“Which way?” she asked. “I haven’t heard the things screeching fora while now.”
They’d given chase for two of the wendigos, but when the creatures split up, it forced Blade and Scotty to choose just one to follow. Now, they had to watch their backs as well as their fronts.
Blade pulled up next to her on the right. He always went right. Mace went left.
He lifted his head and inhaled. She’d always thought he looked so…wolfy when he did that. He didn’t like her saying that, though. He didn’t like talking about his werewolf side. It didn’t often make an appearance, but it was something he despised. Blade had never liked being out of control, and the nights of the full moon left him grumpy, anxious, and a little feral.
“It went into those hills,” he said. “I can’t believe you can’t smell it. It’s like rotting meat and demon feces.”
“I smelled it earlier.” She forced down a shudder. “You’re not wrong.”
They took off after the thing, Blade in the lead, sniffing the air like a hellhound after wounded prey. His sense of smell got stronger with a waxing moon, and she gave silent thanks that it was nearing its Waxing Gibbous stage for this mission. And not just because it aided Blade. The illumination provided ample light for their hike to the mountain foothills.
Figured, though, that as they paused to plot their next moves, clouds strangled the moon from out of nowhere, and the scent of rain grew heavy in the night air.
Blade looked up at the sky and growled. “I hate Alaska.”
As if in response, the sky opened up. The downpour crashed down on them in a shockingly furious deluge.
“Way to go!” she yelled over the roar of the rain blasting the trees and hillside. “Insult the host!”
“Ha. Ha.” He made a beckoning gesture. “This way.”
They ran toward a rocky outcropping and ducked inside a shadowed crevasse. Water dripped down her face and plastered her hair to her skull. Using her sleeve to wipe her eyes, she assessed their situation.
“Well, shit,” she said. “We’re going to lose the scent and the tracks.”
Blade shrugged out of his backpack and tossed it to the ground. “On the bright side, we got a shower.”
“Hmph.” She unloaded her pack, too, since it looked like they could be holed up for a while. “Might as well use the break to call Skoll and Jon.”
Their comms were unreliable out here, and sure enough, she didn’t have a good signal. So, she plucked the old-fashioned relic of a radio from her mission kit.
Skoll responded immediately, his voice hushed. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. We’re in the foothills to the northwest, taking shelter from the rain.” She gave him the coordinates. “How are you guys?”
“It’s not raining here yet,” he replied. “But we’re close to our target. We’ll let you know when we’ve bagged him. Good luck.”
“You, too.”
Blade watched her put away the radio, his eyes glinting with speculation.
“What?” She zipped up her bag. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
His gaze skipped away, focusing on the rain and the stream of water forming in the gully below. “No reason.”
“Stop lying.”
“Do I need a reason to look at you?”
“Stop stalling.”
He reached back to massage his neck and sighed. “I’m just…wondering.”
“About what?” She braced herself against a slab of mossy stone, grateful for a break. “And stop making me drag information out of you.” He could be so frustrating. Mace talked too much, and Blade didn’t talk enough.
He sighed again, but at least he looked at her. “Are you going to sleep with Skoll or Jon?”
