“You gave your allegiance to me!” Walter exclaimed.
“I said I’d follow you when you said you had it!” the young Were said, his hands making fists and his jewelry chiming. His wife was a head taller than he was, but it didn’t make him look any less threatening. “You don’t. Sparagmos does, and she’s claimed him. Dissolve my blood oath. I’ll follow a red wolf as soon as a white one. Either way, I’m not following you.”“You lowlife cur!” Walter snarled, red-faced, his white hair standing out starkly. “I have Sparagmos, and I’ll have the statue, and I’ll have your head as an ashtray!”
The crowd was splitting. I could see it. I could smell it. Old patterns were emerging, both comfortable and familiar. The hair on the back of my neck pricked, and with a small effort I pulled my second sight into focus. My heart quickened. A pearly white now rimmed the street Weres, and an earthy red covered the ones in suits. It had broken that fast.
The entire clearing had shifted. The street Weres were dropping back into the woods. I could smell the whiff of Brimstone. If they went wolf, nothing would contain them.
“Sir,” a grief-stricken Were in fatigues interrupted, and I turned to the six men carrying Pam, their slow steps saying it was too late.
“Pam!” Walter exclaimed, grief raw in his voice. The Weres set her gently down, and the man fell to kneel beside her, savagely driving them away before his hands dove into her fur, pulling her up into him. “No,” he said in disbelief, his wife’s body close to him.
Aretha’s pack had torn open Pam’s throat, and her blood clotted her black fur and stained his chest. His head going back and forth, the powerful man struggled to find the pieces of his world, scattered like the dead leaves shifting between us.
“No!” Walter shouted, his head coming up and his eyes finding me. “I will not accept this. That witch wolf is not my alpha, and I will not give Sparagmos to her. Kill her!”
Gun safeties clicked off. Holy shit! Panicking, I leapt for the slice of parking lot I could see. An instant and I was through. A screamed curse spurred me on. Nails digging, I reached the woods. My feet slipped on leaves and weak-stemmed plants and I almost went down.
Struggling for balance, I kept driving forward. I listened for the sound of shots, but I was away—for the time being. They had Hummers and cell phones. Against that I had a six-foot pixy and a three-minute head start, tops. Pam was dead. This wasn’t my fault!
Behind me came the distinctive calls of a mob organizing. They were all people right now, but that was going to change. I had known the peace wouldn’t last. Weres were Weres. They never bonded together. They couldn’t. It went against everything they were made of.
Thank God for that, I thought as I tracked the scent of snapped twigs, following Jenks. The pixy could find Nick by smell if nothing else. We could still get off this damned island. Maybe the breakup of the round would buy us a few minutes more.
Nick, I thought, my heart racing from more than my escape. So it wasn’t the way we planned it. So sue me.
Fifteen
M y pace wasn’t smooth in any sense of the word, loping through the warming forest, stumbling every time my front foot came down too hard. There were booms in the distance that my wolf hearing couldn’t identify, but nothing close. My back hurt in time with my steps, and my front paw was throbbing. The wind cut a sharp pain across my ear where it was laid open. I went as fast as I could, my nose a good four inches above the ground as I tracked the sapling-snapped scent of Jenks.
I was on borrowed time. The island was big, but not that big, and grief would likely make their feet faster, not slower. Eventually someone would catch up to me. If nothing else, Jenks would run into resistance when he found Nick. They had radios.
Faster, I thought, promptly tripping. Pain iced through me and I lunged to catch myself before my face plowed into the ground. My bruised foot gave way, and cursing myself, I held my head high and took the fall, biting my tongue as I came to a sliding halt in the dirt. I was tired of being a wolf. Nothing looked right, and if I couldn’t run, there was little joy. But I couldn’t say my trigger word and switch back until I reached the mainland and tapped a line.
Besides, I thought, getting up and shaking myself, I’d be naked.
I sneezed the dirt and leaf mold out of my nose, whining when my entire body spasmed in pain. The sharp crack of clean wood on metal rang out. My head came up and my breath heaved. A man shouted, “Just shoot him!” and there were three pops in quick succession.
Jenks! Forgetting my hurts, I jerked into a run.
The light brightened around me as the forest thinned. Shockingly fast, I came out into what looked like an old state park with logs bolted into the ground to show parking spots. A Jeep was parked in the shade of a cement-block building painted brown, and near the entrance I saw Jenks attacking two men with a length of wood still sporting leaves.
I bolted forward. Like a dancer, Jenks swung the stick in a wide arc, the wood hitting one man on the ear. Not watching him fall away in pain, Jenks spun, jamming the splintered butt into the solar plexus of the second man. With a silent ferocity, he spun to the first, bringing the stick down with both hands against the back of his neck. The man fell without protest.
Jenks shouted, an exuberant cry of success, as he spun the stick above his head in a wild spiral, slamming it first against the back of a knee, then the skull of the second man. I came to a four-posted halt, shocked. He had downed both of them in six seconds.
“Rache!” he cried cheerfully, tossing his blond curls out of his eyes to show his He-Man bandage. His cheeks were red and his eyes were glinting. “I take it we’re going to plan B? He’s inside. I can smell crap for brains from here.”
Heart pounding, I vaulted over the downed Were in fatigues blocking the door, my nose taking in the stale coffee in the tiny kitchen, the forty-year-old mold in the bathroom, and the pine air freshener fighting the stale musk in the tiny living room festooned with weapons and a two-way radio frantically demanding that someone pick up. My muscles tensed at the scent of blood under the masking odor of chlorine. Nails clacking on white tile, I padded through the narrow hallway, searching.
There was a closed door at the end of a dark hallway, and I waited impatiently for Jenks. He reached over me, pushing it open with a squeak. It was dark, the dim light coming from a dust-caked high window of wire-embedded glass. The air stank of urine. There was a rickety table cluttered with metal and pans of liquid. Nick was gone, and my hope crashed to nothing.
“Oh my God,” Jenks breathed, his breath catching.
I followed his eyes to a dark corner. “Nick,” I whispered. It came out in a whine.
He had moved at the sound of Jenks’s voice, his head lolling up, his eyes open but unseeing from under his long bangs. They had tied him against the wall in a crucifix position in a cruel mockery of suffering and grace. His clothes had burned patches, singed hair and red skin showing past them. Black crusts of blood marked him. His cracked and bleeding lips moved, but nothing came out. “I will not…” he whispered. “You can’t…I will…keep it.”Jenks pushed past me, cautiously touching a knife to judge the silver content before picking it up. I was stuck in the threshold, not believing it. They had tortured him. They had hurt him for that damned statue. What in hell was it? Why didn’t he just give it to them? It couldn’t be money. Nick was a thief, but he loved life more. I think.
“You can’t do anything here, Rache,” Jenks said, his voice catching as he started to saw at Nick’s bonds. “Go keep an eye on the front. I’ll get him down.”
I jerked when Nick began shouting, clearly thinking they were at him again, calling my name over and over.
“Knock it off, crap for brains!” Jenks yelled. “I’m trying to help you!”
“My fault,” Nick moaned, collapsing to lean forward against his bonds. “He took her. He should have taken me. I killed her. Ray-ray, I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Shaken, I backed out of the room. They hadn’t told him I was alive. Sickened, I turned tail and bolted, nails sliding on the tile. I tripped on the man at the door, rolling into the yard. The sun struck me, jolting my horror into the beginnings of anger. Nothing was worth this.
The blue jays were screaming in the distance, and the sound of an engine grew closer.
“Jenks!” I yipped.
“I hear them!” he shouted back at me.
Pulse racing, I looked at the men sprawled in the packed dirt. Grabbing the shoulder of the nearest, I dragged him into the building, not caring if I broke the skin or not. He might have been dead for all I cared. I jerked him halfway down the hallway in short splurges of motion, left him and went back for the second. Jenks was coming out the door as I got him past the sill and inside. I dropped him, my back hurting and my jaws aching.
“Good idea,” Jenks said, Nick’s arm draped over his neck and shoulder.
Nick hung against Jenks, clearly unable to support his own weight. His head was down and his feet moved sluggishly. His breath came in pained gasps. There were red pressure marks about his wrists, and it didn’t look like he could move his legs yet. When he brought his head up, his eyes were cloudy with a smear of gel. Arm moving slowly, he tried to wipe them, blinking profusely. A dry cough shook him. Clenching his arm about his lower chest, he held his breath to try to stop.