Page 4 of Fangs
“She escaped,” he said.
“What?” Wolf managed to choke out.
“She manipulated an idiot guard to let her out, and then she ran. She can’t be far—she’s in the city somewhere. We’re starting a search party, and we need you,” Pa snapped. “Get dressed.”
As Wolf scrambled to pull on his clothes, a horrible, numb acceptance settled over him. Ember must have done it. She must have killed Dune because innocent people didn’t run, and she had run twice.
1
Twelve years later.
“Think you ran far enough?” asked Wolf.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t remember a single word. I was ten years old again, staring into my older brother’s furious face, but he wasn’t a gangly teenage boy anymore. New scars marked his skin, his wavy brown hair hung long enough to cover his ears, and he wore a green and brown uniform that was worn and dirty. There was a rifle strapped to his back and a pistol on his hip, along with several sheathed knives. A pair of goggles sat on top of his head. The hardness of his green eyes made me feel sick.
“What? You got nothin’ to say to me?” He smiled with no humor in it. “After all this time?”
I stared at him, my heart lodged in my throat. He stared back, studying my face as though looking for something. Was he trying to find the ten-year-old girl he last saw? A low whistle came from the main floor of the clinic below us, and it snapped Wolf out of our bizarre staring contest. Wolf whistled back, then scanned the loft with narrowed eyes. I followed his gaze, trying to see what he was looking at. There wasn’t much. My mattress lay on the floor, covered in Trey’s quilt, and my dresser stood in the corner. Wolf glanced back at me, his expression unreadable, then spun me around and marched me toward the loft ladder.
“We’re leaving,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Go down the ladder.”
I obeyed. Another man with black hair pulled back into a messy top knot and dressed the same as Wolf stood in the clinic holding a large rifle. He looked familiar, but the panic roaring through my head made it impossible to place him. His face stayed expressionless as he shifted to put his body between me and the door. Wolf came down the ladder right behind me, grabbing my arms and twisting them behind my back. I heard the familiar sound of a zip tie cinch shut and felt the plastic dig into my wrists.
“Not a word, you hear?” Wolf growled in my ear as he propelled me toward the door. “I don’twantto shoot my way out of here, but I will if I have to.”
My eyes found the pistol in his hand. It had a silencer on it, and my heart seized with terror that Mac would return and?—
I gulped in short, frantic gasps of air. I couldn’t watch another person I cared about get shot. Wolf and his friend hesitated, staring at me with furrowed brows.
“Quiet,”Wolf hissed as he shook me hard.
Almost as though a switch flipped, it felt like I was outside my body, watching. My gasping eased, an empty nothingness replacing the panic. They both stared at me for a second longer before pulling their goggles down and dragging me outside.
They slid through the shadows easily, and I stumbled along with them in a dreamlike state. After I tripped for the tenth time, they started practically carrying me, the toes of my boots barely brushing the ground.
As we approached the gate, I didn’t notice the bodies until we were stepping over them. They lay in the shadows of the wall, and I couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive.
Fuck. Oh gods, please don’t be?—
“Sable?” Wolf called in a low voice.
Another shadowy figure bled out of the darkness of the gate, startling me. The dark-haired man holding my left arm released me and traded places with this third person—Sable, apparently. As Sable took my arm, I could just barely see their features in the moonlight, making out long blond hair and lips that were frowning at me. The dark-haired man moved to operate the pulley to open the gate doors. We slipped through when the door opened enough to fit a person, and Wolf and Sable darted toward the woods with me in tow. The gate shut behind us and I craned my neck to look back. I had to bite back a gasp as the dark-haired man rappelled down the wall with ease. There were no cries of alarm. No guards shouting. Nothing.
Please don’t be dead.
The dark-haired man caught up and swapped places with Sable. They dragged me through the woods while Sable took up the rear, drawing the large rifle he carried on his back. I tried to keep up and cooperate, butIdidn’t have night vision goggles and stumbled over every damn tree branch and rock. Soon, they seemed to grow frustrated and started carrying me again—my boots dangling. They moved so fucking fast, and now that we were out of the hold, I felt less concerned about Wolf shooting other people and more concerned with my own looming death.
My brother was about to kill me.
I knew he would catch up to me eventually but turns out I hadn’t been as mentally prepared as I thought. They looked like fucking mercenaries. Was Wolf a merc now?
Wolf let out a low whistle, and an answering whistle sounded from somewhere ahead of us. A minute later, a shadowy figure appeared leading a horse.
“Any trouble?” a distinctly male voice asked.
“No,” Wolf said. “Any updates?”
“All clear at home base,” Horse Guy responded.
