Pru and I walk through the doors and take our place in line. The maze is comprised of bushes with various entrance points along the length of a football field. My instincts say to go to the closest entrance from the path. Once inside, the maze will shift like a hall of mirrors does. Even though the maze part will be different, the obstacles will be the same.
“I don’t like being cut off from everyone,” I say as I shift my backpack around on my back.
“I’ve had them in my head my entire life, I’m not sure how I’ll do without communication. We have those tracking chips in our backs so the pack will be able to figure out where we are in the maze.”
I shake my head no to her. “Don’t you remember, we got a memo last month that we must deactivate the chips for the duration of the games? If they try to track us, it will disqualify us.” It isn’t like Pru to forget something so important.
“Damn, you’re right. We’ve got this in the bag, Abe, we’ve been endurance training for over a year. You’re good at pacing yourself and I’m good at revitalized energy bursts. Thankfully, our talents complement each other. Let’s go to the starting point and kick some werewolf ass!”
“To werewolf ass!” I say half-heartedly.
Pru claps her hand on the back of my shoulder. Now to keep us both alive, I think to myself.
Everyone else will go to the last one because they think no one else will go that far. A team from Spain is behind us, they’re talking about their strategy to follow us into the maze. Pru is fluent in several languages, including Spanish. For unknown reasons, I can understand almost every language when I’m a wolf. I don’t hear it in any other language than English. What if I’d been born in Russia, would my wolf translate everything to Russian?
“Yes, everything would be Russian,” Pru answers. “Your thoughts are all over the place.”
“At least I’m not making you think about how soft Oakley’s lips are, or wedding plans. Stop! Look at me,” I say.
“We don’t have time, what’s wrong?”
I place my hands on Pru’s shoulders and pull her in for a hug. “No matter what happens, save yourself. I’m resilient and will find my way, you need to get back to your mom and Oakley. Don’t be a hero, not for me.”
Pru rolls her eyes as she shakes her head back and forth.
“Don’t be a dumbass, I’m not that kind of wolf and never will be that kind.”
“Prudence, I love and care about you, keep that in mind. As your alpha, I’m insisting you save yourself if it comes down to that decision. Stop being hardheaded,” I scold. Her jaw is clenching as she stands silently. It is rare that I’ll go over her head and evoke my alpha card. Her wolf has no choice but to follow a direct order.
“Remind me to kick your ass when we get finished with this game,” Pru huffs.
“You’re so violent, maybe we should get you therapy,” I tease. A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as she fights the urge to laugh. “Let’s go!”
The atmosphere is filled with excitement, my adrenaline is surging and my heart is in my throat.
“Can you feel the excitement?” I ask.
“Yeah, it has me a little jittery,” Pru replies.
The starting gun goes off and somewhere in the distance I hear people cheering. My wolf instinct kicks in; my body goes on alert, sounds riffle in my ears. When I was a kid, I’d hold my hands over my ears and make strange noises for whatever reason….that’s what the world sounds like to me as a wolf. I first will hear the blood pumping through my veins, followed by my breathing and all the strange noises a body makes. In the distance there’s the sound of leaves and twigs breaking. My wolf zeros in on Pru and our direct path. We pause every five minutes to figure out which way we should turn. Soon, the sounds of the other teams fade out into the wind.
“Pru, we need to find the center. I don’t trust being within the walled maze.”
“Okay, do you want to shift?”
“No, I think we should hold off until we have no choice. Tonight it will be cold, we’ll need our coat to keep us warm. We can figure out where we’ll set up camp at the latest moment possible.”
We’re jogging through the maze without much difficulty when the world goes silent. I try to think to Pru but she doesn’t respond. “Stop, something’s coming up.”
“I can’t hear your wolf,” she says and closes the gap between us.
“Yeah, I can’t hear you either; this must be a dead-zone. Be careful of traps. I’m going to go around the corner and check it out.”
“If I’m looking for traps, how are you going to make it around the corner?”
As I take one step forward, a trigger is set off and a whirring sound is headed towards us. We drop to the ground in time to avoid what looks like a saw-blade.
“Jump!” Pru yells and takes my hand.
I jump and my Great Wolf ability takes over. We figured it out a couple of months ago that if I’m holding someone’s hand, they go with me. The two of us are in time to miss another blade, this one lower than the first.
“We must be close to a clue,” Pru says on our way down to the ground.
I can only hover for about five seconds before we come down. “That’s what I was thinking too.” Our landing is rough but we recover fairly fast. “Come on! We need to find the clue and get out of here before one of us is decapitated,” I demand.
We dart around the corner slamming smack into a wall, instead of falling backwards, the ground under us collapses. Tumbling down the narrow shaft which is filled with roots and the dirt is frozen solid. I hit the ground first, Pru lands on top of me.
“Holy shit! What the hell?” Pru yells out. “This better not be snake or rat filled!”
We scramble to our feet not moving from our spot. I blink a couple of times as my wolf-sight sets in.
“Here’s a tunnel, I’m guessing we should check for a clue before we get out of here. Come on, take my hand.” I reach over and grab her hand.
We follow the tunnel, keeping an eye out for a clue until we come to a wall of rock. This can’t be good. I wonder if anyone else is underground with us, scurrying around trying to find a clue.
“There’s no way up, and we’re at a dead end; I’m guessing whatever we’re looking for is behind these rocks,” Pru surmises.
I knock along the wall trying to find inconsistencies in the rocks. “If we start digging, we run a risk of the rocks collapsing and burying us alive.”
“True. What if we tap some rocks and see if any are hollow? Everyone will have the same challenge; the committee who designed this wouldn’t make it easy. Most everyone on the committee this year is an engineer. I’m sure in their head they thought this was cool. Obviously it was approved, so they wouldn’t kill everyone off with a collapsing rock wall.” Pru pulls a knife from her backpack and starts tapping the butt along the rocks.
She’s right; they wouldn’t make it where everyone would die. I start on the rocks that are eye level. Pru begins on the bottom row and we cross our fingers hoping we find the clue before we meet in the middle.
After banging on rocks for at least an hour, I come across a group of stones that echo with each hit. Pru stops what she’s doing to hear me hit them again.
Together we chisel enough away to fit our fingers in the groove and pull out the row of rocks. Nestled within the hole, is a velvet pouch with four quartz crystals, nothing else.
“No note?” I ask.
“Nope, nothing… let’s get out of here.” She takes the strings from the velvet bag and secures it to her backpack.
“Do you feel like a mole? I definitely feel like a rodent digging around under a dirt tunnel.”
Pru nods her head and agrees with me as we hurry up and get back to the opening. The hole is too narrow for me to hold her hand and jump out of here.
“Can you reach both sides with your arms out? You can stand on my shoulders and shimmy up with your arms and legs balancing you as you climb.” I watch her face as she contemplates the
idea.
“We can give it a try, if not; you can jump up and find something to pull me out of here with.”
“Okay, climb up,” I say as I drop to my knees. Pru wiggles herself up to a standing position on my shoulders, pausing before she begins her climb out of the tunnel. She reaches the top and is looking down at me.
“Here goes noth…..”
Before I can finish my sentence, Pru is screaming. Her feet are dangling over the hole and I see her captor is attached to a harness that’s connected to a helicopter. I now hear it and watch as Pru drops her backpack into the hole.
“Abel, keep going, don’t stop!”
My wolf takes control and we jump out of the hole in time to see Pru being heisted into the black helicopter.
Every single bad word I’ve ever heard is racing through my mind.
****************
I run through the maze, not caring if I find a clue or not. Right now, Pru is my only concern. It doesn’t take long before I stumble upon the competitors from a Scandinavian pack out of Norway. Danica Beito is the oldest female in the entire competition; she’s listed as sixty years old. Her angled face is transformed into a scowl as I tell her about Pru’s abduction. Her companion is her son, Frey; he was in the shifting competition earlier in the week. From what Oakley told me, he acted like a douche to his mom at the shifting contest. Right now, he’s being polite and not giving me any signs of friction between the two.
“Abel, they’ve taken me somewhere on the other side of Kilkenny. They don’t know you and I can communicate so I’ll try to give you what information I can. Use your one call to tell IT to run my tracking-chip.” Pru’s inner voice is faster than usual. I don’t want to give Danica or Frey any clue about communicating with Pru, because I’m not sure if they can be trusted.
“Stay strong, I’ll get to you as soon as I can. I’m sure the Olympic committee had no idea anyone would come in from the sky. You think they know? They have all the cameras everywhere, when will they organize a search party?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Abe, two of the people are American, they’re wearing masks, but their voice is American. Everyone else sounds Middle Eastern; however, they’re only speaking English. They all have a black ski-mask on and I can’t get a description to give you. Instead of using names, they’re using numbers.”
“I’ll get you, don’t worry,” I say with a heavy heart.
The trail loops around past another part of the maze until it ends in the clearing. Only one other team has made it this far. Frey is talking to the other team and I go inspect a team coming through another part of the maze. I recognize the voice before I see the face, it’s Violet.
“Abel, bhí fhuadaigh Brianna. Is cuid maité fhoireann ag lorg aici.” Violet says in Gaelic.
“English please! What’s wrong with Brianna?” I growl, harsher than I intended.
“Someone took Brianna! I’ve been trying to find you and Pru for the last hour. Where’s Pru?” Violet rambles. Her face is flush and she’s covered in dirt.
My wolf rumbles in my chest and my heart jumps to my throat. “How was she taken? Where’s her brother Marc, he’s the one who’s competing here isn’t he? Where’s your pack mate?”
“Marc is looking for her. He told us two men in black grabbed her while they were going through the maze.”
“Were they on foot?”
“I don’t know, Marc was really pissed off and didn’t give too many details. He said one of them snuck up from behind and gave him a shot in the neck which paralyzed him. Brianna was given a shot too, but it knocked her out. He said the guy called the other guy with him Nine.” Violet leans forward, placing her hands on her knees and struggles to catch her breath.
“Did you just say Nine?” I pace back and forth, now I know someone has taken two of the most important women in my life.
“Yeah, why? You know him?”
“No, but things are getting more complicated.” I breathe in and bring forth my wolf, he’s alert and zeroed in on the task at hand. Shifting is my only solution; I’m faster as a wolf. “I’m going to shift, my wolf can get out of here faster than I can on foot. I have reason to believe Brianna is with Pru. Neither one of the girls are on the field. You guys can keep on with the game, I’m going to go get my pack.”
I take the phone out of the backpack and call Dolly. On the third ring she answers. I spend five minutes telling her everything I know. As soon as we hang up, I tell everyone I’m leaving. Violet is a mess, she’s struggling to keep her composure but her effort is futile.
“I’m going, good luck to you all,” I announce.
“Abel, I’m going with you. I can’t allow you to go alone, you’re our alpha and I’m not going to turn a blind eye, I’m going with you,” Frey says.
“I’m going with you too, we’re pack, we don’t care about a medal,” Violet says with determination. “You’re the Great Wolf, we’re going to follow you.”
Two more teams step out of the maze. “Danica read us in, we’re going with you.”
Before I know it, there are twelve people standing in front of me. I’m not typically shy, but I don’t want to dangle my manhood around in front of strangers. Oakley will die laughing when he hears about me hiding in the bushes to shift.
The pain of shifting doesn’t make me vomit anymore, not since I’ve shifted so many times. My breaking bones and growing hair all over my body is still a painful process to go through but vomiting wasn’t becoming of an alpha. Last fall, I mastered shifting parts of my body at a time. I would have won the shifting event if I had entered, the general wolf population doesn’t know that though. Once my lower half and my arms are wolf, I’m able to maneuver the combined backpacks onto my back.
Stepping back into the clearing, everyone sucks in their breath. I’m bigger than most werewolves, my coat is full like a husky and my eyes tend to glow when I’m angry. Only a couple of wolves outside of our pack have seen me as a wolf. Without prompting, they all dropped to their knees. Shit, I hate it when that happens.
“What’s wrong Abe?” Pru’s panicked voice asks.
“Oh nothing, I shifted and everyone dropped to their knees. I’m standing in a clearing and they’re all on the ground.”
“Cute. Now get them to find me!”
“So bossy today!”
“Ha! Ha! You know I love you. I don’t have anything new to tell you, have you called?”
“I’ll get you, can you do your dream thing with Quinney?”
“I’ll see if I can do a conscience walk, but he has to be open for it, I’ll try. Abel?”
“Yeah?”
“This isn’t going to end well. The vibes I’m getting are evil.”
“Don’t think that way, I’ll get to you.” I pause a moment before I decide to give the group a nod to let them know to stand up.
****************
Chapter 9. The Hunt
Without warning, my head is filled with the voices of all the wolves. I can’t talk with my own pack, but I can hear everyone who’s in the Seeker game. They’re only able to communicate with their pack mate and me. Twenty-two wolves, all shapes and sizes are sitting on their haunches, facing forward and waiting on my lead.
“I need six wolves to go searching for the rest of the competitors. We’re on high alert, there’s someone penetrating the safety features of the Olympics.” I pause as I decide how we’ll proceed from here. “You, on the back row…you’ll go find them. They aren’t in wolf form or I’d be able to hear them. There are four more weres out there, find them…and get to safety.”
Marc emerges from the bushes to my right. His face is twisted up in a smirk. He steps towards me and my hackles go up. Marc lifts his hands in a defensive motion and it occurs to me that my eyes are probably glowing. He drops to his knees and lowers his head in respect. I return the nod and eye him as he shifts into his wolf.
“Marc, did you get any clues as to who has Brianna?”
Marc’s wolf turns to
me at the sound of my voice. “No, I couldn’t find anything. What are you planning?”
“We need to get back to our packs, we can’t leave them in the dark or someone else will be hurt.” I raise my nose into the air and let my wolf gather the information to get us out of here. “Everyone…..follow me! Marc, flank me on my left, you’ll serve as my beta until I can get to my own pack. Let’s go!”
“Abel, you need to hurry, something is about to happen.” Pru’s voice comes through loud and clear. “No matter what you do, don’t come after me unarmed. These guys have a lot of hardware on them. From what I can tell, everyone is packing heat. I can fight hand to hand, but I’m still no Superman. You aren’t either.”
“Don’t provoke them, Pru,” I whisper.
“Damn, we can’t go anywhere without a bunch of drama.”
“You’re telling me! Keep me apprised.”
We head back the way I came through the maze. The bushes are about six feet apart, barely enough for two wolves to run side by side. I call out to everyone as a sound off to keep track of them. I can’t turn around and check if they’re behind me, so we do a cadence. I pick up my trail and follow each turn as though I’ve run it a thousand times over. When I get to the end, I pick up the scent of a human. We can’t all stop to investigate, I have two of the wolves memorize the scent and send it to me via memory.
The sound of voices is approaching; we must be close to the entrance. We slow down so we don’t trample anyone.
Eyes grow wide as Marc and me come through first. Oakley is yelling something, I tune to his voice and he’s freaking out because Pru isn’t with me. The rest of the wolves all take steps backwards since many of them have never seen me as a wolf before this moment. A woman to my right faints. The rest of my pack is telling people to calm down and step back to give us room. Oakley comes over to me and he’s trying with everything in him to communicate to me but he can’t. Dolly is yelling for someone to get the antidote and administer it to everyone.
The Great Wolf: A Legacy of Kilkenny Novel Book Three (The Legacy of Kilkenny Saga) Page 7
