Rico blanched. “Yes, my queen. You are the light in my life. Without you my world is cold and dark and celibate.”
She looked back at Ox and arched an eyebrow.
“No,” Ox said. “I will not bite you. I will not harm you. Any of you. We will protect Green Creek with everything we have.”
“And what about them?” she asked, nodding toward the Omegas prowling behind us. “If what Rico and Jessie told us is true, they’re sick. They’re hurting. And you don’t know how to fix it. How can you guarantee they won’t turn around and attack someone when you’re not looking? You can’t be everywhere at once, Ox. No matter how strong you are.”
“That’s where we come in,” another voice said.
I turned my head.
On the road stood Aileen and Patrice. Behind them were a group of people.
Witches. All of them.
Aileen smiled. “I have an idea.”
ravensong
“THIS HAS to work.”
I turned my head, fumbling with the cigarette in my left hand. Ash burned my fingers as I blew smoke out my nose. Maybe it was time to quit.
I looked back out at the front of the house at the end of the lane. Omegas prowled in the snow. Some were sleeping. Others were grooming. Still others crashed in the forest around us.
Mark lay at the bottom of the steps, ears perked up, paws crossed in front of him, watching the feral wolves.
Carter was running with the timber wolf at his side. I could make him out in the distance, weaving in and out of the trees.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, stubbing out my cigarette and dropping it into an old coffee canister.
Oxnard didn’t say anything more.
He didn’t need to. We were all thinking the same thing.
It’d been six weeks since the full moon. Things had changed yet again, and I couldn’t help but feel like we were barely in control. The people who’d been at the Lighthouse the night Elijah had come for them had formed somewhat of an uneasy truce with us, led by Bambi and, surprisingly, Will. Granted, he seemed to take pleasure in telling anyone who would listen just how right he’d been, but still. People who thought he was crazy before didn’t think that now.
We hadn’t been able to escape scrutiny. A cop had been shot in the head. Green Creek had been torn apart. People were dead.
A tale was spun. Of a militia group who had come to Green Creek under the cover of a storm. They hadn’t been happy, Elizabeth Bennett had told authorities, about a land deal that had been in the works with her husband before he died. He’d been planning on pulling out but had had his heart attack before he could do so. It’d been left to a grieving family to inform the Kings that any negotiations that had been in place before Thomas Bennett died were over.
The Kings had come then. Armed to the teeth. They’d murdered Jones, dumping his body in the woods. They’d almost killed Chris and Tanner, first by knocking them into the diner, and then, later, by holding them hostage and torturing them. They’d destroyed the bar.
They’d been led by Meredith King.
Meredith King who, in the end, had blown herself up in the Lighthouse.
As for the others, well. While everyone had been trying to hide, there must have been some infighting. There’d been gunfire. That was all anybody knew.
Oh yes, there’d been dogs with them, now that you mention it. Big dogs. Dogs that almost looked… feral. The Kings had brought them when they tried to take over. No one seemed very surprised that the dogs would have turned on their masters. You raise a hand to an animal enough, and eventually it will either cower or fight back.
It looked as if these dogs fought back.
No, no one saw where the dogs went. The area was rural. The forests stretched for miles and miles into the mountains. They probably took their pack and fled. They’d be long gone by now.
It was shaky, held together by thin strings. It had holes large enough to drive a truck through. It was national news, the tiny mountain town under siege by a group of redneck militants. Oregon seemed to breed them. There’d been that group the year before in Eastern Oregon who’d taken over a wildlife refuge to protest the Bureau of Land Management. Granted, they’d gotten off free in the end, hadn’t they?
The Kings didn’t.