Page 119 of Golden Eagle

“Right, then,” Nikita said. “Move.”

With the barest urging, the mage and his two human guards walked backward so they stood against the wall. They all filed past.

Alexei’s breath came quick and sharp, his heart pounding.

He glanced back, once, and saw that Will Scarlet was the last one to walk past their would-be captors. He pulled a small, folded piece of paper from his pocket and tucked it into the front pocket of the boy’s white scrub pants.

“What was that?” Nikita asked with a growl.

“A note from Rob,” Scarlet said. “In case, when his head clears, he wants to know what it’s like beyond the walls of this prison.”

Alexei faced forward again and hastened his steps. His lips felt warm, still, and he had the sense he’d stuck his face in a fire, and barely escaped intact.

~*~

From the front seat, Jamie said, “We’ve got movement.”

“They’re coming out?” Trina asked, leaning up between the seats to peer out the windshield.

“No.” He pointed through the window, across the street. “Over there.”

“This is a busy part of town…” she started, and trailed off when she spotted what he had.

A hooded figure stood a few steps outside the reach of a streetlamp, a wedge of face visible. As she watched, the figure lifted its chin – sniffing the air, she realized – and then shrank back, and turned to retreat.

The window was cracked the barest fraction. Jamie leaned toward it and inhaled. “Wolf,” he decided.

There was a flurry of movement in the back, and by the time she turned, the rear doors were open, and Sasha was leaping out onto the street.

“Sasha, wait!” She scrambled after him, and when she landed, she looked up to see a shaggy white wolf streaking across the street.

The other wolf, still human-shaped, whirled down the alley, and fled.

“Shit.”

Jamie clambered out after her. “What do we do?”

“Follow them. Much, stay here,” she called, checked the street and took off.

“Was going to,” she heard him call back.

Jamie muttered a curse and kept pace with her.

She’d had to turn in her service piece back at the precinct for ballistic testing, but she kept three lock boxes under her bed – daughter of a doomsday-prepper, former Soviet family, after all – and from one of these she’d taken her private .45, and an extra mag. She pulled it from her holster when they reached the opposite sidewalk, and the shadow cover it provided. From her jacket pocket, a slender flashlight. She clicked it on and swept it up the alley.

Jamie said, “There.”

The alley was a dead end, and at the end of it, two four-legged shapes tussled with one another, snarling, flashes of white and gray fur.

“You ever break up a dog fight?” Trina asked, walking toward them, Jamie coming along with obvious reluctance.

She heard him swallow before he answered. “I thought you weren’t ever supposed to do that.”

“You’re not. Not unless you’ve got a water hose. Or maybe a really long-handled rake.”

When they got within a dozen paces, the flashlight casting the wolves in bright relief, Trina halted and gave a sharp whistle. “Cut it out,” she ordered, drawing on her best cop voice.

Sasha was the bigger and heavier of the two wolves. He twisted, flipped the female over, and pressed a paw to her throat. He growled, all his ivory teeth showing.Stay down, it clearly meant. And then he shifted back: a human kneeling on top of a cowed wolf. Still snarling, a wolf’s deep growl boiling out of his throat, an impossibility that still raised the hairs on her arms.

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