Page 32 of Captive Mate
What was Matthew doing right at that moment? I’d been gone for more than two full days, now. Was he looking for me? Did he regret what we’d done? Almost certainly. My belly clenched. Just because I was hungry and tired, dammit. I could still smell Matthew on me, or imagined I could. I wasn’t going to try to catch that scent. I’d take another shower as soon as I could.
Had they written me off as a bad job, called Parker and told him he could look for me elsewhere? Were the Kimballs circling, looking for another opening to take revenge for Sam and Adam’s deaths, the deaths of their pack members in the fight, and their overall resounding defeat?
Not that I cared about the Armitage pack. Fuck them. I only cared about myself, and I needed to know what Parker was doing in order to kill him. That was all.
I needed a car. I needed herbs, salt, chalk, and candles, and possibly a few other oddball items. First I needed food and a place to sleep until night fell, when I’d be free to move.
I slipped down the alley again, just another scruffy drifter wandering the streets at dawn.
***
The Kimball pack had a much larger territory than the Armitages did, and it was a lot closer to civilization, such as civilization was in this part of the country. The northeastern edge of it was only nine miles or so outside of Lancaster.
A little over a mile before the border, there was an abandoned campground. I’d seen it a few times when coming and going from the Kimball territory. Since it was closed, park rangers never went there, and that close to pack land the county sheriffs wouldn’t bother with it either.
It was right after midnight when I crept my stolen Honda sedan down the rutted dirt road, after a quick stop to remove the barrier across the road and then replace it in my wake. I used a little bit of magic to hide the tire tracks. I wasn’t using headlights, relying on my enhanced night vision, and after a while I lost patience, pulled the car in between some trees, and killed the engine. This was far enough from the road to be discreet, but close enough that I’d be able to circle back to the car if I needed more than a bobcat could carry.
Because I had to do my first approach fully shifted, there was no doubt in my mind about that, for all the same reasons fully shifting had been better for escaping from the Armitages. I wouldn’t trigger the wards, my smell wouldn’t attract that much attention, and I was so much quicker and quieter.
I stripped, leaving my clothes in the front seat, and I set the small backpack I’d rigged up with something like a harness on the ground, carefully arranging the straps. It already held the spell components I’d liberated from their captivity in a superstore and in the back of a small herbalist shop earlier that night — and a pair of track pants and a t-shirt, because like fuck was I doing magic in the Kimball territory in human form completely naked. I shifted, melting into my lynx form, contorted myself into a variety of stupid-looking poses to get the backpack situated on my back, and set out into the night.
A small creek divided the old campground from the Kimball territory, and I picked my way across it after a twenty-minute trot. I opened up all of my senses, magical and cat, collecting as much information as I could.
They had boundary wards, and at first glance they looked much fancier than the ones Nate had constructed for the Armitages. Impressive, even, with a lot of the magical equivalent of flashing neon lights and whizzing alarms. Like some cheap, desperate, off-brand Las Vegas casino — and I seriously wasnotgoing to miss being able to visit Nevada.
I wrinkled my nose and huffed. Ugh. The wards weresolike Adam — all form over function.
The wards also weren’t hard to bypass; all I had to do was strengthen the spells that kept me looking like a normal old wildcat.
Wearing a backpack, but hey. That didn’t matter to the wards. I made a mental note to suggest to Nate that he modify the Armitage wards to pick up on spell components that weren’t commonly used in other contexts, in order to set off alarms for shamans who might make it through otherwise.
And I stopped dead, one paw suspended in the air.
I wasn’t going to see Nate again, not even to kill him with a water bottle. I wasn’t going to see — any of the Armitages. I shivered. What the fuck waswrongwith me?
I went on, forcing myself to put one paw in front of the other and focus. Parker. Kill Parker. Leave. Never see Matthew again.
My chest ached. I must have gotten a stitch in my side from running.
One paw in front of the other.
The Kimballs had a larger central compound than the Armitages did, too. The Armitage pack house was basically it, plus a large garage and a couple of outbuildings holding tools and gardening stuff. The pack, such as they were, lived either in the main house or in a bunch of dilapidated cottages out back.
But the Kimball pack house was more of a mansion, much added-to over the years, three-storied and sprawling. They had more outbuildings, several garages, and then a few three- and four-bedroom houses not too far away, each holding large families. There were a lot of buildings to avoid as I approached.
But I made it all the way there without being seen and without, as far as I could tell, drawing any other kind of attention, magical or otherwise. Where the fuck was everyone?
I got my answer once I made it a little closer to the center of the territory. I started to hear shouts and movement, like a lot of people were very busy. It got louder, and then I smelled what seemed like half the Kimball pack, all assembled. From the shelter of a large pine’s drooping branches, I finally got a good view of the wide expanse of gravel in front of the pack house.
The house itself was lit up in every window, and the floodlights on the outside of the building illuminated a few dozen weres at least, all loading things into vehicles parked all around the driveway, and talking in small clumps. There was a boisterous energy to the crowd, the kind of bouncing, boasting arrogance men got before they went to war.
They were going to war. Tonight.
I needed to know what the plan was. I needed to warn Matthew…but why would I? If I’d been in human form I’d have slumped to the ground and covered my face with my hands, but in this one all I could do was pant for breath.
Either way, I had to know more.
I gave the milling crowd a wide berth, padding silently a few feet inside the trees, which grew in scraggly clumps all around the main compound.
