The Valley of Whispering Cliffs

The certificate is still in my hand when every light in the building dies.

         Alarms shriek. Emergency strips flare red along the ceiling, and through Alder's glass wall the lobby turns into a bloody aquarium. Customers hit the floor. A mother drags her little girl behind a potted palm. Guards bark into radios that answer with static.

        "The cameras," Hale says. He tucks the ledger under his arm and does not sound even slightly afraid. "They waited for the cameras to die. Miss Vane, I believe the errand boy has returned."

Claws click on marble.

      Shapes slide out of the dark by the revolving doors. Garrick walks in front with his shirt torn open, canines already stretching, the red light painting his scar the color of raw meat. Behind him come six wolves. Then six more from the garage entrance. Thirteen in total, fanning across the lobby without a sound.

"No cameras now, lawyer." Garrick drags one claw along the teller counter, and the metal screams. "Your marshals are far away, and your witnesses are on the floor. Alpha Cross gave me one order. Bring back the omega's blood. He never said she had to be breathing."

       Alder whimpers under his desk.

"Mr. Alder." My voice stays level. "Is there a staff exit?"

       "The stairwell, behind the vault corridor." He is shaking. "It goes to the roof. There is a helipad."

"Hale, did you book a helicopter?"

        "For two o'clock. Cal Rourke." Hale's eyebrow lifts. "Let us hope he is early."

I kick open the office door.

        Garrick sees me move and howls, and thirteen wolves lunge at once. I run. Hale runs behind me, unnervingly fast for a man in a charcoal suit, and we hit a steel door marked STAFF. The world becomes a concrete tube.

Stairs. Windowless, narrow, one red bulb on every landing. The walls squeeze from both sides, and my lungs lock.

       Mama's voice, small in my memory: breathe, little moon. I breathe.

"Miss Vane," Hale snaps. "Move."

       I climb two steps at a time, and the red bulbs smear past. Below us the steel door explodes inward, and the stairwell fills with nails on concrete, wet snarls, and the groan of bodies getting too big for the space. Second landing. Third, the ceiling feels lower on every floor.

On the fifth landing, a shadow drops from above.

        One of them took the outside shaft. He lands in front of us in a crouch, half-shifted, fur bursting through his collar, and grins with a mouth full of too many teeth. "Boo, omega."

I have no weapon.

Then the system answers.

[Shop: Silver-Edged Combat Knife, 15 GP. Purchase?]

Yes.

       The knife slaps into my palm out of thin air, eight inches of pale glowing steel with a cord-wrapped grip. His grin stops.

"What the fu..."

       I drove it through his thigh. Silver hisses against wolf flesh like water on a hot pan. He screams, drops, grabs for the blade, and smoke rolls off his palm. I rip the knife free and put my boot in his face.

Hale stares at me. "That was efficient."

"Run."

      Boots hammer the stairs below. Hale yanks a red extinguisher off the wall, wheels, and empties it into the lead snout. White foam fills the shaft. A wolf crashes into another, and we gain three landings.

The roof door bursts open in blinding daylight.

      Wind. Open sky. A black helicopter squats on the helipad with its rotors already spinning, and a man the size of a refrigerator hangs out of the cockpit, waving both arms. Two fingers are missing from his left hand.

"Get in the damn bird, lady!"

"Cal Rourke?"

"Who else?" He spits out a wad of cinnamon gum. "You never said there would be company!"

       Hale slams a steel bar across the roof door and jams it into the frame. "Ninety seconds," he shouts over the rotors. "Go. I have a meeting with three federal marshals and a very nervous bank manager."

"Hale..."

"Miss Vane, if I am alive on Friday, I will vote your shares." He grins, a rare sight, and it is horrifying. "Go."

       I dive into the cabin. Cal's hand lands on my shoulder, brief and warm, a stranger's kindness so unexpected that my eyes sting. Then he yanks the collective, and the pad drops away just as the door behind us bends outward like paper. Garrick tears through it in full half-shift, ten feet of muscle and scar. He sprints across the roof and leaps.

His claws hook the skid.

       The helicopter lurches. Cal swears. Garrick hauls himself up, one hand over the other, snarling through broken teeth. "You worthless fucking blood-bag! I will gut you in the air! Your ribs will be my necklace!"

I lean out of the open door with the wind tearing at my hair and the knife in my fist.

"Tell your Alpha," I say, "he should go fuck himself."

       The blade comes down across his knuckles. Silver smokes. Garrick roars, loses his grip, and falls forty feet onto the roof of a parked delivery van with a crunch I hear over the engine. The van folds like a soda can. He does not get up fast.

The city shrinks. I fall back into my seat and shake, hands slick, breath ragged.

       "First time I have seen a lady cut a wolf off my helicopter," Cal says. He studies me with a strange, bright look, then jerks his chin north. "Where to?"

I pull the deed out of my hoodie. "Whispering Cliffs."

He whistles. "Nobody has farmed that dirt since nineteen seventy four."

       Forty minutes later, the clouds tear open, and the valley appears. Granite walls three hundred feet high, a silver river, a green bowl of pine and meadow, and one road squeezing through a canyon mouth forty feet wide. A place no one has ever owned me in. I swallow the tears that rise.

"This place is a fortress, lady," Cal says while screaming "Are you looking to start a war or hide from one?"

"Both." I say.

Then I see the road.

       Six black SUVs crawl up it in a tight line, headlights on in the daylight. Crescent Ridge plates. Nobody followed us. They simply arrived first.

A chime rings in my skull.

[WARNING: Unidentified Predator detected. Rank exceeds Host. Bearing: North Ridge.]

       On a ledge above the pines, a tiny lens flashes in the sun.

Cal's voice goes flat. "We can turn around, or we can land and see what happens. Your call, boss."

       I look at the six SUVs and the glint on the ridge. My left wrist itches where the mark used to be.

"Land," I say.