“No.” Owen shook his head and his wet hair slapped at his cheeks. “We can’t take any chances of being out in the open, going across the clearings near the edges.”
“What are you saying?” Her voice had the tiniest hitch.
“We’re going to have to take out the hunter.” He turned to Vadik. “You know I’m right.”
The Russian held his girlfriend’s face and kissed her. He leaned his forehead against hers. “I know.”
Owen pulled Clara to her feet and held her at arm’s length.
Her face contorted in concern and as she looked into his eyes, her head began to shake back and forth. “No,” she said, low at first. “No, no. You’re not leaving me here.”
“Someone has to stay with her.” He indicated the bleeding woman.
“But if there’s three of us, we can be more spread out, create a bigger target,” Clara said, her fingers clawing at his naked skin.
“No.” He tried to swallow the lump out of his throat, but it wasn’t going anywhere. His gaze drifted across the soft contours of her face. Every freckle, every line, he knew by heart. He’d spent twenty-four days memorizing her face, in case it was the last time he saw her.
“I can help.” Her expression turned wild. “I have to help.”
“You can help by staying with her. Staunching the blood flow.” Owen’s voice cracked. “Please, Clara. Don’t fight me on this.”
The Russian wolf jumped to his feet. “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to hurry. She doesn’t have much time, if she doesn’t start to heal.”
“She’ll heal,” Clara insisted, pulling on Owen’s arm. “I’m going with you.”
Vadik ripped through some of the undergrowth, pulling out fallen palm fronds, branches, sticks.
Clara left Owen standing apart and went to help the Russian cover Andrea.
Owen shifted from foot to foot in the warm, wet earth.
He’d waited his whole life to find a woman who made him want more than just random sex. Until he’d met Clara, he’d never met anyone who made him want to forget himself and give her everything she ever wanted.
That was how he’d grown up. With parents whose worlds revolved around each other, who could never seem to get enough of each other. As an adult, he’d appreciated that, more than he had as a kid. But some part of him had been hoping for that his whole life.
Now, when it came time to put the love of his life in harm’s way, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t endanger her life.
Even though she was right. Three of them would be better. Four would have been ideal. But three would definitely beat two. If he and Vadik went after the hunter on their own, one of them would die.
Clara and Vadik had covered Andrea so well, she would be invisible to the naked eye. Only a wolf, who could smell blood, would be drawn to the spot that looked like debris that had washed down the embankment.
“Which way should we go?” Vadik knelt beside the debris pile, holding the white hand of his sweetheart, and Owen’s throat lump was back.
Why can’t Clara stay under that pile, too? Why won’t she listen to me?
“I’m going.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him like she was reading his mind. Maybe she was. He wouldn’t put it past the supernatural curse to have some kind of magic mind-meld capability or something.
“Fine.” Owen ground his teeth together. “Here’s what we have to do.” They walked along the embankment until it had almost blended into the rise of the small hill.
He pointed along the hillside. “I’m going to go up this side, which is probably where he came down, because it’s the easiest path, to go along the edge of the trees, and not have to go directly through.”
“So we split up from here?” Vadik took a deep breath and stole a glance over his shoulder. “Are you going to shift?”
“No. None of us can shift,” Owen said. “None of us. If he sees a wolf, he’s going to kill it. That’s the game. They come here to hunt werewolves. So we stay human.”
“How are we going to find him?”
Owen sighed. “We’re going to have to be very careful and hope we get lucky.”
“Lucky?” Clara’s voice was tense and he tried to reach out and calm her, but she moved away from his hand. “One of us is going to have to shift.”
“She’s right,” said Vadik. “We’re never going to find him. If he’s hunting at night, he’ll have night-vision. The minute he sees us coming toward him, he’s going to shoot.”
“We can’t shift,” Owen repeated. “You don’t get it. You never shift in here unless you have to.”
Clara pressed her lips together. “So, we run around as vulnerable humans and hope he’s not smart enough to figure out what we’re doing running toward him?”
Owen’s breath was deep, and he tried to tamp down the frustration. “I don’t like the plan any better than you do. But the one way we know for sure that someone will die is to shift. He sees a wolf, he’s going to have it down as soon as he can take aim.”
She smirked and shifted her weight to one leg. “Then don’t give him a chance to aim.” She leaned forward and the air around her shimmered, and before he could speak, her wolf sprung forward, a haze of red hair, and took off up one side of the embankment.
Owen tried to grab her tail as she moved past him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Every fear he’d ever entertained in all the days he’d had with Clara materialized sailed at a breakneck pace through his blood when she shifted into that wolf. As she bounded off into the darkness, he let out a growl that could only have come from the animal part of him.
He pushed Vadik’s hand away when the Russian tried to grab for him. “Dammit, Clara,” he hissed into the dark. Owen ran up the middle of the embankment at top speed toward the direction the other shots had come from.
They hadn’t had time to make a plan, and they hadn’t had time to work out signals or talk through the terrain or what the hunter would likely do.
He was going to kill her, if the hunter didn’t.
Suddenly, from behind him, a black streak ran up the hillside and disappeared over it.
Vadik had shifted, too.
Owen continued to run, pumping his arms, stepping on branches and in puddles. But he didn’t care if his feet were bloodied and gnarled. He had to find the hunter first.
He weaved in and out of trees, trying to run, and listen and smell at the same time. Vadik and Clara would have a better chance to find him with their heightened senses as a wolf, but Owen could still use his years of knowledge of the island, and his seventy-two hunts to his advantage.
The kill shots almost always came from higher ground, which was why Gabriel often headed there. Before the fences had been shut off, chasing the hunter would do no good. The collars weren’t only for shifting. They killed, too.
Everyone knew the rules of the hunt. Can’t climb the fences, can’t kill the hunter, or you’ll die. But if a wolf was really smart, they would stay behind the hunter, up-wind, where he couldn’t smell them. Or hide in the cave. Or keep moving. Killing the hunter? That would’ve been certain death.
Until today.
Killing the hunter was the only way they were getting over the fence.
Owen kept running, varying his path so he was never running in a straight line. He could just hear Clara’s heartbeat, wild and heavy, as a wolf. He was much closer to her than he was to Vadik. He couldn’t hear Vadik at all.
She’d be too far ahead of him, soon, and he’d lose her.
All of the sudden, there was another heartbeat. It was faint, and there was too much residual noise to isolate it, but it was there, underneath his pounding footfalls, underneath Clara’s thumping heart.
It had to be the hunter.
The beat increased to a fast pitter-pitter, and then slowed without warning. Owen counted the beats. One, two, three, then four-four. Something had made him concentrate or focus on his body signals.
From off to the north, another burst of gunfir
e. But not the hunter’s big gun. This was automatic gunfire, and it was much closer than the last burst.
The Rangers?
In the middle of the volleys, a wolf cry split the air and then a man’s loud yelp. A boom of single-shot gunfire tore through the air and in the silence that followed, the wolf loosed a long, piercing howl.
Owen’s muscles pushed him hard, pressing him faster and faster until he couldn’t even really feel his feet touching the ground.
Vadik’s voice replaced the howl. “Hurry! I have him.”
He turned uphill, toward the call of the Russian stranger.
Clara’s wolf bounded out of the bush off to his right and stopped when she saw him. She shimmered back into her human self, the natural fabric of her dress shimmering with her.
He lost his breath when he saw her, whole and safe, and panting against one of the trees, her chest heaving with the effort.
She held out her hand and when his skin slid against hers, he was certain he was dreaming, because he felt like he was soaring above the clouds on a high drugs couldn’t touch.
Her arms slipped around his body and he nearly sobbed with relief to feel the real softness of her chest against his, her hair in his hands. He breathed into her neck, taking in the earthy scent of her.
“Come on,” she said, pulling at his hand. “We have to help Vadik.”
Chapter Seven
RAINIER DUBOIS
* * *
Rain led the team up the hill, following the scent of the retreating guards. It was too faint, the farther they got into the island, where everything smelled unfamiliar. He held up his hand to halt the group. “We’re going to need someone to shift,” he said, looking from Donovan to Luther. “Or maybe both of you.”
The Kentucky wolf began to disrobe immediately. “Can’t smell them anymore, either?”
He shook his head. “There’re too many wild things to nail the scents down from this distance. But we can’t risk them warning the rest of their people, if they haven’t already.”
Luther stripped off his shirt and handed it to Maggie. “I’d better shift, too. At least, Maggie and I can feel each other. She’ll be able to find me if we all get separated.”
“We can’t follow too close,” Rain said, taking Donovan’s clothes and slinging them over his pack.
“We’ll find them.” Donovan knelt down and in a flash if air, his dark, streaked wolf appeared.
Luther’s pants went through the air to Maggie, and she bent to pick up his shoes and Donovan’s as Luther’s gray wolf sprang out to follow Donovan.
“Let’s go, Alpha Team.” Rain signaled for them to keep moving, and Maggie moved up to jog beside him.
They were still going up the hill, and the terrain was rougher than Rain had expected. The cliffs must have been close, because the ground was suddenly harder.
They jogged forward until they couldn’t see the wolves’ shadows any longer. He was used to the pace of following wolves on a mission, but he didn’t like that it was unplanned. Or that they were civilians.
A loud crack sounded from somewhere far across the island. Too far to be where Luther and Donovan were. He held up his hand to halt their progress and listened for another fire.
“That wasn’t an M4,” Banner said.
“It wasn’t auto at all,” Warrick added.
Rain kept his arm in the air, listening for one more second. “How far is that?”
From the back of the group, Brown spoke up. “Sounds like at least a mile. Maybe more. And it echoed back on itself.”
“Was it up at the house?” Rain glanced at Maggie.
She shook her head and pointed off to their right. “The house is that way, straight up the hill on the road, and then back about half a mile.”
Another crack had them all freezing. Only a few seconds later, crack again.
“That was closer,” Brown said.
The bush around them was low, and the wolves were out of sight. Rain gestured forward and the group began to move through the foliage. The trees thickened as they rounded the crest of the hill. All around them, vision was impaired.
“There.” Maggie started forward at a faster pace. “It’s Luther. Something hurt him. I can feel it.”
“It wasn’t a gunshot, was it?” Rain asked, huffing breaths as he kept up with her pace.
“No,” she puffed back. “Something else.”
Maggie led the way through the trees, winding them slowly toward her mate.
Mate.
He still couldn’t get over the idea of Maggie mated to a big, bald human-turned-wolf.
For the last several months, she’d been his lifeline to the enforcer team. If Edward Cavanaugh hadn’t been such a monstrous dickwad, Rain would have gone back once Nora was settled. But her father was always going to be looking for her, and Mexico, with their team, was the first place he would’ve started looking.
“This way,” she darted to her left, behind a big tree, and the Rangers all followed, ducking deeper into the forest.
A chuk-t-t-t-chuk of automatic gunfire cut into the dark woods around them and Rain instinctively dropped his head low.
But the fire wasn’t at them. Another blast of gunfire and Maggie’s pace increased to a flat-out sprint.
He hauled his ass as fast as he could, and finally saw the bright spray of gunfire in another direction.
Maggie screamed Luther’s name and the wolf came bounding back toward them. He shifted and she dropped his clothes.
“Donovan,” he yelled. “They hit Donovan.”
Rain’s heart tried to shove its way out of his chest, but he kept running. He smelled the acrid, metallic sting of blood and ran toward it.
The Rangers thundered after him.
When they reached Donovan, he’d shifted back to his human form and lay, naked, in a pool of blood and mud and forest floor debris. He pointed into the woods and panted, “There’s one more.”
The scene around his friend was a grisly one. Two guards lay dead, their throats open, and another one was crawling toward the direction Donovan had indicated.
Rain stepped on the guard’s back and looked back at the Kentucky wolf.
“No. Not him. The leader, I think. He shot me.” Donovan turned over and Rain could see chunks of open, red flesh along the man’s white back. “But there’s one still running. Luther took a piece out of his leg, so he won’t get far.”
“Brown, Banner, Warrick, Young.” Rain pointed off toward the interior of the island. “He’s bleeding, you can track him.”
The body under Rain’s foot stopped struggling and he toed the man over. Only when his face came up out of the mud, Rain could see he wasn’t a man at all. He couldn’t have been a day over sixteen. With a lurch in his stomach, he stepped back, away from the dead boy.
Damn Adrian Rossi. Damn him to hell.
“We’re not leaving you, boss.” Banner bent down to pick up Donovan without missing much of a beat.
Rain waved him off. “No. I’ll stay with Donovan, and we’ll bring up the rear.”
“I’m staying,” Brown said. “We can’t leave you behind, boss.”
“Get the hell out of here, all of you,” Rain snapped. “And to think I was worried about them not following orders.”
Banner took off, with Warrick and Young behind him, but Brown still lagged behind.
Rain snapped his fingers and pointed after the rest of the team.
Maggie and Luther panted out of the woods, with Luther pulling on his black t-shirt. She immediately ran to Donovan, kneeling in the bloody mud that surrounded him. “What happened?”
“The Professor stood in front of a gun,” Rain said with a laugh. He threw his duffle on the ground and pulled out one of the woundseal packets.
“Where are the rest of the guys?” Maggie asked.
Rain poured the brown powder on Donovan’s wounds and the thick Southern accent of the injured wolf slurred out curse after curse. Rain nodded after the other Rangers. “They
’re going after the last guard.”
“Let me go with them,” Maggie said. “That way, you’ll have Luther with me, and if you need to find us fast, you can.”
She pressed a kiss to Luther’s lips before he could protest and ran after the Rangers.
Rain’s stomach lurched. He hated watching her run off into danger. It didn’t matter how capable she was, Maggie had become like his little sister over the course of this mission. She was like everyone’s little sister.
She was feisty enough, and capable enough, but that would never mean he wanted to see her in harm’s way.
“Help me move him.” He grabbed Donovan under one arm and Luther took the other. “Let’s get him out of all that blood.”
“I’ll put his clothes back on.” Luther grabbed the dangling pants and shirt and boxers from Rain’s pack.
“I’m not dead, guys.” Donovan choked out a laugh. “Yet, anyway.”
“You’re not going to die.” Rain checked the wounds. “Those will keep until we can get you to a hospital.”
“What about them?” Luther pointed to the bodies.
“They’re all so young.” Donovan’s low growl was almost reverent. “I didn’t see it at first, but when we turned them over…”
“I know,” he said. “I thought the same thing.”
Luther pulled Donovan to his feet and helped him step into his boxers and pants.
Rain put his gun on the ground and moved over to where Maggie had dropped the boots. When he looked up, he saw the black barrel of an AK-47, not more than ten inches from his head.
Chapter Eight
CLARA ROSSI
* * *
Clara ran next to Owen, toward the sound of Vadik’s fist meeting the hunter’s face—repeatedly.
“You inhuman piece of shit!” His bare skin glimmered in the moonlight. The magick around him pulsed with his anger. He held the hunter by the front of his shirt collar, shaking him. “Believe me, I’ve seen some messed up shit in my day. But hunting people takes the fucking cake.”
Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven Page 18