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“What? Oh, the woman?”
“Save … Lydia.”
Mr. Personality frowned. “She’s too far into this, mate. Sorry.”
“Kill me now. Do … whatever. Just … save … her. You owe me.”
Eyes so pale, they were almost all white, moved away. “I didn’t ask you to do what you did all those years ago.”
“I can’t protect her against Blade. I’m sorry.”
Daniel struggled to get up. Tried to breathe. Willed himself to stay alive so he could—
“And Lydia’s got to go.” Mr. Personality pointed the barrel of his gun into Daniel’s face. “Yes, you did your part. You brought me here. But only because I followed you. More important, she knows waaaaaaaay too much to let live—”
The attack was so fast and so powerful, the other man didn’t see it coming—and all Daniel caught was a blur of gray and brown fur.
Confused, he managed to lift his head.
A gray wolf with a silver stripe down its back had tackled Daniel’s former roommate and was ripping into his throat. The man was fighting back as much as he could, struggling to get his gun up, punching and kicking. But the vicious animal was too much for him, those fangs flashing, the growling and snarling the kind of thing nightmares were made of.
And it didn’t take long. Blood spurted from that jugular, speckling the wolf’s jowls, chest, front paws—and as soon as that red rush started, there was no question who was going to win.
As the gun got thrown, and the human started to lose strength, the wolf straddled the body and went to town: Clothes shredded, skin ripped free of muscles, muscles torn off of bones, bones snapped and spit out or swallowed.
Daniel watched it all. And when it was over, when the wolf stepped off and licked its chops—and then looked at Daniel, all he could do was laugh inside.
After all this, after everything he’d done in secret for the U.S. government … he was going to die as Alpo. Out in the woods.
The wolf took a step toward him. And another.
“Have at me,” he said hoarsely. “Have—”
The wolf let out a howl of pain and listed to the side. Then fell over.
What happened next … Daniel couldn’t comprehend. And not just because he was bleeding to death internally.
As the guard in the black uniform returned—the same one Daniel had killed once and then seen the sheriff take out, with the same features and eyes and weapons—the wolf started to convulse.
And then it writhed in the pine needles, clawing at the earth, paws thrashing, hind legs kicking—
But that wasn’t all it did.
The transformation was inexplicable. The fur began to recede into the pores it came out of, and then paws morphed, becoming hands, becoming feet, human hands, human feet. The chest and lupine stomach likewise distended, extended … changed … becoming a human chest, a human abdominal cavity … a human pelvis.
And finally, the muzzle retracted, forming a chin and a nose, as the ear flaps pulled up into the skull that was rounding, changing … the whole of it revealing a face that he knew.
A face that he loved.
“Lydia … ?” he croaked in confusion and disbelief.
Of all the things to learn as he died.
“Lydia!” he shouted.
In slow motion, in another facet of this horrible dream, the black-uniformed soldier stepped forward and stood over her naked body.
The gun muzzle lifted, but not by much, as it was pointed at her naked chest.
There was a lot of blood on her skin, but it was hard to know where she’d been hit—and what was just from what she’d done to Daniel’s old roommate.
“No …” Daniel flopped onto his stomach and tried to drag himself over. “Don’t … hurt her …”
Lydia’s eyes fluttered open. As she focused on him, tears fell onto her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I love you, Lydia.” He didn’t understand anything, but he knew that one thing for sure. “I love you, it’s okay … I’m going to …”
He was pulling himself forward, thinking that maybe, even though he was about three heartbeats away from passing out, even though she was one trigger finger away from being killed, there was something he could do to save her.
“I love you, too … Daniel …”
Those were her last words. And as her eyes rolled back and then fluttered shut, he let out a cry of pain—
Growling now. From all directions.
Forcing his head up, Daniel saw the wolves come out from the pines. A dozen of them. Maybe more.
The guard likewise snapped back to attention, as if even he’d been transfixed by Lydia’s unbelievable shifting from one species to another.
That guard barely had time to redirect his weapon.
The wolves came at him from all sides, and as the frenzy took the man down, Daniel looked at Lydia.
The last thing he did before he died was reach forward … and take her still-warm hand in his.
Look at me, he thought at her. See me.
But it was too late for her.
And ultimately, too late for him.
AS LYDIA DIED, her consciousness receded to a pinpoint in her mind, no longer a universe of sensations and thought, no longer a planet of them, not even a plot of land or a stone or a grain of sand.
Just a pinpoint.
But she felt Daniel’s hand in her own, and knew he was holding what he could of her, and she heard the words he spoke.
Both the ones about her to the man who had shot him—and the ones to her after he had seen what had to have shocked him to his core: He loved her. And he had been true to her in the end, in spite of what he had lied to her about before, in spite of all that she didn’t understand and yet couldn’t question.
When Daniel had had nothing to lose, and hadn’t known she was there, he had tried to protect her in his mission, whatever it had been. He had done his best.
So he had been true to them and what they had had.
That was all she could ask for really.
Lydia tried to squeeze his palm back. And as she listened to the preserve’s wolves attack to protect her, protect him, she began to cry …
Sometime later, it felt like years, there was only the scent of blood and the silence of the forest.
Opening her eyes for the last time, she looked into the face of the male wolf she and Daniel had released back into the wild.
Thank you, she thought at the animal.
He snuffled and lowered his head, giving her a nuzzle, as if he were thinking of what else he might do to help—and wishing there was more he could do to repay that which she had done for him.
And that was when she heard the repeating sound, the thumping, overhead.
As the wolf looked up and then reared back, she focused on the sky … and couldn’t understand how C.P. Phalen’s helicopter was coming in for a landing in a clearing a couple hundred yards away. How had the woman known …
The pack scattered into the trees, the wolves disappearing into the shadows beneath and between the pines. And then Lydia had a trippy vision of men in camo coming through the forest, with stretchers.
The woman with the short cap of white hair was unmistakable, and for once, C.P. Phalen was not in a business suit. She was wearing camo as well.