problem. A small price to pay for the pack’s safety.
“Sorry you feel that way,” he said stiffly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t allowed to be here. It’s dangerous.”
“I have no fear of danger.”
Because she was daft. He tried to appeal to her sense of self-preservation. “You might get sliced with a chain saw or run over by heavy equipment. You see all of us in hard hats and goggles? There’s a reason for it.”
Tallulah shrugged.
Maybe an appeal to her dignity would do the trick. “Leave now, or the police will come out here and forcibly remove you,” he threatened.
She didn’t blink. “They can try.”
He caught movement in his peripheral vision as Matt strolled over. Great, she’d make him look like an idiot in front of his alpha.
“Is there a problem?” Matt asked in his wry, quiet way. He signaled the others to get back to work, and a loud buzzing returned to the scene.
“Yes. I’ve got a problem with you destroying these trees.” Tallulah tossed her mane of black hair and raised her voice over the whir of the chain saws. “Some of them have stood for decades.”
“They’re coming down,” Matt said firmly. “Unless you have a court order to stop us.”
She flushed. “I don’t. Not yet. This project sure was kept on the down-low. I didn’t know about it until I happened to drive past and heard the noise.”
“I suggest you protest this through the court system,” he murmured.
“By then, it will be too late,” she spat out. “All the trees will be cut.”
Matt didn’t respond, but his powerful, firm energy was like a force of nature. Being the alpha came naturally to him.
Tallulah turned her attention from Matt and shot Payton a daggered look with narrowed eyes. “I’ll be back,” she promised. “And I won’t be alone.”
Payton removed his hard hat and ran a hand through his hair. He nodded at Tallulah, but she’d turned away, her spine ramrod straight as she made long, purposeful strides toward the county road.
Of course she’d return. What fun this job was shaping up to become. The long, hot summer stretched before him, full of conflict with the locals, high heat and humidity and increased guilt over the destruction of yet more land.
He wasn’t the only one watching her ass sway in angry strides to her car. Eli, one of the ground cutters, approached and nudged his side. “What a looker. You get her number?”
Payton snorted. “I reckon she’d rather spit on me than exchange phone numbers.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Eli said with a slow drawl. “Where there’s sparks, there’s chemistry.”
Huh. More like “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” And an opportunity to get burned again when it came time to pick up and leave again for the next job, the next town. No thank you.
Dark clouds grayed the sky, and thunder rumbled through the woods. Fat, splatting raindrops dripped from magnolias and pines.
Tallulah didn’t care. The increased gales cooled her hot skin and made her restless, hungry for action. Wisps would be out this evening—the storm energy called to their chaotic, wild nature. For the past week, they’d been more active. So had the Ishkitini, as they’d hooted and fluttered in the treetops, ever watchful, looking for an opportunity to swoop in and slash with their sharp talons.
It wasn’t her imagination. Her brother, Tombi, and the rest of the hunters felt it, too. They’d be joining her during the next full moon’s hunting. For now, they were busy with new lives, new loves. Tallulah tamped down the jealous twinges. She’d had a shot at domesticity last year when Chulah, a lifelong friend and hunter, had proposed marriage. She’d even had second thoughts about turning him down, but then he’d fallen for a fairy, and that was the end of that.
It was all for the best. No one could ever compare to Bo, and second best wasn’t fair to anyone.
Whoosh.
Tallulah ducked and loaded her slingshot in one swift movement—but not before a talon swiped the side of her neck. Ignoring the pain, she released the stone. It thudded against flesh, and a lump of brown-and-gray feathers hit the ground.
Excellent. But the damn owl had got in a lick. Tallulah carefully touched the scrape and then examined her fingers, sticky with blood. Not too bad. Might not even need stitches. She dug in her backpack and unwrapped an antiseptic wipe. The alcohol stung a bit as she placed it on the gash, but nothing like a future infection would hurt. Quickly, she bandaged the wound and continued into the woods.
Where the Ishkitini appeared, the will-o’-the-wisps were sure to follow. The night would not be wasted if she killed a wisp. Every defeat ensured a safer, more successful full-moon hunt. She attuned her senses to the night, amplifying sight, sound and smell, then inhaled the scents of wet leaves and damp soil, and even the coppery smell of her own blood, which left a metallic taste in her throat.
Branches scraped bark. Little critters—squirrels, rabbits, mice—scrambled about the carpet of pine needles and the prickly underbrush of saw palmettos and stunted shrubs. Tallulah’s vision adjusted to the gathering darkness, and she unerringly kept to the path leading to the center of the forest.
A teal glow burst through a gap in the oaks—a wisp. Her breath quickened. She needed to get a little closer. Soundlessly, she padded from tree to tree, pausing to hide her body while she edged nearer.
The glow dazzled her eyes. The wisp floated a mere ten feet away. She’d been spotted.
Tallulah loaded the slingshot.
It’s useless, the negative whisper echoed in her mind. She had come way too close to the wisp. Close enough that it could invade her thoughts, inducing despair and misery and hopelessness. The wisps thrived on human suffering. It made them stronger, more deadly.
Death is imminent. Don’t fight it.
No way. Tallulah’s arm drew back the slingshot band, ready to strike.
Join Bo.
Her lungs squeezed, and her throat painfully tightened, as if a boa constrictor were wrapped around her chest. Her breath grew harsh, and her biceps quivered and strained on the band.
You know you want to see him again. It would be so easy. Give in.
Bo. It dared mention his name. She stared at the center of the wisp, where the blue-green heart pulsed. Where the imprisoned spirit lived its miserable existence. Because that’s what wisps did. They killed humans and trapped their souls inside their parasitic bodies. That’s what they had done to Bo—until she had killed the wisp host and set Bo free.
Bo was dead, but at least he’d passed over into the After Life.
