Luna of Rogues

Part 63 - This is War

I limped through the trees, feeling increasingly sorry for myself. My leg hurt less than it had, but I still struggled to put any weight on it. It was ironic that a car braking had done this, with all the danger I had been getting into recently.

"Are you holding up okay?" Cassidy was eyeing my awkward movements with growing concern.

I growled at her, a clear enough answer. Cassidy sighed at me. She hefted the knife in her hand — my knife — and began to grimace. I hadn't wanted to leave her unarmed in case we did run into trouble.

"Hey, I'm only asking because I need you to be well enough to do all the fighting. Holding a knife doesn't mean I know how to use it..."

Through the link, I grunted. "It's easy enough. Use the sharp end."

"This is your last warning. If you're depending on my ability to kick ass, we're both going to end up dead," Cassidy said.

"I can fight," I promised her. "Adrenaline is the best painkiller on earth. But let's not worry about that, because what we're doing right now is just taking a nice gentle stroll through the woods. We're not in any danger."

She looked a little exasperated. "When are you going to stop pretending you aren't following their scents?"

I considered her through stormy grey eyes. There had been a lot of rain recently, and even at such a slow pace, my midnight fur was flecked with spots of mud. The amount which had splattered onto my head and muzzle told a damning tale of how close they'd been to the ground. Yes, I'd been following their scents. Of course I had.

But not anymore. Just minutes ago, Rhys's scent trail had stopped completely. And it had spooked me enough to stop following Leo's. It shouldn't have been possible to just stop leaving a trail. Yes, I knew from previous experience that Rhodric could do it, but surely Rhys would have told me if he had the same talent?

After a moment of companiable silence, Cassidy spoke again. "I think I see something."

Calm as she sounded, I caught the hem of her t-shirt in my teeth and used it to drag her behind a holly bush. Rhys wouldn't thank me for getting her killed. Luckily, she was too surprised to fight back. With her safely hidden, I went forwards to investigate.

What she had spotted was a flash of red through the trees. It was graffiti on a tree trunk, so I focused on checking the surrounding area for scents, footprints — any evidence that we might not be alone in these woods. I didn't find anything, but the whole clearing carried a stench which put my hackles on end. It smelt profoundly ... wrong, like the essence of death itself.

"You can come out," I told her through the link. "There's no one about."

I stopped in front of the tree that had first attracted our attention. The red markings had been written in spray paint, but beside them was a handprint in a muddy brown colour. And that, I knew, wasn't paint. It was dried blood.

"What the hell does it mean?" Cassidy asked.

I reached into her mind, feeling more and more uncertain by the second. "Werewolves — well, rogues especially — use symbols like this to communicate and warn each other."

"And what does this one say?"

"The part on the left means werewolves. And the part on the right is hunting," I began hesitantly.

The ground crunched under her feet as she walked up to the tree and pointed to the centre. "And this?"

I met her eyes before responding quietly. "War."

Cassidy shuffled in place. "Your people are declaring war on the hunters?"

"It looks that way."

It must have been a shifter who had written it. Hunters didn't use this language. It was born from centuries of communication under the noses of humans. You usually didn't have to walk far in the forest to see a sign for prey, shelter, roads, human settlements ... or even danger. More recently, packs had begun using them to mark their borders.