“Coping strategy?” I asked. I’d never thought of it like that.
He gestured around the group. “Without your team, as you put it, you would likely have perished already, so something or someone had the foresight to guard you against that. Even as a child you were driven to seek protection. It makes sense.”
“By who?” I asked.
“Maybe yourself or your wolf?” Jeb answered. “Despite my ability to know all important events, there are things at work we can never fully understand—nor are we meant to.”
“Before, you said you brought my sister here because her life was in danger. If she dies, what happens?” Tyler asked.
“The supernatural race would be launched into chaos until the time of another rebirth, one thousand years from now,” Jeb informed the group. “I can’t impress the importance of this, but Jessica must survive at all costs. Before you all… descended, I was informing her of the odds of achieving that very thing. They are quite low, which is unacceptable. That is why I went to great lengths to get her here. In fact”—he glanced directly at me, his eyebrows shooting up—“if you don’t leave within a minute or so, the exact way I tell you, the odds will be even less in your favor. I have cloaked the area once again, but Enid is now on the hunt. I can feel her magic pressing in on me. We cannot linger.”
Rourke huffed and rubbed his flank into me before walking up to Marcy.
“Boy, you’re one big kitty, aren’t you?” she said as she put his clothes into his mouth.
He tossed his head and trotted into the woods to shift, right as James came out.
“Okay, Jeb,” I said. “We’re all ears. Tell us how to do this.”
“I don’t like it,” Ray grumbled. “I don’t care if that little spiky-haired bastard is right or not. You two going alone feels wrong to me.”
Tyler paced nearby. Rourke was silent, lost in thought for the moment. He’d been quiet after Jeb had told us what to do, not even commenting when Jeb vanished into thin air.
One minute the warlock was there, and the next he wasn’t.
It had been the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. Now the air was deadly quiet, all the magic gone. But Enid was on the move. We had to act quickly, and fighting about it wasn’t helping.
James had already maneuvered the van around so it was pointing back toward the road. It was idling and Marcy and Nick were already inside waiting for the signal to go.
“We have no choice but to trust him, Ray,” I said. “You heard everything he said. He’s been working for the good of the Coalition for thousands of years, and more importantly? He wants me to survive. We go with his plan.”
“I thought he was sincere enough,” Tyler agreed. “I kept trying to catch a scent of a lie and none ever came, but that’s not saying much. If that warlock can cloak his power signature, he can likely do anything.”
Rourke finally turned to me, his eyes intensely focused. “We have to do as he says, and go now. I have a faint recollection of this warlock in my mind, though it’s very fuzzy. I believe he is required to help—as his station in the Coalition dictates. Jessica and I go alone.” He turned to a still disgruntled Ray. “You and Tyler have to stay back, like the warlock said, at least two hundred miles. No closer. My suggestion is to go somewhere and get some rest. Start out again in the morning. If we run into trouble, Jessica can reach her brother in her mind.”
“I don’t sleep,” Ray said. “I’ll do what you ask and stay back exactly two hundred miles. If there is a disturbance, I should be able to feel it. I can cover that stretch fairly quickly.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I told Ray, cutting Rourke off. “Jeb was specific about distance, so make it two hundred and fifty to be certain. You’ll still be within contact at that distance, so no griping.”
Tyler added, “I’ll run under Ray as he flies. He can make sure we stay the right amount of miles back. I can run faster than any other shifter, so I can be there for backup in enough time to help as well.”
Jeb had warned the entire team to stay back in the beginning, but once Enid engaged us, we could call them in. But by that time all might be lost. It was a chance we had no choice but to take. The real hope was to evade whatever her nefarious plans were—plans that Jeb said he had no clue how to interpret. He said the words had been cloaked, but the intent was “tainted.”
Whatever that meant, but the word “tainted” couldn’t be good.
Rourke took my hand and tugged me into the woods to shift. Tyler would gather our clothes and give them to Marcy after we changed.