Beauty's Beast - By Jenna Kernan Page 0,33

heart. Should she follow or run?

She turned to move in the opposite direction when something occurred to her. What if it wasn’t Nagi or his Toe Tagger army? What if vigilante Skinwalkers were attacking the infants?

Samantha’s scalp tingled. She couldn’t let her own kind kill those little ones. It was wrong—so wrong.

She charged after Alon, following his scent as she plowed through the undergrowth toward the unknown.

Chapter 9

Samantha caught up with Alon and Aldara before they reached their objective. Alon turned to face the threat coming from behind and stopped the instant Samantha appeared.

Aldara bared her fangs. Samantha reared up to face this threat, but Alon extended a hand to stop Aldara. Samantha couldn’t hide her distress. They faced her together with huge yellow eyes, gray, pointed, batlike leathery ears and those terrible spiny teeth. They were near identical except Alon was larger and Aldara had fur-covered breasts. They were the most frightening things she had ever seen, and her body began to tremble even as she reared to her hind legs, rising to her full nine feet.

“It’s Samantha,” he said, his words slurred by his fangs.

“She’s a bear?” hissed Aldara.

“A healer, like her father. We might have need of her.”

Is that why he stopped the attack? Because she might be useful?

Aldara lifted her chin as if listening. A moment later she shuddered.

“They’re here. I can feel them on my skin,” she whispered. “Nagi’s forces.”

Alon went still and then the skin on his shoulders quivered like a horse chasing off a fly. “Yes.”

“What do we do?” Aldara’s huge, bulbous eyes were wide with terror.

“Kill them before they can report back.” His words were hushed, slurred and sinister. The harsh, guttural tone sent a shiver through Samantha.

“He’ll know. He’ll see them in the circle. They’ll tell him where to find us.” Her words were an urgent whisper.

Alon raked a hand through the long silvery fur on his head. It was so fine that the tracks of his fingers remained for a moment.

“Kill them quick. Get the Beta, Gamma and Delta packs and run.” He turned to Samantha. “They will kill you if they see you. You can’t defeat them alone. Your best chance is with us.”

Best chance. Her ears began to buzz.

She growled in acknowledgment as she could not speak in this form.

Aldara leaped away, running on all fours like a baboon. Alon glanced back at Samantha and then raced after his sister.

Samantha dropped to all fours and charged after the twins, who left a wide path through the undergrowth. Before she reached them, the terrible howling erupted again and then a roar. She broke from cover to find two Ghostlings locked together in combat. Alon, she realized, with an intruder.

Aldara scrambled from one small Ghostling to the next, stopping briefly to emit a high-pitched cry before moving on. Six small bodies littered the ground in bloody contortions. Four had been torn open in the middle and two had had their throats ripped out. The Delta Pack, Samantha realized.

She heaved with a wave of nausea at the carnage. Aldara finished her survey and roared. It was a sound that Samantha would never forget, full of pain and wrath and the need for revenge. Aldara leaped on the back of the intruder, heedless of the spines that punctured her, and sank her fangs deep into the juncture of its shoulder and neck. Alon released his foe, and Samantha now saw it was a female. The Toe Tagger twisted and howled in a vain effort to shake off her attacker. The Halfling’s movements seemed to drive Aldara’s fangs only deeper into the vessels and tissue at its throat. She could not shake Aldara off. Finally the Ghostling staggered and dropped to her knees. Only then did Aldara release it. Her bloody mouth gaped and she gnashed her teeth as she stood over her fallen foe.

Samantha caught movement from the corner of her eye. Alon and Aldara faced the female, so they did not see the second Halfling attacker streak from the cover of ferns. But Samantha did.

It came so fast she did not have time to think. Instead, she charged, meeting the thing in midair as it tried to tackle Alon. Her block drove it off course, and they both hit the ground.

The ease with which it knocked Samantha down both shocked and terrified her. The male Ghostling raised a claw that glistened with the blood of the Delta Pack. But his blow never landed. Alon grabbed its raised arm and sank his