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Chapter Seventeen
Maxim
We’re still several miles from our landing coordinates when we see it—smoke on the horizon.
A lot of smoke.
“That doesn’t look good,” the pilot, Vance, an old friend of mine, says through our headphones. He leans forward, squinting into the setting sun. “Reasons they would set fire to their own camp?”
I shake my head and lean forward beside him. “As a distraction maybe. Or bait. We show up to see what’s on fire and they’re waiting to ambush us.”
“Or it could just be bad luck for them, good luck for us,” Vance counters. “It’s been a dry fall. Could just be a campfire that got out of control or something.”
I grunt and Vance laughs.
“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t think we’re getting that lucky either. I’ll have our lead deploy a drone, see if we can get some visuals through the smoke and see what’s happening on the ground.”
Ten minutes later,grainy footage of the burning forest flickers onto my tablet’s screen, cutting in and out as the signal struggles to filter through our shielding spell. But I don’t want to disable the spell just yet. This many helicopters zooming toward Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, would attract attention from the human authorities we can’t afford right now.
But so will this fire, sooner or later…
“Do you think they’re trying to get humans involved?” Vance asks, proving we’re on the same page. “This won’t go unnoticed or unaddressed by their forest fire teams for long.”
I chew my bottom lip and narrow my eyes on the screen. “Maybe, but if the firefighters send in a drone first, like we are, maybe not. It looks like the fire is mostly under control. Lots of smoldering brush and a couple structures still burning, but things don’t seem to be spreading. And there aren’t any trees on fire.”
Vance makes a thinking noise. “So maybe it was a campfire accident? And they got it under control before it reached the forest?”
“But there are hardly any people there,” I say. “Just older women shoveling dirt on the brush and some younger kids, not quite teenagers, tossing water on the cabins. Where are the rest of them? The army and Kelley and her people?”
And the prisoners, I think, praying that Diana wasn’t locked away in one of those structures as it burned. If they’ve hurt her in any way—let alone killed my little sister—I’m going to have a hard time leaving a single one of them alive.
“It doesn’t feel right,” Vance says.
“No, it doesn’t,” I agree. “We’ll talk it over with the other unit leaders when we reach the ground and send more drones to check out the areas beyond the flames. Could be they set the fire to keep us busy while they made a run for it. Maybe they’ve decided they don’t want to fight.”
“But we can’t afford to let them run,” Vance says. “Willow’s vision said you have to stop her sister tonight, right?”
I nod. “It did.”
I roll the problem over in my head as we reach our destination and the choppers touch down, one by one, in a valley between two mountains.
What if Kelley has a Pathfinder of her own? Or one of the witches on her team is skilled at telling the future?
If she knows that all she has to do to doom my cause is stay alive and uncaptured until morning, she may have decided running is her best bet. Willow’s vision wasn’t clear about whether I had to kill Kelley or simply take her into custody, but neither will be happening if I can’t find the woman.
Outside, the last flush of dusk casts the valley in a violet glow and the soft burble of the river rushing over stones not far from our landing spot seems to promise a peaceful night. But that promise is betrayed by the smoke filling the air, making my men and women cough as they gather their things and flood out of the copters.
But by the time our defense team has ringed the perimeter and our liaisons have left to meet the troops hiking in to join us from the next valley over, where our plane has already touched down on an old stretch of country road, the smoke is thinning a bit.
My unit heads meet me a short distance from the riverbank, looking as concerned about our current situation as I feel.
All five of them agree their instincts are screaming that this is a trap.
“But what choice do we have?” Samantha asks after we’ve discussed the matter at length and reviewed the night vision footage from our other drones. “We’re not getting any heat signatures from the woods around their camp. Nothing but animals, anyway. Natural animals. Not a few thousand shifted wolves ready to attack.”
“And if we don’t move soon, we might lose our chance to capture the few people still at the camp,” Cox agrees. “Even if their leaders kept their escape plan a secret, there’s a good chance at least one of the people still here knows where they went.”
“And those people might not be Kelley’s,” Samantha adds. “They might have stayed behind because they’re loyal to Bane and not on board with making Kelley queen now that he’s gone. For all we know, there could be significant in-fighting in their ranks right now.”
