Damien starts to speak, but then he stiffens. It’s a little unnerving when his wide eyes swing in my direction.
“How far away are you?” he asks calmly as he stands and moves toward me.
“It’ll take us a couple of hours to get there if we leave now, but there’s no way this is a horde. We haven’t smelled anything like—”
“It’s a horde of mostly omegas, coming in from the south instead of the north where you are. You must be trailing the scouts,” Damien says quietly. “And right now, the army is tracking you. Far more than three hundred. Try to hurry back. It’s been quite some time since I had to hold an illusion against so many people outside of the confines of a party that’s fueling my energy,” he says just as he grabs me and clamps a hand over my mouth.
How could that many wolves move through these woods without being detected or seen by people? I don’t know enough about this area, but that seems impossible. I hope it’s impossible.
Glass suddenly shatters near us, and Damien drags me closer against him, keeping his hand over my mouth. There’s silence after the shattering, and Damien squeezes the toothpaste out onto the counter, before he moves us far to the right.
I move with him, letting him guide this, as I try to keep my heartbeat from getting too loud.
Something buzzes the air, just before three silver arrows snipe the wooden beam behind where we were just standing.
Since when do omegas have the balls to shoot arrows at people?
Just when I think I know what’s sort of going on around me, a whole new set of rules spring up.
Damien moves us again, lifting me off my feet. We spin twice, as more arrows fly in, and I feel the wind off two when they barely miss my arm and cheek.
He doesn’t make a sound, his feet so light, while he gracefully shuffles around the room. I don’t make intentional moves, putting the burden of holding my weight on him, in case I do make a noise and shatter any illusion by accident.
There’s utter silence before a whirring barrage of arrows come soaring in. Damien easily moves around them, dodging every single one like he’s had this dance a time or two.
“It’s empty,” a naked girl says as she comes down the stairs, shocking me, since I have no idea when or how she got in here.
Four more come down behind her, just as naked as she is. “If he’s not here, then it’s because he’s out hunting us. Or at least a portion of us,” she says as she sniffs the air, her eyes moving to the toothpaste on the counter.
She moves toward it, but another girl slams into her, knocking her hard into the wall. Pictures shatter and break, and the attacking girl knees the first girl hard in the face, laying her out cold.
“Mine,” she chirps as she reaches over and grabs what’s left of the toothpaste.
Damien’s eyes narrow on her, as he slowly backs us away.
“If he’s out there hunting ours, we’ll just have them lure him in, and we’ll surround him here,” a man says as he moves through the house, just as naked as all the others. “Start the fires to cover our scent,” he orders some dude, since more and more people are spilling in, and they keep sniffing the air.
Damien carefully lifts one of my legs over his hips. Just as silently, he lifts my other one, while I all but hold my breath.
“That scent is unusual,” one of them says, sniffing the air away from the toothpaste.
They don’t remember his scent if they don’t remember him. That toothpaste is surely blocking out any of my own scent.
“There’s no one here,” a man tells her dismissively, as I very quietly and carefully move my arms around Damien’s neck to help out with my weight.
He easily holds me to him as he moves us from spot to spot, avoiding getting too close to anyone.
“This many numbers is hard to keep grouped together so close to the full moon. It’s a miracle we made it with less than fifty going astray,” the guy goes on.
It sounds like this is a little better planned and prepared for than Ian’s cement burial. Back-to-back attacks. Is this always Emit’s life?
There’s nothing but the occasional cabin in this vast wilderness. At least not that I’ve seen. The last town was at least an hour’s drive, and according to my phone, the next one will take two hours to get to. Yet again, I don’t know that much about the area, so I could be wrong on specifics.
The point is, we’re probably not going to get too far on foot with over three hundred wolves to make our way through.
Damien moves us toward the door, and I glance down at his phone on the table. The call is still going, even though there’s silence on the other end, as though Vance and Emit are listening in.
“If he gets our scent, he’ll run and return with his betas,” the girl says very quietly. “This is our only shot, Drew.”
“I’m well aware of the stakes, but we can always scatter and regroup. We can’t track him out too far. Our strength is our numbers, and those numbers draw too much attention. It’d give him time to get his betas, or worse, if we alert him before we can trap him,” Drew continues. “And he brought the Van Helsing on this hunt.”
“I’m the one who said to leave a day sooner,” she says to him as Damien slowly carries me up the stairs. “And though the plan was to draw out the wolf alpha, I’m more surprised the Van Helsing isn’t hunting us on his own. It’s not shocking the silversmith ninja is here at all, and I warned you of that.”
No one is upstairs, aside from the two of us. Damien gently lowers me to the ground, and he gestures for me to stay, as he moves back down the stairs with stealth.
I watch as he adjusts his tie as he goes to stand in the middle of the room, allowing the group to talk and move around him. He shifts around a lot more and takes closer cuts between people, as he picks their pockets.
He goes through phones and various other things, never once alerting anyone to his presence. I just watch him, wondering how we’re going to get out of here and when.
“We’ve got eyes on him,” someone says as they come in, a phone in their hand. “He’s pretty far out, but quickly heading this way. Does he know we’re here?”
Are they talking about Emit? Just Emit? Where’s Vance?
My heart flutters a little, worry drilling up my spine.
“He may know of an ambush, but there’s no way in hell he’ll be prepared for this,” Drew says as he takes a few quick breaths and does something on his phone.
The phones all start buzzing in the room, and I idly wonder how many people can fit in a group text.
A man walks in, carrying a massive, metal-plated trunk that slams hard against the ground when he drops it. He flips open the lid, letting guns spill out onto the floor…
Damien’s lips thin to a firm line.
“Put every single piece of silver we have in him. Then it begins,” the girl says to Drew, and then she walks out.
My eyes widen, as Drew’s brow furrows, and he walks toward Damien’s abandoned phone. Either Damien has forgotten about it, or his illusion is starting to fail.
Before Drew can open his mouth, Damien stabs him from behind, shoving a silver blade through his back until it juts out his chest. It’s so sudden and done with so little warning, that I have to cover my mouth on reflex just to remember I shouldn’t make a sound.
With uncanny speed, Damien slits his throat with movements so silent I can’t hear anything.
But wolf ears perk up.
Everyone makes one sniff and jerks their gaze over, as Damien takes his time silently pulling Drew’s body to the side.
I expect them to make a move, but they just frown and look away from the spot, their eyes trained on the spot where Drew was standing.
It’s then I realize they’re seeing something I’m not, because I’m inside this bubble with the illusionist. Drew may look like he’s reading the paper for all I know.
Everyone sniffs the air again and looks over to where Drew’s body really is, but then they look back, likely seeing him on the opposite end of the house.
“Abby, you said he was alone, right?” a man asks as he comes out of the laundry room with my robe in one hand and Emit’s in the other.
The girl walks back in, her eyes narrowing on my robe. “Aside from the Van Helsing. We can handle him.”
“This doesn’t look like it belongs to Van Helsing,” the guy notes, sniffing my robe. “Mostly all I can smell in here is that citrusy toothpaste.”
Damien picks up his phone, though no one seems to notice, and he looks like he’s texting someone as his jaw tics. He glares over at Drew’s dead body like it’s insulted him, as he furiously jams his phone in his pocket.
“Doesn’t matter. We can kill some omega whore who is leeching off the alpha,” Abby drones on, bored with this conversation, it seems.
I bristle, but Damien glances up, and he gives me a look that really doesn’t make me feel very good. As though he’s telling me something bad is about to happen.
Drew’s blood starts stinking all the way over here. Even I can smell it. Abby turns and sniffs the air, her eyes staring beyond Drew, as she slowly shakes her head and sniffs the air again.
It’s almost as though bitter acid is in the air, and I almost sneeze.
“Drew? Why does it smell like you’re bleeding?” she asks as Damien gestures for me to stay back.
Drew’s blood is the reddest blood I’ve ever seen, and the pure, perfectly red color seems to endlessly spill from his wounds. My stomach tries to protest watching, but the bright color is almost mesmerizing, as it pools on the floor under Drew’s lifeless body.
Damien picks up my gun from a table nearby, distracting me, as he takes two steps over and lifts it toward a man’s head.
“Drew?” Abby asks as she walks forward, shoving by a huddled group, and slaps her hand through the air like she’s striking something.
Her hand stops, almost like she’s hit something, but her eyes widen, just as she dives for the ground. Damien fires the first shot in the next instant.
I turn and scramble away from the railing when something sprays into the air after the bullet drills into that one guy’s head. For another second, the sound of that gun is the only thing I can hear.
In the next second, Damien is upstairs with me, lifting me into his arms, as guns start firing like crazy downstairs.
He runs and leaps out of the window, and my arms tighten around his neck. For a terrifying moment, I feel weightless, until we land in a hard crouch.
“Left!” someone shouts just as bullets rain all around us.
Damien grunts and curses, spinning us against the side of the house, but he drops me to the ground abruptly.
He whips my shirt over my head without warning, and I’m left in standing outside in the snow…in my bra…while rabid wolves work damn hard to find us. I realize why when I see the blood on my shirt…
They’ll be able to smell that through his illusion.