Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon (8 page)

Both Yasir and Seth turned their attention back to the laptop. The telescopic camera mounted on the first SUV was keyed to motion, so it should have tracked the werewolves no matter where they went, but the screen only showed a bunch of bloody ribs that had been gnawed to stubs.

“Find them!” he barked.

The cameras scanned. Seth got out of the car and propped his elbows on the hood as he searched with the binoculars.

He didn’t look for the wolves. Instead, he imagined the route they would take, decided how long they had been moving, and made an educated guess about their location. Given the forest stretching beyond the ranch, it wasn’t hard to guess where they would go.

Seth spotted them moving into the trees. He tracked their path until their gray tails disappeared into shadow, and a hint of relief eased through him.

It took another twenty seconds for the equipment to pick them up.

Inside the Chevelle, Yasir swore loudly. “They’re gone. Damn it! Get in, we’ve got to move!” Seth jumped into the driver’s seat just in time to follow the SUVs as they peeled down the mountain road. “Faster, kid! They’re going for the mountain.”

“I don’t think so,” Seth said. “Not yet. They’re scared, the mountain is still a few miles away, and they’ve eaten. They’ll find somewhere to den in the forest.”

He tried not to smile when he said it. There were a lot of places werewolves could den without being found. The forest became very thick, very fast once they got to the other side of the pass, and that was less than a mile away. They would never catch them in time.

Jakob and Stripes seemed to realize it, because they jumped the SUVs off the road to cut them off.

Seth tried to follow. Abel would have beaten him around the head if he saw his little brother off-roading in his baby, but the Chevelle didn’t make it far in the forest anyway. They hit a cluster of brush and got stuck.

Yasir jumped out. “Open the doors!” he shouted to the rear SUV.

It stopped, and he waved to Seth to climb in.

The only seat in the back was next to Eleanor, who was still grinning maniacally. She gripped her husband’s book on hunting werewolves in both hands. Her smile faded a fraction when she saw Seth.

The SUV bounced through the forest. He had to grip the handhold to keep from getting thrown out of his seat.

“They’re moving fast,” Jakob said through the earpiece. “We’re a mile behind them.”

“Take your vehicle north. Stripes will take us south. Find an opening—we’ll get around them.” He climbed into the cargo area, pushed away empty gas tanks, and flung open one of the rear doors. A few boxes of supplies fell out, but he didn’t seem to care.

Seth’s heart thudded in his throat as they chased the werewolves. He watched the tracking monitor through the gap in the front seats, and saw them close in on the blinking blue line.

The flashing dot disappeared. Seth swerved to get around it.

“Closing fast, sir!”

“Seth! Give me the gun!” Yasir shouted.

He hesitated only a moment before passing a rifle over the seat. The commander braced himself against the side of the SUV, dug his feet in, and took aim at the trees. A deer darted past the back door.

Eleanor grabbed the other rifle and took position next to Yasir.

“Hit the floods!” he ordered.

Seth pressed his face to the side window as the lights cast the forest in a ghastly white glow. The humans had completely wolfed out and left a massacre in their wake. There was blood and meat everywhere. He wouldn’t have had any clue they were deer if he hadn’t seen the survivor running away.

When the lights hit the werewolves, they plunged into the forest again. Stripes took a hard left to follow.

“There’s a car,” Jakob reported.

Yasir frowned. “Repeat that.”

“There’s a car parked in a thicket north of your location. Shattered windshield. No sign of people.”

Seth glimpsed it as they drove past in pursuit of the werewolves. It was a silver Ford sedan. There was blood on the hood of the car.

“I’m on their tails,” Stripes said. “Turning us around.”

The SUV whipped around, cutting off his view of the abandoned car. Seth lost his balance and sprawled against the side door in time to see the pack of werewolves cut off by the other vehicle. All four of them were pinned between the two SUVs.

A cold realization shocked through Seth.

Four wolves? There had only been three people.

Eleanor and Yasir opened fire. Howls filled the air, and yips of pain followed. Something had been hit.

Seth grabbed one of the handguns and wrenched open the side door. He waited until the SUV stopped before jumping out.

“I didn’t give you permission to go,” Yasir said over the earpiece. “You’re in the line of fire!”

“I saw something!”

Curses filled the channel on the earpiece from all the team members. People shouting. More gunshots. Seth turned it off and dove through the trees.

One of the wolves broke free. He saw white-gold fur and a slender body in the floodlights for an instant before she disappeared. Seth recognized that fur. It was almost identical to Rylie’s hair, but thicker and shaggier. She was still sleeker than the other werewolves.

“Oh,
no
—”

He chased the wolf, moving away from the rest of the team.

His eyes didn’t have time to adjust to the darkness. All he saw was black. He clambered over a fallen log, between trees, over rocks, running mostly on adrenaline and instinct.

His foot splashed in something wet. He paused for an instant—he had found a brook off the main river, and the water was as cold as ice—and then sloshed through. It only went to his ankles.

Starlight shone through a gap in the trees. Gold fur sparkled on a ridge above him as a wolf jumped to the top.

“Rylie!” he shouted.

But she was already gone.

He scrambled up the slope, digging his fingers into the rock and kicking off with his legs. He was strong and fast, but not as strong or as fast as the wolf. By the time he got to the top, there was no hint of her.

But someone else was waiting for him.

Seth’s eyes finally adjusted, and he could see the dark shape of a human standing back in the trees. The new person was tall and broad-shouldered.

“Hey, bro,” Abel said. He stepped forward. His clothes were torn, he was carrying a gun, and mud was splattered all over him. Seth felt a surge of joy.

“Abel!”

His brother didn’t respond with the same smile. He looked angry and confused.

Seth wanted to jump on him and hug him and punch him, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw approaching floodlights. The Union was looking for a route up the mountain.

“Run,” Seth said. “Run! Don’t lose her!”

He didn’t have to say it again. Abel gave him a salute that was only half-ironic and ran after Rylie.

Seth turned on his earpiece again.

“One of them broke free,” he said. “I lost it.”

“It’s fine. We killed two of them. We’ve got your position. See you in a minute,” Yasir said. He stood on top of the boulders, exposed to the chilly wind, and waited for the SUV to reach him. The commander hauled him into the back. “Do that again, and I’ll shoot you,” he said without releasing Seth’s arm. He smiled when he said it, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Understand?”

“I couldn’t miss my chance,” he said.

The commander caught the double meaning. His hand tightened. “Don’t do it again.”

Jakob spoke from the other SUV. “There’s a girl! A human girl!”

Fear gripped Seth, but he tried not to show it. There wasn’t enough time for Rylie to have turned back. It had to be someone else. It
had
to be.

Eleanor’s order rang out like a gunshot: “Get her.”

She slammed the doors shut and climbed back into the main compartment of the SUV as it peeled off again. Seth followed.

There were two wolf bodies stacked by the side door of the vehicle. The bottom one had brown fur that was almost black. The other was a dirty red color. Even though Seth knew that they had been killed before he had seen Rylie, he was still relieved to see that neither was gold.

“I’ve got her!” Jakob reported, and Seth shut his eyes to pray.

“Convene by my coordinates,” Yasir ordered.

Seth didn’t breathe until the other SUV joined them. Everyone unloaded.

Eleanor shoved past him to run to Jakob first. Seth elbowed her. She shot a nasty look at him and raced him to the body, but the team was in the way.

“Move it!” Seth said, and Stripes seemed so surprised to hear him yell that he obeyed without questioning. He moved aside, letting Seth see inside the SUV.

But it wasn’t Rylie between the seats.

The girl had curls that were long and honey-blond. Her olive skin was dotted with freckles, and smeared with enough blood that he couldn’t tell if she was wounded or not. He knew that if she opened her eyes, they would be brown and shot through with gold.

She was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, so he pulled off his jacket and laid it over her curled body, which was a lot thinner than he remembered.

He had found Bekah Riese. And she was unconscious in the hands of the Union.

T
EN

Expert Advice

The Union picked a spot
by the brook to camp for the night. They parked the SUVs before addressing the bodies. Stripes broke teeth out of the jaws of the werewolves they had killed, stamped numbers into the bone, and the team buried the bodies. Seth dug one of the graves himself. He whispered a prayer as he dragged the black-furred wolf into the ground.

Once the graves were concealed, they discussed what to do with Bekah.

“Nobody saw her change, so I don’t think she’s one of the werewolves. I bet she’s a camper,” Stripes said.

“Nobody asked you what you think. You’re not here for what you
think
. It’s obviously another wolf converging!” Eleanor said. She had been even more irate since finding Bekah. She had clearly hoped that Jakob would find Rylie.

Her moping was making Seth angrier by the minute. “We have no way of knowing that,” he snapped.

She glowered. “Who else would be out here?”

Jakob was cleaning mud from under his fingernails with a knife. He had gotten messy digging graves. “We saw a wrecked car. Bet that’s where she came from.”

“Do you see any signs of a car wreck on her?” she asked.

Everyone standing around the SUV turned to look at Bekah again. She was asleep between the seats with her wrists and ankles trussed together. Having so many ropes for such a short girl looked ridiculous, but if she tried to break free, it still wouldn’t be enough. Each of the kopides studied her like she was on a slide under a microscope. Seth knew that they were trying to decide if that tingling at the back of their necks was because Bekah was a werewolf, or if it was from one of the other bodies.

“There is a lot of blood,” Stripes admitted.

“Because she was eating deer!” Eleanor said impatiently. “She ran with the wolves. She’s covered in blood. What other confirmation do we need? Let’s get over this and shoot her.”

Stripes gave an incredulous laugh. “Shoot her? Really? She’s just a kid.”

Jakob rolled his eyes. “You’re such a sissy.”

“Well, it’s true! She’s got to be, like, fourteen,” he said. Yasir gave him a hard look. Stripes was too smart to challenge him. Instead, he stared at his feet as he shifted uncomfortably. “My sister’s fourteen.”

“Waste of Union funds,” Eleanor muttered.

Yasir finally spoke up. He had been organizing their collection of teeth beside the camping stove and pretending to ignore them.

“We’ll take her with us. We’re almost to the mountain, and the moon is coming in a week. If she’s a werewolf, she’ll change sooner or later, and we can’t leave a girl stranded in the meantime. If we get a late season snow, she’ll die.” Eleanor opened her mouth to argue, but Yasir stopped her. “That’s my decision.”

She got to her feet. “We should test how she responds to silver poisoning. Or cut her and see how she heals.”

“No. We shot the others because we were already certain of their species. Not all werewolves heal quickly, either. It depends on how nourished they are.”

“But—”

“Stripes is right. This one’s a kid, probably younger than your son, and we don’t have reason to think she’s a werewolf. Remember that our primary mission is to protect humans. All of them.”

“You’re making a mistake,” she said.

Yasir moved so fast that Seth actually jumped. He leaped to his feet and punched Eleanor across the face.

Her back hit the tree. A silver knife appeared in her hand instantly, and she lunged at him with a roar. Eleanor was terrifyingly fast, but even she was no match for the reflexes of a kopis with military training. He dodged out of the way before she hit.

She spun and lashed out a foot. It caught him in the gut. His breath gusted from him, but he caught her ankle.

With a swift motion, he pulled her off her feet. She landed with a grunt.

Yasir planted a boot in her chest and crouched. “Who’s the commander?” he asked. Even though his voice was calm, his face was twisted into a look of hatred.

“I’m the specialist,” Eleanor said without a hint of contrition. He leaned his weight on her chest, and bones creaked. She moved to stab him. He yanked the knife out of her hand.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Yasir said. “Who’s the commander?”

“You are.”

He let her stand. “We’ll take the girl with us. You hear me? But if anyone sees her change—shoot her. Bed down, everyone. Tomorrow morning, we go to the mountain.”

Seth waited until everyone was
asleep before climbing into Jakob’s SUV. He didn’t close the door all the way so he could keep an eye on the sleeping bags outside.

Carefully, he unknotted Bekah’s bindings. The motion made her stir. Bekah’s eyes opened, and there was no recognition in her face. Only pure panic. Her wide eyes darted around the darkened car. She sounded like she was going to hyperventilate.

“What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I?” Her words slurred over each other, as though she had forgotten how to talk like a human.