And Jericho Burned: Toke Lobo & The Pack

by MJ Compton

  If not for her bad ideas, none of them would be in the situation they were in, not even the victims in New Sinai. No one would have built a fire if wolves weren’t trying to howl down the walls.

  “She can’t do it,” Hank said. “She’ll never make it through the tunnel.”

  Did they all view her as weak and useless?

  “I can do it,” Lucy said, but her voice cracked.

  Hank scowled. “That’s a really bad idea.”

  “Do you have a better one?” Lucy asked, and felt a little better. Maybe her ideas were bad, but at least she was still thinking. She wondered if any of these guys had had an original thought in their lives.

  “Where does the shaft end?” Restin asked.

  “Behind the podium in the meeting hall,” Hank said. “There’s a dais. A ladder slides from the bottom of the platform.”

  “The Tabernacle?” Lucy asked. Oh, didn’t that just figure. That building was located on the far side of the compound, the structure closest to the edge of the ravine. Randy probably planned it that way. He might be a sorry excuse for a human being, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “What about the mineshaft?” Restin asked.

  Hank shrugged. “It’s abandoned. Looks as if the main shaft partially caved in. The support timbers are pretty rotten. It’s not someplace I’d want to be trapped.”

  Restin turned back to Lucy, eyeing her as if measuring her worth. “Sounds like hell for a claustrophobic.”

  Didn’t he understand that her fear for Stoker’s safety overrode her fear of closed places? As long she remembered that, she would be fine.

  “I’ll go after Stoker,” he said, as if putting her in her female place. “You stay here.”

  Chapter 20

  “Where’s Lucy?” Stoker asked the werewolves clustered around the mouth of the mineshaft.

  Everyone looked around, but Lucy was nowhere in sight.

  “Scat,” Luke muttered, while Hank used a more potent human curse.

  “She must have followed Restin,” Luke hedged. “Where have you been? She was going crazy with worrying about you.”

  “Ethan and I were checking the fence. There are a couple of sections in real danger of catching fire.” He glared at the circle of lycanthropes. “Lucy?” he reminded them. “My mate? Where is she? I ran into a roadie, who said he’d turned Lucy over to you, Hank.”

  Hank cocked his head and listened, which heightened the tension. “Sounds like she followed Restin, just as Luke said.”

  Stoker didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. Ancient Ones, it was like dealing with puppies. “And where is Restin? What’s going on?”

  “Restin went to help you,” Luke blurted.

  “Help me? Help me what?”

  “Rescue Lucy’s sister.”

  “What?” Rage exploded like flash bulbs in his vision. “You let my mate go into New Sinai?”

  “Nobody let her do anything,” Luke said. “She was here a minute ago. She must have waited until we were distracted then followed Restin, even after he told her no.”

  “Lucy’s their ghost,” a roadie added. “She wanted to scare them while you grabbed her sister.”

  “I suppose this isn’t a good time to mention that Tokarz extracted Michelle two mornings ago,” Hank said.

  Stoker grabbed the closest body–Luke–and tossed him halfway across the ravine, but that didn’t help his temper. Someone was going to pay for losing Lucy. If anything happened to her, someone was going to die.

  Now he had to slink into the smoky compound.

  He hadn’t exaggerated when he said there were a couple of spots where the brush could ignite the fence with just a spark or two, but as much as he hated going into the fire, he couldn’t leave Lucy inside the stockade.

  Butler might be a scat-eating vampire, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d take one look at Lucy, know that she wasn’t dead, then he’d try to remedy the situation.

  Lucy’s heart battered at the cage of bone keeping it in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. The tunnel was dark, so dark she had no problem seeing the brightly colored spots dancing before her eyes. Her throat closed; otherwise her stomach would have erupted from her mouth.

  It was a good thing Restin and his allegedly superior werewolf night vision led the way. Otherwise, she’d run into a wall and knock herself unconscious.

  The tunnel smelled of wet earth and other things she didn’t recognize and didn’t want to think about. Such as bats and rats. Isn’t it funny how the names of those rodents rhymed? Bats, rats, scat, Stoker’s euphemism for feces.

  Stoker. Let him be okay.

  Restin moved silently. She wasn’t even sure if he were man or beast. Only a backwash of cool air against her sweaty skin as he moved forward gave him away.

  She, on the other hand, sounded as if an entire army in combat boots was marching on bubble wrap. Somewhere, the steady drip, drip, drip of water somewhere, wearing down the rock, provided a backbeat. God needed to call a plumber.

  She swallowed the laughter that tried to gurgle up the gaps left by the organs lodged in her throat. This was nothing to laugh about. But crying wouldn’t solve anything, either.

  The tattoo of her heart and the frantic surge of her blood against her eardrums added to the cacophony surrounding her. She wasn’t even going to think about the harsh rasp of her breathing, because if she tried to regulate that, she would pass out, no question.

  Maybe she’d pass out anyway. Who was to say there was sufficient oxygen for two inside this hell hole? Hank had been through it only once.

  Oh. Tokarz had probably brought Michelle out this way.

  Thank goodness Stoker had simply burrowed under the fence to rescue her. So much easier than a tunnel.

  But he was the one who needed rescuing now, and she needed to use the tools available to her. Like a mineshaft. Deep beneath the earth. Close . . . dark . . . she wouldn’t have braved this route to rescue Michelle. Stoker was . . . different.

  How dare Hank convince Toke Lobo to kidnap Michelle and not tell anyone? How dare Restin not attempt the same as soon as Hank confirmed the existence of the tunnel?

  These people–werewolves–suffered from a lack of common sense.

  She stumbled over something in the dark, stubbing her toe. She cried out, and Restin–oh God, let it be Restin–growled.

  When this was over, and they were safely out of the tunnel and on the outside of New Sinai, she was going to give Restin, Hank, and any other werewolf in the vicinity a piece of her mind. Her furious, frantic mind. She was going to–

  Restin stopped.

  Lucy knew, because she ran into his tail.

  At least, she hoped the tail was his.

  Then she saw the crack in the darkness. A perfectly straight sliver of gray. They must have reached the end of the tunnel.

  She wasn’t prepared for the blast of heat as Restin morphed from wolf to man. The change in air pressure convinced her that her head was going to explode. Why hadn’t he stayed in his human form all along if he planned to confront Randy man to man?

  Something scraped overhead, and she instinctively ducked and covered her hair with her arms. Something else creaked, and dim light seeped into the tunnel.

  Another surge of heat and sinus pain, and Restin was once more a wolf. His eyes gleamed without color as he looked down at her from the Tabernacle.

  He’d needed to be human to lower the ladder and open the trap door. Okay, that worked.

  Lucy grasped a rung above her head and forced her fingers to close over the splintery wood. The ladder creaked, as if even her slight weight were more than it could bear.

  The ladder swayed, or maybe it was just her own equilibrium playing pranks, but there was an open door above her head. Escape from
the awful, dark, closed in place.

  She inhaled deeply. She’d done it. She’d made it through that damned tunnel.

  Her fingers closed over something cool and smooth.

  She glanced up again.

  Restin held something in his teeth, something white, but spattered with dark splotches. The fabric spilled over the lip of the hatch and onto the ladder.

  Shock jolted through her as she recognized the blood stained garment: her wedding gown.

  Randy had probably moved the dress from the alcove to the Tabernacle so he could pray for her lost soul over it.

  Restin shook his head, wafting the skirt, his order as clear as if he’d spoken the words aloud. She shook her head.

  Someone on the bus must have hit the replay button, because she heard herself singing above the roar in her ears.

  Okay, the garment was just a dress; a costume she’d worn when she’d last returned to New Sinai. She could put it on, even if she’d hoped never to see it again.

  Anything would be a piece of cake after navigating that tunnel.

  Stoker ran through the darkness as fast as he could. He didn’t know if he could actually smell Lucy’s passage or if the tendrils of her fragrance he caught were merely his own hopeful thinking.

  He cursed the smoke.

  She had no business putting herself in this tunnel, not when she was claustrophobic, and especially not to find him. When he caught up with her, he was going to yell at her, no matter how much she hated yelling. She needed to know how much she’d scared him. She was supposed to stay on the bus, not try to rescue someone who was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

  The woman needed to learn to think things through. In the past week alone, her impulses had landed her, not to mention the rest of the pack, in enough hot water to scald them all. He needed to get her to Loup Garou, where her impulses couldn’t hurt her or the people around her. Where the only impulses she’d have would be about loving him.

  She went through the tunnel to rescue him. Oh, Ancient Ones, he couldn’t think about what that meant, not right now.

  He quickened his pace.

  The smoke from Reuel’s fire was like Velcro, snagging on every little crevice and splinter on the rough wood surfaces, clinging like swarms of leeches. The coughing grew worse as the smoke thickened.

  All this and allergies, too.

  Randy wheezed. He constantly swiped the water from his burning eyes. Breathing was getting tougher and tougher.

  Reuel had to die. Maybe not until this whole wolf issue was resolved, but Randy was going to shoot off Reuel’s face the same way he’d shot off Bill’s face: at close range with a high power rifle.

  Except Reuel wouldn’t suffer, and Reuel had to suffer for what he was putting Randy through. Fortunately, there was time to devise the perfect agonizing, long, drawn-out, death.

  He considered opening the gates, and leading his people away from their sanctuary, but Reuel–oh, he had to die–had piled the most brush in front of the gate, not stopping to consider that by making the gate off limits, it was off limits even to those inside the compound.

  They were trapped.

  People milled around in the smoke-filled space, looking no different than they had in the predawn moments before Lucy’s ghost and the wolves serenaded New Sinai.

  Maybe those moments of dead light were signs of things to come.

  Randy crossed the yard, heading for the Tabernacle. He didn’t dare call a meeting, because every eye was needed to watch the fire, but he could pray. Think. Formulate a plan away from the chaotic reaction to Reuel’s solution.

  The potent combination of smoke and allergies wasn’t enough to mask the reek coming from the root cellar. Bill was probably a disgusting mass of maggots by now. Being locked in with him served the cook right for being so negative and mouthy. For being Reuel’s woman.

  “The walls came down, and they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein.”

  Randy paused, startled.

  Then he realized the voice belonged to Mattie, still shrieking her Doomsday prophesies to anyone who could linger near the bulkhead. How she could smell the smoke through the miasma of Bill was a mystery . . . or a miracle.

  No, not a miracle. There were no miracles, not in this day and age.

  He rushed past the bulkhead to the Tabernacle.

  Lucy was huddling in a shadowed corner where she’d donned the wedding gown, when she heard the door creak open. She didn’t dare move. Restin crouched next to her, ready to spring at anyone who challenged him.

  For some reason, she’d thought Stoker would be right there, in the Tabernacle, but she should have known better. He would be canvassing all the buildings, searching for Michelle.

  Whoever entered the sanctuary moved as silently as the smoke seeping through the cracks in the walls. Maybe Restin could overpower the intruder so Lucy could get on with the business of finding Stoker so they could escape New Sinai before the whole place went up in a fireball.

  A floorboard creaked beneath an incautious foot. Then the door slammed open.

  “General!”

  Oh, no! Not Randy, anyone but Randy.

  “The fence caught fire at the northeast corner.”

  Randy swore.

  His vicious tone sent a parade of chills up and down Lucy’s spine.

  “How badly?”

  “We can’t save it. It’s furthest from the spring. A bucket brigade is trying to set up, but it’s too far.”

  Pounding footsteps vibrated the plank floor.

  “General!” a third voice called out. “The gate’s on fire.”

  Lucy closed her eyes. This could not be good.

  “I think we should try to dig under the fence where the wolves got in,” the second voice said.

  No! Lucy almost shouted the word. If anyone tried to escape through the gorge, they’d run into a pack of naked men or angry werewolves. Then she’d have to run back through that tunnel to warn Hank and the others when she needed to find Stoker.

  Restin turned his head, and stared at her, his blue eyes vivid against his black fur.

  She didn’t blink as she returned his unwavering gaze. If wolves were anything like dogs, she knew she was playing with Restin’s sense of power, his whole, “I’m-in-charge” charade. Or maybe he was simply trying to pin her with a look, as if she were his prey. Well, that wasn’t going to work, either. She wasn’t going to put up with any more crap from any more alpha male wannabes.

  Thank goodness Stoker didn’t have any use for that sort of nonsense. Now if she could only find him so she could tell him just how much she appreciated his middle-of-the-pack guy-ness, and that she couldn’t wait to move to Loup Garou.

  Randy ignored the itch between his shoulder blades as he followed Reuel and one of the lesser minions out of the Tabernacle to investigate the burning fence.

  He didn’t have to walk far. The palisade was quickly becoming a wall of flame.

  The northeast corner? Good God, Reuel didn’t know his ass from his elbow or a hole in the ground, much less east from west, even though the sun hinted at the directions every damned day.

  Fire on the northeast corner of the fence wouldn’t bring Armageddon. The northwest corner, however, contained the warehouses where he stored his booty. And they were packed with things that wouldn’t mix well with fire. Things filled with flammables and explosives. Such as gunpowder.

  They were so fucked.

  Lucy shot to her feet as soon as the door closed behind Randy. Restin stayed at her side, not trying to stop her, but brushing against her thigh as she hurried toward the door.

  “Stoker. I have to find him.” She turned the doorknob, but Restin nudged in front of her. He was the one who perused the scenario in the yard.<
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  The smoke brought tears to her eyes, and she swallowed an urge to cough.

  Restin finally slunk through the door, indicating the coast was clear. Lucy followed.

  Smoke swirled and puffed like low-lying clouds. Everything was blurry. Only the lurid orange of the flames provided any relief from the shades of gray roiling through the air.