No-Man’s-Land. Macon’s Hardware. Images flashed from the Rabid’s mind to mine. He pulled back, but once I got ahold of something, I never let go until I was ready.
Macon’s Hardware. Path into the woods. And then, finally a name. A town.
The Rabid roared, a noise more fitting to a bear than a wolf, and then he laughed a horrible, mad sound that made me picture blood running from his human lips, down his human face, soaking his human hands.
My stomach rolled. This was a man who killed his victims and laughed.
Time to go, I told Chase.
I can’t. He’s too strong. Walls are gone. Callum helped me. I can’t—
You can, I said back. Think of me, Chase. Think only of me.
He did. He thought of me, and the Rabid thought of me, and their mental images mixed together in my mind. Wet cardboard and drain cleaner and the smell of little-girl fear. Brash and beautiful and home.
That’s right, I told Chase. I’m home. Come back to me.
I had to protect him. I had to undo this. There had to be a way. The panic rose in both of our throats. I saw Chase’s field of vision bleed into a dotty, hazy red.
Trapped.
This time, I grabbed on to the word. Made Chase hear it. We were cornered. We were scared.
We would get out of this alive.
Trapped. Escape.
Survive, I whispered the last word, because Chase couldn’t seem to remember what it was, and his own instincts flared to life. He was a fighter. He fought. This man was nothing.
He wasn’t all-powerful. He was Prancer.
And we didn’t have to let him do this.
Chase was mine. I was his. The Rabid wanted us both, and with that realization, I felt something snap inside of Chase. The Rabid could threaten him. The Rabid could torture him. … But he had no right to think of me. None.
I felt the hum of power, a shift in the air when Chase slammed up his mental walls and caught the sliver of power that bound him to this man between his teeth. Like an animal, a hunter, he tore into it. Shredded it.
And as it began to reweave itself, impervious to Chase’s attack, the boy I called mine took everything that bound him to this Rabid, and in a moment of perfect symmetry, he threw it at me.
I’d felt the sensation before. A tilting of the world on its axis. An explosion in my brain.
Echoing, seductive silence. Silence and Chase.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“YOU OKAY?” LAKE’S VOICE BROKE INTO MY THOUGHTS and brought me back to the present. To the back porch on Cabin 12, where I’d sat down to contact Chase. “At first, you were quiet, and then you were crying. Your body starting twitching, and then, you got real still.”
I caught my breath. “I’m fine,” I told Lake. We’re fine. Back at Callum’s, I’d panicked and rewired our pack-bonds, mine and Chase’s, and just now, when he’d sensed the Rabid threatening me, Chase had done the same. Only this time, he’d cut his connection to the Rabid completely. The pack was still there in the depths of Chase’s mind, in mine, but the Rabid was gone.
“You didn’t feel anything?” I asked. When I’d rewired my pack-bond, every wolf in the near vicinity had felt it.
“Nope,” Lake said. “Should I have felt something?”
I thought for a moment: of the pack, of Chase, and of the Rabid. “No.”
This didn’t have anything to do with Stone River. This had to do with Chase and the man who had made him. The man whose name I now knew was Wilson. The man who was residing in a cabin in the woods, a mile away from Macon’s Hardware in a place called Alpine Creek.
“Wyoming,” I said out loud. “That’s where we’re going.”
Lake heard me. I repeated the message silently, sending it to Chase. He was exhausted physically, and I realized that he wasn’t in any shape to travel from Colorado to Wyoming on his own.
He’d recover. Werewolves always did. But he needed time—and time was one thing we didn’t have. Sooner or later, the alphas would pay the Rabid a visit to collect on his end of whatever deal they’d made him. Sooner or later, Ali and Mitch would get suspicious about what Lake and I were up to.
Worst of all, there was a part of me that knew the Rabid wouldn’t react well to losing Chase. He liked blood. He liked power. And since Chase had robbed him of the latter, someone would pay with the first.
I hated that I’d been inside the Rabid’s head. Hated that I understood him enough to know that if the three of us waited, someone else would die.
Lake and I are going to grab some weapons and borrow the keys to her dad’s truck, I told Chase. You can’t run all the way to Wyoming. You’re going to need some help.
There was only person in Ark Valley that I trusted enough to ask for help.
Devon.
Chase bristled, the way any male werewolf would have at the sound of another male’s name, so I repeated myself.
Please, Chase. He’ll help. You know he will.
Chase knew because I knew, and now, more than ever, he was in my mind the way I’d been in his.
Devon, Chase repeated. Alpine Creek, Wyoming. We’ll see you there.
“You done playing telephone?” Lake asked.
I nodded, pulling back from my bond with Chase as he did the same with me.
“Okay, girlie. Let’s weapon up.”
The words weapon up were slightly terrifying coming out of Lake’s mouth, her voice a weird combination of resolve and glee.
I shuddered, but gestured broadly with one arm nonetheless. “Lead on.”
Lake didn’t take any more urging. It took her less than a minute to jimmy open the back door to Cabin 12, and when the door opened to reveal her father’s weapon’s cache, my mouth dropped open. I’d expected a couple of guns, an excess of silver bullets, and a knife or two. Instead, I saw a room as large as the cabin that Ali, the twins, and I were sharing. Letting out a low whistle, I took in the 360 view.
One side was clearly dedicated to creating the weapons. I recognized a forge in one corner, and there were a variety of tools, and a few things I couldn’t identify that seemed to have a vaguely Frankensteinian feel about them. The other side—and three of the walls—were covered with weapons. Guns. Knives. Axes. Traps. Snares. And several things that I couldn’t even identify.
Lake breathed out a happy sigh as she approached the row filled with guns. “Matilda was my first, but, ladies, you know how to make a girl want to stray,” she said.
“Lake, could you please stop sweet-talking the weapons? It’s kind of freaking me out.”
This room didn’t look like the cautious work of a dad who was afraid that someone might get a little fresh with his teenage daughter. It looked like the work of a man preparing for a brutal and inevitable war.
Lake stuck her bottom lip out in a pout at my reproach but then shifted into business mode. “Silver bullets are in the chest on your right,” she said. Then she paused, picked up a container full of some kind of arrows, and poured them on the ground. “Fill this up. Grab a dozen or so silver arrows, too. I’ll take care of the crossbows and guns.”
While I followed her instructions and started stocking up on ammunition, Lake hauled a large, empty duffel bag off one of the shelves and began throwing in the big guns. Literally.
And some small guns.
Three crossbows.
“Lake, you do know that there are only three of us, right?”
She snorted. “All of this is just for me. I’m getting to you. Callum taught you how to shoot on a nine millimeter, right?”
I nodded.
She threw several more guns into the bag, moving so quickly that her choices should have seemed haphazard but didn’t.
“Is this good?” I asked Lake, after I’d pulled several boxes of handmade silver bullets out of the cabinet and gathered a few of the arrows off the floor.
“Yup. You prefer a crossbow, a longbow, or old school?” Lake asked me.
“I’m better with knives,” I said.
Lake nodded, and then she looked at me very closely and said, “Stand up.”
I did.
“You’ve got two on you right now, correct?”
I nodded, not bothering to ask how she could tell. “I don’t go anywhere without them.”