22

TESTING, TESTING. IS THIS THING ON?

At my insistence, we moved to the middle of the burned fields. There was a lot I didn’t know about bakaaks: I didn’t know if they had enhanced hearing, for example, or if it was possible that one could have learned English. I didn’t know if their hunting magic included scrying spells. What I did know was that I felt safer with a lot of wide-open space and daylight surrounding me on all sides.

Nikolai did not. “We’re exposed out here.”

“We’ll hear any arrows traveling through this much open air in time to react,” I assured him.

“What if this things has upgraded to sniper rifles and high-explosive rounds?”

Then we were fucked anyway, but rather than say that, I settled for: “A bakaak is all about its hunting traditions. That’s in its magical DNA… what drives it and how it came to be.”

“So what do we do?” Bernard challenged. “In your expert opinion.”

“We leave the Chequamegon reserve,” I told him. “Now.”

“You want us to run?” Uni-brow demanded. “Why? Is this thing female or something?”

Half the group didn’t get it. Bernard smiled faintly and Mayte snorted, not necessarily amused. For my part, I made a mental note to have a little discussion with Uni-brow at the earliest future point where we could afford to waste time on such things. But to be fair, testosterone was pretty thick in the air and nobody was too happy about my suggestion.

“What’s your plan?” Bernard asked curiously.

“I want to get some detailed survey maps,” I said. “Whatever else this thing is, it’s still an unclean spirit that hunts on land, and that means it can’t cross running water.”

Nikolai started to say something, but I overrode him. “But it’s going to want to be near a river because I guarantee you that it’s gathering wolfsbane, and lots of it. It will also want to be near a cave. Not only does this thing hide from the sun, it’s the ancient spirit of an obsessive Native American hunter, so there’s a good chance it’s going to want to do some hunting magic. That includes painting pictures on cave walls.”

I was past the part I’d already worked out and thinking aloud by this point. “The damned thing won’t want to be between bends of a river, because that would put running water around it on three out of four sides, and that would make it easier to pen in. So it’s going to make its base of operations near an outer curve of a river, somewhere near cave complexes. It won’t want to be in any lower elevations or near too many wide stretches of open land, either. Get me a detailed map and I’ll narrow our target area as we travel.”

“Travel how?” Bernard asked.

“The best way to go would be by kayak or canoe during the day. Did any of you ever read The Song of Hiawatha?”

Everyone just looked at me. Gabriel’s snort sounded a lot like Mayte’s.

“Look, traveling on water would keep us in open sunlight,” I said, trying not to adopt a this-is-basic-arithmetic-so-please-don’t-make-me-explain-it-to-you-again attitude. I wasn’t used to hunting by committee. “And it would limit the bakaak’s area of attack to one side of the river. The bakaak wouldn’t be able to lay traps in the water, and we could anchor our food and supplies in the boats where it couldn’t destroy them or poison them easily.”

“Anything else?” Bernard’s tone was dry, but I took him literally.

“It’s supposed to be freakishly fast, so shotguns with wide-dispersal would be good. Some homemade Molotov cocktails made out of holy water put through a moonshine still would be good too. And this thing uses infravision, so magnesium flares might blind it. From what I saw at the knight compound, I assume you can get your hands on those things.”

“The holy water moonshine thing is kind of weird, but we can get the rest of it fast.” It was Muscles who agreed, overdeveloped forearms crossed over his overdeveloped chest.

“This is all horse shit!” Nikolai interrupted. “We can’t just leave! Devonte expects to find us here.”

Devonte? The guy who had driven the Jeep when I escaped the knights?

Then Nikolai shut his mouth abruptly—the way people do when they just revealed more than they meant to and are hoping nobody will notice.

“Nikolai.” Just the name, but Bernard packed a world of meaning in it. Friendship. Suspicion. Resignation. Warning. Regret. Anger. Understanding.

“I sent Devonte’s claw out to track this thing down,” Nikolai said sullenly.

Oh, hell.

“And you didn’t tell me.” Now there was no nuance in Bernard’s voice, no tone, no inflection, but that lack was just as significant as any excess of emotion.

“I send people out on stuff all the time.” Nikolai sounded like a child caught in a misdeed. A six-foot-five child with smoldering brown eyes and muscle definition and hands that made fists the size of grapefruit. “You weren’t here.”

“And you didn’t tell me this first thing when I got here.” Bernard sighed. “Did you think it wasn’t important?”

Nikolai fell back on the first defense of noncoms and subordinates everywhere. He shut up.

“Did you do this because you wanted to prove to me that we don’t need John?” It sounded like a question, but it really wasn’t. “Let the knight put on a dog and pony show, and then prove that we have our own way of doing things and they work just fine?”

“We do.” Nikolai gave me a dead-eyed look.

Bernard wasn’t having any of it. He got in Nikolai’s face and didn’t seem to care how the Saw’s eyes fluttered or how his muscles tensed. “So you want to undermine what I’m trying to do? Do you want to kill me and take my place, Nikolai? Is that what this is about?”

Nikolai started to say something, but Bernard didn’t give him time to respond. “Because your new reign is off to a brilliant start! YOU JUST SENT FIVE OF OUR PEOPLE AFTER GOD KNOWS WHAT ON ITS OWN FUCKING TERRITORY WITH NO PLAN OR BACKUP OR WAY TO COMMUNICATE WITH US! OR MAYBE YOU DIDN’T NOTICE THAT OUR CELL PHONES AREN’T WORKING AROUND HERE?!?”

By the end of the sentence, Bernard’s face was red, and spittle was flying out his mouth. His eyes were just this side of sane, and his skin was leaking KILL KILL KILL, and he was pretty sure that he could do it.

Just how physically dangerous was this man?

In any case, Nikolai backed down. It had to be some kind of wolf group instinct just like the thing that had led me to attack Cory. I don’t think Nikolai was afraid of Bernard physically, exactly, but he was afraid of something. Maybe of losing Bernard’s respect? His love? The Clan?

Bernard turned on me. “And you. QUIT PLAYING WITH THAT KNIFE!”

My hand was on my knife. When had that happened?

I forced my hand to release my knife handle with a deep breath that was a mistake. There was still a lot of aggression in the air. “What do you want?”

“I still need your expertise, monster hunter,” Bernard snarled. “How much danger is Devonte’s fist in?”

I looked at Nikolai. No games. “Are they coming back before dark?”

Nikolai shook his head. He was trembling, and it wasn’t fear. He managed one word. “No.”

“When did you send them?”

He looked at his watch, the old-fashioned wind-up kind that work during supernatural energy surges. “Six hours ago.”

I focused on Bernard. “Then it depends. If the bakaak stays underground or goes back to some spirit world during the day, we might have time to find them. If it’s prepared to attack in daytime, your people are probably already dead.”

“Five werewolves? It’s that dangerous?” Bernard asked quietly.

“It’s not the bakaak’s physical capabilities that make it dangerous,” I said. “It was an expert hunter before it ever became a monster, and it’s had a long time to work on its skill set. How long have you been growing dope here?”

Bernard looked at Muscles’s back. “Robert?”

Muscles grunted. “Lafayette finally got too hot about five years ago.”

Lafayette? Where had I heard… oh, right. All of those beasts of Bray Road stories were from around that part of Wisconsin.

“This thing studied your operation and made preparations before it struck,” I said. “I promise you that. It’s ready for werewolves to come after it. It wants werewolves to come after it. That’s why I want to come back over the river. If we try to track it directly, we’re going to have to travel through traps and ambush points.”

Bernard weighed that and the choice presented him: go after some damnable thing half-cocked and endanger even more of his people, or abandon five of his people who might already be dead anyhow so that the rest of his clan could take a less-dangerous approach.

“This paralyzing poison it uses, it works on werewolves.” He was talking to himself.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you said it uses ancient shamanistic magic,” he mused. “Like the kind that made the first were-beings. So it might have other tricks that affect us.”

“That’s a theory,” I said carefully. “But this thing is definitely as strong as we are, and probably faster. In some stories there are lines about bakaaks flying through forests, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a metaphor for how quickly they move and the fact that they like to hide up in trees.”

“We’re going after them,” he decided. “And you’re going to lead the way.”

Say what?

“You want to rush into a trap, that’s your business,” I informed him. “I’ll hunt this thing alone, or I’ll follow along with your group, but don’t ask me to lead if I can’t lead my way. You’re trying to put a fire out by throwing bodies on top of it.”

“The Clan needs you,” Bernard said gravely. “But the Clan also has to trust you. The only way this works is if you lead us, and from the front.”

I was suddenly reminded of Emil and the lengths he had gone to in order to make the knights accept me as their living weapon. Again, I had this sudden image of me on a board between two men playing chess.

“Politics and PR make bad battle strategies.” I indicated Uni-brow with a twitch of my head. “You want to make somebody volunteer, make him.”

“Mayte?” Bernard called instead. “I want you to take point.”

Wait… what?

She didn’t argue, though several of the males turned or stiffened and generally looked like they wanted to protest. Gabriel’s head shot up alertly, his eyes hot, and Muscles started to raise his hand like he was in a classroom. But they remained silent when they saw Bernard’s face.

Mayte was carrying some kind of custom-made long-distance handgun I’d never seen before, one with a scope. She had a machete sheathed on her back too, and a frag grenade on her belt. “Where can I pick up this Devonte’s scent?”

“What are you doing?” I asked Bernard. “She has less experience as a werewolf than anybody here, and she was an MP, not a tracker.”

He answered Mayte’s question instead of mine. “Nikolai can take you to the starting point.”

I got it then.

“You asked what you were doing here,” I told Mayte. “This is it. You’re here to give him leverage over me.”

Mayte’s shrug was sad and hurt and angry. She didn’t much give a damn about what I said, or thought, or thought I said, or said I thought. “Is it working?”

How badly had I hurt her pride?

“No,” I said. I don’t know if I was answering Mayte’s question or protesting it.

Mayte shrugged again. “Bernard’s my leader. It’s his job to make use of me.”

The Clan blew me off then, just started preparing and left me standing there. Bernard called out and sent a couple of people off with Lee to fill in claw leaders about what was going on. Some guy came back with a jerryjug of water and some protein bars while other people stepped aside to relieve themselves and others cinched or tied or buttoned things. Most of them had M9s.

Nikolai started to walk, nodding at Mayte to follow him.

“You know, just because my name is Charming doesn’t mean I have some kind of damsel-in-distress complex!” I called after them.

They kept ignoring me. Mayte was making her own choice, and it wasn’t my job to save her from it. That impulse was sexist or something. That kind of thinking had lost me Sig. Might have lost me Sig. Probably lost me Sig.

Sig. Even if I had idealized her, even if she didn’t want me around, I had told her I would come back to her if I could and find out if there was anything real between us. My word used to mean something.

Shit shit shit.

I stalked forward, snatching the Kevlar vest out of Mayte’s hands while she was still in the process of readying it and walking past her. “Fine.”

“Where are you going?” Mayte called after me.

“Devonte started looking at the place where the fire began,” I snapped over my shoulder. “You don’t even know that, and you’re going to lead a hunting party?”

“I…” Mayte gave up and showed me her teeth. She wasn’t smiling; Bernard was.

“Don’t get too happy there, Sparky,” I advised him, turning back to the front. “If you really want me to become a true believer, you just lost a lot of ground.”

“No, I haven’t.” His voice was calm behind me. “You respect results and pragmatism.”

And the truly damnable thing was, I think he was right.