“I’ll go look.”
“Please be careful.”
Joey slid back a few minutes later. “There’s only Patrick.” He sounded excited. “I can take him any time.”
“Mouse says you can’t because your guts are busted and Patrick will whup you good,” Hope relayed.
“I can jump him easy.” Joey sounded petulant. This was dangerous. Hope didn’t want him to try something rash. He was their only chance of escape, and that stacked the odds against them heavily.
“You’ll need to surprise him, Joey. Be clever. Get him from behind somehow.”
She could hear Joey sucking his teeth as he mulled this over.
“Mouse?” Hope turned back into the room. “We do get fed, don’t we?”
Mouse nodded. “Breakfast is chicken bones. He’ll bring that soon.”
“I can hardly wait.” She went back to Joey. “Joey. Lie low until you see Patrick bringing us breakfast. When he opens the door I’m going to distract him, and you sneak up on him. Okay?”
“What are you gonna do?” he asked eagerly.
“Never mind. You just sneak up on him and sucker punch him good.” She thought that might appeal to Joey.
“He’s coming,” Mouse whispered.
“He’s on his way, Joey. Leave the distraction to me. You get ready to pounce.”
“You bet.” And Joey was gone.
“What are you going to do?” Mouse asked. She sounded worried. “Patrick’s sneaky. He’ll open the door a crack and push the food in.”
Hope could hear his footsteps now, long minutes after Mouse’s keen hearing had picked up on them.
“Don’t worry. I have ideas.” She’d better. There was very little thinking time left.
The lock rattled, and the door screeched open about one foot. The dim light of a downcast day crept in around Patrick’s shadow. He set a tin tray with a plate of chicken bones down on the floor.
“Better make it last, ladies. I’ll be heading out…” His words trailed away as a small round object trundled out of the darkest corner toward him. It rolled slowly across the floorboards. He frowned. The ball bumped into the rim of the tin tray with a soft clunk. He reached for it, full of cautious curiosity. It was barely in his fingers when he let out a surprised yelp and dropped Hope’s prosthetic eye back to the floor. At the same instance, Joey, in his wolven glory, gave a mighty roar from behind and dropped a huge rock on Patrick’s head, sending him sprawling.
Joey threw back his head and howled in delight. The morning sun broke through the clouds, and for a hallucinogenic moment burnished his fur in a triumphant red-gold blaze, like some pagan god.
“Good boy, Joey.” Hope scrabbled the key out of the lock, delicately side-stepping the pool of blood around Patrick’s head. Joey sat on his hunkers panting with pleasure at the praise. Hope fumbled with the lock to Mouse’s chains.
“Yes!” Mouse leapt to her feet and stamped them on the floor in a brave little dance. Hope couldn’t begin to image how cramped she must feel after days in leg irons. She was one tough kid.
“Is he dead? I want to bite him.” Mouse snapped her teeth. Her eyes gleamed with a wicked amber glow. Hope knew the telltale signs. There was no time for more wolven antics.
“Not quite dead. But don’t bite him. Let’s chain him up here and let him eat chicken bones.”
Mouse’s face lit up with glee. “And then I can bite him.”
“What’s the point? He’s out cold. Help me drag him in here and lock him up. We need to get out of here before any of the others turn up,” Hope said. Escape was paramount. Revenge, no matter how well deserved, could wait. “We’ll let Ren have the first bite, okay? She’ll like that.”
It did the trick.
“Joey,” Mouse said, and without a blink Joey lifted Patrick’s dead weight and tossed him into the shack like a sack of cow fodder.
“Mouse, do me a favor. While I chain him up, could you look for my eye?” Hope bent to her chore. Mouse needed a distraction from the possibility of chomping on Patrick.
“Gross,” Mouse said happily and began to scour the floor. “I wish I had a magic eye.”
*
“You go first,” Ren said. “Someone will come out to challenge me. Keep going. Don’t stop or turn around no matter what you hear.”
Godfrey’s frown deepened. She could tell he was nervous. He cradled the dog in his arms a little closer. They were standing by the car, on the western boundary of Little Dip valley.
“Challenge you?” he said uncertainly. “But you’re a Garoul. I know that just by looking at you. Why—Oh.”
He’d turned to her as she stripped off the last of her clothes. Now he was acting the gentleman and looked everywhere but at her. His cheeks flushed and she realized it was not because of her nudity, but her scarring. She bared her teeth. She was proud of her scars. She was a hunter, a fighter; she had a right to these scars. They were a badge of courage, a tattoo of her Alpha identity.
“Remember. Keep going,” she said, annoyed at his stalling. He’d brought her all the way to the Garouls’ golden valley, and now he was beginning to fret. But they had a deal, even if he didn’t realize it, and he was carrying his part of the bargain in his arms. “Don’t turn back, no matter what.”
“Like Lot’s wife,” he muttered sulkily.
Her “Huh?” came out as a low rumble. A drop of her saliva dripped onto his shoulder. The dog drowsily stirred in his arms. At least it knew an Alpha order, even when half comatose. Godfrey peeped over his shoulder, checked out the bloody drool on his jacket, then gazed on up at her until his neck cricked and his eyes popped. She knew he had a wolven mate, but it gave her immense pleasure that he was nonetheless awed by her size and strength. She was a prime specimen. She was wild.
He paled and swallowed loudly. His temperature plunged. She could feel the heat drain off him as a chilling realization took hold. She was Garoul, but she was not family.
Another low growl, so soft the air around them bubbled with subtle menace. Her lips trembled delicately against her canines. He whipped his head around and fixed on the path before them. She snorted a satisfied puff past his left ear, lifting the hair at his temple. He had permission to step out and lead her all the way to the Garoul home compound.
How strange she had ended up here of all places. Her insides constricted in distaste, and she had to struggle not to leave belligerent claw marks on every rock and tree. She could not afford a fight. Her mate was in danger and she had come to parley, nothing more.
Chapter Twenty-four
Isabelle tracked the remaining Were for hours. He blundered, inept and frightened, around the shale slopes and scrubby flatlands. Just before dawn, he crouched behind some scraggly bushes. He grunted and moaned as she waited and wondered what he was up to. Finally, he emerged as a naked man and ran the last hundred yards before scrambling down a gully onto a deserted side road. She watched him hurriedly drag out a stash of clothes from his truck and pull them on any old way. He glanced about nervously, stinking of stale sweat and shaking with fright.
He knew she’d been following him; he just didn’t know how close she’d got. She was right behind him, standing by a tumble of sandstone, deliberately so, because she blended beautifully with the colors in the murky dawn light. It was testimony to his incompetence that he didn’t see her. He wasn’t using his wolf side. Instead, he was letting his blunt human senses ride him.
She flew at him from out of the shrub and stones with the sudden burst of speed she had come to love, and slammed him against the side of his truck. He screamed, and she heard a satisfying crunch as she crushed several vertebrae. He slid to the dirt in a heap, shock and hopelessness draining the color from his face. She crouched over him, watching his dismay as his body instantly began sending messages to his brain—feet won’t work, no legs, can’t move, arms gone… She had broken his back. He could lift his head, barely. His chest rose and fell in panicked heaves; his mouth kept moving, but he had no
words, no screams, just pathetic little grunts of effort as he defied his limbs to unfreeze and save him.
Now she was concerned. What if he couldn’t speak? She hadn’t meant to inflict this much damage. She must remember this. Human bodies took less punishment. She hunkered down beside him. His head had fallen back in the watery mud, and it swam up, filling his ears. She wanted information from him but was unsure how to get it. She supposed she should change into human form as he had done, and interrogate him before…doing what? Calling an ambulance? The police would come, and she didn’t want that. What did you do after attacking a human? Was he even human anymore? She shook the thought from her head; she simply didn’t know these sort of details. It was all a mystery to her.
She looked at him again. His chest still rose and fell too quickly. He was staring wide-eyed back at her. She could see right into his soul. His vulnerability, terror, and remorse were on display, all mushed up in one big ugly ball. If he could read her eyes, would he see doubt and perhaps a little remorse, too? She blinked and looked away. Her immediate problem was not remorsefulness; her problem was changing back to human form and questioning him…about something? What? What had she been hunting him for? He’d tried to harm her, him and his buddies. They were dead now, and so would he be, soon enough. But what did she need from him before he died? Perhaps if she were human she would remember better. Her human brain worked differently. In her wolfskin, human thoughts and recollections were nothing more than an irritating buzz in the back of her mind. A list of chores and boring details her wolven side wanted to ignore. All her wolfside wanted to do was sniff exciting things, and run, and hunt, and enjoy the world for what it really was.
She idly scratched her rump, then plucked at her damp ear hairs. How did she turn back to human form? She had no idea. He burbled something at her. She leaned in to him and paid attention. He was saying something about help please. No. None of that. She pulled away.
Then he said something about her friend. Isabelle bared her teeth. This was good talk. The buzz in her head increased significantly, so she leaned in closer and concentrated on his words. He said there was a shack to the northeast, near Lost Creek, in Wallowa County. He said Patrick had her friend there. Patrick! Her nostrils flared. Yes, she wanted Patrick. The hunt continued, and her heart swelled with joy. She knew there had to be more to it than these three sad specimens, these easy kills. He was talking again, trying to make a deal, trying to get her to help.
Disinterested now, Isabelle heaved onto her feet and padded away into the dawn.
*
A grim, dull light crept over the hills and Isabelle became tired of moving onward. Though she was stronger than ever, her massive musculature demanded more fuel. Her earlier hunt had used up a lot of her reserves and she had not eaten since raiding Hope’s fridge—Hope! Her tongue lolled and she tasted the crisp morning air with happiness. Hope was a friend. Hope was her target, not Patrick. She would kill Patrick because he had stolen Hope and hurt the little dog. The dog was a friend, too. They were den, yet not den? Her real den was far away, in the north, and she was parted from it.
The realization winded her. She squatted on the dirt and raised her muzzle to the gray skies and howled out her sadness and discontent. The mournful cry startled a nearby baby rabbit and it scuttled for home. Isabelle pounced, but its small frame slid through her claws. She snapped her jaws, and by pure luck, caught its hind leg, tossing it into the air. It landed stunned and she was on it in a second, ripping its head off with her teeth and sucking down fur and bone and blood and fuel. A warm kill, the sweetest of nectars, and an ensurance of survival.
Licking her muzzle, she rolled onto her back among the wet wiregrass and stared up at the slowly vanishing stars. The sky was cloudless and brightening by the minute, and the temperature dropping quickly. It would be a cold day. She could smell more rain on the wind. Her fur would keep her warm and waterproof, even though her breath puffed in the morning air. Her stomach felt happy. She could eat a dozen more baby rabbits. Perhaps if she found the warren hole she could dig it out and eat them all?
Satisfied, she curled onto her side and wriggled down into the grass, making a little nest. She would rest for a few hours. Then, before the sun burned too bright, she would head northeast in great galloping strides, eating up the countryside between here and her enemy, Patrick. No, she wanted Hope, not Patrick. Her friend Hope. She’d eat up the countryside between here and her friend Hope. Then she’d eat up Patrick.
*
Her dreams were as thick and fuzzy as wool, but as comforting, too. Aunt Mary fussed about her living room. She wanted to lock up the house for winter, though the sunshine still shone through the opened windows. Shafts of light cut across the plump, chintz furnishings. Dust motes rose up in the air from their frantic cleaning. It was a fine day. Perhaps the last good day before the snows came for real.
Isabelle wore white. A white dress and a flowery apron. She had a yellow duster in her hand, and she was happy and laughing. Everything felt good.
The door rattled with a hard, jaunty rap, and Aunt Mary bustled toward it, excited. She had been waiting for this visitor. She adored this visitor. She opened the door, and the brightest of sunrays haloed Ren standing handsome and impressive on the doorstep. Her smile was radiant; her eyes gleamed as black and as wicked as Lucifer’s heart, and fixed on Isabelle and nothing else.
Isabelle smiled nervously back. All the comfort of her dream world fell away. Her stomach turned stone cold under that stare.
“Why, hello, Luc,” Aunt Mary said.
Isabelle awoke shivering. She was drenched in dew and stiff with the cold seeping through into her bones. She sat on a scrubby slope, in a patch of itchy wiregrass, buck-naked. Her stomach roiled with nausea, her mouth tasted foul—so revolting, in fact, she had to fight down biliousness. She crawled up onto her feet and fell right back down again on her backside on the prickly grass. Was this weakness the aftermath of her transition back to human form? She felt miserable, hungover, and self-loathing. She was aching and wretched, through and through.
Isabelle rolled onto her back and groaned at the sky. What had she become? She shrank from any thoughts on what she might have done, though images clamored at the edges of her mind, bloody and sickening.
“I change when I sleep?” She picked out the most pertinent piece of all the information ricocheting around her aching head. With shame she accepted the memory of the men she had attacked and killed. And the one she had left alive and paralyzed in the gully?
Isabelle lurched to her feet and this time managed to stay upright. With a shaking, swaying gait, she retraced her steps, her own wolven tracks quite obvious to her. She had to find the guy. She had to save him. It was a selfish action. By saving him she was really trying to save part of herself.
*
She found him beside the truck where she’d left him. Approaching from the far side, she saw his feet first. One booted, the other bare. She hadn’t given him time to dress before charging him down. Was he still alive? She came around the truck cautiously, afraid to face her carnage.
Remember, he’s another werewolf from an enemy pack. They all were. They were hunting you down. They were going to hurt you. They’ve already hurt those you care for. It was a hunt, and you were the better hunter. She attempted to quantify her guilt. There was an instinct in her that told her she had to justify her wolven actions and rationalize them with her human side if she was to stay sane.
He was sprawled in the dirt, legs twisted, arms flailed to the sides where he had fallen. His head was still part buried in the mud, his horrified face staring bug-eyed at a slate gray sky. His chest had been stove in. Crushed flat. His unbuttoned shirt fluttered over an enormous, bruised hollow in his chest where before she had seen his lungs inflate with gulping breaths as he bargained for mercy.
Instead, she had abandoned him. She moved closer. She had not abandoned him like this, though. The ground around his body was churned with huge wolven f
ootprints that were not her own. A clear trail showed their approach and retreat. And there, in the center of his caved-in chest, was one more muddy footprint. The beast had stood on his sternum and slowly crushed him to death.
Isabelle stood drinking in the callousness of the kill. This beast had not even bared a claw. There was nothing quick or merciful about this death. It was calculated for maximum cruelty with the least effort.
She sneezed. It brought her back to her own plight. She was naked and shivering and becoming ill because of it. She was in vulnerable human form at the scene of a vicious killing and didn’t know how to mutate back to wolven at will. An enemy was out there. It had killed this man, and she sensed its ill will for her, too. She was not safe here.
The truck cab door still hung open and more clothes were piled on the bench seat. They must have belonged to his dead buddies. She jumbled through the mishmash for the best fit and threw on jeans, a shirt, and some boots. At least she had a sleeve to wipe her runny nose on.
Isabelle stared at the body beside the truck. She took a calculating look at the surrounding landscape and at the state of the track they were parked on. How often was it used? The truck keys were dangling from the ignition. Decision made, she pulled herself into the cab. She backed along the twisting gully track, away from the body, leaving the remains uncovered. Let it be a gift of ensured survival for the coyotes, wolves, and foxes, and anything else that might find him. He could feed his brothers.
The road she reversed onto was underused at that time of year. She headed northeast for Wallowa and somewhere called Lost Creek, following the man’s directions from last night. With the cab heater on she soon warmed up and her body began to relax. Only then did she allow the remnants of her dream to resurface. She was careful with it. She did not trust the feelings it aroused.
Indigo Moon Page 23