Savage (4 page)

“Well, Justin’s been put in charge of me,” she informed Cordelia.

Cordelia wrinkled her nose. “Training a bit-in? An omega like you? Whatever else you might think about him, Kat, that definitely lowers his status,” Cordelia said edgily. “And I’m the one who hid you. Protected you. So what does that do to
my
status? Also lowers it.”

Katelyn had to think fast. That was no longer true, because the Fenners had big plans for her immunity to silver. They were also confident that she was going to find the Madre Vena mine, where it was said there were more guns that shot silver bullets as well as hundreds of silver bullets themselves. Having an in with Katelyn had become a status symbol. The werewolves who had been closest to her in the pack the longest would benefit from their relationships with her. It was like owning a piece of treasure.

But she still didn’t want to risk telling Cordelia that. That was vital, private information that the Gaudins could use against the Fenners. From the way Cordelia impatiently shifted her weight as she inhaled the scents of the forest, it was obvious that Cordelia wanted Dom to find her. When she and Katelyn had first met, she’d shyly confided that she had a crush on “an older guy” who didn’t live in town. It had been Dom, of course. A crush was one thing; did she actually love him — even though he had forced her into marriage? Love him enough to betray the pack she’d been born into?

You could love and mistrust someone at the same time.

That was how Katelyn felt about her grandfather.

“Katelyn!” Magus insisted. She heard him walking toward them.

“After your father kicked you out, Justin kept looking for you,” Katelyn said in a rush. “He promised me he would never stop.”

The look Cordelia gave her could have made a magnolia tree wither. She stood stiffly and clenched her jaw as if she were trying very hard not to say the first thing that came to her.

“Promised
you
. So you’re still seeing him behind Lucy’s back?”

“Not at all,” Katelyn said, feeling the color rise in her own cheeks.

Lucy — Justin’s fiancée — had challenged her to a fight to the death over Justin when they’d come back from the forest and Katelyn had his scent all over her. Katelyn had thrown herself into his arms to thank him for sparing the life of Babette, a spy for the Gaudin pack. Cordelia’s father had ordered Katelyn to kill her, and for Justin to serve as a witness. But Katelyn had managed to persuade Justin to let Babette go free if the spy promised to leave Fenner territory forever.

And Katelyn
had
kissed Justin twice in the bayou when they both thought they were facing death. But even when she’d been kissing Justin, she’d been thinking about Trick.

That wasn’t the point. The point was, Justin hadn’t turned his back on Cordelia.

“Oh, Kat, let’s not do this,” Cordelia said, as Katelyn reminded herself that the voice in her head had warned her about Justin. She was suddenly massively unsure that Cordelia would be all right if she returned to Wolf Springs.

Something must have shown on her face, because Cordelia turned around and studied the forest again.

“Just a
minute
,” she snapped at Magus.

“The fire is spreading too fast,” Magus retorted.

“Dom forced you to marry him,” Katelyn said in her ear.

“Because he loves me,” Cordelia said faintly. “He wanted the best for me. I had to declare my loyalty or leave.”

“What kind of choice was that?”

“A werewolf’s choice.” Her voice softened as she studied Katelyn’s face. She reached out a hand and touched Katelyn’s cheek. “It’s an alpha’s job to keep his pack in harmony. What was he going to do with an unattached Fenner female in exile?”

“You’re defending him,” Katelyn said, stunned. “What he did was wrong.”

“What he did was smart, darlin’,” Cordelia said. “And I have to admire that in an alpha. My daddy . . .” She bit her lip and visibly worked to keep in control. “My daddy was going to lose control of the pack sooner rather than later.”

Justin had been planning to challenge Lee Fenner to the death. The massacre at the bayou had removed the necessity for him.

“We must go
now
.” Magus was walking toward them again.

Katelyn’s heart seized at the thought of moving on and Cordelia blew the rest of the air out of her cheeks.

“When I asked you to come with me, you said you’d try to help me by finding the mine,” Cordelia said in an under-voice. “I’ll try to help
you
by going back with Dom. I’ll find out what the Gaudins are planning. I’ll get word to you, Kat, if you swear that you won’t tell anyone else in the pack. We’ll do what that weirdo over there wants us to. We’ll find a way to make peace. Just you and me.”

Katelyn couldn’t help a little bubble of hysterical laughter. Magus
was
a weirdo, with his robe and his bald head, tattoos, and creepy eyes.

And his threats? Were they all talk, or was there something to them?

“I’ll get in contact when I have something to tell you,” Cordelia promised.

“Same,” Katelyn said, although she wasn’t sure how she was going to manage it.

“Cordelia!” Dom bellowed. He was definitely closer. A whispery smile flashed across Cordelia’s mouth, so quickly Katelyn was not quite certain she’d really seen it.

“
Now
,” Magus said again, striding over to them, breaking up their conversation.

Cordelia gave Katelyn a hug. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you when you wouldn’t come with me,” she whispered into her ear. “I’ve never had a friend like you, Kat. Somebody who just liked
me
. Both parts of me. At school, I was one of those popular girls. A cheerleader, pretty . . . And in the pack world, I was the daughter of an alpha. Now I’m the wife of an alpha. People’ll be kissing up to me until the day Dom dies.”

“Longer,” Katelyn promised. “Your father chose you to be the alpha of the Fenner pack. Maybe we could make that happen, too.”

“You’re a good friend,” Cordelia said.

“I’m really not,” Katelyn replied. Then she kissed Cordelia on the cheek — what pack members did to acknowledge their kinship. Cordelia did the same, then whispered, “Put a flower on my daddy’s grave for me,” and darted into the forest. She didn’t look back.

Magus cleared his throat again. “We’re leaving.”

“Yes, imperious leader,” Katelyn sniped. She didn’t like him. She
really
didn’t want to go with him. Her thoughts drifted back to Justin, who was looking for her right now.

As by mutual agreement, they both darted in the opposite direction of Justin. Her sense of smell kicked in; odors wafted around her like incense. Magus was wearing aftershave and that seemed so incongruous with the rest of his appearance that she had to stifle a guffaw.

She must not have been entirely successful because he hissed at her like a snake. Then he said, “What is wrong with you? This isn’t funny. This is life and death.”

About twenty yards to her left, something groaned. She smelled blood and remembered the dead Gaudin werewolf she’d tried to save. This had to be another one. Maybe a Fenner.

Justin’s face bloomed in her imagination and she put on a burst of speed, surprising Magus, who grunted in frustration and quickly caught up to her. Then he passed her and raced on ahead. Their movements sounded like the surf as they raced each other.

Magus got there first. As brambles and thorns caught at Katelyn, her vision sharpened and she watched him grind to a halt. He was looking down into the brush, but she couldn’t see who was lying on the ground. He reached into his robe and withdrew a long, sharp knife.

He raised it above his head.

“No!” she cried, loudly, without any thought for the consequences.

His hand jerked. Then he swooped down, out of sight, and she heard a second moan, and then a gasp.

Then gurgling.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “oh, God, what did you do?” She ran over and looked down at a young man she didn’t recognize, who stared straight back up at her. Blood was gushing from his neck. His eyebrows rose, and then his eyes went glassy.

“You didn’t have to do that!” she cried, falling to her knees beside the dead man.

“I did. He might have heard us.”

“So what?” She stared up at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. She followed his line of sight: Bushes shook; trees swayed.

“Hellhound,” Magus said.

Katelyn got to her feet. She could do nothing for the man Magus had just murdered. Together they ran back the way they had come; then he signaled to go to the left. He was fast, but she could keep up.

“Can you change?” he said to her.

“Not sure,” she replied, and he laid on another burst of speed as something crashed behind them.

She had never run faster in her life. Dodging branches, leaping over large, gnarled roots. Squirrels burst from the underbrush and skittered around her feet, nearly tripping her. Her eyes and nose were running and she hacked on smoke as it curled around the two of them like a shroud. Directly overhead, the treetops waved as if in a storm. She flew behind Magus like a kite, her feet skimming the ground as he hustled her out of the forest and into a meadow where a shiny black truck was parked.

The doors were unlocked. There was a crash behind her and another evil-sounding roar; then she was almost magically in a truck and Magus was behind the wheel, peeling out of there.

She wheeled around and peered through the small rear window in the cab. A black shadow entirely filled the space. She was thrown sideways as Magus careened around a tree, and then they shot out of the woods onto a one-lane asphalt road. He was going over a hundred miles an hour.

She looked back through the window.

The shadow was gone.

His foot was to the floor as the engine whined. Katelyn held her breath and gripped the armrest. The view to her right was of a massive fire igniting towering trees one by one, as if a giant held an enormous match to each in turn. Smoke poured out of the woods onto the road like a layer of fog, billowing and pluming as the truck ran through it.

Katelyn had no idea how much time passed, but after a while, again as if by mutual consent, she and Magus both slumped back against the seats and sighed with relief. She detected something hard in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her phone. It was on, and she checked to see who had called her while it had been in Cordelia’s possession.

She expected it to be Trick, but it was a Los Angeles number. It took her a moment to realize that Detective Cranston, the lead detective on her father’s murder case, had called her and left a message. She slid a glance toward Magus and put it back in her pocket.

“You didn’t need to kill that guy,” she began.

“You’re welcome,” he retorted. “But really, Katelyn, there is no need to thank me for saving your life.”

“He was no danger to me.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We,” she said. “Your pack. The Hounds of God.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then pursed his lips and downshifted. Irritation flashed over his features.

“Did I insult you?” she asked.

“No. I had something for you. I lost it in the forest.”

She remembered his outstretched fist. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter now. And the Hounds of God are more than just a pack,” he said. “We’re an order of werewolves. We have a mission. A divine mission.”

“To go down into hell and kill demons,” she filled in. “But why doesn’t it matter?”

He lifted his gaze from the windshield and cocked an eyebrow. “To kill demons
wherever
we may find them.”

She went cold. Was he referring to her? Was this a trap? She was unarmed.

But not helpless
, she reminded herself.
I can kick his ass
.

“Do you think the Hellhound is a demon?” she asked him.

To her surprise, a sour smile played across his lips. Covered with tattoos, he looked like a demon himself.

“Wiser men than I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “We have endless debates about it. Some religious groups argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We argue about the place of the Hellhound in our world.”

“Do you know who it is? Is it a person at all?” she asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, slowly, “In the sense that our founder was once a person. Thiess, tortured by the Inquisition in Livonia in 1691. He explained to them that God had changed him into a werewolf to go down into hell to vanquish wickedness, but they found him guilty of black magic. To us, however, he is a martyr. A holy man.”

“How? How do you go down into hell?” she asked him.

“In visions and rituals. We use good magic, what you might call ‘white.’ Our present leader, Daniel, entered into a trance and witnessed the carnage between the Fenners and the Gaudins at the bayou. He knew it was time for us to intervene.”

She swallowed hard, wondering if they had seen her with the gun that shot silver bullets. Watched her leap into a bayou filled with silver to save Doug, Cordelia’s brother-in-law, married to her older sister Regan.

“You have to stop the feuding. Now. Or we will destroy you.” Magus looked over at Katelyn. “Don’t think we can’t. Ask the older werewolves about the Manarro family.” He smiled grimly. “We wiped them out.”

“How?”

He drew himself up and straightened his shoulders. “We made an earthquake.”

“No, really,” she said.

He gave her a look, then returned his attention to the road. A flash of lightning heralded a downpour. He put on the windshield wipers.

“What I lost was your safe passage, should you have decided to come to us,” he said. “Maybe that’s a divine sign that you should come with me now.”

“Come with you,” she repeated nervously.

“To where we are staying while we sort out this mess.”

“Come with you because . . .?”

He moved his shoulders. “I have to tell you that my report to Daniel, my leader, won’t be favorable. We don’t believe the Fenners and the Gaudins will be able to make peace. They’re savages, all of them. We predict that in the end, for the good of the world, we’ll have to kill them all.”