She shrugged and looked around as if to say “the evidence points to yes.”
Somewhere to the west, the helicopter finally found a place to land. Unless Jonesy’s magic was different than other glamours Charles had seen, the enemy would probably be able to follow whatever trace or GPS had gotten them this far despite Jonesy’s spell. Only the Gray Lords working great magic together could confuse technology until it wouldn’t work at all. He considered the reach of Jonesy’s magic. Maybe their enemy was using witchcraft instead. Though witchcraft and werewolves were uneasy bedfellows, he had evidence in the odd gun a werewolf had used on him that their enemy was willing to mix power.
Under other circumstances, Charles would have waited for the enemy to find him. But the weird blood-magic weapon pushed him into caution. He’d never even heard of such a thing before. He didn’t take on enemies without more intelligence about their capabilities.
He did a cursory search of the three dead bodies and discovered no more than that the first dead body, the one Hester presumably had killed, was human. None of them carried ID or had useful clues like insignia or easily discoverable tattoos. Their body armor and weapons (there was only the single witch-blood gun) were good but not custom-made.
It would have been nice if they could call the pack and get reinforcements, but neither he nor Anna had brought phones.
Twice since he and Anna had tangled with the government in Boston, they’d had to go out and rescue federal agents who got themselves stuck in the mountains. The first pair of agents hadn’t been his fault, he and Anna had found them wedged in a rocky outcropping on their way back from a horseback ride. Since there hadn’t been anything up that old logging road except for a few hikers and horseback riders since the 1960s, he figured they were hunting for him and Anna. They seemed suitably embarrassed when he got them out—and unsurprised by his ability to lift the front end of their truck, which confirmed his suspicions.
But after them, he’d been paying attention to his back trail. The second pair he allowed to discover why native Montanans don’t drive over broad, flat meadows high in the mountains unless it’s been below zero for a few weeks. Charles got the people out—but he imagined that the SUV might be sinking deeper in the mud even now.
After that, though, Bran had made a rule that anyone heading into the wildling territory could not carry a cell phone. People who disturbed Bran’s special wolves tended not to live to regret their mistakes. Bran preferred not to kill government agents unintentionally.
“Let’s get back to Jonesy,” Charles said when he’d finished searching the last body. “We can make a decision then whether to hole up in the cabin and call for reinforcements or just pick him up and head to Da’s house.”
* * *
• • •
THEY WERE ALMOST halfway back to Hester’s cabin when the sound of a gunshot echoed in the trees. Charles flattened himself on the ground as a second shot fired, noting that Anna and Hester had done the same without hesitation. There was something odd about the motion the two of them made, but he’d worry about that after he took care of the immediate danger.
Brother Wolf’s hearing told him where the bullet hit in the tree behind where they had been standing. Because it had scored the bark rather than hitting in the middle, Charles also had a nice line of broken bark that pointed back where the shot had come from—downwind, which was why he hadn’t scented anyone.
He divested himself of the witch-worked weapon, leaving it on the ground. Then he rolled to his feet and shifted to wolf in the same moment. The next time he changed, it would be slower, but with the adrenaline in his system, he was still plenty fast.
The shooter had climbed a tree to get the best shot at them. But that left her stuck in a tree with a werewolf coming after her. Not that it mattered. As far as Charles was concerned, as soon as she fired the first shot, she was dead. The tree swayed under his weight as he leaped from one branch to another. The unpredictable movement meant the two shots she aimed at him missed—as he’d calculated they would.
She looked startled more than frightened. She had probably thought that werewolves couldn’t climb trees. Hunters said the same thing about grizzlies—and that was wrong, too. A grizzly could climb as far up as a tree would hold him. Which was pretty much true of werewolves, and Brother Wolf might be big, but he was a lot smaller than a grizzly.
The shooter was human, and she died quickly, dropping from the tree to the ground with a crash of underbrush. From the tree, Charles saw two more people, presumably more of the team who had been pursuing them. They were taking separate paths toward the place where the woman had been shooting.
Separated by no more than thirty feet of forest, he thought. Only one of them looked up, but it was obvious from his expression that he didn’t see Charles, nearly three hundred pounds of werewolf, in the tree. Evergreens were good at breaking up solid shapes. Both of the men had a hand to their ear in a classic I-have-a-communication-device pose.
Charles dropped to the ground much more quietly than the body had fallen. Brother Wolf had identified the one who looked up as the more dangerous of the two, and this time, Charles decided it would be a good idea to take that one out first.
His familiarity with the lay of the land—even if it was half a century old—allowed him to approach his chosen target from the side and downwind. Like the two earlier in the clearing, this one was a werewolf. He was comfortable in the forest—he moved like someone who was used to combat missions.
He went down easily, though, the only sound being the crunch his spine made between Charles’s fangs.
The third in what Charles’s senses now told him had been a three-person strike team (just as the initial group had been made of three people) had found the body of the sniper. There were too many trees, and the underbrush was too thick for Charles to see him, but he could hear him speak into his communication mic.
As he slid through the woods, approaching the man from behind, Charles estimated about two minutes had passed between the time he’d heard the first shot. He took note of the information the man fed his . . . superior? Or maybe just someone on the helicopter Charles could hear. The copter was still on the ground, but, from the engine sound, it was ready to take off immediately.
“That’s the report she gave me just a few minutes ago,” the man said. He’d moved away from the dead female shooter and was running now, a path that was designed to take him in a straight line to the helicopter. Charles could have told him that he’d have trouble getting across the wide, swift-running stream that ran between him and his goal.
Not that Charles would let him make it that far.
“Two new players have joined up,” the man said, his breath even, despite the speed he was running. “One is almost certainly Charles Cornick unless you can think of some other Indian who would be up in these woods. My team is gone. Presume the other team lost. Pick me up. We are FUBAR.”