Savage (29 page)

“Darlin’, you
are
the help.” He gave her a hard look. “You have to get to the meeting. And no one can see me like this. Weak. They can’t see that we’ve been fighting.”

“Justin, that was
Lucy
. I can’t — I can’t just move on as if I don’t know that.”

“You can. You must. Your pack is counting on you. If the Hellhound asks, you tell him that she challenged you. The way I see it, the only fighting they want us to stop is with other packs.” He was grim, determined.

She swallowed down her terror for him and gathered up big handfuls of wet snow. She washed her hands.

“Good,” he said. “Good, Kat. I always keep spare clothes in the truck. Lucy, too,”

“You changed without the full moon,” she said.

“Surprise to me,” he replied. “Remember, if he asks, you were protecting yourself against one last challenge. That’s normal.”

“Normal? Your fiancée is
dead
.”

“Don’t go there. Don’t do it,” he said firmly. “Kat, you are my alpha. Don’t fall apart on me.”

“It’s all going wrong,” she said, still shaking.

“Then go make it right. “I’ll take care of the body.” Not Lucy. Katelyn supposed she wasn’t Lucy anymore. She couldn’t read the emotion in his voice. She didn’t know how he was feeling.

“Find my brother. Look out for him,” Justin said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him safe. I’d even take on that son-of-a-bitch Hellhound.”

As Katelyn McBride, his words touched her. But as the alpha of the pack, she would have to shut him down if he challenged the Hellhound — both for his own good and the good of the pack.

As the crackling sound of the fire penetrated her thoughts, she stirred, realizing that she was thinking like the alpha. It was like living inside a
Godfather
movie, with everyone looking to her for permission to do just about anything. Not her preference. But now, her duty. She’d taken it on, and she had to see it through.

She made sure she had the detonator and walked back up the embankment. Justin’s truck was in sight. She rummaged in the back for the clothes Justin had spoken of. She found a duffel, unzipped it, and found Lucy’s things. She put on sweatpants, a T-shirt, a pair of socks, and a hoodie. She placed the detonator in the hoodie’s kangaroo pouch. A pair of worn women’s cowboy boots lay at the bottom of the duffel. She scented Lucy in the boot leather and checked the size. They would probably be a little big, but she had a meeting to attend.

She reached the cave’s mouth and turned around, scanning for arrivals. Her mouth dropped open as she saw how vast the fire had become. The sky was boiling with steam and smoke, and flocks of birds were chirping and swirling toward the moon. A wolf howled. Then another. And another.

They’re coming
, she thought, and she planted herself firmly, chin up, legs in a wide stance to keep her steady and ready for action. She had seen this going differently, with Justin beside her. The last time she had felt this alone was when her mother had crashed through the floor during the earthquake, plunging into the fire on the ground floor of their house.

Katelyn’s chest tightened as she placed the hood over her hair, then balled her hands in her pockets.

There was a noise behind her that somehow spoke to her; it told her
danger
and
run
.

And
death
.

“Cher,” Dom Gaudin called.

Katelyn tried to act casual as she took a rapid look behind and moved toward the alpha of the Gaudin pack.

Dom raised a hand in salute while Cordelia stared wide-eyed at Katelyn, then turned halfway around to take in the encroaching fire. New sections tinged with blue had ignited and older sections blazed orange and red. Katelyn tried to mask her fear, and instead locked gazes with Dom.

“I’m not your ‘cher’,” she said. “I am the alpha of this pack.”

“This . . . pack?” he said, brows lifting. “We agreed to meet alone.” He made a show of looking behind her. “Justin Fenner is here, I assume?”

She didn’t answer. A slow smile spread across Dom’s mouth.

“He’s not. You’re all alone.”

“The Hellhound might be here,” Cordelia said.

Dom’s head snapped in Cordelia’s direction and he raised his hand just slightly. Cordelia flinched. Katelyn was shocked. Had he been
hitting
Cordelia?

Katelyn studied her friend, whose eyes were cast down. Then Cordelia peered up at her through her lashes and her eyes narrowed. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. Cordelia was in no way loyal to Dom. She was just biding her time until she could turn on him. That could be their answer. If a fatal challenge could be issued from within his own pack, maybe the Hellhounds wouldn’t count it as breaking the peace between Fenners and Gaudins.

If I could give her a gun with silver bullets, and she could hold it long enough to shoot him . . .

She wished now that she’d brought a gun with her.

“It doesn’t appear to be here yet. We are a little early,” Dom said to Katelyn. “So we have time to work out our treaty based on our own terms.”

“Good,” she said, wondering what he was up to. Cordelia had already warned her that Dom was not to be trusted.

“Here are the terms, then: Submit to me, now, cher, and I’ll overlook your rudeness. We won’t simply make peace. We’ll merge our packs. I’ll allow you to save face in front of the Fenners. You’ll serve as my lieutenant, enforcing my orders in any way you wish. But they will be
my
orders.”

“Some peace,” she scoffed.

He smiled patiently at her as if she was too stupid to understand what he was saying. “But it
is
. And as I understand it, that’s all the Hellhound is interested in. Peace. Not
how
we stop fighting, but that we do stop.”

That would be peace without harmony. But it would mean survival. Maybe she would have agreed to it if she hadn’t seen Cordelia flinch. The rest of the pack might be used to cowering under a tyrant, but she, Katelyn, was not. She had seen firsthand the discontent simmering under the surface, the plotting, and the stress it put on the pack. Like Cordelia, they would bide their time until they could revolt.

She couldn’t believe how completely the situation sucked. Justin gone, Trick and her grandfather MIA. More than ever, she wished she’d grabbed at least one gun and enough bullets to reload a few times while she had been setting the charges in the silver cavern.

“There’s only one answer you can give me,” he said. “Even if we could fight, you’d never beat me.”

“When I declared myself alpha, no one challenged me for leadership,” she volleyed, working overtime to keep her fear out of her voice. Dom had been a seasoned alpha werewolf for years, and the Gaudins had beaten the Fenners at the bayou. “No one dared.”

“That’s because we were leaving it to Dom to do our dirty work,” Arial drawled.

Dom and Katelyn both tensed as Arial and four members of the Fenner pack stepped from the trees. They stood in a line with Arial in front, their clear leader. Alarm bells clanged in Katelyn’s mind . . . and became klaxons when Dom simply raised a finger and eight transformed Gaudin werewolves trotted snarling from behind the waterfall. They galloped at full speed toward Arial and her Fenner werewolves.

“You double-crossing bastard!” Arial yelled at Dom.

“Did you honestly believe I would ally myself with
you
?” he asked her.

“You can’t do this!” Cordelia cried. “You can’t fight!”

“What does it matter? They’ve already started the fire, you idiot!” Arial yelled. She held up a hand and in that instant, she and her followers changed. They threw back their heads and howled to the stars. Then they scattered to engage the enemy. Leader to leader, Arial took on Dom.

Still human, Cordelia darted past Dom and he snarled and snapped his teeth at her.

“Here!” Katelyn yelled. She was trying hard not to change. She wanted to show the Hellhounds that she wasn’t fighting.

Arial launched herself at Dom. His jaws snapped at her throat but she slammed her muzzle against the side of his head. He crashed onto his back with an infuriated growl.

The werewolf battle was on. Huge jaws — Fenner, Gaudin — clamped hard on legs, necks, backs. Arial’s outnumbered fighters were savage, undaunted, harrying Dom’s larger group. Dom’s warriors began to fall back toward the mine entrance.

As Katelyn ran into the cave, she clutched the detonator in her pocket. If she could get all of them inside, she could depress it and blow up the cave. She could try to run out, or at least get to the most protected spot. If she did that, the rest of the pack would be safe.

“Get out of here,” she told Cordelia. “Run away.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” Cordelia demanded. Then one of Arial’s werewolves was on Cordelia, and as Cordelia swerved behind an outcropping of rock, she transformed. Her large jaw clacked as the other werewolf leaped onto the outcropping and then hurled itself down at her. Cordelia moved backwards; then the two clashed on their hind legs, twisted sideways, and rushed each other. Blood spurted. Katelyn didn’t know whose it was. It took everything she had not to cut into the fight to defend Cordelia. Then her friend raised her head and howled in triumph as the other wolf collapsed to the ground.

“Get out of here!” Katelyn shouted, and Cordelia-as-wolf seemed to gallop after her. A frisson of fear chilled her insides as she wondered if Cordelia remembered who she was — that she was a friend, and that they shouldn’t be fighting.

Katelyn made sure Dom saw her inside the cave. Arial was an enemy, but Dom’s real quarry would be the Fenner alpha, and that was Katelyn herself. No matter the state of his wolf mind: werewolves recognized enemies and went after them.

Sure enough, he took the bait. And where the alpha ran, his wolves were sure to follow. Arial and Dom’s warriors brought the battle closer to the cave, and then spilled inside.

“Get out of here!” Katelyn yelled again at Cordelia. “Damn it, Cor, go!”

Werewolf-Cordelia cocked her head and danced left and right, zigzagging as other werewolves lunged at her. But she didn’t turn tail and retreat, which is what Katelyn wanted her to do.

By then all the werewolves had poured into the cave and Katelyn doubted she would get a better opportunity to take them out. But werewolves from both sides were coming at her. She was an enemy to everyone there.

Everyone except Cordelia.

Cordelia dashed in front of Katelyn and howled. She took the bite of a Gaudin on her forepaw, then bit its muzzle. Blood gushed; two nearby werewolves wheeled like sharks and came at the Gaudin and Cordelia both. Cordelia fenced left, right. She was incredibly fast. Nimble. She growled and rushed both of the werewolves, then darted into the cave, drawing them toward her.

No, Cor, come with me
, Katelyn thought, but in a flash, Cordelia appeared and charged two more of the enemy. Just then, a werewolf snapped at Katelyn and she kicked at it, hard. The tip of Lucy’s cowboy boot caught its eye and it shook its head wildly.

Another wolf took its place, lips curled back, fangs drooling as it sized Katelyn up.

This time she ran.

Teeth pierced her calf and she yelled as she pressed the detonator in her pocket. She knew she was going to die. They all were.

Nothing happened.

She pressed it again.

Still nothing.

Six more transformed Gaudin werewolves crested the incline. They harried her back into the cave and the werewolves already inside took on the six. That they hadn’t joined forces to attack her was nothing short of miraculous.

She spotted one of Trick’s glow-in-the-dark paw prints on the wall and ran toward it, back into the mine. She kept going to the next one, then through the tunnel and past the hanging corpse. Her goal was the silver room. There was a detonator there, too, but an alternate plan was to arm herself with silver bullets and take out Dom, Arial and their fighters herself. If the warmongers were dead, maybe the Hellhounds would spare the others.

“Cordelia, leave,” she pleaded under her breath, with no idea if Cordelia was even still alive.

She had almost reached the silver chamber when she realized she was being followed. Pain spasmed in her joints and tendons. She couldn’t change. She mustn’t.

Her lungs were nearly bursting; she measured her progress by the numbers of glowing paw prints on the walls, and then she ran into the treasure room. The lanterns Trick had left for her still burned brightly. She ran to the crate on which she had placed the detonator and moved it, prying open the lid and grabbing a gun, planning to arm herself against her stalker.

She hadn’t succeeded in putting in even one bullet when Justin stumbled in after her. He had on fresh clothes but they were wet with blood. His terrible injuries hadn’t yet fully healed. There were scratches on his cheeks and one eye was swollen shut.

“Kat, no, don’t, it’s suicide,” he said, pushing her out of the way and limping to the spot where she had placed the detonator.

“Justin, stop!” she cried.

He pivoted around, hitting his back against the side of a box, chest rising and falling so fast Katelyn couldn’t actually see it moving. She was afraid for him, but she stayed on task.

“I came in here for weapons,” she said. “I’ll only blow up the cave if there’s no other way to stop them.”

“Silver,” he gasped.

Silver. Earlier when he hadn’t been injured he hadn’t been able to even get this far into the cave. She turned and surveyed the room quickly and realized that at least three quarters of everything that had been in there earlier was now gone. There was very little left. She blinked, wondering if her grandfather and Trick had removed it. No werewolves would have been able to.

She continued loading the gun.

Justin’s florid face was pulled down in fear. “My brother,” he said. “Can’t find him.”

She finished loading the gun and stuffed it in the pocket of the hoodie. She was grabbing another gun when suddenly Justin pushed her behind himself. In that exact instant, her body went rigid with fear: