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It was a short flight to Bitty's over rocks and stones that she was grateful she didn't have to walk across. When Claude set her down with a fluttering of wings that left her hair a mass of tangles, they'd gasped as one and quickly guided her to a chair.

“What in the world happened to the little wolf, Claude? You leave her in this condition? Poor little pup.”

He bowed his head and kept his eyes at her neck. “I must leave her in this condition for a time, alpha. She will heal on her own once we start. The one you call the Darkness has grown too powerful. Our only hope to stop him before he leaves the area to claim another, larger pack is to sever the tie from his people.”

Egan gasped audibly. “What you're proposing is extremely dangerous. Not a one of us would be safe. Elizabeth, I can't participate. I'm old, weak … as are you.”

Bitty stood up, rose to a height with her back straighter than Claire would have believed possible from the elderly woman. She slammed the tip of her cane down on the floor so hard the board cracked. “We are healthy enough. You are more healthy right now than this young wolf who is eager to fight on. Are the owls of our family less Sazi than a mere
wolf
?”

Alex exchanged a look with her. Well, that was nicely insulting. But it had an effect.

Egan lowered his head. “Forgive me. I had no right to question you.”

Claude flapped his wide wings, stretched across the whole room. “With age comes experience. We might not overpower, but we can
outsmart
. If you can sever his magic, we can make sure nobody can get to him to fight at his side. Egan, where's that case of nitro?”

Yeesh. She raised a hand. The enthusiasm was nice, but wow … “Can we maybe not blow up the whole town? If we survive this, people might need somewhere to live and we really don't need the state police descending with SWAT teams.”

Egan puffed out his lower lip in a pout. “Fine. No explosives. But we have a few tricks up our sleeve that'll slow people down.”

Bitty had sat down on the couch while they were talking and had begun to glow. Her hair floated in the air like electricity was coursing through her. “Let us begin.

“My pack to yours,” Bitty said as she touched Claire's hand. The old owl gasped as her hand caught fire with golden flames that licked up her arm but did no damage. Bitty scooted sideways to sit next to Claire.

“What are you doing?” Electricity shot through her, making her mind clearer than she could ever remember.

Bitty began to speak in a singsong voice. “You and Alek are part of other packs. I plan to attach them to my own family for a brief time to give us the power to end this. I have no more time to explain. Give me your hand, Alek.”

The alpha owl stretched out one arm. “Please. Your hand. Lend your power to save them all.” Her eyes were unfocused, shining like stars.

It took a few tries before Alek could slip his hand into the flames. Claire understood—it was unnerving to look at. At last, he balled his hand into a fist, then closed his eyes and reached forward. “My pack to yours.” A loud yelp escaped him as the flames licked across his arm and over his chest. “Ow, ow, ow. Man, that smarts.”

The Kragan men chuckled. “Wolves. Can't stand to fly near the sun.”

Well, Claire was no lesser being. She straightened her back and stared right at the two men as she took Alek's hand. “My pack to yours.”

Fire shot through her like a high-voltage wire. Her hair crackled with flame and she could see the blood flowing golden in her veins just under the skin.

Bitty mumbled “Let the pathways open.” The barrier between Claire and Alek vanished, so suddenly that she let out a cry. She could hear his breathing, smell his intoxicating scent, and the touch of his hand on hers did far more than make her tingle. It stirred things deep inside her, a hunger and longing that were both painful and intensely erotic. He felt it too, she sensed, and when he kissed her, still holding Bitty's hand, the world split and reformed.

As his mouth ate at hers, she could feel her pack. Adam and Cara, Rosa, Grandma Carlotta and the others.
Chingado,
as Rosa would say! They were all there, the whole pack. At the center was Will Kerchee, the fierce bald eagle, binding the force of her pack into a single flow of energy that filled her to overflowing.

Alek's pack was there too, their heat a cold blue flame compared to the warmth of the Texas pack. Intense, dangerous, and not to be trifled with. She'd never felt pack members who were more of a single fighting force than a family. The contact strengthened and that coldness flowed over Alek, filling his eyes and changing his face as he took on his Alpha's purpose and strength. There was power written in that face. This was a man who could become a leader to be feared, and followed. The sheer majesty of him made her shiver.

The magic of three packs filled the room until the room was too small to hold it. She felt the golden energy expand to cover every business, every home in Luna Lake. Wherever the magic went, it encountered other lines of power, red and angry, touching nearly every person in town, sucking them dry. The golden glow sliced through the red, severing the Darkness from its power source. Bitty's eyes opened. No longer stars, they had become windows on the sun. “Go now. This is your best chance.”

Claire released Alek's hand and Alek let go of Bitty. His eyes opened wide and he touched her face. “Your face is nearly healed. I didn't think that would be possible.”

“It's a day for impossible things.” She smiled at him. Maybe there was more than
like
inside her for this man.

The two wolf shifters ran out of Bitty's house into what should have been a dark, moonless night. But the world glowed with the light of a thousand candles. She couldn't imagine how she was going to be able to sneak up on anyone. She was lit up like a bonfire.

Alek pulled a cell phone from his pocket and jabbed at the screen. She wanted to ask what he was doing but the call went through before she could speak.

“Patrick, we're getting back the kids tonight.
All
of them. Bring whoever you can, whoever can fight, and meet us at … Where are we going?” he finished, looking at Claire. He'd been running alongside her but didn't know their destination.

“There's a clearing in the woods a few miles from here. I saw the place in his thoughts once when he thought I was passed out. There's a rock shaped like a couch.”

“Pat? Rocking Chair Ridge. Come on foot and follow my signal.” He didn't hang up, just put the phone back in his pocket with the line still open.

“What if he turns them back? Will they fight
against
us?”

Alek turned his dark eyes back to her, now filled with blue fire. “They won't. He won't turn them back. I won't let him.”

She believed him. Her heart was pounding as they ran. The three-quarter moon was just rising over the tops of the trees. They skirted trees and leaped over rocks under the snow as though they knew where each one was.

By the time they arrived, the glow had faded. Claire worried if that meant that Bitty couldn't keep up the energy flow, worried more when she realized she felt tired again, though without the pain she'd felt earlier.

Moving carefully through the underbrush, they crept up on the clearing. A thrill of excitement coursed through Claire at the sight of the semicircle of trees around the couch-shaped boulder. Then she stopped, shocked by the sight of a young girl, suspended by her arms from one of the trees. The girl looked like she was no more than ten and from this distance, reminded Claire of herself at that age.

Alek must have spotted her too—he gasped and started to move forward. She pulled him back, hard.

That's Frannie!
His voice in her head was nearly shouting.
I thought she'd moved away with her family, nearly a year ago. Let's go get her!

Claire shook her head and kept a tight grip on his arm.
No. It's only one child. We have to wait for the rest.

The girl started to whimper past the tape over her mouth, and kick, trying to free herself from the shackles that dangled her high above the ground.
How do you even know there are more? You're not a seer or a healer.

He wanted to race forward and she wanted to let him, but that would ruin everything.
I'm an empath. I told you that.
She yanked on his shirt to get his attention.
Listen to me!
He turned, finally, and stared at her with flashing, angry eyes.
He was happy when he tied me up. I wanted to know why, so I opened myself to his emotions. His feelings were tied to particular thoughts, so I could read them. He was happy because one of the children had
shifted
. That was important.
She dug her fingernails into Alek's arm to keep his attention focused on her; he kept glancing at the child in the tree.
He was annoyed because we had ruined his timeline. It's the northern lights, Alek. This is all about the solar flares feeding the moon magic. He has to finish before they end and this is the last night. He couldn't wait anymore and had to eliminate the
other five
. Then he got mad … and you saw what he did.

He took a deep breath.
Five more.

She nodded silently.

Starlight disappeared, signaling the Darkness's arrival, then reappeared when it left, revealing a new child, hanging from a different tree. Again and again and again, just a few moments each time. The place he kept them couldn't be far. It was a battle of wills for the Wolven agents to wait, to resist rescuing the little ones, most of whom were crying quietly.

Claire assumed they'd learned not to make a lot of noise. She remembered that feeling: noise was the enemy. Claire could nearly feel the weight of the shackles around her own, rail-thin wrists, feel herself dangling, suspended from the cave wall. The weight of her own body caused her agony; she swore she could feel her arms separating at the joints. But they never did.

Alek spoke into her head, startling her out of the memories.
Your Alpha said, ‘not again.' You've been tortured before?

She didn't know how to begin to answer him. He'd shared his past, but could he be ready to hear hers? Nightmares still chased her when her eyes were closed.

Where was the fifth child?

I grew up in a small town in Kansas. My mom got pregnant too young, didn't want me. Put me in a Dumpster, but someone found me and the court put her in family classes instead of taking me away. She was afraid of being punished, of going to jail, so she did what they told her, but she didn't care and never did much. She didn't love me and I knew it. When I was kidnapped, I wasn't completely sorry.
She scanned the trees again, avoiding the horror she knew would be etched on his face.
The snakes were creating an army. Whether any individual child lived or died didn't matter much to them. There were always more kids.
She stared out at the four swinging forms. They were so very young. Had she really been so small?

Most of the wounds were healed the first time I shifted. But there are some deep ones that still show.

Alek brushed her hair with a kiss. She could feel her pack in the background, surrounding her with support. Alek's pack offered not sympathy but revenge, if she ever needed it. One in particular felt like another attack victim, the cold fury sprouting memories of similar attacks before rebirth as a wolf. Like her, he wanted no sympathy, no pity. What was, was.

A flicker of moving darkness caught her eye.
There. The last one.

But it's only five.

The sixth must have shifted. No need to kill that child.

It was time to fight.

 

CHAPTER 27

They raced forward, straight toward the Darkness. Surely the Sazi had to be at the center of that black hole, which was smaller than Alek had ever seen it. Hopefully Bitty's power net had had an impact.

Gusts of cold wind, like bitter daggers of ice, hit him in the face as they entered the blackness. There was no light inside, but they carried their own with them. The glow of a dozen eyes—no, a hundred—lit the space: golden birds' eyes, the cold blue of wolves', bright green cats' eyes, and even red, snake slits. The power cut through the dark and revealed the man, the shifter inside.

Van Monk! Alek tackled him below the waist and threw him to the ground, then was rocketed up and back by a blow of magic like he'd never felt before.

Monk shifted, became some kind of small cat, glowing red with stolen power. In the trees, the children screamed, distracting Alek. A blur of teeth and claws, Monk lashed out, cut through Alek's skin in dozens of places.

Claire darted in, teeth bared. She caught a back leg and was quickly kicked to the side.

“You can't possibly think you can win,” the mayor said. “Do you have any idea how many people I control?” The Darkness appeared again, then disappeared.

A massive cougar stalked out of the trees. Judging by the size of the beast, it had to be Lenny. Alek fleetingly wondered if Lenny was being controlled or if he'd thrown in with Monk to protect himself and his supply of child victims. Claire leaped onto the back of the big cat and began to bite and tear at the cougar's neck, channeling the fiercest warriors of both of their packs. The cat rolled, tried to throw her off. Alek spun around, searching for the mayor, but he'd disappeared.

Tammy appeared then, a second cougar, her eyes glowing red with flickering edges of gold. Whose side was she on?

Alek hoped she was on the right side. He yelled, “Help Claire! Please, Tammy. She's family. At least to me. I love her.”

The snarling cat paused, stared at him with glowing eyes. “Fam … ly?” Then she pounced into the middle of the battle between wolf and cougar. When Claire realized Tammy was fighting
with
them, she rolled away and ran for the trees. Wolves weren't good climbers, but she could jump just fine. She hauled herself onto the branch the first child was hanging from and began to bounce, using her weight and magic to crack the wood.