Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven (19 page)

“
W
e have
to get into the trees,” Owen shouted.

Clara couldn’t stop staring at Andrea’s upper arm. Blood was everywhere. All over Owen. All over Vadik. The spray had painted her dress as well. The wound was massive, like someone had taken a hatchet and carved out a hunk of the poor woman’s upper arm. The smell of sulfur burnt flesh tinged Clara’s nostrils. Andrea’s cries of pain only lasted a second before she passed out.

To his credit, Andrea’s wounded companion heaved her into his arms like it was nothing. The wolf magick was healing him quickly. That, and the adrenaline of the moment. But there was something else in the Russian’s gaze. A pain so deep it showed in his eyes. He was holding something in. When his companion had been wounded, he hadn’t said a word.

Her gaze was drawn to the female’s arm again and the strange matching tattoos she shared with her male companion. Those tattoos were important, she could feel it, but this wasn’t the time to ask questions. Blood still poured from Andrea’s open wound. Owen was right. They couldn’t stay here. Not if they were in direct sight of the hunter.

Owen directed the Russian’s focus to the tree line and then took off, grabbing her hand and half pulling her down the slope. “Into the trees!”

It was everything Clara could do to keep up with him without stumbling. She’d never run so fast in her life. Her heart hammered her chest. They reached the trees and he didn’t stop.

She hazarded a glance over her shoulder; to her surprise the big Russian wolf had slung Andrea over his shoulder and was keeping pretty good pace behind them.

Another gunshot shattered a young tree just to her left and Clara screeched.

Owen dodged to the right and upped his pace.

Clara’s lungs burned. How was he not dying? Her lungs burned for oxygen. Maybe all those push-ups he and Gabriel did in the cages weren’t just for passing time.

“Owen, find a hollow where we can stop safely for a second,” she panted.

He nodded, but kept running, zigging and zagging through the trees like he was following an invisible path.
He was.
He and Gabriel knew this area of the island like she knew the gardens outside the villa. He’d been here two years. Had survived seventy-two hunts.

Minutes trailed by, but a third shot never came. Maybe they’d made it out of the hunter’s line of sight. At least for a while.

She was concerned about Andrea’s wound. Something that deep needed a doctor or her to shift immediately so the magick could work faster on stopping the blood flowing from the wound. Which was just what the hunter wanted.

One of them to shift.

Owen squeezed Clara’s hand as they slid down another sandy embankment.

Vadik was only a few yards behind them. He held Andrea to his shoulder with one arm, pain cut across his face like he’d been the one shot. But he held onto her and still made it down the embankment without dropping her. He loved her. Clara could see it plainly in the way he cradled her body. Did it show that much between her and Owen?

The Russian crouched next to Owen and moved Andrea to the ground. The wounded woman moaned and kept her head turned away from the wound. “I need to shift.”

“You can’t,” Owen hissed. “That’s exactly what he wants you to do.”

“She’s losing too much blood too fast.” Vadik ran his hands up his face and took a shuddering breath, almost as if he were in the same physical distress as his companion.

Clara grabbed the bottom of her dress and started ripping. Maybe if they wrapped it, the pressure would give the wolf magick time to close the wound. Her heart ached for Andrea’s distraught companion. The poor man’s eyes were wide and his chest was soaked in the female’s blood.

“We can’t stay here. He’ll find us eventually.” Owen’s body tensed against hers.

“We’re going to wrap her arm and then go. She’s going to die.”

He growled, but she kept ripping until she had a strip long enough to wrap around the female’s arm several times.

The Russian held out his hand. “Thank you.”

Clara nodded and gave him the fabric.

He wrapped it around the terrible wound. The beige linen stained red immediately. The shot had to have nicked an artery. A flesh wound wouldn’t continue to bleed this long. Not on a wolf. This kind of wound left untreated could kill her and would never heal completely. The cartridge had taken too much flesh with it.

Andrea was shaking and pale. She’d never make a run across the island. Her blue eyes met Clara’s gaze and she frowned. “You have to leave me.”

“No.” Vadik tied off the tourniquet. “I’ll carry her.”

“Fine.” Owen stood, grabbing Clara’s hand again. She didn’t have a chance to speak, before he was pulling her along through the trees. Her lungs burned again in seconds. The break hadn’t been long enough. There was no way they could keep this up. How had he and Gabriel handled this?

“He’s too loud carrying her,” Owen snarled, jerking her between a copse of trees.

A shot rang out, and she fought not to freeze as panic closed over her lungs like an iron fist squeezing her throat. The hunter was going to keep shooting until they shifted. Until they had no choice.

“We can’t run fast enough in human form.”

“Don’t you dare shift.” Owen tightened his hold on her hand and they dashed up a slight hill. The underbrush was thicker, better for camouflage, but worse for running.

Crack!

Clara whimpered as pain seared across her thigh. She stumbled and Owen whirled, scooping her up into his arms without breaking stride.

Crack!

Tree bark exploded next to Owen’s head just as he cut between a pair of large palms.

“Put me down. I can run. It barely grazed me.”

He slid down another embankment and let her roll to the ground, looking back up with wide, white eyes. “These hunters are usually more accurate. He’s playing with us.”

Vadik slid into view a few seconds later, Andrea still clutched tightly to his shoulder, but the big guy was breathing hard. “This isn’t working. We can’t just keep running,” he rumbled and glared at Owen expectantly.

Clara held her breath and waited for the next shot, but it didn’t come. She pulled on Owen’s arm. “Are we safe?”

O
wen’s pulse
thudded in his ears as he looked around the dark, silent forest. He thought he knew where they were, but they’d been running so fast, he wasn’t convinced he was reading the signs right. “This place is only visible from the other side. There’s no high ground high enough.” He slipped his fingers along Clara’s flesh and pulled her into him. “We’re not safe forever, though. He knows we’re here. He’ll be on the move.”

“The bleeding isn’t stopping.” Vadik looked up from his examination of Andrea’s wounds, his features tense in the low light. “And she won’t make it over the fence.”

“We can’t go back to the fence, anyway. He’ll see us.”

Clara sank to her knees beside the black-haired woman and examined the wound. Her fingers came away soaked in blood. “We have to go back to the cages.”

“No.” Owen shook his head and his wet hair slapped at his cheeks. “We can’t take any chances of being out in the open, going across the clearings near the edges.”

“What are you saying?” Her voice had the tiniest hitch.

“We’re going to have to take out the hunter.” He turned to Vadik. “You know I’m right.”

The Russian held his girlfriend’s face and kissed her. He leaned his forehead against hers. “I know.”

Owen pulled Clara to her feet and held her at arm’s length.

Her face contorted in concern and as she looked into his eyes, her head began to shake back and forth. “No,” she said, low at first. “No, no. You’re not leaving me here.”

“Someone has to stay with her.” He indicated the bleeding woman.

“But if there’s three of us, we can be more spread out, create a bigger target,” Clara said, her fingers clawing at his naked skin.

“No.” He tried to swallow the lump out of his throat, but it wasn’t going anywhere. His gaze drifted across the soft contours of her face. Every freckle, every line, he knew by heart. He’d spent twenty-four days memorizing her face, in case it was the last time he saw her.

“I can help.” Her expression turned wild. “I have to help.”

“You can help by staying with her. Staunching the blood flow.” Owen’s voice cracked. “Please, Clara. Don’t fight me on this.”

The Russian wolf jumped to his feet. “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to hurry. She doesn’t have much time, if she doesn’t start to heal.”

“She’ll heal,” Clara insisted, pulling on Owen’s arm. “I’m going with you.”

Vadik ripped through some of the undergrowth, pulling out fallen palm fronds, branches, sticks.

Clara left Owen standing apart and went to help the Russian cover Andrea.

Owen shifted from foot to foot in the warm, wet earth.

He’d waited his whole life to find a woman who made him want more than just random sex. Until he’d met Clara, he’d never met anyone who made him want to forget himself and give her everything she ever wanted.

That was how he’d grown up. With parents whose worlds revolved around each other, who could never seem to get enough of each other. As an adult, he’d appreciated that, more than he had as a kid. But some part of him had been hoping for that his whole life.

Now, when it came time to put the love of his life in harm’s way, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t endanger her life.

Even though she was right. Three of them would be better. Four would have been ideal. But three would definitely beat two. If he and Vadik went after the hunter on their own, one of them would die.

Clara and Vadik had covered Andrea so well, she would be invisible to the naked eye. Only a wolf, who could smell blood, would be drawn to the spot that looked like debris that had washed down the embankment.

“Which way should we go?” Vadik knelt beside the debris pile, holding the white hand of his sweetheart, and Owen’s throat lump was back.

Why can’t Clara stay under that pile, too? Why won’t she listen to me?

“I’m going.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him like she was reading his mind. Maybe she was. He wouldn’t put it past the supernatural curse to have some kind of magic mind-meld capability or something.

“Fine.” Owen ground his teeth together. “Here’s what we have to do.” They walked along the embankment until it had almost blended into the rise of the small hill.

He pointed along the hillside. “I’m going to go up this side, which is probably where he came down, because it’s the easiest path, to go along the edge of the trees, and not have to go directly through.”

“So we split up from here?” Vadik took a deep breath and stole a glance over his shoulder. “Are you going to shift?”

“No. None of us can shift,” Owen said. “None of us. If he sees a wolf, he’s going to kill it. That’s the game. They come here to hunt werewolves. So we stay human.”

“How are we going to find him?”

Owen sighed. “We’re going to have to be very careful and hope we get lucky.”

“Lucky?” Clara’s voice was tense and he tried to reach out and calm her, but she moved away from his hand. “One of us is going to have to shift.”

“She’s right,” said Vadik. “We’re never going to find him. If he’s hunting at night, he’ll have night-vision. The minute he sees us coming toward him, he’s going to shoot.”

“We can’t shift,” Owen repeated. “You don’t get it. You never shift in here unless you have to.”

Clara pressed her lips together. “So, we run around as vulnerable humans and hope he’s not smart enough to figure out what we’re doing running toward him?”

Owen’s breath was deep, and he tried to tamp down the frustration. “I don’t like the plan any better than you do. But the one way we know for sure that someone will die is to shift. He sees a wolf, he’s going to have it down as soon as he can take aim.”

She smirked and shifted her weight to one leg. “Then don’t give him a chance to aim.” She leaned forward and the air around her shimmered, and before he could speak, her wolf sprung forward, a haze of red hair, and took off up one side of the embankment.

Owen tried to grab her tail as she moved past him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Every fear he’d ever entertained in all the days he’d had with Clara materialized sailed at a breakneck pace through his blood when she shifted into that wolf. As she bounded off into the darkness, he let out a growl that could only have come from the animal part of him.

He pushed Vadik’s hand away when the Russian tried to grab for him. “Dammit, Clara,” he hissed into the dark. Owen ran up the middle of the embankment at top speed toward the direction the other shots had come from.

They hadn’t had time to make a plan, and they hadn’t had time to work out signals or talk through the terrain or what the hunter would likely do.

He was going to kill her, if the hunter didn’t.

Suddenly, from behind him, a black streak ran up the hillside and disappeared over it.

Vadik had shifted, too.

Owen continued to run, pumping his arms, stepping on branches and in puddles. But he didn’t care if his feet were bloodied and gnarled. He had to find the hunter first.