Tolya studied him. “I am amazed by the human ability to be willfully blind. How can you come to a place like this and not understand what’s out there?” He stood. “I’ll have a decision this evening about your faux challenge. In the meantime, perhaps you should encourage the men you can influence to get as far away from here as possible before nightfall.”

Parlan smiled grimly. “Leave so they don’t die?”

“Oh, they’re still going to die. But they won’t be here to fire the shot that will kill you and your family.”

CHAPTER 33

Firesday, Messis 31

Air rode Thunder deep into the Elder Hills, the steed’s hooves drumming the earth, a herald for the oncoming storm. She rode until she reached the place where Namid’s teeth and claws met with Elementals when a decision was required.

The Elders were already there, waiting for her.

<A human pack is going to challenge the Sanguinati and Wolfgard for control of Bennett,> Air said.

<That is foolish,> a female Elder said. <We allowed humans to return because the Sanguinati and Wolfgard rule that place.>

<The male who is the human leader claims he didn’t know humans couldn’t participate in a fight for dominance.> Air looked at the Elders. <Packs of humans have gathered for this fight. They have the kind of weapons that killed the Wolfgard before.> She hesitated. <I don’t know if the Sanguinati can survive so many enemies. The Wolfgard know they cannot.>

Air waited while the Elders considered what was about to happen in the town that bordered their home.

Elementals had their own connection to the world and took care of the world in their own way. They seldom interfered, for good or ill, with the creatures that lived in the world, and were usually indifferent to the help or harm they caused the smaller species—except when they or the Elders were needed to reshape a piece of the world. Then they worked with Namid’s teeth and claws to thin out herds that had grown unchecked—or to eliminate a species that had become too much of a threat to the rest of Namid’s creations.

They had joined with the Elders across the world to eliminate a certain breed of human, so Air waited now for the message she would take back to Tolya—and then share with the rest of her kin.

<Why didn’t the Sanguinati eliminate the enemy when this human first arrived?> The female Elder sounded troubled.

<The human caused no trouble, offered no challenge,> Air replied. <He was no different from the other humans who have talked to Tolya about living in the Sanguinati’s territory.>

<Until now.>

<Until now,> Air agreed. <The human promised to challenge and then yield, acknowledging the Sanguinati’s dominance and control of Bennett. He promised the human weapons that kill would not be used.>

<Should we believe this human?> a male Elder asked.

<No,> another male voice answered.

Air felt the change in the rest of the Elders. This one hadn’t taken on a two-legged shape recently, when the decision had been made to assume a humanlike form in order to hunt down the humans who used to live in Bennett. Whatever its true form, this Elder’s shape stood on two legs but there was nothing humanlike about it. It was an ancient form, fanged and furred and terrible in its making—and, Air noticed, feared by the rest of the Elders.

That he was here, now, was a choice she found interesting. But she could afford to find this Elder interesting. She and her steed were the only beings here that he couldn’t harm.

<The human packs are not the same kind of humans as the ones who are living among the terra indigene,> he said. <The humans in the packs prey on other humans. And they will prey on the smaller shifters. They have done this in some of the empty places the smaller shifters reclaimed, and we killed enough of them to drive them away.>

<Now they are here,> the female said.

<Now they are prey to be destroyed.>

Air understood now. The Elders who had gathered to thin the human herds were scattered again, hunting and moving within their territories as prey moved to feed. But here, in these hills, there were many Elders—more than enough to destroy this particular kind of human.

What had Tolya told the Blackstone man? Cattle in a pen. Yes. Knowing there were many Elders here, these humans who preyed on their own kind had been herded toward Bennett. Toward this one Elder in particular.

<Humans who were allowed in the Wolfgard territory are not our fight,> the terrible one said. <If the human leader and his small pack challenge the Sanguinati and then yield and leave the Sanguinati’s territory, that is not our fight. As long as no terra indigene is injured or killed, we will stay in our territory. But if any human in the Wolfgard territory uses the bang that killed the Wolves, then this challenge becomes our fight, and we will thin the human herds again.>

<My kin and I will help if we are asked,> Air said. <Otherwise, we will not interfere.>

It was settled, then—or as settled as anything could be when humans were involved. The Elders and Elementals would keep the human packs currently in the wild country from entering the fight, and Tolya would allow the Blackstone man to challenge and yield in order to prevent a fight that would kill the Wolfgard in Bennett.

As she rode back to Bennett to give Tolya the Elders’ decision and then meet with her kin, Air wondered if the Blackstone man would keep his word. And she wondered which human was going to break the rules and get them all killed.

* * *

* * *

Parlan searched his hotel room, then searched it again. During the third search, he finally found the slit in the mattress—and the black stone that had been placed inside.

Fucking bitch, trying to sour his luck with one of her fucking stones! But when had she slipped into his room? Or would he find a similar stone in other rooms at the hotel? Who else’s fortune had Abigail soured? Not the people who were looking to stay in Bennett. She wouldn’t need to play that con with them, not at first. But there were a limited number of rooms available for transient guests. Had the bitch put a dissonant stone in each of those rooms? If she had …

William and Wallace Parker. Sleight-of-Hand Slim. Durango Jones. They were all staying at the hotel.

Despite being an Intuit himself, Judd didn’t believe that gemstones could bring a person good fortune or sour a person’s luck. He didn’t believe Abigail’s claim to recognize which stone could alter a person’s fate. He’d always said she was playing a con within a con while doing her spiel with Lawry.

But Parlan believed there had to be something real about her ability—and that’s why he began to sweat as he studied the black stone now sitting on the bedside table.

Now he knew why his meetings with the vampire had been going sour. His bitch of a daughter had set him up to fail even before he arrived.

Parlan twitched when the phone rang. “Hello?”

“This is the front desk,” a female voice said. “Mr. Sanguinati would like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

“Thank you.” He hung up. A couple of minutes later, he left the hotel and walked to the building next door.

“I thought you were going to take advice,” Parlan said when he entered Tolya’s office.

Tolya smiled. “I did.”

“That was fast.” And made him wonder if the vampire had tried to play him.

“Sometimes it is.” Tolya stood in front of the desk. “Your proposal to challenge and then yield has been accepted. You and your delegation and I with mine will meet in the town square. Once the challenge is concluded, as long as no weapon is fired and no terra indigene are injured, you will be allowed to leave town by car or train.”

“We agreed I could take over one of the saloons,” Parlan protested.

“We did, but the Elders overruled that agreement,” Tolya said softly. “If you remain in Bennett, you will not survive very long. Your family will not survive.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, that is a statement. Now I must go. I have other business to attend to this evening.”

Parlan walked out of the government building, Tolya beside him.

A Wolf howled, somewhere nearby. Then another howled a few blocks away. Then a third.

And then something else howled. Something that made Parlan’s skin crawl just from the sound of it.

“What is that?” he whispered.

Tolya Sanguinati shuddered. “That, Mr. Blackstone, is a warning.

* * *

* * *

Standing outside her house, Jana shivered, frozen by the sound of that last howl. The one that didn’t belong to a Wolf.

Barb stood just inside the screen door, looking at the street. “What do you think it means?”

Nothing good. “I’m going to check on the neighbors.”

“But dinner is almost ready.”

“I won’t be long.”

Jana jogged across the street to the Gotts’ house. They were home and dinner was on the table. She declined an invitation to join them, then hesitated. She wasn’t an Intuit, but she was learning to be a cop and trust her instincts.

“Stay home tomorrow,” she told Hannah. “All of you. Stay away from the town square.”

“Trouble?” Hannah asked, looking toward the Elder Hills.

“Maybe.”

She went up the street to Maddie’s house and talked to Evan, asking that he and Kenneth stay home with the children tomorrow.

That something howled again and reached inside her past the place of rational thinking. But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow herself to be too afraid to think.

The Ravengard had reported sightings of strangers moving into houses within the town’s borders, but Craig and Dawn Werner, as the town’s land agents, had issued no paperwork for houses on that street. When she told Virgil, he wouldn’t let her check it out and threatened to lock her in the Me Time cell if she defied him.

This had something to do with outlaws, with the men coming into town these past few days. But until someone broke the law, she didn’t know what to do about it.

* * *

* * *

Parlan bought a bottle of whiskey at the saloon and returned to the hotel. He needed to eat, but first he needed a couple of stiff drinks to settle himself.

“Parlan.”

He turned and waited for Sleight-of-Hand Slim, Durango Jones, and the Parkers to join him. “I think we could rustle up a few more glasses if you want to come up and join me for a drink.”

William Parker went to the hotel’s dining room and returned with a tray of glasses.

Parlan didn’t want the company, didn’t want any of them in his room, and hoped none of them noticed the stone he’d found in the mattress, which he’d left in plain sight.

“I saw you at the poker table,” he said as he poured a glass for Slim.

“Cards weren’t with me at all tonight,” Slim replied. “Made me glad they were playing for small stakes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was jinxed.”