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.”
“You’ll be better with your own than you are with mine, but I’ll bring a few extras, for throwing. First, though …” She trailed off, thoughtful. “How tall are you?”
“Five-six.”
“You’re a couple of inches shorter than me,” Lake said, “but you’ve got pretty long arms, so …”
I had no idea where this was going, until Lake walked over to the workbench and picked up two metal wrist guards about the length and width of my forearms, but thin. “Let me put these on you,” she said. I complied. The metal was much lighter on my wrists than it should have been.
“Can you lift your arms?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“Can you fight?”
She didn’t give me a chance to answer the question—she just attacked me. In a room full of enough firepower to blow the whole reservation to kingdom come.
I managed to dodge her blows and get in one of my own. The weight of the wrist guards didn’t slow me down, but I couldn’t put the same kind of force behind my blows.
“With these, you won’t need to,” Lake said. “My dad made them for me. Just in case. Take a step back and then twist your wrists sideways, hard.” She demonstrated and, mystified, I obeyed. Four long, thin silver blades popped out of each of the wrist guards.
“If you’re fighting something with claws, you might as well have some of your own,” she said.
I stared at them and then began to experimentally move my wrists. “Your dad a big fan of the X-Men?” I asked.
Lake shrugged. “Worse comes to worst, he wanted to give me an edge.”