The cold has gotten increasingly brutal.
I start to tell him that he’s ridiculous, but the triplets appear in the room with us, causing him to curse and jump, while muttering something about being an idiot.
“You should probably go…”
Another triplet speaks when the first’s words trail off like she’s distracted, while weirdly studying me.
“The pack of werewolves aren’t a pack at all,” the second one tells me. “They’re a horde, and they’re heading this way.”
“A horde?” Damien asks in an eerily chilled tone as he quickly moves to my side.
“Over three hundred,” the third one says before they disappear, leaving only the first to linger as she continues to frown at me.
She blinks out of sight in the next breath, as Damien starts talking into his phone. “Three fucking ghosts just dropped in to tell us a horde is heading this way.”
He goes outside, sniffing the air, leaving the door open. I move to my feet and collect the gun.
“Nothing at all. You’d smell it if it was a fucking horde. You have to be getting close,” Damien goes on.
“What’s a horde?” I ask, not really expecting an answer.
“It’s when a lot of wolves try to form a pack without an alpha,” he says as he looks over at me. “Or any large gathering of monsters with no alpha they’ve sworn loyalty to. Hordes are rare these days, because they draw too much attention.”
He puts the phone on speaker, dropping it to the table.
“Unless they’ve built on gradually and somehow eluded Emit’s attention,” Vance says. “Not hard to do, since he doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention.”
Damien starts to speak, but then he stiffens. It’s a little unnerving when his wide eyes swing in my direction.
“How far away are you?” he asks calmly as he stands and moves toward me.
“It’ll take us a couple of hours to get there if we leave now, but there’s no way this is a horde. We haven’t smelled anything like—”
“It’s a horde of mostly omegas, coming in from the south instead of the north where you are. You must be trailing the scouts,” Damien says quietly. “And right now, the army is tracking you. Far more than three hundred. Try to hurry back. It’s been quite some time since I had to hold an illusion against so many people outside of the confines of a party that’s fueling my energy,” he says just as he grabs me and clamps a hand over my mouth.
How could that many wolves move through these woods without being detected or seen by people? I don’t know enough about this area, but that seems impossible. I hope it’s impossible.
Glass suddenly shatters near us, and Damien drags me closer against him, keeping his hand over my mouth. There’s silence after the shattering, and Damien squeezes the toothpaste out onto the counter, before he moves us far to the right.
I move with him, letting him guide this, as I try to keep my heartbeat from getting too loud.
Something buzzes the air, just before three silver arrows snipe the wooden beam behind where we were just standing.
Since when do omegas have the balls to shoot arrows at people?
Just when I think I know what’s sort of going on around me, a whole new set of rules spring up.
Damien moves us again, lifting me off my feet. We spin twice, as more arrows fly in, and I feel the wind off two when they barely miss my arm and cheek.
He doesn’t make a sound, his feet so light, while he gracefully shuffles around the room. I don’t make intentional moves, putting the burden of holding my weight on him, in case I do make a noise and shatter any illusion by accident.
There’s utter silence before a whirring barrage of arrows come soaring in. Damien easily moves around them, dodging every single one like he’s had this dance a time or two.
“It’s empty,” a naked girl says as she comes down the stairs, shocking me, since I have no idea when or how she got in here.
Four more come down behind her, just as naked as she is. “If he’s not here, then it’s because he’s out hunting us. Or at least a portion of us,” she says as she sniffs the air, her eyes moving to the toothpaste on the counter.
She moves toward it, but another girl slams into her, knocking her hard into the wall. Pictures shatter and break, and the attacking girl knees the first girl hard in the face, laying her out cold.
“Mine,” she chirps as she reaches over and grabs what’s left of the toothpaste.
Damien’s eyes narrow on her, as he slowly backs us away.
“If he’s out there hunting ours, we’ll just have them lure him in, and we’ll surround him here,” a man says as he moves through the house, just as naked as all the others. “Start the fires to cover our scent,” he orders some dude, since more and more people are spilling in, and they keep sniffing the air.
Damien carefully lifts one of my legs over his hips. Just as silently, he lifts my other one, while I all but hold my breath.
“That scent is unusual,” one of them says, sniffing the air away from the toothpaste.
They don’t remember his scent if they don’t remember him. That toothpaste is surely blocking out any of my own scent.
“There’s no one here,” a man tells her dismissively, as I very quietly and carefully move my arms around Damien’s neck to help out with my weight.
He easily holds me to him as he moves us from spot to spot, avoiding getting too close to anyone.
“This many numbers is hard to keep grouped together so close to the full moon. It’s a miracle we made it with less than fifty going astray,” the guy goes on.
It sounds like this is a little better planned and prepared for than Ian’s cement burial. Back-to-back attacks. Is this always Emit’s life?
There’s nothing but the occasional cabin in this vast wilderness. At least not that I’ve seen. The last town was at least an hour’s drive, and according to my phone, the next one will take two hours to get to. Yet again, I don’t know that much about the area, so I could be wrong on specifics.
The point is, we’re probably not going to get too far on foot with over three hundred wolves to make our way through.
Damien moves us toward the door, and I glance down at his phone on the table. The call is still going, even though there’s silence on the other end, as though Vance and Emit are listening in.
“If he gets our scent, he’ll run and return with his betas,” the girl says very quietly. “This is our only shot, Drew.”
“I’m well aware of the stakes, but we can always scatter and regroup. We can’t track him out too far. Our strength is our numbers, and those numbers draw too much attention. It’d give him time to get his betas, or worse, if we alert him before we can trap him,” Drew continues. “And he brought the Van Helsing on this hunt.”
“I’m the one who said to leave a day sooner,” she says to him as Damien slowly carries me up the stairs. “And though the plan was to draw out the wolf alpha, I’m more surprised the Van Helsing isn’t hunting us on his own. It’s not shocking the silversmith ninja is here at all, and I warned you of that.”
No one is upstairs, aside from the two of us. Damien gently lowers me to the ground, and he gestures for me to stay, as he moves back down the stairs with stealth.
I watch as he adjusts his tie as he goes to stand in the middle of the room, allowing the group to talk and move around him. He shifts around a lot more and takes closer cuts between people, as he picks their pockets.
He goes through phones and various other things, never once alerting anyone to his presence. I just watch him, wondering how we’re going to get out of here and when.
“We’ve got eyes on him,” someone says as they come in, a phone in their hand. “He’s pretty far out, but quickly heading this way. Does he know we’re here?”
Are they talking about Emit? Just Emit? Where’s Vance?
My heart flutters a little, worry drilling up my spine.
“He may know of an ambush, but there’s no way in hell he’ll be prepared for this,” Drew says as he takes a few quick breaths and does something on his phone.
The phones all start buzzing in the room, and I idly wonder how many people can fit in a group text.
A man walks in, carrying a massive, metal-plated trunk that slams hard against the ground when he drops it. He flips open the lid, letting guns spill out onto the floor…
Damien’s lips thin to a firm line.
“Put every single piece of silver we have in him. Then it begins,” the girl says to Drew, and then she walks out.
My eyes widen, as Drew’s brow furrows, and he walks toward Damien’s abandoned phone. Either Damien has forgotten about it, or his illusion is starting to fail.
Before Drew can open his mouth, Damien stabs him from behind, shoving a silver blade through his back until it juts out his chest. It’s so sudden and done with so little warning, that I have to cover my mouth on reflex just to remember I shouldn’t make a sound.
With uncanny speed, Damien slits his throat with movements so silent I can’t hear anything.
But wolf ears perk up.
Everyone makes one sniff and jerks their gaze over, as Damien takes his time silently pulling Drew’s body to the side.