by K A Faul
Ryan let out a pained grunt. “As long as it heals, I don’t care. At least it’s not my face.”
The man’s commitment to vanity, even after being seriously injured, almost impressed Mina.
“We got the gold out,” Thomas said. “It’ll heal eventually, just not as quick as you’re used to.”
“What now?” Mina asked.
Thomas looked at the ground, his gaze roaming over the golden spikes. He then looked up and pointed to a squirrel. “Interrogate that animal. Maybe he saw something.”
“It doesn’t really—”
“Just ask, damn it. We don’t have time for you to send a written invitation for an interview to the Squirrel Union.”
Mina shrugged. Hey, squirrel. See any two legs around? Two legs dropping shiny things?
Only four legs who became two. The squirrel scurried off.
“He’s only seen us,” Mina said, watching Thomas. They’d gone from Thomas thinking she was drugged to him fully buying into her powers in a short period, but pressure and proof of attack went a long way.
Thomas rubbed his chin. “The mages must have figured it out yesterday, or maybe they know our path. Or a spell that tells them our path.”
“Bastards,” Ryan mumbled. “At least they could have come at us straight on. Damned spellslingers.”
Jorge nodded his agreement.
“Do all Rite packs take the same way to the portal?” Mina asked.
“No, but most packs are going to travel the same direction from the cave to the portal, just because of the layout of the terrain.” Thomas shook his head. “This is ridiculous. This is our forest, and they’re hunting us. We don’t even know how many enemies are following us.”
Mina pondered that for a few seconds. “Not a lot. Maybe even one.”
Thomas arched a brow. “Why do you say that?”
“If they had decent numbers and access to gold, or at least gold-producing magic, they would have come straight at us. I’m guessing we outnumber them, which is why they’re trying to weaken us first. Traps are for people in positions of weakness. Straight-on attacks are for people in positions of power.”
Thomas nodded, something approaching respect in his eyes. “I agree. Now we have to figure out how we’re going to respond.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
Mina pointed to Ryan. “We have to take him back. Depending on how deep his wounds are, they might take days, if not weeks to heal, and we can’t have him going back by himself in that condition. We’ll drop him off, and then turn around and come back.” She looked over at Ryan. “No offense, Ryan, but I don’t think you’re in any condition to continue the Rite.”
The other werewolf had paled several shades in the last few minutes. “I’d try to say something tough, but it still freaking hurts, and I agree. Damn.” He sighed. “This was going to get me laid.”
Mina shrugged. “Maybe find a girl who gets off on nursing people back to health.”
Ryan’s eyes lit up, and then he winced again and gripped his arm.
“It’s not that simple,” Thomas said. “We can’t just go back.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How is it not that simple? We have a pack member injured with gold. He can walk, but he’s not going to be able to fight.”
“You don’t understand. We don’t have enough time. We’ll need four-legged speed in Esper to get to the mushroom and back to the portal in time. If we circle back, it’s over. The portal isn’t going to be open long enough.” He gestured widely with his arm. “You’ll all fail the Rite, not just him.”
Mina gritted her teeth. Jorge looked down while Anna’s eyes widened.
Ryan let out a quiet groan. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mina said.
“She’s right,” Thomas said. “It’s mine. I led my pack straight into a trap.” He glanced over at Mina. “Despite receiving warning that I might be doing just that.”
Mina shrugged. “Look, this animal thing is weird even to me. I don’t know if I would have believed you if I was in your position.” She sighed.
Jorge squared his shoulders. “I’ll go back with Ryan. I can go wolf if I need to get a little more brutal, but I can stay in human form while I’m walking him back. That way we can make it back, especially if we’re heading straight for the forest exit rather than worrying about the cave.”
Thomas locked eyes with the other man. “Even if you’re doing it to help Ryan, you will still fail. Do you understand that, Jorge?”
The other man lifted his chin. “I can deal with it. No one back home is going to give me crap for sacrificing my Rite to help out a packmate.”
Mina let out a long sigh. “Maybe we should all go back.”
Anna nodded. “I’ll follow you in whatever you decide, Mina.”
Thomas shook his head. “No. This isn’t how we’re going to play this.” He nodded at Mina. “Especially you. You think you’ve been taking crap before? What do you think’s going to happen if you step back into Golden Oaks failing your Rite of Passage? Garett’s going to be the least of your problems then.”
“It’s like Jorge said. It’s for a good reason. I can take people’s crap. I’ve been taking it for years. I don’t care if I have to wait a little longer. The good of the pack outweighs the good of the individual, right?”
“I care if you fail,” Thomas snapped.
Mina blinked. “What, are you so worried about what people will say about you?”
He snorted. “For once, Mina, try and understand that I’m not an asshole who hates you. I’ve always wanted you to do well, and you’ve worked too damned hard to fail because of my screw-up. Understand?”
So many snarky and triumphant responses could have followed. Instead, Mina offered something a bit more basic.
“Uh, yeah. I understand.”
Utter quiet swept over the pack after that, except the occasional hiss of pain from Ryan. Mina stared at the alpha, shocked at his admission.
Anna walked over to put her hand on Mina’s arm. “He’s right. You can’t fail here, Mina. You’ve proven you have the Blood of Rogan. I believe you have a destiny.”
Mina sighed. “Look, Anna, just because you were right about the whole special power thing doesn’t mean you’re right about everything. I don’t have the faith in myself that you have in me.”
The other girl’s face lit up in a soft smile. “Then it’s all the more important that I have even more faith in you.”
Mina pointed at Ryan. “He took multiple gold spikes. Any destiny that has me putting myself above my packmates is a destiny that I don’t care about. It’s pretty obvious what we have to do here.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “I screwed up.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s those damn mages from Esper. Assholes.”
Thomas sighed. “Sorry, Mina, but this goes beyond you. If you fail, it weakens the king. I’d been so sure the trouble would come on the Esper side of things, but I should have been more aware of Earth-side risks. My main concern was you taking this seriously.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I don’t want to send Jorge and Ryan back by themselves, not when we’re being hunted. If the enemy is trying to separate us, we’d just be doing their work for them, and we risk wolves getting killed, not just hurt.”
Mina shook her head and stuck her hands on her hips. “I’ve got a better solution.”
“What?”
“If we’re being hunted, then we freaking hunt their asses back. We’ve got the heart of wolves, right? It’s like I said earlier, if they are putting down traps, that means they don’t think they can take us in a fair fight. Maybe all their spell crap takes too long to pull off.”
“But won’t we just take more spikes?” Jorge said. “For all we know, they’ve coated half the forest with those things.”
Thomas looked between Jorge and Mina. “Not if we stay in human form and maintain our clothes. We’ll lose our enhanced senses, but we’ll be less v
ulnerable to their tricks. Once we finish them off, then we can talk about who needs to head back to the forest entrance, and the rest can proceed to the portal. I doubt these assholes filled the forest in Esper with gold spikes. Otherwise, they would have waited for us to go through.”
The other werewolves nodded.
“Plus,” Thomas added, “we have an advantage they have no way of knowing about.”
“What’s that?” Mina asked.
A dark grin appeared on his. “You.”
Chapter 22
When Mina communicated with animals, she wasn’t sure how much of it involved them just interpreting her sensations. She tended to think in simple words, and most animals seemed to understand, even if their responses were a combination of sensations and feelings she was mostly interpreting as words.
The real problem was that any attempt at jokes or snark with the animals failed, which meant every conversation, such as it were, had to be as straightforward as possible, or, as far as she was concerned, boring.
Mina hoped to refine it in the weeks and months that followed. That was assuming, some crazy mage didn’t kill her in the next few hours.
Her latest conversation partner, the forest’s most skittish fox, rushed off into the underbrush. He’d still given her more useful information than any other animal she’d encountered in the last few hours.
People fail Rites. People die on Rites.
Even as everyone had told her, she never really took the threat seriously.
Maybe next time they should be a little more direct and say, “Hey, Initiates, you might be ambushed by some mage from Esper who wants to skin you for the study in his magic tower.”
Mina sighed. Too bad the fox hadn’t given her any good news. The whole stuffed werewolf ending grew more likely by the minute.
Thomas looked over at her expectantly. “What?”
“The fox saw a flying two legs coming our way.”
“How long ago?”
Mina shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him to check his watch. Come on, Thomas. He’s a damned fox.”
Thomas narrowed his eyes. “This is important.”
“I got the feeling it wasn’t all that long ago.” Mina pointed toward the trees. “Lots of birds flying off, and other animals just feel… off. The bastards are close.”
“Yeah, it feels that way.” Thomas glanced over at Ryan. “We’ve been moving slower, so they’ve had a chance to catch up.”
“If we can get the guy close, we could take him out,” Mina said. “So, that’s a good thing, right?”
Any reservations she had about killing a man vanished with the discovery of the golden spikes. It was obvious that whoever was after them intended to finish them off. She didn’t need to be on four legs to feel a burning predatory anger.
“I wish these guys would just get it over with,” Jorge said. “I mean it’s not like—”
A loud gunshot echoed in the forest. Jorge body’s jerked backward, and he bellowed in pain. Blood blossomed from his shoulder as he gritted his teeth and tried to crawl backward.
Thomas and Mina grabbed him and pulled him behind a tree. Ryan and Anna found their own trees as more shots rang out.
“It burns like hell,” Jorge said through gritted teeth. “It’s like someone stuck the sun in my shoulder.”
Thomas ripped the man’s shirt open and narrowed his eyes. “The bullet’s still in there, and if it hurts that much, it has to be gold-plated.” He peeled off his undershirt to form another makeshift glove and moved his hand toward Jorge. “Sorry. This is going to hurt very, very badly.”
“Just do it, bro,” Jorge hissed. “It can’t hurt much worse than it already does.”
Jorge screamed as Thomas dug deep into his shoulder to yank out the golden bullet. The alpha tossed it to the ground. The other man stopped screaming but still drew in shuddered breaths, shaking slightly.
“At least it was the shoulder,” Thomas said. “Rather than your heart or head.”
Jorge managed a weak laugh, his face pale.
Mina’s hands curled into fists, her heart thundering. The pack had done nothing wrong. They hadn’t attacked anyone, but now they were being hunted, during their own sacred ritual, by some bastard who didn’t even have the courage to show his face.
Movement caught Mina’s attention, and she dared to peek around her tree. A man in some sort of green camouflage fatigues leapt from tree to tree, his gloved hands grabbing branches as makeshift trapezes. He flew through the air and landed against a trunk, pushing on contact to send him to the next tree with surprising ease.
Guess that’s why we don’t have any weirds scents on the ground. Assholes stayed in the trees. A two legs who flies without wings.
“He’s not flying… damn it.” Mina locked her gaze on the moving form, following the man as he bounced and jumped from tree to tree, each movement taking maximum advantage of his existing momentum.
No, there was only one group who could move like that and knew about werewolves.
“I was wrong,” Mina said. “Too bad you can’t record me saying that. That’s not something I’m going to say all that often.”
“Wrong?” Thomas asked. “If anything, you were too right. What do you mean?”
“The shooter. He’s not a mage. He’s a Hunter.”
Thomas’s brow furrowed. “We can work with that then.”
Jorge slumped against a tree, moaning. Anna and Ryan kept their backs plastered to their own temporary wooden shields, concern etched on their faces.
“We’ve attacked no innocent people,” Thomas shouted. “This forest is our land, and we’ve taken only animals from its bounty. You’re in violation, Hunter of the Church, of the agreement between my people and your Church.”
The Hunter responded by sending a bullet into the tree near Thomas. He jumped one more time, spinning around a few more branches to send him higher onto a nearby branch. The glint of metal from a pistol caught Mina’s eye.
“My kind have forgotten their purpose, hellhound,” the man shouted from his high branch. “Abominations like you have been allowed to run free. You think because you pretend not to be killers now that we should forget that you’re nothing more than rabid killers wearing the skin of people?”
“Yeah, this conversation will go well,” Mina muttered. She surveyed the forest, trying to evaluate the tactical possibilities. If they got close to the man, they could win.
She thought about trying some of her training tricks involving trees. She could get some height, but she couldn’t move like a Hunter. She had no good way of closing on him, and he held a gun with golden bullets. The bastard held the high ground, both literally and metaphorically.
“Do you want a war?” Thomas shouted. “Killing any of us risks more violence. We can end this bloodshed now.”
The Hunter barked out a laugh from above. “If only. You soulless animals are allowed to run free pretending to be human. The cowardly Church has given up on culling you and sending you back to hell where you belong.”
“The only coward here is the guy hiding up in the tree.”
Another shot rang out. The impact threw up dust and dirt near Thomas.
The Hunter laughed. “You’ve given me a good idea, hellhound. I’ll make it clear that a Hunter killed you. Maybe then your demon friends will go kill Hunters and a war will start, and the Church will finally remember its duty to humanity.”
Mina sighed. His rogue status made her feel slightly better about the situation, but the fact that he was an obvious nut pushed all that away. Sometimes, the only solution was a solid beatdown.
“Jorge, how you doing?” Thomas asked quietly.
The other werewolf gave a thumbs-up. “I’ve been better, but I’ll live.”
“Ryan?”
“My arm hurts, but it’s not like I’m going to pass out or anything.”
Thomas nodded. “We need to start being proactive. We haven’t seen any spikes in a while, so we need to start pla
ying to our strengths. Anna and Mina, you shift.”
Mina shook her head. “Are you insane, Thomas? He’ll pick us off during the shift.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to keep his attention while you shift. Mina, Anna, once you’ve shifted, try to get him to take some shots at you. I’m going to try and make my way over to that big trunk over there.” He nodded to a tree in the distance. “Jorge, Ryan, just stay here. We’ll keep his attention, so you’ll be fine.” He looked into the eyes of each of his pack members. “Ready?”
Everyone nodded.
Thomas burst from his hiding place and sprinted toward another tree.
Two more bullets whizzed by him, one so close Mina thought she saw it tousle his hair.
Don’t get your brains blown out in front of me, Thomas. I’ll have to spend the next hundred years singing songs about your bravery, and that would just be embarrassing for both of us.
Mina closed her eyes and knelt. Pain shot through her as she initiated her shift. Anna let out a slight whimper as her own shift started.
“For a Hunter, you’re not that impressive,” Thomas said. “And you’re a damned coward.”
Another shot blew off a chunk of bark from the alpha’s current tree shield.
“A Hunter destroys those who prey on humanity,” shouted the man above. “I don’t do this to prove my bravery. I’ve been blessed to be stronger and faster than a normal man to fight demons like you. The only thing that matters in the end is that you die.”
“Screw you,” Thomas shouted. “We’re no demons or servants of demons. You’re the one trying to murder us, and you don’t even have the balls to come down and take us on face-to-face.”
“All of you filthy hellhounds will pay for what you did to my wife,” the Hunter shouted back. “I will endure whatever humiliation I need to make your kind suffer. You will die in this forest.”
Thomas darted for another tree. More shots rang out. “Maybe if you weren’t such a weak coward, your wife wouldn’t be dead.” With that, he hurried toward the large tree he’d indicated before.
The Hunter pelted the ground with more bullets but didn’t manage to land a hit on the sprinting werewolf.
