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“Apex,” he said.
“You want to be Apex?” Ruth asked carefully.
A tricky question, I thought. Did an alpha predator and presumptive Apex “want” to be Apex? Or was it just an unquestionable state of being?
“I am alpha,” he said, looking at each of them. “And my father is Apex. It’s up to him and the Pack when his tenure is done. Up to the Pack to determine whether I’m next. But I don’t intend to step away.”
There were considering nods. Ruth had opened her mouth to ask another question when screams cut through the darkness, echoing around us in a cloud of sound with no apparent starting place.
Silence fell again. We stood one by one, quietly and slowly, and we waited, bodies tense and still, for another sound to penetrate the quiet.
There was another scream. And this time, the direction was clear.
It was coming from the Stone farm.
“Carlie,” Connor said.
Clothes were discarded and light flashed as humans became wolves, shifters running full out toward the possibility their human friend was in danger. Or worse.
Connor looked back at me. “Go,” I said.
“You’re sure?” He searched my face.
“I’m sure.” I flipped the dagger from my boot. “And I’m armed.”
He slipped a hand through my hair and pulled me against him, kissed me hard. “Follow the trail. It’s a good half mile to the farm. There’s a V just before you get there. Go left.”
“I’m right behind you,” I assured him. “Be careful.”
He nodded, ditched his clothes, and ran.
Dagger tucked away again, I took off after him.
FOURTEEN
I was fast, but they were faster—proving that four supernaturally enhanced legs were in fact better than two.
As I pushed through the darkness, it worried me that I couldn’t even hear their footsteps ahead—until I realized it was smarter to track them by magic rather than by sound. I reached out for that, caught the sizzling trail off to my right, and pushed harder. It took only a moment to hear the battle, then to smell it.
And then to emerge from the woods... and step directly into hell itself.
The woods edged into the cleared land of the Stone farm, furrowed rows of dirt either left fallow for the season or already cleared of whatever green they’d held. Now, in the warmth of late summer, there were only scraps of what had once been growing.
The farmhouse was on the other side of the field, white clapboard and guarded by a windbreak of trees on the opposite side, all of it on a gentle rise that offered a view of the lake.
And ten yards from the tree line, a bonfire that might have sprung from one of Dante’s hellish circles. Wood and brush had been piled six feet high, and the flames licked the sky several feet above that. There’d been chairs, but they were tossed, scattered across the field along with empty beer bottles and an upturned cooler.
Some of the humans were running, screaming. Others were down, blood staining the earth and scenting the air. Five wolves—the shifters from the firepit, including Connor—stood between the humans still on their feet and the monsters who’d attacked them.
They were wolves, but not wolves.
They were beasts. And they were enormous—twice as wide as a human, and nearly as tall as the fire itself. Their bodies were generally wolflike, if wolves stood on two legs, had claws as long and sharp as icepicks, and narrow, gaping muzzles with fangs nearly as long as their claws.
The wicked hour had come, I thought ruefully. But these were no cryptids, no myths. They were as real as I was.
There were four of them. Going by fur: silver, brown, red, and black. But their fur was matted and bare in spots, showing what appeared to be human skin beneath. For all their bulk, they were skinny enough that bone and tendon were visible beneath that thin skin.
Stringy strength,Beth had said, and I understood now what she meant.
