The shifters were content to ignore me, light and magic flashing as they transformed, dropping clothing and exchanging bare skin for paws and fur. Moments later, a dozen wolves, a couple of coyotes, and the sleek, dark form of a panther dispersed to look for a murderer.
Connor glanced at Alexei. “You mind going back to the resort, staying with Georgia and the others? I’d feel better if you were there. And they’ll be working on dinner.”
“Incentive,” Alexei said, then gave a salute and headed wordlessly back to the trail.
“You mind?” Connor asked, pulling off his jacket.
“It’s your party,” I said, then winced. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I know what you meant.”
“You want me to put the clothes on the bike?”
For the first time in hours, he smiled. “They’ll be fine where they fall. Take a step back, would you?”
I did, pulling my dagger in case anyone got brave while Connor was midshift.
“Good call,” he said, and clothing dropped to the ground.
I watched him, let my gaze linger on that dip at the bottom of his spine, just before the ripe curve of his gorgeously toned butt.
“I can feel you staring at me,” he said without turning around.
“Then you’re very perceptive. Can you understand me when you’re in wolf form? I mean, is your understanding the same as when you’re a human?”
“We pretty much just divide everyone into ‘food’ and ‘not food’ and go from there.”
I was sure he was joking. Well, mostly sure.
“I hear you, and I understand you,” he said. “But the understanding of human words is . . . different. Less like hearing the individual words than understanding the concept. The same applies when I’m human. I understand animal concepts—smells, sounds, instincts—differently than when I’m wolf.”
“What about scritches?”
He grinned. “Scritches are appreciated in any form. And here we go.”
Magic sparked, ignited, circled his body in shimmering waves. Light filled the air, bright as a camera flash, and put the trees and boulders in sharp relief. I shielded my eyes.
When the magic dissipated, I glanced back. A wolf stood where Connor had been. Large and strong, with silver fur and the blue eyes that were undeniably his, even in this form.
He padded toward me, moved by my side, just close enough for his haunch to graze my leg. I looked down, decided this wasn’t the time or place for scritches. A grimmer business was at hand. “You want to lead?”
He bolted.
“I guess that’s a yes,” I said with a grin, and ducking my head, pushed off to race after him.
* * *
* * *
That we were moving quickly made me feel better about being in hostile territory—and not just because we were going too fast to notice any slithery things on the ground. The trees and undergrowth were so tangled that I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me, or more than a dark sliver of sky above the canopy. All that flora smelled rich and green and a little funky—the commingled scents of decay and rebirth and traces of the animals that lived here.
The slope increased gradually until we reached the crest of a granite-pocked hill that overlooked the lake, the road ribboning a hundred feet beneath us, the lake a dark blanket at its edge.
We stopped to look over the pale break of waves, the single golden dot of a boat on the horizon moving south. Nose lifted, Connor scented the air, seeking the clue that would tell us who—or what—had hurt Loren. I glanced around, but saw nothing on the trail nearby, or strewn across the hard rock, that would mark a murderer.
Below us a lone wolf howled, its cry rising through the air to circle around the cliff. A second wolf answered it, then another, until the air was an orchestra of sound, a chorus of harmonized voices.
I doubted many vampires had borne witness to this, had been able to stand in the midst of the Pack and listen to its sonata. I closed my eyes, let the monster have its chance to hear as the howls rose and fell, wound around one another. Some carried the melody—the main portion of the song—while others sang or yipped around the edges, adding their own stories to the larger book. It was astoundingly beautiful and yet hauntingly sad, even though I knew it had a practical purpose.
“They’re checking everyone’s location, right? Making sure they’re all safe?” I looked down at Connor, and he lifted his gaze to me, but his eyes were unreadable.
“At the risk of insulting you, and I’ll apologize in advance for that, could we have some kind of signaling system when you’re in wolf form?”
He continued to stare at me. But it seemed chillier.
“One paw scratch for yes, two for no? And not like one of those counting horses,” I said, reading his expression perfectly. “I don’t want you to perform for me. I just want to be able to communicate with you.”
I made myself continue to meet his steely gaze, unreadable though it was, because it seemed important that I not look away.
“One for yes, two for no, and three for ‘you’re being a brat’?”
He scratched once.
Then he scratched three times.
I probably had that coming.
NINE
We walked for nearly an hour, following this wing of the trail over and around hills marked by god-strewn boulders. The trail appeared to dead-end at another creek that channeled through the high granite walls.
“End of the trail?” I asked him.
I sensed the lightning spark of power before I saw it, and this time managed to close my eyes. The light of his transformation still flashed red behind my lids. When darkness fell again, I opened them to find him naked beside me, hands on his hips.
“Yeah, unless you want to go rock climbing.” He lifted his gaze to the thirty-foot ledge on the other side of the cold, dark water.
“Not at the top of my list. But if we might find anything over there, we should probably follow it through.”
“We won’t,” he said, moving closer to the water, crouching in front of it. “I don’t smell Pack—or anything else—past here. The water’s deep, and if anyone tried to cross it, they’d have had to take a good swim.”
“Eliminating their scent trail,” I guessed, and Connor nodded.
“At least for a bit.” He rose again. “Long enough to mask their direction. I’d rather search with a scent, a footprint, something. Not randomly stumbling around.”