ChapterSix
Tanner parked next to the horse trailer and Isaiah’s phone rang. He checked the number.
Laura Phillips.
To Tanner, Isaiah said, “I’ll be down by the river.” He got out. Once he passed the row of trees, he answered his cell, “Yeah?”
“Have you made any progress with Luca Suarez?”
Isaiah stopped by a picnic bench. “Not in the way I’d hoped.”
“You need to hurry.”
“I won’t force a tie on him.” He sat and the damp wood cooled the back of his thighs.
“You may no longer have a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night, a cur attacked Dr. Dante in his home.”
What Laura said wouldn’t process.
“We tracked more via satellite moving north to south.”
More? Isaiah’s heart clawed the inside of his chest. It took a strong Sarvari to create a single cur. It took an impossibly powerful one to create and control a horde. “He's fucking insane.”
“There’s no proof the Grey Dekker is behind this.”
“Of course he is. Every part of this disaster has been due to his selfishness.” They’d stolen the DNA. They’d helped facilitate New World.
Their evil had been the reason Koda was dead.
“A conclusion you’ve come to based on broken bits of information that are greatly influenced by your personal bias. And nothing will get done if you continuously allow yourself to be blinded by the past.”
The only reason Laura could say that was because she hadn’t lived through the Cataclysm. She hadn’t held a dying Cana. She didn’t inhale the smoke of the funeral pyres.
She was a Warden, human. She hadn’t lived for over a thousand years, caught in a state between life and death, separated from herself, forever watching the Fenrir. The wolf who was Isaiah. The reason for him to exist.
“And I think you underestimate what Grey Dekker is willing to do to recreate the Sarvari and build his own Mah Clans. His own species.” Isaiah leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Grey may be a lot of things, but sloppy isn’t one of them. And whoever set those curs loose wasverysloppy.”
“Desperation can make you sloppy. And he’s desperate.” So was Isaiah. And every day, that desperation grew.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” An engine started and would have never been audible over the phone with human ears. “Grey isn’t desperate. He’s determined. If he were desperate, he would have taken Dr. Dante before he left Canada rather than waiting till now.”
“Wait. Took him? You said Dr. Dante was killed.”
“No, I said he was attacked.”
“He survived?”
“It appears so.”
“How?”
The buzz of road noise joined the hum of the engine. “From my examination of the scene, the evidence suggests Dr. Dante cut off the animal’s head with a meat cleaver.”