09-29-2009, 05:33 AM
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| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_fall.jpg); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:fixed; padding-top:240px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px; padding-bottom:10px;"> Whisper Beach! The hybrid woman was wandering dangerously close to Dahlia de Mai territory, and she damn well knew it. But she was well on the neutral side of the borders, lying low and several hundred feet away from the actual perimeter of the packlands, so she hoped that she was concealed well enough. It was burning curiosity that had driven her to this dangerous place today. Haku Soul had driven her here, sort of. The hybrid woman had at first believed the chocolatey wolf dead, for she had locked her teeth around his throat and squeezed his breath from him. In retrospect, she should have torn it out to make sure—but hers had been a suffocating hold, too much neck and fur and flesh in her mouth rather than the throat itself, the jugular veins that pumped precious life through his body. The ashen coyote had returned to the area where they'd battled, and found nothing. No body, no blood, no scent. The rain had washed the evidence away, but something else had happened to the body. Maybe someone from the Dahlian pack had come to collect their fallen brother, maybe he had been carried off by a bear or a cougar—the hybrid woman had concocted all of these strange stories to explain the lack of a body, all the while entertaining a low whisper in the back of her head, one that chanted, no body, no body, no body again and again. No body meant no death, no death meant that someone would seek her blood in return for that which she had spilled. Kaena Lykoi did not like this. She was too old to entertain another archnemesis; she had hers and vanquished him, and now she wanted to be left in relative peace to cultivate her family and protect her clan. The silver woman stalked forward, creeping almost on her belly as her yellow eye peered through the underbrush at Dahlia de Mai territory. Grumbling to herself, she realized she would have to get closer to smell anything definitive, yet a gripping fear held her in place. She would not tread closer to Haku Soul, she could not. A whine bubbled in her throat and she choked it off; she had never been afraid of Salvaged. Kaena had many years on Haku, and though that had proven the advantage the last time they'd clashed, she was not getting any younger. The coyote woman stood abruptly and turned around, heading away from the border at once. She knew that Dahlia de Mai laid claim to the land on the other side of the Whisper Beach inlet, since it would make little sense for the pack to end their borders before butting up against the coast, depriving them of the valuable fishing resources. Perhaps she would find a better vantage point there. She traveled up the broken and decaying highway quickly, carrying herself with the typical coyote trot. Her head was down and her golden eye was narrowed, her ears folded back against her skull in contemplation as she went. It was still late afternoon and she had several hours before nightfall, when she wished to be back in Inferni territory. She would not give up so easily; the hybrid needed to know whether or not the devil had survived. |