About half a mile away, Duo stops the van. He leans back over the top of his seat, peering at me and Rayne. Ugh, who am I kidding, he’s looking at me.
Solo mirrors the gesture leaning over his own seat with the edge of his bottom lip pulled up between his teeth. “Are you okay?”
Redundant questions for all, please.
I shake my head. “What have I done?”
“Nothing—”
“Wendy trusted me.” I cut across Rayne with a grunt. “He came to SPEAR specifically looking for me and look what happened.”
“You couldn’t have stopped that, Danika. None of us could.”
“But—”
Rayne touches my arm. “You really think your actions kick-started that? Come on, Aleksandar was undermining Mx. Dunn before we ever arrived and look how many of the pack were behind him. This is not your doing.”
“But—”
Solo clears his throat. “She’s right, Danika. You’re human, you can’t see it, but I can.”
“And me.” Duo looks to his brother. “It was so strong.”
“We could smell it—”
“—and so could every other wolf there.”
“Aleksandar is a fighter—”
“—a born leader—”
“—and he never would have allowed Chalks to lead for as long as he did—”
“Except Wensleydale was always around.”
“But not today.”
“Okay, okay, you two.” I lift my hand. “Can you stop that for a second. It freaks me out.”
Both hang their heads in perfect unison. “Sorry.” Their voices come out as one.
Bloody hell.
A thump outside our van signals Hawk returning. He arrives with both Erkyan and Willow, the first clinging to his back, the second cradled in his arms.
All three are clearly shaken, Hawk perhaps more than the others. Several dots of blood mark his pale green face. His clawed hands shake as he wipes the marks away, the long spines of his wings trembling to match.
He swears, something truly filthy and angry. I know most of the words, but Gargoyle isn’t a language I know well. The gist is clear enough though.
I jerk the doors open and step out onto the street.
Wow. Even from so far away, I can hear the remnants of the fight. Howls, calls, and yells, carrying on the night air. My skin crawls.
“Okay, we need to calm down.” Not sure who I’m telling, but I need the pep talk as much as anybody else. “If we stay calm and think this through, it will be fine. We just need to figure out the next steps.”
Duo grunts. “There are no next steps.”
“Aleksandar won. The fight is over.” Solo climbs out of the van.
“But—”
“He. Won. It’s over.” There’s quiet regret in Solo’s voice, but he adds no more than that. Instead he walks back along the street, head bowed, hands clenched into fists.
I let him go. “Okay, fine. So he leads the pack now. What about Wendy?”
Rayne steps close to my side. Her body is still and silent, but her presence is a comfort even now. I’d give a lot for a brief moment alone with her, just to feel her arms around me.
As if sensing my thoughts, she reaches for my hand. Her fingers brush mine for the briefest moment before sliding away. “We still have a job to do,” she says. “Remember? It’s not just Mr. Gordan’s pack. We need to figure out why werewolves as a whole are acting as they are. Perhaps we can visit another pack and get some answers.”
Willow smiles at me. Her teeth are slightly green and pointed, her eyes wide around slitted pupils. Her hands move, a little flutter of signs and patterns with long, dexterous fingers.
“We will work together.”
Or at least I think that’s what she says. Sprite Sign is still new to me, but I have enough for basic conversation.
I flutter my own hands and fingers in response. “Thank you.”
Her smile widens.
Back to Rayne. “Next stop is Grey Tail, then. They aren’t as accommodating as the Dire Wolves, but that’s still somewhere to start. You guys up for that?”
Hawk, Erkyan, and Willow all nod. I glance back to the van at Duo, but he doesn’t seem to have heard me. He’s still at the wheel, clutching it with both hands.
For the first time, I notice how pale his knuckles are and that his eyes are scrunched tightly shut. In fact, his entire body is tense, muscles coiled up like a spring.
“Duo?”
His eyes snap open. “Get in the van.”
“Huh?”
“Right now, everyone in.”
* * *
The urgency in his voice propels all of us into immediate action. Erkyan and Willow move first, diving through the open doors without a word. Hawk eyes the vehicle, then bounds upward, landing lightly on the outstretched arm of a nearby street lamp.
Rayne pulls at me.
“What’s happening? And what about Solo?”
“The Dire Wolves are moving,” Duo snaps. “He’ll follow at a distance, but we need to get off the road.”
“What?”
“Move.”
Back into the van again, but not before I finally notice the sound previously on the edge of my hearing.
All that yelling and howling, it’s closer now. Close enough in fact that I’m stunned I hadn’t heard it clearly before. With it I catch a rumbling sound, like marching, but there are too many feet for it to be anything as human and mundane as marching.
No, this is something else.
Rayne slams the door just as Duo guns the engine.
The van leaps forward, ka-chunking swiftly through gears.
Duo’s eyes are narrowed, his hands carefully positioned at two and ten. He speeds us away from the edge of pack territory and toward more populated and touristy areas outside the Bowl.
But the sound of howls is gaining on us.
“One of you get the radio,” I call out while moving toward the back of the van, smearing condensation with my hand to better see through the glass.
Nothing. Just empty streets.
Why then do I feel so sick and tense? Why is my stomach knotted with deep, crawling fear?
Static crackles through the vehicle’s speakers followed by Duo’s stiff voice.
“Hawk, you got eyes up there? What’s happening?”
More crackling and then, “Uh…do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Great.
“Tell us, Hawk.” Still I watch our rear. “What’s happening?”
“Good news is, I can see Solo and he’s fine. He’s wedged under a car on the outskirts of Dire Wolf territory. I think they know he’s there, but no one seems to care.”
Duo grunts from his position up front. “He’s fine. What’s the bad news?”
A pause.
“Hawk?”
“They’re moving. The Dire Wolves I mean.”
“What?” I crane my neck, but from within the vehicle there’s no way I can see him. “What are you talking about?”
“Aleksandar is at the front, still in hybrid form. Dozens of others, maybe all of them, are with him. They’re running.”
“Where?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I think I do, Hawk. What’s happening?”
The others gather around me, now fighting to see out the back window.
They needn’t have bothered.
Around a corner at the end of the road strides a single werewolf in hybrid form. An instant later comes another. And another. And another.
Within seconds, the road at our rear is a boiling mass of sprinting monsters, a wave that swells and engulfs our vehicle in seconds.
Duo puts his foot down, but we’re not fast enough.
The wolves overtake us en masse, flowing around us, over us, never once stopping, but buffeting us from every angle as they continue on their way.
Erkyan screams and waves her tiny fists, while Willow joins in. Her screams aren’t cries so much as breathy, rasping gasps, like skeletal twigs brushing together in a high wind.
Only Rayne and I remain calm, our fingers entwined.
She stares at me. “You didn’t do this.”
“Rayne—”
“You didn’t do this. You even said so yourself—Aleksandar has been undermining Mx. Dunn’s position for a while.”
And just like that, it all falls into place.
Fuck. How could I have been so stupid?
The attack this morning, the snide and snippy comments within earshot of other pack members. Even sending Pete on some wild goose chase to pick up supposed new werewolves. It has all been a set-up. Right from the start.
All those threads, all those little, seemingly innocent actions, all leading to this.
“He wanted this. He wanted an excuse to fight Pete, and I…I gave it to him.”
“Danika…”
“Stop it. Can’t you see? Aleksandar set me up. He set us all up. Giving wolf descriptions to SPEAR, getting Wendy out of the way. Once he’d done that all he needed to do was take down Pete.”
“But why? If he wanted control of the pack why not just do it without all this fuss?”
I sigh. “Would you want to fight a wolf with Wensleydale’s reputation? This way he doesn’t have to.”
At last the pack of hybrid wolves moving around us ebbs, then fades to nothing. The last wolf bounds off our roof with a joyful howl and speeds away into the night.
Duo stops the van, drawing a heavy breath through pursed lips.
The speakers crackle. “Guys?”
I sigh. “Yes, Hawk?”
“They’re heading for the West Side.”
Ice floods my veins.
At this time of night, even on a weekday, the West Side is a roaring hub of tourist activity. For humans, the West Side is the safest place to enjoy edane culture with shops, restaurants, clubs, and bars all open from dusk until dawn.
Willow stamps her foot. Once she has my gaze, she signs at me. “We have to stop them.”
“I know, but—”
Another foot stamp. “Civilians in the area. They must be protected from the cucumber.”
I frown. “Cucumber?”
Erkyan giggles.
Willows rolls her eyes and signs again. “Danger.”
A rippling snarl from up front draws my attention to Duo.
He has his eyes closed again, though this time, his hands are pressed to his temples. His lips move, though no words come out. He seems to be arguing, though for the life of me I don’t understand how.
A second later his eyes fly open and he pounds both fists against the steering wheel. “Chalks is hurt. Badly. He can’t move.”
“What? How do you—”
“Solo is there. He says he needs medical aid.”
Ah. So these two must have been Fire Fangs before they joined SPEAR.
Well, shit. Can anything else possibly get fucked up tonight?
“Where’s the rest of the pack?”
“With Aleksandar.”
That makes me wince. “All of them? What about those who were with Pete? What happened to them?”
Duo stares at me. The expression in his eyes is enough.
Fuck.
“Solo can move Chalks, but it will be slow. Without help the blood loss will kill him.”
“Can’t he shift back?”
A brief pause. Duo seems to look inward for brief moments. “No. The injuries are too severe.”
No need to ask how he knows. I’ve seen enough oddness and magic in my time to know he has some strange connection with his twin, either from simply being a twin or from starting his werewolf life as a Fire Fang. I don’t have to understand it to make use of it.
“We need to go back.”
Willow makes a horrid little rasping noise, like tree branches splintering. Her hands move quick and jerky. It’s far too quick for me to catch the signs, but I know what she’s saying.
“But we can’t leave him there.”
For the first time, Erkyan speaks. “You’d trade all the civilians of the West Side for one werewolf?”
Ouch.
“Of course not, but—”
“Then let us go do our job.”
I cover my face with my hands. She’s right, but can I really leave Chalks out there, alone and dying when it’s my fault this happened?
And what would Wendy say?
For the first time in a while, I remember that Rayne is still holding my hand. I notice because she squeezes my fingers with hers. It seems an age since we’ve touched.
“The entire pack is mobile,” her voice is soft and low, but I know we can all hear it. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. At least not in such a heavily populated city like this one. We have to call it in because we can’t handle it alone anyway.”
“Fine. Do that. I’ll go back to the Bowl and help Chalks.”
The grip on my fingers becomes crushing.
“Okay, okay, you come with me. Just calm down. That’s my gun hand.”
Duo looks ahead. “I won’t have all werewolves smeared by Aleksandar’s actions. I’m going out there to stop him.”
“But—”
“But nothing. That one is rotten, Danika. He even smells bad. If he does something to hurt people, who do you think will get the blame? Not you, not SPEAR, not Wensleydale, but all wolves. I’m going after him. And I’m taking the van.”
Our roof rumbles, then gives a little on one side. Moments later, Hawk drops to the ground outside the window. He yanks open the door. “I’ll take you back. I can fly quicker than this heap of junk anyway.”
I stare at him for long seconds. “Thank you.”
He shrugs. “You’re a good person, Danika. For a human. And a good leader. I want to help you.”
“Good, then let’s get out of here. Duo, you take the others on. All of you fit an earpiece and stay on comms. We’ll be in touch once Chalks is safe.”
Erkyan passes out the small communications earpieces while I clamber out the van. Rayne follows close behind, fitting hers on the way.
Her eyes glitter with traces of silver as she watches me scramble onto Hawk’s back. “You’re not going without me,” she mutters.
Hawk grins. “Then keep up, fanger. We’ll stay in contact.” He taps his left ear where his own comms earpiece is already in place and bends his legs.
I have just enough time to grab my own device before Hawk bounds into the air with a spring like a goat.
Fuck.
My stomach threatens to drop out of my body, and I cling to his shoulders with my eyes scrunched shut. I tell myself this is worth it, that this is the best and quickest way to get back to the Bowl and save Chalks.
Just the same, as Hawk puts on a burst of speed with a powerful flap of his wings, my guts flip-flop and try to escape through my nose.
I would rather have walked.