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“He’s scared,” Vira murmured in wonder, squeezing my hand. “He’s frightened.”
Backing up, Eli shouted at the others, and they all ran towards the van. Eli cast one last glare our way before he jumped inside. The van sped away. Byron said something, but I couldn’t focus on what the wolves were doing. With the harbingers out of sight, I fell to my knees, too tired to think straight. The pack kept moving, and Vira was left alone with me.
She helped me to my feet. “You must be exhausted.”
“What did we do?” I asked her. “How did we do it?”
“We helped each other,” she said. “Like Eli is trying to teach his new friends to do. But we have the advantage of experience and shared blood.” She looked me over. “And new power.”
“I saw something odd while he was using his power.”
“Because of the wolf?”
“Yeah, but even before, I saw what looked like hands clawing at Eli’s face. Today, I saw death differently, more clearly. I don’t know how to explain it, but there are people sort of attached to Eli. When he used his power, it looked like he was drawing it from them.”
She flinched. “People?”
“I met a spirit once,” I said. “They reminded me of him.”
“You saw spirits,” she mumbled. “You saw dead people, attached to Eli. You saw them give him power.” She gazed at her hands in horror. “Is that what we really do?”
“Not you. Or me. Not even those other harbingers out there. Only Eli. The spirits or whatever… when he drew from them, they looked like they were in pain. They wanted to escape, but they couldn’t.”
I thought she was going to throw up. “I’ll have to think about what this means. I’ve never heard of anything like this before."
“Maybe I’m making a mistake.”
She looked away, in the direction Eli had fled towards. “No, I don’t think you are."
CHAPTER30
Dorian
The encounterwith the harbingers had been brief, and nobody had gotten hurt. The harbingers had discovered that we could bite back, even though we refused to shift into wolves in public. Some of the pack were still following the harbingers, but Byron told the rest of us to head for home.
“There’s nothing else we can do for now,” he said. “We’ll discuss this again, but there’s no point in hanging around here. The harbingers are long gone.”
Some people had more questions for Byron, despite the weary look in his eyes, but the rest of us began the walk home.
I found Margo looking exhausted, so I took her hand. “We can head back together.”
We separated into groups to look less conspicuous. Most people walked in twos or threes, but a few left by themselves. Jorge walked away with his head bowed, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He always looked so serious lately.
Margo and I followed his direction for a bit, but he was soon out of sight. The group directly behind us strolled along, noisily debating what had happened.
“You okay?” I asked after a bit. Margo’s hand in my mine was clenched tight.
“I suppose,” she said. “What was the point of that? It made the harbingers look weak. Why come at us unless you’re certain you can win?”
“He didn’t come directly at us. Not really. Only used us to help his new friends practice. Besides, he didn’t know about you.” I glanced at her. At least she didn’t look scared anymore. “That threw him off.”
“His new friends are nothing compared to him,” she said. “That’s lucky.”
Somewhere behind us came heckling followed by loud cackles of laughter. The usual rush from a pack run had shifted into something else. Even Margo felt different.
“I know things didn’t end up as expected,” I said, trying to bring us back to our earlier happiness, “but you enjoyed running with the pack, right?”
“It was an experience.”
