Authors: Judy Teel
A single, nearly silent crunch of a leaf and I dropped to one knee, sweeping my knife from left to right above me as I did.
The blade sliced through the shirt and into the stomach of the man as he passed over my head. His momentum carried him about four yards past me where he landed on the ground, curling around the wound as he rolled to a stop. Blood seeped between his fingers and dripped into the dirt as he winced.
I gave Cooper my best scowl. "Thanks for your help."
Off to the side, he opened his silver-green eyes and sat up. "You're getting better." He gave me one of his swoon-worthy smiles as he leaned against the tree behind him. The light dappled through the branches and across his thick brown and black brindled hair, making the threads of silver running through it shine. "I might consider graduating you."
"And spoil your fun?" I took a step back to give myself a better view of our new friends. "At least now I know why you let them capture you."
The gash on Travis' stomach didn't look too bad. In about fifteen minutes it would be on its way to being a line of pink new skin, and then in another thirty look as if nothing had happened. Maybe faster, if the evil eye he was giving Cooper and me was any indication.
"Don't you two know it's impolite to sneak up on people?" I commented. Keeping the gun on them, I wiped my knife off on a patch of moss and slipped it back into the sheath in my boot.
Pulling in a breath, the male Were took in my scent, and I did my best to pretend not to notice. You'd think I'd be used to that particular Were practice, but nope. Maybe that was why I was still having trouble using my own enhanced sense of smell to read people. Going around sniffing everyone was too gross for words.
"You're human," Travis accused as if his getting out-smarted had been some kind of accident.
Cooper got to his feet smoothly and sauntered over to the fallen woman. "If Addison weren't, you and your friend would be dead." Gripping her elbow and wrist, he slowly pulled her forearm away from her body as she grimaced in pain. Lifting the female's upper arm to align the shoulder, he then leveraged her wrist back toward her stomach. A dull
thunk
came from the shoulder as it reseated. "Why did you attack us?"
Flexing the fingers of her reset arm, she looked at Cooper. "Our Alpha's orders—"
"Don't, Sharon," the man gritted out. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, one arm clutching his stomach. "Trust no one."
Cooper crossed to Travis and hoisted him to his feet by the front of his T-shirt. Pulling the Were's arm away, he yanked up the hem. A nice pink scar was the only evidence of his encounter with my knife. "They're healed," Cooper said, shoving him away. "Collar them."
I unclipped both of my Paranormal Restraining Collars, or PRCs, from my belt. PRCs were designed toward the end of the war to help level the playing field where humans versus paranormals were concerned. I used them regularly in my line of work. Glad I'd refused to leave them behind when Cooper took my Browning.
The gray tube was only as thick as my little finger and had a narrow code box attached to the front. On the back was the lock. The code box displayed a seven-digit keypad that opened the collar if the right code was punched in. If the wrong code was entered or anyone tried to get the collar off by force, it generated a contained laser sweep that decapitated whatever was wearing it.
Even better, the collar was locked on, the indicator light next to the keypad changed color depending on what you'd disabled. In my opinion, one of the better post-paranormal inventions.
I handed the PRC to Travis. "Try not to break it," I said, when his fist tightened around the smooth gray tube. "I don't think even a Were can grow back severed fingers."
He snarled and snapped the collar around his neck, flinching as the shock of the device suppressed his Were DNA. The resentment burning in his golden-brown wolf eyes never faltered as they turned an unimaginative, and very human, brown.
"You're next," I said to the female Were, Sharon. She gave me the same sour expression but clamped the collar on without comment. As her fancy yellow wolf eyes turned a pale hazel, I checked the clip on the Glock and tried not to miss my Browning.
When I went into business for myself, I'd had the gun modified by a talented friend of mine named Falcon. In addition to bullets, it held an arming chamber that shot hollow glucose-based dissolving needles that were filled with some special and illegal formulas of my own — one for vampires and one for Weres of any kind that nature could come up with.
What I shot out of it depended on what I was aiming at. It was possible to stop paras with bullets, but if you weren't an excellent shot it took a whole clip to do it. Taking the time to squeeze off that many rounds wasn't a great option when you were fighting things that moved as fast as they did.
I gestured with my borrowed gun for our new captives to follow Cooper. With another set of resentful glares they complied, and we started down the path toward camp. I wondered what Miller would think of two more mouths to feed.
*
*
*
We were about three hundred yards from camp when I realized something was wrong. Granted, I was still new to the Were gig thanks to the suppression spell laid on me by the mother who'd abandoned me, but I knew what the urge to fight, snarl or shift meant when it slammed into me — trouble.
That, and Cooper bristled up, coming to a stop on the path in front of us.
He turned suddenly and shoved Travis down, forcing him to sit on the ground. Our eyes met and I repeated the precaution with Sharon. Then, in a smear of motion, Cooper was gone.
Pushing away my worry, I stepped back to give myself plenty of clearance in case Travis or Sharon tried anything. I leaned against a tree, prepared to give Cooper a good twenty minutes before I decided he needed backup. Of course that might mean our prisoners would make a run for it and frankly, if they didn't at least give it a try, I'd have a hard time respecting them in the morning.
Travis seemed to be thinking along the same lines, faking being sick from the PRC by resting his arms on his bent knees and letting his head hang between them as sweat dripped from his face. I couldn't fault his reasoning. As far as he knew the odds were two humans to one, even if the one was armed. With his Were arrogance still fully functioning, he probably thought they had a pretty good chance.
Up the path, I heard the whisper of something brushing up against the green leaves of the laurels we'd passed on the trail a moment ago. "Attacking random people in the woods can be a bitch," I said, focusing on the soft touch of a light step on dark, damp dirt, this time to my left. "You never know what kind of welcome you'll get."
An explosion of movement from the woods skimmed across my skin and I dove for the ground, rolling as I fired. The bullet from the Glock grazed the gray wolf's shoulder as he sprang at me, and I jumped to my feet. I backpedaled to give myself more maneuvering room as his paws hit the trunk of the tree above my prisoners and he pushed off, landing on the path in front of them.
"You won't stop him," Sharon said, her eyes lit up with anticipation.
"We'll see."
The wolf's lips curled away from his teeth, showcasing long sharp fangs as a low, threatening growl rumbled in his chest. Tightening my finger on the trigger, I waited for his next move and hoped it would give me a clear shot of his heart. With a groan, the man behind him fell over into the leaves.
"Travis!" Sharon cried as a shudder ran through his body.
She screamed as Travis started thrashing and bucking, clawing at his PRC. The wolf snapped his teeth at me and then pounced on Travis, trying to hold him down.
Travis' eyes rolled back in his head, showing nothing but the whites, and dark, thick blood seeped from their sockets. The wolf backed off of him and into Sharon, pushing her away as he did. She skirted past him and fell to her knees beside her companion. "Travis," she whispered, balling his shirt in her hands.
A tortured scream ripped from his throat and dark blood gushed out of his mouth and ears. He grabbed the PRC in both hands.
"No!" she screamed, trying to pull his hands away, but he knocked her down, rolling and twisting in his frenzy to get the device off.
Alarm surged through me as the collar gave off a high-pitched warning signal. "Hands off the collar," I ordered. I didn't want to shoot him, especially while he was wearing the PRC, as the injury would be significant without his Were ability to heal and withstand pain. But before I could pull the trigger on the Glock, the collar's laser engaged with a hissing sizzle.
Travis' scream cut off abruptly.
He twitched and then shuddered. Slowly his head rolled to one side, severed cleanly, the flesh and bone cauterized. A shocked thud of my heart against my chest and then blackened blood erupted from his neck, spraying Sharon and soaking the ground.
The wind sifted through the trees, making shadows ripple across his body and over the woman as she stared in disbelief at the blood splattering her clothes and arms. Then a scream exploded from her — a long, piercing sound full of misery. Grabbing her hair in both hands, she tore out handfuls of the long red strands and threw them at Travis' body. Then she lifted her head and howled.
The gray wolf padded up with his head down and pressed his shoulder against hers. Then he sat down and raised his muzzle in the air, joining her human voice with the haunting melody of his own song. Their sorrow filled the forest around me and soaked into my soul, tightening my throat.
Underbrush crackled behind me, catching my attention along with a comforting, warm scent. A few seconds later, Cooper pushed through a bank of laurel bushes on the path up ahead, bloodied and battered. His gaze swept over the scene in front of him. His expression darkened when it landed on the gray wolf.
"Knox," he said, a note of command in his voice. "What's happening to Bone Clan?"
The wolf ducked his head, ears flattening. His gaze flickered between Cooper and the ground.
"Knox," Cooper repeated, a growl of warning in his voice. "Friend or not, I will get an answer from you."
The gray wolf stepped back from the grieving female and his body began to glow. His wolf shape compressed, stretching shapelessly up before sprouting the general shape of arms and legs and a head. The shape solidified, features refining, hands and fingers and feet becoming distinct. The shape of a man's body glowed for a moment and then the light pulled inward, concentrating in the middle of his chest. There was a sharp crack of sound and a naked man stood on the path — slender build with tanned skin, dark brown eyes, and short light brown hair, the tips dyed red, which surprised me.
Knox crouched down next to Sharon and rested his forehead on her shoulder.
"My practitioner is gone," Cooper said to him. "Our supplies were taken. Know anything about that?"
I took a step toward the Weres, anger flaring into my gut. "What have you done with Miller?"
"It's dangerous to be here," Knox said. "The Alpha's orders—"
"I'm here on the Alpha's orders," Cooper snapped and Knox flinched. "I've been legally summoned," he added in a softer tone.
Sharon slammed her fists against her thighs and looked up at me, her outraged face streaked with tears. "Travis is dead," she gritted out. "You see the blood. You saw his madness. One of us is next."
*
*
*
My logger boots crunched across the sticks and leaves cluttering the narrow deer trail as we hiked up a steep hill. Before we'd headed out, Cooper had gone with Knox to retrieve his cache of clothes from where he'd left them, and then they'd collected several large rocks to cover Travis' body. After that, we'd started off, following the trail left by Miller's captors.
Sharon walked behind Cooper with Knox in front of me. They weren't exactly our prisoners anymore, but something weird was going on and I wanted to keep the Glock handy and my eyes trained on the two of them. As the trees closed in tightly on either side of us, I rubbed the back of my neck and hoped that for once the faint tingling sensation brushing across my skin didn't mean bad things were headed our way.
Opening my senses wider, I scanned the dappled light and shadows around us and tried to tell myself that I was being paranoid. As a young child, an afternoon in a park had been an unusual and coveted treat. Grass and trees and playgrounds full of kids that had accepted the lies I told them about my fictional perfect family.
After years of paranormal fighting those parks had turned wild and dangerous, becoming great places to end up as a midnight snack for a rogue Were or a vampire, renegade or civilized — there wasn't much difference. People liked to think that the vamps who'd stepped forward to help beat back the terrorists were just people too. They were probably the same idiots that believed the rumors about Central Park unicorns.
Cooper signaled for us to stop. In front of him, a line of animal skulls dangled from tree branches and clattered in the light breeze, marking the path.
"I'm guessing we're in
Bone Clan territory now, right?" I commented.
Turning left and then right, Cooper pulled in several long breaths, testing the air. "Something's wrong."
As soon as he said it, a shiver swept up my back and my stomach knotted. That was the only warning I got.
One minute I was looking around for what in the hell was sneaking up on us, the next, three Weres slammed down on us, dropping from the trees and covered in mud.