Azure (The Silver Series Book 5) (2 page)

Traer’s eyebrows rose. “You're sidestepping
the fact that she cut you with her knife and you still defended her
against Ben and Brian. A dangerous move, I might add.”

I tossed the bloody cloth onto the counter
and picked up some gauze. “They'll live, and they know better than
to mess with me.”

He nodded. “For now. Your size will only
protect you for so long. One of these days they’re going to attack
when you’re weak.” I rolled my eyes at the words he had said many
times before. Two was still mine and their strength was no match
against me. His brow creased. “You didn't answer my question.”

We both knew I didn't have to answer
anything to a gray, but he was my friend and had never been
anything but true to me. I wiped the blood from my hands with a
clean cloth and shrugged. “She looked like she needed help.”

“
She's not some injured
puppy, Vance.” He glanced at me. “You can't keep a Hunter here
without consequences. Too many lives are at stake.”

“
Tell me about it,” I said
quietly. I threw my rag with the others. “Would you rather I had
let her die?”

Traer didn't reply. He tied off his last
stitch, wrapped a bandage around her arm with smooth, deft
movements, and checked the other bandages one last time. He sighed.
“Well, she might live. She lost a lot of blood and the grays
definitely gave her a working over, but she's still breathing so
we'll see if she lasts the night. Humans heal a lot slower. A wound
we'd recover from in a day could kill them by infection before it’s
even had a chance to close.”

I frowned down at her still form. “Tell me
something I don't know.”

Traer glanced at me. “You're going to have
to explain this to your parents?”

My lips twisted into a wry smile. “No doubt
Ben's already beat me to the punch. You'd think they were his
parents the way he fills them in on everything that happens
here.”

“
And twists it to fit a
profitable point of view?”

“
Exactly.” I let out a
breath. “I'll deal with them tonight when they call. For now, help
the others clean up and give me an account of the injured and
dead.” I rubbed my knuckles absently and a thought occurred to me.
“Traer?” He turned at the door. “Have the boys bring what weapons
they collect. The scent of silver in the bullets was stronger. We
need to see what they're using.”

He nodded and pulled the door shut behind
him. I stretched gingerly. My shirt clung to the knife wound along
my back, but it was already healing and was nothing more than an
annoyance. I sat slowly on a chair by the fireplace and studied the
still form of the girl.

Straight black hair swept across the side of
her face in a soft caress, accentuating fair skin and full lips.
Her brow creased as though she felt pain, but Traer said that his
sedative wouldn't wear off for hours. I stood up again. It was too
much to be in a room with a Hunter while my comrades were gathering
bodies and tending to the wounded. I went to the door, then paused
at the question of if she would be safe while I was gone. A small
smile touched my lips at my foolishness. If there was anything a
werewolf respected, it was territory. She would be fine as long as
she stayed in my quarters.

I shut the door behind me and walked down
the hallway, trailing my hand along the red rock walls in a habit
that had stayed with me since childhood. The familiar rough grains
under my fingertips calmed my troubled thoughts. I followed the
twists and turns of the natural rock formations to the wide dining
room. Natural benches carved from the red rocks were interspersed
with worn couches, a television set that had seen better days, and
a dining table that had once been my mother’s newest fad, but now
showed the dents, scratches, and carvings of fourteen werewolves
stuck in one place for too long.

Thomas was there, the other Alpha besides
myself and the Lopez brothers. He tended to Johnny's arm and
glanced up to meet my eyes when I walked in. His expression was a
mixture of concern and amusement. “Found a pet?”

“
Very funny,” I
replied.

Zach came in with Max close behind.

“
What's the report?” I
asked.

Zach cleared his throat. “Riff, Sam, Jason,
and Sy are dead.”

I took a slow breath to ease the anger that
ran through my veins. The urge to hit something flared and I rubbed
my knuckles. Several of the werewolves closest to me backed up and
dropped their eyes.

Ben continued, “Johnny, Drake, and Brian
were wounded but recovering. Twenty-four Hunters are dead.”

I stared at him. “Twenty-four? What'd they
do, bring a small army?”

“
Looks like it.” He met my
eyes, his gaze serious. “They were definitely out for
blood.”

Ben walked into the room. “I put the guns on
your table. That Hunter's sleeping on your couch.” He gave me an
accusing look.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up and
I fought to keep my tone calm. “What do you want me to do, have her
sleep on the floor?”

“
If she has to sleep
anywhere,” he said.

My control slipped. “She's not an animal,” I
snapped before I could stop myself.

“
Neither are we,” he
growled back. “Yet they hunt us like vermin.”

“
And I did my share to stop
them,” I said in a tone that warned he was about to step over the
edge.

Zach cleared his throat, his eyes on the
ground. “By my count, Vance killed fourteen of the Hunters
himself.”

Ben's eyes widened in surprise, then
narrowed. “Why keep the girl then? She's one of them.”

“
That's what they say about
us,” I pointed out. “She was obviously inexperienced and I didn't
feel like she deserved to die.”

“
Did Sam?” Ben asked
softly.

I leaped at him and it took four werewolves
to hold me back. Larger than any of them, I often felt more like a
bear than a wolf. I waited until I felt under control again, then
shrugged them off. The knife wound across my back had open again
and start to bleed. I rubbed my forehead and sighed. “Zach, Max,
take the trucks and haul the Hunters' bodies to White Horse
Canyon.” I met Ben's eyes. “We need to prepare our friends' bodies
to send home to their families.”

He looked like he wanted to say something,
then he nodded and turned away. I sat next to Johnny. “How's the
arm?”

He grimaced when Thomas touched a
particularly painful area. “Just peachy,” he said from between
gritted teeth.

I gave a small smile. “What's the other guy
look like?”

He let out a laugh. “You don't want to
know.”

Traer entered the room with his physician
bag. He tended to Johnny's arm in silence, stitching the wound with
just enough thread to hold it together so it would heal without
scarring. He then nodded toward my back. “You gonna let me take
care of that?”

“
It's fine.” I shrugged,
then winced. It should have started healing, which meant the knife
she had used was silver and there were possibly fragments in the
wound. I gave up and pulled my shirt off, then leaned forward in my
chair.

“
By fine, you mean still
bleeding and full of silver slivers?” Traer replied, frowning. He
pulled instruments from his bag and got to work.

Chapter 2

I met Ben and Thomas in the storage room.
The bodies of our friends had been laid gently on the tables we
usually used to clean our weapons. It felt wrong to smell their
blood mixed with the tang of steel and oil. Sam’s pale face stared
unseeing at the recessed lights above. The life was gone from his
gaze. It was as though I looked into the vacant eyes of a fallen
elk. I reached out and closed his eyelids with a hand that covered
up most of his face. His cool skin sent a rush of regret through my
body and I fought down the urge to phase and run away, leaving the
others to do the job I dreaded.

I dressed Sam in the clothes he saved to
wear when his parents came to visit. The black shirt, red tie, and
slacks failed to hide the haunting wound in his forehead that
glared at the edge of my vision no matter where I looked. I combed
his hair, smoothing down the cowlick that persisted stubbornly in
front. His black hair stuck up again despite my efforts and I
blinked back tears at memories of him running through Two, his eyes
bright and hair a mess as he followed me around. Three years
younger than me, the kid was constantly into everything to show me
he was old enough to be my second despite the lack of the usual
hierarchy of a pack within Two. I turned away with the painful
thought that I wouldn’t hear his footsteps trailing me any
longer.

Ben and Thomas finished with the other
bodies, and then as if on cue the remaining werewolves in our group
filed into the room. It felt small, cramped with the scent of
werewolves and blood, steel and pain. No one spoke and eyes flitted
over the bodies to rest on me, waiting.

I dreaded the words I had never spoken,
words that were inevitable now. I took a breath, let it out, then
said quietly, “My brothers, bodies of flesh and blood no longer
your souls hold. Run without the confines of bone and sinew, howl
without the constriction of lungs or breath, and live within the
embrace of the moon and her welcoming light. Your lives are one
with wolvenkind, and your hearts will beat with ours forevermore.
You will not be forgotten.”

The other werewolves repeated the words four
times, once for each slain brother, in a low chant that echoed
mine. The voices spoke the words that had been passed on to us by
our parents and drilled into our thoughts when we were young. The
words were older than our parents’ parents. Each werewolf at Two
knew the chant, but none had ever wished to repeat it. It felt
final, as though as the last word faded away it took the souls of
the werewolves with it.

I closed my eyes and a howl reverberated
from my chest. I never howled in human form, but the Uniting Chant
required it, combining both the human words with the mourning cry
of the wolf. A wolf howl expressed pain and sorrow far above the
limited words of the human, and I put every throb of pain and loss
from my heart into the howl. The others waited until my voice rose,
then theirs lifted as well to mingle heavy and full of sorrow in
the room. When I stopped, the tones echoed down the long red rock
corridors, whispering back to us as though the souls of those who
had been slain called in answer, their voices faint from the life
beyond.

I set a hand on Sam’s head and closed my
eyes again. “Never forgotten, always one,” I whispered. I moved to
Sy’s table and did the same. The others followed me, their voices
quiet after the howl. When I finished with Jason and Riff, I left
the room and walked down the corridor to one of the back exits we
rarely used. The footsteps of the others faded away behind me. The
ritual was done, now everyone would have their space to mourn
alone.

Once my feet touched the sand still warm
from the sun, I took off my shirt and phased. I padded away from
Two, my mind escaping into the simpler thoughts of the wolf. The
loss pounded with every beat of my heart, and the thought that I
had failed those who looked to me for protection echoed over and
over in my head. I bowed my head and let me paws take me away from
Two and the sorrow that would meet me when I returned.

***

I walked back to my room later that evening,
my mind heavy with loss. I kept seeing Sam’s blue eyes, open but
blank to the world, no reflection of life left where such a spark
of joy and excitement had been.

I put my forehead against the door to my
quarters for a minute; the cool metal brought a slight relief to my
pounding headache. I pushed the door open, shut it behind me, then
was blinded by a spark and something slammed into my shoulder. It
took me a second for my eyes to clear so I could make out the
Hunter girl crouched beside my couch with a gun in her hand.

“
Are you crazy?” I
demanded. I gestured toward the door. “I'm the only thing standing
between you getting torn to pieces by a dozen angry
werewolves.”

She glanced uncertainly at her gun, then
glared at me. “Don't you feel pain? Shouldn't you be dead on the
floor or something?”

I fought back a growl and took a step toward
her. “I'm concentrating on not tearing you apart myself right
now.”

“
Like an animal,” she said
with a satisfied tone as if I had answered a question she hadn't
voiced.

“
Like someone who just got
shot.” I crossed the space between us and ripped the gun from her
hands, then threw it across the room. “If you recall, you attacked
us. We were minding our own business when you came to camp with
guns blazing.”

“
You're werewolves,” she
said as if that should answer it.

“
We bleed just like you,” I
shot back.

Footsteps ran down the hall followed by
pounding on the door. “Vance, you alright?”

I glared at the girl and she cowered against
the couch. I made my way back to the door and leaned against it, my
shoulder on fire. “Everything's alright. I was just testing out
these new guns.”

Thomas' voice was doubtful. “Try it outside
next time. It'll keep you from going deaf.”

“
I'll keep that in mind,” I
replied dryly.

He waited for a minute outside the door,
then his footsteps receded down the hall.

My arm tingled and fingers were numb. I
flexed them and turned back to the girl. “What did you guys add to
these bullets, anyway?”

Her face was pale as if she realized I had
just saved her life again. I didn't have any doubts as to what
Thomas would do if he found out she had shot me. She swallowed.
“Uh, I'm not sure. My dad's the one who makes them.”