Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) (17 page)

“
They are merely a tool,
my tool. A means to an end.” He pointed toward the pile of papers
on the ground. “A legal end, I might add.”

“
And so you’re asking
what? For us to surrender?” George asked.

“
I’m asking for the
hybrids to surrender. You, Miss Godfrey, and Mr. St. John do not
have that option. Your crimes are beyond surrender. I’ve already
chosen each of your fates.”

“
What does that mean?” I
asked, though I already knew.

“
We haven’t done anyth—”
George began.

Time was up.

I sensed the change happening but I
wasn’t sure my thoughts were quick enough to warn the
rest.

It was amazing how they attacked as
one without a single word spoken between them. Almost as if they
had a mental connection of their own.

From far out in the trees, they rushed
us. The ground underneath me vibrated with their approach. Branches
crashed and leaves crunched. They were so close.

And then, one by one, they were
stopped. Pulled to a halt and then dragged backward into the
foliage again by jaws full of jagged teeth. I knew it was my pack
from the grim satisfaction they took in sinking their teeth into
flesh.

I had no more time to ponder it as
teeth snapped near my face. Wes and George stayed close, keeping
themselves between me and whoever. It was sweet—and utterly
annoying. I took advantage of George’s distraction and moved to
Chris’s side.

Together, we took down the rogue he’d
been eyeing since the beginning of our exchange. When the enemy
hybrid was still beneath us, his eyes open and unseeing, I turned
to Chris. “Get out there with the pack,” I said.

“
But you—”

“
I have George and Wes.
I’m fine. Get out there and help the pack. No one dies.”

His shoulders slumped then
straightened as he accepted the order. “All right,” he
said.

“
I mean it, Chris,” I
called after him. “None of them.”

“
I’ll do my best,” he said
before leaping away.

In the space he left behind, one of
Steppe’s hybrids appeared. My jowl curved into a wolfish grin as it
approached me. The animal in me would enjoy this.

I approached slowly, one paw, then the
other. It did the same, both of us wanting to draw it
out.

Halfway there, I doubled over in
pain.

My midsection felt like it was being
ripped in two. I dropped to my belly and howled.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Wes
react. He faltered and cast me a sideways glance. It was the
opening his opponent needed. Teeth sank into the fur below Wes’s
neck. He yelped and jerked sideways. By then, my view was obscured
by my opponent, hovering over me, jaw slack and ready to
bite.

I snarled.

It didn’t flinch.

I tried to pick myself up off the
ground but another wave of pain hit. This time, my head felt as if
a brick had been smashed over it. My front left paw seized and
cramped as a new pain hit. My breath whooshed out of me. Someone
had gotten the wind knocked out of them.

The voices in my head howled. My head
thrummed with the vibration.

The Werewolf standing over me lunged.
I met it with jaws opened and instead of moving, I let it come to
me. When it did, its teeth sank into my shoulder at the same time
my own jaw closed over its throat. I barely had time to feel the
burn of my own injury before my teeth broke the skin and its blood
fill my mouth. I’d hit a vein.

I bit harder.

Ten seconds later, the Werewolf quit
writhing and went still. I let it fall over me and then shimmied
backward, belly scraping the dirt until I was clear of it. I
whined, the sound building and then bubbling from my throat against
my will. It was a whine borne of my mental pain more than anything
physical but it was hard to tell when the two were so much like the
same thing.

A few yards away, George and Wes still
scrapped with a group of hybrids. Wes was bleeding from the bite
I’d witnessed earlier, but otherwise he seemed okay. George looked
winded but he was holding his own. Beneath his light coat, muscles
bunched and rippled as he rose on his hind legs and sent his
opponent sprawling. It looked almost like a tackle. Any other time
I would’ve smiled. George, ever the sports jock. But this time, I
watched in muted concern. Something was happening. Something I
didn’t understand, nor did I think was possible.

With each breath, the pain dimmed.
Awareness receded. One by one, the voices in my mind were snuffed
out. I cast about, unsure what it was I expected to see but
convinced there must be some visible proof of the extraordinary
thing happening in my mind.

But there was nothing new to
see.

The others were oblivious, and the
fight raged on. George got his teeth around his opponent and dug
in, twisting and turning this way and that until the other wolf
went quiet. Its body jerked a few times after George let go. I knew
it wasn’t dead, but it didn’t get up when George left it
alone.

I whimpered.

George glanced left. I tracked his
gaze and found Wes involved with the last of Steppe’s creatures
that remained between us and whatever was happening in the woods.
Steppe himself was nowhere to be seen. George made his way toward
me, head cocked sideways.

From what I could tell, ours was the
only connection that hadn’t changed.

More voices disappeared. The pain
vanished with it. Until slowly, all that was left was my own. It
made me numb.

I was alone.

The bite on my shoulder hurt less than
the void left behind in my mind.

From somewhere in the trees, I heard a
muffled voice, distinctly human and cruel. I had no doubt it was
Steppe. I couldn’t make out the words but it must’ve been an order
of some kind. The hybrid Wes had been engaged with suddenly turned
and sprinted into the trees. Wes took off after it, but he wasn’t
prepared for such an abrupt departure and I could tell he was too
far behind to catch up.

I listened as paws moved over leaves
and branches in retreat. I expanded my senses. Farther out, I heard
what sounded like car doors being slammed. Then rumbling—engines,
maybe?

Then nothing.

Wes returned. His chest heaved with
labored breaths. He stared down at me in concern, his eyes widening
when he saw my bite. “It’s fine,” I said, moving to get up. “Find
the others.”

My body grew heavy underneath the
weight of my panic, and I struggled harder. I had to get to them. I
had to know if they were out there.

Neither of the boys moved.

“
Go,” I shouted, startling
both of them. They backed up as I rose and advanced on
them.

“
Are you—?” Wes
began.

“
I need to know if they’re
all right,” I said, cutting him off. He hesitated another second.
When no one moved, I tore out of the clearing without bothering to
see if either one followed.

I ran, casting a wide circle and then
an even wider one when I backtracked. Nothing. The woods were
empty.

“
Where the hell is
everyone?” I heard George call from somewhere to my
left.

Minutes. Hours. How long had they been
gone? The quiet inside me felt as if it’d been there
forever.

I kept running.

My sides ached. The bite on my
shoulder burned. I didn’t care.

“
Here!” Wes called. “I
found one. No—two!”

I sprinted toward the sound of his
voice and then stopped short. In front of him lay two
Werewolves—Janie and Emma. The sisters. Neither one
moved.

“
Are they breathing?” I
asked.

George ran up and stopped short when
he saw who I meant. He didn’t say a word as Wes bent low and nudged
each of them in turn, pressing his ear to their slack
mouths.

“
They’re breathing,” Wes
said.

I sighed in relief but it sounded more
like a strangled growl. George looked at me strangely. “You didn’t
know? You can’t sense them?” he asked.

“
I can’t—” I swallowed.
Saying it aloud made it real. “I can’t sense any of them except for
you.”

Both boys stared at me.

I blinked against the itch in my eyes.
If I were human, tears would’ve already fallen. “Say something,” I
demanded.

“
They’re all gone?” Wes
asked.

The unmistakable note of hope in his
words was too much. I let out a long, high-pitched whine and backed
away, thrashing my head side to side. There was no explanation for
my freaking out, except that my wolf didn’t know how to handle all
these human emotions. Or the aloneness it felt at the quiet. It
needed its pack.

I couldn’t believe that’s what losing
them had done to me.

I wondered if I’d cope differently if
I shifted back to human. Then again, when the bond had been in
place, being human amplified the discomfort. I wasn’t willing to
shift and find out. Not yet.

As I backed away, George and Wes
watched me with matching looks of concern and alarm. Through our
connection, George tested my emotional stability. I let him in. He
needed to see how apart I felt.

It must’ve been bad because neither
one approached me or tried to quiet me down.

“
Is she all right?” Wes
asked George in a low voice.

“
I … don’t know.” His
worry came through in a growl.

“
Tara?” Wes asked. He took
a tentative step and I crumpled into a heap, my head resting
sullenly on my front paws.

“
They’re gone,” I said
simply.

“
We’ll get them back,” he
said.

I wasn’t sure if I believed him. In
that moment, it didn’t matter. The absence of noise was like a void
swallowing me up.

I didn’t answer and they let me
sit.

Wes backed off, giving me space but
keeping me in sight. At one point, he said something and George
darted away. He came back a few minutes later with a bag clutched
in his teeth, dropped it near one of the girls, and left
again.

Wes—back in human form, though I
hadn’t noticed when that’d happened—rifled through the bag’s
contents and pulled out a small packet of something. I watched in
detached interest while he cleaned whatever wounds Janie had
sustained. She stirred and moaned and he whispered to her, coaxing
her back to whatever state of sleep she’d been in
before.

He did the same for Emma. Both of them
came out of it enough to nudge the bond between us. Our connection
was caught somewhere between awake and asleep. It made me feel
marginally better to know it was there. But two—compared to four
dozen—wasn’t enough.

Wes left them alone again and began
pulling clothes from the bag George had brought. He cast glances at
me here and there but I ignored him. Part of me knew we couldn’t
stay here; we had to move, to take some sort of action, but I
couldn’t make my limbs move. I’d never felt so completely empty of
everything that mattered. Or so incapable of describing the
sensation to someone else.

From inside the bag, Wes pulled the
phone Grandma had given us. I listened as he called her and relayed
what’d happened. It relieved me to know he’d warned her. I
suspected he knew that would’ve been my first priority if I were
myself. I was grateful, but still…

I sat.

When George finally returned the
second time, Wes looked at him expectantly but George shook his
head. Wes looked relieved. Neither spoke. They resumed watching
me.

Darkness fell, thick and complete in
the unlit forest. My eyes adjusted so well, it looked like daylight
to my wolf sight.

After what could’ve been hours, Wes
spoke. “Tara, we need to go.”

I lifted my head from my paws and
shook it side to side. “I can’t leave them.”

“
You have to. Steppe will
come back here. He knows we’re alive.”

Even in the darkness, I could see
straight into his irises. “What if I can’t sense them because
they’re all dead?”

“
They aren’t. He wanted
them for something.”

“
What?”

“
I don’t know, but we have
to go if we want to live and find out.”

I let that sink in. He was right. I
knew that, but I hated the prospect of more quiet. More than I’d
hated the noise before.

“
If not for yourself, do
it for Janie and Emma. They’re still here, still your pack. You
need to protect them,” Wes said.

Through the bond, George urged me to
listen even as he disappeared behind a tree with a pair of cargo
shorts clutched in his teeth.

I forced myself to think past sitting
here. Think past the quiet. Finally, I nodded at the two girls.
“How will we get them out of here?”

George stepped out from behind the
tree, human again and clad in shorts. He gestured to Wes. “We’ll
carry them until they wake.”