spell drifted away into nothing. All I knew for sure was that Elizaveta was here, and she was somewhere in front of me. The best thing to do was to find Adam and warn him, so I walked back around the warehouse.
Things had changed since I left. Adam, the red wolf still sitting at his feet, had only a handful of wolves with him. Shawn, David's grandsons, and a couple of other humans I didn't know, held guns on a group of men who were stretched out on the ground in a spread eagle.
As I approached them, David and Darryl escorted another man out and sent him sprawling by the other men.
"That's all the humans, Sarge," David said. "We left a couple dead in the house. But the wolves have scattered, and I couldn't pick up Gerry's trail, though, not even when I started from the last place I saw him. His scent just fades away."
"Adam," I said.
He turned to look at me and the red wolf suddenly leaped into the air as a shot rang out. It wasn't a particularly loud shot; it sounded like a small caliber.
"Get down!" barked David as he dropped to the ground. His men crouched, still holding their guns on their prisoners.
The wolf beside Adam stood for just a moment longer, then collapsed, as if it had listened to David as well-but I could see the dart dangling on his side and knew he'd been hit by one of the tranquilizer guns.
Adam didn't drop. Instead he closed his eyes and canted his face upward. For a moment I wondered what he was doing, then I realized the light on his face came from the moon, which rose above us almost exactly half-full.
Darryl, low to the ground, surged over the distance between Adam and him. He stopped beside the downed wolf, jerked the dart out.
"Ben's okay," Darryl said, raising his gun so he'd be ready to shoot as he scanned the darkness surrounding us.
Ben was the red wolf. It had been Ben, the psycho-killer from London, who had saved us. Saved Adam twice.
Another shot fired. Adam moved his hand and the dart fell to the ground to roll harmlessly against his feet. His eyes were still closed.
"Sarge, Mercy," hissed David. "Get down!"
I realized then that I was still standing, too, leaning a little toward Adam as he called down the moon. I might have knelt then, if only because David told me to, but Adam threw back his head and howled, a wolf's song rising from his human throat.
For a moment the eerie sound rose, echoed, and died away into silence, but not an empty silence. More like the deadly quiet that precedes the start of the hunt. When he howled again, he was answered by every werewolf within hearing distance.
I could feel a song surging into my throat, but like my wild brethren, I knew better than to sing with the wolves.
When Adam called a third time, Darryl and David both dropped their weapons and began to change. The moon's call sang through the trees and I could feel it catch the rest of the wolves and force them into their wolf form. I could hear cries of agony from those who fought it and groans from those who didn't.
Adam stood in the moonlight, which seemed somehow brighter than it had been moments ago. He opened his eyes and looked at the moon's face. This time he used words.
"Come," he said.
He didn't speak loudly, but somehow his voice, like his song, spread through the abandoned tree-farm like a roll of thunder, powerful and unavoidable. And the wolves came.
They came by ones or twos. Some came with joyful dancing steps, others with feet dragging and tails low. Some were still changing, their bodies stretched and hunched unnaturally.
The warehouse door banged open and a man staggered out, one hand clutched to his chest. It was the guard Shawn had shot. Too weak to change, he still answered the power of Adam's call.
I wasn't immune. I took a step forward without watching the ground and stumbled over a stick. I caught my balance, but the jerky move set off the pain in my arm-and the pain cleared my head like a dose of ammonia. I wiped my watering eyes with the back of my wrist and felt the unmistakable surge of witchcraft.
Heedless of Adam's magic and my arm, I started running, because, in the night air, thick with power, I felt the spell gathering death and it