She leaped over the curb and rocks and dashed into the brush. The two wolves darted ahead, weaving between the trees. Oaks and cedars flew by. Her muscles warmed, turning loose and pliant. Her world expanded, her ears catching distant sounds, her eyes registering the flickers of life among the trees. Odors flooded the trail, pushing in from all sides: the nutty, fir-tinted signature of squirrels, the musty, old-gym-bag stink of raccoon, the sharp tang of a female mountain lion, the rats, the rabbits, the birds…
She sent commands down the bonds to the wolves. At this distance, this close, she didn’t even have to whisper.
Silent, quiet, hidden. Track.
The thread shone brighter. They were gaining on their target.
The wolves crested the hill and plunged into the ravine below, and she followed, so light on her feet, she was nearly flying. She jumped over ragged chunks of limestone, dodgedtrees, and slipped through the brush, fast and sure. There would be no backup. No human could match her speed, not in this terrain with twilight creeping in. If Augustine tried, he would break his legs.
That was perfectly fine. This was a family matter.
They crossed the shallow valley and started up another hill. The trail vibrated, solidifying. The thread was solid now, like a fluid glowstick, veering between the tree trunks. Her enhanced hearing caught the rapid thumps of feet in boots striking the ground. Their prey was near.
She pushed a command down the bond. The wolves split, darting to the sides. They bounded uphill. A slight burn nipped at her legs, the first sign of fatigue. She dismissed it and kept running, pushing up the rocky slope.
The air flung a new scent at her, the foul, rotting, nauseating stench of putrid vomit. Llama spit. They were likely passing by a ranch.
The trail faltered, dimming and diffusing into the stench. Kensley had realized she was being tracked and was trying to disguise her trail.
Diana almost laughed.
The wolves slowed, padding through the chaotic violence of the llama spit. The solid glowing line of the trail had turned into a faint cloud, but the two hundred and eighty million olfactory receptors in wolf noses had given them the kind of sensitivity the human body couldn’t overcome. They sorted through the llama scents, picked the one that didn’t quite fit the pattern, and were off again.
Within moments, the trail solidified back into a solid glow, then changed slightly. A different human scent—Kensley, altering her signature again. It didn’t matter. Both Akela and Whiskey had locked on, and the three of them chased theglowing line through the clump of cedars up the slope and to the left.
The ground leveled out again. She caught a flash of a clearing through the trees, a group of live oaks, thick and twisted, with a dozen trunks growing from almost the same spot, rising up, then curving nearly parallel to the ground.
The flicker of black was her only warning. Diana darted behind a cedar trunk just as the gun barked twice. Bullets bit into the other side of the tree, but she was already moving, slinking along the rocky terrain on all fours with inhuman speed, past the thicket of agarita to the left. A few more feet, and Diana sank to the ground, hidden by a mountain laurel bush, and went still.
In front of her, the massive live oak rose from the hillside. Someone had cleared the brush around it, and the packed-gravel ground lay bare. A stone bench—just a slab of limestone resting on two other chunks—waited by the tree, and beyond it, there was a hole of open air. Kensley had run to a scenic overlook near the apex of the hill.
Diana inhaled deeply. Her senses sampled the environment and identified the foreign presence, a shadow figure leaning against the big oak’s trunk. The assassin had tried to blend in, weaving an illusion, but she was not nearly as skilled as Augustine. She had succeeded in matching the color and pattern of her clothes, skin, and hair to the oak’s bark, but she was still human-shaped. She still breathed and smelled, although she had altered her scent again, trying to match the cedar. In her place, Augustine would’ve been invisible.
Diana held still and listened to the soft whisper of air going in and out of Kensley’s nose.
Her bond told her Akela had circled all the way to the back. He was ten yards behind the woman, while Whiskey crouchedon Diana’s right, not too far from the direction from which they had originally come.
The wolves waited, and she waited with them. She had waited this long; she could wait a little longer.
Minutes passed, soft and slow. The sun was setting, and the golden and pink light of the sunset was dying slowly, congealing into dusk.
Kensley shifted by the trunk.
More moments, falling down softly like feathers, marked by Kensley’s breaths.
The killer took a slow step from behind the trunk, holding her gun with both hands.
Diana leaned forward, the muscles of her legs flexing, compacting herself like a panther just before it leaped.
Her magic found a red-tailed hawk in a treetop across the clearing. She wasn’t as compatible with birds as Cornelius, but she didn’t need much.
The hawk flew with a screech.
Kensley spun toward the noise, firing two shots in the direction of the sound.
Diana pounced.
She launched herself out of the brush, clearing the distance in a single bound. Her weight landed on Kensley’s back, and Diana locked her hands on the illusion mage’s neck and yanked her backward. Kensley’s legs folded under her. She dropped, trying to roll and bring the gun around, but Diana ripped it out of her hand and threw it. The weapon went flying. Diana let go and bounced away.
