Blood

20. Unwelcome Visitors

We slept kind of late. Why not? And we didn't think to take turns standing watch. I guess we were just too tired to worry about it and we'd gone so far into Canada that we didn't expect any trouble. I was pretty confident those agents hadn't followed us.

What I hadn't considered was the other Valukar. Those families from town who the agents had tried to round up, and who'd escaped ahead of us in their motor boats to join their Canadian friends. I assumed they'd gone to their Hide, wherever that was. Hedges had seen the map when he was helping them with their computer stuff, but I didn't know the details.

I guess it wasn't all that far from our cabin...

A growl awoke me. It wasn't an audible growl. There weren't any wolves in or near the cabin, I was pretty sure. It was something I heard inside my head. A warning sent to me by the leader of the wolf pack.

I sat up and my teeth slid down.

I could smell them then. I wish I'd slept like that, with my special senses engaged, instead of in my dumb old human form. Because I could smell a bunch of people, correction, Val. They had that more musky animal smell I'd learned to associate with the Valukar. But anyway, the point is, they were near. All around. Probably sneaking up on the cabin. Why would they do that?

And then it occurred to me that they probably blamed me for being hunted out of their homes. Because if it weren't for me, an 'unregistered' Val with the super-hunter genes of the Valvenandi family that they all seemed to fear, no one would have bothered to come to our sleepy town to hunt them.

I got up silently and shook Hedges. "Shh," I warned. "Visitors. Put your flannel shirt on."

And then I went to a window and, putting my eye to the crack in the checkered cloth curtains, studied the clearing and the woods beyond it. I couldn't see anyone, but I could definitely smell them.

Concentrating, I teased out the different scents. Amira's grandfather was there, probably leading the raid. (Why would he do that, though? It puzzled me.) And six more men, but only one I recognized from the fight at the police station. The others were new to me. Either family members who'd joined us at the marina when we fled, or new Val from Canada. Maybe both. What if there were a lot more of them here, and they all wanted us dead?

And I also smelled oiled metal and bullet casings faintly on the morning breeze. Hunting rifles. Damn!

Yesterday I'd fought more than a dozen armed agents, but that was in close quarters when I could strike them before they could get clear of each other and line up a good shot at me. And they were only humans. Could I fight a dozen armed Valukar whose reflexes were almost as good as mine? And how would I close the distance to even the first of them without being a really easy target out in the clearing around the cabin?

We were outnumbered and completely outgunned, seeing as we didn't have a— wait, what? Hedges had pried open a tall case in one corner and was taking out a shotgun and putting cartridges in it. Okay, that was a start. "Cover the door," I said. "And blast anyone who comes in."

I started to slide a window open, but a bullet buried itself in the log wall just to one side of the opening. Shit! I ducked to the side and looked at Hedges, who frowned and bit his lip. This was a bad situation. Probably the worst yet. And we were completely alone.