Wild Card (65 page)

Glancing up, I could just see there was a bag on the ground beside him.

A CSI type body bag.

Suddenly, the wolf was scrabbling inside.

Kill!

No.

I clenched my fists, my lungs laboring to get air. I couldn’t lose control now.

Focus.

The wolf faded back, but all that flowed in to replace it was a taste of ashes and despair.

My team was spread out over a mountain that only one of us had ever set foot on before. We had no way to communicate, no way to control the situation. Noble knew the mountain, and all the time we’d been planning, he’d probably been guessing what we’d try. If that was Emily beside him, dead or alive, there was no way either Gray or I could get the drop on him.

If it wasn’t, who was it? If Emily was back in the cabin, he couldn’t go back in there while I was here. Maybe we had just the sort of stalemate our plan needed.

Or Emily was dead and he had a shotgun and we were screwed already.

If, if, if.

I wouldn’t say I’d been a fool to come here like this.

When your options shrink until there are no good choices, it’s worse to do nothing.

Do what you can. None of us can do any more.

Thanks, Top.

There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, but climb the last steps of the mountain.

The wind was cold on one side of my face and the sun hot on the other.

I couldn’t submit to what Noble had planned. Even if that meant Emily and I died. It might be that this was my day to die. Well, then, a fine day it was for it.

The feelings washed through me, leaving a sense of lightness and a purity of purpose.

And a red flare exploded in the sky, fired from down near the ranch.

Ursula.

The Nagas were here already.

Chapter 70

“Your friends have come to join the party, Noble.”

There was no time left. I was already sprinting up the last switchback.

I heard the rasp of a zipper.

Maybe I could get him to panic. Maybe I could make him forget about Emily and concentrate on me.

I felt a spike in Alex’s emotion through the Call. He sensed my emotions. He was coming.

Noble had to have a weapon in that bag.

I jinked and leaped up the last couple of paces onto the summit’s flat space.

Still no weapon pointed at me.

Instead, bizarrely, he had pulled his coveralls back so he was practically naked. His hands were thrust into the bag, gripping Emily’s throat and pointing a gun at her head.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Despite knowing it was wrong, I skidded to a halt. I couldn’t kill Emily like this. We had lost.

“It’s all over, Noble,” I said. Anything to distract him. “Petersen will kill you.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think, I’ve got you here. You can’t fight me. You can’t escape me. I’ll take what I want and go. Petersen won’t find me out on the mountain.”

The green flare behind the cabin caught me completely by surprise.

Gray!

But that was the signal that he had Emily. How?

Noble twitched, but all he did was sneer and lower himself into the opening of the body bag. It was obscene.

Without thinking, I was running again. It wasn’t Emily in the bag.

The gun dropped from his fingers. It had been nothing but a way to slow me down.

The woman struggled. She was bound and gagged; there was nothing she could do—but as the bag slipped back I saw it was Noble’s receptionist. The poor woman who’d been hopelessly in love with him.

And my skin started to burn with the pull of energy.

Faster.

All in the heartbeat it took me to get there, a ball of eye-searing blue light exploded from the bag and I half-tripped as Noble’s body distorted in front of me.

I crashed into him, pushing him away from her.

A red flare exploded against the cabin.

Nagas! Right here!

I’d caught Noble off-balance and his wolf fell away, but I was too late for her. As he’d changed, he’d used the energy to tear her body apart and feed his transformation. Her whole front, where they’d touched, was just gone. The sharp edges of her ribs and chest bone stood out starkly. Nothing was left of her abdomen but blood.

We struggled to our feet.

Behind Noble, the cabin had caught fire.

He was huge, his fur mottled with blood and filth from the murder he’d just committed. As he stretched to his full height, his wolf’s eyes were level with mine. They blazed—not golden, but red, charged from the woman’s dying fear.

And at the same time, I felt him reaching for me with his sick mind. The cold tide washed around me, freezing me in place with its grip.

No.

He needed me to lower my defenses. Tricking me into thinking he was Alex hadn’t worked, but fear was doing the job for him even better.

He took one slow step forward.

Fear can paralyze you. Fear can sap the strength from your limbs, and rise up, crackling through you like water abruptly turning to ice, until even your brain stops.

I’d never met anything that scared me like this.

But fear means you’re still alive.

Run!
I shouted in my own head.

Over that, his bleak, binding monologue hissed through my mind like poison.
There’s no way you can escape. It’s over. There’s no point in running. Give up. It’ll stop. Make it shorter.

Alex was running. He was too far away.

The Call. Take strength.

I managed a shaky step backwards. And fell over the edge toward the trail switchback.

The shock cleared my head, broke the connection with Noble. I had enough time to register what was happening and relax before the deep, soft snow puffed out around me. The forty-foot drop I’d fallen over was more than half snow. The worst was that it tumbled me, so I had to figure out which way was up.

Then I was running.

I couldn’t help Gray and Emily. The best I could do was divert Noble.

No. Change! Fight!

It wasn’t Tara in my head. That was silent Hana, my wolf.

But I couldn’t change now; I had no idea what would happen if I did. When I killed the Naga I’d blanked out completely. Surely that would mean I’d forget about what I had to do here? Would I even know how to change back?

Who do you think got you to change back last time? Hana.

That was Tara speaking.

But I can’t trust changing.

He’s catching you,
was the simple reply to that.

What came from Hana then was a jumbled image rather than words, as if words would take too long.

Noble was huge. I mustn’t let him catch me in his jaws.
So obvious.
But the size was a mistake. It made him slow in a fight. It made him clumsy. It wasn’t his normal size. He had to adjust for everything. He would tire quickly. Just so long as I kept away from his jaws.

But I’ve never been a wolf. I’ll be even clumsier.

That’s why you must let me.

Do it
, said Tara.
Trust her.

I leaped down a section of the switchback.

Noble ran to the end and turned.

He
did
look slow to turn.

But he was frighteningly quick on the straights, and I’d run out of switchback eventually.

Without my really thinking any more about it, my clothes were falling off me. Skin was rippling. A gasp became a howl.

No time.

The world blurred and I fell towards the trail. Hana sizzled through me as if my veins had caught fire.
I
became
we
.

We leaped up, back up the switchback, right past Noble’s frustrated, snarling jaws.

Up. Up.

Noble chased, going the long way. We could jump further than him. He was slower going up than he had been coming down. Either he knew we didn’t have anywhere else to go, or he was conserving energy.

Could this actually work?

I wasn’t blanked out. I wasn’t controlling my body, but I was experiencing everything, like some kind of weird fairground ride that you didn’t dare fall off.

He came closer. We let him. He lunged and we were a spinning, snarling knot that unraveled and we broke away and jumped again. Up.

He was even slower. He’d not gotten so much as one tooth on me.

But at the top, there was nowhere else to go. The flat space in front of the cabin was about twenty yards across and twelve deep. No space for anything fancy. No way down but the trail. Too long a drop on the sides or the back. Alex too far away. And I had to keep Noble from going around the back and helping the Nagas.

Shots were fired somewhere behind the burning cabin. Shouting. Gray was in trouble. He wasn’t armed.

He had to look out for himself. We had to defeat Noble.

Noble stalked us, trying to herd us one way or the other, cut down the options.

We feinted and darted in front of him, but he knew his strengths. He wasn’t trying to fight. He was concentrating on getting one good bite, a grip on me and then I’d be facing that cold strength seeping into my head again, shutting everything down.

We got too close. He raked our side with his jaws, drawing blood, only just unable to close on flesh.

Hana!
I called.

I couldn’t talk to her. I could see the way out of this. A way that Hana as a wolf wouldn’t see. A way using my human knowledge and Hana’s control of my wolf body.

Images!
Tara said.

How to translate years of martial arts and half-remembered physics lessons into pictures?

Hana saw.

Noble thought his size was his overwhelming advantage. He hadn’t studied the martial arts. He might know his vulnerabilities in his mind, but he didn’t have the feel of those lessons, deep in his body. We did.

Hana dodged as if we were running for the trail. He turned, and we straightened, sprang at him like an arrow. Our jaws fastened on the side of his throat, fangs sinking in.

It was the wrong place. The back of the neck, biting down on the spine, or the front, tearing at the soft arteries; those were killing zones. Not the side. But it hurt him all right.

Noble’s wolf screamed and twisted. His sheer bulk allowed him to throw us. And we let him.

We landed, already scurrying backwards to the side of the landing, frightened by his incredible strength and invulnerability. We were cowering. Our tail was between our legs and we were whining with fear.

Noble’s eyes shaded to the same red as the fresh blood on his neck, and he charged.

Back. Back.

He was like a tidal wave bearing down on us. He accelerated the short distance between us like a shell from a cannon. He was impossible to escape. He would crash into us and knock us onto our back.

Down!

We couldn’t get out the way completely. I had anticipated that.

Roll. Kick!

We didn’t have the strength to kick him clear and we weren’t small enough for him to pass over without tangling.

Noble flew over the edge, but he’d still hit us in passing and we went with him.

Not the front with the trail and the gentle, twenty-foot fall into the snow.

The side. Straight down.

Chapter 71

A fine day it may have been, but it wasn’t my day to die.

I was in a white fog. Was I looking up or down? I didn’t think I was dead. I didn’t think I was back in restraints and under sedation in the Aurora Center, but it felt a bit like it; nothing seemed to work the right way.

Ah! Still four-legged. Okay, that makes more sense now.

My mind cleared and I could feel Alex’s frantic searching through the Call. Unfortunately, all I could communicate was that I was alive. Our Call tingled with his relief and love.

He’d be going up the trail. There wasn’t a direct route from there to wherever I was, other than the way I’d taken, and I wasn’t going to recommend that.

I worked my way around until my muzzle popped out of the snow.

I was on a ledge with further to fall if I wasn’t careful.

I’d hit a bank of snowdrift at about sixty feet, started a small avalanche and been carried down with it.

Noble was bigger and had been traveling faster. He’d fallen further. There was no sign of him, but there was a huge fantail of disturbed snow below me, a much bigger avalanche than I’d caused. He could be anywhere under that.

His real problem was he was so much heavier than me. The old problem of the difference between a cat falling twenty feet and a cow falling the same. Splat. With any luck he’d broken his neck, but snow is tricky to predict. I wasn’t going to be happy until I’d seen his dead body, but in the meantime, there was something more urgent.

Emily.

I scrabbled along the ledge, working my way toward the back of the mountain, behind the cabin which was now well ablaze.

Hana and I relaxed. It was easier to let my wolf’s instincts feel out a way, sometimes burrowing into a mound, sometimes stepping tentatively out onto the gleaming slope. Left to their own devices, my big paws were sensitive to every nuance of weight and shifting in the snow. Despite a few heart-stopping moments, we quickly got to the edge of the steepest section and then slithered carefully down toward the base.

There were no more shots, but I could hear movements coming from the pine woods ahead.

Alex was above me. I caught a pulse from him as he saw me slinking toward the trees and I could feel him edging out over the lip and starting to work his way down. I could feel the tension in his body, his focus on the feeling through his paws.

The Call was like a sweet shot of brandy, spreading its warmth through my body. We were hunting together.

Another shot. There was a cry and a heavy body thrashed through the brush below.

There were Nagas, out there in the pines below me. They’d come here—
my
territory, my wolf said—and they wanted to harm my friends.