The Wolf's Bounty Read online

  “Where are we going?” Raleigh asked when he came back inside. Water dripped off his hat brim.

  “We’re going to investigate a black-market ring. They’ve been trafficking in illegal substances. I’ve been hired to track them down and bring back one of the rare creatures they stole.”

  “What creature is it?”

  “It’s called a twen.”

  Raleigh perked up her ears. “A twen? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “It comes from a faraway land. You wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s very rare, even in the country where it normally lives.”

  “What exactly is it?”

  “It’s a sea mammal similar to a walrus, but with tentacles instead of flippers. They’re highly intelligent and even have their own written histories of their population under the ocean.”

  Raleigh blinked. “That’s impossible.”

  Bishop put his head outside again. “Left fork, please.”

  The coach veered sideways onto two wheels. Raleigh clutched two handfuls of the seat upholstery, but the coach never slowed down. It rattled over a wooden bridge and screeched to a stop under a stone railway overpass.

  Bishop grabbed the door handle. “We’re here. I hope you’re ready for this.”

  Whatever ‘this’ was, Raleigh wouldn’t get any more ready than she already was. She jumped out of the coach next to Bishop. A solid sheet of water poured on either side of the overpass. Bishop pulled one pistol and waved it toward the road. At the last second, he turned back and fixed his flashing eyes on Dax. “Stay here.”

  No one could disobey that voice. It cut Raleigh to the quick, and Dax quailed. “Yes, Sir.”

  Bishop set off down the road back the way they came. Raleigh plunged into the downpour after him. She cast a backward glance at the coach sitting black and idle under the overpass. “Where are we going now?”

  Bishop growled between his teeth. “Are you going to keep asking that every time we do something? We’re going back to the bridge.”

  “Why didn’t you have Dax drop us off at the bridge so we wouldn’t have to walk through the rain?”

  “If I had him drop us off at the bridge, he might be tempted to do something foolish like follow us. I always make sure to leave him somewhere well out of the way. I couldn’t do my job if I had to worry about something happening to him all the time.”

  Raleigh cast a quick glance at his face under his hat. Rain spattered her forehead and got in her eyes. She should have brought her hat and coat with her, but she couldn’t help that now. “You really care about him, don’t you?”

  “Care about him?” Bishop snorted. “He’s a baby. He should be sucking his thumb in his mother’s parlor. Instead, he’s out in all kinds of weather getting into God knows what kind of trouble. He’s a millstone around my neck. I wish I could get rid of him and get a proper driver.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “He would probably start crying if I did. Besides, he won’t leave me alone. He’s always nagging me to let him drive me. If I want to go out to the apothecary shop, he begs me to let him do it for me. If I don’t let him, he punishes me for the next six weeks. He moons around my back door and begs me to give him one more chance. He makes all kinds of outlandish promises until I let him work for me again.”

  Raleigh’s mouth twisted into a grin. “You really do care about him, don’t you? Admit it. You’re soft on him.”

  Bishop rounded on her with his teeth bared. “Now you listen to me, and you listen good. If you’re gonna do this job, you better cut out the jokes right now, because this is no joke. Are you trying to get killed? Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Put Dax out of your mind,” Bishop told her. “It’s hard enough keeping yourself alive in this job without worrying about people like him. That’s why I always make sure to leave him well out of the way and never, never let him think he’s going to get involved. I couldn’t concentrate if I did that.”

  Raleigh nodded. “Okay. I understand.”

  Bishop started walking again. He muttered under his breath so she could barely hear him. “I’ve put thirty apprentices in the ground in the last year, and most of them, their bodies were never recovered. How do you think it feels sending out thirty letters a year to grieving parents and wives that their son or husband isn’t coming home?”

  Raleigh didn’t answer. So that’s what this was all about. Bishop couldn’t stand so much death and wasted life. That was the price of being the best and getting the jobs too hard for any other bounty hunter to do. None of his would-be apprentices could match him, and they all wound up dead.

  Now she understood those men making wagers on her outside the Gingerbread House. They all thought she would wind up dead, too. Bishop just couldn’t stand the thought of Dax getting killed, too.

  Chapter 6

  Bishop paused on top of the bridge. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Okay. Here we go. Whatever happens, fight your way out. Don’t let them take you alive.”

  “Who?”

  “Wolves,” he hissed.

  Raleigh stiffened. “I’ve fought wolves a million times. They don’t take anybody alive. All you have to do is...”

  He silenced her with a curt shake of his head. “These aren’t your usual wolves. They’re hybrids.”

  “Hybrids of what?”

  “People, of course.”

  He started to turn away, but she yanked him back by the arm. “Now I know you’re screwing with me. Hybrids of wolves and people? You’re joking. There is no way people could ever hybridize with wolves.”

  He bent his head close to her face. Rain drops bounced off his hat brim into her eyes, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his smoldering face. “Do you want to come with me or not? Do you think you can work for me and keep ambushing ula’ree in your barn yard? You’re gonna see a lot of things in this job you never thought could possibly exist, and just about all of them are gonna be gunning for your scrawny ass. Do you understand me? You better be ready to fight for your life down there, girl, or you’re not gonna last long.”

  Raleigh stood stock still. She never confronted anyone like him before. No one ever talked to her like this, but he spoke to some part of her she never knew existed. She never realized until that moment how much she hated farm life, how boring and prosaic and humdrum it all was.

  She hungered for a challenge. She longed to test herself against something bigger and far more dangerous than the same old monsters she always fought. Is that why her father urged her to leave? Did he sense how she wasted her skills in the backwater of Tunstead? She needed more. She needed danger and mystery to keep her interests peaked and her instincts sharp.

  Bishop threw up his hands and spun away. “I never should have brought you along. Go back to the coach right now. This is your last chance to get out with your life.”

  She stood her ground. “I’m not going back. If you’re going down there, I’m coming, too.”

  “Then listen to me and listen very carefully. These hybrids are not like ordinary wolves. They’re closer to humans, and they plan these attacks well in advance. They use all their pack strategies to gang up on their adversaries so you don’t stand a chance, but they won’t kill you. They might kill me, but they won’t kill you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ll be very careful to capture you alive. They’ll take you back to their den and keep you for breeding stock. They’re always on the look-out for healthy young human females. That’s how they keep their bloodline strong.”

  Raleigh reeled on her heels. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m deadly serious.”

  “So what are you going down there for?”

  “They guard the entrance to an underground warren. I have to go down there to find out what happened to the twen. I have to get through the wolves first.”

  Raleigh struggled to comprehend all this. He was right about one thing. She would hear and s
ee all sorts of things in this line of work she never dreamed of. She would be lucky to survive most of it.

  “Do you still want to come?”

  Raleigh tightened her grip on her blade and nodded. “I’m coming with you. If I don’t do anything else, I’ve got to see these wolves for myself.”

  Just for an instant, he regarded her with a very different expression on his face. He didn’t smile, but he looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time. Then he pursed his lips and nodded. “All right. Come on.”

  He set one hand on the wooden bridge and vaulted to the ground along the stream beneath it. Raleigh landed next to him, but he already set off on a winding path that twisted and turned with the circuitous waterway.

  The rain pelted down and soaked Raleigh’s clothes, but every sense sparked alive and alert to her surroundings. Whatever waited for her at the end of that path, she would meet it. She gloried in this moment. She would show Bishop what she was made of. She would show the world she wasn’t some shrinking flower who belonged in the kitchen or the sewing room.

  The storm clouds lowered further and cast the countryside in dusky gloom, but Bishop didn’t glance right or left. He followed the path into a patch of dense woods far from the bridge where he left Dax. He took no chance of his admirer tagging along.

  Raleigh thanked the stars he did it, too. She wouldn’t want a young, unseasoned person like Dax coming to a place like this. People like her and Bishop lived on the edge. They lived in a world of guts and gore. No one else could understand that. They couldn’t understand crawling into bed at night with the sensation of rubbery organs and splattered brains still clinging to their skin. She and Bishop existed to protect the sensitive ordinary person from every experiencing that sensation.

  The woods blocked out the last remaining light. Bishop pressed on through the shadows, but his spine straightened and he turned his head from side to side in tense anticipation. Raleigh strained her ears to hear any sound above the patter of the rain. She didn’t hear anything, but she didn’t expect to. She wouldn’t know what hit her until the enemy leapt out to smash her head in.

  How far would Bishop go before he got to his secret entrance? How could a secret entrance to an underground warren exist in this innocuous-looking wood? She would have to learn not to ask so many questions. He knew a lot more about this strange world she found herself entering. She had to trust him.

  He halted so suddenly she almost ran into him. He turned around and studied the canopy overhead. An embankment rose on their right side, and the stream tinkled over stones at their feet. The thick forest cut off their line of sight not far to their left. Bishop let out another quick breath. He whispered low. “This is it.”

  “What is?” she whispered back.

  He nodded toward the embankment, and she noticed a curtain of vines covering what looked like a low tunnel. He put out his hand toward the curtain when a dark shape rocketed over the embankment and landed right on top of him.

  Raleigh staggered back out of the way, but dozens more of the things already sailed over the embankment toward her, too. Three or four pounced on Bishop to knock him over backward, but she didn’t see him go down. She had her hands full of her own assailants.

  She got one glimpse of them before she tangled with a faceful of snapping jaws and snarling fangs. They could have been human with two arms and two legs, but they loped along the ground on all fours. Their faces jutted out in blunt snouts like wolves, and their pointed ears stuck up from their shaggy-furred heads.

  Other than that, she couldn’t tell the difference between them and hairy men. An inner intelligence burned in their sparkling eyes. She fought enough wolves to know these creatures knew exactly what they were doing.

  As Bishop predicted, they didn’t use the advantage of their numbers to drive for her neck. Normal wolves would have broken her ankles, hauled her to the ground, and torn her throat out. She would have been dead in minutes.

  These hybrids pinned her to the ground. One animal leapt on each of her arms and legs. She rallied all her raging power to fight them off before another three sat on her chest. They had no intention of killing her or even injuring her.

  Their tactics terrified her far more than regular deadly wolves. She could understand a wolf pack trying to kill her. If she failed, she would close her eyes and never wake up. If she let these hybrids subdue her, she would suffer a much worse fate. Bishop did right to warn her in the strongest possible terms.

  She slipped her left arm out from under the wolf sitting on it. In one quick motion, she whipped out her blade and smashed it into the head of another creature sitting on her chest. His skull caved in, and he slumped sideways where she pushed him.

  Another wolf spun around to snap at her, but she brought the blade back the other way across his throat. They didn’t want to kill her, but no rule prevented her from slaughtering them with extreme prejudice. If they held themselves back, they only made themselves better targets for her.

  She didn’t waste her energy trying to shake them off. They could sit on her until kingdom come if they really wanted to. She could still wipe them out.

  Another wolf hopped on her left arm. This time, another one joined him so she couldn’t break free no matter how hard she tried. She kept a firm hold of her blade, though. She kicked out with her feet. She hooked her knees behind the back of the wolf on her left leg and hammered him forward onto the ground. He pitched onto his face and landed on top of her blade. His own weight impaled it into his eye socket, and the curved point exited the top of his head.

  She couldn’t free her blade with him on top of it. She had to think of some other trick to pull on them. She glanced sideways and spotted Bishop fighting off seven of them at once. He spun one way and sent one of his hidden daggers glinting through the air to embed its tip in one wolf’s chest. He danced the other way and clubbed another across the temple with his pistol butt.

  Before he could recover, another wolf barreled in from the other direction. It tackled Bishop across the midsection, and its forehead thunked against Bishop’s armor. Bishop stumbled backward from the impact, and both men toppled onto the ground. Before he came to rest, Bishop spun his pistol around on his palm and caught it facing the other way. He snatched the trigger, and the gun exploded against the wolf’s head.

  A cloud of blue gun smoke drifted across the clearing and obscured the scene, but Bishop didn’t fall still on his back. The moment he hit the ground, he planted both hands and both feet against the dead body draped over him. He hurled it with all his might at the other wolves hemming him in. The body blasted them backward and gave him time to regain his feet.

  Raleigh couldn’t enjoy watching him fight. She had to get out of here, and she couldn’t move anything but her legs. Another ten wolves sprang over the embankment. They would be on top of her in an instant.

  Like so many other times she fought for her life, sheer insane fury tore out of her. She bellowed at the wolves sitting on top of her, but no force on Earth could hold her down. She flung her legs up and locked her ankles around the neck of the first wolf she could reach. She yanked him off her and smashed his head into the ground with her knees. She didn’t wait around to see if he fell unconscious from the blow. She aimed a well-placed kick at the last remaining wolf sitting on her chest.

  Her foot hit him behind the ear. He whirled around with a yelp. Her leg shot up one more time, and she nailed him square in the nose. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he tumbled off. His companions spun around to see what was attacking them, and that gave Raleigh the space she needed to fight her way free.

  She took a clue from Bishop. She tore her right arm free and pulled her pistol. The wolf who should have been pinning that arm down looked down in time to take a mouthful of powder and lead. The back half of his head vaporized in a cloud of blood and pulp.

  Raleigh tossed the empty pistol aside. It wouldn’t do her any good. She heaved off the ground and twirled both legs around
in a pinwheel motion. She generated enough torque to throw off the last wolf. She launched off her back and whipped onto her feet. She wheeled around to face her foes just as five more wolves raced in to fill their comrades’ places.

  Chapter 7

  The wolves showed Bishop no such consideration. They lashed him right and left with their fangs. They cut his pant legs to ribbons. Four wolves pounced on his back, sank their fangs into his coat, and tried to drag him to the ground. More than a dozen others rushed to join the fray.

  He cut right and left with his blades. He fired his pistols, but when he spent them both, the wolves closed around his arms. He vanished under a tide of bodies. At the last second, he clenched his teeth and pierced the ampule hidden against his cheek.

  He threw back his head, swallowed the contents, and spat out the empty capsule. The next instant, his knee hit the ground. Wolves slathered and bit him all over. He bent his chin against his chest and closed his eyes. The wolves redoubled their efforts at the sight of victory. They ripped into his coat and gnawed his arms. They jawed the back of his neck until blood matted his hair.

  Just for a moment, he crouched still and helpless underneath them. In that brief pause, some shimmering change swept over him. The next thing the wolves knew, he shot to his feet. A dozen bodies catapulted away in all directions, and a thing much different from Knox Bishop rose from the place where he once cowered for his life.

  He swelled to twice his normal size. His coat split along its seams, but the metal armor still enclosed his chest. His shoulders bulged with monstrous muscle, and his fingers extended to raking claws. A ridge of black fur sprouted down his neck and back, and his face stretched into a snout full of razor fangs.

  He let out a blistering roar that shook the raindrops from the leafy canopy. He spun one way and then the other. The wolves tried to retreat, but he moved too fast. He snatched one of them off the ground and ripped it in half with both hands. He flung the halves aside and took a step to catch another one. He crushed it in one fist and yanked its head off its body with the other.