Wolf Ways (The Madison Wolves Book 9) (36 page)

I laughed and wondered what she wanted from me. I considered telling her she could have whatever it was, but Portia leaned over to me. “The fun is winning whatever it is she’s after.”

“All right then. I guess we should join our captains.”

A moment later, I was accepting a hug from Michaela. “Tell me the truth,” she whispered into my ear. “Are you having fun?”

“I feel incompetent,” I said. “But otherwise, yes. I wouldn’t mind if we played games I was good at once in a while though.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “They keep me on my toes, finding ways to twist their games to suit me. In the fields with lots of cover, I do okay at this.” She paused. “You figured out about my hearing, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Not the details, but yeah. Natural foxes hunt by sound and can hear a mouse under the snow.”

“Right. My hearing is better than a natural fox. So when there is deep cover, I can still tell where a lot of people are. But in these arenas, I get clobbered. It’s all in fun.” She paused, still not releasing me. “There will be games you’re good at. Not often. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s all right, Michaela. Thank you for looking out for me.”

“Speaking of looking out for you… Where are your guards?”

“They each want something from me,” I said with a laugh.

“Ah, of course. I wonder what.”

“They didn’t offer any hints. With half of Scarlett’s team going after you, there won’t be that much competition to take me prisoner, so I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.”

She laughed. “Just so.”

By then, everyone had picked teams. Michaela released me, and we turned to see Scarlett and Angel negotiating.

“You have more enforcers,” Angel said.

I whispered to Michaela, “I thought we weren’t supposed to use titles.”

“We’re alone here,” she whispered back, “but the playing field has a referee.”

“You have the fox,” Scarlett countered, “and two more people than I do. I think the teams are fair.”

“You have Lara, Elisabeth, Portia, Serena, Eric and Monique. I only have Karen and Rory. I want one of your enforcers and you can pick one of my members or I’ll pick two.”

I leaned to Michaela. “Are the teams uneven?”

“Maybe a little, but they’re mostly hamming it up.”

“You have Michaela, too.” Scarlett crossed her arms. “What am I offered?”

“You’re asking for a bribe?” Angel asked her.

“Yep.”

Angel put her hand on her hip and thrust it out. “What do you want?”

Scarlett looked Angel up and down pointedly. “You know exactly what I want.”

“What?” Angel spat. “No.”

“Fine. We’ll play with these teams.”

“No,” said Angel. “Fine, but I’m only giving you one person and it’s my choice.”

“Fine, but you have to keep anyone who is over there because someone over here wants to shoot her.” She looked pointedly at Michaela, and there were several chuckles.

Angel pulled us into a huddle. “Any volunteers to switch?”

No one spoke up immediately. Finally Connor sighed. “I wanted to catch Monique.”

“I’ll go,” said Ember. “If you guys promise to go a little easy on me.”

“No way,” someone said. “I want my room cleaned.”

Ember laughed. “Gotta catch me.”

“Thanks, Ember,” Angel said. “If I catch you, I won’t ask you to clean my room.”

“Thanks, Angel. If I catch you, I want an airplane ride.”

We broke up the huddle, and then almost as an exchange of prisoners, Eric and Ember traded places. And then we were moving towards our field.

* * * *

The field we played on seemed large, about the size of a soccer field. There were ample obstacles, but not so many that you couldn’t see where people were moving, more or less. We huddled together before the start.

“All right,” Angel said. “Our guns are only good to about a third of the length of the field. You can shoot a pellet from here to the other end, but it probably won’t break when it hits someone, especially against a soft target.” She looked at me. “Your helmet protects you, but the balls also break more easily against it, so people can shoot you from further away.”

“That’s another reason some of us don’t wear them,” Eric said.

I nodded. I wasn’t willing to take it off. I’d gotten shot in the head several more times, and it hadn’t hurt with the helmet in place.

“So we’re going to move forward quickly,” Angel said. “We’re going to advanced as two bulges, one on the left, one on the right. Michaela, you’re in the middle.”

Michaela groaned.

“What?”

“She’s the bait,” Angel said. “Everyone wants her. They want favors from her, but they also like shooting her even more than anyone else.”

“They’re getting even because I win so many of the other games,” Michaela said. “Angel wants me visible, but not too visible. She’s hoping everyone will concentrate on me, and the rest of you can pick people off from the flanks.” She turned to Angel. “I’ll agree to your strategy, but it costs you an hour.”

Everyone laughed.

“I am the team captain,” Angel said. “And you’ll follow my strategy whether you like it or not.”

“Perhaps, but the zeal with which I do so would be greatly enhanced if I knew my babies were going to be watched over by your careful eyes.”

There was more laughter.”

“Uh, uh,” Angel said. “We both know you’ll play with every ounce of skill you have, regardless of what I do.”

“Damn it,” Michaela said. “Fine. I’ll be your bait.”

“Questions?”

There weren’t any. We moved to the staging location, indicated we were ready, and then waited for Scarlett’s team.

I moved to stand next to Michaela.

“You aren’t going to want to do be anywhere near me,” she said. “They’ll start shooting at me long before we’re even in range.”

“How is this going to flow?”

“Ah. It tends to be a shootout somewhere near the middle. There will be a few breakthroughs, and the lines will collapse into chaos. But because anyone shot has to be taken to jail, the games don’t tend to get too one-sided. There’s an advantage to being the guard in that you can return to the game sooner. Prisoners have to run around the outside. But that just means the game flows back and forth a bit. If it gets too one sided, the returning prisoners will wait until they can join the game en masse, and then it’s a huge shoot out. If that happens, guards take really small bribes so they can get back into the action immediately, and the game flows back towards the center again.”

“Got it.”

Then the referee counted down, and then “Go! Go! Go!”

I played the first few minutes conservatively, playing to the right side and well back from the main action. I made a number of long distance shots, and a few of them even hit the people I was shooting at, but it was past the effective range, and they must have bounced off, as they didn’t surrender.

Michaela came under heavy fire right from the beginning, eventually crouching behind a barricade about a third of the way down the field. She got pinned there after that. I don’t know if she could have broken free or not. I’d seen her move, and I knew I couldn’t have hit her on the run. But she’d promised to be Angel’s bait.

A minute after that, we began exchanging prisoners. I could only tell a few people, so I didn’t know who was capturing whom. But we took a few prisoners; they took a few prisoners.

The bell rang, and I counted my first point.

I moved closer to the front, coming to a stop perhaps ten yards behind our bulge on the right side. I was close enough that I could be shot there, so I was more careful.

A group of wolves began moving onto Michaela’s position, but they came under heavy fire, and one by one they put their hands up. Other wolves raised their guns and ran forward to claim prisoners.

I even shot one, or thought I did, but he was claimed by someone else, so maybe we both hit him, maybe only she did. I couldn’t tell.

Then I looked right, and I saw three wolves trying to outflank us to the right. I fired and actually got one. She stood up and said, “I’m hit.”

I raised my gun. “Guard!” I yelled. I ran forward and claimed my prisoner.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Ember,” she said.

“Sorry, I can’t tell anyone behind the masks.”

“It’s okay.”

I grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her to the jail.

“What do you want to let me go?”

“An hour helping me work off my service time,” I said immediately.

“Ten minutes,” she countered.”

I began walking more slowly.

“No way!” she said. “You’re supposed to run.”

“I’m a clumsy human,” I said. “I might trip and get hurt. It’s an hour if you agree now or a half hour once we finally arrive at the jail.”

She laughed. “An hour, but I get to pick how I serve it?”

“An hour, but you negotiate with Portia from amongst the things she’s making me do. I want company.”

“Agreed,” she said. “Shake on it, but then I get to run.”

“Forty-five minutes if you know how to help me run fast.”

She laughed. “Forty-five minutes.” We shook on it, then she took my arm. We didn’t run as fast as I had with Portia and Monique, but she was able to pull me along a lot, lot faster than I could have run without her.

At the jail, there was a table with paper. Ember wrote down what she owed me, told me, “Don’t forget you get five points for catching me,” and then she left by the back door.

There were several wolves still in jail, trying to bribe their guards. One of the prisoners said “Zoe! Are you a guard?”

“Um. Sure.”

The wolf moved to me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Kaylee.” She moved closer so we could whisper. “Please let me go.”

“Sure, for an hour helping me work off my sentence.”

She laughed. “Ten minutes.”

“Thirty.”

“That’s too much,” she said. Then the bell rang. I lost the chance for a point, but Kaylee lost a point. “Damn it,” she said. “Come on, Zoe. I helped you scuba diving.”

“You can pick what you do based on the tasks Portia assigns to me,” I said, “but I want a half hour, and it has to be working with me. We can talk while we work.”

She glanced over at one of the other guards. “Eric is trying to make me wash his dishes for a month, and he’s a pig with his dishes.” She stuck out her hand. “Thirty minutes.”

“Thanks, Kaylee,” I said. We shook, she wrote down her debt, and then she was running out the back.

The game had barely begun. I had six points and seventy-five minutes of help with my sentence. I decided I liked this game.

Before the bell could ring again, I began moving forward, moving from cover to cover. I was most of the way back to the main action when I came under fire from the front. I ducked down, making myself look as small as I could, then smaller still as I nearly got shot anyway.

That lasted about fifteen seconds before I got shot from the right. I lifted my hands and called out, “I’m hit,” then slowly stood up, ready to duck again if anyone started shooting at me anyway.

Then I began counting, waiting to see if anyone would come claim me.

“Guard,” came a familiar voice, and when I turned to look, I saw Elisabeth moving quickly towards me. She took my free arm and pulled me towards the edge of the field before coming to a stop.

She leaned down. “I was watching for you. Please don’t be angry.”

I thought about it and shrugged.

“I want something from you,” she said. “Will you let me run us to jail and then give me first shot at accepting a bribe before you ask anyone else?”

I nodded. A moment later, we were running.

Once we arrived at jail, she pulled me towards the back corner. “Do you want me to let you go?”

I nodded. “What do you want?”

“A calm conversation sometime before Thursday.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. You agree to do your best to stay calm and keep an open mind. That’s all I want.”

“An open mind about what? Elisabeth, I won’t let you settle. I won’t be the consolation prize.”

“That’s not it,” she replied. “Just a conversation.”

“Everyone seems to negotiate,” I said. “That seems to be part of the game.”

“I don’t know what room there is to negotiate, Zoe. This is what I want.”

“You can have your conversation on two conditions.”

“What are they?”

“You are also calm. I might have things to say, too, and I don’t want you browbeating me.”

“I have no intention to browbeat you.”

“Condition number two. You run me back to my side.”

She barked a quick laugh. “Halfway back.”

“Agreed. Do I write it down?”