Bright afternoon sunlight slanted through the branches of the subalpine firs clustered along the edge of the escarpment. The trees’ elongated crowns cast fingerlike shadows over the pristine snow, as if they were laying claim to the remote mountain slope. Maybe they were, because Vaughn had the distinct, and weird, sensation of being unwelcome.
“I’m still confused about why you wanted to search here,” Vaughn said to Rick. They often tracked together, since Rick was one of the few males who could keep up with him, and his nose was almost as good as Vaughn’s. “Didn’t you already inspect this section by air?”
“Uh-huh, but since no one’s been having any luck tracking the rogues, Liz and I thought we should re-examine some of the outer areas of the territory.”
Outer? Far-flung was probably a better word for this section of the pack’s territory. It had taken them more than two hours to get there by car. Roads never ran in a straight or convenient line in the mountains.
“Besides,” Rick continued, “with Freddie’s Bell being out of commission, we’re down to Dev and his Huey. He can only see so much from the cockpit and your mother can’t fly over everything.”
No, but she’d sure as hell try. Golden eagles could fly for a long time and Mom would do just about anything for his father’s pack. Even fly herself into a dangerous exhaustion.
A steady wind blew from the southwest, over the edge of the escarpment’s cliff face to the slope they were hiking. Vaughn didn’t like it at all. They were hunting other lycanthropes. If anyone with a preternatural sense of smell was up on this isolated ridge, they’d detect him and Rick first. Like Vaughn, Rick had serious skills, but they weren’t immortal.
And there was something...something the land was trying to tell them.
They were heading uphill, the cliff several yards to their left, hidden behind the dense tree line. To their right was a shoulder where the mountain curved and sloped away. Vaughn peered into the woods around them, his wolf peeking out through his human eyes. Details sharpened and the shadows brightened. Dozens of tracks crisscrossed the slope, small prey and large. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Still, his instincts screamed. That other part of him, the part he tried not to acknowledge, pushed its way to the forefront of his mind. Daggerlike talons dug in as the eagle demanded its turn and insisted they were missing something. The raptor’s sight was exponentially better than the wolf’s, but still, it couldn’t penetrate solid objects.
“We should shift. The wind is working against us here,” Vaughn said. In their fur, they’d be able to smell more and travel easier. They’d be giving up their guns, but he’d always preferred his claws and fangs over manmade weapons anyway.
“Just a minute,” Rick said, walking past him a few feet.
But something was off in Rick’s voice, and Vaughn’s skin crawled as his beasts sought the source of danger once again.
His hand eased to the holster on his hip. He didn’t try to hide it when he unsnapped the safety strap. “Why? What’s going to happen in a minute?”
Rick’s slow, wide smile was the kind of thing you imagined Hannibal Lecter wearing when he showed up to Sunday dinner. “Well, that’s up to you.”
A branch snapped to the right, behind Vaughn. He pivoted to keep Rick in his peripheral vision as he took in the newcomer—no, two newcomers. One was huge, over six and a half feet tall, with shoulders the size of a Buick. His shoulder-length brown hair and grizzled beard rippled in the wind—the same damn wind that had helped conceal his scent. The other male was smaller, maybe five-eight, five-nine. His eyes glowed.
“The other cougar,” Vaughn said.
“Not as stupid as we thought you were,” the cat said.
Debatable. Vaughn felt pretty stupid. Completely moronic, actually.
“Even though you’re a freak, it doesn’t have to end bloody for you, Vaughn,” Rick said. “You have no loyalty to Luke. You could find a place with us.”
A snarl, nasty and echoing, burst from Vaughn’s throat. “You think I’d betray my Alpha? My pack?”
Rick shrugged. “Thought I’d give you a chance. I don’t hate you as much as the others.”
“Stop fucking insulting me, asswipe.”
“So confident. Your deputy was pretty full of himself, too,” Rick drawled, a feral gleam in his eyes.
Icy fear skittered up Vaughn’s spine. “What?”
The cat laughed. “He’s not too far from here, as the crow flies. Or should I say eagle?”
“I think you mean his corpse isn’t far from here,” the Buick said. Oh, goddess. Who?
Run! Vaughn’s wolf howled. Where? They had him hemmed in with the cliff at his back. Fly! his eagle screamed. Not likely, unless some miracle happened in the next three seconds that finally gave him wings.
Can’t run like a wolf. Never could fly like an eagle. Might as well fight like a human.
Vaughn pointed his gun at the big guy’s chest. “How we playing this? You may outnumber me, but at least one of you is eating silver.”
A safety disengaging on Rick’s gun cracked like lightning. “I don’t know. I like my odds of blowing your head off before that happens.”
Vaughn was moving and shooting before Rick finished his sentence. So were the other two shifters. The big guy was quicker than Vaughn had given him credit for, and Vaughn’s shot just creased the bastard’s chest. The cougar exploded into a shift that sent his clothes flying like confetti from a cannon.
A lash of fire whipped Vaughn across the cheek as Rick’s shot grazed him. Already falling back into a roll, Vaughn snapped off a shot at the cougar, popped up, and ran for the line of firs. His only hope was to find a way to either outflank the assholes or outrun them.
So he ran. Faster than he’d ever run before, because if he didn’t survive this, Rick’s next stop would probably be Rissa’s. She’d never see the betrayal coming from her own brother-in-law. Branches cracked behind him and a bullet whizzed by his ear. The cougar screamed to his left, and Vaughn ran harder.
Could he shift fast enough to outrun them? Maybe—
Pain blasted through him as blood arced from his left side. He stumbled, and another bullet hit him in the side of the neck.
As he burst through the trees and fell off the edge of the cliff, he wished he’d learned to fly.