. This time, though, I followed him without a second thought.
Chapter Twenty
The park was dark. Most of the street lights had been knocked out, and the only true light came from the almost-full moon that hung in the sky. As I followed Byron into the dense trees lining the dirt paths throughout the park, I struggled to listen for any signs of something nearby. But aside from the usual small rodent activity, nothing suggested that a larger and deadlier creature was lurking in the darkness.
Byron jerked his hand in a forward motion, and I caught up to him quickly. He pulled me in against a tree, pressing his body so close to mine that I could feel his heart beating steadily through the fabric of his dark hoodie.
“There’s a group of teenagers at the other side of the park, drinking,” he whispered in my ear, his breath warm on my skin.
“Do you think the rogue is still here?” I murmured against his chest, not wanting to move. If I did, I would be closer to his lips, and I needed to be able to think. The closer I was to him, the more his alpha pheromones screwed with my head, distracting me from what I really needed to concentrate on.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “I can get his scent, but, like I said, he has been crisscrossing, muddying the waters ever since he realised I was on his tail.”
“Are there any other potential targets?” I asked. “Something else he might go for instead of innocent people?”
Byron shook his head and shifted against me. “The sickness causes them to go for the most carnage. I don’t know why, but that’s what happens every time. If he’s here, then those kids are going to be next.”
Although his words didn’t comfort me, at least knowing where we should head could allow us to potentially head off the werewolf before he had the opportunity to murder any more innocents.
“Let’s go,” I said, moving out of his grip.
“Don’t get too close,” he warned. “Let me take care of the rogue—you get the kids out of there.”
His voice held a gruff tenderness that I hadn’t been expecting, and I glanced up into his face. His eyes had gone completely amber, lost to the wolf that lurked beneath the surface. Then, in a blur of speed, he was gone, moving through the trees with the agility and silence only his kind could manage.
Drawing a deep breath into my lungs, I tried to steady my heartbeat before following him with the speed given to my kind.
I reached the edge of the teenagers’ playground, a literal playground they had taken over for their nighttime activities. I hadn’t been able to hear them from the other side of the forest, but the closer I got the louder their drunken revelry became until it was almost impossible to ignore. If the rogue was out there, he was undoubtedly drawn to the noise.
Something moved at the edge of my vision and then crashed into me before I could get out of the way. It was a pixie moving fast, her blades flashing in the moonlight as she stabbed down toward my heart. Raising my arms, I blocked her blow and drove her away from me as I rolled onto my feet. I had no time for this, but didn’t it always work out that way?
Right when you didn’t want them, pixie assassins came along to carve your heart from your chest. It was definitely how they should advertise their services—need your enemy to die at the most inconvenient time possible?
I fended off her blows as she moved like a blur, zipping in and out, always slashing with her blades.
One of the blades caught my arm, and pain ripped through my shoulder as she sank the tainted silver and iron blade home and then twisted it for good measure. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was definitely inconvenient and intended to cause as much pain and discomfort as possible.
Ripping the blade free, she twirled in toward me again. I leaned back, practically folding my upper body backwards in an attempt to escape the swinging arc of her knife. She came after me, and I dropped to the ground, swinging my legs out from beneath me and planting them in the centre of her chest. Then I thrust her up and away from me.
She was so small that she flew backwards through the trees, the look of surprise on her face almost comical as she landed in the leaves and dirt. I was on my feet in a flash, and she had just changed her grip on the blade when the rogue came crashing through the trees behind her. His huge jaws snapped shut around her chest as he ripped her from the ground and tossed her into the air.
Shock rooted me to the spot as the pixie’s blood rained down over my hair and face. The rogue ripped into her small body despite her desperate attempts to fend him off. He dropped her to the ground, and she struggled to raise her arms to defend herself against the onslaught. My brain was sluggish, and I’d missed a couple seconds of the action as I’d stood frozen. Was this what the humans meant when they spoke about shock?
The pixie’s movements had slowed; the rogue had obviously severed something important when he’d tossed her about like a rag doll. Her arms no longer moved the way they should, and she stopped struggling as he pinned her beneath his huge paws. The snap of his teeth closing on her face and chest dragged me from my shock and back to the present moment.
No sooner was he done with her than he turned to face me. Viscera dripped from his razor-sharp fangs, some of which were longer than my fingers. He shook his head, and blood and gore splattered the leaves around us as I carefully tugged one of my blades from the sheath at the back of my jeans. He continued to watch me with eyes that were far more intelligent than any animal I’d come across, but there was still something utterly wild about them, something that told me reasoning with him wasn’t going to work.
Something rustled in the bushes next to me, and the rogue’s large head snapped to the side. His movements were fast, far faster than anything I could hope to achieve. A young, inebriated couple stumbled out of the trees, and the rogue’s eyes lit with excitement when he heard their gentle groans as they shared a passionate kiss.
Byron had said the rogues sought to create the most amount of carnage possible, and the eagerness in the rogue’s eyes told me he hadn’t been wrong. His tongue lolled out, slobber dripping from his lips as he dropped to the ground.
The girl fumbled with the boy’s jeans, and I weighed my options. If I moved toward the wolf, he would reach them in one leap and rip into them, potentially killing them both. If I shouted, I’d draw attention and probably bring the other teens running in our direction.
I was basically out of options, except for one. I might not be fast enough to reach the wolf, but I didn’t need to be. I just needed to be fast enough to reach the teens.
Drawing my blades out in front of me, I smiled at the wolf
as the girl raised her face long enough to see me standing behind her boyfriend with two curved knives. As she opened her mouth to scream, I launched myself in their direction, and the wolf leaped into the air. I drove my body into the teens, knocking them out of the way. The girl’s scream cut off mid-formation as I shoved her out of the way of certain death.
Time slowed to a crawl.
The wolf’s paws slammed into my chest, driving the air from my lungs as he sent both of us crashing to the ground. Before I hit the dirt, I buried one of the curved silver blades through his chest, barely nicking the edge of his heart as the blade’s edge got stuck in his ribs.
His mouth opened wide, giving me a front-row seat to the rows of teeth that would soon be buried in my throat. Without thinking, I thrust the other blade through the bottom of his mouth, driving the silver tip through his tongue. With a roar, his jaw snapped down over my face, and I prepared for the end.
Chapter Twenty-One
The wolf’s weight disappeared from me, and a high-pitched whine cut the night as he hit the trees. Scrabbling back to my feet, I watched Byron fight the creature; his hoodie was scored down across the back, the fabric ripped open to reveal his tan, muscular flesh.
Power rippled outwards from where Byron stood fighting the rogue, and the urge to abase myself at his feet washed through me. He threw the wolf once more, and Byron’s power faltered, disappearing as quickly as it had arrived, but the rogue cowered against the tree where he had fallen, his black tail tucked in against his legs.
Byron glanced in my direction, and the relief on his face when he met my gaze sent a jolt through me.
Time caught up with us. Sound rushed back in around me as the sobs of the teenagers next to me reached my ears.
But that wasn’t the only sound.
The rogue snarled once and then jumped. His mouth closed around Byron’s shoulder, and they tumbled to the ground.
The Bone Blade appeared in my hand out of nowhere. Darting forward, I thrust the blade between the wolf’s shoulder blades, forcing it past the bone.
Power flowed in my veins, and I threw back my head and screamed, the sound bouncing off the trees as I felt the rogue’s life slip through my hands and the Bone Blade feed on the very essence of his being.
The wolf shifted, fur and bone sliding beneath my hands as his body realigned itself and he became human once more.
I shoved him away from Byron and dropped to my knees, scanning Byron’s face for any signs of life. My fingers slipped in his blood as I searched his neck for a pulse and found it beating sluggishly as his lifeblood flowed out through the gaping wounds on his neck and shoulder.
Death hovered nearby, and through my own grief I couldn’t tell if he was there for the wolf or Byron. Ripping off my jacket, I pressed it to the wound on Byron’s neck, applying as much pressure as I could without risking cutting off his air supply.
“Darcey,” he said, his voice thick with pain.
“Shift! You need to shift,” I said desperately.
“I can’t… the sickness… I can feel it…” He struggled to draw himself upright.
“You have to! You’re strong enough to fight the sickness, but you won’t survive the bite…” I could already feel the blood seeping out through the thin fabric of my jacket. Given how much blood Byron was losing, the rogue must have nicked an artery.
“I can’t…” he said.
“Do it!” I begged. “If you go mad, I’ll kill you myself…but I’m not going to lose you like this.”
He stared up at me, and I could see the longing and need in his eyes.
His back arched and power spread across his skin, and between one heartbeat and the next, his bones shifted and popped as fur flowed where skin had just been. I was now clinging to a silvery wolf, and I could see the dark grey markings in his fur that looked almost black in the night. The colour lay in the silver of his fur, the opposite of the Mallen streak Byron had as a human.
The wolf stirred, raising his head to stare up at me with pain in his amber eyes. The fur receded as quickly as it had arrived, sliding beneath my fingers as Byron appeared before me once more.
The wound on his neck was now smaller, the bleeding slowed to something more manageable, but I knew he would still bleed out if it wasn’t tended to—death would just take longer.
“I don’t want to be the one who says I told you so,” I said, helping him sit up.
“You just did.” His voice was strained, and I knew that shifting back and forth had come at a significant cost.
“We need to get you to someone who can patch you up,” I said, eyeing the oozing bite on his neck.
“Normally I would argue that I’m fine, but…” He trailed off, his skin ashen. It would take something pretty serious for an alpha to admit weakness. Well, that and complete trust in someone.
Despite seeing the longing in his eyes, I still didn’t believe that he trusted me enough to admit weakness. So that left only one thing—he’d shifted and healed as much as the sickness would allow, but he was still badly hurt.
“Noree,” he said. “Take me to her.”
I didn’t answer him, instead keeping my thoughts on the topic to myself. After all, hadn’t I asked him to do exactly the same thing? Who was I to question his choice?
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I raised his good arm and threw it across my shoulders, then tugged him gently to his feet. I was strong enough to carry him if necessary, but his size would make it seriously awkward and he’d be better off unconscious for something like that. He was an alpha, after all; I really couldn’t see him taking too kindly to me carrying him across my shoulders like a damsel in distress.
Glancing around the small clearing, I realised the teenage couple must have fled at some point without me noticing. The other drunken teens also seemed to be gone, and I wondered if it had been the stories of car-sized wolves or the sound of my scream that had frightened them off. At least they were safe.
As I passed by the body of the man who had been the wolf, I fought the urge to kick him. I’d seen the intelligence in his eyes when he’d weighed his options over the teenagers. Part of him had known what he was doing. The fact that he couldn’t help himself, that the sickness had driven him to commit such violent atrocities, stopped me from kicking him. Even though I found it hard to think of him as another victim, that was exactly what he was. His choice had been taken from him, and that was something I could understand better than anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The journey to Noree’s restaurant was even harder than I’d expected. Byron made a terrible patient; his unwillingness to let me carry him made him nothing short of impossible.
By the time I got him up the stairs and into her front room, I was almost fit to finish the job the werewolf had started on him. But seeing the look of surprise on Noree’s face when I’d half-carried, half-dragged Byron into her living room definitely lifted my mood. She was wearing a cream nightdress buttoned up to a high Victorian collar. Her salt and pepper hair was piled up beneath a cap, and I could just make out the edges of her curlers poking through.
“Sit still,” I said, planting my hand in the centre of Byron’s chest as he tried for the third time to get up from his chair while Noree prepared something in the kitchen.
“I don’t need to sit, I’m already beginning to feel better,” he lied. His colour was still horrendous, and blood continued to ooze from the bite without slowing its pace, leading me to believe internal bleeding was a definite possibility.
“Drink this,” Noree said, thrusting a glass into his hands. The contents smelled to high heaven, and I reeled back.
“I didn’t think I would see you so soon,” Noree said, inclining her head in my direction. Her expression was a mix of curiosity and genuine surprise.
“What were you expecting?” I asked, struggling to keep my tone neutral as I eyed the dark liquid bubbling in Byron’s glass.
“Nice try,” she said before turning her attention t
o Byron. “Drink, wolf child.”
“What is it?” he asked, staring at the contents suspiciously.
“Something that will make what I must do to close the wound that much more bearable.” She pushed the glass toward his mouth.
“I don’t need something to make it bearable,” Byron said, attempting to dodge the glass. Noree was far stronger than she looked, and she hooked her clawed hand around the back of Byron’s neck while pushing the glass toward his lips.
“I’d drink it if I were you,” I warned, “or she’ll crush the glass against your mouth.”
“I—mmpf—fiff—way,” he mumbled before finally giving in. He twisted his face up in disgust at the first sip.
Some of the liquid, so thick it could be called syrupy, trickled down his chin and clung to the stubble covering his face. Satisfied, Noree released him and watched as he finished the last of it before handing the glass back to her with a grimace.
“It tasted like swamp,” he said.
“Sounds accurate,” she replied.
“What’s it going to…” Byron trailed off, his eyes widening as his pupils dilated. He slumped over in the chair, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“I was going to ask the same question, but I can see what it does now,” I said, reaching out to gently steady him.
He mumbled something incoherent in his sleep and swatted uselessly at my hand.
“He has been poisoned,” Noree said, poking at the wound on his shoulder.
“He was bitten by one of his own,” I said.
“It was a vicious attack.” She prodded along the edge of the ragged flesh, causing the wound to ooze blood a little faster. “Katia, fetch my kit!” she bellowed, catching me by surprise.
She turned back to me and met my gaze with her eyeless sockets, sans the dark glasses she usually wore, and I could see everything moving around as though the eye still existed and she could actually see me.
“He was supposed to die,” she said, catching me off guard.
Huntress Moon (Bones and Bounties Book 2) Page 15
