“Just . . . Wolves,” she finally said. “And people living in little wood houses.” A pause. “Cabins. Fire. Burning.”
“Okay.” Vlad gave her arm a gentle squeeze before releasing it. “The Wolves will hide with you until it’s safe. The rest of us will send the warning to as many packs as we can.”
Simon looked at Vlad. <Jackson?>
<His prophet pup is scared sick and running, just like Meg,> Vlad replied grimly. <Both of them, in different parts of the continent. This is not good, Simon.>
Joe’s face looks like that. <Joe?>
<The warning was sent. I don’t know if it will be in time.> Vlad rose, his legs already shifted to smoke. <Stay here. The rest of us will do what we can. It’s not just the Wolves. The attack is also aimed at the Intuits.>
Everything he and the rest of the terra indigene in Lakeside had tried to do by working with humans was breaking apart. How far was it going to break?
He shifted back to Wolf form, instinctively understanding that it would calm Meg.
<Simon,> Vlad said.
<Go. Do what you can. Warn Steve Ferryman.>
<I’ll do that first. He’ll get the warning out to other Intuit settlements within reach of the bad humans.> The Sanguinati shifted all the way to smoke and raced over the ground.
<More Sanguinati going with Vlad,> Blair reported.
<We will help you keep watch over our Meg,> Jenni said as she, Starr, and Jake perched in the nearby trees.
<Uncle Simon?> Sam whimpered. <I don’t wanna lick my fur clean.>
He didn’t want to lick the pup either. <As soon as it’s safe, we’ll get you and Meg cleaned up.> And they would need to wash any of the other pups who were splattered with puke. For now, there was nothing any of the Wolves could do.
Resisting the temptation to lick her neck clean of dried blood and ignoring the bad scent of vomit, Simon rested his head on Meg’s shoulder, offering silent comfort—and trying not to think too much about what was happening to the Wolfgard in other parts of Thaisia.
CHAPTER 34
Firesday, Juin 22
Jackson trotted back to the Wolfgard cabin. While troubling, the meeting with the Panthergard had gone well. Only one of the Cats now living in the Sweetwater area had gone through the first level of a human-centric education—enough to read, write, and do sums, as well as speak with humans and make a purchase at a trading post.
Enough education to distinguish between normal human activity like farming and tending animals and activity that felt . . . wrong.
Nothing suspicious around Sweetwater’s Intuit village, but that wasn’t true about Endurance, the closest human village. Something wasn’t right there. Something had changed. But it was like trying to hook your claws into air, hoping to catch hold of the problem and deal with it.
<Jackson! Jackson!> one of the Ravens called. <Your pup is strange sick.>
He ran toward the cabin, momentarily relieved when he spotted Grace. Then Hope burst into view looking as terrified as a fawn being run down by a Grizzly.
“We have to hide!” Hope screamed. She ran past Grace, grabbing at the pups who had run to greet her. “We have to hide!”
“Hope?” Grace said, her white hair gleaming in the sun.
Jolting to a stop, Hope looked at Grace. “Fire. Death. We have to hide!” She ran toward the creek and the pups ran after her.
<Go with her,> Jackson told Grace. <I’ll check the cabin.>
Grace pulled off her clothes, shifted to Wolf, and ran after the girl with the pack’s nanny and the juvenile Wolves following.
Jackson rushed into Hope’s room in the Wolfgard cabin. Where had the girl been? She wasn’t supposed to go out of sight of the cabin without telling an adult Wolf.
He stopped at the smell. Wasn’t Hope a little old to be piddling on the floor?
Spotting the scatter of pencils and crayons, he moved cautiously around the bed—and smelled a hint of blood that was almost overwhelmed by the scent of urine.
He came farther into the room, moving his feet with care to avoid stepping on Hope’s drawing supplies. When he lowered his head to sniff the floor for the blood smell, he spotted the drawings under her bed. He pulled out the intact drawing and then the pieces—and snarled.
All the pups and juvenile Wolves in the Sweetwater pack. Dead. Mutilated. No wonder Hope wanted them to hide!
Then he looked at the intact drawing. Meg Corbyn’s face in one corner. A hilltop view of the Intuit village at Sweetwater, all the buildings on fire. And filling the center of the paper . . .
He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. It was like the drawing she did of the mound of bison except . . .
Joe.
Jackson tore out of the cabin and ran as if everything in his world depended on his speed . . . because, at that moment, it did.
<Help!> he called.
<Wolf? Wolf?> Replies from the Ravengard, Hawkgard, Eaglegard.
<The Intuits are going to be attacked. We’re going to be attacked. Watch the road. Give warning if any humans head our way.>
<Jackson?> That was Grace.
<Hide the pups! Warn the Wolves. Get away from the settlement!>
<Where are you?>
<Have to warn . . . > Who? How many?
Reaching the communications cabin, he flung himself inside, shifting to human as he walked to the table that held the telephone and the computer.
“Jackson?” The Hawk minding the cabin stared at him.
Jackson stared back, then picked up the phone and called the number he had for Prairie Gold. Getting a busy signal, he hung up and called Howling Good Reads. No answer.
As he stood there, he smelled Hope and urine.
“The Hope pup was here?”
The Hawk nodded. “She used the telephone. She said ‘Meg, run, hide, death,’ and then she ran away.”
Jackson wrote a phone number on the pad of paper next to the phone. “Call this number. Keep trying until someone answers. Tell whoever answers, even if it’s a human, that the Wolves have to hide. They have to hide or they’re going to die.”
“Where are you going?”
“To warn the Intuits. Hope saw their village burning.”
Shifting back to Wolf, Jackson raced down the road. It wasn’t just Intuits who needed help in that village. There were the four surviving prophet pups living there too.
CHAPTER 35
Firesday, Juin 22
Joe pushed for all the speed he had. <Wolves! Wait!>
<They’re killing our meat!>
Too angry. Not listening. He’d been chosen as leader of the terra indigene settlement because of his contact with Simon and the Lakeside Courtyard, because they needed someone now to actively deal with the Prairie Gold humans. But being the leader of the settlement wasn’t the same as being the dominant Wolf. The pack had just proved that by ignoring his command. <The sweet blood says it’s a trap!>
That slowed the other Wolves who had been racing toward men so focused on shooting bison that they didn’t seem to notice the angry Wolves bearing down on them.
<Sweet blood?> The pack’s dominant enforcer slowed to a trot.
<Simon’s prophet, Meg, called Jesse Walker to warn us that this is a trap.>
More Wolves slowed down. The hunters among them were more reluctant to let the humans continue killing the meat the pack would need, but the enforcers, who had the job of protecting the pack, turned away from the humans standing in the beds of the pickup trucks and headed toward Joe.
Then they stopped, took a step back. Like them, Joe felt the thunder that meant only one thing: bison stampede.
Gunshots and shouts behind him. Behind the bison. Humans were driving the bison toward the pickup trucks, and the Wolves were caught in between.
<Run!> Joe shouted. The Wolves turned and ran toward the trucks and the bison that were already dead. Big bodies. Pressed against the belly, a Wolf might escape being shot—might escape being trampled. They had no chance in the open.
They ran toward the trucks and the men. Had to reach the dead bison before . . .