Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Luna was dead.
Raven cried out in horror. Her grief clenched tight as a giant fist inside her.
She could do nothing but watch in numb despair as Cobb stalked across the clearing and stood triumphantly over the dead wolf. He punched the air in victory with his fist.
He kicked the limp body savagely, mercilessly. Then he laughed.
Raven felt flayed. “Stop! Stop it!”
Shadow howled. High and plaintive, full of grief. Abandoning Vaughn, he darted across the clearing to Luna’s side. With a bewildered whine, he nudged her head with his muzzle, as if begging her to open her eyes, to leap to her paws.
She didn’t. She wouldn’t, ever again.
Shadow crouched over her fallen body, raised his great head, and snarled at the Headhunters. He was protecting her, even in death. But his honor would get him killed, too.
“Run!” Raven screamed at him. “Run, damn it!”
Cobb had retreated several feet at the black wolf’s approach. Several Headhunters formed a loose half circle several yards back from Luna’s fallen body and from Shadow, a growling, snarling demon of hate and rage.
Cobb raised his rifle at the wolf.
“Don’t shoot!” Vaughn roared. He cradled his left arm against his chest, which was tattered and streaked with blood where Shadow had gotten in a few bites. He’d lost his rifle somehow in his fight with the wolf. “That wolf is mine! I get the kill shot. Bring me a gun.”
The men looked at him like he was insane, but they obeyed. They kept their rifles up and ready, but no one fired a shot.
One of the Headhunters handed Vaughn a pistol. He gripped it in his uninjured hand.
“Let me go!” Finally, Raven tore free of Damien’s grasp and ran toward the wolves. Slip-sliding in the slick ferns. Staggering, stumbling, dizziness washing through her, panic burning in her chest.
She lunged in front of Shadow. Placing herself between the wolves and Vaughn, she raised her arms, shielding Shadow as best she could. “NO! Don’t you dare hurt him!”
“You,” Vaughn said through gritted teeth. “You did this.”
She had no weapons, not even the knife now. She didn’t stand a chance. She knew it, but still, she didn’t move. Behind her, Shadow crouched, snarling. She would protect him to the end, just as Luna had protected her.
Vaughn’s eyes glinted with cold anger. “You’re going to pay for this.”
His right finger curled over the trigger. The barrel began to rise. Slowly. So slowly. Rain pattered off the gun. Rain pouring in a thick gray sheet. Each drop splattered as loud as a cannon blast in her ears.
The barrel settled on a spot between her eyes.
Damien shouted something she couldn’t make out clearly. Sound drained away. Everything disappeared but the muzzle of the gun aimed at her face.
Everything but the smell. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was muted in the pouring rain. Faint but unmistakable, that smell: the sickly-sweet aroma of buttered popcorn.
Vaughn flicked off the safety. His finger massaged the trigger, started to squeeze. “I’m going to enjoy killing you and your wolf.”
The roar was loud as a freight train. The deafening sound trembled the ground beneath their feet.
Raven’s brain formed a single frantic thought—tiger.