Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel) (30 page)

Chapter 46

I stood just before the drop-off to the bridle trail, listening as hard as I could for sounds from below. I wanted to yell down to Jesse, make sure he was okay, but I was afraid to spook the nova wolf—or the bargest. What if I yelled at a crucial moment and distracted one of them? If Jesse was actually in danger, there’d be more noise, wouldn’t there?

I was focused entirely on the bridle path area, feeling useless, with fear tightening the knots in my stomach. Then I suddenly realized that I was alone, and exposed, and injured, in the dark. It seemed as though Kirsten’s Humans-Go-Home spell had turned the area into an isolated bubble, with just the nova wolf, Jesse, and me.

I heard a tiny noise behind me. I couldn’t even identify it, it was so soft. A branch breaking? A scuffle in the dirt? But I turned around slowly, flashlight beam bouncing around the clearing. There was nothing there. In the distance, I saw car lights coming down from the Observatory, people leaving for the night, and I told myself I’d just heard a car sound.

And ye
t . . .
something felt wrong. I moved the flashlight beam through the clearing one more time, intending to turn around and yell for Jesse when I was sure it was okay. On the second pass, though, I saw a bright flash of something under one of the picnic tables. Twin glowing spots, menacing in the shadows.

Eye shine. Like you see in wolves.

I kept the flashlight moving, trying to hide my discovery, but it was too late. The werewolf crept out from under the table, growling. It started to advance on me.

It was clearly expecting me to try to run, probably figuring I’d be easy prey with the cane. It looked momentarily confused, however, when I started limping straight for it. That confusion, of course, was increased exponentially when I finally took the last step needed to get it in my radius.

I’ve changed werewolves before, and they each react a little differently. Some, like Will, roll with the change. Some freeze, some even start shaking from the sudden absence of magic. The wolf in front of me, however, simply dropped, like a rock in a pond. I hurried closer, wanting to keep him in range, and stopped when I was four feet away, keeping the flashlight beam on the werewolf.

It was a him; that was obvious. He was naked, curled in the fetal position, shock on his face. I limped a couple of steps sideways so I could see his face—it was Henry Remus.

But if Remus was her
e . . .
I opened my mouth to yell at Jesse, but something must have clicked in Remus’s brain, because suddenly he had scrambled to his feet and was
diving
for me with mad fury on his face. He moved like humans
never
do: not trying to catch himself or keep his balance, not adjusting his movement for the moment we inevitably collided. He simply
hurled
himself at me, clumsy and desperate.

Under normal circumstances I could have dodged him easily, but even when I ignored the pain in my knee, I couldn’t move fast enough. I stumbled backward and tripped on the leg of a nearby picnic table, starting my own fall even as Henry Remus barreled into me.

We hit the ground hard, and the back of my head rammed the packed dirt like I was trying to dig a frickin’ hole with it. It wasn’t exactly the same spot where I’d struck my head two weeks earlier, but it was damn close, and nausea and dizziness were suddenly tugging at my attention like impatient toddlers. My cane slid away in the dirt.

On top of me, Henry Remus had recovered and leaned upright, his foul breath on my face. “
You
again,” he hissed from inches away. “What
are
you?” My flashlight had skittered away when we collided, but it pointed more or less toward my feet.

I really wanted to come out with something like “your worst nightmare,” but I was busy remembering where my limbs were. Remus pushed himself off the ground and straddled me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them. “Wha
t . . .
ar
e . . .
you?” he whispered.

Instead of answering, I opened my mouth and screamed. It wasn’t tactical or anything. It was just that I was so scrambled by vertigo that it was the only sound I felt capable of producing. I drew breath to scream again, and Henry Remus leaned down on me, his grimy hand smothering my mouth, his elbows touching the ground as he rested his naked weight on my upper body. I struggled then, but I might as well have been pushing against a downpour of rain. Finally I wrenched my mouth open just enough to bite down on the skin of his hand as hard as I could. It tasted horrible, but it worked.

“Ow!” Remus cried, sitting up without getting off me, cradling his hand to his chest. He gave me a wounded look. “Why did you do
that?”

“Seriously?” I panted, sucking in air. I wiped at my mouth with the back of my sleeve. Ick.

There were footsteps behind me, and suddenly I heard the glorious sound of Jesse’s gun as he took the safety off. “Police,” Jesse said, his voice scary-calm. He began circling around us, trying to position himself to see my face. “Get off of her.”

“What?” Remus said, looking suddenly baffled. He didn’t move. “Why are you guys
doing
this to me?”

Jesse was close enough to see me now, and even in the darkness he and I exchanged a confused look. “Are yo
u . . .
whining
at us?” Jesse said in disbelief.

Remus’s face twitched distractedly. “I’m trying to do something great here,” he protested. “Why can’t you people see that?” He turned his head to glare down at me. “And
yo
u
. . .
why are you taking him away from me?”

“Taking who?” I asked, confused.

“Brother Wolf,” Remus said reverentially. “He speaks to me. He wants me to kill, to eat, to fuck, to
create
.” He leaned forward, giving me a look at his flashing eyes, filled with madness. I could feel his erection on my stomach, and I almost threw up on him. “Don’t you see how that’s bigger than you?” he whispered.

“Jesse?” I said nervously. I really, really wanted the crazy naked person to get off me now.

“Enough,” Jesse barked at Remus. “Get off her. Slowly.”

“You disappointment me,” Remus whispered to me, like we were co-conspirators. He leaned forward to put his hands on the ground by my head, making like he was going to push off the ground and stand up. But then in a quick, scary motion, he tangled his fingers in my hair and rolled my body sideways as he swung a leg over me, forcing me in between himself and Jesse’s gun. I cried out with pain as my hair and knee were wrenched. We were kneeling, and he very slowly forced me to my feet. It took every ounce of self-control I had left to keep from screaming at the pain.

Remus held me between him and Jesse, who looked anguished and uncertain. “Drop the gun and kick it away!” Remus sang gaily, delighted with the turn of events. Jesse didn’t move, and Remus pulled his fingers out of my hair and grabbed my chin instead. The other arm wrapped around my shoulders and chest, pinning me to him. “I can break her neck,” he mused to Jesse. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. Never actually broken a neck before. But how hard can it be?” I could hear the
interest
in his voice. Jesse must have too, because he dropped the gun. Before I could protest he had kicked it off into the darkness.

At least my hands were now free. I dug my right hand in my jacket pocket. Seeing the motion, Jesse tried to keep Remus talking. “And who’s with you?” Jesse asked, his voice tense but steady. “Who’s the gray wolf?”

Remus went alert, looking anxiously at Jesse. “That is our mate,” he informed him, his hot breath on my neck. He took his free hand off my chin—it felt like he was leaving a greasy film behind—and wrapped it around my waist instead. I suddenly could feel his fingers worming under the waistband of my pants, pressing into my skin. It wasn’t sexual, exactly, but intimate, like he was digging for warmth. Ick, ick, ic
k . . .
I focused on breathing, trying not to panic. You can take a hundred showers when this is over, Scarlett.

“I picked her and Brother Wolf transformed her. She is ours now.” I couldn’t see Remus’s face while I was being employed as his human shield, but I saw Jesse react to Remus’s expression with revulsion. “Where is she?” Remus asked Jesse, plain curiosity in his voice, like he couldn’t find one of his shoes. “Have you done something to her?” He sighed elaborately. “I hope not. We went through
such
trouble to make her. Most of the potentials were too weak.” He tilted his head, as if listening to an inner voice. “Although that’s true, number five taste
d . . .
interesting.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jesse said casually. Very slowly, I started to ease the Taser out of my pocket.

“Oh,
yes
. But now we have our mate. Brother Wolf tells her what to do, and she must listen,” Remus giggled, as though he hadn’t heard Jesse at all. “We
own
her.”

Holy shit, this guy was nuts. We’d miscalculated, thinking that it would be a while before he could control Lizzy Thompkins as her alpha. But Henry Remus wasn’t a normal alpha werewolf; he was a sick, twisted imitation. And Lizzy was in thrall. “She’s fine,” Jesse said reassuringly, keeping his voice level. “She’s hanging out on the path back there with a friend of mine.”

Shadow. I’d almost forgotten about Shadow. I looked at Jesse questioningly, but he was focused on Remus, not wanting to give anything away.

I made a show of squirming, like I was uncomfortable, to cover up the movement it took to get the Taser in position with my thumb on the trigger. Remus gave me a little shake to keep me still. He wa
s . . .
ah, God, he was sniffing my hair.

Clumsily, as best I could, I reached my arm around and tasered the sick fuck on the hip.

That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But I was dizzy from being shaken again, and instead of making a clear connection between his skin and the two electrodes on the Taser, I think maybe one electrode brushed against his skin briefly. It was enough to get Remus to let go of me and stumble back a few feet, but it didn’t have nearly the effect it should have. I swayed from the dizziness.

Remus was already starting to step toward me again when Jesse yelled, “Scarlett,
down
!” I dropped as fast as I could. Jesse flew through the space where I had just been, and hit Remus in a flying tackle that felt very satisfying to watch, especially after he’d just pulled the same crap on me. “Get out of range,” Jesse told me tersely, and I complied, scooting away from Remus on my hands and one knee. The full moon was high in the night sky, and as soon as he popped out of my radius Henry Remus began to change again. Jesse yelled something in French—later I learned that it was the word “release”—and suddenly, the bargest streaked into the picnic clearing like a flying demon dog from hell. I knew then that I had chosen the right name for her, because in the dark clearing she was nearly invisible, like smoke in the darkness. Jesse scrambled away from Remus, picking up one of the flashlights and pointing it at the nova werewolf.

I’d never seen anything like Shadow’s attack. She was effortlessly fast, pouncing on Remus like a supernatural puppy on a squeaky toy. Remus was bigger, but in the few weeks that he’d been a werewolf, he hadn’t actually had to face a single challenge. His half-developed fighting instincts weren’t prepared for something that had been trained her whole life to kill him. The poor crazy bastard never had a chance. Shadow pinned him in an instant, and while he was still trying to squirm away, Jesse yelled,
“Tuez-le!”

Shadow tore out his throat.

Remus fell back, panting shallowly as the skin reformed on his neck. As soon as it was more than translucent membranes, but before Remus could even take a full breath, Shadow reached down and ripped it off again, spitting the skin onto the ground next to Remus’s head. Then she did it again. And again. He began to visibly weaken after the third time she ripped his throat out, and by the fifth, he was barely moving his legs anymore. Shadow kept going until his blood stopped pumping into the ground. There was a brief shimmer as his body changed, and then Henry Remus was lying there dead.

Shadow came over to me and sat down daintily, blood soaking her muzzle and front paws where she’d dug at the wound. Jesse and I both stared down at Remus’s body, and then Jesse went over and nudged it with one toe. “What about DNA?” he asked me. “Will his be normal?”

I nodded. Werewolf magic, like most forms, depends on life to sustain it. When Remus had died, the magic had left him, evaporating back into wherever it had come from to begin with. “I don’t know about bargest saliva, though. Maybe your pathologist friend could do something with those tests?”

“Mmm,” Jesse said noncommittally.

“Where’
s . . . 
,” I began, but just then she came limping up from the bridle path, a tired-looking wolf with gray fur and bright blue eyes. Shadow stood, looking at Lizzy with a confused face like she’d just dropped out of the sky. I put a hand on her collar.

Bereft of her alpha, Lizzy came cringing into the clearing, weak and injured. I was pretty sure that not all of those injuries were physical. I motioned for Jesse to take Shadow’s collar and he did, leading her a few feet behind me. Then I painfully knelt down on the ground and called, very softly, “Lizzy. Lizzy Thompkins.”

The wolf’s eyes flicked to me once, confused, and she stopped, her paws dancing nervously on the ground like she was ready to bolt. No one has ever been able to really explain to me how much of themselves the werewolves retain when they’re not in human form, so I had no idea if any of this would work. “Lizzy, shh, it’s okay,” I said soothingly. “He’s dead. And we know someone who can help you.” I held out a hand. “If you could just come a little closer, I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Lizzy edged a tiny bit closer to me, and when nothing bad happened, a little closer still. I felt the bargest shifting restlessly behind me, but Jesse stroked her and murmured reassuringly. Finally Lizzy took the last step she needed to get into my radius, and flopped to the ground, human again. I thought she was going to stay there, but she kept moving, crawling closer and closer, until she reached me. She was older than I’d imagined, maybe in her early- or mid-thirties, a skinny mixed-race woman with dark hair that spilled down her back in matted snarls. Then Lizzy pulled herself half into my lap and collapsed there, sobbing.