He would find out what it was soon enough, he imagined.
Wrath was notoriously demanding, but never unreasonable.
In the meantime, he was going to drown his sorrow in the only kind of six-pack that appealed—something twentyish, six-foot-ish, athletic….
And preferably dark haired. Or blond.
SIXTEEN
“Someone’s already been by here.”
As Rhage spoke, Qhuinn got out his penlight and shone the discreet beam down onto the ground. Sure enough, the prints through the snow were fresh, not airbrushed with loose flakes…and they went directly out into the clearing in the forest. Clicking the light off, he focused on the hunting cabin up ahead that seemed to be abandoned to the cold weather: no stream of smoke curling out of its stone chimney, no glow of illumination—and most important, no scents of anything.
The five of them closed in, circling the clearing and sidling up with a wide-angle approach. When there was no defensive reaction from anything, they all mounted the shallow porch and scoped out the interior through the single-paned windows.
“Nada,” Rhage muttered as he went to the door.
A quick test of the handle—and it was locked.
With a thrust, the Brother slammed his massive shoulder into the panels and set the thing flying, fragments of the locking mechanism falling in a scatter along with splinters of wood.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” Hollywood shouted as he marched inside.
Qhuinn and John followed protocol and stayed on the porch as Blay and Z filed in and searched.
The woods were quiet around them, but his keen eyes traced those footprints…which, after a sojourn to the cabin, headed off in a northwesterly direction.
Damn well suggested someone was out here with them, searching the property at the same time.
Human? Lesser?
He was thinking the latter, given all the shit in that hangar—and the fact that this whole property was remote, and relatively secure because of that.
Although they were gonna want to bring Stanley Steemer into that building for a cleanup first.
Blay’s voice drifted out the open door. “I got something.”
It took all of Qhuinn’s training not to break covenant with surveying the landscape and turn to look inside—and not because he particularly cared about whatever had been found. Throughout their searching, he’d been constantly checking on Blay, measuring to see if that mood had changed.
If anything, it had only gotten worse.
Soft voices went back and forth in the cabin, and then the three of them emerged.
“We found a lockbox,” Rhage announced as he unzipped his jacket and slid the long, thin metal container in against his chest. “We’ll open it later. Let’s find the owner of those boots, boys.”
Dematerializing at fifty- to sixty-foot clips, they fanned out through the trees, tracking the prints in the snow, following silently.
They came across the lesser about a half mile later.
The lone slayer was marching through the snow-covered forest at a clip that only a human with Olympic training could have sustained for more than a couple hundred yards. Clothes were dark, a pack was on the back, and the fact that he was navigating by sight alone was another clue that it was the enemy: Most Homo sapiens would not have been able to move that fast in such little light without battery-powered illumination.
Using hand signals, Rhage orientated the group into a reverse triangle formation that cupped around the lesser’s trail. Continuing to advance along with him, they observed for about a football field’s length and then, all at once, they closed in, surrounded the slayer, and blocked him at contrasting compass points with gun muzzles.
The lesser stopped moving.
He was a newer recruit, his dark hair and olive coloring suggesting that he was of Mexican or perhaps Italian descent, and he got points for showing no fear. Even though he was looking at a hurting, he merely calmly glanced over his shoulder, as if to confirm that he had in fact been ambushed.
“How you doing?” Rhage drawled.
The lesser didn’t bother to answer, which was in contrast to what they had been seeing lately. Unlike the others, this was no young punk to talk smack and flash his gat. Calm, calculating…controlled, he was the kind of enemy that improved your job performance.
Not exactly a bad thing…
And sure enough, his hand disappeared into his coat.
“Don’t be stupid, my man,” Qhuinn barked, prepared to put a bullet in the bastard at a moment’s notice.
The lesser didn’t stop moving.
Fine.
He pulled his fucking trigger and dropped the bitch.
The instant the lesser hit the snow, Blay froze with his guns in place. The others did the same.
In the silent seconds that passed, they kept eyes locked on the downed slayer. No movement. No response from the periphery. Qhuinn had incapacitated the thing, and it appeared to have been working alone.