Treeland Pack Tales 3: A Trace of Ivy (3 page)

“He won’t. They shred their clothes all the time when they
change into beasts.”

Ivy nodded and tried to gather enough spit to swallow the
lump of fear clogging her throat.

“K-Kat’s right. You have to go before the others wake up.”
Tess turned her freckled face toward the unmoving teen.

“Move your ass, girl, lock us in, and don’t forget to put
the key back on the hook.”

“Come with me.” Ivy pleaded with the women, for the
umpteenth time.

“M-My arm hasn’t healed right. I’m too weak to run fast.
Besides, the child shouldn’t die alone. I don’t even know her name.” Tess’s
voice thickened with emotion.

Kat scowled at her, but her big brown eyes were shiny with
unshed tears. “I’d just slow you down. Quit stalling, or I took a beatdown for
nothing.”

After a final yank on a denim knot, Ivy shot to her feet.
The room blurred. She gulped back the sudden bile that rose, and bowed her head
to get more oxygen into her brain.

“Slow, deep breaths, babe.” Kat rubbed courage into Ivy’s
bruised backbone.

Ivy nodded and grabbed her friend’s hand, squeezing gently.

“Hang in there. I’ll be back with the cavalry, I promise.”
Ivy prayed she hadn’t just lied.

“N-not going anywhere.”

Ivy gave Tess a last quick nod, gathered her courage, and
turned away before she lost her nerve. She pulled the door open a narrow crack,
praying it wouldn’t squeak and alert the sleeping beasts. Quiet as a mouse
stealing bait from a trap, she locked the heavy padlock and then scurried down
the stairs.

An unconscious Dud sprawled across the foot of the
staircase, blocking the exit. At least he was in human form. The beasts seemed
to doze with one eye open.

She placed each step with care and clung to the handrail as
she edged past. His rotting-meat stench singed her nostrils and made her
stomach roil.

“Ungh,” he grunted.

The guttural sound gave her less than a second’s warning
before his massive arm flailed. She tucked her legs up, all her weight held by the
flimsy pole. Her heart hammered against her breastbone. She fought to breathe
without gasping or heaving.

From her new perch, she spotted the aptly named Rank lying
across the entrance to the living room. His ginormous snout rested on his
forepaws. One yellow eye was open a narrow slit. She forgot about breathing.
Air was way overrated.

“Umph.” Dud listed toward the other wall, knocking his glass
meth pipe down a couple of risers. A big foot thudded against the front door,
and then he slumped, wedging himself firmly between her and freedom.

She darted a glance at Rank. He whimpered, his ears
twitched, and his legs scissored in a mockery of his normal lope. She eased her
weight off the rail and back onto the threadbare carpet covering the steps.
Contact with the surface cleared some of her panic.

The hook for the keys, on the left of the entrance, might as
well have been in Paris. She had to leave the key where it would be easily
found. She leaned past Dud, stretching until the wide ring slid over her hand
and onto the glass doorknob with the tiniest clink. She held her breath, frozen
in place until the roar of her blood subsided. Not trusting the silence, she
watched Rank from the corner of her vision. Satisfied he’d slept through the
small noise, she swept the living room with her gaze.

For long seconds she couldn’t make herself move. The other
women would die unless she brought help. She had to try for the back door.

A heavy motorcycle was parked next to the coffee table. That
was new. As if the beasts weren’t fast enough without wheels. The bike was
weird, but it didn’t chill her blood. Three more monsters slept in human skin
in the shabby front room. A second enormous wolf napped half on, half off the
couch. The brown mound of fur might be either Jack or Bro. She wasn’t going to
prod the male for a closer look at his markings.

One footfall at a time, she picked her way over Rag’s
outstretched arm and narrowly missed treading on a brown paw. Her stomach tried
to climb up her chest as she scaled the coffee table to avoid the brown, furry
parts that seemed to take up half the space. Cold sweat dripped down her spine.
She breathed through her mouth to control the urge to vomit.

Sly lay catawampus across the narrow passage that led to the
kitchen and the back door.

More worrisome, the tangle of limbs only accounted for seven
beasts. That left Vic and either Jack or Bro, both vicious killers, at large.
Vic was the head asshole and not likely to go missing or to leave the house
alone. Were they crashed in one of the bedrooms or on patrol outside—waiting to
jump her? Or were they already on a hunt?

Her stomach lurched, and her pulse leaped into sprint range.
Fear propelled her forward. She cleared the last beast in a single bound and
landed light. Her feet barely made contact with the linoleum floor before she
bolted for the exit.

She slowed long enough to crack the door with caution and
close it just as silently.

The final rays of a fiery sunset sank below the mountains to
her west. With nightfall the beasts woke hungry and horny. She had only a few
minutes left to make her escape.

Cold seeped through her denim bindings from the frost-coated
steps. For a moment she strained to hear the warning snarl. Hearing nothing,
she scanned her surroundings for a promising exit.

A discouragingly high spiked fence enclosed one side of the
yard. An even taller, dense evergreen hedge blocked the rest of the property.
If there were neighbors, then their houses were as dark as the one she’d left.
She didn’t know where she was or what direction to go for help. The adrenaline
rush of terror started to ebb. She was only twenty-three, but after weeks in
captivity she felt ancient. Her teeth chattered, and every bruise and cut hurt.
The impossibility of her quest overwhelmed her and threatened to seep away her
small store of courage.

She drew in crisp, clean air—a definite improvement over the
monsters’ stench. If she failed, she’d be beaten. Worse, the beasts would
tighten security. There would be no second chances for Kat or Tess.

She took off across the lawn.

The crisp frozen grass crinkled under her weight—first time
she’d seen frost this late in March. She had bigger problems than weird
weather. She glanced over her shoulder and frowned at the tracks she’d left.
Nothing she could do about the bent lawn. Even if she could erase the
footprints, the monsters’ uncanny sense of smell made her too easy to follow.
She searched the backyard for a way to disguise her trail.

A cobweb-filled shed yielded half a gallon of gas in a
plastic container. She doused her bound feet, praying for a dearth of matches,
lighters, and flints. When she’d soaked her bindings and exited Spiderville,
the lawn was still vacant. The dark house seemed equally unoccupied. She went
with the survival instinct screaming for her to put distance between her and
the beasts from hell.

She plunged through the thick hedge, straight into a
snowdrift.

At least five miles later, she dropped to her knees on
pavement. A big improvement over the gravel road she’d followed this far.
Asphalt meant civilization, right?

She sure as hell hoped so. Snow still clung to the highway’s
shoulder. She had no idea where she was, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t
the Bay Area. The realization made her wonder how much time she’d lost to the
drugs the beasts used whenever they needed to move the women. Vague memories of
being shoved into the back of a panel van sent a shudder that had nothing to do
with numb feet through her blood.

Would the monsters search for her? She couldn’t chance it.
She stayed close to the road’s edge, ready to leap into the underbrush
bordering the blacktop at the first glint of headlights.

An hour later, she’d made another couple of miles. She was
stopping too often to rub circulation back into her tired feet to go any
faster. The sky took on a pearly pink predawn glow that warned her it was time
to get off the road and find shelter.

The faint hum of an engine jerked her gaze over her
shoulder. A sixth sense propelled her off the shoulder. The slushy ground gave
way beneath her weight. She tumbled down the steep bank. A passing boulder
grazed her head. Blackness welcomed her home.

* * * *

In decent weather the trip to Cedar Grove would’ve taken
four hours at most. It was four a.m. and Chet had been on the road for almost
eight hours. A flurry of snowflakes worsened his visibility. The two-lane
county road had a sheer cliff on one side and impenetrable forest on the other.
He slowed the Land Rover to a crawl.

An hour later he found Darin’s place. No sign of the sheriff
or his SUV. Chet sniffed around long enough to pick up the male’s scent, then
consulted his notes and entered the address for the Hawthorne property into his
GPS. A pleasant female voice directed him to drive north for approximately
three-tenths of a mile.

The Hawthorne place appeared as deserted as the sheriff’s
house. Chet parked and got out of his rig. A couple of recent tire tracks
crossed the driveway. He followed the crisscrossing patterns, picking out two
distinct vehicles. One was equipped with snow tires, the other, chains. He ran
along the heavy tread marks into a nearby copse. A few fir branches made a poor
camouflage. He spotted the light bar atop the white sheriff’s SUV. His gut
tightened. He opened the driver’s side. In addition to the prominent county
decals on both sides of the rig, the smell instantly confirmed Darin’s
ownership. The vehicle yielded no other usable clues.

Chet doubled back to the house. The front door hung slightly
open. He kicked it hard enough to bang against the inner wall and entered the
dwelling. His nose told him that he’d found the rogues’ hideout, but there was
no one home.

Blood, sweat, and fear clogged his nostrils. Twice he
stepped outside to breathe the cold morning air and clear his sinuses. He
picked up traces of the sheriff in the kitchen and tracked him to the
swift-running creek to the west of the property. His savaged corpse had caught
in a tangle of dead limbs wedged against a fallen tree.

He reached for his cell.

“Yeah.” Daniel’s voice was sleep roughened.

Chet cleared the frustration out of his throat. “Found the
sheriff.”

“Dead?”

“Absolutely.”

“Rogues.”

The boss hadn’t made it a question. Chet answered anyway.
“Yeah.”

“Any survivors?”

“My nose says no, but I haven’t searched the house. I
followed Darin’s track to a creek.”

Daniel took a turn clearing his throat. “I’ll send a crew to
retrieve the body. Stay in touch.”

“Will do.”

Chet removed his clothes before wading into the icy stream.
Like all full-blood male werewolves, he was too heavy to swim. The fast-moving
water presented a serious challenge, but he wasn’t about to leave the hazardous
business of retrieving the rogues’ victim for others to deal with.

A half hour later, he recovered what was left of the male,
closed the eyes, and wished the sheriff speedy swift journey into the shade.

After a minute of silence, he dressed quickly and headed
back toward the Hawthorne place.

On his way back through the hedge he caught a whiff of
gasoline, then traces of fear laced with apple, cinnamon, and sweet surrender.
Even in skin, his keen nose put together a multilayered report on the recent
activity in the backyard. A scared, smart Beta bitch had disguised her trail
and fled through the dense shrubbery. Rogue stench topped the traces of her
fear. The bastards were trying to track her. He reversed course, snarling while
following her trail like a bloodhound.

Five miles later, he reached the county road and noted his
surroundings. He notched a sapling for good measure and loped back to get the
Land Rover. As fast as he was, the vehicle was faster. She might need urgent
medical attention. The only solution was to stay on her track on foot, then
double back and move the rig closer every few miles.

She had to be freezing. He pushed his ground-eating run into
a sprint.

Another mile along a road, he found her crumpled against a
fir trunk halfway down a cliff. Tawny-blonde hair hid her features. Below an
ugly plaid coat, her long, bare legs curled close. Dirty rags wrapped her feet.
She wasn’t moving.

Sheer stubbornness propelled him down the rocky slope. He
knelt beside her and gently brushed matted strands away from her face. A faint
blue vein pulsed in the hollow of her slender throat.

He held his breath while he examined her, taking care not to
jar her. He found no obvious broken bones or open wounds. Scrapes and bruises
on her knuckles had started healing. She’d fought hard. In tribute to her
courage, he pressed a kiss on the back of her hand. She was frighteningly cold.
When he touched a chicken-egg-sized lump at the base of her skull, she drew her
limbs tighter and made a small whimper.

A low growl erupted from lips curled back in challenge. His
fingernails lengthened and thickened into claws. With his wolf so close to the
surface, he had to fight to stop the shift. A primal instinct to pull out a
weapon and stand over the small unconscious female dug into him like badger
talons. The irrational urge seemed to appease his inner wolf. The beast
retreated, although he remained tense and alert.

There was no immediate threat. His wolf’s reaction made no
more sense than him wanting to guard her did. She needed fluids, warmth, and
medical help. For a couple of seconds, he sat back on his well-shod heels. An
overpowering feeling he needed to keep her safe rocked through him. Where the
fuck was this coming from? A shudder rippled across his shoulders. He rolled
the strangeness away. Whatever weirdness had infected him did nothing good for
her health. He held tight to this nugget of sanity and got his ass in gear.