“Two minutes,” Haley warned, and immediately I felt the shift in the energy around us, like an electrical current surging, then fading. At the edge of the road, one of the big cats took a step.
“Fuck,” Ronan said. “This is about to get ugly. Anyone got weapons?”
“Nothing that would help against these creatures,” I said.
“Can’t you shoot them?” Ronan asked Lansky.
“Doubt it.” Lansky drew his weapon again anyway. “These aren’t silver bullets. They won’t work on shifters.”
“Might not kill them,” Ronan said, “but maybe you can make them bleed.”
Haley took a step backward toward the van. “Now or never, boys. Thirty seconds and we’re totally exposed.”
“Stay alert.” Lansky took aim, firing off three shots into the chest of the closest beast.
The creature didn’t even flinch, and if it’d bled at all, it’d been such a minuscule amount that not one drop had stained the snow.
“Great. Apparently, they heal faster than regular shifters, too,” Lansky said, holstering the useless gun. “Guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”
“Haley,” I said, catching his meaning. “Now might be a good time for you to get in the van. You too, prince. See if you two can get it started.”
The moment we heard the van door slam shut, we struck.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the dark gray blur of Lansky’s wolf form, Ronan right on his heels. The shifters were just coming out of the spell-haze when we took down the first two—Ronan and Lansky on one, me on the other. I barged into him, biting, slashing, disemboweling. His blood tasted ashy and bitter, laced with some kind of chemical, but I drank deeply anyway, needing the fuel and—yes—needing to put on a show of dominance.
The wolf and the raging, black-eyed demon made quick work of their foe, Lansky mauling him with his massive claws while Ronan tore off hunks of white fur and flesh with his bare hands. The bullets hadn’t made a dent, but the damned things were finally bleeding now. The three of us had no intention of letting them heal.
I scanned ahead for my next shifter meal, but was shocked to see the rest of the pack backing off.
Were they… retreating?
“Why aren’t they attacking?” I growled, wiping the blood from my mouth.
Lansky pawed at the beast he and Ronan had shredded, drawing my attention to a black metallic object that appeared to be fused to its collarbone. It was circular and flat, about the size and shape of a watch face.
I tore the bone clean out of its carcass so Ronan and I could take a closer look.
“I’m guessing it’s some kind of behavioral control device,” he said. “Or tracker. I bet they all have them.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re holding back,” I said.
“If that’s the case, then someone is watching. Someone’s controlling them.”
“Let’s take them out,” I said, already anticipating the bitter tang of blood on my lips.
But the big cats were already disappearing, loping away into the snow-packed forest on silent paws.
* * *
“I don’t believe they weren’t trying to kill us,” Lansky said later, stepping into what was left of his clothing. While Haley and Jael had finished loading up the salvageable supplies into Lansky’s van, Ronan, Lansky, and I had done a full sweep of the area, tracking the shifter prints a good mile out in all directions before the trees became too dense to continue. “Not for a second. Six cats that size against three of us? They could’ve done a hell of a lot more damage.”
“We hit the first two pretty quickly, though,” I said. “My sense was they weren’t expecting our initial attack.”
“No way. They knewexactlywhat we were up to. Exactly how we’d react. I’m telling you, guys. These aren’t normal shifters, operating on instinct. They’re following orders in real time.”
“Detective Lansky is right,” Jael said, securing one last box of food in the back of the van. “My belief is that Darkwinter is trying to unhinge us a bit. Consider it—Orendiel suffered a massive defeat that night at the warehouse, and he knows we’re gathering strength here. What better way to keep us off guard and second-guessing our strategies?”
“Psychological warfare,” I said. “Dark fae expertise.”
