Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3)

by Brad Magnarella

  I eyed the man’s fur trapper hat, checked wool coat, and multicam pants. A thick beard bulked under a mask covering the lower half of his face. Looked like he’d spent time in the bush.

  I stopped suddenly, remembering something.

  Earlier in the day, Berglund had told me that right before the Centurion reps reached him he was about to hire a group of “bush crazies” to help with the hunt—former military who had bugged out and set up camp north of Old Harbor. Someone had even drawn Berglund a map.

  Son of a bitch went out and hired a second team.

  From the time Berglund stormed off until now would have given him enough time to get to their camp and back. I guessed that the hunters had been en route to the hill where the wolf shifter pack was waiting for Nadie and then diverted to the meadow when they heard us howling.

  Dammit.

  There would be no reasoning with these guys. The best option was going to be to call in the quick reaction force and have them detain the hunters for working in an area under Centurion’s jurisdiction. It was bogus, but it would keep anyone—including the hunters—from getting hurt until Nadie and the pack were safely away and we had completed the mission.

  Through my connection with Nadie, I sensed that she’d recovered the weapons cache and was heading toward our rendezvous point.

  I took off low to meet her. Two shots cracked from the hunter I’d spotted, but I’d already put trees between us. I splashed through a bog, stirring up its thick, muddy smells. A quarter mile later, I reached the rendezvous point as Nadie was returning with the bag in her mouth.

  “Thanks,” I whispered, taking the bag from her and opening it.

  “Professional hunters, huh?” She had picked up my earlier thoughts through our collective.

  “Yeah, I’m going to let someone else deal with them.”

  A couple of miles away, Sarah and Yoofi were waiting in the van. I could radio the QRF from there, give them the hunters’ location, and then take Nadie back to her pack. I’d have her tell me the meaning of the creature’s name on the way. If Aranck had any more information, great, but I wanted all of them out of here. I noticed Nadie backing away from me.

  “I can’t return to them,” she said.

  “It’s not up for debate. We had an agreement.”

  “That was before the hunt.”

  “What about the hunt?” I slotted a conventional ammo mag into the M4 and checked the sight. At the same time, I was keeping my senses attuned to the hunters. They were holding position.

  “It completed our bonding,” Nadie said. “That only happens with two who are meant to mate.” Her eyes flashed up at me through the falling snow. “I’ve already broken off from my pack.”

  “A little premature,” I grunted. “I never agreed to anything.”

  “But you did, you have. It was why you offered me the heart.”

  I was in problem-solving mode, which seemed to keep the wolf down. When Nadie tried to brush her body against my hip again, I stepped away, and held out a hand for her to stop. My ears cocked to the south. I was picking up a sound.

  “Boar,” she said. “I smelled them coming back.”

  I was picking up the musky scent too, but something wasn’t right. The smell was too stagnant.

  “Down!” I shouted as two cracks sounded.

  A bullet nicked past my shoulder, but the other entered Nadie’s side and blew out in an explosion of blood and hair. The pain tore through our collective like a row of talons. Nadie fell onto her side, eyes large with shock. I scooped her up and dashed behind cover. More shots cracked in our wake. By the time I set her down, she had reverted to her human form, her dark hair wrapping her body. She was pale and panting. I could smell the silver coiling up from her wound.

  I bared my teeth, fury roaring through my head.

  “Got one,” a man said in a deep, muffled voice. “The other one’s pinned.”

  His walkie-talkie crackled in answer. “We’re coming in.”

  Absorbing as much of Nadie’s pain as I could bear, I reared back my head and released a ragged howl.

  16

  Shots popped off, hitting the trees that concealed me. It was the hunter who had dropped Nadie. I brought the barrel of my M4 around the side of a large tree and squeezed off an answering burst.

  “Holy shit!” the hunter shouted.

  “Was that you?” another hunter radioed.

  “No, one of them’s armed. Need backup, now!”

  I released another burst to keep him pinned and sprinted in the fusillade’s wake. I reached his position within seconds, just as he was peering out. My talons met his lower jaw in a hard, arcing chop. He grunted as the rest of my mass plowed into him. We came to a violent rest against the ground, me on top. The hunter had managed to maintain a grip on his weapon, but it was trapped under my knee. I doubted he even knew he still had it.

  The man stared at me in shocked horror. Blood bubbled from a bearded mouth that had been knocked almost beneath his left ear. I could smell the boar musk he’d sprayed to disguise his scent. With the other hunters securing the north end of the meadow, he’d worked his way in from the south. I gave him marks for tactics, but with the image of Nadie’s vulnerable, blood-soaked body pounding through my head, I felt no mercy.

  I buried my muzzle into his neck and emerged with his throat.

  I rose, panting, and spit out the gritty taste of him. I had enough wherewithal to disarm his weapon and stick the mag in my duffel bag. I took some spare mags and a sidearm off him as well.

  His walkie-talkie crackled. “Resal, do you copy?” A pause. “Res?”

  There was panic in the voice. The hunters might have been military trained, but they’d never faced something like me. I attuned my hearing to their approach. It sounded like bounding overwatch—the two hunters who had been positioned at the far end of the meadow were coming in, past the two who had taken positions at the sides of the meadow.

  I pulled a handful of frag grenades from the bag and moved to the meadow’s edge. Moments later, I picked up what I’d been listening for: a whispered exchange off to the west as the hunter in motion drew even with the hunter on overwatch. I armed the grenade and hurled it high. I watched its arcing trajectory, then armed a second grenade and heaved it at where the hunter had been on overwatch on the east side of the meadow. By the time that grenade was away, the first one was dropping through spruce branches.

  It detonated with a violent boom.

  The second grenade tumbled down and went off. Having thrown that one blindly, I cocked my ears toward the aftermath. One of the hunters had been dropped. I could hear him gasping in pain. The other was running. I armed a third grenade and hurled it toward his flight path.

  I then took off toward the west side of the meadow where I’d thrown the first grenade. One of the hunters was screaming, the sound punctuated by the boom of the third grenade.

  I slowed as I drew near. I found the other hunter, the silent one, facedown in the snow, not breathing. I was half surprised to see it was a woman, her hair cropped short. I disarmed her, then stepped over her body and around a tree, toward the screamer. He lay propped on one arm, squeezing his right knee with the other hand. The lower leg was nearly severed. I looked around, but his weapon was nowhere in sight—probably blown away when he’d been hit.

  The soldier in me considered treating him, but the wolf acted first, finishing him with a head shot.

  From the edge of the meadow, I peered across the snow-covered expanse to the opposite line of trees. I couldn’t see the other hunters. I squeezed off a suppressive burst then sprinted into the open, watchful for the least movement. When I reached cover, shots began to crack. They were coming from the far side of a deadfall. It had to be the hunter who had been gasping earlier, but he was firing blindly. I eased around the deadfall until I had a clear shot.

  I put him down for good.

  One left, I thought with a growl.

  Then I had to get Nadie help. I co
uld feel her presence thinning in our connection.

  I moved in the direction I’d heard the final hunter running before I’d heaved the grenade. Soon I arrived at the place where the grenade had detonated. Bark and splintered branches littered the snow. My gaze stopped at a spray of blood. I locked in on the scent, but I didn’t have to. A bright trail dribbled off to the south.

  I followed it at a loping run, heart pounding with the hunt once more.

  I caught up to the hunter shortly. He was staggering like a drunk, aiming for a ravine. Even though he was still carrying his AR-10, I walked behind him for several paces, matching his steps so he wouldn’t hear me. I listened to his wheezes and broken pants, a part of me glorying in the control I held over this man’s final moments. This man who had attacked my pack.

  I lengthened my next stride so that my foot came down on a fallen branch.

  He flinched at the sound of cracking wood. By the time he brought his weapon around, my talons were slashing toward his neck. I relieved him of his rifle as he thudded to the ground.

  I stood for a moment to make sure that had been all of them.

  But as I was about to return to Nadie, the wind shifted, carrying with it a familiar smell.

  You son of a bitch.

  I took off through the trees, rage crackling inside my chest. At the north end of the meadow, the land fell to a double-track road. I spotted the vehicles the men had arrived in, a pair of pickups with studded snow tires. Behind them was a third vehicle. A black Chevy Suburban.

  The hunters had no doubt ordered Berglund to stay inside his vehicle, but the gunfire and explosions had drawn him out. He was pacing the side of the road now, sweeping the trees with a rifle. Though the snow gave off a dull luminosity, Berglund lacked any kind of night vision.

  I descended quietly and came around behind him.

  “Your hunters are dead,” I snarled.

  When he wheeled, I jabbed the knuckles of two fingers into his eyes to temporarily blind him. I caught his rifle barrel in my other hand and wrenched the weapon away. With a cry, he staggered back, pawing for the pistol holstered around his thigh. I let him draw it, then smashed it from his grip with a backhand. Something snapped in his wrist. He pulled it to his chest.

  “Their deaths are on you,” I finished. “You stupid, stupid man.”

  Pinned to his vehicle, Berglund tried to squint up at me. I was without my helmet, but I would have been a blurry shadow through his tears. The stink of fear and alcohol poured from his body. He must have been drinking the whole way to and from the hunter’s encampment.

  “Don’t kill me,” he slurred.

  “Why not?”

  His head tilted as my voice registered.

  “Captain Wolfe? Is that you?”

  I snarled, lips peeling from my canines.

  “W-wait, I can explain!”

  I drew back his rifle and smashed the stock end into his forehead.

  By the time I returned to Nadie, she was cold, her lips blue. She was coming in and out of our connection like a thinning flame. I jammed the M4 into the duffel bag, slung it over my back, and lifted her into my arms. I took off running, Nadie snug against my warm body.

  One effect of our connection was that I had access to her history. As I ran, pieces came in flashes. Growing up in a pack, hunting, but taking only what they needed, hiding from humans—that had come to mean the Cree too, the tribe who had once worshipped the Masked Wolf People. For survival, Aranck had grown more despotic, restricting the pack’s movement and eventually every aspect of their day-to-day lives. He met insubordination with violence. To Nadie—fiercely independent Nadie—it became unbearable.

  The she-wolf had sensed my arrival to Old Harbor somehow, then tracked my scent to Berglund’s cabin. In me, she saw a mate she could splinter away with and start her own pack.

  Our next two meetings had been fast courtships, culminating in the moose hunt. The same damned hunt from my dreams of the past couple weeks. Only instead of offering the heart to Daniela—who had looked back at me with horror in the dream—I had offered the vital organ to Nadie. I remembered how our lips had touched when she’d accepted her half and swore at myself.

  I crested the ridge where I’d met the she-wolf earlier, then raced down the far side toward the meeting point with Sarah and Yoofi. Rusty, who had a drone overhead, must have alerted them I was coming because they both got out.

  “What happened?” Sarah called when she saw that I was carrying Nadie.

  “She’s been shot!” I shouted back through the snow. “We need to get her in the van!”

  She nodded quickly and opened the side door. By the time I arrived, she had flattened the middle seat into a makeshift bed and covered it with a clean sheet. I lay Nadie down, checking where the bullet had gone in and grimacing at the ragged hole below her ribs where it had exited.

  Yoofi, peering in from outside, made an ominous noise, and turned his head away.

  “Silver,” I said to Sarah. “And there are still fragments in there. Did you bring more solution?”

  “Yes, but give me some room.” Steady as ever, Sarah opened a side panel onto a stash of medical supplies, transforming the van into a mobile treatment unit. “I’ll start working on her.”

  I backed out and closed the door to keep the inside of the van warm. Yoofi came up beside me.

  “Someone shot her, you said?”

  “Yeah, Berglund contracted a group of hunters. They were armed for werewolves.”

  Yoofi looked off in the direction I’d come from. “Where are they now?”

  “No longer with us.”

  His eyes went wide when they returned to mine, reminding me how he’d reacted to the sight of me tearing out the throats of the death dog. “And Mr. Berglund?” he whispered.

  I released a harsh breath, sending up a plume of vapor. After landing the blow to his head, I’d watched him collapse in a heap. Knowing he was ultimately responsible for Nadie being wounded, maybe mortally, the wolf in me had wanted to finish him. But he had acted out of the desperation to recover his girlfriend. He hadn’t known it would be me the hunters would attack.

  Plus, he was still our damned client.

  Inside one of the trucks, I had found blankets and a towing chain. I wrapped Berglund in the blankets, secured him with the chain, and threw him into the backseat of his SUV. We’d pick him up later and hold him until the mission was over—for his own safety as much as ours.

  “Sleeping,” I answered.

  When I heard Nadie moan, I turned back toward the van.

  Sarah is a doctor, I said softly into the connection. Let her help you.

  I thought I felt a nod of understanding. The moan subsided. If Sarah could get enough of the silver out, Nadie’s own regenerative abilities would kick in. Closing my eyes, I said a prayer.

  Then I walked around to the back of the van and opened the cargo hold. There, I swapped the M4 for my MP88 and loaded it. Nadie had never told me the meaning of the Prod 1’s name, but that wasn’t foremost in my mind right now. I was more concerned about her pack. If she had splintered from them would Aranck try to get her back? And how would he regard me, the one she’d splintered off with? I remembered his parting warning…

  Do not become tempted by her, Wolfe. For I will know.

  “Seems like we’re fighting every damned thing except what we came here to fight,” I muttered.

  “Mr. Wolfe!” Yoofi shouted. He ran around to join me. “Rusty is calling for you!”

  I’d almost forgotten about losing my earpiece, as well as the fact I wasn’t wearing the suit I’d left up on the ridge. I nodded quickly, pulled a spare headset from the cargo hold, and turned it on.

  “Go ahead,” I said, fitting it over my ears.

  “The surveillance grid just picked up something really frigging big!”

  My heart sped up. “Can you see what?”

  “It’s pitch black and moving fast. I’m having trouble getting a clear visual on the fe
ed, but it’s heading straight for a cabin.”

  “And it’s not a bear?”

  “Way too big, boss.”

  “Get me there,” I said, grabbing several spare mags. “Send Takara over too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are we moving out?” Sarah asked.

  “I am. I want you to finish treating Nadie. Yoofi, stay on outside security. Join us when you can.”

  Part of wanting Nadie taken care of came from the pack bond we now shared—that was clear. But there was also a good chance she was the only one who would clue us into the creature’s identity. And knowing what in the hell we were facing was the first step in stopping it.

  “Rusty?” I said.

  “You’re two miles out. Take the road north.”

  With the duffel bag and MP88 secured to my body, I fell to all fours and launched away. As the wind screamed past my face, I could taste a hunger in the air that wasn’t my own.

  This was the thing we’d come to hunt.

  17

  With the energy from the moose still pulsing inside me, my wolfman form felt like it was hitting on all cylinders. Beneath my dense coat, muscles pumped and blood surged, propelling me at speeds I hadn’t achieved before. The forest vibrated in my vision. I was aware of every creature hiding in trees and dens as I tore past them. Both Aranck and Nadie had said this thing couldn’t be killed, but I was ready to test that theory.

  “Hold that course,” Rusty said. “You’ll get to the cabin about the same time as the Prod.”

  “ETA?” I panted.

  “A couple minutes.”

  I didn’t want to reach the cabin at the same time as the Prod. I wanted to head it off, then open up on it with everything I had without care or concern for human casualties. I was in no place to exercise restraint. Meaning if I couldn’t find another speed, we needed to slow this joker down.

  “If you get a clear shot,” I said, “take it.”

  “Should have one in a few secs. Still can’t get a good look at him, though.”

  I remembered what Nadie had said about the creature’s greed creating distortions around it. Maybe that’s what Rusty was seeing.