Want to fight wolf. Scratched his nose one time.
You did? I didn’t remember that, but I thought it might be prudent to not continue the conversation. And when Eli whirled the airboat in a tight arc to take us to the next place on our list, I used the centrifugal force as an excuse to hold on to Rick and not respond.
The second place was more likely. I smelled werewolf stink from yards away. The airboat roared up onto land in front of a house; the engine cut off.
Brute stepped over the back of the seat and shoved his snout between Rick and me, pushing us apart, sniffing, getting dog drool on my shirt. I was sure it wasn’t an accident. I shoved his nose away. “I smell it,” I said. I stepped onto the land, boot heels sinking into the mud. Brute landed beside me, shaking his head, the human gesture looking all wrong on him.
“What?” Rick asked. “Is this the right place?”
Brute nodded.
“Are the weres here?”
Brute lifted his snout and sniffed as the airboat went silent and shook his head.
“They’re hunting,” I said softly.
Brute snuffled agreement. Pea crawled up his back, holding his ruff in her tiny little fists. She sat astride his neck, holding on, and sniffed the air. She chittered, the sound menacing and deadly, strange coming from the green-coated, kitten-sized grindy. She closed her eyes and sniffed, tiny explosions of air. She opened her eyes and looked at Rick. There was an intensity in her gaze that belied her cuteness.
“I haven’t touched Jane. Oh. Wait. You know where the werewolves went?”
Pea sniffed again and pointed with a tiny paw/hand, one finger extended, the two-inch steel claw at the tip. Deep inside, Beast hissed at the sight. I know, I thought at her. I don’t know where she keeps them either, but when she pulls them out, they are scary.
Behind us, silent, Eli started the engine again, the prop deafening in the night. Brute and I leaped back inside, and we followed Pea’s nose and steel claw down the canal.
Pea directed us to shore along a stretch of water that was black as sin. Eli pulled up and beached the boat, cutting the engine. Another airboat was beached beside ours, and it stank of were. And wolf-in-heat. And terrified human. Female. They had captured a woman. When she was in the boat, she was unharmed, no blood smell. But she had been so filled with fear that her sweat stank of it. And she had urinated on herself. Recently.
Eli turned a bright flash on the boat, where we could see clothing, shoes, beer cans, and jewelry in piles. He moved the light and studied the muddy bank. Close to the boat it was hard to tell what was what; there were human prints and wolf prints. But farther out, one pair of bare, human feet led off into the brush. And three wolves followed.
Eli leaned over the seats and started passing out weapons. The rest of us took them, checking their readiness by feel, holstering them, checking the slide of blades and the position of, well, everything. My M4 Benelli was in its spine holster, the grip above my ear, loaded with hand-packed rounds containing silver fléchettes. They had been designed to kill vamps but most supernats could be poisoned by silver, weres among them. I retied my boot laces. Made sure water bottles were easy to hand. Eli carried a U.S. army med kit, mostly for him and any hurt victim, because the rest of us would be likely to heal fast. He had walked me through everything in it, and their uses. I had managed not to laugh at his description of the uses of tampons—“Great bandages to insert into gunshot wounds. They have their own tail to locate the injury later.” Uh-huh. Kinda knew that.
When we were all ready, we stepped to the bank, and mud sucked at our feet, each step a slurping sound, each foot an effort to lift. With a whiff of satisfaction in his pheromones, Eli pocketed the keys of both boats. The wolves had left theirs. He turned off the flash and we stood to let our eyes acclimate.
There were no lights anywhere. There was only the stink of rotting vegetation, scat, the rot of a dead animal in the distance, and the smell of fear, aggression, violence. No sounds but the rare splash of a water animal, the trickle of slow-moving bayou and tide. In summer there would be frogs croaking, insects buzzing, night birds hooting and calling. Gators roaring. The smell of animals nesting and sleeping and hunting everywhere. From time to time, there would be boats and campsites with lights and fire pits, and the sounds of drunken humans would echo through the dark. But the weather had turned cold in what passed for winter here, and tonight it was just us and the smells and the small round moon on the black water and the silence that was left after the roar of the boat. Until the scream rent the air.
Everyone but Eli jumped. Eli settled his low-light gear over one eye and, with the other one, looked at the tiny kitten and the white wolf. “You take point. Move slow and steady. No matter what you hear.” To us, he added, “Stay together. Jane, you got our six.” It wasn’t a request, and I fell in at the back. When it came to paramilitary operations I was the novice, he was the expert. And he was the one with the fully automatic weapon. I had learned that current Louisiana gun laws didn’t prohibit magazine capacity, and that was why Eli felt so safe carrying them everywhere we went. I hadn’t asked, and he had seen no reason to enlighten me.
I had also learned that no wet place in Louisiana is similar to any other. Walking through land bordering a saline marsh meant mud, shrubs, mud, stunted trees, mud, broken limbs, some sharp as stakes, mud, sawgrass and regular grasses, lots of them taller than we were, and more mud. It clung to our boots and sucked at each footstep. The white wolf was two toned, his bottom half black with muck, his upper half bright in the moonlight. Pea chittered softly, directing the wolf, using his hair like reins, pulling him where she wanted. It was a weird hunt, to be at the back of a pack, and I pulled on every sense Beast could lend me, from power in my leg muscles, to her night vision, which was much better than mine. Beast didn’t like this hunt. Neither did I. Not with the snarls and yips and screams that came from ahead, in the dark.
The snarls and yips were excited and vicious; the screams were full of terror and agony, and we were taking too long—too long!—to get there. But the muddy terrain set the pace, not the victim, who, by her screams, was being torn apart, eaten alive, so damaged she would die, no matter how fast we got there. I bared my teeth in a killing rage. Forcing my feet to lift high, to run faster. Ahead, Eli did the same, and I could smell his desperation and fury.
The screams ended with a panting, pained moan, over and over with each fast breath, moans that seemed to roll out over the water and the low land, seeming to come from everywhere. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Je . . . ssssuusss.” And then there was nothing but the sounds of tearing and growls and the crack of bone. Just ahead.
We slogged out of the low trees into a clearing, Eli firing a burst from his automatic weapon, the sound and the muzzle fire ripping through the night. Yelps, howls, and shrieks followed. Beast flooded me with strength and I raced for the body on the ground. I took it in with a fast glance and didn’t need to check for a pulse. She was dead—very dead, with nothing left inside her abdomen and a pool of blood on the wet ground an inch deep. It trickled off in tiny rivulets, toward the water.
If we had gotten here sooner . . .
I screamed and whirled and dove into the fight. A vamp-killer in one hand and a nine-mil loaded with silver shot in the other.
Brute was battling a reddish wolf, the coat color visible in the moonlight. Rick was side-to-side with Eli, taking on a . . . a monster. I fired into the monster’s side, aiming for his heart, emptying my weapon into him. I slapped the blade flat under my arm and changed mags.