Forever. Part 35

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE.

* SAM *

Everything about this was wrong. We were in the open, we were bunched together, we were too near the vehicle. Instincts made my hackles rise. The light of the moon glowed inside the mist, making the world artificially bright. A few of the wolves started to retreat back into the darkness of the trees, but I broke into a run, herding them back snugly by the lake. Images flashed briefly into my mind: us, by the lake, all together. Me and her.

Grace. Grace. finding the wolves. the lake.

I'd done those things. What now? There was no what now.

Grace could smell my anxiety. She nosed my muzzle, leaned into me, but I wasn't comforted.

The pack was restless. I had to break off again to drive a few stragglers back to the lake. The white she-wolf - Shelby - snarled at me but didn't attack. The wolves kept looking up to the vehicle; there was a person in it.

What now, what now?

I was torn by the unknown.

Sam.

I jerked. Recognition rang through me.

Sam, are you listening?

Then, clearly, an image. The wolves running down the road, freedom ahead, and something - something menacing behind.

I swiveled my ears, trying to find the direction of the information. I turned back to the vehicle; my gaze was met by the young man's steady one. Again, I got the image, even more clearly this time. Danger coming. The pack pelting down the road. I took the image, honed it, threw it to the other wolves.

Grace's head instantly snapped up from where she was doing my job: keeping a wolf from wandering back into the trees. Across two dozen moving bodies, I met her gaze and held it for the briefest of moments.

In my paws, I could feel the vibration of something unfamiliar. Something approaching.

Grace tossed another image to me. A suggestion. The pack, me at the head, leading them away from whatever threat promised to arrive from behind us. Her alongside, driving them after me.

I couldn't mistrust that image being sent to me from the car, because it came with this, again and again: Sam. And that made it all right, even if I couldn't quite hold the entire concept of it in my head.

I sent an image to the pack. Not a request. An order: us moving. Them following me.

By all rights, the orders should have been given by Paul, the black wolf, and any others punished for their subordination.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, we broke into a run, nearly simultaneously. It was like we were on a hunt, only whatever we chased was too far away to see.

Every wolf listened to me.

CHAPTER SEVENTY.

* COLE *

It was working.

The moment I started to follow in the Volkswagen, though, they scattered and it took them a long moment to regroup. It was almost dawn; we didn't have the time for them to get used to the car. So I got out, tossing images as best I could - I was getting better, though I had to be close - and I ran on foot. Not stupidly close to them; I stayed on the shoulder of the road mostly, to keep my bearings, and they were dozens of yards away. I just tried to stay close enough to keep tabs on their direction. I couldn't believe I'd cursed their slowness before. If they'd been more focused, I wouldn't have been able to keep up. Instead, here I was, running with them, almost part of the pack again, as they coursed along under the waning moonlight. I wasn't sure what would happen when I got tired. Right now, fueled by adrenaline, I couldn't imagine it.

And I had to say, even as a cynic, it was something to see the wolves, leaping and jumping and ducking and surging with each other. And it was something else again to see Sam and Grace.

I was able to send images to Sam, sure, but it obviously took an effort for him to understand. Sam and Grace, on the other hand, both wolves, with their connection - Sam would barely turn his head and Grace would fall back to encourage a wolf that had stopped to investigate a fascinating smell. Or Grace would intercept one of my images and translate it for Sam with a flick of her tail, and suddenly they would have changed directions as I wanted them to. And always, as they ran, though there was an urgency to the pack, Sam and Grace were touching, nosing, b.u.mping against each other. Everything they had as humans translated.

Here was the problem, though: North of Boundary Wood, there was a large, flat tract of land covered only with scrub trees. As long as the wolves were crossing it to the next stretch of woods, they were easy targets. I'd driven past it before, and it hadn't seemed like too wide of an area. But that was me in a car going fifty-eight miles an hour. Now we were on foot going maybe six, eight miles an hour. And the edge of the horizon was pinking as the sun contemplated coming up.

Too soon. Or maybe we were too late. The scrub stretched out for miles ahead of us. There was no way that the wolves would be across it by the time the sun came up. The only thing I could hope for was that the helicopter was slow to get started. That it started on the far side of Boundary Wood and was more concerned with why there didn't seem to be any wolves in it anymore. If we were lucky, that would be how it worked. If the world were fair.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE.

* ISABEL *

By the time I found the Volkswagen, abandoned in the parking lot by the lake, it was dawn. I swore at Cole for leaving Sam's phone behind, for leaving the car behind, but then I saw that the pack had left cluttered tracks in the dew. More wolf prints than I'd ever seen before. How many was that? Ten wolves? Twenty? The brush was beaten down where they'd waited, and then the prints led back out to the road. Like the journal had said. Heading up 169.

I was so pumped to know that I was on the right track that I didn't realize, at first, what it meant that I could see the tracks so clearly. The sun was coming up, which meant we were running out of time. No, we were already out of time, unless the wolves were well away from the woods. There was a big, ugly stretch of alien wasteland on 169 leading out of Boundary Wood and Mercy Falls. If the wolves got caught there, they'd be totally exposed to my father and his enterprising rifle.

All I could think was that things would be fine if only I could get to the wolves. So I sent the SUV speeding down the road. I was freezing, I realized; even though it wasn't that cold, just normal early-morning chill, I couldn't seem to keep warm. I cranked up the heater and gripped the steering wheel. I didn't pa.s.s any traffic - who would be out on this hick road at dawn except for wolves and the people hunting them, anyway? I wasn't sure which category that put me in.

And there, suddenly, were the wolves. In the half-light of dawn, they were dark spots against the scrubby ground, only presenting themselves as different shades of gray and black when I got closer. Of course, they were smack-dab in the middle of the alien wasteland, strung out in a long, orderly line, two and three across, perfect targets. As I got closer, I saw the wolf that was Grace up at the front - no way could I forget the shape of her body and the length of her legs and the way she carried her head - and next to her, Sam. I saw a white wolf, and for a brief, confused moment, thought it was Olivia. But then I remembered, and realized it must be Shelby, the crazy wolf that had followed us to the clinic so long ago. The other wolves were strangers to me. Just wolves.

And there, far ahead of me, running by the side of the road, a human. The low sun stretched his shadow out one hundred times taller than him. Cole St. Clair, running alongside the wolves, sidestepping debris on the roadside every so often and sometimes jumping the ditch for a few strides and then back again. He held his arms out for balance as he leaped, unself-conscious, like a boy. There was something so fiercely big about the gesture of Cole running with the wolves that it made the last thing I said to him ring in my ears. Shame warmed me when nothing else could.

I had a new goal. I was going to tell him sorry, after all this.

It occurred to me then that something in my dash was rattling. I pressed my hand on the dashboard, then on my door panel, trying to locate it.

And then I realized it wasn't coming from inside the SUV at all. I rolled down the driver's side window.

From the direction of the woods, I heard the sound of the helicopter blades beating the air as it approached.

* COLE *

The next part happened so quickly, I couldn't really keep any of the events straight or make them make sense.

There was the thump thump thump of the helicopter, every thump coming twice as often as the crashing of my heart in my ears. It was fast, compared to us, and low, and louder than an explosion. In this light, it was black against the sky; even as a human, it looked like a monster to me. It felt like death. Something in me p.r.i.c.kled, a wary premonition. The tempo of the blades exactly matched one of my old songs, and the lyrics sprang into my head, unbidden. I am expendable.

The effect on the wolves was immediate. The sound hit them first, and they began to move erratically, bunching together and spreading. Then, as the helicopter itself came closer, they twisted their heads up as they ran. Now there were tails tucked between legs, ears flattened.

Terror.

There was no cover. The people in the helicopter hadn't seen me here, or if they had, I didn't interest them. Sam's head was half-turned toward me, listening for my direction. Grace was close by, trying to keep the wolves together as they panicked. I kept throwing out the image of making it to the woods on the other side of this open ground, but the trees seemed far away and out of reach.

I took in the wolves, the helicopter, the ground, trying to formulate some new plan, something that could save them in the next twenty seconds. I saw Shelby lagging near the back. She was worrying at Beck, who had been guiding the wolves from the rear. He snapped at her, but she was relentless. Like a mosquito, returning again and again. For so long, she'd been unable to challenge anyone in the pack because of him, and now, when he was distracted, she was making her move. She and Beck were falling farther behind the rest of the pack. I wished I'd fought better when I'd met her in the woods before. I wished I'd killed her.

Sam somehow sensed that Beck was falling behind, and so he lagged, too, leaving Grace to lead. His eyes were on Beck.

The sound of the helicopter was so loud, so all-consuming, that it felt like I had never heard anything else. I stopped running.

And that was when it all started to go too fast. Sam snarled at Shelby, and she abandoned Beck as if she had never cared about attacking him. For a moment, I thought that Sam's authority had won out.

Then she threw herself at Beck.

I thought I'd sent a warning.

I should have sent a warning. It would have been too late, anyway, even if they were listening to me.

Dirt kicked up around them, scattershot, and before I understood what it was, Beck fell. He scrambled back up again, biting at his spine, falling again. There was another crackle, barely audible over the helicopter, and this time, he went down and stayed down. His body was a wreck, in pieces.

I couldn't think about it. Beck. He was jerking, snapping, scrabbling without getting up. Not shifting. Dying. His body was too ruined to heal itself.

I couldn't look.

I couldn't look away.

Sam jerked to a halt, and I saw his mouth form a whimper that I couldn't hear from here. We were both transfixed; Beck could not die. He was a giant.

He was dead.

Taking advantage of Sam's distraction, Shelby hurled herself against his side, shoving him to the ground. They rolled and came up painted with mud. I tried to send Sam images, telling him to shake her off and get on the move, but he wasn't listening, either because he couldn't see anything but Beck or because Shelby was taking all his concentration.

I should have killed her.

Ahead of them, the helicopter was still flying slowly after the wolves. There was another explosion of dirt, and then another, but no wolf fell this time. I only had a moment to think Maybe Beck will be the only one when a wolf in the middle of the pack fell mid-stride, rolling and twitching. It took several long minutes for the two guns in the helicopter to finish the job.

This was a disaster.

I'd led the wolves out of the woods to be picked off slowly, one at a time, death in seven slow bullets.

The helicopter banked. I would have loved to think that it was abandoning the chase, but I knew it was just coming back around to get a better shot on the wolves again. The pack was badly scattered from fear; with Sam fighting with Shelby, they had virtually ceased all forward movement. The wolves were so close to the woods, though. They could almost make it to cover, if they could just move. They just needed some moments without that helicopter terrifying them.

But we didn't have moments. And with Sam and Shelby separated from the rest of the pack, I knew that they were the next to go.

I could still see Beck's death.

I couldn't let that happen to Sam.

I didn't even think. My shadow, stretched out in front of me, dug into the pocket of my cargo pants at the same time I did. I flipped out the syringe, pulled the cap off with my teeth, and jabbed it into my vein. No time to consider it. No time to feel n.o.ble. Just - a rapid, jagged surge of pain through me and then the silent push of the adrenaline helping speed the shift. I was a world of agony and then, I was a wolf, and I was running.

Shelby. Kill Shelby. Save Sam.

That was all I had to remember, and the words were already sliding away when I hit Shelby with everything I had. I was nothing but my jaws and my snarl. My teeth snagged around her eye just like I'd learned from her. She twisted and snapped, knowing that this time I was playing for keeps. There was no anger in my attack. Just relentless determination. This was what our fight should have been earlier.

Blood filled my mouth, either Shelby's or mine, from my tongue. I tossed an image to Sam: Get out. I wanted him up with Grace. I wanted him away from me, back with the pack, one of many instead of a solitary, nonmoving target.

Why wouldn't he leave me? GET OUT. I couldn't make it any more of a request. There were ways to convince him, but my mind no longer catalogued them. Then an image from Grace came back to us. The pack, directionless, scattering, the woods so close, but so far out of reach without him. The helicopter was returning. Beck was dead. They were terrified. Him. They needed him. She needed him.

He didn't want to leave me behind.

I let go of Shelby to snarl at him with everything in me. His ears flagged, and then he was gone.

Everything in me wished I was going with him.