The Road to Wolfe (The Sanctuary Series Book 4)

by Nikita Slater

  I hear a skirmish off to my left, in a copse of trees that spills from the top of the valley down into the river. Grunts and growls alert me to the presence of Primitives. I pull the gun from my holster and unsheathe my knife, striding rapidly toward where I'm hearing the noises.

  I round a boulder in time to see Skye launch a full-on attack against three zombies. They have her surrounded and are lunging at her, teeth snapping, limbs flailing. Every instinct in my body screams at me to run into the fight and take them out before they can touch her, but I hold myself back. Skye is a creature of intense beauty. The way she moves, fluid and graceful, her weapons slamming home with each strike. She doesn't miss once as she cuts each zombie down, killing them before they can hit the ground.

  In a matter of seconds, she’s surrounded by a twisted bloody heap of limbs, torsos and heads. Blood is splattered across her shirt and legs as she turns to face me, her weapons raised, her pistol pointed straight at my face.

  My lips twist into a grin and I say to her, "That was a beautiful fail."

  She cocks her head to the side and blinks at me. "Fail?"

  I nod. "We want them alive, right?"

  Her bloodthirsty gaze lands on the gruesome mass at her feet and her pretty face twists in a grimace. "Oops."

  Twenty-Seven

  Despite the three zombies that Skye found, or that found her, the night passes uneventfully. We leave the fire raging in the hopes that it will attract our prey. Two men take guard duty while the rest of us sleep in the cars. We do guard rotation every few hours.

  Though Skye attempts to take another rotation, I tell her to remain in the car. While I may trust her to fight, I want her fresh for the hunt, not exhausted with slow reflexes.

  The next morning, we have a quick breakfast of fresh buns made for us by Hannah, paired with another round of antelope meat and soup.

  We agree to drive further northwest, still skirting the mountains and remaining as close to the river as possible. It's starting to look like our zombie hunt is going to be a bust, but we push on anyway.

  After several more hours of driving we find an old abandoned gas town.

  Shortly after the Fall, before survivors began organizing themselves into Sanctuaries, small towns with resources like gas, crops and water were inhabited. Unfortunately for the inhabitants, the Primitives found easy prey in these small, isolated towns. As the years passed and Sanctuaries cropped up, survivors moved out of the smaller towns and into the heavily walled and guarded Sanctuaries, turning gas towns into ghost towns.

  When we attempt to fill the vehicles with fuel, we discover empty tanks. This isn't a problem for us since we didn't anticipate a fuel stop and calculated our mileage accordingly.

  "Zombies like these old gas town settlements," Skye says casually as we drive through the main street of the empty town.

  I don't reply, my gaze on the cracked pavement as I carefully maneuver through the town.

  "No recent activity," Skye murmurs, her sharp eyes scanning the area for movement.

  "They might still come looking for survivors," I say to her, stopping the car outside of a group of buildings that look like they’ll make good cover if we can lure a horde our way. "We’ll spend the night here, use the buildings for cover."

  I climb out of the car and she follows my lead, gazing around at the ramshackle buildings with a critical eye. Half of them are in such disrepair they’d be dangerous for us to explore. Everything is covered in weeds, vines and dirt.

  "What if they don’t come?" she asks.

  "Then we head back to Sanctuary and prepare another party. Try our luck again in a few weeks, maybe head out in the opposite direction."

  Skye turns to me, hands on her hips. "You know what I like about you? You’re tenacious. You’re willing to play the long game, give a good idea a chance to work."

  I’m damn near stunned by her words. "Didn’t know you liked anything about me."

  She shrugs and sets off for the nearest building that looks semi-inhabitable. "Well, you can’t be all bad all the time."

  I would argue that I can be bad all the time, but I like her playful mood too much to contradict her.

  She tries to open the door of a building that looks like it was once an old hotel, but the door doesn't budge. She puts her shoulder against it, braces her feet and shoves harder. Still, it doesn't move. I throw my shoulder into it next to her and it flies open with a poof of dust. I catch Skye’s shoulder and steady her so she doesn't fall over from the momentum. We both cough as dust settles all around us.

  We step into the shadowy building and Skye looks around critically. The entire room is a ramshackle mess. Roots have broken up most of the floorboards and vines have creeped through the windows to wrap themselves around old rotted furniture.

  "Home sweet home," Skye says dropping her bag on the floor.

  I assess the hotel with narrowed eyes, deciding that she's right, this will make a good base for luring zombies. I head outside and gather my men around. Skye follows behind and stands next to me as I speak, her arms crossed under her chest, her leather armbands gleaming in the sunlight.

  "Kingston, take two of the men and check out the rest of the buildings on Main Street. Pair up in teams and choose buildings to stake out. Make sure you stay hidden. We’ll lure them here to the hotel and you can ambush them from behind. If there's too many, kill the ones we don't need, but remember to grab at least three of them."

  As the men scatter to search through the buildings, Skye comments from next to me, "Good plan, bringing an entire horde down on top of us." She grins her approval. "I like it."

  She stuns me with the heat of her smile. It's so unexpected, so rare that I can't help but stare at her. She’s in her element, out in the wild, flexing her zombie hunting skills. I recognize the look, because I feel the same. I wish I could take that smile, or the feelings that smile engenders, wrap them up and hold them next to my heart forever.

  "Let's check out the hotel," I say gruffly, turning to go back inside. "Stake out some attack points."

  "You say the most romantic things," she says with a laugh, following behind me.

  I wish I was smooth speaking enough to banter with her. When she's in a good mood like this I want to bask in the heat of her attention. But I've never been able to engage in meaningless conversation with people. Instead, I listen and learn, looking for weaknesses in the people around me before exploiting them.

  Skye doesn't seem to care about my lack of conversation. She chatters to me as she wanders through the hotel, gingerly placing her feet so as not to fall through any of the rotted floorboards. I follow her closely, intent on keeping her safe if she does happen to find something harmful. We carefully make our way upstairs and check out each of the guestrooms. There are twelve in total, though four at the back of the building are missing the outside wall. The elements have rotted all the furniture and rusted all the metal.

  We make our way back downstairs and attempt to find a way to the basement to see if there are any lurking Primitives who want to fall in with our ‘catch the zombie’ plan, but the stairs to the basement have long since fallen, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. One of us could drop down and search, but I decide against it.

  Skye runs outside to grab a solar flashlight from the vehicle. She comes back in and we shine it through the hole, squinting into the darkness before determining that there's nothing down there except for possibly rats and cockroaches.

  Skye sits back on her haunches and says to me, "I think we'll just have to wait. Hopefully they show up tonight."

  I grunt a noncommittal response that seems to satisfy her. She heads back out to the vehicle to bring in our packs, including bedding and food and water. She tosses mine at my feet and sits down, her back against the wall, and starts digging through her pack for some of the food Hannah packed for us.

  I leave her for a few minutes as I check on my men, making sure they’re in place for a potential ambush. I determine that everything
looks good and head back to the hotel.

  I follow Skye’s example and reach into my own pack, pulling out a flask filled with water, unscrewing the lid and drinking deeply.

  We don't speak, just sit in companionable silence, eating and drinking. Eventually, Skye’s eyes begin to drift shut and I think about waking her up enough to get her to lay down on her bedding, which is now spread out on the floor in front of her.

  Without opening her eyes, she speaks, showing me that she hasn't fallen asleep, "Tell me, Wolfe, if you wanted to be Warlord so bad, why didn't you ever try to depose Silas? It wouldn’t have been too difficult after he got sick."

  It’s possible her words are meant to incite annoyance or anger, but I feel neither. Skye likes to test me. She likes to push me to see if I'll lash out at her. I believe this attitude is a combination of a life filled with grief and hardship, and an inability to find her place in the world. If she goes on the attack first, then she won't be hurt when her assumptions are proved correct and the worst happens to her.

  When I don't immediately say anything, she pipes up again, her piercing grey eyes opening to meet mine. "Were you afraid that you'd lose? That Silas would defeat you?"

  My lip tugs upward in a twisted grimace and I shake my head. "There’s no chance that Silas would’ve won in a battle against me. Not in full health, not even with an army at his back. His security force was loyal to me, not him."

  "Then why did you choose to come back here..." she looks around the room, realizes that "here" is a broken-down hotel in a nonexistent town in the middle of nowhere. "The Santa Fe Sanctuary, I mean. Why did you take over as Warlord?"

  "You've asked me that before." I don't like repeating myself.

  "You didn't give me a good enough answer before," she says, her voice challenging.

  I debate whether or not to indulge her. She’s right, I have a very different motivation for taking the position of Warlord in Santa Fe.

  Skye is a complicated and challenging woman, one who doesn't scare easily, but who also gets skittish when it comes to some things, like intimacy and responsibility. I was unwilling to give her my entire plan, knowing that it could drive her away. It's been enough of a struggle getting her to engage in Sanctuary, engage with me. I didn’t need to give her one more reason to attempt an escape.

  Perhaps it’s time to tell her the whole truth. She's worked hard over the past several weeks to create a solid city council to help strengthen Sanctuary, to connect with the citizens. She’s setting down roots and becoming more reconciled to staying. Perhaps she deserves to know what the ultimate plan is.

  "I never wanted to be a Warlord," I tell her.

  She nods and I believe that she understands. I’m a lone wolf. I don't like being around people. I don't solve other people's problems. I don't rebuild cities. Unless Skye is involved. I’ll do anything for her, including taking on the burden of Warlord in order to create a city that will satisfy her every need, a wall that will protect her, and a position that is worthy of her.

  "Then why did you take the position of Warlord?" Bewilderment infuses her tone.

  "For you." I try to get her to see the truth in my expression, but she shakes her head, not understanding.

  "That doesn't make any sense, you couldn't have known that I would come back to Santa Fe."

  "I knew," I grunt.

  She frowns at me. "Explain."

  I lean back against the wall opposite from her and sling my arms over my knees. I tip my head back into the wall, the vines cushioning me as I think. Finally, I say, "I wanted to give you a place to call home."

  I can feel her eyes on me though I don't look at her. Her voice reaches out to me from the shadows, sharp but beautiful with the husky tones that are uniquely hers. "Home can be anywhere. You didn't have to go through the process of taking over an entire city, kidnapping me away from my vaccination team and forcing me to fix a bunch of problems that shouldn't have been mine to fix. You could've just stayed in the Tucson Sanctuary with me. We could've… built a home there."

  My heart aches at the longing in her voice. I understand. She misses her sister and she was sad when I left her behind. But she’s still not getting it.

  "I didn't want you to just have a home, I wanted you to have a Sanctuary. Your Sanctuary."

  She growls her frustration and snaps, "Just say what you're trying to say, I don't understand."

  I tilt my head back up and pin her with a look. "Warlord." When she continues to stare, I spell it out, "Your place is Warlord of the Santa Fe Sanctuary."

  Her expression slowly melts into understanding. She finally gets it. As soon as the truth sinks in, she shakes her head, stiffening against the wall as she says, "You can't be saying what I think you're saying. Me become a Warlord?"

  "Yes." I don't say more. I don't need to. She understands now.

  "I can't be Warlord," she scoffs, laughing bitterly at the thought, though I can see her brain whirring at the possibilities. Her head continues to shake as she ponders the idea. "A woman can't be Warlord."

  "You will be Warlord," I assure her quietly.

  "I can't," she whispers, the agony of longing in her voice. She’s realizing how badly she wants what I'm offering, but she's holding herself back from taking it with both hands, which means she's not ready for it yet.

  The time will come when she is ready and the position will be hers. I will step down and she will step up.

  I look her dead in the eye and say, "You will."

  Twenty-Eight

  Skye

  Anger surges through me as I scramble to my feet, leap over my sleeping bag and plant myself in front of Wolfe, with legs spread and hands on hips.

  "You can't force me to become Warlord!" I snap at him.

  The whole idea is absurd. Me? Warlord? Ha! It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't know where Wolfe got such a terrible idea, but I'm going to set him straight if I have to bash the idea right out of his head.

  When he just continues to sit on his ass, gazing steadily ahead, chewing on his piece of deer jerky I growl at him, "You think you can force me to stay and be Warlord? You’re wrong, I will find a way to leave the Santa Fe Sanctuary."

  His eyes travel slowly up my legs, linger on my hips, move up to my breasts and finally settle on my face.

  "You won’t be leaving. If you try, I’ll find you and drag you back." His voice is steady and the authority that constantly surrounds him is still there, despite him sitting on the floor while I tower over him angrily. "You don't have a choice. Eventually, you will take your place as Warlord."

  "You have no right to constantly dictate my life!" I shout, storming away from him so I won't do something incredibly stupid like try to kick him in the head. I can only imagine how badly that would end. The man has the reflexes of his namesake. He'd have me pinned to the ground, my fragile neck under his fist in seconds. I whirl back around and glare at him accusingly. "I’ve put up with enough of this. It's time for you to stop forcing your agenda on me and to let me go my own way."

  His thick brows draw together. "You’ve had enough?" he growls, his deep voice reverberating through the room. "We haven't even begun yet. You'll be unrecognizable by the time I'm done."

  "Are you threatening me?" I reach for my knife, my hand settling on the hilt.

  "I'm promising you." He stands slowly, reaching his full height and going for maximum intimidation as he towers over me, his shadow stretching across the floor in the bright light of the setting sun as it creeps through the broken windows. He steps toward me, his stance intimidating. "You will be Warlord."

  "I will not." Unable to contain my anger anymore, I reach out and slap the deer jerky out of his fist, my hand making a red mark on his wrist. The jerky flies across the room.

  Wolfe looks at the jerky unconcernedly, then raises his gaze to me. "You hit me."

  I laugh out loud, my tone unamused. "You can't handle a light slap?" I taunt. "No wonder you want me to take over as Warlord. You probabl
y can't hack it."

  I know I'm being as asshole, but I can't help myself. When I'm faced with emotionally charged situations I fall to pieces. I've never been taught how to properly handle anything like this. My family was torn apart while I was still developing. All of my teenage angst was poured into mourning my parents and then, later, my grandparents and sister. I've never had the opportunity to understand how real relationships work. Even my relationship with Silas had been lopsided. He had many wives, and though I was favoured, I still had to share him. I'd bottled my emotions and played the dutiful wife. Yes, I loved my husband, but I can also recognize that he hadn't necessarily been good for me.

  "You hit me," Wolfe says again, emphasizing the word hit as though he wants me to understand something.

  "What’s your problem?" I shout at him.

  It finally occurs to me, a split second before Wolfe strikes. When I was first brought to Sanctuary, when I tried to fight him, he countered my physical attacks with kisses. Apparently, the rule still stands.

  He shoves me back so hard, when I hit the wall it shudders under my weight and the entire hotel creaks ominously. I’m too stunned to immediately fight back as he falls on me. I open my mouth to tell Wolfe to take it easy before we do some serious damage to the building with us inside, but he uses the opportunity to slam his mouth over mine, thrusting his tongue into my mouth.

  Before I can even think to bite him, he grips my jaw and holds my mouth open wide. I'm not sure if this is to protect himself from my bites, or if he's trying to gain better access, but either way, he sweeps my mouth in a kiss so all-encompassing it can barely be called a kiss. It's painful, it's exhilarating, it's everything I’ve come to expect from Wolfe. Wild, untamed, completely feral. His teeth cut me until I taste blood. The blood doesn't bother me though. If anything, it turns me on.