Another trickle of rocks signaled more movement above. Different pulses of energy flicked at him. Animal and human. One, two, five, ten. Too many too count. Too many too sort. All moving in from different angles, different distances. All centered on him. Farther down the trail Cole could see where the hills sloped toward each other and narrowed the path, the perfect place for an ambush. Looking over his shoulder, the path was just as narrow. There was no going back and no going forward. Ahead and again to the right, there was another cut in the bank. The space was just big enough to hold him. He patted Rage’s shoulder, reached behind, and unbuckled his saddlebags.
“Looks like this is it.” As if he understood, the horse tossed his head. “I’m going to hold them off while you make a break for it.” Cole opened the flap of the saddlebags, grabbing bullets and stuffing them into the deep pockets of his duster. Now, he not only had Reapers to deal with but wolves. Rage snorted and sidestepped.
“Yeah. I feel it, too. There’s a shit storm coming.”
The warning tingles were climbing like ants up his spine. The Reapers didn’t surprise him but the wolves? That did. Rainfall had been light of late but not that light. Certainly not enough of a drought to cause desperation. Which meant there was another explanation. And no matter what Reese thought, Cole didn’t believe Reapers were wolves wearing a human disguise. More than likely the Reapers had a few wolves as pets, and folks in shock from battle had jumbled their memories into something much more fantastic. As the legend gave them power, the Reapers had been content to let the rumors grow to myth. Cole dismounted, listening to his senses. Not liking what they were telling him.
Dragging his saddlebags off Rage’s back, he slung them over his shoulder. Tugging the horse’s reins, he urged him forward. “Wait for me down the trail.” Rage tossed his head and planted his feet. Cole slapped his flank.
“Not your fight today, friend.”
Rage hesitated, tossed his head, nostrils flaring as he reared, his cream white mane catching the light. His front hooves made a staccato tattoo on the hard ground when he hit all fours again. It was a measure of Rage’s loyalty that he paused when the scent of wolf had to be hanging so heavy in the air.
Cole slapped his flank again. Harder. “Go!”
With a snort, Rage gave in to the same nerves eating at Cole and galloped down the path. Cole fired two shots in rapid succession up at the ridge, providing what cover he could, cursing because the horse deserved better for his loyalty, but two bullets was all he could spare with an uncertain battle looming.
“Watch your back,” he muttered after the horse, watching until the animal turned the corner. Cole felt the warning tingles grow to a steady crawl under his skin. No more pebbles tumbled through the silence. No snarls emanated from above, no voices broke the quiet, but they were out there.
“Fucking wolves.”
And fucking Reapers. He levered two shells into the chamber of the rifle and cocked the hammers. They were out there, too. Every inch of his skin tingled, indicating the danger all around.
A short animalistic cough came from the right and above, followed by a sense of amusement. He whipped the rifle around. He couldn’t see a damned thing down the sight except rock and dirt.
“Do that again you son of a bitch, and I’ll give you something to laugh at.”
No sound came. But the almost laughter lingered in his head.
“Reapers. I’ve been watching them. They’re more than you think, Cole.”
Damn Reese and his superstitious leanings. Reapers were men, and wolves were wolves. The only thing that gave Reapers an edge was the superstition with which men viewed them. Against his will, Cole remembered when he’d confronted Isaiah outside Addy’s home. How Reese’s certainty had resonated as firmly in his mind as his hand on his arm.
He’ll kill you before you can pull the trigger.
No one’s that fast.
Reapers are.
A chill went down Cole’s spine. He looked up at the opposite ledge. If Reapers really shifted from wolf to human depending on their mood, a Reaper in a human body with a gun could pick him off like a fish swimming in a barrel right now.
“Fuck.”
Again that cough that sounded like laughter from the ledge above. A little back and to his left now. Cole resisted the urge to fire at it. A fool wasted ammunition. A bigger fool stayed where he was. There was deadfall back the way he’d come, with an overhang offering some protection. If he could make it there he’d have a chance. A growl came from the direction he’d just come, then another, deeper, more menacing one. They wanted him to go forward? Fuck that. He was backtracking. Leaping to his feet, he fired two shots in the direction of those growls and charged back down the path.
On the first step, he felt the change in energy. They were coming up behind him fast, on the ridge. Lightning fast. Fuck. Tightening his grip on the rifle, he drove himself harder. He felt a surge of unified energy behind him as clearly as he heard the tumble of rock down ledges. A wolf leapt out in front of him. He brought it down with a bullet between the eyes and kept running, leaping over the body, all of his senses sharpening as he ran. Dirt crushed beneath his boots. Wind whistled past his ear. And those silent growls grew louder in his mind.
They were fast, but he only needed to be just fast enough. He just needed to make it to the deadfall and to the narrow clearing beyond, and he’d stand a chance. He was almost to the opening when he heard that coughing laugh again. Behind him claws dug into the earth scattering twigs and dirt and rock. They were coming.
Ahead was the downed tree and vegetation that made up the deadfall. With a shout of victory, he leapt for it arms wide, guns tight in his hands. Too late to stop his leap, he saw the three wolves standing shoulder to shoulder in front of him. Bigger than any he’d ever seen, they stood there with their hackles raised. Waiting. This was the real trap.
Fuck.
He whipped his rifle forward as he landed. The wolf on the right moved in a blur of fur and teeth, grabbing the barrel in incredibly powerful jaws and yanking it from Cole’s grip, before dropping it to the ground and looking at him through eerily human green eyes. Common sense said his fancy was running away with his imagination, but in his gut Cole knew that wolf had known exactly what he was doing. The wolf had disarmed him as neatly as any human could have.
“What the hell kind of wolves are you?” he asked, keeping his revolver trained on the trio who watched him with nothing akin to the fear they should have had. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
And again from behind him came that cough that sounded distinctly like laughter.
Looking over his shoulder, Cole understood one thing: the chances of him getting out of this alive were dangling around slim to none. Three wolves in front and three or more coming up fast behind him, and somewhere back farther, many more. And only six bullets in the chamber. Even if he emptied his guns, he couldn’t kill them all. Addy’s face flashed across his mind’s eye. Dammit! He couldn’t die here like this. She needed him. The wolves took a step closer. Cole didn’t bother to step back. Where would he go?
“Come on, you bastards.”
As they stalked forward, moving as one, another thought came hot on the heels of the first. If he died here, his brothers would have no idea where to find him. Their knowledge of his death would only come when he failed to return year after year. Fuck. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Which only left him one option: staying alive.
Behind him a wolf snarled. In front of him two of the three gathered their muscles to jump. With a lift of his lip he snarled right back. There wasn’t a Cameron born who knew the meaning of quit. And he certainly wasn’t going to give it a definition now. Fucking wolves. Drawing his knife, he leapt forward, the Cameron battle cry cutting through the air as cleanly as the bullet fired from the barrel of his revolver. The wolf going for his throat dropped midair.
<
br /> Twisting around Cole thrust upward with the knife, driving it into the gut of the one going for his unprotected back. Blood spilled over him like warm rain, obscuring his vision as he shoved the body away. Spinning on his heel, he faced the rest, heart pumping, battle fever clearing his mind of all but the fight.
With a twitch of his fingers he invited them in. “Who’s next?”
2
They came at him as one unit, perfectly coordinated in their attack. Four wolves, each weighing easily two hundred pounds, leapt toward him, lips drawn back, fangs gleaming. Balancing on his toes, Cole waited. At the last second, he dove under them, rolling to the left before coming up to his feet, ready to make use of the knife. He blinked. They were right there with him, stealing his advantage with reflexes as quick as his own. Maybe quicker.
Damn.
One with a white mask lunged, snapping at his knife hand. Cole jumped back. His boot slipped on a rock. Before he could recover, the masked wolf was on him, knocking him backward. There was no time to twist or do anything but fall. He hit hard. His breath left him in a rush as his head slammed back. Pain gouged at him as the wolf’s huge feet dug into his biceps. He blocked the sensation with the ease of practice, focusing his attention instead on the way the wolf had him pinned to the ground. How the fuck had the animal known to do that?
The wolf’s breath hit Cole’s face like a fetid blow. Saliva dripped on his neck as the wolf lowered his head, his strangely human eyes holding Cole’s, challenging him as his jaws opened wider. Emotion and energy hit Cole in discordant waves. Hatred. Purpose. Insanity. The wolf was insane, maybe even rabid. Shit. If the damn thing didn’t kill him, he’d kill himself rather than force his brothers to do it when the rabies took his reason. Cole shifted his weight. The wolf growled long and low in his throat. Did it think a threat meant shit to a Cameron?
“Fuck you,” he snarled right back at the animal.
Bold words from a man who was outnumbered and couldn’t move. As if the wolf read his mind, its lips pulled back farther into what Cole swore was a grin. Cole managed to turn the knife in his hand, aiming the point at the beast’s paw. The animal snarled again. Cole ignored the warning.
“Let’s see how well you do missing a foot.”
Wrenching his arm up, he jabbed at the wolf’s paw. A blur of motion out of the corner of his eye was the only warning he had before teeth sank into his knife arm.
Agony shot up his arm and horror infected his soul. Another wolf. Likely as rabid as the first. The knife dropped to the ground. He gritted his teeth against a moan. Rabies. His head hit a rock so hard he saw stars. The horror solidified to determination as the first wolf lowered its head a fraction more. So close its breath seared his skin. Fuck. Wolves he could fight. Rabies there was no cure for. He heaved up to no avail, straining fruitlessly against the horror.
A tremendous wave of energy exploded across his torso, and the weight abruptly lifted off his arms. The loss of tension left him jerking pointlessly. Before Cole could react, the earth shuddered under the force of bodies hitting the ground. A quick turn of his head to the right revealed the small space teaming with wolves, the new colliding with old within vicious battle, their claws tearing up the ground around him as they strained for supremacy. The din of bloodcurdling snarls filled his ears. The musky scent of churned dirt filled his nostrils as he rolled to the left only to come up against a wall of legs. Fuck, there was nowhere to turn. Digging his fingers into the dirt, Cole waited for his chance.
It never came. The battle was short and vicious, and at its end yet another wolf stood beside Cole. It was bigger than the masked one, with thick black fur tipped with silver. Its jaws gaped wide, showing off large, pointed white teeth dripping blood. As Cole watched, the wolf’s face distorted. Blurred. Cole blinked and shook his head. He’d hit it going down, but he hadn’t thought he’d hit it so hard that he’d be seeing things. The wolf dissolved, distorted, and reshaped, and—impossibly—became a man, but it was not just any man. Isaiah Jones, naked, blood on his face, squatted beside Cole where the wolf had just crouched.
Cole blinked to quell the mix of fascination and horror inside him. Shit, the rumors were true. Reapers could change shape. That was going to take some digesting. Cole blinked again and inched his hand toward the knife.
For a second Jones looked as dazed as Cole felt. Then he shook his head, and with a flick of his hand he indicated Cole’s appearance. “You’re a mess.”
The tone rasped across Cole’s nerves. “You’re not looking that appealing yourself.”
“Uh-huh.” Jones shoved his hair off his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I lost something.”
“Your mind for starters.”
Cole shrugged. “And you’ve lost all appearance of being human.”
Isaiah narrowed his eyes. “A necessary consequence of saving your ass.”
Cole moved his hand closer to the knife hilt. “Wasn’t aware you were that fond of it.”
Isaiah stared at him deadpan. “I’m not.”
Cole smiled at the snap in his tone. “But Addy is.”
And that had to gall the other man to no end.
“I wouldn’t save your ass because of that.”
Cole arched a brow at him. “No?”
Isaiah met his gaze with flat honesty. “You endanger with your presence everything I’m fighting to build.”
Interesting. “So why?”
“You saved Addy’s life.” Isaiah stood. “That’s a blood debt.”
Anything with the word blood in it was serious. “Good to know monsters have honor.”
Isaiah held out his hand. Cole didn’t take it. Isaiah narrowed his eyes but didn’t withdraw the offer of assistance. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“You shouldn’t have taken Addy.”
Isaiah snorted. “You don’t know her well if you think any man could ‘take’ that woman.”
“Addy is fragile.”
“Not anymore.”
He hated that Isaiah knew that before he did.
“So you say.”
“So I do.” Isaiah crooked his fingers. “You want to lie in the dirt all day or do you want to get moving?”
Cole sure as shit didn’t want to be lying in the dirt at the feet of this man.
Spotting his hat, he grabbed it off the ground. The knife gleamed dully in the churned-up ground to his right. The urge to reach for it rode him hard.
“You wouldn’t make it.”
The way Isaiah spoke with the calm of a man whose words were supported by cold, hard fact aggravated the shit out of Cole. He should have stayed home, which he could have done had Isaiah left Addy alone.
Isaiah cut him a glance. “I would never leave Addy.”
Search as he might, Cole couldn’t see any signs of the wolf in the man standing before him. Around them other naked men milled about checking bodies, donning clothes. There was no common look of family between them beyond well-developed physiques. They were blond and brunette, dark and light skinned. To all intents and appearances, they were just men now. Hard to believe a few minutes ago they were wearing fur and snarling like animals.
“We call that our inner beast.”
Cole’s gaze snapped back to Isaiah’s. “You read minds, too?”
Isaiah shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to read that thought.”
Cole remembered another reason he didn’t like Jones. The man didn’t like to give a straight answer.
The men formed a line. Waiting. For him, Cole realized. He took Jones’s hand, resentment and anger surging through him. A kidnapper’s hand. Isaiah’s eyes were watchful as he helped Cole up. Cole didn’t have any goddamn option but to say thank you.
“Had you stayed where you belonged, there’d have been no need for this battle.”
No doubt Jones wo
uld like Cole to believe that. Cole looked around at the bodies on the ground and the hard, determined expressions of those that had survived.
“Then why do I get the feeling this battle would have happened whether I was here or not?”
Isaiah just stared in that steady, provoking way he had.
Dusting his hat off he asked, “Not answering?”
Isaiah grunted. “The battle would have happened. But it would have happened at a time and place of my choosing and not because we had to waste energy rescuing you.”
“So these aren’t friends of yours.”
“No.”
Short and to the point. That answered that.
“If you’re that unhappy with it, why did you bother?”
Isaiah’s lip lifted in a snarl. “You are cousin to my mate.”
The word choice hit Cole wrong. “What the fuck do you mean by ‘mate’?”
Isaiah didn’t answer. Just started walking away. Cole slammed his hat on his head, swore under his breath, and followed. Every step annoyed the hell out of him. He wasn’t one to follow. But this man knew where Addy was. With a sharp motion of his hand Isaiah communicated with someone behind Cole. Cole turned. A tall man with shoulder-length blond hair and dressed in brown wool pants and a black vest went into the trees. A second later he came out leading Rage. Cole was pleased to see the horse whole.
Isaiah pointed down the mountain. “Your home is that way.”
Rage tossed his head when Cole got close. Cole knew exactly how the horse felt. He didn’t like this, either. He took the reins and patted his neck. “That it is.”
Another Reaper tossed him his rifle. He caught it. Rage didn’t flinch.
“Where you want to go, you’re not welcome,” the Reaper that had fetched Rage informed Cole.
As if he cared. Cole nodded up the path. “Is that where Addy is?”
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