There were howls of agreement, and Storm gave a bitter huff. The trouble was, he was right. The Pack was more important than anything else.
That’s why you have to protect it, she thought. That’s why you can’t ignore the hard truths like this! How is it you can’t see that?
“We will train together, every day,” Lucky said, his voice slightly quieter now. “We will make sure that we are a strong, united Pack when we face our enemies. And every dog will know their place,” he barked.
Storm knew that remark was meant for her, but she couldn’t even muster the energy to feel angry about it—she just felt desperately sad, as if a heavy stone were tied to her heart and dragging her down.
Her eyelids began to feel heavy too. She shook her head a few times, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to see properly—even with her eyes open, everything looked so dim. She tried to blink to clear her vision, but after a while she couldn’t summon the energy to reopen her eyes. Storm’s muzzle met the earth, and then there was nothing but darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Storm jolted awake, her heart beating for a few moments like a terrified mouse running in circles before she looked around and found she was still in the hunters’ den. There was a soft, speckled green glow in the den, the Sun-Dog warming the leaves and branches that sheltered it. She was alone.
Good. She had needed to sleep last night—she’d dropped off on the edge of camp and could have slept all night, and gone sleepwalking again, if Bella hadn’t nudged her awake. The golden dog had wanted her to sleep in the den, but instead Storm had gone for a walk, treading around the camp perimeter until she felt she could sit without slumping back into sleep.
She’d been snatching moments of sleep all night, either huddled at the entrance to the den or sprawled on the ground outside, getting up to walk off the dizzy feeling of falling. At some point, the Sun-Dog had risen and the others had emerged from the den, and Storm had thought it would be safe to go inside and shut her eyes.
She felt a pang of morning hunger, but the idea of sharing prey with the rest of the Pack made her stomach twist anxiously, until she couldn’t tell the hunger from the sick feeling anymore. She would have to face the others soon, but she hated the idea that they would all stare at her, after her outburst yesterday.
It’s not my fault. How can I be a good dog and stay obedient to my Beta when his decisions are so rock-headed?
Why won’t Lucky listen to me?
He always used to—even when she had been a pup, she had felt like Lucky was on her side. Now, it seemed he only had time for one thing: his pups. It was as if he was desperate to protect them from harm, but the idea that the real threat might be from a dog that was close to him, a dog who was hiding true darkness, was too frightening for him to even consider.
Storm supposed she couldn’t blame Lucky. She was asking him the hardest question she could imagine: Which of your Packmates do you think might be capable of murder?
She could understand him dreading the answer.
Lucky wants the foxes to be responsible, because foxes are outsiders—not-dogs, who can be battled and defeated.
But wanting that wouldn’t make it real.
Storm stood up and shook herself hard, from her head to the tip of her tail. There was a threat to the Pack, and if the other dogs weren’t going to try to find out what it really was, then she would have to do it alone. She left the den and padded out of the camp, heading for the woods where Whisper had been found.
And if it’s you? That persistent voice of doubt sneered into Storm’s mind again, but she sniffed the fresh air and held her head high.
If it’s me . . . I will face what I’ve done and take the consequences. What would those be? she wondered, a chill running down her back. Would she be scarred? Exiled? Would she be killed?
Blade would have executed any dog who posed such a threat to the Pack, but perhaps Storm’s swift-dog Alpha would have mercy—if she thought the killer deserved any.
These were dark thoughts, darker even than Storm had become used to, and she pushed them away as she stepped into the small clearing where Whisper’s body had been. Looking for evidence that she’d killed him would be as bad as Lucky scratching around for evidence that the foxes had done it—she had to try to keep an open mind. It was the only way to find the truth.
There must be something every dog had missed, something that would point to the dog who had killed Whisper. Storm lowered her snout to the ground and made herself sniff all around the clearing, searching for anything that stuck out. The spot where Whisper had died still smelled faintly of blood, where it had soaked into the ground. Storm could make out the scents of the Pack as they’d crisscrossed this space, though she could tell they had been avoiding walking across the earth where Whisper’s body had been.
Then, just for a moment, there was something. . . .
A volley of enthusiastic barks from the camp stole her attention away, and when she looked back, she couldn’t think what it was she’d seen. It was just a patch of darkness that looked different, somehow.
She shook herself and tried again, sniffing intently for any scent that seemed out of place. Whisper’s fear-scent lingered very faintly in one spot, and Storm hesitated. She could normally scent anger on other dogs—and the kind of fury that a dog would need to feel to kill a Packmate should have left a trail. But the only thing she picked up on was Whisper’s terror. She shuddered. How could Whisper have been killed by a dog who felt nothing?
Perhaps sleeping dogs don’t make scents like waking ones do.
Storm shut her eyes and focused only on her nose, trying to shut out the sounds from the camp and the nasty voice in her own head. No more distractions.
I have to see what is really there.
When she opened her eyes again, the forest felt strange, as if Storm could see every leaf and every twig in sharp focus, but at the same time she could take in the whole of the scene in front of her. She felt her heartbeat slow down.
There. The dark patch she’d seen before and lost. It was a paw print, pressed deeply into the soft earth underneath the thin branches of a bush, where it had been sheltered from the rain and the passing dogs who had obliterated the rest of Whisper’s last paw prints.
The print was small—about the right size for Whisper, too small to be Storm’s own—and deep enough that Whisper must have been putting a lot of weight on it.
If he had been pressing down on the ground, scratching the earth in fear or tension, he would have raked the ground with his claws. There was no sign of that. Storm looked around for other prints nearby. If he’d been standing with one paw there, then the other prints should be . . .
But there weren’t any other prints, until she looked farther, past the bush, almost hidden by the roots of a tree.
This wasn’t the print of a dog standing in mud; it was the heavy tread of a dog who was running.
Storm followed from one print to the next, each spaced at the limit of how far a dog Whisper’s size could stride. She could see him now . . . racing through the trees, some dog at his heels, his fear-scent blinding him to the smells of the forest. She could see his gray fur in front of her, beaded with sweat, and the way his ears flapped against his skull as he turned to look over his shoulder and his eyes went almost black with terror at the sight of her. . . .
Storm stumbled to a halt and let out a strangled whine. Is this my imagination, or a memory? She pressed her eyes shut again, but this time she focused on the hunger in her belly, the feel of the mud under her paws, the scent of the damp forest—anything but the vision of Whisper running for his life to get away from . . .
Storm’s eyes flickered open and her ears swiveled as she realized just where in the forest she was. The camp was behind her. Whisper had been running away from the camp, away from the protection of his Packmates.
At her paws, there was another of the prints, and this one had something caught in the mud at one edge. Carefully Storm scrap
ed at the earth until the little, hard, white thing fell out of the gap it had been lodged in.
It was a claw. No dog would have run fast enough to lose a claw if he hadn’t been terrified, and no dog would run away from the Pack when he was afraid, unless . . . he didn’t think it was safe. Unless he’d been attacked by something that came from within the camp. Her stomach turned as she looked at the little claw. It must have hurt tearing off. Something about it made Whisper’s terror so much more real.
Storm sat down heavily on her haunches, breathing fast.
If I did do this . . . She stared down at the ripped claw, trying desperately to think clearly and not let panic sweep over her. If I can avoid dreaming, am I safe, or is there no way to stop it? Should I leave the Pack now, to protect the others? The idea was too painful to bear. What would she do? Where would she go? How could she leave Lucky—despite his anger with her—and the pups, and Sunshine, and . . .
“What are you doing out here?” a dog’s voice asked, and Storm scrambled to her paws, slipping a little in the mud as she turned to see who was there. It was Bella, her head cocked to one side with interest and concern. Arrow was right behind her, as usual, his ears pricked.
“Nothing,” Storm said. “I’m just . . . looking.”
“At the ground?” Bella asked keenly.
Storm sagged. “I’m looking for clues. I need to know what really happened to Whisper.”
She waited for the two older dogs to tell her that she was being foolish, that she should listen to her Beta and not make wild accusations—but Bella and Arrow simply exchanged a glance and then nodded at the same time.
Storm blinked, distracted for a second by the fact that they’d seemed to talk to each other without making any sound. Could all mates do things like that? Perhaps it just came from spending so much time together. Storm didn’t like that idea—her thoughts were her own, and no other dog was welcome to run around in them, no matter how much she liked their company.
“Do you need any help?” Bella asked, turning back to Storm.
For a moment, Storm was too surprised to reply. Bella and Arrow apparently took her silence for a yes, because without waiting for her, they lowered their muzzles to the earth and started to sniff around.
“I—I found this,” Storm said, standing aside so Bella could see the paw print and the broken claw. “I think this means he really was running away from camp.”
“And he wouldn’t do that if he was being chased by foxes,” Bella said, frowning down at the paw print. “I hate to say it, Storm, but it seems you may have a point. Let’s keep looking. Maybe we can figure out what he was running from.”
Storm thought about pointing out that there was nothing to find, but then she thought better of it. Perhaps Bella and Arrow would find something she had missed, or recognize a scent she couldn’t. She sat down to one side of the trail of paw prints and watched as the golden dog and her Fierce mate sniffed and pawed at the undergrowth, then raised their heads to listen to the sounds of the forest, then smelled the air again.
Bella seemed to be searching aimlessly, but Arrow looked a lot more focused, tracking back and forth from the spot with the claw to the clearing where Whisper had died.
“He was attacked over there, where we found the blood,” he muttered. “He was dragged into the clearing. He must have gotten up and tried to run—that was when he broke his claw. But he would already have been wounded. He couldn’t have gotten far. If I was attacking Whisper, I could have caught him without even breaking into a run.”
Storm flinched slightly, trying not to imagine the weakened, bleeding dog being followed by a merciless, unstoppable Fierce Dog. She wasn’t sure which was worse, imagining that she had been the killer, or imagining that it might have been Arrow. . . .
“He would eventually have fallen—yes, here,” Arrow went on, passing Storm with his gaze completely focused on a scuffed patch of dirt a few pawsteps away. “I dragged him back to the clearing to finish him off. . . . I must have wanted him to be found. But why?”
Storm tried to shut out his words, wishing he’d chosen almost any other way to phrase his question. Not only was it frightening to imagine Arrow as the killer, it reminded her too much of how she had visualized Whisper’s death, how easy it had been to slip into the role of the killer herself. Storm shuddered—was this their Fierce Dog heritage? Then she felt warmth against her flank and looked up into the large brown eyes of Bella.
“Are you doing all right, Storm?” Bella asked.
“I’m fine,” Storm said quickly.
Bella tilted her head to one side. “No, I don’t think you are,” she said. Storm bristled but supposed she shouldn’t be surprised by Bella’s blunt manner—Lucky’s litter-sister never had any trouble speaking her mind. “You have every reason to be upset, after yesterday. I know Lucky doesn’t make it easy to disagree with him, sometimes.”
Despite herself, Storm let out a weak chuckle. Bella’s description of her litter-brother was exactly right.
“Once he’s gotten used to being a Father-Dog, he’ll settle down and see reason about all this,” Bella went on. “It’s just happening too soon. He still thinks Alpha and the pups could be hurt by a stiff breeze, let alone . . .”
“A killer dog,” said Arrow, in a muted whine. He padded back to where Storm was sitting and put his head close to Bella’s. “I think she might be right, Bella.”
“But the Pack’s only dog enemies were Blade’s Pack,” Bella pointed out. “And the ones who survived the Storm of Dogs are long gone—you would have scented them if they were here, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s just it. The only scents I smell here are from our Pack. I think Storm’s not just right about the foxes being innocent. We shouldn’t be looking for our enemies—we should be looking at ourselves.”
He caught Storm’s eye, and her heart stuttered in her chest. He knows. He knows! What do I do? Don’t let my ears go flat—oh, Earth-Dog, I must look so guilty. . . .
But Arrow’s eyes weren’t accusing—they were full of sadness. The moment passed, and Storm’s panic passed with it. How could he know what she might have done, when she didn’t know it herself?
“We can’t take that to Lucky,” Bella said firmly. Arrow’s ears twitched in surprise, and Bella shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that it’s so . . . so awful. He won’t be able to handle it if we insist it’s true. Not yet. Anyway,” she added, a thoughtful look coming over her face, “say we do convince every dog that the killer is one of us. Lucky’s right, the Pack could tear itself apart—and the first dogs to feel the bite would be the two of you.”
The truth of this hurt Storm like a stinging insect. She felt her heart sink, thinking of the suspicious whispering of Snap and Dart. She had tried to tell them what was happening, and they had taken no time at all to decide Arrow was guilty.
“There’s something else too. If some dog in the Pack is a killer, then they already know that you suspect,” Arrow said, turning to Storm. “You could be in danger. And the more we say, the more we antagonize that dog.”
Storm stared at him. That had not occurred to her, and the thought was chilling.
“We need to approach this carefully. We must figure out if any dogs were out of camp on the night when Whisper was killed, and where they went,” Bella said.
“But how can we find out any dog’s movements without making them suspicious?” Storm asked. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Arrow to go around asking too many questions. He’s . . . new,” she added, not quite wanting to tell her fellow Fierce Dog that some dogs already suspected him. “I can probably ask around without making things worse—every dog already thinks I’m just a silly pup with a wild theory.”
“Oh, Storm.” Bella’s ears drooped. “I don’t like that idea one bit. But if you’re determined . . . well, at least try to be careful.”
Storm thought hard. Lucky and Snap had been out on the hunt for the Golden Deer when
Whisper was killed, and Thorn and Breeze had been patrolling. Who else might have been awake?
Her tail wagged as a thought struck her. “Moon was on High Watch. She’d have a good view of the camp—maybe she saw some dog leaving their den, or something else that could help us. And I’m sure she won’t go telling the other dogs I’ve been asking her questions.”
“All right—why don’t you go and talk to her?” Bella said, brightening. “And I’ll ask a few questions around the camp.”
“Promise me you’ll try to be subtle,” Arrow muttered. “I don’t want any bad dogs targeting you next! If I didn’t have you . . .” He trailed off, and Bella rubbed her head against his cheek affectionately.
“Don’t worry about me, Arrow,” she said. “I’m good at subtle.”
Storm shifted awkwardly, embarrassed. “I should probably go to Moon now. So we’re not seen out here together.” She got up and hurried away.
The fastest way to get to High Watch was to go straight through the camp, but Storm didn’t want to meet any of the other dogs just now—let alone have to explain to Lucky or Alpha what she was doing. So she padded a wide circle around the dens until she reached the stony edge of the cliff, with its steep drop down to the sandy strip between the land and the Endless Lake.
She ran along the edge of the cliff, careful to keep a few pawsteps between her and the very edge, where the earth wasn’t quite solid and an unwary dog could easily take a tumble down onto the rocks below.
High Watch itself was a bare, grassy space between the Endless Lake and the Pack camp, where the cliff rose even higher above the lake. A chill wind blew Storm’s fur the wrong way up her spine as she climbed the hill and spotted the restless shape of Moon silhouetted against the bright-gray sky.
The white-and-black Farm Dog was turning around and around on the spot. At first Storm thought she might be chasing her tail, but then she wondered if she was turning a sleep circle. Surely Moon wouldn’t go to sleep on watch?