Shiloh checked her other amulets:healingworkings; onehedge of blood, which could be used as either a shield or, if reversed, a prison; and onestasis. Only onestasis, the most difficult working in her meager repertoire. If she’d had time, she would have made ten of the paralytic-style workings. Then again, there was no proof any of her own amulets would work. She’d had only hoursto make them and no time to test them. As a witch, she was a three out of ten in terms of training, power, and experience.
Maybe a two.
High in the trees, Shiloh circled the rhododendron thicket, spiraling out. The werewolf scent trail moved east. She dropped to the ground.
The guard team caught up with her in little pops of sound. The three vamps—Mi-sook, a mixed-race Korean woman; her wife, Kang, a blond chick who was the closest thing to a friend Shiloh had left since Atticus was killed; and Fred, also white—were winded, breathing heavily, like humans.
Kang sat and rested her back against a tree, gasping, frowning up at Shiloh. “Girlfriend, you run like the wind.”
Girlfriend…“I’m a little faster, I guess, from the werewolf taint. Prions. Whatever. It’ll wear off.” Not likely, but no one argued. Shiloh wasn’t used to friends, except her human blood-servants, and it felt odd that a vamp wanted to be one. For the last few months, Shiloh had tried to wrap her head around vamps wanting her for herself, and not simply for royal access. Mi-sook and Kang had no interest in getting closer to the queen. Fred just liked fighting.
“I have better tracking skills than you do,” Kang said. “And I’m better with sword work. I’ll take point when the trail freshens.”
Shiloh’s sense of smell was better than Kang’s. Wolf good. Her sword work was way better than anyone knew. Not that she would share that.
Fred plopped to the ground, propped against a tree, and took a dip of snuff, patting the tobacco inside her cheek. Her weapons were strapped inside and outside her armored overalls, holstered, pocketed. Frederica Crabtree had been married to a successfulpig farmer in the late 1800s. When human, she had never flaunted her wealth or been concerned with fitting into society; she was even less interested now. Fred was an excellent tracker and a better shot. She’d been bored, according to the queen, when the team met at dusk.
“Even when you’re at point,” Kang said, “you should stay in sight.”
“Trees are faster,” Shiloh said. “And I needed time alone to…process.”
Kang rolled her eyes and elbowed her wife. “Modern scions need toprocess. When I was human, we did what had to be done. None of thisprocessing.”
Shiloh had no intention of taking their six. “And you’re a well-balanced personality,” she said, sarcastic.
“Yes. You stay in sight.”
Reminder to self: Kang has no sense of humor.
Moving slower, Shiloh climbed into a tree and jumped to another. “They went this way.” In the trees, she left them behind, tracking scents she remembered from the attack. The vamps on the ground followed her own scent in the air above them and the blood-scent below. Once out of sight, she raced ahead.
Half an hour later, the terrain plunged into a crevasse, where the faint moonlight vanished. Hopping to the ground, she vamped out fully; needlelike fangs—indicative of being a young vamp—clicked down. She was under control, the razors distant. On foot, she tracked the werewolves along an animal trail as it snaked down the rock wall of a gorge, deeper into the dark.
The walls narrowed until she could touch the rock face on both sides of the wide fracture.
She reached the bottom, where a springhead bubbled out of the rock, becoming a clear crick. Ahead, the rock cleft widenedinto a small, hidden forest, brightened by hints of moonlight. Wood smoke hung in tree limbs. A narrow path marked the way.
Shiloh knelt and sniffed. She picked out the original six males and the female. Fresh scents overlapped those: three of the males and three new males. The bitch had indeed replaced her pack members.
Returning to the trees, Shiloh sprinted along the limbs, following the small crick, breathing in short sniffs as the scent trace changed. She caught a whiff of the unexpected.
Fainter, older, was a hint of vampire.
She stopped, arms gripping a tree trunk. Breathing, analyzing.
She knew this scent. It was old, but unmistakable.Kang.
Kang had been here before.
Kang had told her to stay in sight. Kang had told Shiloh that she would take point when the trail freshened.
Kang had pretended to be her friend. Playing the long game.
Betrayal stung, clawing through her, sharp as the razors, bitter as wormwood.
If their small group had arrived together, Kang could have obscured her former presence here by simply racing ahead. Shiloh hadn’t waited. Kang had to realize Shiloh knew her secret.
Worse, there had been an attack by enemy vamps on the queen’s wedding party a few weeks past—and a werewolf had been with them. An ally. Kang was working with the queen’s enemies, the last supernats who had vowed to never bow to a Dark Queen. Kang. Maybe Mi-sook. Hell, maybe Fred too.
