Page 63 of The Sacred Wolf

“No, don’t!” A human yelled beside us, and I whirled.

A man threw himself between a policewoman with a gun and a limping shifter. I recognized the brown wolf as one of the Manhattan SecPack members, bleeding but safe behind the most miraculous shield I could imagine.

A willing human.

“It saved my daughter and me!” The man said, his arms spread as if they could ward off bullets, his tween daughter cowering behind him. “We didn’t even know what was going on, and then one of them came at her and this one…it…it.” He stammered. “Please don’t; it’s already hurt.”

The policewoman lowered her gun, her hands shaking. “What do you mean?”

“Look around!” The man said. “They’re not all attacking.”

She turned, raising her gun again. I followed her gaze, staring at the seemingly endless sorties scattered across the lawn and beneath the clumps of trees. The wind was rising, and the treetops dipped and fluttered above what looked like a Renaissance painting of a Greek battle—if those had included wolves—the battlefield littered with bodies that moaned and rolled in pain, or lay still. Even against this horrific tableau, one could see that there were now more shifters battling shifters than shifters attacking humans. The tide was turning.

The policewoman lowered her gun. Her uniform was ripped at the shoulders, and blood spattered on her face, but she appeared unharmed. “Take your daughter and get out of here,” she said. “I’ll make sure no one hurts this one.”

My jaw hit the ground. Was she going to guard…one of us?

The man didn’t wait; he nodded and grabbed his daughter’s hand, running for a section of trees that was now deserted, except for the dark bundles scattered in the deepening shadows like downed tree limbs. Bodies.

“Elyse,” my sister urged, “Let’s go. We need to help the others.”

“Did you see that though?”

“How could I miss it? Seems like some of your beloved humans aren’t so stupid after all.”

We were pounding our way toward the center of the worst fighting as she said this, and I stopped short, pulling up beside the body of a young woman lying prone in the bushes. My chest cinched as I took in the cascade of brown hair, the kooky cat-eye glasses, and the nubby pink cardigan this poor human woman had chosen this morning to greet the sun. Now her life was over, dark blood drying on her cotton candy boucle, and the sun hiding behind the menacing clouds that were growing like a volcano on the horizon.

“Did you know her?” Kiana circled back to me, sniffing.

“No. But she… looks like my friend, Charlie.”

Kiana’s whiskers twitched. “The one from the train?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” This time my sister’s tone carried with it the flinty scent of grief.

My breath came in shallow huffs as I fought off the image of Charlie bleeding out, her life ending in a senseless pile in a subway car, much like this poor thing. Then the poor thing’s chest fluttered upward, a tiny hummingbird beating against the tide dragging her toward the afterlife, and I stepped forward, sniffing.

“She’s alive!”

Kiana came beside me, scenting. “Yes.” She swung her magnificent head so that her muzzle nudged mine. “You know what you have to do.”

Her touch was so gentle that I almost didn’t feel it. For the merest second, I leaned into her. And then I bit down on the girl, just as I’d done Evan, begging Leto to help me as my jaws sliced into her left collar. I held on for as long as felt right, and then gently released her, stomach churning at the blood bubbling from the four new puncture holes. Nothing happened.

“Let’s go, Elyse,” Kiana said, as I stared at the bloody sweater, willing the chest to rise again. “There are many others you can save.”

“I don’t know if I should wait to see if it works,” I said, hesitating.

“We know it does,” she said, tugging at me. “So, let’s get to more of them as fast as we can.”

Dragging myself away from Charlie’s doppelganger with a final prayer, I followed my sister into the bushes, heading west toward the Delacorte Theater. Breathless, we bounded from one crumpled human to another, sniffing for signs of life. Fat drops began to fall from the lowering sky as we reached my fourth patient, as I was now thinking of them. The middle-aged man was slumped against a tree trunk, dark curly hair peeking from beneath his Mets cap, blood dried on his neck like a burgundy scarf. I stepped forward to bite his collar when a roar erupted from the bushes.

“Don’t touch him!”

A grizzled man with tear-stained cheeks ran at us, his Mets jersey torn and muddy. Kiana fended him off, doing her best not to harm him as I finished my bite on the man I now saw was likely a brother, given the shared curly hair and hawklike nose. I prayed anyone who loved a sibling enough to charge a wolf without a weapon would accept him once he became a shifter.

“They don’t know you’re saving them,” Kiana said, rebuffing the man once more before we raced away. Behind us, he collapsed over his brother, sobbing. “Stay with me so I can protect you.”

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