Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  Gabrielle had remembered to bring the hairbrush.

  “My hair never got this much attention before,” I complained as she started brushing again. “Keep brushing and you’re going to end up pulling it out.”

  “Behave,” she said, and slapped me gently on the arm.

  Alice waved the blindfold, but I shook my head and closed my eyes. I reached out for them with my eukori.

  For all their confidence about recovery times after the first working, I could feel the others were still tired, but we were getting better at this. Together we slipped back into the spirit world like a salmon diving into a river.

  Wrong image.

  We are the hawk again.

  Maybe Gabrielle’s spirit guide was making it easy to visualize.

  This time, we were circling in the crisp morning sunlight above Escalante. Below us, the famous Grand Staircase. The petrified forest.

  Higher and higher. Bryce Canyon to the west.

  There!

  We’d found her. Tara was waiting. She’d probably been waiting for us all night.

  I could feel her, so carefully reaching out.

  There!

  Gabrielle wanted me to keep quiet, so I tried to think of love and hoped that somehow got through to Tara.

  We’re coming, Tara. We’re coming.

  The sense of her blinked and faded. Had she responded? Was she just too tired?

  Lost.

  We turned back, seeking the connection again.

  But it wasn’t Tara who was waiting this time.

  I saw a glimpse, no more. A cold face. Cold eyes, blue entirely, without pupils. Hair like needles of ice.

  Then blades. A thousand thin metal blades, woven together like feathers, dark as a raven wing, chopping down.

  And silence.

  What the hell was that?

  Alice tried to quiet us down. Gabrielle and I turned one way and the other, seeking out that hesitant whisper of a connection.

  TARA! I screamed it at the innocent sky.

  I could feel the power boiling up inside me. More power than it would need. All it would take would be to reach down and—

  Stop, Amber!

  There was sudden panic in Gabrielle’s voice now.

  Stop. Stop. Back. Now!

  I sank, but slowly, wheeling through the wide blue sky.

  Tara?

  But what I heard was the rattle of bones, a hissing and clinking and slithering that seemed to come from all around, while the sky suddenly darkened.

  Back. Shhh. Back.

  Then I was struggling on the floor of the aircraft, held down by a worried Yelena, who was looking into my eyes.

  “Amber?”

  “I’m okay,” I said and she let go.

  “What happened?” Yelena asked the rest of them. All were standing with shocked expressions on their faces.

  “We got through to Tara,” Alice said. “Then the connection was cut.”

  “By the Hecate,” I finished, when Alice hesitated. I pulled myself upright.

  I wanted to yell. Anger boiled up in my chest. I’d been stupid to trust the Hecate. And Gabrielle.

  “Didn’t look much like Wendy Witch to me,” Flint said.

  “Apart from the color of the eyes,” Kane said. “And the hair.”

  Gabrielle didn’t respond. Her face was pale and her eyes wide.

  Alice waited a moment before she spoke. “I think we came close to discovery by one of those substantiations that the Hecate warned us about.”

  “The Empire? Matlal?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t tell.” Alice shrugged. “Are we in danger now, Gabrielle?”

  Gabrielle shook her head.

  Unless I was being duped again, Gabrielle’s reaction showed she had really believed the Hecate was on our side somehow. I sensed she still believed it. I was going to need to talk more to her, but later. The connection had been cut, but not before we’d got a direction from it.

  The only problem was we’d given away how we were searching.

  Ignoring that, Flint spread the map on the floor of the aircraft. He started to draw his line north from Escalante.

  And east of Salt Lake!

  The lines from the two directions crossed in the Ashley National Forest.

  Not as bad as Salt Lake City, but still in Utah. The Ashley was part of the wilderness area that started fifty miles or so east of the city, but which the Salt Lake pack might regard as part of their territory.

  Flint marked the possible errors on the second reading we got, so eventually there was a rough diamond shape around the point where the two direction estimates crossed.

  “That’s still a lot of territory,” Alice said.

  “At a guess, 1,500 square miles,” I said. “Maybe 2,000.”

  That was a lot better than the 4,500 of Moffat County that Alex was talking about, but most of the Ashley was rough going. We were definitely going to need more feet on the ground. Or paws.

  Yelena came back in and looked over my shoulder.

  “You make it narrower, smaller error, by going closer,” she said.

  That got a reaction from Gabrielle, who shook her head quickly. “This working is very quiet, but it’s still detectable, and the effect isn’t linear. If we halved the distance, we’d be four times more noticeable.”

  “If Weaver is watching,” Yelena said.

  “Even if he isn’t, there’s something else prowling around out there.”

  “Okay.” Yelena shrugged and made her way forward to the pilot’s seat. “Back home, Boss?”

  “No,” I said.

  The territory was too big, and I had to assume Weaver was going to do something now he knew we were searching. His options came down to moving to hide somewhere else, or speeding up his plan. It would be much more difficult to hide and move at the same time, so my guess was he would speed up his plan.

  He’d try and break Tullah to gain access to Kaothos. However strong Tullah was, no one holds out for ever.

  I reckoned we had maybe the rest of today and tomorrow. But no one on site today, so only tomorrow. To cover 2,000 square miles. So I did what I had to and texted Zane.

  Need to ask a favor. Urgent.

  To my surprise, he sent a reply immediately, but it wasn’t really good news.

  Busy. El Paso. Thanks for that. Come ask F2F.

  I got the meaning. I reckoned Cameron had followed my advice and gotten Zane to prepare a replacement pack for El Paso by moving one of the New Mexico sub-packs a little further south. Even if he wasn’t really pissed by the extra work, he was certainly pissed that I’d failed to answer his calls.

  Now that he knew I wanted something, he was going to use that for his own ends.

  Fair enough. Two can play that game.

  I went and sat up front, and played with Yelena’s aviation GPS to see what was available down near El Paso, but away from the city itself.

  After five minutes, I sent Zane another text.

  Doña Ana airfield. Noon. Important.

  Chapter 64

  Zane was waiting in the small, neat terminal at Doña Ana when we landed.

  I was half expecting him to have a posse of the local sub-pack around him, but then again, maybe not this time. Maybe he didn’t want witnesses. He didn’t even have his usual Albuquerque sidekicks, Haz and Bode. He was alone, dressed in khaki cargo pants, skinny T shirt and tailored brown leather jacket. He slouched on a seat as if he couldn’t care less whether I was here or not.

  He’d let his dominance off the leash as well, but unfortunately for the image he was trying to project, there was a subtlety to it today, as if it was obscuring what he really felt. He was also trying to frown, to show me how angry he was, but he couldn’t hide the way his brown and green eyes were devouring me.

  He looked good, which was not the frame of mind I was supposed to be in, considering what I had planned.

  And my wolf came out to play, shoving back against his dominance to see what he’d do. />
  Oh, crap. Stop this.

  I sat next to him. Yelena ambled around the terminal building, never quite out of sight, but giving us space.

  Our shoulders touched. I was very aware of the heat of his body, and equally aware the reverse was true.

  The man wasn’t going to start talking first. He continued to glare into the distance, his proud features set firm.

  Against a prepared opponent, be sneaky. Do the unexpected. Take control of the fight.

  I was pretty sure my old Ops 4-10 instructor, Ben-Haim, hadn’t meant this kind of fighting, but all advice is worth considering.

  And to that advice, I would add Dominé’s warning, given just before I’d met Zane for the first time: Don’t be prey.

  I leaned across, pushed Zane’s dark, coiled hair out of the way, kissed his cheek and then let my Athanate fangs out.

  “Mierda!” he said, twitching. His voice was usually rich; now it was as hoarse as old crow.

  Score one.

  “Bruja!” he swore. Witch.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “All my fault. Making poor Zane go crazy. The thing is, mi corazon, I really am a witch.”

  He snorted and his eyes traveled up and down my body. “A witch. Makes sense, I guess. That’s how you do the ritual thing with the halfies?”

  I nodded.

  “A witch as well as a wolf and a snake?”

  I could have done without the snake nickname for Athanate, but I nodded again.

  “And so?” he said, pushing back.

  “Not even a little bit afraid, guapo?”

  “No.”

  I was listening to his heartbeat, inhaling his scent. He wasn’t lying. If anything, he was more aroused than when I’d sat down. He’d enjoyed being called handsome, too.

  “I need...” despite everything, I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling and drew it out. My voice had dropped half an octave. “I need a favor.”

  He snorted again and wrestled his voice back to the way he wanted it to sound. Casual and in control. “You don’t write. You don’t call. You don’t answer your freaking cell. You fly all the way down south and it’s because you want something only I can give you? Am I surprised?”

  I bit my lip to stop answering that isn’t surprise in your pants.

  Instead I said: “It’s hard. To explain, I mean.”

  “Try me.”

  He’d stopped frowning, and now he was playing word games with me.

  “There’s a woman who’s been kidnapped, that I need to rescue,” I said. “This is all about Adept politics...”

  “Power, you mean. And whenever the people in power need someone to be rescued, they send you, like they sent you down to Albuquerque last time to talk to the crazy werewolves.”

  “They didn’t send me, and anyway, look what happened.”

  “Yeah, you came down without a single fucking clue about the situation in New Mexico! You nearly blew up the state, nearly got killed by us, nearly got killed by rogue Athanate, got us into a war with the Confederation—”

  “Rescued the person I went to rescue, and a couple of others, tripped up the rogues, got Cameron and Felix in bed with each other, literally, and helped a halfy change, too. The Confederation was already at war with you, unless you were going to just roll over, which you weren’t. And we met, as well. All worked out okay.”

  I got a bleak stare for those last comments before he spoke. “How insanely stupid is it this time? Come on, tell me she’s being held in Confederation territory or something.”

  I winced.

  “Shit, woman! I’m right, aren’t I? You want some werewolves to go attack the Wind River pack or something.”

  “No. Not that bad. We think she’s being held in Ashley National Forest.”

  He just shrugged—he didn’t know where that was.

  “The wilderness area where Colorado, Wyoming and Utah meet.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “So, not just knocking on the Confederation’s door, but pissing off the neutral neighbors in Salt Lake as well. No. The answer is no, Amber.”

  “Hear me out. Please. This is really important.”

  I didn’t say: Help me, Obi-wan Zane-obi, you’re my only hope.

  Nope. Not going to say that. Even if it was kinda true.

  “If it’s too close to Wind River territory, or the Salt Lake pack gets itchy, we pull back unless Felix and Cameron give us a green light—”

  “Which they won’t until they’re good and ready,” he interrupted, “and convinced it’s worth it, to them. So, tell me, is it?”

  Getting Kaothos back to Tullah was worth it to the wolves, but I couldn’t explain why to them yet.

  “Yes,” I said and left it at that. “First we need to find out exactly where it is, and I can’t get enough spare wolves from the Denver pack. It’ll take weeks to get my new pack from El Paso to Colorado. I can’t drum up enough Athanate, either.”

  “What about the Adepts? Aren’t there any who will help?”

  “A handful. Not enough. And better at defensive fighting anyway.”

  “So you come down to ask the crazy wolves who hang out in New Mexico and haven’t got anything better to do.”

  “What have you got on your hands, apart from setting up a new pack in El Paso?”

  “The Sonoran pack are pushing in on Arizona,” he said, with a jut of his jaw, “and the Tucson pack are our allies. We’re helping them.”

  “And that takes a lot of your resources?”

  He was bullshitting. A year ago, it’d been the New Mexico packs on their own, keeping everybody out of their territory by their reputation of being both crazy and deadly. The Denver pack to the north, Tucson to the west, El Paso to the south, and Amarillo to the east. Maybe Mexican packs as well.

  All of those US packs were now allies in the Southern League. That had to have freed up a lot of foot soldiers. Or paw soldiers, technically.

  “Yeah, okay,” he conceded. “Let’s imagine, theoretically, we help you find this kidnapped woman, and she’s not in Salt Lake or Wind River pack territory. What then? You want my wolves to attack? What would we be facing? Adepts? A mix of Athanate, Adepts and Were like at Carson Park? Guns? Magic?”

  “Won’t know much until we find out where it is, and I’m not going to jump into any confrontation without all the bosses being on board.”

  “So just hunting the location?”

  “Unless the bosses say otherwise.”

  Or events overtake us.

  “Who have you spoken to?”

  “Skylur. Alex. Haven’t spoken to Felix and Cameron yet... unless you think it’s necessary.”

  Big boy like you doesn’t need to talk to the bosses.

  “Don’t try that pop psychology bullshit on me,” he said.

  “Okay. Sorry about that. But let’s say, theoretically, you’re going to lend me a hundred wolves—”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  His eyes narrowed and his jaw muscles rippled before he spoke. “Maybe.”

  Maybe was good. Maybe was halfway there.

  And despite what Alex said, Zane wasn’t going to ask me what he was getting in return. He was either arrogant enough to believe that he’d get it anyway, or smart enough not to say it outright to me.

  “Could you get them up to the town of Vernal tomorrow, ready for several days out in the wilds?”

  “Shit! Not only have you taken my best lieutenant and landed me the job of shifting the White Sands pack down to El Paso, but you want me to whistle up seventy-five werewolves and ship them to the other end of Colorado, and you want it done tonight. Who’s paying for this, by the way?”

  He was down to arguing over details now.

  “Bill me for the costs.”

  Skylur had said everything you need for this, apart from more Athanate. Transporting werewolves to help out had to come under that.

  “As for your lieutenant, Rita,” I went on, “she told me she volunteere
d and it was Cameron who raised the option. And lastly, cariño, I can help you with the White Sands thing.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Instead of sneaking around El Paso as if you were planning to invade enemy territory, hand the work to Alex. We’re all one pack now, remember? Cameron’s words were: one pack, New Mexico and Colorado. Alex has got to be down here anyway, so why would it need two of you?”

  He scowled. He didn’t refuse, and his grimace showed how unhappy he was that he hadn’t even thought of it that way.

  “Why would I want to work with Alex?”

  “Because the bosses said you have to, and they appointed me to make sure it happens.”

  He grunted at that. It was what Felix had said: to ensure the two parts of the pack work seamlessly and without friction, we appoint Amber Farrell as liaison.

  “Mi corazon, the last thing I need is to be traveling back and forth between the two of you, interpreting your snarls into diplomatic language that doesn’t get the other’s hackles up. None of us has time for that, and it would weaken the defense against the Confederation.”

  He didn’t like it, but he knew I was right.

  This was exactly like sparring in the gym; while he was off balance, I pressed my advantage.

  “Which is why I called Alex and told him I was meeting you down here. He should be along any minute. By the end of the day, you’ll have agreed on a way for White Sands to move in while the old El Paso are moving out. Houses can be traded, businesses handed over. Less hassle, less waste, less inefficiency. You’ll be free to look after more important things. Win-win-win.”

  Zane actually snarled, loud enough that someone wandering through the terminal stumbled and looked around to see where the rabid dog was.

  Alex’s reaction hadn’t been that different when I called him on the way down, but I’d worn him down. Eventually, he’d given me the address of the pack’s house in Vernal. He’d agreed to order the Denver pack’s patrols in the area to incorporate the search for Weaver’s hideout, promised to send me twenty-five reliable El Paso werewolves to help... and he would order them to coordinate with New Mexico pack members that Zane was going to send me.

  If you get any, he’d said.

  Snarky bastard. Well, I’d done okay on that count.

  Meanwhile, Alex had arrived here early. I could tell he was outside, and there was nothing wrong with Zane’s werewolf senses.