Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(79)

Charles’s grandfather looked each boy in the eye. “Afterward, that old man sat down with me and explained what the monster who took my aunt was. He said, ‘A medicine man, healer, or shaman, who has given up his connection with the way of the earth, is more evil than anything I have ever met—and in my youth I hunted the stick men and three separate times I brought down the Hunger that Devours. When those who are sent to do good turn from that path, when they gain power and long life by stealing life from others—there is no evil greater.’ He had, he told me, seen only one other such. The creature who took my aunt is the only one I have ever seen. They are rare and dangerous. Hard to see them—but if you look in their eyes … If you keep watch, it is their eyes that give them away. There is only one way to kill them, if you are not a medicine man such as he or I. That is with fire.”

? ? ?

“JERICHO,” SAID CHARLES softly.

A quick change, my brother, he asked the wolf. As quick as we ever have. For Anna’s sake.

Then, opening his mating bond as widely as he could, he said, Anna. I need you to do something for me.

The wildling looked at him, and so did Anna.

“Jericho,” said Charles again, heavily. This time, it wasn’t a request for the other’s attention. “Jericho’s wolf’s eyes are yellow.”

Run, he told Anna. Run and do not stop.





CHAPTER





11


Anna bolted before her brain caught up to her feet.

Skinwalker, Brother Wolf breathed into their bond. The Diné would call him a skinwalker. Such as he can only be killed by fire or a medicine man’s magic.

And then, Brother Wolf drove her to her knees with the sudden, complete memory of a smoky, dimly lit place where eight boys listened in terror as an old man told them a warning tale about a monster. And the information the old man had given those boys terrified her, too.

Devon whined. Anna turned her head to see that he was trotting back and forth, watching the battling wolves—because apparently whatever wore Jericho’s body didn’t have a problem making a quick shift to wolf.

Given what she now knew about Jericho, she should be running.

“Devon,” she said. “Devon—that’s not Jericho.” She remembered what Charles had said before he attacked. “Jericho’s wolf had yellow eyes.”

Devon froze and looked at her.

“Skinwalker,” she told him. “They kill the people whose form they want, then they steal it. They wear their whole person like a coat. It’s not Jericho, Devon. He’s dead, and the skinwalker stole his body and his memories to wear.”

Flesh and spirit, Charles’s grandfather had said. That must be why the blood bonds between the Marrok and the wildlings had not warned him and, through the Marrok, the rest of the pack. But the thought of it made her want to be sick. How much of Jericho was left? Did he understand what the skinwalker was doing? Or was he truly dead and “spirit” meant something different?

Anna, said Charles, I cannot defeat him. I have magic, but it is not the kind that my grandfather meant. He meant the magic of a holy man. Get out of here, my love. Get out of here and warn the others. Call my da and tell him he—

His voice in her head broke off as the air around the thing that was Jericho rippled where the werewolf had been. And in its place was a bear far larger than the grizzlies that roamed the pack territories.

Anna, please, Charles implored.

You must survive to tell our da—in case he takes us, said Brother Wolf. He won’t be able to tell until it is too late.

Charles expected to die. He expected to die and that the skinwalker would take his shape. As the skinwalker had probably been planning on doing to Anna after separating her from the others by sending them off after Sage.

Sage had known what the skinwalker was—had known who it was. That’s what those strange-at-the-time requests had been while Jericho had been talking. Sage and the skinwalker knew each other—and Sage had been asking Jericho-who-was-not-Jericho not to betray her to them.

They had been looking for Wellesley. Jericho-who-was-not-Jericho had called him Frank Bright—the name Wellesley had used before he’d come here. They’d gone to Hester and to Jericho because—Anna would put money on this—those were the only two wildlings whose homes Sage had been to. But sometime during the attack on Jericho, the skinwalker had seen the chance to do more than that, to become one of the Marrok’s pack.

Anna tried to visualize what she’d seen when that stink bomb had gone off and driven Charles off the trail. Had it come from Jericho—who had been on the trail above Charles? Charles, in wolf form already, was the one most likely to catch Sage. But the distraction had also allowed the skinwalker to isolate Charles and Anna from the rest—and ultimately, Jericho had been trying to isolate Anna.

And then there was Sage. Had she been looking for Wellesley for over twenty years? Or had her primary purpose been as a spy?

Later, Anna told herself, she’d figure it out later. She would not allow the skinwalker to have her mate. Charles had to keep fighting while she looked for a way to kill it.

Anna didn’t know where a holy man was to be found, but she did know that they had just burned down a cabin, and all three of the vehicles parked only a couple of miles down the trail had been at Hester’s cabin yesterday—and Asil had been in charge of the fire.