A Fistfull of Charms(47)

Heart pounding, I looked into the silent green, afraid to shift my head. A leaf fluttered down, and I prayed Nick didn’t wake. I couldn’t see anyone, but I could hear them. It was as if ghosts were passing before me, silent and invisible but for their scent.
My eyes flicked to where the sun glinted on smooth skin. A trembling took my feet, and I forced myself to not move. There were two of them, one on two feet, one on four. I didn’t think they were the island Weres, but rather, off the boats from Mackinac Island—their uniforms looked like government issue and their gear was more aggressive. 
The taller Were grimaced at the stink, and I slitted my eyes to nothing when the one on four feet nudged his leg and silently pointed with his nose. With a whisper, the Were checked in using the radio clipped to his lapel. There was the pop of a channel opening thirty feet away, and I saw a distant shadow of brown and green come to a halt, waiting to see what they had found.
Shit. There was a line of them. If we were found, it wouldn’t be two Weres I’d be fighting, but a platoon.
I caught the word Jeep, but there was no jubilation, so I figured Jenks was still at large. Only now did the two Weres enter the clearing, the one in fur finding the broken splat balls and the three damp spots where Aretha and her pack had been doused with saltwater to break the sleepy-time charm. The other touched the ground where the deer had lain. His head came up, his eyes going right to the deer. I panicked, thinking he had seen us, but with a click, he got the attention of the Were on four feet. Together they looked over the clearing where we had been attacked, discussing with body signals what might have happened. The deer, they avoided.
The screaming jays grew closer, calling from right overhead for an instant until they continued, following the unseen line. The Were in fur snapped his teeth, and the other rose. Taking a red flag from a pocket, he jammed it into the ground, marking the clearing. Silently they headed farther inland. There was the soft scritch of cloth rubbing, then nothing.
My blood pounded. To lay there and wait for them to pass us had been one of the most frightening things I’d ever done. The jays’ noise went soft, and I exhaled, started to pant.
Waiting for Jenks, my thoughts returned to the soft sureness the invading Weres had shown. Their sly hesitancy made the stark brutality of the three packs I had just escaped stand out all the more. Weres weren’t savage—they just weren’t—and I felt a spike of worry remembering the ugly ferocity of them ringing me. It had been more than them wanting to see a fight. They had been like a different species, younger and more dangerous, lacking the control that the alphas gave them. The trouble a cocky Were pack in Cincy could get into was enough to give me the shivers. The only reason Inderlanders and humans could coexist was because everyone knew their place in the social order.
I was so intent on my thoughts that I all but barked in surprise when Jenks dropped out of the tree above me.
“Holy crap,” he whispered, eyes dancing. “I was sure that one saw you. Damn, that deer stinks worse than a fairy’s ass-wipe. Let’s get out of here.”
I couldn’t agree more, and leaving my disturbing thoughts about the strength Weres found in packing up, I crawled from my shelter, leaping over Nick in my haste. His eyes flashed open and he came up on an elbow after seeing Jenks, leaves falling to hide the deer’s glassy eye. “I fell asleep,” he said, sounding ashamed. “Sorry.”
“We’re behind their line.” Jenks didn’t offer to help him stand, and I waited while Nick slowly gained his feet using the snag as support. His hands were swollen and there was a soft sheen of moisture on some of the burns as they oozed, bits of leaf chips stuck to them. I whined at Jenks to be nicer, but he wouldn’t look at me, moving to play vanguard to the road.
I tried to find evidence of the invading Weres’ passage as we went, seeing nothing. Nick stumbled behind me, stinking of dead deer, and I tried to pick a way that would be easy for him. His breathing grew labored as the forest thinned and we came out onto the road. A quick dart across and the forest closed in again.
Jenks was nearly silent to my wolf hearing, and I was pretty quiet myself. Nick tried, but every misplaced step brought a stumbling snapping of twigs and leaves. Being barefoot didn’t help, and I was wondering why we hadn’t taken someone’s boots. After a few moments I trotted to Jenks, giving the pixy a look I tried to make meaningful before I loped away to make sure no one was nearby. Sound didn’t travel as well as one might think in the woods, and as long as no one was close, Nick could make all the noise he wanted.“Rache,” Jenks hissed as I trotted off. “You playing scout?” he guessed, and I bobbed my head in an unwolflike manner. Nick came even with him, panting. He leaned against a dead tree, which promptly snapped with the sound of a gunshot.
While Jenks cursed him in thinly veiled disgust, I slunk through the brush, starting a sweep to the left when I couldn’t hear Nick stumbling about anymore. Somewhere ahead of us was our scuba gear. Maybe we could hide out on Round Island. Unless by some miracle Marshal was still there. I prayed he wasn’t, not wanting to have to make that choice.
Jenks and Nick’s forward progress was maybe a third of mine, and it wasn’t long before I had made a complete circuit and found nothing. I started a back-and-forth pattern before them, one ear on their progress, one on the forest ahead. Sooner than expected the green light filtering through the leaves brightened and I heard the sound of what seemed surf. But my heart almost stopped. I realized that the hiss of what I had thought surf was radio static.
“Their radio silence is continued,” a voice said, and I froze, one paw lifted as I slowly crouched, all of my muscles protesting. In the background were sporadic thumps echoing against water. I was sure this was where we came in and not the marina. And Brett had said they hadn’t found our boat, which meant they hadn’t found the scuba gear either. It must be the six boats we had heard about. Great. Just great. Out of the frying pan and into government control.
“They haven’t regained him,” a higher, masculine voice said through a radio. “The third air tank and gear says she’s probably headed right for you. Move the boats behind the curve of the shore and keep watch. With any luck, they’ll walk right in on you. If you retrieve him, don’t wait. Move out and radio from the water.”
“Aye, sir,” the Were said, and the radio retreated to a hiss.
Damn it, I thought. They had seen the tanks from the water and landed right where we had to leave. They knew everything the island Weres did, having listened in to their efforts to regain us. Someone else wanted Nick too. Just what the devil was this thing?
I tried not to pant, my head weaving as I attempted to spot them. I caught a glimpse of a green outback hat and a clean-shaven face. The noise behind them became loud with decisions being made, and I got scared. Slowly I backed away, carefully putting my feet down until I couldn’t hear voices anymore. Turning tail, I made a beeline to Jenks.
I found them together, Jenks looking marginally more accommodating as he held Nick’s elbow and helped him over downed sticks. Nick moved like an eighty-year-old man, head down and struggling for balance. Jenks heard me and brought them to a stop. “Trouble?” he mouthed. 
I nodded, and Nick groaned, looking desperate behind his beard.
“Shut up,” Jenks whispered, and I shifted my sore front paw nervously.
“Show me,” Jenks said, and leaving Nick to fend for himself, I led him to my spot. Jenks’s motions grew slower, almost seductive, as the brush grew thicker at the edge of the island, until he eased into a crouch beside a tree at the edge of the brush.
I settled in beside the large pixy, panting as I relished the cooler air coming off the water. “Marshal is gone,” Jenks said, his viewpoint higher than mine. “Good man. There’re four Weres with semiautomatics…. That might be a Were in fur in the shadow of that tree. In any case, our gear is gone. Probably on one of the boats.” His eyes squinted. “Tink’s panties, if I was myself, I could just flit over and see, or get them to shoot themselves, or stab them in the eye with a thorn. How do you do this, Rache, being the same size as everyone?”
My teeth parted and I gave him a canine grin.
Jenks adjusted his weight, eyes fixed on the peaceful beach littered with boats drawn up onto the rocky shore. Two men were standing guard while two more prepared to move the first boat out. “I have an idea,” he whispered. “You go over to that pile of break-wall rock, and when they’re looking at you, I’ll circle to come up behind them and whack them a good one.”
His eyes were glinting, and while I wasn’t keen on the looseness of the plan, I did like his confidence in it. And since we didn’t have much of a choice, I flicked my ears.
“Good,” Jenks whispered. “Get wet before they see you so you look black, not red.”
Giving me a smile that made him look like he was plotting to steal the teacher’s apple, not a boat from four Weres with semiautomatics, Jenks dropped back to tell Nick the plan. I headed out, skirting the brush line. My pulse quickened. I didn’t like being a decoy, but since I could probably cross the beach in four seconds, coming to Jenks’s aid wouldn’t be hard.