by L. A. Banks
Etienne tugged on his lace shirtsleeves and offered Francois a droll smile. “Let us think this through and remain open-minded, mon frère. If the Shadows lose their minds due to a virus gone berserk and begin to eat their own kind, especially demon-infected Werewolves—”
“Which should pack quite an interesting wallop to their adrenaline-starved systems,” Francois said with a sly smile, finishing Etienne’s sentence.
“Oui, rather than competing with us and preying on humans,” Etienne observed with a casual flip of his wrist.
“Ah, I hate it when the Werewolves pollute virgin bloodstreams all over this planet,” Francois said with a sniff of disdain. “They are like huge vermin. Weasels.”
“But if the wolves are eating each other, perhaps they might be way too consumed to bother with pestering us?” Etienne released a coy chuckle at his own joke, drawing the lithe blonde closer to him.
Francois smiled with a grand sweeping bow, his fangs lengthening as he sent his amused gaze across the graveyard. “Anything, as always, in the name of détente, Your Grace. Then let the good times roll.”
Chapter 8
Vibrations were tense inside the vehicle as they drove, so thick that it felt like something oppressive and invisible was strangling him. Try as he might to diffuse Sasha’s worry, that was impossible as the sun set.
He couldn’t blame her. The best he could do as he watched the last of the light wink at him before it fell behind the mountains was to grip the steering wheel tighter and step on the gas. This was a dangerous time for the wolf—twilight, when the blue-gray shadows blanketed everything and the moon was waiting her turn to promenade the sky.
Then there was the other insistent problem that had gone dormant within him while the packs met . . . Sasha’s fantastic scent. Although he’d never say it to her unless he was looking for a black eye, it had everything to do with the big alphas’ acquiescence to the plan. Arguing with a gorgeous she-Shadow in heat was antithetical to male wolf DNA, but had everything to do with what probably made Barbara crazy enough to challenge Sasha on a moot point.
The wolf within him was winning, the darker it got outside. The air inside the vehicle cabin was stifling. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his brow. His T-shirt was wringing wet beneath his parka. Hunter glimpsed the thermostat. The heat wasn’t even on. He clenched his jaw for a moment, feeling his canines about to rip through his gums, and inhaled deeply through his nose, then hit the window button.
A blast of icy fresh air felt like a sharp slap across his face—one he desperately needed. It had never been this hard to control the wolf before the moon was up. Hundreds of insane thoughts tore at his mind like savage teeth and claws. The woods were calling him on either side of the vehicle. Only five more miles and they’d be at the abandoned lodge. He had to breathe through his mouth. Damn, she smelled fantastic. Wolf burn had started as a molten, stabbing pain in his gut that now radiated through his chest, lungs, limbs, and groin. A repressed howl was making him shudder. Tears of agony blurred the darkening stretch of road before them.
Unable to stand it any longer, he stomped on the brake, burning rubber in a skidding, careening stop, threw the gears into park in the middle of the road, and then jerked his attention to Sasha.
The barrel of a gun and a very level gaze met his anguished stare.
His hand hit the door handle. “You have to drive the rest of the way alone. . . . I’ll meet you at the lodge.”
“As what?” she said through her teeth. “You’ll meet me at the lodge as what, Hunter?”
Their gazes locked for a moment.
“I honestly don’t know.”
He was gone before her trigger finger could twitch, merging into the all-pervasive twilight. Her mind on autopilot with a survival imperative, she was in the driver’s seat, had slammed the door shut, and gunned the engine within the next blink, not even sure where she was going.
The only thing that was clear was she had to get out of the open ASAP. The lodge had rifles, pump shotguns, automatics, and the monster shells that went with them. There’d be a sat-phone there, shortwave radio, and probably enough crap lying around, like a nasty bleach and ammonia combo or alcohol and fertilizer, to do Mac-Gyver proud.
Any way she viewed it, out here, a huge predator playing chicken with an F-150 traveling at ninety-five miles per hour on a single-lane stretch of road flanked by trees wider than the truck—anybody could do the math. It wouldn’t be pretty for the non-seat-belt-wearing human being behind the wheel. But she wasn’t prepared to set down her gun and wasn’t in a position to turn loose the wheel in order to fasten a seat belt.
Call it a premonition or pure fucked-up fate, but a herd of spooked deer rushed the road like an impenetrable brown sea that might as well have been a concrete wall. Body after leaping, fleeing body became an instant horizontal barrier. When seconds mattered, there was only one option if she didn’t want to become road pizza—and that was to bail.
She landed on all fours, all wolf, tattered clothing floating down around her and boots dropping with a thud as the unmanned vehicle plowed into deer bodies, flipped twice nose over rear bumper, and finally stopped somersaulting with a shattering crash on its roof, then exploded. So much for seat belts.
But the panicked animals kept coming, jumping over flames, into flames, hurdling metal and glass strewn in the road, some breaking their legs on their fallen, dead sisters. Panicked, they didn’t even stay in formation but widened and narrowed the thick wave of bodies as confusion sent sections of the massive herd in different directions.
Common sense told her to push forward, try to jump over them, somehow head toward the lodge they’d blocked. Only, there was no way to get on the other side of them until the last one crossed. It was as though the entire forest was emptying itself out on one side. Sasha instantly took cover as rounds began to go off inside the crushed vehicle.
Precious seconds passed, and then she saw her opening. Unfortunately, so did the thing that had spooked the herds.
It came out of the woods on massive hind legs standing ten feet upright, a bloodied, twelve-point buck’s head in one humanlike fist with claws. An outrageously huge, bald, human male erection bounced and glistened as the thing inhaled and exhaled. Sasha briefly closed her eyes. Yeah, she was gonna have to kill him. But to do that, she had to get to the ammo at the lodge. Right now, even in wolf form, she was no match for what he’d turned into. She kept her gaze steady and moved only as he moved, staying downwind from him.
Thick, yellowing saliva leaked from between distended, gnarled canines, and the beast’s broad, barrel chest was only partially covered by a ragged coat of matted fur. She could still see skin and nipples beneath the sparse hair on its chest, and its thick, tree-trunk-like limbs were sculpted with visible ropes of endless muscles. A great howl set her teeth on edge as she hid in the shadows, and then cringed as a pair of yellow glowing eyes swept the terrain.
Seeming agitated by her concealed presence, the beast flung away the buck head, dropped to all fours, sniffed low on the ground, and then stood again, howling with rage. It rushed the overturned vehicle and, seeing that she wasn’t in it, roared with fury as it picked the truck up by the axle, lifting it overhead, and flung it against a line of trees so hard that two of them snapped from the force, not the weight. If it hadn’t been winter, with enough snow to stop and absorb the heat, a national treasure would have been set ablaze. It then grabbed the remaining sections of the wreck, flinging them in a monstrous tantrum that felled trees from whirring car doors and broke limbs from flying bumpers.
Glass made the road glisten as though coated with a layer of newly formed ice. A bit of fabric suddenly drew the beast’s attention. Sasha remained as still as stone as the huge predator tracking her lowered its snout to the crotch of her jeans, inhaled, moaned, and then went into another furious tirade, sending shards of glass into the snow-covered foliage on either side of the road.
Fallen deer bodies took the brunt
of the abuse as the irrational beast spent his frustration on them. Each carcass got dismembered as it tore them limb from limb, gutted them, and then finally hurled them away. It was solely an act of violence; the beast ate nothing but had destroyed everything in its wake. She was just glad that its temper tantrum had cleared the road of most of the hazardous debris so that hopefully no lone trucker or family of tourists would collide with it and die.
While the predator’s gaze continued to sweep the terrain, his nose snuffling the air as though unconvinced no one else was near, Sasha didn’t move a muscle. She’d hunted this particular demon before and knew enough to know that there were only two effective ways to come out of demon-infected Werewolf hunts alive—blindside it in a human form to attack it with powerful ammo, or go after it in a wolf pack and be prepared to get good and bloody for the trouble.
Since neither dicey option was available, she stayed in a low, hidden crouch among the shadows during the entire twenty-minute ordeal. Then the beast looked straight at her and began moving in a blur like a locomotive, heading right for her. Reaction time vaporized. She didn’t even have time to roll out of the way, much less meet the brute in a jaw-locking hold that would have probably ended badly with her face ripped off. Two seconds from direct impact, he leaped and sailed over her shadow-hidden frame and then disappeared into a shadow of his own.
She was out. Sasha ran the shadows as though the devil himself was on her trail. Seconds mattered, minutes were a gift. Every insistent thud of her heart meant she’d cheated death yet again. But the grim scene before her that brought her skidding to a halt meant someone else hadn’t.
A huge flatbed timber hauler was jackknifed off the road. Long skid marks showed where the trucker had tried to avoid something. He’d been traveling in the opposite direction as she’d been, headed east, while she’d been headed west. Sasha sniffed the air that was still laden with diesel fuel, brake fluid, battery acid, smoke, and blood. She needed to know how soon before or after her collision with the brute this accident and slaughter had happened.
The trucker’s load of logs told the story of something incredibly strong converting trees into fireplace tinder. One huge log had been horizontally rammed through the driver’s-side window and door. The CB radio had been ripped out of the cab and pitched twenty-five yards away, left hanging by cables from the trees. Sasha glimpsed what had been a section of a red plaid lumberjack shirt and coat, knowing there was no use in looking for a survivor. The gore on the shirt was testimony enough.
Same deal with the ranger’s squad car. The front window was smashed in and the cruiser’s metal roof peeled back with wide claw marks dug deeply in it. From the looks of things, she could only imagine that the beast had probably landed right on the hood as the poor man was driving, and that was when the ranger had veered off the road and hit a tree. Fifty yards out she saw his arm still clutching his gun with his sheepskin jacket and uniform sleeve still covering it.
Judging from the radio’s trajectory, part of the truck driver might have also followed it in the air. No doubt the trucker’s panicked call is what lured the ranger to the site. Helicopters would be on the scene in the morning and probably crawling all over the lodge, since they’d find a third supremely wrecked vehicle, hers.
If she lived through the night, she’d be gone by dawn. All she’d need would be to have some rightfully panicked Oakies haul her ass in for possible vehicular homicide and fingerprint her, and then run her prints. Sasha kept moving, warily selecting shadows to enter, not sure which ones were safe, and then she froze.
Her and Hunter’s amulets had been in her jeans pockets. Her ripped jeans and abandoned clothes and boots were several miles back in the direction of sure danger. Whatever was looking for her had obviously cut a swath from the lodge back to her, and it was clearly very pissed off that she was somewhere naked, in heat, and unavailable.
It took a moment for her to force her mind to accept it—Hunter had fled the vehicle, headed at top Shadow Wolf speed toward the lodge. He was laboring not to transition. Turned on, turned out, and straight flipping. If the beast within finally emerged, he would have doubled back for her to head her off at the pass. Whatever got between them would have become an instant casualty. He was too far gone, had actually killed two innocent humans. There was no wait-and-see, fall-back position left.
Tears stung Sasha’s eyes as she turned away from the carnage and headed back toward the wreck farther up the road. A little piece of silver and amber was all she had left of him . . . and until she got to an automatic with real silver shells, that was unfortunately also the only weapon she had.
He stared at Crow Shadow’s truck through wary wolf eyes. What the hell was Crow Shadow doing here, when he was supposed to be shepherding the two familiars to a pack chopper station? Hunter looked at the hastily parked truck in the lodge entrance that still had the door slightly ajar and the motor running. Skid marks said the driver had been in a hurry. Where was Sasha’s truck? She should have been here by now.
Breathless and senses keened she arrived at the lodge and allowed her gaze to tear across the main courtyard entrance. Crow Shadow’s truck was parked at a haphazard angle, motor still running, with blood on the seats, the steering wheel, the dashboard, and the ground. Nausea roiled within her so strong that she almost dry heaved. How could he attack and eat his own pack brother? Horror permeated every cell in her: Woods, Fisher.
Hunter’s scent was unmistakably thick in the air—along with the undeniable pungent blend of infected Werewolf trail. What if her squad hadn’t gotten out by chopper?
Sasha narrowed her gaze as she slipped into shadows along the side of the building, hunkering down as she crept past the pine veranda. The front door was open. Understatement; it was hanging off its hinges. Whatever was looking for her was most likely still inside. Unfortunately, that’s where the weapons she needed were, too. Plus, Hunter knew this lodge; this was his home court advantage. No doubt he knew every nook and cranny of the building, where the pack would have stashed ammo, and he’d be waiting laying for her to stumble foolishly into an ambush. Same dealio with the demon doors. He’d been the one to show her how to track a predator to and through them. Now that he was a full-blown demon-infected lycanthrope, he could probably pass in and out of them at will, no ward needed.
Scouring the terrain for anything she could use, her line of vision went back to the truck. To her mind, it was a bomb on four wheels. All she needed was something to detonate the fuel tank as she sent it crashing into the lodge. After that, was anybody’s guess. But if Crow Shadow had been dragged from the vehicle as quickly as he obviously had, then chances were there was something left in his truck to work with. The entire pack traveled with weapons, ammo. Sasha sniffed the air; there was no residue in it from unspent rounds.
Now the only problem was transitioning to the weaker human body she needed in order to make use of the dexterity of hands.
It only took an instant for her lithe female form to step out of the shadows and begin ransacking the truck. To her horror the glove compartment, flatbed, even under the seat were vacant. Not even a tire iron remained.
Shit. Okay, new plan. Send the truck crashing into the front as a diversion to draw the beast outside, enter the building from behind, use walls and furniture to block its counterattack until blinding chemicals like bleach or ammonia could be located, and then get the hell out, turn, and fire.
Admittedly, it was a fool’s errand and a really bad plan. However, given the circumstances of two to three slaughtered men, her being naked in freezing temps in the wilderness, and not a damned weapon on her that would work, it was the best shot she had.
Sasha slid into the truck’s driver’s seat, shuddering from the contact of ice-cold leather against her skin. In a strange way, she now wished she’d claimed the ranger’s gun from his severed arm—just for the sake of being able to blow the gas tank from afar—not that the regular bullets would have done anything to the creature. Even the p
ump shotgun or rifle she was sure the ranger had in his trunk would be useless against a raging Werewolf.
She quickly jumped back out of the truck feeling claustrophobic and assumed her wolf form. It was beyond obvious now that to fortify herself against this predator, she had to go back to the second crash site, transform to human, get whatever weapons and blankets she could scavenge from the ranger’s cruiser, and run naked, concealed by the shadows, back to set up a perimeter outside the lodge to kill the beast. There’d be no way to carry all the supplies while in wolf form. It was always a decision between using the power-body of the wolf for an attack or speed, versus the agility of the human form.
The shadows, however, had betrayed her. Preoccupied, her mind racing, she’d slipped into a sliver of darkness that contained a familiar scent and a low, warning growl.
Lunging toward the sound, blind, she made her objective a swift first strike. A whoosh of air passed over her, causing enough of a back draft to tell her that what had avoided her had been huge. Her worst fear realized, it smelled like Hunter.
Time didn’t permit her to look back. Seconds granted her a head start. Propelled forward by a raging will to live, Sasha bolted toward the second crash site, her focus laser. Danger was on her heels; she couldn’t hear it but knew it had to be close. Flash-fight hormone made the quick transformation back into human form so painful she cried out. An echoing howl reverberated through the glen, but it told her he wasn’t as close to her as she’d thought. She didn’t have two seconds to question why not. It was a gift. Period.
A frozen, blood-coated gun was in her hand, and she didn’t have time to be squeamish about breaking dead fingers to get it in her grip. A single shot opened the trunk. A pump shotgun, a blanket, a tire iron, a bright yellow rain poncho, flashlight for the battery—she scavenged whatever she could find like a pack rat, rolled everything but the tire iron and shotgun in the blanket, and leaped into a shadow to disappear.