Long Anubis excerpt (unedited) (Patreon)

I'm so close to being done with Anubis (the editors still need to tear it apart). Maybe end of this week. Here is an excerpt with some fighting action. You meet Caspin.

Isaiah moved into the driver’s seat. “Keep your cell phone on vibrate. I’ll call you when I find him.”

Tanner nodded and stepped off into the shadows. Isaiah pulled back onto the barely-road that dead-ended to flat area where the rocks rose up out of the ground, in the first step towards the mountains.

Tucked in the shadows a narrow entrance to a mine.

Isiah parked beside a massive pine tree and cut the engine. The headlights winked out leaving the fading night where woodsmoke from a dying fire created halos around the treetops.

Leaves danced with the wind making frantic circles. The scent of smoking deer and rabbit meat mixed with the spice of fall leaves.

Isaiah collected the other shotgun and a handful of rounds. He put those in his pocket and loaded two into the double barrel.

He made his way closer to the mine.

The faint red of dying coals outlined the broken spit and the strips of drying meat scattered on the stony ring. Dimples pot-marked the ground, forming what looked like the prints of prehensile toes.

It had to be a trick of the light.

Isaiah stepped closer.

“What do you want, Isaiah.” A growl broke up the question formed from barely comprehensible words.

Isaiah turned.

Caspin stood at the edge of the clearing, naked, covered in blood, with a dead buck over his shoulders. Even with the burden of extra weight, not a single leaf shifted under his feet.

He walked over and dumped his kill next to the fire pit.

“Your sister stole my Cana and I need to know where she is.”

Caspin dug his fingers into the belly of the deer and ripped it open spilling out its insides.

“And what makes you think I know where she is.” He dug out the liver and took a bite. “You want some?”

Isaiah recoiled.

And Caspin grinned, flashing crimson-stained teeth. “I forget, you never hunted.”

Isaiah had, but he’d been young, his Fenrir new. After he developed control he’d regained control of the civilized ways he’d been born with.

But even as a wolf he’d never been very good at bringing down game, especially alone, and here was Caspin, trapped in the form of a man, with a large dead buck.

“How did you manage to catch that?”

Caspin picked up a flimsy tin pie pan near one of the stones and tossed the remnants of the liver into it before setting it onto the coals. “I thought you were here about Seung, not for tips on hunting.”

“You said you didn’t know where she is.”

“And yet you’re still standing in my territory.”

“Because I don’t believe you.”

Caspin rolled a look up, his pale amber eyes as cold and full of feral rage as Isaiah remembered from the times they held him back from the *** so he couldn’t claim a wolf.

“I need to know where she is.” Isaiah tightened his grip on the shotgun.

“You plan on shooting me?” He gave Isaiah his back and began peeling the hide of the dear from the meat.

“Not unless you give me a reason to.”

Caspin stood, towering over Isaiah, his lean form some mix between a beta and delta. “I’m not of your pack or Clan. You have no power here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” As a Greater Alpha there were no territorial lines to Isaiah and Caspin knew it. “Tell me where she is or I’ll go to Palmer and he’ll go to the Senate. And I can guarantee you by sunset tonight they’ll be ripping apart these woods.”

“Nothing about you has changed. Still tattling on wolves who don’t do what you tell them to and using the Senate to beat them into submission.”

“There are laws, Caspin. I follow them.”

“Laws…” The word morphed into a snarl and Caspin rolled up his lips. His teeth were far sharper than they should have been. “Laws written by men, not by wolves. And unlike you, I do not sleep at their feet.”

“Those laws set boundaries. We follow them to stay civil. But you wouldn’t know anything about that. Look at you living like an animal. You’re a nightmare made real. The monster they’re afraid of.”

Caspin roared and shoved Isaiah back. The shotgun clattered against the ground out of reach.

Isaiah tried to stand but Caspin knocked him on his back again.

“We are wolves, Isaiah. We are animals. We are not men.” Saliva flecked Caspin’s lips.  “Trying to be men is what killed our Cana. Obeying men is why we’re almost extinct.”

Isaiah scrambled back kicking up leaves and dirt. The next time he stood Caspin didn’t stop him.  

“The sooner you learn that the better.” Caspin returned to his kill. “The sooner you learn that Cana belongs to only one wolf, and none of us, the better.”

“He doesn’t belong with Nash Kelli.”

Caspin huffed. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I know. He’s a Cana, he belongs with the Varu. He is our door to the ***. He is life, not death, and that’s the only thing the Anubis will ever be.”

“Is that why you tried to poison Nash with ***?”

Isaiah rocked back. “Who told you that?”

Caspin finished skinning the deer and tossed the hide onto a stump close to the fire pit. “They talk and I listen .”

“Who?”

Caspin sank his fingers into the thick muscle of the carcass and pulled tearing away fat strips. “If you’d get your head out of your ass long enough you wouldn’t have to ask because you’d hear too.”

“Someone in my pack?” The idea that one of his people might betray him left Isaiah’s insides knotted.

“But you don’t. You never have. None of you have.” Caspin threaded the bits of meat onto a stick and hung them over the coals. “It’s why you were stupid enough to try and purge the ichor from Nash Kelli.”

“Did your secret source tell you how the Anubis almost severed Luca’s leg, and arm?”

Caspin lifted his eyes. “You not only don’t listen you don’t observe.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“You believe what you saw, because it’s what you wanted to see. But the Fenrir can only see what’s there.”

And what did that mean?  “I want to know—”

“Quiet.” Caspin jerked his attention to the shadowed woods filled with briars and dead limbs. He stood. “You were followed.”  He didn’t look at Isaiah when he said it.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

A deep growl rolled out of Caspin’s chest. A sound normal vocal cords couldn’t make. Isaiah was so caught off guard he nearly missed the wind shift carrying in the scent of wet fur.

Isaiah’s wolf flashed in his periphery and in reaction he dropped to the ground. The cur burst from between the trees claws extended.  In that second Isaiah knew he’d never outmaneuver the creature. He would die there in the woods leaving behind too many who needed him.

Light collided with the dark taking it out of the air.

It took him a moment to process what he saw, the white wolf. A Fenrir. The first in over a millennium. The two wolves spiraled, kicking up dirt, jaws locked on different limbs.

A second black wolf landed off to Isaiah’s right. Rocks, roots, rotting wood, shredded to nothing under its massive claws. Isaiah rolled and grabbed the shotgun. The cur lunged. Isaiah pulled the trigger and its head disintegrated.

The white wolf turned. Its blazing blue eyes a mass of stars, its fur smeared with red. Remnants of the cur hung from its muzzle.

Then Fenrir retreated in a web of white leaving Caspin. “You need to go, there will be more of them.”

“How—”

“Go. Now.”

Isaiah made a run for the truck. Another beast tore through the underbrush and Caspin lept, his body vanishing under white threads. He jerked the cur out of the air.

 Two more emerged.

One turned toward Isaiah as he got to the truck. A spray of gravel shot up from under the wheels before gaining traction. Isaiah steered the vehicle in reverse.

The cur made chase.

Isaiah jerked the steering wheel. The truck spun and the bed collided with the cur tossing it into the trees. Isaiah hit the gas. Ruts, gaps, holes, it knocked the pickup back and forth.

The cur reappeared in the rearview. It would only take seconds before it caught up. Isaiah slammed on the breaks, shifted into reverse. The cur dug its feet into the ground but before it could stop the tailgate slammed into its face. Momentum flung it forward feet overhead. The deep thud of its body echoed through the truck frame and the roof of the cab buckled.

It landed on its side blocking the path. Bones jutted from under its black fur and its jaw dangled from its skull. The cur staggered to its feet, wounds stitching as fast as it regained its balance.

A crack of thunder cut the air and its neck shredded. Tanner rushed from the bushes and yanked open the passenger side door.  

He climbed in. “What the hell?”

Isaiah put the truck in gear. “Not now.” The shocks on the truck protested with each dip of the hood. Another quarter mile and the ground smoothed out and the vehicle picked up speed.

Caspin had done the impossible. Phasing without contact with his wolf? It was unheard of. And if somehow Luca had tapped into the *** Isaiah would have at felt it. So whatever reconnected Caspin to his Fenrir went against the laws of the tie.

Tanner spoke but whatever he said was lost under the boom of the passenger window exploding.  Isaiah fought the steering trying to keep control of the sliding truck while the cur bulldozed it off the road.

The rear of the truck dropped into the culvert and the tires spun spitting up wads of mud.

Metal screamed and the vehicle rocked two more curs landed in the bed.

“Fuck.” Tanner stuck the shotgun out the window and fired.

The cur pushing the vehicle flew back thrashing on the ground.

“Run, I’ll distract them.” Tanner fought with the door.

“Don’t be stupid.” Isaiah might have been stronger than a human but wouldn’t get half a mile before they ran him down.

One of the curs in the back leapt onto the hood, punching holes into the dented metal. Isaiah turned the steering wheel in the other direction letting gravity pull them farther off the road. He just needed a little speed and for the tires to catch.

The truck rolled and he gave it some gas. “Come on, come on.”

The cur on the roof moved to the hood as if confused as to where its prey had disappeared to.

But cur’s weren’t known for being smart.

Just as the cur turned the truck lurched forward and the creature lost its balance. It hit the windshield and cracks spider-webbed across the surface. The truck picked up speed and it fell from the hood. Isaiah used the speed to climb the incline at an angle and back onto the road.

The cur he’d knocked off the hood met the truck as it made it to the road and the creature still in the back rammed the rear glass. Tanner turned shoving the barrel of the shotgun into its gaping mouth and pulled the trigger. The cur in the road charged.

Caspin ripped through the trees colliding with the cur pinning it to the ground.

“What the ever-living fuck--” Tanner stared wide-eyed at the white wolf as it shredded the smaller cur.

As quick as the wolf appeared it was gone again. To fight off more curs or escape?  Isaiah had no idea. He took the gravel path to the main road. Tanner was watching the area they’d fled.

Vibrations rattled the beat to hell truck and wind cooled the blood soaking Isaiah’s back.

Tanner turned. So much hope, want, sadness, shadowed his gaze. When he spoke his voice cracked. “Caspin has his wolf back.”

“I know.”

How?”

“I have no idea.” Tears blurred Isaiah’s vision. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. “But we’ll find out.” Somehow some way.

For all of them.

 Isaiah had to.