41

“The Crow moon rises on Friday evening at 6:48 p.m.,” Renee said. The girls sat in a semicircle on the floor of the living room. They each wore sweat- and mud-stained clothes. Mitch cracked his knuckles. Hazel spread her legs and stretched, a warm washcloth draped over her neck. “We will attack on Friday, at dawn.”

“Er, what?” Corwin said.

“They’re planning on attacking us at the moon,” Renee said. “Archer’s pack fought under the moon, too. Each time. Rares are nocturnal. We need to use the element of surprise and turn their biology against them. With the sunrise at our backs, they’ll be at a disadvantage.”

The girls looked to one another and shrugged.

Renee continued. “Here are the things we know about the Morloc: As full-bloods they’re stronger at night in nearly every way: eyesight, stamina, strength. Each of them is roughly twice our size and twice our wolf strength, eight times our human strength. They’re smart, but they are wild animals more attuned to hunting prey by picking off the slowest of a pack and defending territory. We know they cooperated to kill Bree, but we don’t know to what extent they can work together otherwise.”

Lexie nodded. “We don’t know if they know we’re prepping for a fight, but it’s best to assume that they do.”

Renee nodded. “And if so, they have every reason to expect we will come at them as wolves. Because of that expectation, they will undoubtedly prepare for a moonrise attack. We’re going to get the jump on them. Questions?”

“How fast are they?” Corwin asked.

Sage answered. “Fast, but like a giraffe or an elephant is fast. They’re fast because they’re big. They span space in a different way than us. In a straight footrace they’d win.”

“But in an obstacle course, we’d have the upper hand,” Lexie said.

“So how do we make it one?” Mitch asked.

“The Morloc live dispersed throughout the Barrens, just a big rubbly open space,” Lexie said. “We need to draw them into the woods.”

Renee continued, “We’ll use Lexie’s guns as humans, deliver as much damage as possible, and then shift for close combat.”

“That’s fine for Hazel and Lexie, but the rest of us can’t stay human the whole time,” Corwin said.

“Yeah, they’ll be too strong,” Sharmalee said. “Five of their six ends are pointy. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“That’s why we need to practice our shifts,” replied Renee. “Hazel got there today, and I think we all can do it.”

“You think?” Mitch said.

“We’ll practice tomorrow. And Friday we fight.”

“One day?” Jenna said. “One more day to train?” Jenna’s voice cracked. She blinked back tears.

“And prepare,” Renee said. “I need three of you to go to the edge of the burnout and start digging trenches, running trip wires, anything we can do to make the space more complicated for the Morloc. And I need one more to go with Lexie to pick up the guns. We need as much firepower as we can gather.”

“What have we got?” Mitch asked.

Lexie shifted on her feet. “One pump-action shotgun, one bear rifle, and one over-under.”

Only Mitch acknowledged the paltry list. The others didn’t know what any of it meant, but Mitch’s dismay was easy enough to read.

“That is insane!” Jenna said.

Renee crossed her arms over her chest and nodded, looking at her feet.

“Renee, we can’t. This isn’t a plan,” Jenna pleaded. “You can’t send us in there without any training. Lexie’s the only one of us who’s even shot a gun. We’ll be eviscerated.”

“Jenna, I understand your fear, but we don’t have the time.”

“We don’t know that,” Jenna said, tears flowing unimpeded now, her ears growing rosy and her curls sticking to her cheeks. “Why couldn’t we go underground until after the moon, wait it out?”

“The Morloc aren’t going to wait,” Sage said. “When the moon comes, they will draw blood on a scale larger than this town has ever seen. We are Milton’s only line of defense.”

Jenna covered her eyes and tried to calm herself. Hazel reached out and stroked her back. “Do you realize what you’re asking of us?” Jenna whispered.

Renee nodded. “I do. And you all should know this now: we may all die on Friday. We may lose, and then our teachers and our friends and our families will die too. But if Lexie is right about their plan, it’s better for us all to die than to survive a war that they win.”

Jenna tugged at her hair. “What if you’re wrong? What if it’s not about us?”

Lexie and Renee exchanged a pained look.

“Bree was murdered,” Lexie said. “Whether she was supposed to be a sacrifice, an offering, or a sex slave, we don’t know. You can hide behind our incomplete information, or you can take a stand to help stop it all.

“That’s why we have to fight,” Lexie continued. “Because even if we don’t play, we lose.”

Jenna brought her hands to her face, a grimace tugging at her mouth, but she was only giving expression to the horror that all the girls were feeling.

“I’m in,” Corwin said. “These fuckers are going to pay for what they did to Sharm.”

“No way am I going to be a character in these monsters’ rape fantasy,” Hazel said. “I’m in, too.”

Sharmalee nodded. “Me too.”

“Yep,” Mitch said, rocking his body with his nod.

Lexie looked to Renee. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“Me too,” Renee said, with a smile.

The Pack looked to Jenna, who clasped her hand over her mouth, her eyes bloodshot and heavy with more yet-to-be-cried tears. “Oh god,” she whispered. “I’m so scared, sisters.”

Hazel crawled to Jenna’s legs, hugging them. The rest of the Pack stood and joined her, embracing Jenna from all sides.

Jenna let the Pack’s hugs squeeze out the sobs. She choked on her fear as it tried to strangle her from inside. “Okay,” Jenna gasped. “Okay. I’m in. We can do this,” Jenna said it to convince herself, and it sounded familiar to Lexie. She once had to force herself to abandon uncertainty, too. Now she had shed it completely. She would not miss it.