In the Werewolf's Den (26 page)

And maybe it's the tooth fairy
, she told herself sternly. She knew perfectly well who else could walk so softly. Warders.

Against two warders, Simon and Fred could only handicap her, distract her attention.

As she passed him, she signaled to Simon to remain in place. This was her fight.

A one-against-two battle was not especially difficult for a trained warrior. Unless the two have trained together, they are likely to get in each other's way. A skilled fighter divides and conquers.

Warders, though, were trained to fight in teams. And a trained team could defeat a single warrior, even if that fighter was more skilled.

Like her, the two hunters disdained any artificial light, relying on their enhanced senses to see through the dark.

"There's nobody here.” An untrained ear wouldn't have even heard the sound of that voice. To Danielle, it cracked like thunder.

"The sensors say there is."

Danielle fought a brief sense of vertigo. She knew the second voice.

Mary had mentioned that Sergeant Mansfield would be coming to Dallas, but Danielle hadn't even considered the possibility of running into her. Mansfield, the woman responsible for training the warders in both blur and unarmed conflict, could eat Danielle for lunch.

"Probably three big dogs,” the first voice argued.

"She's here,” Mansfield stated with the certainty that only years of hunting can give. “Close."

From the changing angle of the voices, they were heading straight for Fred and Simon and would pass within ten feet of Danielle.

If she'd been alone, Danielle thought she could get past them. Mansfield was good, though, and it could have gone either way. With untrained men to protect, Danielle didn't have the option of simply fading into the bush. Unless she wanted to abandon Fred and Simon. But she'd abandoned too many already. She wasn't going to leave any more behind her.

Besides, the guys were important if her idea for the zone was going to work. With his cooking skills, Fred could help make the zone more of an attraction to tourists from the normal side of the line. Tourists who could see the promise of the zone and compare it to the hopelessness of the normal side of the line.

Simon, with his video talent, could help communicate the message of their new zone throughout the world—to other zones and to normals.

Even more importantly, the two would be wonderful examples of how people with ability, even if non-magical, could prosper in the zone. They would serve as a beacon of hope to those who, stuck on the normal side of the line, had given into despair.

Of course, Danielle knew she'd work just as hard to keep no-talents like Jeff and Harry alive. Go figure.

A sense of anticipation froze her.

It was the oldest trick in the book, but the snick of a shell being chambered almost made her start.

"Stay alert. I sense her,” Mansfield hardly breathed the words.

"You're crazy,” the male voice replied.

Danielle could see them now. Mansfield's solid form, almost as wide across as it was tall, took the lead. Behind her walked a massive, almost troll-like, man. Mansfield carried a large-caliber shotgun: the man, an assault rifle.

"Call for a chopper,” Mansfield ordered. “We've got her."

They were past her now, almost to where she'd left Simon.

Danielle let her trained reflexes take over, allowing her brain to watch rather than direct.

She bent, picked up a rock, closed the distance, and slammed the rock into the male warder's helmet before he was aware that he was under attack.

She wasn't sure she had done it quickly enough to head off his call to the helicopter, so she knew she needed to keep going, to take on Mansfield.

The instant she'd connected with the man's helmet, Danielle had rolled away, intent on avoiding the shot she was sure would follow the hollow sound of her rock striking the helmet.

The air displaced by the solid slugs was almost a punch.

"Got him, did you? That sucker won't be a loss to the warders."

Mansfield had vanished into the high grass that marked the return of prairie to this part of what had once been the second-largest city in Texas.

"I'm not interested in fighting,” Danielle said. “I'm just heading back to the zone."

"And I'm just here to stop you,” Mansfield said. “There'll be a hundred warders in the area within fifteen minutes. You don't seriously think you can finish me off before then, do you?"

Danielle kept quiet.

She was still holding the remains of the rock she'd broken on the warder's head. Now she threw it to an angle of where Mansfield's voice had come from.

Mansfield only laughed. “You didn't think I'd fall for the old shoot at a rock trick, did you?

The woman was good. Damned good. But was she as good as she thought she was? Danielle wasn't sure, but she knew she had to find out.

She circled around, counting off the seconds. Mansfield had been lying about the fifteen minutes. Even if Danielle had headed off the male warder's call, Mansfield would have called in her own helicopters. Danielle had five minutes at most.

She almost stumbled over something soft and yielding.

A stench reached her sensitized nerves like a shout. The distinctive smell of rotting corpse.

Recalling Arenesol's penchant for dynamite, she steeled her senses and reached for the corpse.

No dynamite. The elf had been a teenager and looked more normal than magical. She'd probably been a child when the return hit and moved to the zone with her parents. If her ears had been pointed at all, that, like so much else, had faded with a week of decomposition.

The only weapon the girl had carried was a light silver sword.

A sword was the kind of impractical statement that children like to make, but it was better than another rock.

Danielle picked it up. Things would have been easier if her nightstick hadn't dented Harry's pistol barrel. But she hadn't planned on fighting her way back to the zone. She'd hoped this part of the journey would be a walk in the park.

She didn't think she'd made a sound as she unsheathed the small sword, but she must have been wrong. A spread of shot whistled over her head where she bent over the corpse; a single silver slug ripped away a tuft of her hair.

Well, she'd never been a fashion plate anyway.

Mansfield's conceit in using an old fashioned shotgun was Danielle's only advantage now. She had already closed half the distance before she heard the weapon's action as Mansfield chambered a new shell.

Her sword met the shotgun just as Mansfield pulled the trigger, Danielle's weight deflecting the aim and the sharp blade embedding itself in the barrel.

Mansfield swore, then threw the ruined gun away, the sword still stuck to it. “Just you and me, kid. In another minute, it'll be just me."

Danielle hadn't been on blur for long, but she hadn't had much sleep for the past week and that weakened her. She felt the burr begin to ebb away.

With it, she had a small chance against the Sergeant. Without it, she knew she'd be outclassed by the woman who'd taught the Academy instructors most of what they knew.

Mansfield must have caught her look of dismay. “You had potential, kid. You're throwing it all away."

Danielle re-engaged the blur just in time to block a flurry of kicks and punches. But Mansfield pressed in too quickly to give Danielle a chance to counter.

Only one blow got through Danielle's guard, a hard fist to her floating ribs, but that punch ached and sucked energy from her system.

Desperately, she remembered what Carl had done to her when they'd fought. It had only been a week earlier, but already it seemed to be another life. Carl didn't have the blur, but he had his
Were
abilities. Very soon, Danielle would have neither. Still, she didn't think Mansfield would have faced the set of moves that Carl had put on her.

As her blur blinked out, she stepped back and tried to remember, to emulate, the way Carl had moved into the small circle kung fu/t'ai chi that had defeated her.

"Straight lines, Goodman,” the sergeant instructed as if they were in a classroom. “That fancy stuff is fine for forms, but it isn't fighting."

Danielle hoped Mansfield believed that. Danielle had certainly believed it until Carl worked his moves against her. But Carl was a master. She'd had only had a week to integrate them into her own system. And a week wasn't long.

Mansfield seemed impossibly fast, shifting from stance to stance without seeming to move in between. She phased in and out of the blur, preserving her energies when she didn't need it. That was something else for Danielle to integrate into her own arts—assuming she survived this fight. Mansfield definitely hadn't taught this lesson to her fellow warders and Danielle hadn't even known it was possible. People like Mansfield were always aware that their students may some day be their rivals.

Danielle guessed she should feel complimented that Mansfield thought she was worthy of using her secret weapon. She decided she could do with one fewer compliment.

She kept her hands in motion, knowing that she wouldn't have time for conscious reaction. She had to rely on her training, her skills, and her instincts.

It wasn't a good time to remember that Carl had fought her off with these techniques, but he hadn't beaten her until her own blur had faded. She couldn't fight defensively, waiting for Mansfield to lose her blur. The area would be crawling with warders before then.

Mansfield landed a hard shot to Danielle's calf—a fraction of a second after Danielle lifted her leg. Without that instinctual move, she would have lost her knee and the fight.

"You've learned something, but not enough,” Mansfield told her. “Too bad."

For the first time since she'd lost her sword, Danielle went on the attack.

Mansfield didn't even bother trying to decipher her feints and real attacks. She blocked everything, relying on the blur to speed her wherever she needed to be.

After the first few seconds, Danielle knew her attack was pointless. Still, she pressed on for a full twenty seconds sucking every reserve of energy she could find in her body. She wouldn't surrender, wouldn't let them capture her without giving everything she had to the fight.

Mansfield blocked Danielle's last kick—a spinning roundhouse that she knew was too slow before she launched it.

"I guess that's about it, then, Goodman."

If Danielle couldn't escape, at least she could let Simon and Fred try to get past the warder. “I'll keep her busy!” she shouted. “You two keep moving toward the zone."

"We can help you,” Simon answered.

"Trust me, you can't."

"Come on, Simon. Let's do what she says before we get killed."

Fred and Simon weren't the hero types, fortunately. She heard the loud tramp of their footsteps as the two men circled around the two warders and headed west, toward the zone.

Mansfield's eyes widened. “You're helping impaired escape?"

"They're not impaired, they're normals. And the only thing they're trying to escape is the world you warders have created."

She knew Mansfield understood her words. It was equally obvious that the Sergeant didn't have a clue what she meant.

"You hate the impaired,” Mansfield reminded her, spitting out the word with contempt. “Why would you want to expose any normal to that perversion?"

Could she hope to explain, to persuade Mansfield that she was fighting on the wrong side of the biggest battle of the century? Danielle didn't think so, but talking was better than getting killed. Every second she gained meant that the boys were a step closer to safety.

"I thought my step-father killed my mother because he was a vampire. But it wasn't the vampire, it was the man who was evil. When I lived in the zone, I learned that they were just people, some good, some bad. Same as normals. The only thing is, I decided I wanted to be one of the good ones."

"Damn. That
Were
seduced you, didn't he."

Danielle tried to suppress the smile. It hadn't been Carl who'd done the seduction. She had wanted it, insisted on it.

She obviously didn't suppress it enough for Mansfield.

"Perversion."

The Sergeant launched herself at Danielle, her arms outstretched in a completely inartistic attack.

Danielle's arms went automatically into one of Carl's circular blocks, one hand pushing Mansfield's attack off and the other, morphing from block to attack, slamming a palm thrust into the older woman's ribs.

Mansfield blinked out of the blur and glared at Danielle, surprise written over her face.

Danielle blurred and followed up, hammering elbows, fists, and chops into the Sergeant until the older woman collapsed.

"Guess you learned something after all,” Mansfield said. She leaned against a tree, her fight, at least temporarily, gone. “Too late, though. Listen."

The turbine roar of warder black helicopters shook the sky.

Danielle took off running.

She angled away from the path that Simon and Fred would have taken, hoping that the warders would be confused by multiple infrared signals.

She was only a couple of miles away from the zone. Close, but way too far. Even in blur, it would take precious minutes to cover the distance. And blur would make her stand out like an infrared beacon to the warders manning the huge choppers that circled overhead.

Although her instincts told her to run, to cover whatever distance she could, she slowed to a deliberate pace, trying to send the message that she was a natural inhabitant. A deer, maybe, or a feral dog, or even one of the wild pigs that had once ranged only in east Texas but that now covered greater territory as the rains increased and as humans withdrew more tightly into their cities.

She splashed through a creek, climbed the limestone cliff on the other side, and looked down into the zone.

It was so close, she could almost touch it.

In the distance, she caught sight of two figures nearing thick strands of barbed wire. She hoped it was Simon and Fred, although it was too far to see.

Three hulking gunships, machineguns jutting from their ugly frames, floated between herself and the questionable safety of the zone.