In moments, the human Becky was gone and a large wolf shook out her gray and tawny fur, stretched her sleek body, and looked at me. Still the alpha, even if I had only two legs.
I sighed. “Here we go.”
She ran ahead, pausing a moment to urinate. Now if we could get upwind of them, let them get a whiff of that, they’d be on us in seconds. And wouldn’t that be fun?
Becky loped on, and I ran after her.
Chapter 5
WE FOLLOWED the slope of a hill until it crossed into a narrow valley, where we lost the scent, so we doubled back. Becky covered more ground, crisscrossing ahead of me, nose low, tail out like a rudder. I was more cautious, looking around, searching stands of trees and gaps in the forest for flashes of movement, testing the air with every breath. Becky continued marking our presence.
We found them again, traces on the air, strange fur and musk. Becky sat back on her haunches, tipped her nose to the sky, and howled. The thin, piercing sound echoed, filling the woods, seeping into the stones of the mountain itself. Anyone within miles could hear it. The others standing watch at the trap would be able to hear it. The other wolves had to know we were here.
She howled again, another somber, falling note. Here we are, this is our land, we’re here! the howl said. Howls marked territory, helped members of the pack find each other, and warned other packs away—or offered a challenge. It was an existential declaration, as well as being primeval, mysterious, and maybe overly romanticized. But I could understand why people were entranced by wolf howls. I wanted to join her, but my human lungs and voice wouldn’t do justice to the call.
Her howls might also be like waving a red flag. The hairs on my neck were tingling, my shoulders bunching. Becky had started pacing again, nose to ground.
Then the answer came, a clear howl in a voice I didn’t recognize, waving a flag of its own. It was close.
I nodded back the way we’d come and called, “Hey, let’s get going.” I wanted to be heading toward the trap instead of away from it when the army boys started following us.
She raised her head, glanced at me as I jogged back up the hill, and set off, trotting in graceful wolf strides. She quickly passed me and moved out ahead, and I followed. Testing the air, I could smell the rogues even more strongly. We’d found them, but I couldn’t see them, couldn’t guess where they might come from, and that made me nervous. More nervous. I glanced around, not wanting to get caught in tunnel vision, even as I tried to move quickly.
Becky spotted them first, or at least one of them. She stopped and swung to our right, standing tall, her ears pricked forward and her hackles stiff, all the hair on her back standing up. When I looked, I saw a shape dodging trees—a shadow in the growing dusk, with four legs, a furred outline, taking huge, loping strides. Maybe a hundred yards away, but it was hard to tell distance because the creature was massive. It might have been the biggest wolf I’d ever seen. As a human, he’d be over six feet tall, well over two hundred pounds.
He might have been even bigger, and even closer.
Becky was still staring. Not that I could blame her—I’m sure he was very handsome. I ran past her, slapped her shoulder, and yelled, “Come on!”
They were flanking us. I looked left and found the second one, this one silver, running alongside us, not racing, just keeping us in view. One was still missing. He’d be either right behind us or right in front us, waiting to ambush.
Shit, we might be in trouble.
“Go, Becky, go!” Our job now was to run for the trap and hope it sprang according to plan. Ben would recognize Becky and tell Stafford and Shumacher not to shoot her. We could do this.
By running, we were only encouraging them. But since they were wolves and not human, my plan to stop and talk reasonably with them was out the window. In the wild, a pack of wolves would work in shifts to run their prey to exhaustion, then strike. If that was their plan, we could outrun them and hope they didn’t smell the trap. But that depended on whether or not they were looking at us as prey.
They might have had something else in mind.
I could run fast—I had some of my Wolf’s speed and stamina. But I couldn’t run as fast as I could as a wolf, as Becky was running now. She pulled ahead of me, and my own Wolf growled and leapt, wanting a chance at that power, to shift and escape. No, not yet, I couldn’t let go, I couldn’t drop the backpack.
The two wolves angled in, closing in on us. They were both huge, especially next to lithe Becky. This wasn’t going to be much of a fight. But we were faster.
Then they shut the pincher. One of them, the silvery one to the left, sprang and tackled Becky. The two of them rolled, a tangle of fur and snarling, wolfish lips pulled back from fierce teeth.
I yelled, my voice loud and grating, “Get away from her!”
The first wolf—the darker, shadowy one whose color I couldn’t quite determine—swerved, dodging between Becky and me, separating us. I stopped. He planted himself in front of me and stared, and there it was, the other mark of a werewolf: not just his great size, but the shine of human intelligence, the way I could almost hear him say, “Gotcha.” His wolf body language showed he didn’t think much of my ability to take him. I bared my teeth at him—showing I didn’t think much of him at all.
In the middle of their tangle, Becky slipped away and ran—she remembered the plan and rocketed toward the trap. I dodged out from the shadowy wolf’s gaze and cut around him. The two wolves only stayed surprised at our slipperiness for a moment. Becky’s pursuer shook himself and kept going, and mine launched likewise. There was only so much ducking and dodging Becky and I could do to keep away from these guys. We had ourselves a regular showdown. I didn’t want to have to pull out that gun.
I had stopped looking for the third wolf. I didn’t expect the hulking human figure to dash out from behind a tree and grab hold of me. I screamed a shocked burst of sound.
He held on to my shoulders, and we glared at each other, eye to eye, challenging. He had dark brown skin, with a broad face and square jaw, dark eyes, head shaved bald. His muscles strained against a gray T-shirt, and he wore camouflage pants. He also went barefoot. He wasn’t linebacker big—he was only a couple of inches taller than I was—but he had weight to him, a solidness that wouldn’t budge. Sergeant Joseph Tyler, according to Stafford’s dossier.
“Who are you?” he said through a snarling mouth. His nostrils flared with his hard breathing.
“My name’s Kitty, I want to help you.” I hoped my voice stayed steady and confident. I didn’t want to seem weak, I didn’t want him to think I was challenging him. We were just two wolves having a chat, right?
Becky, bless her, stopped when Tyler caught me. She was maybe fifty feet away, and holding off the two wolves with pure force of attitude. She was snarling at them, bouncing stiff legged every time they approached. The two of them circled, as if trying to figure out how to get through a prickly thicket. She couldn’t keep them off forever.
Tyler studied me, brow furrowed, confused, as if he was trying to figure something out. Human brain arguing with wolf instincts. His hands on my arms were firm—his grip didn’t hurt, but he wasn’t going to let me go. He leaned forward, bringing his nose close to my neck, smelling me. He was careful, even gentle. Uncertain, he turned my scent over in his nose, considering it, cataloguing it. I was betting I was right—he’d never smelled a female werewolf before.
I kept talking, hoping to nudge him more toward human. “Colonel Stafford told me about you. They’re looking for you. Now I don’t want anyone to get hurt, but you’re heading into my territory and I have to look after my people, so I’d really appreciate if you’d back off, tell your buddies to back off, and we can talk about this. There’s no reason we can’t talk about this.”
He smelled of sweat and exhaustion, and anxiety strained his face. He didn’t seem afraid, but he did seem like a guy at the end of his rope. He didn’t know what to do. He looked over to the shadowy wolf.
&n
bsp; This wolf was huge, and he was also tense, all his hackles up, his fur standing on end—furious. But he hesitated, braced between me and Becky, trying to decide which way to jump. When Tyler looked at him, the wolf drew back his lip to show teeth and flattened his ears.
Tyler quickly looked away and stared at the ground. He wasn’t the alpha. Because he managed to stay in human form, I’d assumed he had the most control. But the shadowy one was Vanderman, who’d murdered his squad-mates when they challenged him. He was the one I had to watch out for. He could bite my head off without thinking about it.
Tyler moved behind me and presented me, prisonerlike, to the dominant wolf. That’s right, boss, it’s all her fault. Great.
Would I seem like a complete dork talking to a big, fanged, angry-looking wolf? Probably.
“I just want to talk,” I said calmly. “But I’m not going to show you my belly. We talk as people, we work this out, and nobody gets hurt. Nobody else gets hurt.”
I didn’t know if the wolf even understood me, or if he only heard my voice as alien buzzing. But Tyler’s grip on me relaxed. He was listening to me, and he let me go. I stood my ground.
During the lull, Becky took the opportunity to slouch, tail and ears drooping, limbs buckling, bringing her closer to the ground, in the hopes that the other wolves would read the submissive cues and leave her alone. That was just fine—I wanted them to leave her alone, so she’d get out of this in one piece and with no more emotional scars than absolutely necessary.
I wanted them all to pay attention to me. I was the alpha, I had to act like it. And I had to completely ignore how terrified I was, staring down the three biggest, meanest werewolves I’d ever encountered.
“I know you’re looking for a safe place. You’re looking for your own territory, and you found this one. Mine. Maybe you even think you can take over and have a pack of your own. But you can’t. This is my territory, my people. If you want to stay here, you have to do it on my terms.” My stare was a challenge. We both knew it. The shadow wolf’s lip curled, showing teeth—no way could I intimidate this guy. I tried anyway.
“Colonel Stafford is here. He’s coming after you one way or another. I say we do this the easy way. You all settle down, and we talk.” I couldn’t turn away from the alpha to look at the others, but I sensed them. Becky occupied the other wolf’s attention, and the human one, Tyler, was behind me, lurking just a couple of feet away, his muscles tense, heart rate and breathing fast. He was anxious, but he was listening. I was talking to him as much as I was talking to the alpha. Maybe Tyler could talk Vanderman down if I couldn’t.
“No one here’s out to get you. You’re safe, now.”
The wolf gathered himself, and the look in his eyes turned murderous.
“Van, no.” Tyler said it low, like a growl.
The wolf jumped at me. I fought instinct, which told me to either run or cower, to curl my back, roll over, and show my belly or get the hell out. I didn’t. I lunged right back at him, knowing I was going to get hurt. But if I backed down, we were all screwed.
We crashed into each other, and I grabbed at him, digging my fingers into his fur and shoving, twisting out of the way, using his momentum to get him away from me. His jaws were open, saliva gleaming on long, bared fangs ready to bite and tear, but he swung out. His claws reached for purchase and scraped down my arm, which I had raised to protect myself. I lost more skin that way . . .
I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming.
It was chaos. The silver-gray wolf had taken his leader’s cue and attacked Becky; the knot of wolf bodies and fur writhed a few feet away from me. The alpha was gathering himself for another jump, and I turned to face him, because what else could I do? Nearby, Tyler had doubled over, fists pressed to his temples. He was fighting the Change, groaning through clenched teeth.
Before leaping again, the alpha hesitated, looking outward, ears perked up. I smelled it before I heard or saw it: newcomers, human scents on the breeze. Machinery and gun oil. Then I heard the voices, and people crunching through the forest.
“Kitty!” It was Ben. He came running over the ridge and braced against the trunk of a pine.
The alpha wolf swung toward him, teeth bared. No, not Ben, stay away from him—
I was about to hiss and pounce on the alpha when a whip-crack stabbed through the air, and the wolf in front of me yelped.
Stafford and Shumacher were on the ridge, bracing air rifles. And so was Cormac. They’d given him a third tranquilizer gun.
“Not that one, she’s ours!” I heard Ben say.
A second shot whined out, and a third. Tyler got the next one, and the alpha got another. Tyler arced his back and fell, and that last shock sent him over the edge. He screamed, and the teeth he bared were wolf fangs. He tore his shirt, struggling to get out of it, and kicked at his pants. The tranquilizer didn’t seem to be slowing him down any.
Didn’t the military have a few choice technical terms for situations like this?
I was bleeding, panicked, and desperate. Wolf scraped her claws down the inside of my body. Stabs of pain seared my gut, but I had to ignore it, I couldn’t shift, I couldn’t. I looked around, assessing. The alpha had slowed; he looked like he wanted to attack, but his limbs kept slipping out from under him. Good.
Becky and her opponent didn’t seem to notice the commotion. She kept extricating herself from his grip, and he kept attacking her, pouncing, trying to get his teeth over her neck. He’d get his body over her, and she’d slip away. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to rip her up or rape her. I wanted to jump in and tear at the guy myself. That would only make the situation worse; they couldn’t hit the male with the tranquilizer while the two wolves were tangled up.
“Becky, back off! Get away from him!” I shouted.
Twisting, she bit at his face, kicked away from him, and ran. He got up to chase her, but more darts followed. He flinched and yelped as they struck his haunch. He tried a few more steps. Then he fell.
It seemed to take a long time for calm to settle over this corner of the forest. We all paused, waiting for something to happen. We only started moving when nothing did.
Tyler had turned before the tranquilizer took hold. He was a reddish-tawny wolf, huge like the others, half tangled in his clothes, slumped to his side, tongue lolling. I stood in the middle of a group of drugged-out wolves.
Across the carnage, Becky looked at me, her back and tail low, panic in her eyes. Blood marred her snout. I couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. I nodded at her and whispered, “Go. We’ll find you.”
She ran. Running for a few miles—or ten or twenty—would calm her down. We were close to home; she’d find our den and settle down. And I didn’t want Stafford and Shumacher getting their hands on her.
“Wait a minute—” Stafford called, pointing at her.
“She’s mine, you can’t have her!” I shouted at him, baring my teeth.
Everybody froze. I took it all in, each person: Dr. Shumacher, wide-eyed and frightened; Stafford, tense and uncertain, along with a pair of accompanying soldiers; and Cormac, holding the rifle loosely in both hands. Classified each as predator or prey, ones I had to worry about and ones I didn’t. Wolfish thinking. Shumacher: prey. Stafford: wasn’t worried about him, which struck me as ironic. But Cormac—I could imagine him raising the weapon and firing in a heartbeat. Despite the set, unflinching expression on his face, I could see him deciding whether or not to fire.
Then came Ben, sauntering down the slope toward me, gaze down, ready to circle me, all of his signals calming. “Kitty. It’s okay. Pull it together,” he said gently. Mate to mate, he spoke to me, and I listened. I stood for a moment just breathing, pulling myself back into myself.
I could look around and see past the chaos. This had probably gone as reasonably well as I could have expected. But I had secretly hoped the rogues would actually listen to me.
If it had just been Tyler, we’d have walked out of here without a scratch. As
it was, my right arm was covered in blood.
Ben reached me, and we stood face to face. The look on him was wry, full of worry and exasperation. “Are you okay?”
I tried to scrape off some of the blood and more welled up. “Yeah.”
“He got your face, too.” He rubbed a thumb across my jawline; it stung. Ben’s hand came away bloody. The alpha must have nicked me there when he sideswiped my cheek. I kept telling myself it could have been worse. I leaned my face on Ben’s shoulder and let him pull me into a hug.
“Mr. O’Farrell,” Shumacher said, her voice panicked. “Be careful, her blood’s contagious!”
I hadn’t told her about Ben. She hadn’t spotted him as a werewolf. I giggled into Ben’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Doctor,” Ben called to her over his shoulder. “I’m not worried.”
“But—”
“I think you should be worried about them.” He nodded at the unconscious wolves, bulky shadows in the fading daylight.
Shumacher had to leave us alone. In Ben’s arms, I came back to myself.
When I was finally ready to stand on my own, I pulled away. But I kept hold of Ben’s hand.
“Was all this worth it?” he said.
“I don’t know. Tyler—he actually listened to me. He was almost lucid. But the other two . . .” I shook my head. I wouldn’t know until I saw them as people. I wanted to hear their side of it.
Shumacher and Stafford oversaw the next part of the proceedings. This involved Stafford’s soldiers bringing out their nets and ropes, laced with strands of silver, to “secure” the wolves. That was the term they used. This basically involved bundling them up until they couldn’t move. I didn’t want to watch.
Instead, Ben and I joined Cormac, who remained on the fringes of the proceedings.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to have any guns,” I said, nodding at the rifle in his hands.
“It’s technically not a gun,” Cormac said.
“Why do I even argue with you?” I said.