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It was a man—or so I assumed when I saw the sausage-like bundle heaved over one shoulder. No, not a bundle. That had to be Clarence, dead or knocked out or so sick he hadn’t even woken when he was gathered up and spirited away.
Just like my family’s pelts. For half a second, I was back in my childhood den. Quivering, four-legged, under the porch where I’d run in my terror. Listening to the pounding of feet on floorboards above me. Huddling there for an eternity after silence descended, until my twin’s face peeped in, upside down.
“She’s here!”
“Thank goodness.” My mother crouched at the edge of the yard. “My baby. You’re safe.”
She opened her arms and I crept into them, nosing for safety. The moon glowed bright above us, but my father stumbled as he came down the stairs toward us.
Human eyes were nearly blind in the darkness. Otherwise, Bright would never have asked:
“Where did you hide the wolfsfells?”
I shook. Not just my head, but my entire body.
I didn’t want to answer. Not when I’d only hidden myself rather than my family’s skins.
***
FOR THE SECOND TIME in a matter of minutes, I blinked away the past and returned to the present. I’d been a child then. Barely self-named. In the interim, I’d trained myself to be a warrior. Had learned to protect and attack with dagger and gun.
I’d lost my family’s pelts, but I wouldn’t lose Clarence. The tricky part would be taking down this intruder without harming the kid.
The dark shape stalked toward me, boots loud on hardwood flooring. But no one else stirred. The household was sleeping.
I could only hope Clarence—bent over the intruder’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes—was also sleeping. The fact that two people had died near here over the two nights preceding this one didn’t bode well for the Smythewhite teenager.
Regardless, I wasn’t letting this intruder escape.
The staircase yawned wide and open behind me. If the kidnapper made it past, he could escape into the downstairs and be gone before I found him. My fingers fell to my thigh. Slowly, ever so slowly, I eased up the snap restraining my dagger....
The barest click as metal slipped away from metal. The intruder hesitated.
The bundle on his shoulder slid sideways, and he hefted it back into place with an effort. He reached out to steady himself against Luke’s door....
And I sprang. Not wolf-like. Only human.
Still, the dagger was as good as fangs. It ripped into the intruder’s shirt, far enough away from Clarence so I wasn’t concerned about stabbing the teenager.
“Drop him!” I barked.
The intruder reached for me rather than obeying. I fended him off with my free hand.
For a moment, we were locked in place. His fingers were strong, his grasp like iron. In self-defense, my dagger slid past fabric and into skin.
The intruder yelped, reeling backwards. He was taller than me, but I could take him down. I knew it. I’d use the intruder’s top-heaviness against him, topple him to the floor being careful not to pin Clarence, hold him at dagger point until....
All of this flashed through my mind in the time it took Luke to rouse himself from sleep and react to our struggle. Or so I gathered when the door we’d been leaning against swung outward with the force of a charging werewolf.
The pivoting wood knocked both me and the intruder sideways. The dagger clattered out of my fingers as I lost both my balance and my grip.
And my plan didn’t come to fruition as intended. Instead, I wound up being the one on the floor as the intruder sprinted back the way he’d come.
***
FOR A MOMENT, I LAY there, stunned.
Luke was naked. No, not naked. He was wearing boxers.
And now my eyes could see in the darkness?
I shook my head, trying to clear it. My temple throbbed, and I couldn’t figure out whether it was due to my fall or to lending Bastion my pelt.
“Are you alright?”
Luke crouched beside me. He held me down when I started rising.
“Let me go. Clarence....”
Luke was so close I could see his nostrils flaring. “Blood. Who’s hurt?”
He’d smelled it. I could almost see his wolf waiting behind his human eyes.
And that’s what I needed at the moment. A wolf to track down the intruder.
Grabbing my dagger, I sprang to my feet. Okay, so “sprang” is perhaps a little overly ambitious for what actually happened. I ended up steadying myself against Luke’s shoulder while I spoke to his still-crouching form.
“Someone’s taken Clarence down the back staircase....”
Because that door yawned wide in the darkness. It hadn’t been open earlier—I was sure of it.
80% sure of it.
Suddenly not so totally sure.
But Luke accepted my first impression. “I’ll go first.”
“No.” I grabbed him as he started in the obvious direction. “We need to split up. Catch him in the middle. The kitchen has a back door. If he knows this house, he’d go straight out....”
“Okay.”
Luke was gone. One moment he was kneeling at my feet, the next he’d disappeared down the main staircase so quickly I barely saw him moving.
It was the darkness. It had to be the darkness. Or perhaps the skinless could do that? Move super-humanly fast?
It didn’t matter. Clarence was depending on us. I clenched the dagger tight in my right hand as I sprinted down the hall in the opposite direction. Pressing the door to the servant staircase a little wider so I could pass through it, something wet slid across my palm.
Blood. I hoped the wound belonged to the intruder rather than to Clarence. I hoped....
I didn’t bother to muffle my footfalls as I galloped down the stairs. The door at the bottom was closed. I flung it open just as Luke had done up above.
Here, there was a light.
The kitchen hallway looked nothing like it had the previous evening. At the time, even this distant off-shoot of the party had been full of hum and bustle. Now, the space was museum-like. Cavernous. Empty.
Was I right to think the intruder had gone out the back way? What was stopping him from waltzing out the front?
I hesitated, torn between turning left into the kitchen or right into the main part of the residence. Then a sound emerged from my left.
A muffled sob. The low rumble of an adult male voice.
Clarence is in there. And so was his attacker.
It wasn’t much, but the element of surprise was all I had going for me. I eased the door knob clockwise until the latch released its hold on the jamb.
Then I burst through, spinning sideways to shield myself behind the door.