A sticker with smudged scribbling was at the bottom of the page, and the rest reported how they drove reptile shifters away and emptied their territory without occupying it. But there was more.
Three are dead, but the rest got away. I tracked them, but they sought shelter from another source. The source refused to give them up. I did my best to drive them away and protect our men. Rest assured that they won’t return.
Because they had been killed?
He studied the sticker once more, holding it close until he could make out the words.
“West Cub.” His hands tightened on the page. “The Western Cub.”
P.S. I renamed that whole area. It’s ours now.
A photo fell out from the page: two men who had led the ambush…one who had gone further to do more than an ambush. Both Bennetts.
And one of them was his brother.
Chapter 18
It was a stupid idea to do this all over again, but Anne felt time closing in on her as the days passed and nothing happened. She knew Nico was coming to terms with it and was disappearing from time to time, then coming back even more preoccupied and disturbed than the last. Not wanting to leave it all to him when she could help out, the decision echoed loudly that morning until there was no escape and she was excusing herself from planting activities.
Five o’clock,her watch read, as she stood in one of the many empty, safe forests in New York, close to where the Bennetts had shortcuts to and from the streets. But safe was never a permanent word when it came to the supernatural world, and she knew she couldn’t stay here for long.
“You have to come out tonight. Please come out. I need to see you.”
Her words fell on silent air. A breeze picked up as the sun descended, a gorgeous view that never failed to awe. It painted the sky in colors that made imagination grow rampant, captivating her in its glory. She was so absorbed that it took her a while to realize the world around her had changed, starting with the cold on her ankles. When she glanced down, the fog was everywhere, its rhythm already familiar.
“You came.”
There was no response. The shadow didn’t appear, either.
“I have more questions. Can you answer my questions?”
Anne bit her lip when the silence wasn’t broken, worrying her. She calmed her desperation and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. After a beat, she sat on the ground—another stupid idea, but sometimes people had to make them. The fog didn’t stop dancing.
“Help me help you,” she declared. “Help me follow you and get answers so I can eliminate this evil you talk about. Lead me to you.”
Silence. She closed her eyes, then realized that she hadn’t done so earlier and was still her sane self. Taken aback, she gasped, then shut her mouth when she felt the wisps prick her skin as if tugging. When she returned to sight, it was to find that the fog had thinned out…and one part of it formed a line and was moving away.
“You are leading me, aren’t you?”
Again, there was no response, but she was on her feet and trailing after the line. It moved slowly, and it took her a few minutes to understand that it was hesitant to lose her and was mirroring her pace. When she went faster, so did the fog, and soon they were moving through the ins and outs of the fields and traversing from one forest area to another. The certainty that she was far away from the Bennett territory pulsed inside her, but the need to discover where she was being led overpowered it. When they passed the public park through the back and continued moving, she knew there was no turning back.
“I hope this isn’t a trap.”
She kept the one-sided conversation going until she felt they were in safer areas close to the streets, then paused to look when more fog coated other areas and they didn’t dance. She went silent when they reached areas she had never been to before, then felt her hair stand on end when they brushed past territories already taken. To her relief, the fog didn’t breach those spaces, leading her elsewhere. The hour rushed on and the moon was no longer shrouded with clouds, and she inwardly thanked her lucky stars that she no longer had to deal with her shifting problem.
The wolf reared its head, though, demanding to be let out. She tucked it in and locked her gaze on the goal, senses so alert that even the sound of leaves swaying didn’t escape her. Neither did the squeal from the side and the faint scent of blood…nor the energy that surged from the ground and slapped her skin, invisible but so prominent.
“We are here, aren’t we?”
There was no need to ask, but hearing her voice and her still-clear ruminations made her feel better. Nerves seeped in as the fog slithered towards a darker space, the bushes and trees so clumped together that they blocked out most sources of light. She observed it for a while until the fog pricked her ankles once more.
“Yes. I’m coming.”
The reality that this really could be a trap throbbed everywhere, but so did the desire to see this through. Persistence won, and she ambled forward, squeezing herself between tree trunks to get to the other side—
“Oh.”
There were flowers everywhere, but they were dying. There was a cavern off to her right illuminated by the fog, which was giving off glittering light…and in the center of that cavern was a man in the flesh, his lower body filled with black spots and multiple scars. The top part was coated in glitter, extending up to pointed ears and a head of matted white hair. The glitter shimmered as the figure jolted at the sight of her.