Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel) (29 page)

“Okay. That could work,” she said to herself. To me, Kirsten began, “There is a minor hex we use sometimes for big gatherings, or if we’re working a spell that has to be done in an area accessed by the public. The younger witches call it the Humans-Go-Home. It makes anyone with no ties to magic have a sudden, overwhelming desire to return home.”

“So it’s not just a clever name,” I said, straight-faced. Beside me, Jesse snickered.

“No.” Kirsten went on, “I can wait at the road, and once you and Detective Cruz are in the clearing, I can cast a Humans-Go-Home on the mouth of the pathway. It won’t affect the werewolf, but anyone else should stay away from that spot.”

“That’d be great,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. It was a good idea, but I’d been hoping fo
r . . .
I don’t know, a promise to storm the park in droves or something.

“Just remember, Scarlett, that when you get close to the spell it’ll dissolve again, so you can’t leave that area once you’re in,” she cautioned.

“Pee before we leave the house. Got it.”

I hung up and explained the idea to Jesse, who was a fan. Before either of us could even get off the table, though, my phone began playing “Werewolves of London.” I frowned. I had spoken to Will less than two hours ago. Picking up the phone again, I said, “Hey, Will.”

“Scarlett,” he said in a tight voice. I could hear noise from the bar behind him. “Describe the Luparii scout to me again.” It was not a request.

“U
h . . .
” I glanced at Jesse, then held my phone away from my face and put it on speaker. “She’s maybe six feet tall, dark-blonde hair, slim.”

Jesse added, “Hey, it’s Cruz. Her name is Petra Corbett. She was wearing a black pantsuit when we saw her.”

Will sighed heavily into the phone. “I was afraid you would say that.”

Jesse and I exchanged a glance. “Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s standing on the sidewalk in front of my bar.”

Chapter 44

“Of course she is,” I said harshly. I really wanted to kick something. It couldn’t just be okay for ten minutes, could it? “How the
fuck
did she get out of that bathroom?” And had she brought more than one black pantsuit, or was she wearing the one with the urine stains? Okay, that part maybe wasn’t relevant.

Jesse shrugged and said, “She might have access to magic you don’t know about, or she’s got a handler or partner in LA. Or maybe she had scissors in the bathroom. It doesn’t really matter at this point.”

“I agree,” Will said darkly. He sounded like he was barely controlling his temper.

“What is she doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. She’s leaning against what I assume is her car, glaring at the door to Hair of the Dog. She knows I can’t attack her in the middle of Pico Boulevard.”

“She’s going to follow you,” Jesse said quietly, and I finally caught on. We’d taken the bargest away from Corbett, so she was simply going straight for Will. Either she’d try to kill him, or follow him to the pack.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s she going to do against a whole pack of werewolves with no bargest?”

“She’s still a witch, Scarlett. We have no idea what she’s capable of on her own,” Will said grimly. “And if she has access to a gun and a lot of silver bullet
s . . .
”

“I thought these douchebags were all about the hunt,” I complained. “That’s gotta be cheating.” I looked at Jesse. “Can you arrest her for loitering or something?”

Jesse considered it for a second and shook his head. “We’d have to leave her at a police station, and like Will said, we have no idea what she can do as a witch. She could hurt a lot of cops.”

There was silence for a few minutes.

“We could just, lik
e . . .
kidnap her,” I volunteered. “Jesse and I could come down and bring her into the bar. You could leave her in the back room or something.”

“Because tying her up and leaving her worked so well last time,” Jesse interjected. “We can’t stay with her, Scarlett, we have to go after the nova.”

“And we can’t kill her either,” Will sighed. “The Luparii in France would have kittens.”

I wished I were in the driver’s seat so I could pound my head against the steering wheel. “Well, shit. I have one other idea, but I have to check on a few things. Will, we need to call you back.” I hung up the phone before either he or Jesse could respond.

Jesse looked at me, a little incredulous. “Tell me you have a plan,” he stated.

“You kno
w . . .
I think I might. I don’t like it, but it might be our best option.”

On the surface it was simple enough: we needed to kill the nova wolf first, then go to Will’s to deal with the pack. But we’d need a lot of outside help, and Jesse would have to make a few more moral compromises. I wasn’t sure how he’d respond to that.

To my surprise, though, Jesse got on board almost immediately. “With one condition,” he intoned. “When this is over, we’ll finish that conversation I started.”

The conversation about getting the hell out of LA and starting over somewhere else. I took a deep breath and nodded. “We’ll finish it,” I promised, meeting his eyes.

It took almost two more hours for us to get everything ready, which included updating Will and Kirsten and Jesse talking to Noah about what we needed. The last thing Jesse did before we left was check his gun, making sure the silver bullets were still loaded. Then he looked at me. “You ready?” he asked me, snapping it into his holster.

I shrugged. “As I’ll ever be.”

Impulsively, he stepped forward and wrapped me in his arms for a hug. “You’re doing the right thing.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, breathing in his familiar scent. “No,” I corrected. “I’m doing the best thing. Doesn’t make it right. Now let’s go before I come to my senses.”

The sky was already beginning to darken when we left Jesse’s parents’ house at 4:30 with Shadow in tow. I don’t know if she was just picking up on the tension in the air, or if she could actually sense the full moon, but she seemed to know something was happening—she was even more alert than before, her head up and her feet stepping lightly as her head swung from side to side looking for new dangers. By 4:45, Jesse was piloting my van up the winding road at Griffith Park. We only had fifteen minutes before the sun went down, which was when we figured Henry Remus would change and get in position. The moon was supposed to rise at 5:52 exactly, at which point any werewolves who hadn’t already changed would be forced into it by magic.

We were counting on the fact that Henry Remus didn’t know who we were or what I could do. If we were wrong about that, and he had had the foresight to, say, plant a gun somewhere in the park, we were screwed.

As soon as we passed the park gate, I closed my eyes and focused hard on my radius. Finding the edges of it was getting easier and easier; whatever had thrown off my inner equilibrium seemed to be finally wearing off now, and my senses were attuned. I could feel the bargest six feet behind me, curled politely on the floor of the van, waiting for orders. But there was nothing else Old World in my range, even when I extended it.

“Anything?” Jesse said quietly, trying not to startle me.

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes. “No, but he could be anywhere in the park at this point. If, you know, we’re even right about this being the right place.”

“We’re right,” Jesse said firmly. I couldn’t tell if he really believed it or was just trying to reassure me, but I was grateful either way. “Do you want to drive around the park awhile, see if you can feel him?”

I considered the idea. “Nah,” I said finally. “There are a ton of places to park here, and they’re going to change any minute. When they do, they won’t need to stick to the trails. Better to wait for him to come to us.”
If that’s even what he’ll do
, I added in my head.

Jesse nodded. “I’ll head toward the Observatory.”

I didn’t respond. Doubts about this plan were eroding whatever half-assed, caffeine-fueled confidence I’d had in it. We thought we could predict what Henry Remus would do, but that was based o
n . . .
what? A place that his mother thought he may have remembered from his childhood? It was so tenuous. The guy could still be in any park in the city; hell, any open area, really.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I read the new text with a grateful sigh. “They’re all set up at Will’s,” I said to Jesse. “She took the bait.”

His shoulders relaxed a little. “Good,” he said. “Then it’s just the nova left.”

When we reached Observatory Drive, I caught a quick, dim glimpse of the wide path Jesse had shown me in the photographs, before he drove right on past like we were going straight to the Observatory. There was a long line of cars parked on the side of the road already, and I spotted Kirsten’s vehicle among them. I gave it a little wave, just in case she was still inside.

Jesse pulled the van over to park behind a big gray SUV with stickers of a little stick family decorating the back window. It was almost five. “Should we head for the scenic overlook,” I asked, “or wait a bit first?”

“Let’s go to the outlook,” Jesse answered. “I’ll take Shadow.” We were counting on the bargest to be able to move swiftly where I couldn’t, and to catch the nova wolf if it somehow managed to evade my radius.

He got out of the van, and a moment later the back door opened so Shadow could hop out. I turned in my seat to see her stretching her long limbs in the dying daylight. She yawned, displaying those terrifying fangs again.

“And here we go,” I whispered.

Chapter 45

Jesse felt like they were so far out on a limb, he could no longer even see the tree trunk.

He bent his left arm so Scarlett could take it, and with the bargest’s leash in his right hand, they started down the wide path toward the picnic area. The park was almost completely dark now, and although Jesse could make out a dim buzz of light and sound up the road next to the Observatory, the path itself was deserted. They were deep in the park now, well above the city, and soon the quiet began to unnerve him. With each step on the path, Jesse was half expecting the nova wolf to leap out of the shadowed hillside on his left, straight onto his shoulders, breaking his neck. Suddenly, Scarlett’s plan was feeling more and more idiotic. What the hell was he doing out here? He had no idea what the bargest would do even if it
did
scent a werewolf. For all he knew, the stupid thing wouldn’t move until he gave it a command in French. He glanced at Scarlett, who looked just as nervous. She gave him an encouraging nod, and they kept going. “Don’t turn around,” she whispered, “but I just saw Kirsten heading toward the path, so we shouldn’t be getting any humans this way.”

Step by step, the three of them crept forward on the wide path, until they finally reached the big circular picnic area. “Anything?” Jesse said quietly to Scarlett, who just shook her head. She reached down and scratched behind the bargest’s ears, which Shadow accepted graciously. She’d been fairly calm since they’d left the condo, but this was the most focused and purposeful she’d been since they had first seen her. It was like finally releasing a fish back in the water. Shadow knew what they were doing, and she was in her element.

“Maybe we’re too early?” Scarlett suggested. “It’s only five; maybe he’s waiting to change until the moon rises.”

“Or maybe we’re in the completely wrong part of the city,” Jesse sighed.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, looking at him expectantly.

“I guess we wait.”

They perched on top of a picnic table covered in red graffiti, legs resting on its benches—except for Scarlett’s bad leg, which she’d stretched out along the table next to herself. The bargest, calmed by Scarlett’s radius, lay curled up under the picnic table bench too. “At least he won’t be able to see Shadow as well in the dark,” Scarlett remarked. “So we don’t have to worry about her size scaring him off.”

“I guess so,” Jesse said doubtfully. “But this close to you, does she have any chance of smelling the werewolf magic anyway?”

“Nah, but it’s okay,” she said, patting his arm. “I’m the perfect nova wolf trap. He tries to sneak up on us poor unsuspecting humans, and
bam
!” She snapped her fingers. “Suddenly he’s just another naked crazy guy.”

Jesse laughed. They looked out over the city lights in silence for a while with their backs to the wide path, enjoying the view. He was having a hard time gauging Scarlett’s mood: she seemed sort of introspective and pensive, but maybe she was just trying to anticipate the nova’s next move. His arm and shoulders touched Scarlett’s, and he felt it when a shiver passed through her. “Cold?” he asked, putting his arm around her.

She nodded. “You know what the Native Americans call the full moon in January?” she asked idly.

“What?”

“Wolf Moon. True story.” She turned her head and went still, looking at him in the dim light from the Observatory street and the city lights themselves. They each had a flashlight stashed in pockets, but had planned to leave them off for the moment in order to make themselves more enticing prey. Slowly, Scarlett raised the hand farthest from him, lifting it to his face. Her fingers were cool as she laid her palm flat against his cheek, cupping the side of his face from his eyebrow down to his mouth. Keeping his eyes on hers, Jesse turned his head very slightly so he could kiss her fingers.

Scarlett slid her fingers up into his hair, closing the distance between their mouths. She kissed him tentatively at first, then with increasing need. Jesse returned the kiss with enthusiasm. He still held the bargest’s leash in his right hand, but his grip on it loosened as Scarlett’s tongue dipped into his mouth.

After a few minutes, Scarlett pulled back, and her eyes were shining. “What was that?” Jesse said, half to himself, half to her.

“Tha
t . . .
was a thank-you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For the offer.”

Jesse stared at her a beat before he understood. And then his heart dropped. “I take it you’re not accepting,” he said huskily.

“
I . . . 
,” she began, but then with a single sharp tug and no sound at all, the bargest’s leash was jerked out of his hand. Jesse yelped with pain as it was dragged off his wrist, and suddenly, the bargest was free, darting down the bridle path into the darkness.

“Shadow!” Scarlett shouted. Jesse tried the bargest’s French name. But she had vanished.

“Did you feel someone?” he demanded, jumping off the bench.

“No, no! I don’t understand wh
y . . .
” Scarlett’s eyes moved back and forth frantically as she thought. “The smell!” she cried. “I’m a space in the smell!”

In a flash, Jesse understood. The nova wolf had no way of knowing what Scarlett was—but even before he reached her radius, he would notice that he couldn’t smell her. The absence of proof was proof itself. The nova might not know
what
she was, but he would certainly know something was off.

Scarlett climbed down from the picnic bench like she was going to follow the bargest, but neither of them had any idea where it had gone. By unspoken agreement, they both froze, listening. There was a short, cut-off growl and the sound of bushy plants being trampled. Then silence. “Lights,” Jesse said brusquely. They both dug out their flashlights and switched them on. It would make them an easy target to the nova wolf, Jesse knew, but they were an easy target anyway. They both flashed the beams around the mouth of the bridle path, but aside from some disturbed dirt, there was no sign of the bargest.

“Maybe she just went after a rabbit or something,” Scarlett said anxiously.

Jesse shook his head. “She’s too well trained to be distracted by a rabbit.” He flashed his beam on Scarlett’s stomach, so the edges of it would illuminate her face. She was looking doubtfully at the bridle path.

“That’s really steep,” she ventured. “I’m not sure I can make it down there with my knee. Or, if I
do
make it down there, I’m not sure I can make it back up.”

“Wait here. I’ll see what’s going on, and if we really need you down there, you can slide down on your butt.” She nodded. Scarlett looked so vulnerable, and he wanted to tell her to be careful or to go wait in the car. Then he reminded himself that she was far more protected from the nova wolf than he’d ever be.

Jesse held his flashlight with his left hand, using it to support his aching right arm as it held up his weapon. He picked his way down the steep rocky path, which wound around like an infinity knot before leading down into the depths of the park. There was a lot of brush along the path, ranging from knee-high tumbleweeds to wide, stubby trees as tall as Jesse. It was surprisingly dark and felt strangely claustrophobic, especially considering the size of the park. He was very aware of his breathing, which seemed painfully loud and obvious.

In front of him, somewhere behind the biggest tree he could see, Jesse heard a pained canine yelp and a series of scuffling sounds. He circled the tree as fast as he could, the flashlight bobbing wildly as he worked to keep his footing. “Wher
e . . . 
?” he breathed, and Jesse caught a brief glimpse of motion even as he moved the flashlight past it. He jerked the light back and saw what it had been: the bargest, frozen with its feet planted and its enormous jaws pinning the neck of a limp werewolf to the ground. The werewolf in its jaws was a deep cloudy gray, smaller than the ones he’d seen before. The werewolf wasn’t moving, and at first he thought the nova was already dead. Jesse stepped closer, cautiously, and saw its chest heaving up and down. The acrid scent of urine stung his nostrils, and Jesse realized the nova wolf had wet itself.

It was a spooky tableau, mostly because both creatures were just staring at him now, silent and unmoving. It was the least doglike thing either of them had done.

He swallowed, mind racing. Of course. Scarlett had said the Luparii would need to use the bargest, which meant they’d need to train i
t . . .
which meant they’d need to teach it restraint. They were trained to kill werewolves
on command
.

It was waiting for his command.

Jesse did know the French words for “kill it,” because his French teacher in high school had been afraid of spiders. But if he gave the command, he was killing a defenseless creature, one who had surrendered and posed no threat to him. It wasn’t the same as shooting the nova wolf in a fight, and Jesse found himself unable to force the words out of his mouth.

Sensing his hesitation, the nova wolf reared up in a sudden burst of strength, trying to flip itself free, but the bargest let out a low growl and pressed down harder, suppressing the nova easily. The wolf yelped with pain again.
It has to be done
,
Jesse reminded himself. He remembered Kate and Samantha and Ruanna, the women who’d done nothing to deserve the brutality that this monster had shown them. Jesse needed to get justice for those women. He took a deep breath and said,
“Tuez-le.”

His words were drowned out by the sound of Scarlett screaming behind him.