FAZER LOGINToriCorben's truck pulls in late, and he doesn't sit in it.Just pulls in and opens the door immediately.The man usually idles in our driveway the way other people go to church.Tonight he's out and moving before the engine's stopped shuddering.He’s carrying a large brown envelope under his arm, and his expression is equal parts fear and anticipation.This can’t be good.I'm in the closet with my ear flat to the wall before the side door's finished closing.Cursing the courier service for not having delivered the stethoscope I ordered yet.The meeting is nothing like the others.Corben's voice comes through first, pitched high and fast, sentences climbing over each other.Excited.Really excited, and trying to sound solemn about it, which might be the most disgusting combination available to the human throat.Then an envelope tearing.Then nothing.During the other meetings, Dad's voice runs underneath the whole time, low and even, the sound of a man steering.Tonight there's just.
Gavin"Read me last night’s log again."Corben flips back through his notebook like the answer might've improved since he wrote it down."Nothing really happened. Gate stayed shut after dark. Two of them walked the inside of the fence around midnight, same as the night before. No vehicles out. No vehicles in."Nothing.Five trucks sitting in the treeline every night, good men going without sleep, and the wolves have never behaved better in their lives.The council would call that reassuring.The same council that couldn't find its trucks in an empty lot.An animal that knows it's being watched behaves. That's all good behavior is. Proof they know we're there, and proof they care that we are.You don't guard an empty safe."They're being careful," Corben says, like he's worked this out himself and wants a treat for it."They are."He sits forward in my chair the way a dog sits when it thinks food is coming.Eager man, Corben.Useful, the way eager men are useful. Point him in the direc
NoahTwelve hours ago there was a hole in his shoulder I could have put my fist into.Now there's a stripe of skin two shades too pink, and by lunch there won't even be that.Must be nice.My ribs are going to bill me interest every time I breathe for the next week, and his body just hits undo.He's at my window with his back to the bed, thinking I'm asleep, and he's doing the thing he does when he figures nobody's looking.He lets his face fall.About a foot.All the swagger drains out of it and what's left underneath is a guy standing in his boxers watching the parking lot like he's contemplating deep and complex emotional issues and not even seeing it.I've decided not to have feelings about that.Going great."You're staring," he says, without turning around."I'm asleep.""You breathe different when you're asleep.”He turns, and he's all easy confidence again. The cracks plastered over and hidden from view."Morning. How are the ribs?""Attached.""Sexy."He crosses back to the b
Dax'Now.'No.'He put himself under it. He hasn't moved. He isn't going to move.'I know what he's doing.'Then do it.'My thumb is on two inches of Noah Hunter that I've spent months building an entire personality around avoiding, and his pulse is pushing against it like something trying to get out, and he's looking up at me with his jaw set, waiting to find out which way this goes.I take my hand off his throat.The wolf makes a sound I feel in my ribs and goes somewhere at the back to sulk about it.Noah doesn't say anything. His face does the thing it does when he's decided not to have a feeling, which is the same thing it does when he's having one.It’s impossible to tell with him most of the time."Tell me to move my hand," I tell him."No.""You want it there?"He grabs a fistful of my shirt."Come here and stop asking me questions."I get a hand under his knee and shove it up toward his chest, and whatever else he was going to call me turns into a noise, since I've got two fi
Noah"Give it back.""No.""I'm not finished with it.""You've had that in your hands for an hour."Dax holds the bow up out of reach, which is cheating and he knows it."You haven't looked at it once. You've been staring at the floor.""I'm fixing the string.""That's wire you’re holding. I’m no expert but I’m going to venture a guess that it doesn’t offer great flexibility when used to string a crossbow."I look down.It's wire.Dammit. Now he’ll think he’s won the argument."Sit," he says."I’m getting water.""I'll get the water. Which is the entire point of what I'm about to explain, so you need to put your listening ears on."If I wasn’t so happy he’s alive I’d hit him.He puts the bow on top of the fridge, which is such a shithead move, then comes back with a glass of water I didn't ask for and folds my fingers around it like I might drop it."Here's how tonight’s going to go. You relax, you don't lift anything, you don't reach for anything, and you do exactly nothing for me. I
Noah"Up. Get up, right now."Dax has a fist in the back of my jacket and I'm off my heels before I've finished the thought I was having about the print."Where is it?""Off the water. That's all I've got. Everything before the wind turned was us."I read the ground in one pass and there isn't one thing on it I like.Water behind us.A hundred yards of dragged shore with not a thing standing on it anywhere.The chute building off to the left with its roof stripped and three ways into it.The road out is past the bend and uphill.The truck's parked a quarter mile up it, which seemed clever in the dark and is aging very badly.Finn comes out of the brick doorway at a run and pulls up short when he sees the two of us standing still and not talking."What is it? What's wrong?""Something's here," Dax says.My hands go to work without waiting for the rest of me.Crossbow up, bolt on the rail, ready for action.One shot. That's all I’ll get before the wolf that leaves a print that size is o
DaxThe wolf wants to turn around.He's wanted to turn around since I cleared the fence, and he isn't being quiet about it, because quiet isn't a thing he owns.He just keeps shoving the same word into the back of my skull like a toddler with a doorbell.Ours.Ours, ours, ours."He's a hunter," I t
NoahThree weeks I've been hunting this wolf, and tonight, finally, he does me the courtesy of holding still long enough to kill.Big of him.He's at the tree line where Northgate's fence gives up and the real woods start, and he's shirtless.Obviously. He almost always is.Cold's got nothing to sa
DaxThe thing's in pieces at our feet and my body's still waiting for round two.I never come down off a kill clean. My blood's still up, ears still straining, every muscle still voting to hit something else.I don’t think it’s a werewolf thing. It’s an adrenaline thing.So when the wolf decides to
NoahThe wolf hits it like a truck, and the thing barely rocks.Wrong.Two hundred pounds of Alpha at a dead run should fold anything with a spine.This rotten thing takes the hit, slides back a boot-length in the dirt, and swings an arm the size of my leg.The wolf has to wrench sideways midair to







