Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

“I don’t know. I’ve never been on the run.” She remembered what Kieran had said: “Where I’m going you can’t follow.”

“Kieran said something about—” Finding his own kind. That was a revelation she couldn’t take time to think about now. “He seemed to have a sense of where he wanted to go,” she finished.

“Then trust him,” Julie said. “Maybe his memory is pulling him, or the senses he has that we don’t. Trust him, Alex.”

Julie made it sound so simple. “Kieran can’t run forever,” Alex said bleakly. “Unless he becomes a wolf again and… stays that way.”

“He won’t have to.” Julie hunched her shoulders. “This’ll just buy time. While you’re taking care of him, we’re going to keep looking for the real killer.”

Alex wished desperately for even a fraction of Julie’s confidence. You made your choice, Alex…

“You just concentrate on finding somewhere out of the way where the cops won’t find you. We’ll do what we can on this end. I’ve got a cousin who’s a cop over in Baxter, and he’ll pitch in too. I’ll give you a number you can call for updates.”

Silenced by the sheer scope of it, Alex swallowed several times, hard. “Without you, Julie…”

“Things have a way of coming together,” Julie said. “There are patterns—” She broke off and gave Alex a sheepish grin. “Here I am going all mystical on you. It’s simple. If you feel a powerful need to pay me back, you can finally sell me that Blazer of yours.”

With a long, shaky sigh, Alex began to laugh.

Chapter 13

When Joseph walked in on the meeting in the back of the bar, they all fell silent.

Even the loudest of them, Howie Walsh, looked at Joseph with respect. Joseph took it as his due. “Old Arnoux,” they called him, but they knew his father had been one of the greatest wolf hunters in the north, and Joseph had followed in Jean-Baptiste’s footsteps from a very young age. Until the wolf bounty had ended, and it became illegal to hunt wolves in Minnesota.

But the hunting had never really ended. The men gathered here wanted blood.

Howie got to his feet. “Glad to have you with us, Arnoux,” he said. He puffed out his chest, gathering his compatriots in with his glance. “We knew you’d want to be part of this.” He gestured to a chair and slapped Joseph on the back. “We were just talking about the rogue wolf five years ago, and how you went after it. This time the bastard won’t get away.”

Joseph took the offered seat and looked around the room. The men here were mainly of Howie’s ilk—puppies who had no idea what they faced. They truly believed a mere wolf could have torn Peter Schaeffer’s body into ribbons.

They waited for him to speak, but when he remained silent they resumed their rambling conference. Boasts and loud promises to bolster their courage against a man-killing monster.

No, they didn’t understand what they faced. They worked themselves up into a killing frenzy, reducing the unknown to something easily faced. They were fools, most of them. They didn’t possess the true hunter’s spirit that understood and became the quarry in order to emerge victorious. But he needed their help. Alone, he couldn’t watch on all fronts now that he knew Kieran had killed again and would be on the run.

“When we find that killer wolf,” Howie was saying, “we’ll take it straight to that bitch’s house and hang it up over her door. Prove to all of them—”

“She wasn’t at the cabin this morning,” Norm McCallister said. “Maybe she’s out trying to find the wolf to protect it.”

There was a chorus of harsh laughter and protests. “She was screwing that bastard Holt,” toother man put in. “The cops think he did it. Heard they went to question her. She’s probably holed up with him somewhere.”

“Let the cops think whatever the hell they want,” Howie snapped. “If Holt gets in trouble, great. But we still have a job to do. Kill that wolf and—”

“No.”

The softness of Joseph’s voice startled them to stillness. He got stiffly to his feet, meeting every set of eyes around the loose circle of chairs. “No. When you find the wolf, you must not kill it. You must bring it to me.”

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