Monty saw the shock on Kowalski’s and Debany’s faces. They looked at each other, hesitated, then shook their heads.
“It felt like the fight went on for hours, but I don’t think the whole thing lasted more than a few minutes,” Kowalski said. “The Elementals got there first, but backup was right behind them, and you were right behind the backup.”
Burke slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “All right. Good. We’ll check out the Courtyard and then we’ll return.”
Monty walked out with Burke. Holding the door for Merri and Ruth, he looked at his men, then said quietly to Burke, “I know why you had to ask the question, but did they need to wonder about that today? The question came as a shock. They’ve had enough shocks.”
“Help arrived before they had a chance to wonder if it would arrive. I think that’s going to matter a lot in the days ahead. Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s find out if Simon Wolfgard also believes help arrived in a timely manner.”
CHAPTER 49
Watersday, Maius 26
The driver of the police van did his best to make careful turns and avoid quick stops, but just the motion of the van as they drove back to the Courtyard made Simon hurt. He hurt and hurt and hurt. He wanted to shift to Wolf and find a safe place to hide. Then he could whimper like a little puppy because he hurt and hurt and hurt.
When he was a juvenile Wolf living in the Northwest Region, he’d spent a year with other youngsters learning to work and hunt with a pack that wasn’t family—a first step to working in a Courtyard where you would have to work cooperatively with many forms of terra indigene. That’s when he’d met Joe and Jackson. Working with them had felt easy, natural, and that bond had made the three of them a collective leader of their pack.
But one juvenile Wolf didn’t fit in with the rest of them. He wanted to be leader, but there was something about him that made the other Wolves wary, and they wouldn’t follow him. He resented Simon, Joe, and Jackson, and that resentment grew until the day they were hunting a half-grown bison. The pack was hungry and motivated to bring down game. Instead of working with the rest of them, the Wolf turned the animal at the moment when Simon would be unable to get out of the way.
He’d been lucky that day. Instead of being trampled, he’d dodged the hooves and received nothing more than a glancing blow that had slowed him down and prevented him from hunting for a few days. But it had hurt, just like the betrayal had hurt.
The resentful Wolf disappeared that same day. The day Simon rejoined the pack for a hunt, they found that Wolf. He’d been trampled, his hip bones crushed. He also had deep claw marks that had torn up his sides. He’d tried to crawl, looked to be heading toward the area where the juveniles were settled. And then something had crushed his skull.
The adult Wolves had said the juveniles were on their own that year—within howling distance if they got into bad trouble, but essentially on their own and not under the watchful eyes of other Wolves.
Whether that was true or not didn’t much matter. When they’d searched for scents to figure out what kind of animal had killed the Wolf, they smelled nothing but other terra indigene. Not Wolves. Not anything they could name.
It had been the only time during that year that any of them had smelled those forms of terra indigene. All of them hoped they never caught those scents again.
Some of those scents had been in the air the day he and Henry drove past the River Road Community on their way to a meeting with Steve Ferryman, which meant some of those forms of terra indigene were now close enough to watch the humans and the Others who lived around Lakeside.
The lesson the juvenile Wolves had learned that day when they had found the body of the resentful Wolf was this: certain actions angered the earth natives who lived deep in the wild country, and they were the ones who should not be provoked.
Would today’s attack be considered provocation? He didn’t know. He just knew that, right now when he was hurt and unable to defend himself, he feared other kinds of terra indigene more than he feared humans.