There was only one streak-headed werwulf I knew of, and I’d already tangled with him before. I’d shot him in the jaw, but not before he bit Graves. Christophe had shot him, too, right in front of Dad’s truck. Sergej’s pet, a wulfen broken to his will.
I didn’t think he was here to offer me cookies.
Ohshit. It’s Ash. I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you’re hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It’s stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it’s going to go on living.
Ash stopped, head upflung, and sniffed. The tickle got worse. His head ducked a little, lean muzzle dipping, testing the air. He stepped sideways, utterly silent, and stopped again. The fog cringed away from him.
Keep moving. Oh God, let him keep moving.
Another soft call from Gran’s owl marred the sudden silence, but I couldn’t see it. The crashing and snapping had stopped. Everything was still, even the spots and shafts of moonlight holding their breath, trapped in reflective veils of white vapor.
Too late I remembered the stiletto in my ass pocket. If I’d thought to get it out, I could be armed now, instead of lying helpless in a tangle of thorns.
The streak-headed werwulf took another three steps, quick and eerily graceful, to the side. His head turned, and the mad gleam of his eyes seemed to pierce the darkness and burn into my skin.
Did he see me? God, oh God. Did he? My hand twitched, wanting to get at the knife. But if I did, I’d have to roll over and make noise. And good luck getting it out of my jeans in time to do anything about the werwulf.
God, how I wished for a gun. Any gun, even a.22. A nine-millimeter would be better. A.45 or an assault rifle would be the best. And someone to work it who had a bead on this thing would be awful nice too.
And while I’m dreaming, I’d really like a pony. My heart hammered, thudded, and basically tried to make me gasp again. I couldn’t even start moving my hand toward my pocket, if I could see movement at night, a wulfen damn sure could. If he couldn’t already smell me.
Why was he hesitating?
The tension stretched, unbearable second after unbearable second, and the taste of wax and dead oranges burst on my tongue, so hard I almost gagged.
I hate that. My eyes rolled as I tried not to swallow it, my mouth was full of spit, Jesus Christ, I was going to start drooling now. I know that taste isn’t real, I know there’s nothing in my mouth, but fuck if I’m ever going to swallow it.
The streak-headed werwulf folded down like a toy, a slow fluid movement. His shape rippled, becoming more slump-shouldered animal than vaguely human. The white streak got more vivid, or maybe it was a spot of moonlight pulsing on his pelt. A slight wheezing, chuffing noise came out of him. He was facing away from me, and I wondered if some of the teachers from the Schola were in the woods now.
Ohplease. Please, God. Help me out a little here, come on. Please.
Another shape resolved out of the moon-and-tree chiaroscuro, fog melding around it in a cloak of greasy cotton. Vaguely humanoid, tall and broad-shouldered. The moonlight picked out a white blur of face and two white blurs of hands, the rest just a shadow.
“Isn’t this nice,” the newcomer hissed, an affront to the silence filling the woods. The rasp underneath the words ran over my skin like a wire brush, again. I tried not to flinch. “Where is the little bitch? I can smell her.”
Ash growled. The growl held not even the approximation of words, but it was chock-full of warning. Fur rippled, and the white streak on his head glowed.
“Shut up and find her!” The words held a slight lisp, and I knew why.
Because the tongue didn’t work right around fangs. This was a sucker, a nosferat. I could tell by the way his voice sucked at the world around it, oily and cold.
And it sounded like he was after me.
Well, duh, Dru. Big deal. Stay still. The maddening tickle got worse. It was like a sharp stick digging into the back of my throat. Reflex tears built up in my eyes, hot and aching. A thin finger of fog was creeping closer and closer to my feet, and I knew that it would touch me, and when it did the sucker would know I was here, and—
The werwulf’s growl changed pitch and tone.
“Don’t presume to bark at me, beast. The Master wants—”
I didn’t get to find out what the Master wanted, because the werwulf sprang away from me.
He collided with the sucker like a runaway freight train, a crunch that echoed between the fog-hung trees. The sucker let out an amazing, blood-chilling howl. They rolled over and over, hitting and splintering trees, bones and teeth snapping.
Move move move! Dad’s bark in my head, as if I was on the heavy bag again, popping punches and sweating, wanting to make him proud. Or as if we were dealing with those roach spirits again, me passing ammo through the window with shaking hands and—
I scrambled to my feet, thorns raking every exposed edge and pulling at my sweater like they were trying to tell me to stay down, and bolted. Leapt over the fingers of vapor crawling over the ground like I was doing football tryouts or something, skipping too fast to really keep my balance. It didn’t matter where I was heading, as long as it was away.
The woods got deeper and denser, and I tore through them. Trees whipped past, some of them clutching at me like they were on the sucker’s side, trying to slow me down. More thorny vines snaked across my path, but the fog had retreated. I floundered through, making a hell of a lot of noise, and heard a high, chilling howl behind me.
I thought wulfen howls were bad when I heard them in my own garage. Hearing the high, glassy cry in the middle of the woods at night is infinitely worse, because the howl sounds like it could be words if you just listen hard enough. The horrible thing is that it pulls on that deep hidden part in every person, the blind animal part.
The part that knows you’re the prey.
But the worst thing about it?
Is when it sounds right behind you, and something hits from behind, tumbling you into another thorn-spiked mess of vines and branches, leaf mold and dirt filling your nose, and a huge, hot, hairy hand winds in your hair.
CHAPTER 9
I tried to scream, but the other paw-hand had clamped over my mouth just before I could get enough air in. Hot breath touched the top of my head as we both lay for a second, me with the sense knocked out of me, stunned and scraped all over.
Goddammit, girl, that ain’t gonna cut it! Dad’s voice yelled in my head. Let’s see some action here!
It’s what he used to yell when I was working the heavy bag, so tired my arms were about to fall off. It meant I was going to have to do more, be more, in order to help him. He needed his helper, and that was me, and death doesn’t wait for when you’re rested and ready. It sneaks up on you when you’re exhausted and hungry and cold and so scared you can’t even see straight.
I thrashed, flung my head back and clipped a wet, cold nose with my skull. It hurt and the wulf made a little pained yowl, like a puppy running into something. My elbow sank into his midriff, and he huffed out another sound with a whine at the end. His hand loosened from my hair, but that was only so he could grab me by the waist as I struggled and he braced himself.