“How?” Why were the last thoughts in her life going to be fueled by morbid curiosity?

“With. My. Teeth.”

She stared at him as he bared his teeth. He had something caught between two teeth, like a bit of greens. Except it wasn’t lettuce or spinach or anything that benign. It looked like meat. Flesh.

Her.

* * *

* * *

“Jana!” Virgil snapped her name and waited, watching.

His pack sister was gone again. Gone.

He leaned closer. Felt the shallow breath on his face.

“Jana!” Another voice calling her name.

He looked up and saw Tobias running toward them.

The man dropped to his knees, bent his face close to Jana’s. It hurt to see the look of relief on the human’s face.

“She’s still with us,” Tobias said, looking around.

“Most of the Wolfgard were dead when Kane and I got back to the den after the attack by the HFL humans,” Virgil said softly. “The pups were dead. My mate … I licked her wound clean, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t fix my mate. All I could do was stay with her until she wasn’t there anymore.” He looked at Jana. “I can’t fix my pack sister either, but I will stay with her until she isn’t here anymore.”

“Virgil.”

Virgil looked at the man. “Kane doesn’t answer when I call.”

“Virgil, Jana isn’t a Wolf.” Urgency filled Tobias’s voice. “Jana is human, and the human bodywalker is at the hospital right now fixing up people who got hurt in the fight. Help me save her, Virgil. Help me save Jana.”

They could save her?

Virgil sprang to his feet and ran to the edge of the street to look around. The horse that was not meat would be able to run fast to the human bodywalker’s den, but …

Seeing the van coming toward him, he stepped into the street. The van screeched to a stop. The driver lifted himself halfway out the window.

“Gods, Virgil,” Zeke shouted. “What the … ?”

Before Virgil could snarl a command—or bite the humans who had looked past him—past him—and now were foolishly scrambling out of the van—he heard movement behind him and turned to meet the threat.

Not a threat. It was Tobias, carrying Jana.

“Zeke, I’ll get the doors,” Larry said.

Zeke dodged around Virgil—who allowed him to dodge—and ran to Tobias.

“Oh gods,” Zeke said, looking at Jana.

“Can’t wait for the ambulance,” Tobias said.

“Come on. Larry! Spread some of those bedsheets we picked up yesterday.”

As Tobias and Zeke lifted her into the van, Jana groaned in pain.

Snarling, Virgil shifted to Wolf, ready to deal with any human who hurt the wolverine.

Then Zeke jumped out of the back of the van and Tobias said, “Virgil? You coming?”

He hesitated. <Kane?> No answer. <John?> No answer.

<Virgil!> Yuri called. <Candice Caravelli found a car with keys inside. We’re taking John to the vet. One leg is gone. We don’t know … I’ll protect him.>

<Then I will help protect the wolverine while she is here.>

<Jana’s … ?>

He didn’t want to say more, didn’t want to think. He leaped into the back of the van, careful not to step on Rusty’s human mom, who was bleeding again.

Zeke closed the doors. A moment later, the van jolted forward, almost throwing Virgil off his feet. He lay down on the other side of Jana, giving her the only things he could—warmth and companionship.

* * *

* * *

Jesse approached the station platform. She hadn’t seen Tolya as she and Tobias made their way from the southern end of Bennett’s town square to the northern end. Tobias had headed off to help Jana. She continued on her own to the train station.

How many terra indigene had fought here? She stepped around dead men, automatically moving weapons out of easy reach as she went. She didn’t think all these kills had been made by Elders. The bodies were too intact to be the work of Namid’s teeth and claws.

Someone groaned inside the part of the station that stored packages and other freight.

Judging by the smashed boxes, a part of the fight had happened here, and the fighting had been fierce.

She found Hawks, Crows, and Ravens. Some were in their feathered form. Others were mostly human in shape—if you didn’t look at the heads with beaks or the feet that had talons large enough to gut a man. All were dead from gunshot wounds.

Then she found Nicolai Sanguinati. One side of his face was masked by blood, and his breathing was harsh. He stared at her and slowly bared his teeth, revealing a fang that had broken at some point.

“Nicolai.” Jesse kept her voice firm, just as she had the time Tobias had tried to ride a green colt and ended up with a broken leg. “It’s Jesse Walker. Do you remember me?”

Could a Sanguinati have a concussion? Or brain damage? Nicolai looked like he’d taken a terrible blow to the head, but he could be paralyzed from some injury that she couldn’t see. And what she could see of him would haunt her dreams for a very long time.

“I … remember.” Every syllable took effort.

“Good. I’m going to step outside for a minute and find help. Then I’ll come back and stay with you.”

A quick look around confirmed that the telephone that had been on the counter had been smashed and the cord had been pulled out of the wall. Jesse took a couple of steps toward the passenger side of the station, then shook her head. Even if the phone worked, she had a feeling that there wouldn’t be anyone answering phones today.

Standing outside the station, she whistled—the loud, sharp sound she’d mastered years ago to call a boy to supper.

Birds circled above her. Ravengard maybe. Vultures, more likely. But the vultures were ordinary birds, not terra indigene, and nothing responded to her whistle until …

She didn’t recognize the man and woman who approached her cautiously. No visible wounds, but she figured the majority of the folks in Bennett weren’t used to handling guns and would have stayed out of the fight. Not like in the frontier stories where citizens grabbed shovels and pitchforks to help defend their town. But the hard truth was that any human who had picked up a weapon today would have been seen as an enemy.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Craig and Dawn Werner,” the man replied.

“You hurt?”

They shook their heads as they stared at all the bodies on the platform.

“I need you to find one of the Sanguinati. Any one of them will do. Try the hotel, the mayor’s office, or the saloon. If you can’t find one of them in those places, keep looking. Tell them Nicolai is at the train station and needs a little help.” Nicolai needed a lot of help, but she was certain Tolya would prefer having injuries downplayed.

“Okay,” Dawn said. “Is there anything we can bring back for you?”

“Water.”

They hurried away, and Jesse hurried back to Nicolai.

Not knowing what was wrong with him, she stayed out of his reach. But she also stayed within sight so he would know he wasn’t alone.

A few minutes later, Tolya walked in.

Jesse felt a moment of relief, even joy, at seeing him before she registered what she was seeing—or not seeing in his dark eyes.

This was a Sanguinati male without any pretense of humanity. Oh, the shape was still human enough, but it was a predator who stared at her.

“Nicolai needs your help,” she said.

He dipped his head in the slightest acknowledgment, his eyes never leaving her face, never losing awareness of her hands—and the rifle she held.

Keeping the gun pointed at the ground, she moved slowly toward the door. He turned with her, keeping her in sight, his attention never wavering.

Predator. Other.

And she was human, one of the distrusted.

It surprised her how much that hurt.

She didn’t want to believe he and the rest of the terra indigene had become enemies of the humans living in Bennett and Prairie Gold, but she wasn’t sure that was true.

What had it cost the terra indigene to win this fight—and what had the humans lost?

* * *

* * *

Virgil left the hospital. Stinky place. Kept making him sneeze.

He could have helped keep the wound clean, but the human bodywalker wouldn’t let him inside the fixing room, said he had to wait.

He would have shredded the fool’s leg if the bodywalker hadn’t made Tobias wait outside the room too.

He started to call for his brother, then stopped, already knowing there would be no answer. And John? A Wolf with three legs couldn’t survive in the wild country, even with the pack’s help. He wasn’t sure John could survive in this human place either.

Something howled. A deep sound. Distant.

Virgil shuddered. Even shifters didn’t want to approach that form of Elder. But he wasn’t going to let that howl go unanswered because the wolverine had challenged the terrible one, had been the reason the Elders had attacked the enemy inside the town’s boundaries. If he didn’t answer now, Namid’s teeth and claws would come back down from the hills—and after all the humans were dead, all the terra indigene would go back to the wild country and leave this place to the carrion eaters.

All the humans, including his pack sister. That he would not allow.

“Arroo!” I am here. “Arroo!”

I am here. I am here. I am here.

Alone.

* * *

* * *

“Come on, darlin’. Time to wake up.” Tobias’s voice, warm and coaxing.

“Stupid female thinks she’s a big predator … small predator … puffed up with attitude.” Virgil. Still on a rant.

Jana tried to move. Big mistake. “Hurt,” she whispered.

“Of course you hurt!” Virgil said from somewhere she couldn’t see. “You. Got. Shot.”

Tobias looked toward the door. “Not helping, Virgil.”

Virgil just snarled.

Shot. Yes. She remembered. She’d been fading. Failing. Now? “How bad?”

“Well, Deputy, it was a little more than a flesh wound.” Tobias said the words lightly, but now that she could focus enough to see his face, she could tell the effort to keep it light was costing him, because it didn’t last. “You lost a lot of blood. But the doc patched you up and said the bullet didn’t hit anything vital. You’ll be in here for a day or two so that the doc can keep an eye on you, and then you’ll be on desk duty for a while once you go back to work.” He paused. “One thing about living around Intuits. Plenty of people showed up at the hospital, saying they had a feeling the doctors needed help and patients needed blood.”

Tobias reached for something on the bed tray positioned over her knees. “There might have been concerns about the blood that the hospital had stocked, but look what Fagen and his food salvage crew found to assist patients in their recovery.” He held up a container full of a green substance.