Chapter 8
STILL TUESDAY
IN WHICH JAMISON GETS A CRASH COURSE IN WEREWOLVES
Jamison thought he was prepared for his first introduction to Werewolves, but everyone was moving so fast, he could barely keep up with what was happening.
“We’re borrowing your wheels!” Dessa shouted to the Werewolves over her shoulder as she raced around the side of the building.
Meanwhile, the ripped woman in front of him—the Alpha, he presumed—leapt into the air, and in a blink, a massive gray wolf landed in her place before running into the woods.
With another howl, the missing girl’s sister—Brynn—changed just as quickly.
The red wolf came up to his shoulder, and his mind sputtered to process her unbelievable speed as she raced after the gray one.
Whatever they were chasing didn’t have a chance, and he just had to be glad it wasn’t him.
The cryptic magic in him twinged like a jolt of static beneath his skin just looking at them, and while he wasn’t quite sure what it meant, at this point he was beginning to think it was a warning.
The roar of an engine cut into his thoughts, and Dessa pulled up on a muddy four-wheeler. “If you’re coming, get on.”
Jamison didn’t hesitate, even as his magic buzzed harder, intensifying a sense of foreboding that didn’t feel entirely in his control.
Whether it was trying to warn him or not, there was no way he was going to miss this.
He’d barely leapt onto the four-wheeler behind Dessa before she gunned the engine, and his hands clamped around her waist. “Okay, but if a couple of Werewolves can’t find this girl, what are we going to do to help? ”
“If they couldn’t smell the person that took her, then he was using some kind of magic to obscure it.” She turned on the road, the needle on the speedometer edging up to sixty as they passed the middle school. Ahead, a man and a group of preteens talked to another large brown wolf.
“So you think a Magicker took her?” Jamison asked, the rain stinging his face.
“Not necessarily. There’s all kinds of magic products anyone can use. If you can imagine it, then it probably exists.” Dessa peeled off into the woods, narrowly avoiding a tree.
“Whoa, please try not to kill us.”
A howl erupted from the forest to their left, but Dessa turned to the right instead. “I thought you wanted to shadow?”
“I do, but I still have no idea where we’re going.
” Jamison’s foreboding hummed insistently, and he didn’t know if it was because of the stalker they were chasing or the trees flying by them on either side.
But it was kind of nice to at least have an idea of what the stupid magic did, and a rather pleasant surprise that it was maybe trying to keep him alive.
“I’m following the magic trail that the Werewolves can’t sense,” Dessa said. “To me, whatever magic they’re using stinks like strong oil smoke, but it’s obscuring the Werewolf girl’s natural scent and whoever’s chasing her.”
“Wait, magic has a smell?” Jamison ducked as a branch whipped by his head. “Do I smell?”
Dessa let out a sigh he felt more than heard. “Yes, Jamison Kane, you definitely have a smell.”
“What do I smell like? Is it a bad smell?”
She swerved around a tree. “I’m not talking about your smell right now!”
Jamison’s grip tightened on her, but before he could ask any more questions, a huge, furry creature crossed the path in front of them. It moved so fast, at first Jamison thought he must’ve imagined it.
“Found her!” Dessa pulled off the path and into a meadow where a muddy trench carved through the grass like a scar. Jamison’s gaze swiveled around the clearing, but there was no other evidence of anyone else.
“What about the guy who’s chasing her?”
“I don’t know, keep your eyes open.”
But barely had the words escaped Dessa, when she slammed on the brakes and cut a hard turn, skidding to a stop that threw Jamison from the four-wheeler.
He rolled on impact, tumbling until he lay flat on his back in the wet grass. Bruised, definitely, but at least nothing seemed broken. “Next time, I think I’ll drive.”
A rust-colored wolf emerged from the tall grass to snarl over him.
Jamison froze, and for a moment the meadow fell still except for the drum of the rain and the deep, rumbling growl.
While this wolf wasn’t as big as the others he’d seen, it was still as tall as the four-wheeler.
“Okay, this isn’t exactly the face of someone who wants to be rescued,” he whispered.
“We’re not here to hurt you!” Dessa called over a boom of thunder. “My name’s Dessa McKinney with AzRIO, and Alpha Hismark sent us to help. Are you okay?”
The wolf’s hackles only rose higher as she snapped with a vicious bark, and Jamison’s foreboding spiked. He subtly tried to wriggle away from the beast. “What do you want me to do here, Blue?”
“Don’t make—” But before Dessa could finish, the wolf lunged for Jamison, and he just barely rolled away. Pulse thundering in his ears, he lurched to his feet and leapt for the four-wheeler.
“Gun it already!” He crashed into Dessa, leaning hard against her back to wrench the handlebar throttle. The quad rocketed into the long grass only a second before the wolf charged them.
“What are you doing?” Dessa screeched as she took back control of the handlebars, the Werewolf hot on their tail.
“Um, trying not to get mauled.” He looked over his shoulder as the wolf snapped at their tail, missing them by an inch. “Does she not understand you?”
“She might not.” Dessa wove between the trees, and Jamison could only hope she knew where she was going.
“At eleven, she probably only just started to experience the change, and young Werewolves have a harder time holding on to their human thoughts when they’re in the full wolf form.
Since that guy essentially stripped away her sense of smell, she’s probably lost her way, and her fear has taken over. ”
“That might’ve been nice to know before we started chasing after her,” Jamison said, his hands once again around Dessa’s waist, the two of them soaked to the bone.
“You are so needy. We can lead her to the pack.”
As the wolf behind them tired, Dessa eased off the gas just a little so they didn’t leave her behind, and in only a few more minutes, the road came into view.
The two kids and the man they’d left there all turned to them as one, and Dessa pulled the quad to a stop in front of them on the grass. “We found her—”
The wolf burst from the wood, ramming straight into their quad, and the world spun around Jamison.
The force of the collision launched both him and Dessa into the air while the quad went rolling.
He skidded across the wet grass—again—only for Dessa to land practically on top of him.
The impact drove the air from his lungs, but his arms wrapped around her instinctively.
The Werewolf sprang for them again, and Jamison tensed, ready for another hit as the magic screamed inside him.
Just before impact, a larger red wolf burst out of the woods and collided with the smaller one.
Jamison had barely moved before the two changed, and Brynn was kneeling on the ground with a crying preteen wrapped in her arms. One of the kids lifted his head and let out a long howl, and after a moment, three more howls echoed it in the distance.
Brynn looked at them with naked relief in her eyes. “Thank you so much for bringing her home. But who are you exactly?”
“I’m Dessa McKinney and this is—”
“Jamison Kane,” he filled in.
Brynn flinched at the name, her eyes narrowing a little. “A Kane? From that rich Nesci family?”
Jamison tried to ignore the sharp disappointment that wriggled through him. His family needed to work on their public relations.
“It’s all right,” Dessa said. “He’s a Cog now and interning at AzRIO.
” Brynn’s expression softened just a hair, and Dessa rose with a wince.
“Lexi was alone when we found her. It looked like she’d managed to run away and had gotten lost without her sense of smell.
” She turned to Lexi, and Dessa’s dirt-streaked face melted into a soft, concerned smile, one that said she’d done something like this before. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Lexi wiped her face with her hands and nodded, not looking at all like the giant beast that had literally just tried to kill them minutes ago. “I was walking home from school, and this guy was walking in the opposite direction.”
Dessa’s brow furrowed. “Do you remember what he looked like?”
The girl shook her head. “He had a hat and one of those cloth masks on, which I thought was weird since he was outside, and it was raining. Then I realized he didn’t have a smell, and that’s when he grabbed my arm.
He had something in his hand, but he moved so fast I didn’t know what it was.
” She fidgeted in the grass and hugged her sister tighter.
“I shifted to make him let go, and I ran away. He was super fast though, and I got really scared. I don’t know how long he chased me, but eventually, I realized I didn’t even know where I was anymore.
I was too afraid to howl in case he heard me, and that’s when you showed up. ”
Alpha Hismark stalked out of the forest in her human form, dragging a man behind her. “I found this one in the woods.” She deposited what looked like a shell-shocked man in a gray rain jacket and jeans in front of the girl. “Is this him?”
The Were-girl looked him over for a second and then shook her head.
“I don’t think so. He looks much smaller than the man that tried to grab me.
” She cocked her head, and wolf ears sprouted from her hair, twitching this way and that.
Yeah, it was going to take Jamison a good long while to get used to this. “But he doesn’t have a smell either.”