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Crow Shadow doing here, when he was supposed to be shepherding the two
familiars to a pack chopper station? Hunter looked at the hastily parked truck
in the lodge entrance that still had the door slightly ajar and the motor
running. Skid marks said the driver had been in a hurry. Where was Sasha's
truck? She should have been here by now.
~
Breathless and senses keened she arrived at the lodge and allowed her gaze to
tear across the main courtyard en-trance. Crow Shadow's truck was parked at a
haphazard angle, motor still running, with blood on the seats, the steering
wheel, the dashboard, and the ground. Nausea roiled within her so strong that
she almost dry heaved. How could he attack and eat his own pack brother?
Hor-ror permeated every cell in her: Woods, Fisher.
Hunter's scent was unmistakably thick in the air along with the undeniable
pungent blend of infected Werewolf trail. What if her squad hadn't gotten out
by chopper?
Sasha narrowed her gaze as she slipped into shadows along the side of the
building, hunkering down as she crept past the pine veranda. The front door
was open. Un-derstatement; it was hanging off its hinges. Whatever was looking
for her was most likely still inside. Unfortunately, that's where the weapons
she needed were, too. Plus, Hunter knew this lodge; this was his home court
advan-tage. No doubt he knew every nook and cranny of the building, where the
pack would have stashed ammo, and he'd be waiting laying for her to stumble
foolishly into an ambush. Same dealio with the demon doors. He'd been the one
to show her how to track a predator to and through them. Now that he was a
full-blown demon-infected lycanthrope, he could probably pass in and out of
them at will, no ward needed.
Scouring the terrain for anything she could use, her line of vision went back
to (he truck. To her mind, it was a bomb on four wheels. All she needed was
something to detonate the fuel tank as she sent it crashing into the lodge.
After that, was anybody's guess. But if Crow Shadow had been dragged from the
vehicle as quickly as he obviously had, then chances were there was something
left in his truck to work with. The entire pack traveled with weapons, ammo.
Sasha sniffed the air; there was no residue in it from unspent rounds.
Now the only problem was transitioning to the weaker human body she needed in
order to make use of the dex-terity of hands.
It only took an instant for her lithe female form to step out of the shadows
and begin ransacking the truck. To her horror the glove compartment, flatbed,
even under the seat were vacant. Not even a tire iron remained.
Shit. Okay, new plan. Send the truck crashing into the front as a diversion to
draw the beast outside, enter the building from behind, use walls and
furniture to block its counterattack until blinding chemicals like bleach or
am-monia could be located, and then get the hell out, turn, and fire.
Admittedly, it was a fool's errand and a really bad plan. However, given the
circumstances of two to three slaughtered men, her being naked in freezing
temps in the wilderness, and not a damned weapon on her that would work, it
was the best shot she had.
Sasha slid into the truck's driver's seat, shuddering from the contact of
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ice-cold leather against her skin. In a strange way, she now wished she'd
claimed the ranger's gun from his severed arm just for the sake of being able
to blow the gas tank from afar not that the regular bul-lets would have done
anything to the creature. Even the pump shotgun or rifle she was sure the
ranger had in his trunk would be useless against a raging Werewolf.
She quickly jumped back out of the truck feeling claustrophobic and assumed
her wolf form. It was beyond obvious now that to fortify herself against this
predator, she had to go back to the second crash site, transform to human, get
whatever weapons and blankets she could scavenge from the ranger's cruiser,
and run naked, con-cealed by the shadows, back to set up a perimeter outside
the lodge to kill the beast. There'd be no way to carry all the supplies while
in wolf form. It was always a decision between using the power-body of the
wolf for an attack or speed, versus the agility of the human form.
The shadows, however, had betrayed her. Preoccupied, her mind racing, she'd
slipped into a sliver of darkness that contained a familiar scent and a low,
warning growl.
Lunging toward the sound, blind, she made her objec-tive a swift first strike.
A whoosh of air passed over her, causing enough of a back draft to tell her
that what had avoided her had been huge. Her worst fear realized, it smelled
like Hunter.
Time didn't permit her to look back. Seconds granted her a head start.
Propelled forward by a raging will to live, Sasha bolted toward the second
crash site, her focus laser. Danger was on her heels; she couldn't hear it but
knew it had to be close. Flash-fight hormone made the quick trans-formation
back into human form so painful she cried out. An echoing howl reverberated
through the glen, but it told her he wasn't as close to her as she'd thought.
She didn't have two seconds to question why not. It was a gift. Period.
A frozen, blood-coated gun was in her hand, and she didn't have time to be
squeamish about breaking dead fin-gers to get it in her grip. A single shot
opened the trunk. A pump shotgun, a blanket, a tire iron, a bright yellow rain
poncho, flashlight for the battery she scavenged what-ever she could find like
a pack rat, rolled everything but the tire iron and shotgun in the blanket,
and leaped into a shadow to disappear.
The thing she circled was wild in the eyes, knocking down trees with its
massive fists, just punching them out of his way as he barreled through the
forest hunting for her. She had to get back to the lodge, had to double back
before the beast sensed her location.
Sasha brought both amulets that she wore to her lips and kissed them and then
ran toward the truck that was her only hope of escape. With the shotgun she
could det-onate the tank. A tire iron could take out an eye.
Out of breath by the time she reached the truck, she jumped in, backed the
vehicle up in a screeching roar, bounced onto the asphalt, and burned rubber
down the road.
At a hundred twenty miles per hour, the F-150 would pack a punch when it blew.
The moment a huge black wolf figure leaped onto the road on all fours, she
opened the door and threw out the shotgun and tire iron as the beast charged
with glowing gold eyes. Two seconds later, her wolf fled the cab, but by the
time she'd drop-rolled to the ground she was all woman; naked, ornery, and
then up again, going for the gun.
Anticipating her move, the beast sailed over the truck. Sasha went down on one
knee, held the shot steady, and fired.
The blast from the truck caught the beast midair and in the gut. Entrails
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