The Hunted

Six

Blake

The campground had been organized into a mobilized war counsel.

Blake stared through the window as Malachi maneuvered the car towards his site at the back of the camp. "How many hunters?" she asked.

"About fifty."

"And the wolves?"

"Numbers are unconfirmed but we should have no problems. Daryl's been monitoring this pack for some time now. He knows what their weak spots are. Plus we've gotten reports saying that the lead bitch is pregnant so when the monster in charge of this pack realizes they're under attack, he's going to reinforce the women and children. Leaving the door wide open for us."

Blake raised a brow. Not easy information to come by. "Where did he learn that?"

Malachi slid a glance her way. "I didn't ask."

A lie. After all these years, Blake had learned Malachi's tells. It was the way his jaw twitched, just slightly. But she didn't push it. That wouldn't end well for either of them.

"What's the infiltration plan? Are we luring them off of their land?"

"No. We're going to them."

Blake started. "Really? Won't we be repelled by that freaking magic wall they have around their border? How'd Daryl even find the pack anyway? Those walls act as deterrents. I've met hunters who've gotten their heads completely scrambled from getting too close."

All hunters knew that most werewolf packs within North America were secured behind faerie-enforced barriers. During the witch and werewolf hunts of the past, many supernatural groups had banded together to go into hiding.

Illegal and warded markets popped up, vampire covens refused to stay stagnant, the faeries relocated back into their Courts. Of them all, the warlocks were perhaps the hardest to track down when on the mortal plane. Nomads – many of which knew magic that let them blend into a crowd. Not impossible to find but very difficult in major cities where being different was just another Tuesday.

Many werewolf packs though had called upon the fair folk to weave complex warding spells into the fabric of the environment they lived in so that humans like Blake had no chance of finding the communities contained within them. The walls were invisible to humans did weird things to your head if you got too close.

Malachi had shown her one once, as a training exercise. They'd been in Utah when they'd accidentally stumbled upon the pack's wards. Being near the wall was the closest they'd gotten to seeing what was behind the curtain before the magic had repelled them away. Blake remembered walking towards a line of trees before suddenly finding herself a few miles away, heading back in the direction of their car as if that had been her path all along.

A normal person would have played it off, presumed that they'd gotten turned around in the forest and had back-tracked by accident.

Blake knew better. She knew what magic felt like. How it made her head slightly foggy, her memories unclear. As if she'd been drugged.

She didn't like the feeling.

"They have it," Malachi assured her. "One of Daryl's guys tracked a wolf here from Denver. Got close enough with his binoculars to see where it disappeared off to but stayed far enough back that the magic didn't affect him. He took the coordinates down for us and we started working on a plan to get inside."