Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
The scent tackled him like something physical.
And even though he knew exactly who it was, he leaned forward, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed in through his nose. Just to be sure.
As he was exhaling, Mayhem came up to him. “I said, what we got?”
At that moment, a pack of dogs started howling, somewhere in the forest. Like they were bringing something down.
So they could eat it.
CHAPTER THREE
Mahrci, blooded daughter of Whestmorel the Elder, had come out in the storm only to make sure the feeding station for the deer, which she’d set up and maintained for the last couple of nights, had a fresh load of grain on it. Worried about the herd, she’d put a fifty-pound bag of feed on her shoulder and hoofed it out from the barn, the snowshoes keeping her on top of the three-foot accumulation while she got sandblasted by flakes.
There was no way one of the ATVs could have made it through, and dematerializing with the kind of weight she was carrying was impossible.
Plus, in a weird way, she’d liked the feel of the storm battering her. She’d been locked in the octagon of her own mind since she’d come up here, so it was good to fight against something physical.
Yeah, until everything had gotten away from her.
The first of the coyotes had snuck up on her just after she’d unlocked the snowshoes and brushed off the platform she’d built in the wood shop. She’d seen the animal out of the corner of her eye as she’d started to cut a pour hole in the burlap—
She’d been so surprised, the Swiss Army knife she was using slipped.
And went right through her glove, into the meat of her palm.
The blood had come quick, pooling inside the ski mitten before dropping into the snow: Even with the blizzard whipping everything around, the scent had been a copper rush in her nose, and a calling card she didn’t need.
Another coyote had ghosted out of the slashing snowfall. And another. And more.
Until they had surrounded her.
No mystery there: The predators had been smelling exactly what she was.
Instantly, because fear was the penultimate fuel source of the body, her heart rate had tripled, which increased the bleeding—and meant she couldn’t calm herself and dematerialize.
She’d tried, though, to close her eyes and concentrate, but she’d been terrified about being snuck up on and attacked from behind.
There’d been no way to get herself back to the big house.
And then the boldest of them had come for her, shooting forward and nipping at the back of her ankle. Even through the snow pants, she’d felt the bite, and a scream had ripped from her throat.
Not that there was anyone who’d come for her. That groundskeeper was a ghost, and the estate was otherwise empty—which was why she’d come here.
The next attack was triangulated, three of the coyotes lunging forward at once, their jaws snapping at her, their whip-thin bodies fast and strong.
So now she was screaming even more as she clambered up onto the platform. Wheeling around at her attackers, she kept the knife in front of her—not that she was going to be very effective with the three-inch blade.
More coyotes came out of the blizzard.
Mahrci panted and tried not to focus on how wet her glove was, how much blood was staining the snow, how light-headed she was getting—
“Heeeeeeeeeeeelp!” she called out for no reason.
Was this how she was going to die? Out in a goddamn snowstorm, at her father’s pretentious summer retreat, in the dead of winter?
And now she knew why it wasn’t “the living” of winter.
She jabbed the tiny little blade at the snarling jaws that popped up over the lip of the platform and disappeared. With every jump, they got a little higher, and she had the sense she was being toyed with: The platform was just four feet off the ground. They could get at her if they wanted—
“Fuck you!” she hollered as she stabbed at air.
She kept cursing and thrusting with the blade. After everything she’d been through, this was the way she went out? After all the shock, all the indecision, all the panic and confusion—and then what she’d done just before she’d left Caldwell?
Her death came by being torn apart by feral border collies?
“I hate you!” she yelled as her eyes flooded with tears that had nothing to do with the cold, the snow, the wind.
Or even the coyotes.
Meanwhile, the predators were not impressed with her defense. They had clearly done this before, circling their prey, closing in that circumference, their bright, greedy eyes locked on their meal, those open jaws chattering as they chuffed and howled in excitement, in the storm, in the snow.
Her tears burned as they froze to her cheeks—
The final attack was like a lightning strike, four of them coming forward on the compass points and jumping right up onto the platform like it was nothing to them. Because it was nothing to them.