He felt his hackles rise, a curious corkscrew electricity running up his backbone, as if Death had run a playful forefinger up his vertebrae. A cold, hard spot appeared in his mind, coming from the head of the sphinx. Unable to say what it was, he knew only that he feared it.
"Eveready," he said, voice low in his concentration. "The very top of the hill. Maybe by that big windfall trunk... I think something's up there."
The matchless night vision of the Cat searched the hilltop peak as the boat shot toward open river. Valentine dug his oar blade into the water as if trying to dig a hole for the boat to hide in.
"Val, I think you're right. It's up there, but not moving. A Reaper. Hard ears, boys. This is a sound you need to know."
Fingernails on the blackboard. The cry of a stricken hawk. Sheet metal squeezed in a compactor. Each would remember the banshee wail differently, loud and fresh and terrifying, to their dying day.
"Madre de Dios," Hernandez gasped, missing a stroke. "Shit!" he added, "I'm sorry, I dropped my oar."
"Use your rifle butt!" barked Valentine.
Other, distant wails answered the ghostly cry.
"Five," counted Eveready. "One for each of us. Hope that's luck, not planning."
The clouds thickened and dropped, bringing the horizon to a few feet from their faces. Aghast, Valentine brought his palm to the sky, barely able to see its outline.
"How the hell... do they do that?" Burton asked, puffing between strokes.
"I'd rather know how they knew we were going to hit this stretch of the river," Valentine said as he paddled.
Even in their current perilous situation, Eveready had lessons to teach. "They're disrupting your minds, not the weather. This could even mean a Kurian himself is around or working us from his Seat of Power. I've heard they can make a city seem to go up in flames, or a building catch real fire, just by willing it.
"They're reading us somehow. One or more of you might be giving off lifesign. While the swamp is full of it, if one of them were close to us, they might have picked up on ours, kept their distance, and just plotted where we were going. We'll never know for sure. The good news is that while they can swim the river, it'll take 'em a while. We can be across and separate, and head for the New Arkansas Post like hell. They'll go after whoever they can pick up on, and with luck the rest of us will make it back."
"Jesus, that's cold," Burton gasped.
"Makes sense to me," Alistar said.
Valentine swallowed his fear. "Can't do it, Eveready. We're Wolves-"
"I was a Wolf before you were born, son, and-"
"Then you should know," Valentine interrupted right back. "We stay as a team, whether it's two or two hundred. Only the dead get left behind."
"Whoever's giving off lifesign is dead already, Val," Eveready argued, trying to pierce the black curtain behind them. "Maybe not tonight, but some other trip in the future."
"We don't know they're reading lifesign. Maybe they tracked us the old-fashioned way. There are sniffer-Grogs, I'm told."
"Sorry, kid. I've got experience, and you don't. Gotta be lifesign."
Valentine broke the glum silence. "I say we put it to a vote. Every man for himself, yea or nay. If we decide to stick together, we put you off on the west shore. Alone, the way you like it." Valentine feared he might have pushed the old Cat too far. Maybe the vote would go four to one against him again, but he needed to try.
"No, no votes. Not with five Reapers on your tail," rasped Eveready.
"This isn't about you anymore," said Burton. "It's for us to say."
"Have it your way. Idiots. You know, if one Reaper catches up with you four, just one, you'll all be dead in twenty seconds. Five seconds each."
"Okay, lets take a breather," Valentine ordered, turning himself around in the boat to face his fellow Wolves. "Tradition. Youngest first. Hernandez? Every man for himself: yea or nay."
Valentine expected the sixteen-year-old to glance around at the others, or at least Alistar, for approval. But he looked squarely into Eveready's eyes. His hero. The man he called sir despite Eveready's repeated commands to knock it-off.
"Nay."
Valentine's heart leaped. He could have hugged the skinny youth. "Alistar?"