Vice(50)

Again, it comes. And this time, a cacophony of sound follows after—yipping and chattering that wouldn’t be audible if the animals weren’t very close by. Goddamn it. Fernando said it himself. These animals are brazen. They’ve taken people from outside the f*cking house before, which means they won’t have a problem taking a single person out in the forest by themselves. I’m not worried about me. I have my balisong. Plus, I’ve fought off crazed drug dealers and psychotic Columbian women in the past. Plus the odd Taliban extremist here and there. I can handle a bunch of wolves. Natalia, on the other hand? Does she even have a weapon with her?

Fuck.

My brain changes gear with all the finesse and power of an F16 fighter jet. I turn and run back the way I came, my muscles screaming, my lungs burning, my heart on fire.

“NATALIA!”

“Over here!”

She’s easy to find. She must have been doing a fairly good job of keeping up with me, because she isn’t that far behind. I find her crouched low with a serrated dagger in her hand. Her expression is grim and serious, her gaze locked on something in front of her. I don’t see it for a second. My eyes need a moment to adjust to the camouflage of the forest, but soon I can pick apart all of the greens and blacks and browns, and the wolf appears, hunkered down, teeth bared, eyes glinting wickedly. He’s pure black, so wild looking and beautiful, despite his obvious desire to tear Natalia’s face off. She holds out her hand, gesturing for me to stop, to stay where I am.

“He won’t strike if there are two of us,” she whispers. “Just wait. Don’t move.”

I’ve had no experience with wolves before, and I’m betting the woman in front of me has had plenty. I do as she says, waiting to see what the wolf will do, though my hands are twitching by my sides. It feels wrong. It feels like I should be doing something to protect her.

“Steady, boy,” she murmurs under her breath. “Steady now.”

The wolf remains totally still; the only part of him that moves is his muzzle, which trembles as he growls. It’s a menacing sound. He means f*cking business, and I have no doubt he’ll launch himself at Natalia if she so much as flinches.

She doesn’t, though. She is even and calm as the wolf watches her with his sharp yellow eyes.

A series of excited yips echoes through the trees around us, and a cold sweat breaks out on my brow. “He’s not alone, Natalia. I think it’s time to go.”

She nods very slowly, turning the handle of her serrated knife over in her hand. “If I back down now, he’ll know he’s won,” she says. “I’ve got to see this through.”

Fuck Harrison. If he hadn’t taken my gun, this situation would be a whole lot different. I might not have even needed to kill the wolf; a shot in the air might have been enough to scare him off. As it stands, the animal is likely to die, and for some reason that seems like an injustice.

The wolf pounces forward, just a foot, testing the water. Natalia doesn’t back down, though. She remains frozen, knife held out in front of her, ready, and her hand is stable. The woman isn’t even shaking. She’s f*cking remarkable. “Get ready to run,” she tells me. “I was wrong. This one already thinks he’s won.”

“We don’t need to ru—” Sudden, fast movement takes me off guard. I haven’t been watching. I haven’t noticed the wolf to my right, sneaking through the undergrowth toward me. I barely register the blur of color as it springs up out of the shadows, flying toward me, teeth bared and snapping, going for my throat. I don’t get my arm up in time. I’m halfway there, bracing, getting ready to break the thing in half, when a flash of silver cuts through the air, and the wolf cries out, yelping. He hits me in the side with the force of a seventy-pound bowling ball, but he’s not trying to tear at me with his teeth now. He’s bleeding, lying on his side, and Natalia’s knife is sticking out of the side of his ribs.

Then everything is chaos.

The black wolf attacks, hurtling toward Natalia, who is now unarmed. Did she…did she just take down a wolf with her knife? Mid-air? I have no time to process. I’m racing toward Natalia, but the black wolf is there first. He fastens his teeth around her forearm, clamping down, drawing blood. She screams, and the sound of her pain sends a frisson of electricity through the darkening forest. A series of howls and yelps follows—the wolves are getting excited. And now, they can undoubtedly smell blood.

I fall on the black wolf, grabbing hold of its head.

“Cade! Get it off me!”

I try to cut off its air supply, to choke it out for want of a better word, but I can tell from the rigid, taut way its body is bowed that it won’t give in that easy. It just won’t. There is no backing down in this animal’s world. There is only success or failure, and when failure means starvation, it makes creatures like this determined. I have to kill it. I have to. My balisong is still in my hand, but stabbing him isn’t the most efficient way of ending this right now. I grab hold of his head, taking hold of his muzzle and his lower jaw, and I twist sharply. A sickening crunching sound fills the air, and I feel the damage I’ve done. The wolf’s neck snaps in my hands, and that’s it. He’s dead. It’s over.

Only it isn’t, because then there are another two wolves creeping forward out of the forest, and then another two, and then another three. More and more of them appear, materializing out of the darkness, and every single one of them looks ready to kill.