Page 9 of Cast in Shadow (Drenched in Darkness #1)

9

I shot a glance over my shoulder to make sure Nguyen was still close. “What’s up, Dennis?”

“Just got a ping from Echo. They’re tracking the shifter girl. Looks like she’s headed in the general direction of her grandmother’s cabin, but half the pack is closing in on her too.”

Not good. Even if she could find her grandmother’s place, she wouldn’t be safe with pack enforcers running her down.

“Did you get that?” I asked, directing the question at Nguyen. “The cabin isn’t far from here. A couple of miles as the crow flies, I think.” But it would be triple that if we drove it, thanks to the network of dirt and gravel roads out in the woods.

Nguyen nodded once. “Dennis, activate Charlie—they’re on standby today—and send them to the campsite as backup.”

The idea of leaving just two agents to guard the area grated, but with no sign of where Megan went, the next few hours would likely be all about investigation and cleanup.

I glared up at the blue sky peeking through the trees. “How close is Echo to the girl?”

“Not close enough,” Dennis replied. “They’re trying to intercept, but when I said half the pack is closing in, I wasn’t exaggerating. Monty said there’s got to be sixty or seventy adult wolves running her down.”

Damn. With that many wolves in pursuit, pack mentality would take over. When they did eventually catch up with the girl and her grandmother—which they would—it would be a bloodbath.

I’d already seen one of those today. If I could do something to prevent another, I would do it.

“Patch Nguyen and I through to Echo,” I said.

The comm crackled again as I headed for my Jeep, motioning for Nguyen to follow me. A few seconds later, the sound of gunfire erupted through my earpiece, and I winced. When I glanced back, his expression was twisted with pain, and he was scrambling to turn down the volume on his own earpiece.

“Echo, what the hell is happening out there?” I asked, fighting the urge to yell over the noise that only Nguyen and I could hear.

More shots came through, along with more vicious snarls than I could count and a scream so gut-wrenching I felt it in the base of my skull.

“There’s too many! Disengage! Fall back to the trucks!” I recognized that voice as the team’s second-in-command.

“Erin, what’s happening?”

“They’re everywhere. Monty is dead. Shit! They tore him apart. FUCK, GET BACK!”

Bang. Bang. Bang. Another scream pierced my eardrum, followed by the wet sound of flesh tearing and a sickening gurgle.

My heart was in my throat, but all I could do was stare into Nguyen’s brown eyes and watch the fury building inside him shine back at me like I was looking in a mirror. “Erin, talk to me.”

Another wet, choking sound broke through before the line went completely silent.

Anger detonated in my chest. “Dennis!”

“I’m—I’m trying to get them back.” He sounded absolutely fried.

“You have my location. Tell me where I need to go.”

One of the other agents circled around from behind me. “What about Navali?”

I jabbed a finger toward the ground. “Stay here and wait for the cleanup crew. Do not let a single soul see those bodies until they’ve had a chance to do their thing.”

He offered me a curt nod. “Will do.”

“Dennis? Come on, kid. Just point me in the right direction.”

“West! From where you are now, head straight west.”

“How far?”

“Two miles, give or take.”

I was moving before he finished the sentence, feeding magic into my muscles to boost my speed. I would never be as fast as Emerson, or any of the Brethren, not when they could simply transport from one place to another with a thought, but if I manipulated my power, feeding energy into the right cells, I could cover that distance in under four minutes.

Technically speaking, I could outrun a wolf, for a while.

But what about a pack of them?

Nguyen followed my lead, though he started falling behind after about two minutes. That was the tradeoff for a bear shifter. Even in human form, he could move inhumanly fast in short bursts, but that impressive speed burned out quickly.

“Pace yourself,” I breathed. “I’ll see if I can get ahead of them and find the girl. Coordinate with Dennis and have him guide you to the cabin. Only shift if you have to. ”

He grunted in response.

“Be careful,” I added. “Bridget is an alpha too, and she still has a lot of fight in her.”

“I won’t get killed by a grandmotherly wolf.” He sounded irritated, which meant he wasn’t listening.

“I mean it,” I bit out between breaths. “She’s stronger than she looks.”

“Dennis,” Nguyen growled, dialing his frustration back a little. “Get backup on the way to the grandmother’s cabin too.”

“Already mobilized, but even if they run every light and break every speed limit, they’re still at least fifteen minutes out.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Dennis didn’t follow up. More evidence of his mental state?

The guy might be a genius, but I couldn’t help wondering if he might be too softhearted to be our communications coordinator.

I pushed harder, pumping a steady flow of magic into my legs and lungs, forcing my body into a more efficient version of itself. Using my magic like this didn’t come without consequences, but I shoved the inevitable pain and misery out of my head and focused on covering as much distance as fast as I could.

A few minutes later, the sweet scent of fear hung heavy in the air, like a mouthwatering dessert just begging to be devoured. To a hunter, that kind of fear was addictive, and it could create a frenzy not unlike dropping a bucket of chum into shark-infested waters.

I slowed to a jog and took in my surroundings. The trees and shrubs looked the same as they had for the last few minutes, but there was an unnatural stillness to the forest that brought me to a full stop.

The pack was close. I could just make out the faint hues of their magic creeping closer. That wasn’t great, but what really worried me was the fear perfuming the area.

“Naomi?” I whispered.

A twig snapped behind me, sending a jolt of adrenaline through me. I wheeled around to see more magical auras peeking through the trees. The wolves were circling around to box her in, and there I was, standing right in the middle of it all.

“Naomi,” I said, pitching my voice as quietly as I could. She was a new wolf, but I was hoping her senses had developed enough to allow her to hear me. “Stay hidden until I tell you to come out.”

With that, I turned in a circle again, acting like I couldn’t see the magic pulsing between the shrubs and behind the trees. Each wolf carried a different hue, but they were all some shade of yellow, ranging from a bright gold to a deep, burnt orange. Generally speaking, the darker a person’s aura, the more morally compromised they were.

I seriously doubted the ones with lighter auras wanted to be out here hunting a teenage girl. They were likely running on their alpha’s orders, which couldn’t be refused by most wolves. The darker ones, though, were all-in on this chase. The magic emanating from them was muddied by their dark thoughts and misdeeds, much of it likely driven by greed.

There was nothing wrong with wanting money or power. Those things brought a measure of security, but when a person was willing to do anything to get them, that was when they became a problem.

The wolves swimming in deep orange magic would have had to do unspeakable things to experience that kind of color change, which made them the most dangerous of the bunch. And not just for me.

A fresh wave of fear scented the air again, thick and heavy, swirling around me. I stepped around the tree closest to me and almost wished I hadn’t.

The girl was there, wedged between a jagged boulder and the papery trunk. Tangled black hair framed a face tight with fear. Torn jeans. Filthy shirt. She was shaking so hard it was a miracle the tree wasn’t vibrating right along with her.

Any wolf who’d been watching me would have seen me notice her. A smart one would have followed my gaze. That gave me about half a second to come up with a plan.

Gritting my teeth, I reached into the shadows and ripped the girl from her hiding spot. She landed at my feet in a trembling heap. It felt like just about the shittiest way to handle the situation, but I needed her fear of me to feel absolutely real to the rest of them.

I hauled her up by her hair, exposing her neck, and created a ball of brilliant orange fire in my palm. The magical flames spit sparks against her bare skin that had her flinching and whimpering as she tried to pull away.

“The girl is coming with me.” I projected my voice out into the trees, trying not to let the fact that I felt like a monster for tormenting a traumatized teenage girl show on my face. “If any of you try to stop me, I will kill her.”

After a beat, a dirt brown wolf with a black strip running the length of his back stepped out from his hiding place, shifting from wolf to man in a move so fluid it was hard not to be impressed.

As a man, he was relatively tall, with a long and lean muscular build, and brown hair that looked like it was in one of those awkward growing out phases after a bad haircut. I could forgive the hair—we’d all been there—but the energy pulsing from him, so muddy it barely qualified as any shade of gold, made it all too easy to dislike him .

“Easy, witch,” he said, his alpha influence flooding the words.

“The girl is mine.” I let my magic flare, creating more sparks that popped against her skin. She screamed and tried to twist free of my grip, but I had her ebony locks good and knotted in my fist.

My magic wasn’t really burning her. It was uncomfortable, sure. It might leave a few red marks that would be gone in an hour, but there was only enough power behind it to terrify her. That was all I needed.

“Naomi Prentice is mine.” He took another step forward, as if he was completely unconcerned with how vulnerable his naked human form was at that moment. “And as a member of my pack, it’s my job to protect her.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of that claim. Even from the brief glimpses I’d caught of the girl, she was underfed, covered in old and new bruises, and scared shitless. No, this guy wasn’t interested in protecting her, just controlling her.

“Hand her over to me now, and we will let you leave here,” he said, lifting his arms out to his sides with his palms up.

The movement must have been a signal, because more wolves came slinking out of the bushes and from behind trees. The ones with lighter energy hung back. I couldn’t blame them. If the girl was any indication of how good wolves were treated in that wretched pack, I would have hung back too.

Except that wasn’t true at all. I would have killed my alpha. But I hadn’t been raised in the life. I wasn’t a shifter. To me, family wasn’t about blood or blind pack loyalty. It was so much more than that.

The girl’s energy stood in stark contrast to her oppressor’s. Hers was bright yellow, innocent and cheerful, like the center of a blooming daisy. There was nothing dark or menacing about her. And yet, her own alpha saw her as a threat .

“What’s your name, witch?” he asked, spitting the word at me like an insult.

“You first.” I yanked on the girl’s hair to pull another whimper out of her. It had the reaction I expected, lighting up the alpha’s face.

His eyes gleamed. He liked this. The fear. The power.

“Levi Dunham, alpha of the Clark Ridge pack,” he said, pushing more of his greasy alpha influence out as he puffed up his chest in a pitiful display.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t powerful. He was. What was pitiful was that he kept trying to use that power to influence someone outside of his pack. That was a violation of shifter law, precisely because strong alphas could influence others. Other shifters, non-magical humans, and yes, even some witches. Just not this witch.

“Well, Levi, it seems we’re at an impasse. You see, I’m not some second-tier witch who can be pushed around by an alpha, and certainly not one as weak as you.”

That earned me a few growls as the darkest of the wolves closed in around us.

“Weak?” Levi let out a laugh that would have sounded more at home coming from a hyena than a wolf. “I am the strongest alpha Clark Ridge has ever seen.”

“Are you now?” I could feel the energy rolling off him, but it was nothing compared to the fury carried in the magic that was barreling toward him.

Bridget was close and she was coming in hot. I didn’t know how I knew that or why I could sense it. Hell, maybe it was my gut telling me something only the universe could possibly know, but I had no reason not to trust the feeling.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to wipe out half the pack to get the girl free of them after all, no matter how much that idea tempted me. Based on what I’d heard over the comms coming out here, they all might deserve to die gruesome, painful deaths.

“Hand over the girl,” Levi snarled. “Or I will personally see to it that you don’t live long enough to see the sun set.”

His words weren’t enough to scare me, but they had the girl writhing in my grip. “Let me go!”

Before I could make a move to silence her, a familiar cinnamon wolf leapt from the trees, crashing into Levi and slamming his weaker human form into the dirt. Bridget’s claws dug into his back, sending streams of blood spilling from the punctures as he screamed in pain, but she didn’t retract.

She didn’t bite at him or rake her deadly claws across his tender human flesh. Instead of making him squeal like a dying rabbit, she used his body as a dais as she growled her warning at me and the other wolves.

Okay, so, things probably didn’t look great from where she was standing, but surely she could see that I was trying to save the girl. Right?

Levi’s body started to shift beneath Bridget’s paws, until she dug her claws in deeper, kneading his back like an angry kitten. Alpha power sparked from every reddish-brown hair on her body, feeding down her legs and into his back. She didn’t just have him pinned with her weight or the pain, she was actually holding him down with her magic.

It was a magnificent sight.

Levi bellowed in frustration, thrashing beneath her. The more he fought, the more of that golden energy pulsed from her paws, injecting deep into his muscles. Directing that kind of power in such a precise way took an impressive amount of control, for any magical being. All the while, her copper eyes were focused on me and my hold on her granddaughter.

I let the flame in my hand snuff out, but kept my grip on the girl, pulling her ear close. “Listen carefully. I’m here to help. I just had to put on a little show for that worthless alpha until the cavalry arrived.” Of course, I didn’t expect the cavalry to show up in the form of her grandmother. That complicated things a bit. “If we don’t play this right in the next few seconds, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.”