“There’s got to be, maybe, a hundred of them out there,” he reported.
Lana got up from repairing her clothing with a needle and thread and looked for herself. “That’s more than one pack,” she said.
“You can tell that?” Astrid asked, yawning and rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“I know a little about coyotes now,” Lana said. “If we see this many, it means there’s at least twice as many around here. Some have to be out hunting. Coyotes hunt day and night.”
She sat back down and picked up her sewing. “They’re waiting for something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t see Pack Leader. Maybe he left. Maybe they’re waiting for him to come back.”
“Sooner or later they’ll lose interest, won’t they?” Astrid asked.
Lana shook her head. “Normal coyotes, sure. But these aren’t normal coyotes.”
They waited and every hour or so Sam or Edilio would check the view, and every time they saw coyotes.
Suddenly there came the sound of a hundred canine voices raised in excited yips.
Patrick stood up, bristling.
Sam ran to the peephole. Lana shone the flashlight on him.
“They have fire,” Sam said.
Lana pushed past him and climbed up to see for herself. “It’s Pack Leader,” she confirmed. “He has a burning branch.”
“It’s not just a burning branch, it’s a torch,” Sam said. “It’s not just something he found. It’s only burning at one end, a branch wouldn’t do that. Someone with hands had to have made it. Someone gave it to him.”
“The Darkness,” Lana whispered.
“This cabin will burn like a match,” Sam said.
“No. I don’t want to burn,” Lana cried. “We have to get out, make some kind of a deal with Pack Leader.”
“You said he’d kill us,” Astrid said. She had her hands over Little Pete’s ears.
“They want me alive, they want me to teach them human ways, that’s what the Darkness said, he can’t kill me, he needs me.”
“Try,” Sam said.
“Pack Leader,” Lana shouted. “Pack Leader.”
“He doesn’t hear you.”
“He’s a coyote, he can hear a mouse in its hole from fifty feet away,” Lana snapped. Raising her voice to a scream then, “Pack Leader. Pack Leader. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Sam was back at the spy hole. “He’s right outside,” he whispered.
“Pack Leader, don’t,” Lana begged.
“They’re all backing away.”
“Oh, God.”
“Smoke,” Edilio said, and pointed a flashlight beam at the door’s threshold.
Lana hefted a gold brick and began beating at the boards they had nailed over the door. Edilio grabbed her arms.
“You want to burn alive?” Lana demanded.
Edilio released her.
“We’re coming out,” Lana shouted as she banged at the boards. “We’re coming out.”
But the boards were no easier to remove than they had been to put up. A yellow tongue licked beneath the door.
Sam pulled back suddenly from the spy hole. “Fire.”
“I don’t want to burn,” Lana wailed.
“It’s the smoke that kills you,” Sam whispered, looking at Astrid. “There’s got to be a way out.”
Astrid said, “You know the way out.”
From the back wall now, smoke snuck in through cracks and seams.
Lana hammered at the boards. Smoke was gathering under the rafters. The cabin was burning quickly. Already the heat was becoming intolerable.
“Help me,” Lana cried. “We have to get out.”
Edilio sprang into action, helping to pull boards away.
Sam leaned over Little Pete’s head and kissed Astrid on the mouth. “Don’t let me turn into Caine,” he said.
“I’ll keep an eye on you,” she said.
“Okay. Everyone get back from the door,” Sam said, but too quietly for it to register above the panic sounds.
He grabbed Lana’s hand as she swung with a gold brick. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“You saved my life with your power,” Sam said. “My turn.”
Lana and Edilio and Quinn shrank back from the doorway.
Sam closed his eyes. It was easy to find the anger. He was angry at so many things.
But for some reason, when he tried to focus on the outrage of this attack, his mind’s eye did not call up pictures of the coyote leader, or even of Caine. The picture in his mind was of his own mother.
Stupid. Wrong. Unfair of him, even cruel.
But still, when he reached for his anger, it was his mother he saw.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered to that image.
He raised his hands. Fingers splayed wide.
But at that moment the half-burned door burst open.
Flames and smoke were everywhere, a torrent of choking smoke.
And through the inferno leaped a coyote as big as a Great Dane.
That, Sam thought, made it easier.
A flash of green-white light erupted from his upraised hands and the coyote dropped to the floor. An eight-inch hole was burned clear through his body.
A second flash, like a thousand flashbulbs, and the front of the cabin blew apart.
The sudden vacuum swallowed some of the flame, not all, just a pause in the inferno and Sam was moving, dragging Astrid by the arm, Astrid dragging Little Pete in turn. The others shook off their shock and followed.