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Empty.
“Human dead.”
She knew the voice instantly. It wasn’t a voice you ever forgot. It was Pack Leader’s slurred, high-pitched snarl.
“Yes, I noticed,” Lana said. She was proud of the calmness of her tone. Inside, the panic was threatening to engulf her, just one pocket left, and if the keys weren’t there?
“Go to the Darkness,” Pack Leader said.
He was a dozen feet away, poised, ready. Could she reach the gun before Pack Leader could reach her?
“The Darkness told me to pick this guy’s pockets,” Lana said. “The Darkness says he wants gum. Thinks maybe Jim has a pack.”
During her time as Pack Leader’s captive, Lana had come to respect the coyote leader’s ruthless determination, his cunning, his power. But not his intelligence. He was, despite the mutation that allowed speech, a coyote. His frame of reference was hunting rodents and dominating his pack.
Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock, Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.
No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader could reach her.
Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.
Inside, something cold and hard-edged.
She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then thrust them into her own pocket.
Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.
Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.
“The Darkness asked for it,” she said.
Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she stood up.
“I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked directly toward the coyote.
But this was too much for Pack Leader.
“Go to Darkness, human.”
“Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up and fired.
Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!
Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.
There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.
In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard, far short of his objective.
She was past him and running now, running blind and heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not in terror.
Lana screamed in defiance.
She screamed in triumph.
She had the key.
TWENTY-SEVEN
