Red (9 page)

I closed my eyes and inhaled, tipping my
head toward the bright, copper scent.

No. No, that was wrong. This blood was at
least a few hours old. Where was that fresh source coming from?

I opened my eyes and rose, moving in the
direction the boot print pointed, looking for more signs.

“
Shouldn’t you radio into
Eileen?”

I should. I was breaking protocol. But I had
to find the source of that scent. “In a minute,” I said.

The wind gusted, bringing with it a blast of
copper-scented air that left me dizzy. I stumbled and went to one
knee, my hands fisting in the vegetation around me.

Prey. Fresh kill. Blood. East.

Run.

~*~

Sawyer

Elodie shot up from the ground and
bolted.

“
Hey!” It was all I could
manage when the wolf pressed so close to the surface.

She didn’t slow, just continued to run as if
the devil himself were right behind. Straight in the direction of
the blood source.

I took off after her, viciously suppressing
the urge to howl at the chase, at the hunt. She was
fast
,
leaping and dodging brush and fallen limbs with the agility of a
deer. Fast enough to be like me?

The wolf rose just enough to let me catch
her. I started to call her name, to reach out and stop her before
she stumbled headlong into what was probably going to be a
nightmare. But my mouth was crowded with extra teeth, and I had to
fight my own reaction to the rising scent of fresh blood.

So it was Elodie who broke the tree line
first. Elodie who stumbled and fell. Elodie who screamed.

I leapt after her, not caring at that moment
that I was seconds from shifting, needing only to get between her
and whatever had frightened her.

Blood. So much blood and carnage. My head
reeled from it until I collapsed to my knees, fingers digging into
the earth, curving to claws. Terror sliced through me as I fought
the wolf for control, the human part of my brain assessing the
scene.

Not now. Not here. The threat is already
past
.
It’s over.

The wolf didn’t like my logic.

Behind me, I could hear Elodie losing
whatever she’d had for breakfast. Then she crawled past me, through
the bloody dirt, toward the body, where it lay propped against a
tree. She didn’t even glance my way, and I wasted precious seconds
watching as she reached one shaking hand toward his neck to check
for a pulse.

His eyes snapped open and Elodie shrieked,
falling back.

“
Jesus. Oh Jesus,” she
said, scrambling to her knees and going back to him.

My hands were still tipped with brutal
claws, the wolf not willing to give up its hold in the face of all
the blood, so I had to stay put. Even as I fought for control,
Elodie seemed to find hers, looking past the gore to assess the
situation. That was confirmation enough that my hopes were dashed.
No young werewolf could control herself in the face of this.

I beat down the disappointment and wrestled
for dominance.

“
It’s gonna be okay,” she
said. Her voice was strong, confident as she slung off her pack and
began taking stock of his injuries.

She didn’t ask him what happened. That’s
what I wanted to know. There was no way all this blood was his. The
scent was too muddied, but there was simply too much of it for him
to still be breathing.

Oh Christ, where was the sister?

Elodie’s voice jerked my attention back.
“Rich, where’s Molly?” I didn’t need the quaver in her voice to
know her thoughts had flown the same way as mine.

“
Not . . . make it,” he
mumbled, eyes starting to roll back.

“
Rich!” she snapped, and
his eyes focused on her again. “We need to know where Molly is. Was
she with you?”

“
Got away,” he
said.

“
Got away from where? From
who?”

“
Don’t know. Left her in a
cave. Told her to hide. Wait for me. But he found me.”

“
He who?” she demanded.
When that didn’t get a response, she shifted gears. “What cave,
Rich? What was nearby? Help us help Molly.”

The beast was starting to calm down at the
sound of her voice, at her rationality.

That’s right. Let her do her thing. Settle
down so I can help her.

“
Was cabin . . . by the
river. Where he took us. Got away. But not far enough.”

“
Do you remember any
distinctive features of the landscape. Anything that might narrow
down where you were?”

But Rich’s eyes rolled back into his head as
he passed out again.

Elodie swore a blue streak as she snagged
the radio off her belt and turned it back up. “Base this is Elodie
Rose. We have Rich. He’s alive but badly wounded and only
semi-conscious. He’s sustained a head wound, probably a concussion.
His leg is . . . it’s caught in a bear trap.”

Bear trap?

I could just see the edges of mangled flesh
and the white gleam of bone beyond where she knelt. A growl built
low in my throat, and I missed the dispatcher’s reply.

“
I haven’t attempted
removal, as I think the pressure from the trap is the only thing
that’s kept him from bleeding out. Molly is not with him.
Over.”

There was a crackling pause.

“
What is your
position?”

As she passed on the coordinates, I
staggered to my feet and over to them, pretty sure the wolf would
let me have control now. The leg was bad. With no pants or boot to
stop the teeth, the trap had dug deep into tissue, shredding muscle
and possibly cracking bone. But though he was bleeding, it was
evident that Rich’s leg was not the source of all the gore.

“
Can he be transported to
the access road?”

“
Not without help,” she
replied. “We’ll need bolt cutters to cut through the chain. The
trap is attached to a tree with a spike.”

I followed the coil of chain from the trap
to where it was pinned to the tree, calculating whether I could
yank it loose.

“
Patrick and David are
nearest you. I’m rerouting them to assist in stabilization. Lynn
Petersen and Ralph Fleming will be en route with medical. Is there
any sign of Molly?”

Elodie took in the remains around us. She
swallowed. “No.”

Well that was one fear I could put to rest.
I was dimly aware of Elodie relaying what Rich had said about his
sister as I paced the clearing, examining the carnage with a more
critical eye. Something had been butchered here. Organs and blood
were scattered in a wide perimeter around the tree where Rich was
trapped. Why? To attract predators? To confuse the scene? I sure as
hell couldn’t parse out the kidnapper’s scent amid all these
competing odors.

Elodie was tugging at the chain, when I
turned back. The muscles in her back strained with the effort, but
the spike didn’t budge.

“
Help me,” she snarled. Her
face was white, her jaw clenched.

I crossed to her, laying a hand on her
shoulder. “It’s not human,” I said quietly. “Whatever this is, it’s
not human remains. It’s not Molly.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled a shaky
breath. “Okay.” Another breath, then she took a firmer grip on the
chain. “Help me,” she said again, calmer this time.

“
Let me up front. I’ll have
more leverage.” I nudged her back and took the chain in my hands,
wrapping it around my fists. Behind me, Elodie did the same. “On,
three. One. Two—”

“
Don’t move!” she
hissed.

I saw it, even as she spoke. A huge black
bear shuffled along, sniffing at the remains about a dozen feet
beyond the tree. It hadn’t noticed us yet, probably because all the
blood and guts masked our scent. I hadn’t noticed it for the same
reason.

It noticed us now, freezing to the spot.

We held perfectly still, watching the bear.
The chain links dug into my palms as I clenched it, fighting the
wolf for control. A cool head needed to prevail here. This wasn’t a
grizzly. Black bears weren’t as aggressive. This one might just
walk away as long as we didn’t do anything to antagonize it.

Through the length of chain, I could feel
Elodie trembling, and I couldn’t stop the growl from rumbling in my
chest. If the bear noticed, it gave no sign. Instead, it paced to
the side, circling the tree, eyes fixed on us. We should’ve been
backing slowly away, getting out of the bear’s territory. But that
left Rich. Bleeding, unconscious Rich.

Sure enough, the bear’s attention shifted to
him as it came around.

Shit
.

It lowered its muzzle to sniff at Rich’s
leg.

Naturally, the idiot chose that second to
open his eyes.

“
What the fuck?” The words
were quiet, slurred with shock, which was probably the only thing
that kept the bear from noticing he was no longer playing dead. But
his eyes went wide, consciousness seeming to hit him like a freight
train.

“
Don’t move,” I gritted
out.

I don’t know if he heard me. At that moment,
the wind shifted, coming from our backs. The bear snorted, clearly
catching our scent. The tiny, dark eyes snapped back to us, and I
knew then that this thing had never smelled a werewolf before.

Shit, shit, shit.

The bear reared up with a roar.

I shoved Elodie behind me and jumped over
Rich, toward the towering bear.

“
Sawyer!”

I couldn’t reply to Elodie. The wolf had had
enough of waiting, enough of the threat to
her,
and rose to
the surface, claiming my vision, my teeth. This thing would not
touch her.

You wanna dance? Let’s dance.

The bear roared again.

I drew breath to reply in kind, to hasten
the shift. A shot rang out, dust puffing up at the feet of the
bear. It shuffled back on its hind legs. A second shot, another
cloud of dirt. Behind me, Elodie began to yell.

“
Go on! Get out of here!
Get!”

From his spot by the tree, Rich joined her
with his own shouts, and since I couldn’t yell myself—at least not
with a voice sounding remotely human—I waved my arms, even as the
third shot was fired.

Deciding it was outnumbered, the bear
dropped back to its paws and lumbered off through the trees.

I stood there, panting, staring after it
while I struggled to pull back to fully human. Horror came swiftly
on the heels of relief. I’d nearly shifted in front of Elodie and
Rich. Yes, it would have been to protect them, but holy hell, how
stupid
could I be? What the fuck was wrong with me? The
shock was enough to finish the change back to human.

Feet crunched through the brush and a hand
fell on my shoulder. “You okay?”

I swung my head around to meet Patrick’s
worried gaze. My voice was gruff, but human when I replied. “Yeah.
Yeah, just kinda shaken up.”

I didn’t ask where he’d gotten the rifle. I
was just grateful he’d shown up when he did.

Elodie and David where kneeling by Rich as
another couple materialized from the trees. Lynn and Ralph, I
presumed, taking in the bags emblazoned with a big red cross on the
side.

“
What happened?” Ralph
demanded. “We heard shots.”

“
Bear,” said Patrick.
“Fired some shots to scare it off.”

The pair of them stopped, taking in the
carnage of the scene.

“
Holy hell,” said Lynn, her
face going two shades paler. She shook herself and crossed to Rich,
unshouldering the bag.

Somebody’s radio crackled. “Transport is on
the access road due west. What’s your status on getting that trap
loose?”

“
We just arrived,” answered
Lynn.

“
Bolt cutters are coming to
you. Sit tight.”

Ralph unpacked a collapsible stretcher.
“Gonna need this to get him outta here.”

I felt useless as the trained personnel came
in and took over. Even Elodie was nudged back as Lynn took over.
She stood there watching, face drawn, arms crossed over her torso.
God knew what she was thinking. My brain scrambled over what had
happened, trying to figure out what she might have seen of my
partial transformation.

Taking a bracing breath, I walked over to
her. She turned to face me and the color that had returned to her
cheeks faded again.

“
Elodie,” I
began.

But she wasn’t looking at me. She was
looking past me, toward the tree line where a tall, sandy-haired
man stood with a pair of bolt cutters in hand, staring right at
her, a grim expression on his face. Who the hell was this? His eyes
flicked to me momentarily, and I felt the chill even across the
clearing. Beside me, I felt Elodie draw herself up, square her
shoulders, waiting as the man crossed over to us.

I could smell the anger on him, and my
protective instincts were roused. But before I could do anything
like step in front of Elodie, she opened her mouth to speak.

“
Hi, Dad.”

Chapter 5

Elodie

Despite
the sticky summer air, I felt
chilled as I faced my father. He took a pointed glance around at
the carnage then looked back at me, gray eyes as hard and flat as
gun metal as they searched my face.

“
You okay?”

I heard what he was really asking.
Are
you feeling wolfish? Are you going to change?

I thought back to my mad dash toward the
scent of blood. The temporary loss of control before I pulled
myself together again. “Yes, sir, I’m fine.”