Jagged mountain tips buckled to a concave surface below our position on top of the ridge road. Like an ancient desert pushed up by giants, a random assortment of whites, creams, tans, and reds streaked the basin within the forest.
I’d be a speck on the quarry floor.
“The dried lakebed and surrounding cliffs are a sandstone quarry,” Herc said. “That’s where we’re playing tonight.”
“What businesses are associated with this grid?” Fear was sinking its claws into me.
“This is high-quartz Sandstone. Mature. We use it in construction. Paving. Housewares. Fountains.”
Most of that meant nothing to me. It would take years to understand all this. “The businesses are local?”
He slowed and took a small dirt road. “Yes. This town survives on exports to the surrounding regions though. Bluff City is the largest of them. Ragna used to be the sales rep for that area after Dad died.”
My mum? A sales rep. “I never knew that.”
Herc didn’t answer.
I spoke again. “I spoke to Jiani.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Do you know when Murphy died?”
He clicked his tongue. “I’d need to look it up in our public records. Sometime in the spring around eighteen years ago.”
When I was three.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Jiani seemed to think Murphy would never leave Mum. She believes that his death prevented him returning to us. I’m not sure if I believe that. Mum seemed to think he’d left us for good. But I can’t remember exactly how old I was at the time to check.”
“Right. Well, I can tell you that Murphy stayed in the valley for a week. He wouldn’t speak about Ragna. I asked many times where and how she was, but he refused to answer. He didn’t mention you either, obviously.”
Did Murphy drive here straight from Queen’s Way? Did he intend to come back?
“He didn’t say anything else?”
Was he Murphy or Dropkick?
Herc shot me an apologetic glance. “I recall being frustrated when he wouldn’t give me details. We hadn’t heard from Ragna for years. By then, we’d put two and two together that Murphy was with her. When he turned up, I thought my sister might want to come back too.”
That would be a bitter pill to swallow.
“Murphy’s family are stewards and still in the area,” Herc said.
Really? “How many?”
“Two sisters, a brother, and his father. And his mother too.”
Oh my god. I had a grandfather, a great grandmother, two aunties, and another uncle. My breaths turned shallow.
“If you like, I can arrange a meeting? Things between our families deteriorated after Ragna left. She was the flightier of the two and they blamed her for taking Murphy away. But I’m happy to try.”
I’d gained two relatives in the last two weeks. Five more was too much right now. “Maybe down the track. If they won’t be offended? It’s just a lot to take in.”
I wasn’t sure where I stood on the Dropkick Murphy front yet. Until then, getting to know his family was an overwhelming concept.
Shifting on the seat, I said, “Do you think something else happened to Mum to make her leave?”
“I wondered at times,” Herc answered, a wrinkle between his brows. “What could drive her away though? She loved this valley more than almost anyone else. Her friends seemed to think there might have been an accident. For myself, I saw Ragna’s mounting exhaustion. I saw the battle was wearing on her. It sometimes happens to people who throw everything they have into Grids. I think my sister just got tired of it all and didn’t know how to face us about leaving. So she ran.”
I absorbed that as we drove past a long line of cars on either side of the road. I had the number for another of Mum’s friends. Maybe she could tell me more about Murphy and Mum.
Herc stopped the car by a sign that read, Thana Reserve.
“Isn’t it awkward for both sides to drive up here and park? Do we just ignore each other until the game starts?”
He grinned. “Our side has a one-hour head start on the grids to counter the wolf’s speed.”
“Oh. Handy.”
He passed me a bag out of the boot. “It is. Not their best negotiation. In this grid, specifically, the head start is a major advantage. We’re able to claim higher cliff ground and essentially pick them off. Though we haven’t played in Sandstone for a long time. The wolves usually pick Timber or Iron. Timber because it’s the most even playing field. Iron because it yields the best profit of all the grids.”
I wouldn’t have suspected Herc’s nervousness if he didn’t admit the truth earlier. His blue eyes were firm, posture relaxed, and his chin tilted.
My teeth were rattling in my head.
Reaching forward, I squeezed his forearm. “We have this in the bag.”
He winked. “I know. We should hurry. Go change, but here—”
I caught a small spray bottle.
“—spray your hands with that before dressing and cover any visible skin with it after.”
“What about my hair?” I asked, clutching the spray bottle.
“Wolves are colour blind.”
“No shit?”
Herc smiled. “Yes shit. Make sure to cover your skin with the spray. And put on the mask too.”
Maybe I’d empty the whole damn bottle over my head while I was at it.
All the better to keep Alarick away.
I looked like a giant, saggy ball sac. Where were the badass black outfits from last week?
Herc snorted at my expression. “And that’s why no one likes Sandstone.”
“You don’t look so bad.” His uniform didn’t have a tight condom hood or the white linen mask with built in bug safety lenses.
Seriously. A tight cream Lycra underlayer was flattering in approximately zero ways. Linen strips were stitched on top in an array of whites, reds, and tans. Cleated mountain shoes matched the cream Lycra.
I felt like a display of what happened when dogs ate white chocolate and socks.
“The leader should always be easy to see,” he said, eyes watering.
“This better not be a new recruit prank.”
His lips twitched. “The other stewards probably wish it was. Follow me.”
I walked in his wake. “The game is going, right?”
“We’re half an hour in. In another thirty minutes, the Luthers will enter the grid. But most have been here for hours.”
“Really? Why?”
We worked down a steep slope through thinned trees.
“Because they’re wolves. Google won’t tell you everything about their kind. Some things you can only know from experience. Then there’s the differences between wolves and werewolves, which are ample. For instance, most people have a visual of a wolf pack taking down a moose or deer or Belle’s father from Beauty and the Beast.”
My eyes flew to his back.
How the hell did he know I was thinking that?
Herc stopped at the bottom and waited for me to catch up. “The reality is somewhat different. Wolves are incredibly intelligent. It would be remiss of me to call Luthers anything but. Wolves in nature are very suspicious, and Luthers are no less. Both species expect traps. A hunter may pile meat in the middle of a clearing in the hopes of shooting a wolf. But a pack will eat other prey, or not at all, as they stalk and circle the pile for weeks—months even—before making a move. Then overnight, the meat will disappear.”
“They’re cautious.”
The last of the trees cleared.
We’d reached the dried lakebed now, but from here the texture of the quarry was easier to note. High overhead, sandstone had been sliced away to form great tiers which casted us in shadow on the ground level. They’d sliced downward, too, and a huge pit yawned to my left. Another we walked past was deeper still. The quarry was like a giant uncompleted game of 3-D Tetris.
Stacks of sandstone were piled at intervals, and I tried to
bury the uneasy feeling a werewolf could be behind any of them.
Herc spoke again. “Their caution is a strength and a weakness. The game is two hours long. The Luthers are on the grid for one of those. Their wariness has helped them survive the ages, but inaction does not help them in the game. Their tendency to assess for days and weeks is something to overcome. It’s unnatural for them.”
Humans had the opposite issue.
“How are we doing?” Herc asked.
I squealed when some sandstone moved.
Fuck, it was a person!
I did not expect the camouflage to be that effective.
“Everyone is in position. We managed to lay five new traps.” The wrinkled, grey-haired woman held out a screen to him.
He took the tablet. “Pascal, have you met my niece, Andie?”
The woman extended her hand, but her mind was clearly elsewhere as we shook.
“Pascal is our marshal,” Herc said. “Each side has one. At the end of the game, the two marshals walk the grid together and tally the points—one point for a trapping or shooting. The player must still be confined in the trap, physically held by an opponent, or unconscious from a tranquiliser dart when the end cannon sounds. One point is lost for each Luther that shifts to wolf form during the game and for any Luther who enters the grid early. Two points are lost for causing serious and sustained injury. Loss of grid for murder.”
Chills raced down my spine.
This was eerie as hell. Cliffs rose up at least fifty metres overhead, but a tonne of stewards could be watching me. I couldn’t see a single person.
“Why would a wolf shift if they lose a point?” I asked. “And how do you track that?”
Pascal murmured. “We have heat sensors throughout the grids. In wolf form, their heat signature is off the charts. They can’t shift without us finding out. Plus, they have an almost uncontrollable urge to howl in that form, which gives them away.”
“Do heat sensors pick up partial shifts?”
She glanced at Herc, then me. “No, but technically that wouldn’t be against the rules. We have a team analysing small surges registered by the sensors to see if we can track it, however. The information would be useful.”
“In answer to your first question,” Herc passed the tablet back to Pascal, “Luthers can’t always control the shift. Heightened emotion, particular negative emotions—fear, anger, grief, hate—loosen their control. We did push that aspect for a while, but in wolf form, they’re unpredictable and deadly. Triggering that wasn’t worth the potential consequences.”
“Ten minutes,” Pascal announced.
“We’ll move to a higher vantage point for the game,” Herc said. He jiggled a white rope I hadn’t even noticed as we passed by a cliff.
Craning my neck, I followed the rope up the sheer stone face. Rock climbing ropes?
Would I learn to do that at some point?
Yuck. I didn’t do well with heights one bit. Not in a frightened way. My vision went loopy.
Machinery was lined up around the corner of a tier. We filed onto a cherry picker, and I clutched the rail as Pascal directed the tray upward.
“Do you have a map of all the traps?” I closed my eyes as the ground rolled and surged.
“Recruits are required to memorise maps to the best of their ability through an app and a virtual reality programme. We used to wear watches that buzzed when a trap was near, but the wolves caught onto that after a while. They could hear it.”
“I’m assuming they can’t hear us now?” This all seemed like pretty crucial information to bandy about.
Cracking an eyelid, I caught his smile.
“Werewolves are sensitive to a particular frequency. They struggle to hear through it. We have frequency generators running right now. Though we encourage everyone to keep things vague while in the grid just in case.”
This must have taken decades for them to piece together.
We stepped onto the top tier and Pascal beelined for a tower that extended higher still. A square viewing platform sat on a tall metal framing with stairs circling up through the middle. Kind of like an observation hide.
Herc climbed with me close behind.
I focused on the rail, clutching it tight.
“We alter the traps after the wolves are tricked the first time,” he said, not puffing in the slightest. “Changing the location of the trigger—that type of thing. But Luthers do love to use our traps against us, so that can be an issue.”
We reached the top of the observation tower, and I leaned on the balustrade to recover.
“There’s a lot to learn,” I muttered between pants.
I hated not being in possession of all the facts. I may be here for Mum, but Herc and Rhona’s opinions meant something to me at this point. I didn’t want to enter the grid and be a liability.
“Don’t sweat it. Thousands of people have wrapped their heads around this in the past.”
“So if I fail, it would truly be a first?”
Pascal laughed lightly, binoculars raised and focused on the opposite end of the valley to where we entered. “They’re at the ready, Herc.”
“Can I see?” I asked.
Herc unclipped his own binoculars, and I played with the dials, surveying the far end of the quarry.
My stomach lurched when I found them.
Fuck.
No matter how many times the lesson was hammered home, I couldn’t wrap my head around this werewolf thing. There they stood in two-legged form, in three long rows that spanned the length of the quarry.
“The white is a new addition,” Pascal murmured.
White chalk streaked their savage faces. I couldn’t imagine the streaks would have much of a camouflage effect, but if their intention was to be terrifying, mission accomplished.
I scanned the rows until I found him.
He stood in the middle, near the front, talking with Luthers either side. Alarick had to be important. That seemed like an important-ish position, at least. I held my breath, tightening my grip on the binoculars as I noted the tense set of his shoulders and the clenching of his jaw.
He looked terrifying with the white chalk swiped over his face and through the ends of his shoulder-length hair.
I hope someone shot him in the neck with a dart. Teach him to touch me like that.
He lifted his head and looked directly at me. I froze before recalling he couldn’t see me.
… Could he?
That was a really, really direct stare.
Alarick smiled and turned to listen to Leroy on his right. My gut flipped. That smile better not have been for me.
Boom.
Biting down on a yelp, I quickly passed the binoculars back to Herc.
“The Luthers aren’t running in tonight,” he said.
The wolves moved into the grid as a unit, sticking to the cover of walls and cliffs. Groups peeled off at intervals, stopping at uniform distances. The pack traversed across the lakebed toward this tower, and my breathing shallowed.
That was just a coincidence, right?
How the heck was Herc not pacing the shit out of this tower?
“This is how they entered Timber last week,” Herc said, leaning on the rail.
Their unity was eerie.
A flag went up—red.
“One for us,” Pascal said, tapping on her tablet. “Trap 113. Gets ’em every time.”
My eyes widened. How many damn traps were there?
“They can hardly leave the cover of the cliffs,” Herc said with grim satisfaction. “We place traps there. Stillness. That’s crucial here, Andie. And to maintain high ground. From high up, we have the best vantage point for shooting. Their guns have less range uphill, they’re limited by the extending tiers, and we’re physically stronger when fighting from above. The wolves have tried any number of techniques to gain that ground in the past.”
I squinted as thwacks rang through the quarry.
Herc groaned. “They cut the climbin
g ropes on the bottom tier. We have to set them up each time we’re here.”
Smart though. That had to put a massive dent in the Thanas’s hour head start in Sandstone. And cost them dollars in replacing equipment.
Another red flag. And another.
“Two of the new traps,” Pascal reported.
“Excellent,” Herc murmured.
Was that three points to us?
A clatter echoed through the quarry, and I tensed, squinting at the wolves. They were holding something.
“They’ve brought net guns again,” Herc said, gripping his walkie-talkie. “Knives at the ready. Nets incoming. Over.”
He finished, and there was a rustle on the cliff faces before a series of deep booms thundered in rapid succession.
I jumped as nets exploded through the air.
Movement exploded.
Werewolves sprang for the cliffs, and only my grip on the balustrade stopped me backing away double time. They didn’t need ropes. The monsters ran, leaping higher than humanly possible.
I gasped as they punched their hands into the Sandstone, surging upward in an unnatural, beastly tidal wave.
Stewards who’d fallen victim to nets were frantically trying to free themselves. Some were struggling. I itched to snatch the binoculars from Herc.
“They’ve reinforced the nets,” he whispered. “Knives aren’t working.”
That couldn’t be good.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The frontline of the beasts reeled back. I pressed a hand to my cheek as one wolf ripped a dart from his neck. Snarling as he continued upward, but his scrambling climb turned sluggish, and his head lolled without warning. I covered my mouth as he toppled backward, crashing all the way down.
“Unless their heads are removed or they sustain fatal injury, they won’t die,” Pascal said conversationally.
I turned my still-widened eyes on her. I had a feeling they’d never return to normal.
Herc pressed his lips to the walkie-talkie. “Initiate phase two.” Releasing the button, he shot me a look. “Communication over the talkies needs to be vague. We change the frequency each week, but they figure it out soon enough.”
There was so much more going on down there than I could fathom.
Shifter Wars: Supernatural Battle (Werewolf Dens Book 1) Page 17