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“It was only a matter of time,” Guy hisses, crawling away from the edge and back to the cover of the forest.
Kade follows, his head spinning. Panic is brewing deep in his gut, panic that tells him to run to Elara. To save her, protect her, but in the end is it not him that put her in danger?
“I have to go. I have to warn her, Guy!” Kade insists.
“No, you don’t,” Guy snaps, turning on Kade with fire in his eyes. “Elara’s important, but she can’t know that yet. We have to go question Carl and find out everything he knows. Follow me.”
“Guy! What if they believe him?”
“They won't, he’s a rat,” Guy says simply.
Kade and Guy skirt around the clearing where the group of shifters have holed up, following Carl as he carries an old tin bucket towards the river not far away from the campground. Once he’s out of the light, the men flank him and trap him between them and the river.
Carl crouches down to fill the bucket.
And Guy strikes.
Like a shadow of a blade, Guy flies through the air and lands on Carl’s back, forcing his head underwater. When the struggling stops, Guy lifts him out of the water and locks his arm around his neck, his other hand over the mouth gasping for air. He turns him to face Kade.
“We have questions,” Kade says, his voice rough and gravelly. “If you answer them, you may get to live. Do you understand?”
Carl nods, his eyes wide with fear as he struggles to breathe past Guy’s hold.
“If my friend uncovers your mouth, you will not scream.” He hardens his voice. “Or you’ll die.”
Carl nods again.
“If you refuse to answer our questions, you’ll die.”
Carl nods again.
Kade turns his head slightly to look at Guy, who slowly removes his hand. Carl draws in a deep breath, water dripping down his face from his sodden hair, but then stills. His nostrils flare.
He spins around to face the man who was holding him. “You?—”
There's a sudden flash of darkness in his mentor’s eyes. Something Kade has never seen before. In a lightning-fast movement, he reaches out, grabs Carl’s head and savagely twists in one quick motion.
Carl drops to the ground, dead.
Kade staggers back in shock, blinking at his mentor in confusion. “We needed to question him!” he whispers. “You said we had to?—”
“Shut your mouth, boy!” Guy roars. Behind them, the sounds of the camp cut off to eerie silence.
“Guy! What are you doing?!” Kade demands.
“There can be no witnesses!” Guy hisses, then turns towards the camp. “I told you I smelled a rat. Look at him, in the dirt where he belongs.”
Kade spins on a heel at the sounds of hooves and paws coming their way. As one, he ang Guy men pull out automatic pistols and aim them at the coming attackers. Kade can smell Sadie, a sleek lioness, and he can see her mate by her side who’s taken the shape of an imposing lion. They’ll work as a team to tear them apart, he knows it.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots and the lions drop to the ground dead, bullet holes between their eyes.
“Shoot, boy!” Guy shouts.
Kade aims his weapon and fires.
With expert marksmanship, the pair unleash their weapons without mercy. An antelope with its horns lowered to gore Guy is shot by Kade in the side. A gorilla jumping off a rock outcropping falls backward with a gaping hole in its chest. Two men, still human, try to run but Guy takes out the one on the left and Kade kills the one on the right.
