Moon Called

At first I could see no one, but then a shadowy form emerged from behind a car, then another one, and another. Silently Adam's pack formed around him. Most of them were in wolf form, but Warren and then Darryl came as humans. They wore dark clothing and both of them were armed.

Warren looked at the red wolf, our rescuer, and raised an eyebrow, but he didn't break the silence. He examined Adam and then touched Jesse's bruised cheek.

"Warren." Adam spoke in a soft voice that wouldn't carry far. "Would you take my daughter and Mercedes to safety, please?"

Another time I would have argued with Adam. After all, who had rescued whom? But my arm was throbbing brutally and I'd done my killing for the day. The only good thing was that my ears had quit ringing. Let Adam and his people finish this, I was ready to go home.

"I don't want to leave you," said Jesse, taking a firm grip on her father's borrowed T-shirt.

"I'll take her to my house," Warren said, with a reassuring smile at Jesse. "You can stop and pick her up on the way home." In a softer voice, he said, "I'll stay with you until he comes. You'll be safe with me."

"All right." Jesse nodded in a quick, jerky motion. I think she'd just figured out that her father wanted her out of the way before he dealt with the people who'd kidnapped her.

"I don't have a car here, though," Warren told Adam. "We ran about three miles as the crow flies to get here."

"Shawn?" I said, trying to keep my voice as quiet as everyone else's had been. "You told me that there was an old truck around her somewhere that was easy to hot-wire? If you can tell me where to look for it, I can hot-wire it so Warren can get us out of here."

"On the far side of the warehouse, away from everyone else's cars," he said.

I started off alone, but Warren and Jesse were soon on my heels. The truck was the only car on the far side of the warehouse. Parked in the center of the pale illumination of one of the warehouse's exterior lights, was a 69 Chevy, painted some dark color that glittered. Someone was going to be very unhappy to see his toy missing-if he survived Adam's wrath.

But that wasn't my problem. My problem was how to hot-wire a car when my right arm was broken. I'd been keeping it tucked against my side, but that wasn't going to be enough for much longer. The pain was steadily getting worse and making me light-headed.

"Do you know how to hot-wire a car?" I asked Warren hopefully, as we approached the truck.

"I'm afraid not."

"How about you, Jesse?"

She looked up. "What?"

"Do you know how to hot-wire a car?" I asked again, and she shook her head. She smelled of fear, and I thought of how she had clung to her father.

"That guard tonight," I said.

She looked puzzled for a minute, then flushed and hunched her shoulders.

"He's not going to bother anyone ever again."

"He was the dead werewolf?" I couldn't read the expression on her face. "That's why you killed him?" She frowned suddenly. "That's why Dad shot him like that. How did he know? He was unconscious-and you didn't say anything to him."

"I didn't need to," I answered, and tried to explain that moment of perfect understanding, where a gesture had told Adam everything he needed to know. "He saw it in my face, I suppose." I turned to Warren and handed him the. 44 so I could do my best with the truck.

Hot-wiring the truck with one hand took me longer than the keys would have, and the awkward position I had to take in order to strip the housing off the steering wheel and touch wires had me bumping my injured arm. But the engine roared to life at last-something bigger than the original powerhouse rumbled underneath its hood-and I realized my hearing had cleared up completely.

"I've never heard you swear before," said Jesse, sounding a little better. "At least not like that."

"Power words. Without which mechanics the world over would be lost." Warren's tone was light, but his hands were gentle as they helped me extract myself from the cab. He handed me my gun and, when I fumbled, took it back and made sure it was at half-cock before he handed it to me again.

He opened the passenger door and helped Jesse inside and then held his hand out to me. I took a step toward him, then something attracted my attention.

At first I thought it was a sound, but that was only because I was tired. It was magic. It wasn't wolf magic or fae magic.

And I remembered Elizaveta.

Samuel knew about her, I told myself. But I knew that I couldn't leave. None of the werewolves could feel her magic, not until it was too late, and Samuel might not know how important it was that Adam know that Elizaveta was working with Gerry.

Elizaveta Arkadyevna Vyshnevetskaya was not just any witch. She was the most powerful witch in the Pacific Northwest.

I had to warn Adam.

"Get Jesse to your house," I told him. "Feed her, make her drink gallons of orange juice, cover her with a blanket. But I have to stay."

"Why?"

"Because if Bran brings the wolves out in the open, Adam's witch on retainer loses her income."

"Elizaveta?"

A gun went off, echoed by a second and third crack.

"Get Jesse out of here, I have to warn Adam. Elizaveta's here and she's working on some sort of spell."

He gave me a grim look. "How do I turn off the truck?"

Bless him. He wasn't going to argue.

"Just pull the wires apart."

There was gunfire from the other side of the warehouse, four shots. They sounded like they were coming from somewhere near the boarded-up house.

"Be careful," I told him. He kissed me on the forehead without touching my poor sore body, then hopped in the cab.

I watched him back out, turn on the lights, and drive away. Jesse was safe.

I've always been able to sense magic of all kinds, be it werewolf, witch, or fae-and I know that isn't usual. Charles, when he found out, told me to keep it secret-in light of the vampire's reaction to finding out what I was, I could see that there was more to Charles's advice than I'd thought.

From what Stefan had told me, I was somewhat immune to the vampire's magic, but I wasn't such a fool as to assume the same was true of witchcraft. Once I found her I had no idea what I was going to do with her-but I try not to worry about one impossible task until I've completed the first.

Turning in a slow circle gave me a direction. The pulse of magic felt like a warm wind in my face. I took two steps toward it… and the spell drifted away into nothing. All I knew for sure was that Elizaveta was here, and she was somewhere in front of me. The best thing to do was to find Adam and warn him, so I walked back around the warehouse.

Things had changed since I left. Adam, the red wolf still sitting at his feet, had only a handful of wolves with him. Shawn, David's grandsons, and a couple of other humans I didn't know, held guns on a group of men who were stretched out on the ground in a spread eagle.

As I approached them, David and Darryl escorted another man out and sent him sprawling by the other men.

"That's all the humans, Sarge," David said. "We left a couple dead in the house. But the wolves have scattered, and I couldn't pick up Gerry's trail, though, not even when I started from the last place I saw him. His scent just fades away."

"Adam," I said.

He turned to look at me and the red wolf suddenly leaped into the air as a shot rang out. It wasn't a particularly loud shot; it sounded like a small caliber.

"Get down!" barked David as he dropped to the ground. His men crouched, still holding their guns on their prisoners.

The wolf beside Adam stood for just a moment longer, then collapsed, as if it had listened to David as well-but I could see the dart dangling on his side and knew he'd been hit by one of the tranquilizer guns.