Glinting Silver

Chapter 7

Come on! Let's go! Alistair yelped. I snarled inwardly, flattening my ears. Belle was walking again, limping beside me. The snake bite had been from a death adder no less, but had only managed to get to one of her lungs before the poison diluted. She had blacked out because she only had one lung.

Aren't we meant to be gong to the Hunters' camp? she complained. Alistair glanced behind him but said nothing.

On the other side of me, Kim was holding her satchel in her mouth. I looked away from it and shuddered. Bliss poked my flank and tipped her head, glancing at Belle. I pricked my ears and flicked my tail, mouth open. The young wolf was fine.

The ground turned to hard, cracked stone beneath my paws. I looked up, and my jaws hung open. We were ontop of a small hill if rock. And way in the distance was and active volcano. I whirled around to glare at Alistair. He seemed perfectly at home, russet fur waving in the breeze, and I got the feeling we were following him into a trap. I started walking.

"Wait! Juniper wait!" a human voice. I turned to see Alistair running towards me. His powerful arms and legs were moving at blinding speed, and his dirty-blond hair was flying around his face. I noticed Kim was watching him. Huh.

I glared at him, head forward and lowered and teeth bared. The young man held up his hands in acceptance of my dominance. He was holding something. It looked like a stick. I flattened my ears and reached forward to grab it with my teeth.

Alistair quickly snatched it away, eyes wide. I started going human, wanting to touch the thing. As soon as I had hands, I was given the thing. It was a long arrow, almost as long as my leg. The end was feathered in black, and the tip was a sharp grey rock with a black liquid on it. I tipped my head, turning it over in my hands.

Belle, Bliss and Kim, all human, peered over my shoulder. I touched the arrow tip and rubbed my fingers, succeeding in smearing on my hands. It didn't look like it would do me any good, which might have been why Alistair wouldn't let me hold it in my mouth.

"Where did you get this?" I murmured. Alistair turned and started walking away across the flat stone ground. Tiny shrubs stuck up out of cracks in the dirt and they grabbed my legs with long twisted arms. We kept going until all I could see was stone and thorn bushes. Then Alistair stopped, and I saw something new.

The stone was dark with blood. Arrows lay abandoned on the ground, the plastic and wooden shafts snapped. A broken dagger lay nearby. All were covered in the same dark black liquid. Bliss touched the broken dagger, almost cutting herself on the sharp blades.

"The blood is fresh." Belle called. Oblivious to me, she had been touching the dark splotches on the rocks. Bliss smacked her hand away, and an all out play war broke out between the twins, Kim and Alistair trying in vain to shut them up.

The moon came out from behind a cloud and lit the scene. And what shines in moonlight? Silver fur. What did I see shining in the thorns? You got it.

While the others squabbled behind me, I inched forward to get to the bush. My human skin was not tough and would be shredded if I tried to get the shining thing. Instead, I parted the branches with a rock and grabbed it before the branches could close.

It was a tuft of fur that shone silver I the moonlight. There was a dab of blood on the end and I touched it.

Images! They flashed through my head so fast I could only make out one. It was just flashdlashflashflash and then one image that stayed. A silver wolf launching himself at a bigger tougher white wolf.The entire seen flashed a blinding white and I was screaming.

I was screaming. An inhuman cry was escaping my lips. My friends and Alistair were looking down at me as I convulsed on the stone ground. Kim had the tuft of fur and was inspecting it.

"Murder. This is the fur of her mate." she observed. "That's why she's reacting this way to touching it."

My uncontrolled sobbing was quieting now. Bliss and Belle glanced at each other, mouthing the word Domino to each other. Alistair picked up the broken arrow and tipped his head.

"The black syrup must be a poison of some sort. My kin have equipment to find out exactly what sort." he said, wiping the goo off his hands. I trembled, curling into a ball.

"Your telling me we can turn back and find your kin? Instead of saving Roar?" Kim demanded. Alistair nodded solemnly. Me, I was too haunted by dreams to care what was happening.

"We can't fight the Hunters with June like this." Belle pointed out. "We either find your kin and Domino, or we die."