All of us were taken aback by this. How could Victoria not be here?
Xavier grimaced. “Show it to us.”
We followed the hunters with their mutants across the clearing and toward the building on the far right. We did not approach the entrance, however. We traipsed around the side of the building before arriving at a much smaller one that had been hidden from view—a rather nondescript, rectangular building. Its windows were made of tinted glass so we could not see what was inside.
One hunter strode inside, while the others circled around us and remained outside with their mutants. A few moments later, the building’s front windows slid downward, allowing us to gaze inside a room filled with monitors. Their CCTV control room. The hunter was fiddling with one of the monitors, stopping, pausing, rewinding footage, until finally he tilted the screen for us to see better: An injured Victoria scrambling up against a tree—that was the last Heath and I had seen of her—and then shortly afterward…
What?
A wild-looking young man with black hair thumped to the ground beside her. He scooped her up and then with an almighty leap swung back into the tree with her.
So that’s why those hunters were shooting at the treetops. But who is that man?
“Oh, my God,” Arwen gasped, clasping a palm to her mouth. “That’s the wolf guy!”
Everyone whirled on her.
“The wolf guy in the cage whom Victoria insisted I free,” she said. “That’s the guy!”
This was the first I was hearing about Victoria and Arwen freeing a “wolf guy”.
“If he’s a wolf, why is he in his human form?” Heath asked. “It’s nighttime.”
“Well, yeah, there’s something weird about him,” Arwen replied. “He looks like a wolf, and he said that he was a wolf.”
“I’ve never heard of a wolf who didn’t shift involuntarily at nighttime,” Micah said, frowning hard.
“So you see,” the hunter interrupted, “she was carried off. We don’t have her here.” He approached the door again, jaw firmly set. “Now you have your answer, I must warn you for the last time: return through the portal and leave our territory.”
“This is not your territory!” Micah snarled.
“This land is under our surveillance and supervision,” the hunter said, before reaching into his pocket and drawing out an intercom device. “CCTV room. Assistance is required.” He spoke into it even as he drew up the glass window, locking himself inside.
A swarm of mutants came stampeding around the building toward us. Their razor beaks clacking, they launched into the air. I realized that there had been hunters running among them, gripping their leashes, now being lifted up with them. With shocking agility, the men swung themselves onto the mutants’ backs and rode them gracefully even without saddles. They drew out guns and, as they circled above us, began raining down bullets. The mutants opened their mouths and released sharp tongues of fire.
“Let’s not tempt fate,” Corrine murmured, her face scrunched up in concentration as she and the other witches kept the boundary up.
“I agree,” my grandfather said. “Vanish us outside the compound. There is nothing more to see here anyway… for now.”
Grace
We reappeared in the midst of a thick dark wood, some miles away from the compound. Aside from Micah, others in our group had been to The Woodlands before, but everyone looked lost as they gazed around, even Micah.
“I can’t believe they’ve done this,” the wolf said, growling and shaking his head.
“We probably should’ve guessed this would be their next move,” my father said. “It’s just something that the IBSI would do.”
“Micah,” Vivienne said, returning our thoughts to the task at hand. “You know Victoria’s scent, right? Can you smell her anywhere?”
He began sniffing the air. “Not yet. But we’re still close to the compound. It’s possible they were still traveling through the trees at this point. If we keep scanning this area, I’ve got to pick up on her scent at some point. Wherever that wolf man—or whatever he was—was planning to take her, I doubt he would have traveled the whole way in the treetops. I guess just until he deemed it safe to touch down. Let’s keep moving.”
Micah positioned himself at the very front of the group, my father, grandparents, Vivienne and Xavier close behind. Then walked my mother, Rose and myself, followed by Ibrahim and Corrine, then Mona and the rest of the adults, right up to Jeriad, who hung at the back. He was in his dragon form. So far, the trees around us were fairly widely spaced apart, which meant that he could still walk without crashing into trunks.
I hung back a little, leaving my mother and Rose, as I wondered where my three friends were. I moved toward Jeriad and looked up to his back. There they are. Heath was seated behind his father’s neck, while Brock and Arwen sat further down Jeriad’s spine, near his tail. The couple were making out. Again.