Dark Lycan by Christine Feehan

Fen said.
    “How can you tell?” Dimitri turned in a circle. “I cannot feel them.”
    “I can smell them. Get Enre and Gellert into the tree and throw a shield around them,” Fen instructed.
    Zev, from the tavern, strode out of the mist and brush. He looked cool, and confident, his long trench coat open, his hair gathered at the nape of his neck, much like Dimitri and Fen wore theirs. His eyes blazed a mercurial gray, sheer steel. He looked around the small circle of fighters.
    “You cannot stay here.”
    “There’s no safe passage,” Fen said. “Carpathians will fight with Lycans to bring this rogue pack to justice.” He nodded toward his brother. “This is Dimitri, and that is Tatijana.”
    “Zev,” the newcomer identified himself. “This pack is my problem. I’ve sent for the hunters, but they are still twenty-four hours out.”
    Dimitri waved his hand toward the two drunks to take over their minds, spinning his fingers to encase them in the safety of a shield before wedging them in the higher branches of the trees.
    Zev studied Fen’s face. “Dimitri and Tatijana are Carpathian, but you are Lycan.” It was a statement, the tone strictly neutral.
    There was no hint of distrust in Zev’s voice, but Fen knew Zev was suddenly very suspicious of him. Why would a Lycan be friends with two Carpathians? There was no way not to notice the resemblance between Dimitri and Fen. Zev was an elite investigator, which meant he had gone from an elite hunting pack to pursuing rogues on his own for the shadowy government behind the Lycans. He seemed more than confident.
    “Have you any idea of the size of the pack?” Fen asked.
    Zev nodded. “It’s large. The largest I’ve ever run across. I’ve been tracking them for months.”
    “Dimitri counted thirteen, and that was just with a single pass.”
    “It’s more like fifty to seventy. I’ve identified that many individual tracks, and I’m not certain that’s all of them. They tend to divide, each unit hunting separately and then coming back together.”
    “That’s why they’ve been able to do so much damage,” Fen said.
    Zev shot him a quick glance. “You’ve been tracking them?”
    Fen nodded. He wasn’t about to admit that he thought Zev was wrong, or at least partially wrong. He was fairly certain the rogue pack killed often, but a vampire either trailed them, doing far more of the brutal destruction than the pack had done, or traveled with them as a Lycan. The vampire was intelligent. He covered his tracks well, making certain the pack took the blame for his work. Of course, that was conjecture, Fen had no real proof.
    “I ran across their kills a few weeks back and trailed after them,” Fen admitted. Dimitri, they’re coming at you from your left. Three of them. Tatijana, go to mist or take to the skies. You’ve got two targeting you. They’ll rush you from opposite sides and they’re unbelievably fast.
    Mist swirled, a thick gray fog. The wind rushed through the trees and the rogues were on them, tall wolves running at them on their hind legs, each leap crossing thirty feet or more with blurring speed. The wolves poured into the circle from every direction, a silent, eerie attack made all the worse by their red glowing eyes, shining through the mist.
    The three wolves leapt at Dimitri before he could move, or dissolve, all three sinking their teeth deep, ripping through muscle right down to the bone. Claws dug at his belly, trying to slash him open.
    Claws raked Tatijana from her shoulder to her hip, even as she tried to turn to mist. They got to her far faster than she ever conceived possible. Fen rushed past the ones coming at him from every direction, his speed and momentum allowing him to knock over the one directly blocking his path to Tatijana. As he passed the werewolf, he slammed the silver stake deep into the chest wall. The sound of the rogue’s heart was his beacon. The werewolf went down, and he kept going, blowing past the