by MJ Compton
She didn’t argue with him. They had more immediate issues looming. Besides, according to Stoker, their forever wasn’t going away.
She pulled on the gray sweatsuit Stoker had bought for her. The soft fleece was comfortable and protected her from the chill clinging to the air, while the color blended with the pre-dawn light.
Stoker nudged her along, not speaking, but acting as if he’d already shifted from man to his alternate form.
Once everyone was settled on the bus, Restin pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Ethan and Luke did reconnaissance yesterday afternoon,” he explained. “And they placed a few speakers in strategic spots. Apparently the mountain is riddled with abandoned mineshafts. Parker is going to handle the remote playback of Lucy’s loop from the bus. This map shows the best vantage points for the rest of us. Stoker, you’ll be here.”
He jabbed the crudely drawn map with his long finger as he assigned a position to each member of the team. “Lucy, you’ll stay on the bus with Dakota and Parker.”
“Who’s Dakota?” she asked at the same time Stoker growled his disagreement.
“The driver,” Restin replied, his focus not on her, but on Stoker. “You’ll be safest on the bus.”
“She goes with me,” Stoker said.
Restin shook his head. “I agreed to let her come with us, but I never said she could participate. That’s why we recorded her voice. I don’t want to chance anyone inside the compound seeing her. She can’t shift, Stoker. I won’t risk her.”
Stunned, Lucy settled back in her seat.
Even Stoker seemed surprised by Restin’s response.
“The safety of mate and offspring above all,” Restin repeated Stoker’s own words.
Lucy squeezed Stoker’s fingers, knowing who would win this round. “It’s okay. I’d rather stay on the bus.”
Something flared in his coffee-colored eyes. A muscle in his jaw throbbed, but he nodded.
One by one, the band members disappeared into the small lavatory at the rear of the vehicle and emerged as wolves. Stoker explained changing so soon after the new moon required more effort than any other time. Residual energy from their change heated the bus. Stoker, the last to morph, except for Restin, held her hand until it was his turn, as if he could hear the flutter of her pulse as she tried not to fear being surrounded by wild animals.
The moment was surreal. She appreciated their concern for her modesty by using the cramped bathroom in which to strip and change, but her all-too-human survival instinct struggled.
She knew their identities; those inside New Sinai would not. She thought of the weapons and the endless military-style drilling Randy forced on his followers. She wouldn’t stand a chance against his army, whereas the wolves might.
Restin instructed the driver to stop the bus some distance from New Sinai, claiming the sound of a vehicle straining on the twisting road would carry in the stillness of the morning. The spot was so far from the compound, anything could happen between the start of the campaign and the agents’ retreat.
Waco, Lucy thought, and swallowed her panic.
Stoker nudged her knee with his nose, as if he scented her fear. She tried to focus on something else, something that would calm her and reassure him. Something that wouldn’t distract him from what he had to do.
She wanted him safe. Her fingers scratched behind his ears, as if to comfort him, when she was the one who needed solace. He growled, the sound springing deep from his massive chest. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his ruff. He smelled clean, like the wind on the mountain.
Restin emerged from the lavatory and snapped, as if impatient with her need to hold Stoker.
Reluctantly, she released him. “Be careful,” she whispered.
Single file, the wolves silently padded down the steps and off the bus.
Chapter 14
Lucy sat on the bus steps in the open doorway. Her watch said the operatives had been gone half an hour, but it felt like a lifetime. The only sound was the wind ruffling the leaves. She closed her eyes and tried to hear past the silence.
“Here goes nothin’,” Parker said, and punched a button on an electronic device resting in the palm of his hand.
All she heard was the thud of her own heart.
“There,” Dakota said a moment later.
Sound might carry in the wilderness, but a couple of miles was beyond her mere mortal ears.
Then she heard the howls. Low and mournful, the chorus raised every hair on her body as it echoed, bounced, and tumbled down the mountain.
The song had to terrify those inside the stockade.
Randy and his soldiers didn’t come to mind, but rather the faces of the women with whom she’d worked in the cookhouse; her sister; the children. The howling surely penetrated their already impoverished dreams. Even she, who knew the truth behind the wolf-born serenade, felt a foreboding chill.
The reverberation of a single gunshot punctuated the howls.
She gasped, and Dakota started the bus.
She gnawed her lip then a knuckle until the first wolf returned. Not Stoker. She didn’t recognize the others in their full-moon regalia, but she’d know her husband anywhere.
“A warning shot,” Ethan explained a moment later, after emerging from the lav in his uniform of gray sweats.
Stoker arrived next, and Lucy launched herself at him.
The others reappeared, singly and in pairs, until the seven were safely ensconced on the bus.
Dakota eased the vehicle onto the road and began the descent to town.
“I’d say step one was successful.” Restin almost smiled.
“If you enjoy scaring babies,” Stoker snapped. He leaned back in his seat as the bus bumped down the road.
The crying of the children seared his soul. The women’s screams had bothered him, but terrifying the young went against everything he and the others believed sacred. The turn the operation had taken sickened him.
“We mean no harm to them,” Restin said.
“Try telling that to a scared kid,” Stoker suggested.
Restin narrowed his eyes.
Stoker glared back.
Lucy appeared on the verge of tears; looked guilty that her impromptu suggestion had been so thoroughly utilized. And she hadn’t even heard the wailing of the babies.
He reached for her hand and once more reminded himself that Restin’s decisions weren’t her responsibility, even when they were based on her ideas.
“You’re too tender-hearted,” Restin said. “A marshmallow.”
Stoker hated that name and added the slur to the list of items Restin was going to regret once they returned to Loup Garou.
“When are you going back to New Sinai?”
Stoker started. He’d forgotten he was supposed to continue badgering Butler to see Lucy. He didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to witness fear in the children, but he couldn’t blow the band’s cover by not following through.
“Hank, go with him,” Restin said. “I want you to look for more mineshafts. State records indicate this area is honeycombed with abandoned mines, and my gut tells me Butler didn’t choose his mountain at random. I want a way into New Sinai.”
“Lucy is really sick,” Michelle said, raking the dry ground inside the compound with her bare toes. Two armed guards flanked her, and she wouldn’t meet Stoker’s gaze.
A pounding tattoo punctuated her words.
He had to wing it. “Then I need to get her to an emergency room. This isn’t like her.”
“It’s just a stomach virus,” Michelle lied. “She’s miserable, and doesn’t want you to see her so sick.”
Stoker tried to step inside the stockade, but found two rifles aimed at his chest, bores staring like soulless eyes. The stenc
h of death–Danby’s death–lingered.
Michelle was paler than she’d been the previous day. Dark circles accented the hollows of her eye sockets, and a livid bruise marred one cheek. Her hair hung in dirty, limp hanks around her too-thin face. Only her belly, distended by advanced pregnancy, was round. Everything else was angular and sharp.
“Let me talk to your husband,” Stoker snapped. “This is man business.”
“He’s busy,” Stoker’s favorite guard growled.
“So am I.” Stoker took another step, daring the soldiers to stop him. “I want my wife, and I don’t have time to keep traipsing up this mountain.”
Michelle held up her hand. “Listen,” she said in a voice so soft he barely heard her, especially above the hammering. Her gaze slid to Hank, then quickly back to him–or rather, his left ear, because she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Maybe you should let Lucy recuperate for a few days. It only agitates her when you show up.”
Stoker shook his head.
“Please don’t make things more difficult.” Her whisper sounded choked. “Randy has a problem right now. Believe me, you don’t want to make him angry.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t make me angry,” Stoker replied.
Michelle jerked upright. Her wary gaze finally met his. “You’re a piano player. You wouldn’t stand a chance against the General.”
There it was again. The belittlement of who and what he was. He’d taken enough insults for one day. A lifetime. “Maybe you and the General don’t want to know just how mean a ticked-off country band can get. We don’t play behind chicken wire for nothing, you know.”
“Protection,” she sneered. “The cage protects you.”
“Send for the General, and I’ll prove to you, him, and everyone else inside this fence how very wrong you are.” He drew himself up proudly. “I don’t have to live behind walls of logs and men with guns. Or,” he added, “hide behind a woman’s skirt.”
“You think that’s what Randy is doing? Hiding behind me?” She sounded incredulous.
“Or Lucy,” he taunted.
“Hiding behind Lucy?” Her laugh was bitter and abrupt. “Maybe you’re right. Good day.” Michelle turned her back and strode away, her spine stiff, head arrogantly high.
Stoker glimpsed a bit of Lucy in the shape of her sister’s jutting chin.
As he turned to leave, a woman darted toward the gate. Two thin, dirt-encrusted children followed her.
He paused. He was at New Sinai on reconnaissance as much as to protect the band’s cover.
The woman grabbed Michelle’s arm. “Help me.” Her plea was loud, her tone hysterical. “I’m taking my kids and leaving. I need you to get me past the guards.”
“You can’t leave.” Michelle’s soft voice carried, even above the steady background hammering “You’re safe here.”
No one out and no one in, Stoker remembered Restin reading the human Bible aloud. Lucy had been right. That description of Jericho fit New Sinai completely.
The woman shook her head, her stringy hair flying every which way. The girl child clutched her mother’s skirt. “I heard God this morning, warning us.”
“Wolves,” Michelle corrected, but the woman clearly wasn’t buying into platitudes. “The General is taking precautions. Don’t you hear the men building observation platforms?”
That explained the pounding.
Stoker shift his gaze to see what Hank thought of that tidbit, but Hank was no where to be seen.
“No,” the woman half-sobbed. “Before the wolves began howling. I heard her. God.”
“Her?” Michelle froze.
“That’s blasphemy,” a guard said. “If you heard anything, it was Satan.”
The minion of evil would have to die for slandering Lucy.
The woman pulled her children close, warily eyeing the guard. “I know what I heard.”
“Did you tell the General?” Michelle asked.
“I can’t get near him. He’s too busy overseeing construction of observation platforms to bother with the cook.”
“We all heard the wolves,” Michelle said.
“Not the wolves,” the woman insisted. “Before that. Like the wind.”
Michelle’s expression grew troubled. And, Stoker thought, frightened.
“This place is doomed,” the woman whispered. “I know my Bible. We’re all going to die if we stay here.”
“Please, Mattie, you have to trust the General.”
Contempt twisted the woman’s features. “My trust is in the Lord, not Randy Butler, and the Lord sent us a sign.”
“You hush your mouth, woman,” the guard said. “Unless you want a beating.”
“You know the General is a prophet of God,” Michelle said.
“I know the General is interested only in his own profit.” The woman—Mattie—hawked and spat on the ground then turned on the guard. “You gave him all our worldly goods, and now our kids are in rags and cry themselves to sleep every night because their bellies are empty. What kind of father are you?”
“But you know what happens when people leave!” Michelle sounded frantic. “Look at Bill Danby and my sister. They went into town one night, and–”
“And your so-called prophet shot Bill and threw your sister to the wolves!” Mattie shrieked.
Stoker pounced on the women’s words. “What do you mean he threw Lucy to the wolves?”
“It’s just an expression,” Michelle stammered.
“I’m not staying until it’s me or my kids turn to be sacrificed for Randy Butler’s glory!”
“I’m always willing to listen to good advice,” Butler said, stepping immediately behind Mattie, who hadn’t seen him coming. As usual, he was surround by armed guards.
Mattie flinched, and her face went as pale as Michelle’s. Both of Mattie’s children scurried behind her, hiding in the folds of her skirt.
Butler stared at her, and Stoker felt bad for the woman. “What did the woman mean when she said you threw Lucy to the wolves?” he asked, throwing in a snarl for effect.
“Michelle, return to our cabin,” Butler said, ignoring Stoker. His gaze never left the other woman.
Michelle bowed her head and scurried off. It was hard to believe such subservience in anyone related to Lucy.
“Where is my wife?” Stoker demanded. What he really wanted to do was seize Mattie’s children and run. Except even as fast as he was, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet, and he couldn’t save anyone if he was dead. Butler’s method of dealing with Danby had instilled a healthy sense of caution in Stoker.
“I’m not leaving until I speak with Lucy.”
“I told you before,” Butler said, finally acknowledging Stoker’s presence. “You have no wife.” He nodded at the guards, who immediately began swinging the gate shut.
“Mattie,” Stoker heard Butler say. “Let’s discuss your children.”
Chapter 15
Restin was waiting for them when they pulled up to the motel, but no one spoke until they'd arranged themselves in Stoker’s room. Except Restin. He paced.
“You were right,” Hank said. “Butler built his kingdom over a tunnel. It ends in the bottom of the gorge. My guess is that it’s his private escape route. There may be more shafts, but I found just the one. Butler is the only one who uses it.”
“How do you know he's the only one?” Restin asked, as he started a new path in the already worn carpet.
Hank narrowed his eyes. “I may be old and not have Stoker’s nose, but I can still follow a trail.”
Stoker was through being patient. Besides, the room wasn’t big enough to indulge his own need to move, not while Restin was on the prowl. “Things are getting worse up there. I say we use the tunnel to rescue Michelle and get th
e kids out.” The plan made perfect sense to him. They could save the babies and scare the scat out of the adults at the same time.
“Kids?” Restin paused mid-circuit. “What kids?”
“All of ‘em,” Stoker said. “I can’t stand seeing them so scared. And you heard them crying this morning. They don’t deserve to suffer because they have stupid parents.”