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15
“Evie!” Maria called out in the darkness. “Evie, come on. Open your eyes.”
I groaned, and my head rolled to the side, colliding with something soft. Her hand. “M-maria.”
“Oh, thank god,” she sighed. “Can you open your eyes.”
I nodded and squinted up at her. We were still in the woods. The witches had left me in the clearing, and the sky behind Maria’s head had lightened with the early dawn.
“Where’s Jamie?” I asked, struggling to lift myself into a seated position.
“I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “When you didn’t come home last night, I went to the Alpha house, and Adrian said you’d come out here to deal with the shadow things. The…walkers or whatever they’re called.”
“Jamie and I were together, but...” I shook my head, trying to clear the fog. “We were interrupted.”
“By what?”
“Witches,” I said, forcing myself to my feet. “One of them appeared and caught me, she sent the beasts after a wolf that shouldn’t have been in the woods. Someone was howling. I don’t know who.”
“You couldn’t tell?” Her eyebrows drew together. “Were they not a pack member?”
“I was in human form. Jamie turned into a wolf. One of us had to hit the button to trigger the explosives. He was worried if I went wolf I’d pop a lung with a broken rib or something, but….that’s not important. What’s important is he raced off to help the other wolf, right on the tail of eight of those monsters. Eight. I couldn’t help him. The witches knocked me out.”
“Why did they let you live?” she asked, following behind me as I started towards the opening in the trees where I watched him disappear.
“I don’t know, but we need to find him. Fast,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “I’ll be faster as a wolf. I need to—”
“No,” Maria said, grabbing my wrist as I started to pull off my shirt. “Jamie was right, after the attack the other night, you’re still healing. You can’t change yet. You have to be careful. I’ll go wolfy, you follow.”
“Maria, he’s probably hurt. We need to—”
“Find him. I know, and we will. I promise.” She said, turning away to strip naked. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I didn’t like being helpless. I was a wolf, I should’ve been able to run, but I’d been reckless, and now Jamie was in danger because of me. If I’d only set off the bombs the when the girl appeared everything would be different. I was too slow.
Maria changed with a flash of light, and padded closer to me sniffing my clothes, looking for Jamie’s sent. I knelt down and pulled my hair from the unsinged side of my neck. She gave me a questioning look.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not submitting to you, Jamie touched me here, in his wolf form. It’s where you’ll get his scent.”
She huffed and came closer, her nose shifting back and forth as she inhaled whatever her wolf would pick up. She stepped back and her tongue lolled out of her mouth for a moment, telling me she had the scent before she turned and began searching for hints of him on the air.
I waited, shifting my weight back and forth on my feet and then she jumped, standing at attention. She met my gaze and then took off into the trees, west of where the clearing sat.
I couldn’t keep up with her, but I even in my human I could run fast enough to follow her scent.
She moved so fast, I barely had time to register she’d stopped at the edge of cliff before I was forced to fall back nearly skidding over the edge.
Maria sniffed at the dirt and then gestured to a mark near my hand. I frowned and leaned sideways to let the light shine down on what I realized were claw marks. My heart leapt into my throat, and I threw myself to the edge of the cliff. Not to go over, but to look down into the river gorge below.
It had to be at least fifty feet deep, and thin. It reminded me of the fissure in the cliff beside the wolf altar, but instead of having rocks enough to climb down, this one was a sheer drop right into a thin river that cut through the woods like a blue vein.
I almost didn’t see him in the low light, but as my eyes scanned the water’s edge, I spotted a hand jutting out from behind a rock.
“There,” I shouted, pointing down into the gorge. Maria leaned over beside me, her eyes following my fingers and whimpered. There was no way for her to get down to him. I nodded. “Stay here, I’ll climb down.”
She scratched at the ground in protest, but I didn’t care. I just pat her on the shoulder and ran along the edge of the ravine to get closer to where he’d landed. There wasn’t anymore time for me to be careful. I had to get to him. I had to know he was okay.
“Evie, be careful,” Maria shouted returning to her human form. “It’s steep.”
“I have to help him,” I spat, lowering myself down over the edge. My shoes scraped on the rocks, and I slid half a foot before stopping on an outcropping about halfway down the side. I took a deep breath, glanced up at Maria, down at where I could now see Jamie’s arm, and the top of his head. I had to get down there.
