“Then stay on this side of the barricade. Stay on the land the Intuits are permitted to use. At least for now.”
“Going to have to deal with those trucks sometime. The remains will have to be returned to their families.”
Jackson caught a scent in the air that made him shiver. He looked at the men who weren’t quite looking at him. How to tell them what his instincts howled? “The wild country begins at the barricade now. It . . . surrounds . . . us. It surrounds that human town.”
“It always did.”
“Not like this.” He watched them pale.
Silence. Then, “No way out?”
“Not for a few days.” Didn’t want to be in this skin, didn’t want to look human.
Jackson shifted back to Wolf. Nothing more he could tell the Intuits anyway. Not yet.
He ran home to find Grace and the Hope pup near the stream with the rest of the pack. The sweet blood seemed dazed until he licked her cheek. Then she threw her arms around him and started crying.
<It’s okay, pup. It’s okay.> Hope couldn’t hear him, but he said the words anyway. Then he looked at Grace. <Is it okay?>
<The Eagles and Ravens said there was fire, but it didn’t come here,> she replied. <The Intuit village?>
<Safe.> He licked the Hope pup’s ear since that was all he could reach. <Would have burned without her warning.>
When the Hope pup finally stopped crying, she washed her face in the stream while Jackson rolled in the grass to clean his fur. Then he and Grace led their prophet pup back to the Wolfgard cabin. He went in first and removed the terrible drawings, hiding them in the kitchen area until he could decide what to do with them.
Grace came in next. Together they opened the windows in the bedroom and bathroom and washed the pee smell off the floor as best they could.
Leaving the Hope pup dozing on the porch with the rest of the pack guarding her, Jackson and Grace trotted to the communications cabin at the edge of the settlement. The Hawk who had been answering the phone looked at them with sad eyes as he handed a message to Jackson after the two Wolves shifted to human form.
“Who is it from?” Grace asked.
“Vlad Sanguinati,” Jackson replied. “Simon and the Lakeside pack are all right.”
“Vlad asked about you,” the Hawk said. “I told him the Sweetwater pack was all right too. I’ve been calling the number like you asked me to, but there’s no answer.”
“I already know part of the answer. The Hope pup drew a picture of it.” But he’d been hoping Joe had received the warning in time.
Grace sucked in a breath.
“Phone is working, then not working,” the Hawk said.
“It might be like that for a while.” Nothing he could do right now. Nothing any of them could do right now except wait. “We’ll be at the Wolfgard cabin if any more messages come in.”
Grace waited until they were trotting back to the cabin. <Do you expect any more messages?>
<No.> How many packs had received a warning to run, to hide, to flee from the evil humans? How many of the Wolfgard were still out there?
They were safe. For tonight, all the terra indigene in the settlement were safe.
CHAPTER 37
Firesday, Juin 22
Simon felt the exact moment when Meg relaxed.
It’s over, he thought. At least for us.
He’d lost track of time, had no sense of how long they’d been hiding in that dip of land. Since he didn’t have to worry about Meg now, he considered the other problem.
<How are we going to get the BOW out of here?> he asked Blair.
<We can attach a rope. Then some of us will pull and some will push. We’ll get it out.>
He considered the next, and more immediate, problem. <How are we going to wash Meg? She really stinks.>
<The BOW is my problem. Meg is yours.>
Simon sighed, then moved his head, resting it against Meg’s back. It was the only part of her that smelled more like Meg and less like vomit.
? ? ?
Monty gave Kowalski full marks for his driving skills, but he still wished cars had brake pedals on the passenger side. As it was, Kowalski whiskered by the patrol car assigned to block the intersection of Parkside and Crowfield avenues.
They would have been heading for the Courtyard earlier if Captain Burke hadn’t called everyone in for emergency assignments. No one, including Burke, was sure of what was going on. But after Burke received a call from Pete Denby, he had placed an urgent call to Agent Greg O’Sullivan, who, in turn, must have called Governor Hannigan. Despite the slim amount of information available, the governor had issued emergency orders that amounted to an ultimatum for the entire Northeast Region: block access to every Courtyard; block every street that led to a settlement controlled by the terra indigene; arrest anyone who tried to get around the barriers. Trains were detained at whatever station they were in. No travel of any kind between towns until further notice. The severest measures allowed by law would be taken against anyone who attacked, or attempted to attack, any of the terra indigene or any human who worked with the terra indigene.
Hannigan’s orders were a declaration of war on the Humans First and Last movement, and he expected the police departments in every city to uphold that declaration. And any officer who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, obey those orders was expected to resign immediately.
Plenty of speculation but no explanations. And no one on Monty’s team had told anyone outside the “police pack” about the frightened phone calls that had come in from Merri Lee and Ruth. There had been some kind of dustup between Robert Denby and Nathan at about the same time that something had happened to Meg, and now the Wolves were gone. All of them. Didn’t close up the stores, didn’t even close doors. They just ran off.
The girls couldn’t find Tess, couldn’t find Vlad or Henry, couldn’t find a single Crow to tell them what was going on, but they believed there was a serious problem.
Pete Denby said much the same thing to Burke. Something very bad was happening, and not just around Lakeside. The children were in the Market Square medical office. The terra indigene were . . . gone.
Armed with that information, Burke had informed O’Sullivan and then circumvented the Lakeside police’s chain of command by calling patrol captains Zajac and Wheatley for help. Before Police Commissioner Kurt Wallace, who was a member of the HFL, even knew there was a potentially lethal problem, the police were locking down the city—and bracing for whatever was coming.
“Gods, this feels creepy,” Kowalski muttered as he pulled into the Courtyard’s Main Street entrance and then eased the patrol car down the access way.
“Like a ghost town you read about in stories.” Once the car was parked in a space usually reserved for the earth native delivery trucks, Monty hurried toward the medical office. “Did Ruth and Merri Lee say where they would be?”
“With the kids and Theral and Pete Denby. Safety in numbers.”
He hoped that was true.
? ? ?
Vlad hung up the phone with exaggerated gentleness just as Eve Denby strode up to Howling Good Reads’ checkout counter. He’d managed to avoid dealing with the female pack since the Wolves went into hiding. Now . . .
“Did my son cause whatever this is?” Eve asked.
Vlad shook his head.
“Then I’ll hand out a suitable punishment.”
He said nothing. Tolya’s voice on the phone. So flat, so . . . empty.
“I’ll clean up Meg’s office. Being a mother, I’ve dealt with my share of puke.”
He said nothing.
“Hey.” Eve reached out. Almost touched his hand. “Is Meg really hurt?”
He looked at her. Honest concern. Would that make any difference now? “Joe Wolfgard is dead.”
“Oh.” Immediate sympathy. “Some kind of accident?”
“No. We called to warn him, and he tried to stop the pack from running into the trap, but . . .” Vlad sighed. “Except for the nanny who went with the pups, all the adult Wolves in the Prairie Gold pack are dead. Slaughtered. By humans.”