Ivy #2
Flare gun's still there.
"See?" I pat my pocket. "I've got my panic button. I'll be fine."
Wraith's jaw works.
"I don't need you to worry about me tonight, okay? This is something I want. Something I chose." I press my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart. "Go home. Get in the nest. Watch out the window if you want. I'll be back before you know it."
He exhales through his nose and cups both hands around my face, his scarred palms gentle against my cheeks, and bends down to press his forehead against mine. We stand like that for a few heartbeats.
Then he lets go.
He picks up my flashlight from the roots, wipes the mud off against his thigh, and hands it back to me.
Be safe, he signs. Please.
"Always."
He steps back, then another step, slowly, like he has to force himself. And he probably does. Then he turns and starts down the slope, his massive frame slipping down between the trees.
The path curves and I lose sight of him for a moment before the trees thin enough to give me one more glimpse. He's maybe forty feet below me, standing where the slope levels out, and he's stopped.
He's looking up at me.
My flashlight beam catches his face, shining off his sharp teeth and his worried blue eyes. There's no ferality in them this time.
I wave.
He doesn't wave back.
So I blow him a kiss.
His hand drifts up. He catches it against his jaw and holds it there.
Then he steps back and the darkness swallows him.
I stand alone on the slope, my breath visible as foggy puffs in the cold. Even the wind has died, and the silence that replaces it is heavier this time.
I click off the flashlight.
Something's… different about the darkness this time.
It's nothing I could point at or name specifically. But the air shifts, the same way it does when you know without looking that someone else is already there.
He's been here the whole time.
Watching me with Wraith. Watching me blow a kiss. Watching me stand alone in the dark like an idiot with my heart going a hundred miles an hour.
And there, in the shadows maybe forty feet away, something glows in pulsing neon lines tracing the shape of two pointed ears, a tapered snout, and X's for eyes.
My brain catches up with my eyes.
It's a mask.
A wolf mask.
The towering lean body beneath it is invisible in all black. Turtleneck, jacket, dark pants, everything swallowed by the night except that glowing wolf face. It tilts slightly, regarding me.
"Val?" I breathe.
The mask tilts the other way.
He takes a step forward.
I take a step back.
Another step. And another. Closing the gap between us at a pace designed to make me feel every single foot of shrinking distance.
I match him step for step, retreating, my eyes locked on the mask.
The gap closes to twenty feet.
Ten.
My boots hit the path hard and I'm fucking gone, coat flapping behind me, the cold air searing my lungs as I sprint uphill. Branches whip past my face and I duck under them, feeling more than seeing, my feet finding the path instead of my eyes.
Behind me, nothing.
No sounds of pursuit at all.
Which is somehow worse than hearing something.
The path forks at the boulder. Left drops into a ravine I can hear water at the bottom of. Right climbs higher, the ground turning rockier, the trees thinning into scraggly pines that lean sideways from years of wind.
I go right.
My calves are screaming. The slope is steep enough that I have to grab a low branch to haul myself over a shelf of exposed rock, my boots scrabbling for purchase. The bark bites into my palm and I don't care.
I stop at the top of the shelf, chest heaving, and listen.
Wind through pine needles.
My own ragged breathing.
That's it.
I scan the trees below me. Moonlight cuts through the canopy in silver slashes, illuminating patches of forest floor. My eyes have adjusted enough to make out dead leaves, exposed roots, the pale trunks of birches further down.
Empty.
All of it.
I turn and keep climbing.
For another three or four minutes, there's nothing but the sound of my own movement and the hammering of my pulse.
The path narrows to almost nothing up here, just a game trail threading between boulders.
My boots slip on loose shale and I catch myself against a pine trunk, the bark rough and cold under my fingers.
I press my back against the tree and hold my breath.
A pebble shifts somewhere to my left.
Could be an animal.
Could be an alpha who moves like smoke.
I peel off the tree and cut left, abandoning the trail entirely. If he's tracking me by the path, going off-trail buys me time.
The undergrowth is thicker here. Low bushes catch at my jeans and dead branches crack under my boots no matter how carefully I step. Every sound I make feels amplified in the silence, a neon sign pointing at my position.
Here she is. Come and get her.
My heart is in my throat.
I duck behind a cluster of boulders and crouch, tucking myself into the gap between two of them. The rock is ice cold through my jeans. I pull my knees up and press my back flat against the stone, making myself as small as possible.
Which, being me, is pretty fucking small.
I wait.
One minute.
Two.
The forest settles around me. Somewhere far off, the owl calls again, and I strain my ears to listen through the breeze whispering through the pines overhead.
There.
The faintest shift in the darkness, a shadow moving in a way animals don't, passing between me and the moonlight maybe twenty feet away on the other side of the boulder cluster.
I cover my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing.
The shadow stops.
We're both motionless. Me crouched in the gap, him somewhere just on the other side of the rocks, the flickering edge of his neon mask barely visible through the leaves.
I don't move.
He doesn't either.
Then the shadow slides left, circling. The unhurried, measured gait of something that knows exactly where its prey is and isn't in any rush.
I bolt.
Straight downhill, crashing through the undergrowth with zero regard for stealth because stealth is over, I've been made, and the only advantage I have now is speed and the fact that I'm small enough to fit through gaps he can't.
Branches slap my face. My boot catches a root and I stagger but don't fall, momentum carrying me forward, my arms windmilling for balance and duffel bag swinging wildly off my shoulder.
Behind me, the undergrowth parts. Something huge and fast is simply flowing through the trees after me.
Fuck!
I cut hard to the right, ducking under a fallen pine that's wedged between two standing trunks at chest height. I slide under it on my back, the bark scraping my coat, and roll to my feet on the other side.
I freeze, crouched on the other side of the fallen pine, and look back through the gap I just slithered under.
Moonlight.
Empty forest.
He could be anywhere.
I scramble backward on my hands, putting distance between me and the fallen tree, then turn and run again. Quieter this time. Picking my steps, using the balls of my feet.
This time, I go uphill. My legs are burning so bad I have to grit my teeth to power through it, but the terrain gets rougher as I climb and that's what I want.
More obstacles.
More gaps too small for a predator his size.
I fumble with my zipper as I run, pawing through the clothes I stuffed in the duffel bag that are covered in my scent. I fling a balled-up pair of panties in another direction.
That'll slow him down.
I toss another pair of panties into a tree above me before vaulting a crumbling low rock wall and land hard on the other side, my ankle protesting.
A cluster of young pines grows thick here, their branches low enough to form a wall of needles. I stuff my bra between the stones and pack in earth to hide it.
I hear him behind me now, and I know it's because he wants me to hear him. The soft crunch of his boots on pine needles, measured and unhurried, perfectly in rhythm.
I hear him pause further back and wonder if he found my panties.
Good fucking luck, Valek.
I shove through the wall of pine needles, the branches scraping my face and hands and snagging the strap of my duffel bag, and push out the other side into a small clearing lit by a single shaft of moonlight.
The ice-blue glow of the wolf mask appears at the edge of the pines behind me.
Shit.
There's a tree at the edge of the clearing. A big one, an oak, its lowest branch about seven feet up. Too high for most people to reach.
I'm not most people.
I take three running steps, jump, and catch the branch with both hands. The bark bites into my palms as I swing my legs up, hooking one knee over the branch and hauling myself up with pure adrenaline and stubbornness.
Second branch. Higher. I grab it and pull, my arms shaking, my boots scraping the bark for purchase.
Third branch. Now I'm a good fifteen feet up, hidden in the canopy, my back pressed against the trunk and my legs straddling a thick limb.
I hold my breath.
The wolf mask enters the clearing.
The blue glow sweeps the ground, and I bite my palm so I don't make a sound.
It lifts, then sweeps down again, and he doubles back the way he came. He's silent this time, but from my vantage point, I catch a few glimpses of glow through the thick leaves.
He's gone back on the trail.
My crazy scent plan worked.
Holy fucking shit.