Jacks, Marcy - The Blind Werewolf Assassin [DeWitt's Pack 4] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (9 page)

Some could not be ordered to go. Jason, a recently transformed omega who knew how to shoot a gun, refused to leave Mick, his mate, behind. He was to stay close to Isaac, and they were to watch each other’s backs. Tristan and Corey also couldn’t be persuaded to leave, and they had been given jobs to attend to the wounded with Old  Maggie, because there would surely be wounded after this battle.

Adam had no intention of letting any of the hunters he captured

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leave alive. He was going to kill them all or be killed trying to kill  them all. Either way was just fine with him.

James had only briefly questioned him when he returned. How  close were they? How many? What sort of weapons?

The worst part of it had been that Adam could answer none of  those questions at all. He hadn’t seen who had been coming after  them like sneaking thieves in the night. He hadn’t so much as scented  any humans at all in the area.

James had tried to not let his disappointment show when Adam  revealed this and had promptly done what he could to keep the pack  organized and prepared for the attack that was surely to come.

Adam had been attacked by hunters, on their own land, and unlike  the last time, these hunters were left alive. They would follow Adam’s  trail back here and try to kill all of them.

These hunters were smart, too. They knew that coming after the  pack at night was no good, and not long after the pups and omegas  were cleared from danger, a smoking canister was tossed into the  clearing of cottages.

It had been thrown right at Isaac’s feet, who had immediately  kicked it back into the trees with an angry curse.

As though answering a challenge, ten others were thrown from  different directions, all of which were hissing the grey gas. It smelled  strange, but certainly didn’t make Adam very sleepy, though it did  bother his eyes.

Tear gas.

“Everyone shut your eyes!” someone shouted.

Looked like he and the other alphas would be putting Nick’s  teachings to good use sooner than expected.

The problem was that even with their eyes shut, the gas still  affected them. It made it hard to breathe, for one thing, from the nose  and the mouth, and a lot of coughing and gagging followed.

Adam's nose clogged as he inhaled, trying to find out where the  hunters were coming from through scent, so that was out, too.

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His ears remained just fine, and so was his sense of touch, and he

used them to hear and feel whatever he could.

A war cry sounded from deep within the bushes, and Adam could feel the vibrations in the ground as two dozen men charged onto their land. Their shouts were muffled. Gas masks, Adam thought.

Strange how much he could put together even  with his eyes closed, especially with one ear half blown off.

One yell in particular came just a little too close to Adam for his liking. This hunter was not shooting at him, which meant he had a weapon of some kind in his hands.

Adam dodged out of the way of the strike, listening to the swipe of metal cut through the air. Christ, did this guy have a machete?

Another swipe and another dodge. Being quick while choking on the air was difficult, and Adam toyed with the idea of just letting the hunter take him  down so that he could join Nick in the afterlife, if werewolves even got such a thing.

He threw the idea away quickly, snatching his hand out, finding the throat of the attacking hunter, digging his fingernails into the flesh and ripping it clean out.

The  hunter gurgled and immediately fell. Adam listened to his desperate wheezing breaths for only a moment before the man died.

Adam would not let himself be killed, by this man at least. For all  Adam knew, this had been the man to shoot and kill Nick.

Adam charged forward at the sound of the yells of his pack mates.  Some were yells of pain as they were struck, others of anger as they returned the fight.

He was going to take out as many of them as he could.

He wasn’t a master of being blind like Nick had been.  And with his nose useless as well, occasionally he still needed to open his eyes, at least to get his bearings, and the blurred visions in front of him did tell him that he was on the right path right before he grabbed the head of an enemy and twisted it around until he heard the telltale snap of bones.

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He continued on like this, tears running down his cheeks from the gas and from his rage. He managed to take out at least five hunters before the wind started to clear away the gas enough that he could see

a  little better, though his face felt swollen and weird.

James’s right arm was dangling and bleeding, but he still managed  to hold his own well enough against the three hunters attempting to  gang up on him.

Morgan fought like a true warrior and had two dead  hunters at his  feet as he ducked and dodged the coming attacks with his eyes closed,  entirely relying on his ears and the vibrations in the earth like Adam  had.

Isaac had a deep gash over his right eye that freely bled no matter how many times he wiped it  away. Had Jason not been right next to him, shooting at any man attempting to sneak up on him with one of their blades, he likely would have been killed by now.

Three men Adam recognized, Steven, Derek, and Eli’s brother  Eric, were on the ground, eyes open and unmoving in death. Eli stood above his older brother, protecting his body even as the anguish on his face told Adam that he knew perfectly well there was nothing that could be done.

I know exactly how you feel.

Adam was about to rejoin the fight when  another sound of hissing air stole his attention from behind, and he did a duck and roll just in time before the swing of the machete could take his head clean off.

The man he saw holding the weapon, his very face, made Adam’s insides freeze up.

“Deacon?”

Deacon stopped, clearly stunned to have been recognized. “I don’t

believe we’ve met.”

Adam growled at him. “I was one of the wolves who watched you get killed.

And dead he most definitely had been. Adam had been one of the men, along with James, to pull Deacon out of the pond before his

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blood could do too much damage to the clear water. He had even

helped to bury him.

“You’re dead.”

Deacon flicked the mean-looking machete in his hand. “Yes, well,

clearly I’m not.”

He swung again, and Adam dodged. “Isaac and Mick won’t let  you anywhere near their mates,” he said, recalling the times when  Deacon had attempted to force a claim onto them.

“I will kill that one wolf for attacking me like he did. Tristan I will  take into my pack because he’s mine. You, I’ll chop your head off just  for the fun of it.”

He swung again, and clearly he was not used to handling a weapon of this nature over his own claws and teeth, because his swings were sloppy and slow.

It took Adam a hair of a second to realize what had happened, and

he took the risk of taking his eyes away from Deacon just long  enough to glance at the other men fighting against the wolves of  James’s pack.

Not men. Not really. Those weren’t real hunters. They were  werewolves Deacon had recruited.

That was why Adam couldn’t scent any coming hunters before

Nick had been shot. It was because there were no humans in the area.

They’d all been werewolves.

“You’re getting your new pack to attack us, pretending to be hunters?” Adam asked.

They could have been talking over beers  with the casual way  Deacon responded to him. “I figured that the hunters must be doing something right. They do kill a couple of us once in a while.”

The fact that the weres fighting behind Adam, handling their weapons with so much more skill than Deacon,  could only mean that they were recently transformed werewolves, too. Deacon was building a new pack, and he still wanted this land, it seemed.

“It’s a good idea. Kill us all off, make it look like hunters did it,

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and that way the neighboring packs won’t look twice at you for it,

back from the dead or not.”

Deacon smiled, his teeth showing as he pointed the machete at  Adam. “Exactly.”

“Yeah, well.” Adam took in a deep breath. “James! Deacon is here! He’s alive! He’s not dead! He’s alive!”

Deacon swung again, and Adam lost his concentration because as he jumped back to avoid the sharp blade of Deacon’s machete, something he hadn’t been aware was there caught his feet. When he landed on his back, the air whooshed out of his lungs, and for a few seconds he had trouble breathing.

“You little shit,” Deacon snarled. “Do you really think it matters if you yell it out? I’ll kill everyone here. Then I’ll go and claim the omegas and have a full pack again, and it won’t matter if everyone here can see that I’m alive. They’re all dead anyway.”

No, they weren’t, Adam wanted to say but couldn’t because of the trouble he had catching his breath. He could still see that there were more of Deacon’s men dead and down than there were of James’s.

James’s pack would win this fight  and chase away Deacon with hardly any more bloodshed now that the tear gas had blown away.

It made Adam feel better as he held still while Deacon lifted the

machete over his head, ready to make the killing swipe.

Adam closed his eyes.
 
I’m coming, Nick.

So  am I.

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Chapter Eight

Nick was aware of a bluish-looking fog that completely surrounded him when he opened his eyes. Then it occurred to him that he was seeing something. It was all color, and no shape, much the same as it had been in the last days before he’d lost his sight completely, but it was there.

I really am dead, he thought.

Then he tried to breathe, and he choked as the water invaded his

nose and lungs.

No. Not dead. Maybe drowning, but not dead yet.

He came above the water with a splash, choking and gasping,  spitting up the water he’d breathed in and struggling to grab hold of  the bank of the pond.

He got it, grabbing some long grass in his fist. He pulled himself  onto dry land, heaved himself to his hands and knees, and retched.

The puking and heaving was only because he’d taken in so much  water to begin with. The funny thing was how he needed to crawl  back to the pond to rinse his mouth out when he’d finished.

He could still see that same color of faded blue. Adam’s smiling  face appeared in  front of him, clear as day over top of the blur of  bright, beautiful color that was everything else.

For a second, Nick thought he might actually be standing there.  “Adam?”

No answer. Adam just kept right on smiling at him, and then he waved, motioning toward something else in that excited way he did whenever something had caught his attention.

He looked just like Nick remembered.

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Then Adam vanished, a slow fade-out that made Nick panic.

“Adam! Wait!”

He didn’t. Adam disappeared. Then so did all the blurring colors at the edge of Nick’s vision, and he wanted to cry.

His eyes. He’d thought they were…He thought he was going to see again, but everything was black and colorless once more.

Nick took in a deep breath to calm himself. He was all right. He was going to be okay.

Was he? Nick had the sudden recollection that he’d been shot. He

reached his hand up to his chest, gently probing his fingers along,  searching for the wound that he’d definitely felt going in, and found  nothing.

His courage, and disbelief, went up a few notches when the first  inspection turned up nothing. But there had to be something there!

Using his whole palm, Nick rubbed around his chest, but still  found no stinging, gaping wound.

It was like he hadn’t been shot at all.

Nick let his fingers dip into the cool water of the pond. Had this

water…?

Those hunters! The hunters who weren’t hunters. Maybe that was why Nick hadn’t noticed them until it was too late. Maybe part of the reason also stemmed from the fact that he’d been too busy having sexto bother with anything else. That Gerard person’s scent was already in the air, and if Nick had noticed that in the back of his mind, then he

must have shrugged it off.

Not acceptable. Adam had nearly died, and Nick had been shot.  And he knew he wasn’t dreaming that up because he could scent the  tiny drops of blood that landed in the grass and not in the water. That  was his blood.