Monty shook his head.
Burke waited a beat. “Lieutenant, I can assign someone else for this.”
“No, sir. I’m the leader of the team that deals with the Courtyard. So I’ll deal with this.”
Monty returned to the patrol car. As Kowalski pulled over to let Burke take the lead, Monty prayed to all the gods he could name that Jimmy hadn’t done any serious damage to Meg Corbyn. And if Jimmy had, he prayed that his brother would have sense enough to surrender so that he wouldn’t have to be the one to put a bullet between Jimmy’s eyes.
• • •
Meg ran and ran, following paths that blurred or became too sharply focused. Cyrus had cut her across the scars of old prophecies, and he’d made the new cuts too close together. The prophecies weren’t distinct because of that. The images bled into one another. Worse, she kept seeing superimposed images, and she couldn’t tell what was real and what was part of a vision. She could walk off a cliff because she thought she was walking on a road.
But she had to run no matter what she thought she saw, had to find the right place.
Finally slowing to a walk, she wiped her left hand on her shirt to remove the stickiness. When it felt sticky again a moment later, she finally looked at the blood welling up from a cut.
How had that happened? When had that happened?
She kept walking. She needed water. She needed to figure out which of the visions she’d been seeing for the past little while were the ones that would help her.
Preoccupied with her thoughts and a path that was or wasn’t real, she took a step and overbalanced when her foot hovered in air before she rushed headlong down a slope into a small bowl of land.
Her foot caught on something beneath the leaves, propelling her forward. Reaching in front of her, her hands hit something and slid along its length as she fell.
Meg looked at the jacket sleeve. She felt the cold white hand—and screamed.
• • •
Jimmy swore and kicked the car. Fucking piece of shit. What was he supposed to do way the fuck out here with a flat tire?
That bitch knew. She knew. He should have softened her up, taught her who was boss. If he’d done that, he could have stopped at that trading post and picked up some food and water. He wouldn’t be standing out here with nothing if she hadn’t been such a bitch.
Suddenly he stopped swearing, stopped making noise, and listened to an odd silence he could almost feel against his skin.
The blow knocked him off his feet, lifted him so high he flew through the air and watched a strange rope uncoil from his belt before he hit the ground in the grass verge. When he tried to sit up, he saw the slices in his torso that had been made by big claws sharp enough to cut glass.
As he lay there, unable to move, the air shimmered around him and turned into shapes so old they were remembered only in nightmares.
• • •
Something wrong with her ankle—wrong enough that she couldn’t walk, couldn’t even support her weight enough to stand.
Meg scooted a little farther away from the cold white hand. Then she looked around.
This was it. This was the end of the prophecy. She had found the grave in the woods, the tombstone made of old leaves.
It was cool and dark beneath the trees, but she wasn’t cold. It would be night before the temperature dropped enough for her to feel cold. But she was hungry and tired and so very thirsty.
And alone.
But she was part of the Wolfgard pack at Lakeside. Just because she was alone, she wouldn’t turn into some blubbering human. She would . . .
“Arroo! Arroo!” I am here. I am here, Simon. Come find me. “Ar-r-rooo!” Please find me.
Then she turned into a blubbering human after all.
• • •
A strange sound. Familiar but not. And nothing made by one of them.
Their kin near Lake Etu had sent out a call to all who could hear them: find the sweet blood howling not-Wolf, the little female called Broomstick Girl.
Could this sound be coming from what they sought?
As they moved toward the sound, their footsteps filled the land with an odd silence.
• • •
O’Sullivan took the call, spoke quietly for a minute, then hung up. “The local police found the car.”
“Are we on the right road?” Burke asked, his voice neutral.
O’Sullivan nodded. After a minute of brittle silence, he added softly, “They think they found Cyrus Montgomery.”
Burke didn’t ask what that meant. He already knew.
CHAPTER 27
Thaisday, Messis 23
Snapping out of a light sleep, Meg tried to rub the crusties out of the corners of her eyes without rubbing dirt into her eyes. Had she really heard sirens? The sound carried, but it still meant that, maybe, she wasn’t that far from a road that was patrolled.
Of course, not being able to walk meant “not that far” was still too far.
She looked around again. Maybe there was a fallen branch that she could use like a crutch. Or something within reach that she could wrap around the injured ankle.
She looked everywhere—except at the body lying a couple of feet away from her.
• • •
Burke pulled onto the left-hand shoulder a few yards in front of the brown car and the police car parked behind it. The officer leaning against the side of the patrol car wore captain’s bars and had a look Burke recognized—tough, experienced, and with enough knowledge of what was, no doubt, watching them from the woods to appreciate the danger they were all in at this moment.
“Mr. Wolfgard . . .” Burke didn’t bother to say more, because Simon was already scrambling to get out of the car, shifting his front paws enough to have fingers that could pull at the door handle and snarling in frustration when the door wouldn’t open.
Burke released the door locks. The moment Simon was outside and no longer interested in them, Burke said quietly to O’Sullivan, “Do what you can to keep Monty up here on the road.” Then he pushed out of the car, glancing back at the Lakeside patrol car.
Kowalski didn’t bother to pull over to the shoulder of the road. With two Wolves going nuts in the backseat, he just stopped the car, jumped out, and opened a door for them.
Nathan and Blair rushed to join Simon, who was busily sniffing around the brown car. While the local police captain watched, not daring to move closer or move back, they got the doors opened and their large bodies stretched across the seats. They sniffed everything, trying to find the scent they were looking for.
Simon clawed at the trunk, leaving scratches in the paint until Kowalski hurried over and opened the trunk. Suddenly all three Wolves were pushing their heads and shoulders into the trunk, sniffing and sniffing before they left the car and spread out across the road.
And not one of them even looked toward what lay in the center of a square made of yellow crime scene tape and tall garden stakes.
Burke raised a hand and strode toward the other captain. As he came past the brown car, he saw another police officer searching the grass between the tape and the trees.
“Captain Miller?”
The officer nodded. “Are you Burke?”
Burke nodded in turn, then looked at the two objects that had been placed on a pile of shredded clothing.
“Jimmy?” Montgomery’s voice.
“Lieutenant!” Kowalski shouted.
Burke didn’t hesitate. He body blocked Monty, pushing him back while Kowalski and O’Sullivan grabbed Monty’s arms.
“Jimmy!”
Hearing the anguish in Monty’s voice, Burke felt pity for the man. Monty must have considered the possibility that they wouldn’t find Cyrus alive, but nothing could have prepared him to see this.
“Monty, I’ll handle this,” Burke said. “Wa
it by the car. Do you hear me, Lieutenant?”
A blank-eyed moment. Then Monty took a deep breath and said, “Yes, sir.”
Burke glanced at O’Sullivan, who nodded and said, “Come on, Monty.”
He watched Kowalski, who was watching the Wolves and frowning. Then he turned to Captain Miller.
“Your lieutenant knew this man?” Miller asked.
“His brother.”
Miller paled. “Gods above and below. I’m sorry he had to see this.”
“So am I.” He walked into the grass until he stood beside the crime scene tape and could get a good look at what the unseen residents of the wild country had left behind.
He’d seen this a couple of times before when he’d been posted to human villages in the wild country, but in those cases, enough of the bodies had been left behind for the medical examiner to do an autopsy and run some tests. When the results came in, he remembered seeing tough, experienced cops vomit when they learned one particular detail about the Others’ form of justice.
And he remembered what human action had triggered this degree of savagery.
“What’s your procedure when this happens?” he asked Miller.
“We don’t have one,” Miller replied. “Out here, we either find the person alive or we don’t find them at all. Unless the person was killed by another human. We’ve had body dumps along this road over the years. Domestic disputes that turned fatal most of the time. When that happened, we usually found the woman—and the car. We rarely found the man. Not even this much.”
“This wasn’t domestic,” Burke said, confirming whatever Miller had heard about the manhunt. “This was a kidnapping.” As he pointed to one object lying on the shredded clothes, he choked on the rising fear that they might be too late. “The silver folding razor belonged to the young woman.”
“Is she one of those girls?”
He nodded.
Miller looked toward the road and the Wolves who had returned to the brown car, sniffing and searching before they headed down the road in the opposite direction.
“Friend of theirs?” Miller asked.
Burke nodded again.
“We didn’t find anything to indicate there was another person out here.” Too much knowledge in Miller’s eyes. “This is a few miles west of where the truck driver called in the position where he’d seen a young woman and this car. She may have been lucky enough to get away from her kidnapper, but it takes more than luck to get away from them.”
He knew that. Meg Corbyn had a better chance of surviving in the wild country than anyone he’d ever met—if she wasn’t having a psychotic episode because of the cuts Cyrus Montgomery made.
“Did anyone search the area where the truck driver saw her?” Burke asked.
“Don’t know. That’s just beyond my jurisdiction. I called the captain who handles that part of the road. He could have searchers out there now . . .”
“Or he could still be waiting for permission to send men into the wild country.” Not always an easy thing to receive—and never a guarantee of safety for the humans going in. He understood a leader’s caution. He also knew he would have gone in without permission, taking with him whatever help was offered.
He spotted Kowalski slowly walking toward them and turned to Miller. “Can you get me the exact position?”
The truck driver who called it in had included the number on the closest milepost. He would be able to start his own search close enough to Meg’s last known position for the Wolves to pick up her scent.
“Didn’t you . . . ?” Miller noticed Kowalski and nodded understanding. “Will do.” He walked away.
Kowalski came up beside Burke and stared at the second object that had been placed on the shredded clothes: Cyrus Montgomery’s lower jaw.
“The Wolves can’t find Meg’s scent,” Kowalski said. “Wherever she is, she didn’t leave the car anywhere around here. Nobody is shifting to human form to talk to me, but my impression is they didn’t find her scent in the car; just in the trunk.” He hesitated. “Captain, there’s blood in the trunk. I don’t think it’s enough to be life-threatening, at least for any of us, but it struck me as being more than usual for one of Meg’s cuts.”
That was disturbing but not surprising. Very few people would know how to properly cut a cassandra sangue to avoid her suffering physical or mental problems, and Cyrus Montgomery wasn’t one of them. Even if he had known, Burke doubted Cyrus would have cared.
“The Wolves may not realize that we’re miles from the spot where Meg escaped from Cyrus. Go up and tell them so they understand why they can’t pick up her scent. As soon as Captain Miller confirms the location, you and the lieutenant pack up the Wolves and get over there to start the search.”
“Yes, sir.” Kowalski didn’t move, just stared at the jaw.
“Don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer,” Burke said quietly.
Monty had an ingrained courtesy and courage that had opened a door, allowing some humans to communicate with the terra indigene. Karl Kowalski had the grit to see the truth about what was on the other side of that door and still walk through it.
But did he have enough grit?
“Was he dead when they ripped off his jaw?” Kowalski asked.
Burke took a deep breath and blew it out. “No.”
• • •
So thirsty. And scared that Simon wouldn’t find her. The terra indigene weren’t the only wild things out here. And unlike the terra indigene who knew she wasn’t prey, other wild things might decide she looked, and smelled, pretty tasty.
She couldn’t run. Even if both legs worked, she’d never outrun predators who were used to chasing their dinners.
She didn’t have much strength or courage left, but she had enough for one more bit of defiance.
“Arroo!” Meg howled. “Arroo!”
I am here. I am here!
Then she noticed the odd silence.
• • •
They circled the small bowl of land, trying to decide what they were seeing.
Looked human but didn’t smell human. Didn’t smell like prey. Smelled . . . intriguing.
“Arroo!” it howled. “Arroo!”
Tiny voice. Puppy howl. All puffed up and challenging.
And hurt. Hind leg didn’t work right.
“Arroo!” it howled again. “Arroo!”
Tiny voice. Puppy howl. But brave to challenge them, to warn them off.
Was this the howling not-Wolf?
They circled the small bowl of land and considered the messages that had rippled under the skin of the world, that had been a scent in the air and a taste in the water.
It was not a Wolf, it was not prey, and it was howling.
Crows had told them there were Wolves in their territory, searching along the road. Was the not-Wolf howling for its mate? Tiny howl. Wouldn’t be heard.
One of them stayed to watch the not-Wolf. The others moved silently along the game trails, traveling far enough to ensure that they would be heard.
Then one of them howled.
• • •
Simon staggered into the middle of the road and stopped moving.
Meg was gone? Really gone?
He was supposed to find her. There was supposed to be a trail for him to follow.
But Meg’s scent wasn’t on the road or the grass, wasn’t anywhere except in the trunk of the car. Without her scent, he didn’t know where that Cyrus had left her.
Had no way to find her.
Lifting his muzzle, Simon howled the Song of Sorrow, joined by Blair and Nathan.
Then he stopped howling as a thought occurred to him. Nothing Meg had seen had indicated that he would lose her forever. She had escaped from that Cyrus and run into the wild country where a human couldn’t follow her. She would run un
til she found the place in the woods that had the grave and the cold hand—the place she had seen in the prophecy dream. She would get there and wait for him. So his Meg wasn’t gone; she was just lost until he found her.
If the humans couldn’t help him find Meg, the terra indigene who lived around here could—and would.
When he howled again, it was a Song of Battle. And it was answered.
• • •
Monty leaned against the patrol car, blinking away tears as he listened to Simon’s heartbroken howl.
Jimmy had done this to Simon, to all of them. Just another scheme that might have consequences for everyone but Jimmy. Except this time he had miscalculated and had paid dearly. Would his wife and children grieve, or would they secretly be relieved that he wasn’t coming back?
Gods, what a thing to wonder about a brother.
Monty wiped away the tears. This wasn’t the time for him to grieve or wonder. Meg Corbyn was still out there, somewhere.
He pushed away from the car and noticed how O’Sullivan immediately turned toward him. The ITF agent didn’t need to worry; he wasn’t going to try to see what had been left inside the crime scene tape. Not again.
Kowalski hurried over to join him.
“What’s our status?” he asked, taking in the Wolves’ body language as Nathan and Blair stood with Simon, howling: defeat.
“Captain Miller gave me the exact location where Meg escaped from Cyrus,” Kowalski said. “Sounds like a few men started at that point and searched along the edge of the woods for a couple of miles in both directions. So far, there’s been no sign of her.”
“How far could she travel?”
Kowalski snorted. “You’ve never played chase with the Wolves. Uninjured, I think Meg could cover some distance.”
And if that distance took her deeper into the wild country, they had no chance of finding her because there was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark—even when the dark was the shade and shadows of the woods. The men who patrolled these roads knew that, and while a commander might risk his men if they had a solid location and were going in to rescue someone, no one would send in men to search for a body.