“But listen to me, girl. If you come with me now, you have a chance to survive and leave this place. I will take you with me, and I can help you escape.” He straightened. “Or you can return and try to save your friend from his own foolishness.”

“You can track him, right?”

The half-man’s lips drew back, showing teeth. “You still think I’m your dog?”

“No!” Fates, it was impossible to deal with the monster. Even soldier boys made more sense. The half-man seemed like a person, but then it would turn cold and she’d think it was about to tear her apart. “Can you help me? Please?”

“If I do, do you consider our debt settled?”

“Help me get Mouse.”

“What is he to you?”

“He’s my friend.”

“Friends are easy to find.”

“Not like him.”

“You’re willing to die to save him?”

“Fates.” Mahlia looked away, feeling lost. “If he dies, I’m dead anyway. I don’t got nothing else to lose.”

The half-man looked at her, scarred and huge. It didn’t move.

“Never mind.” Mahlia turned and started back into the swamps. “Do what you want; I got to get him back. If he’s dead, I’m dead. It’s how it is.”

“Pack,” the half-man said. “He’s of your pack.”

The way the half-man said it made Mahlia think that it was more than just when you talked about dogs or coywolv running together. It was something absolute and total.

“Yeah,” she said. “Pack.”

20

THE SMOKE THICKENED about them. Mahlia cut a strip of fabric from her tank and soaked it in the swamp, bound it around her nose and mouth, and fought to keep from coughing.

The half-man didn’t seem affected at all. Even as Mahlia’s eyes teared in the smoke and she fought against sneezing and coughing, the half-man eased through the trees and pools and kudzu like a wraith. Sometimes, he would hold up a hand and she would freeze and he would sniff the air.

Three times, he motioned her off the trail and into the tangled vines of the jungle. Then they lay on the muddy ground, listening as snakes slithered through the undergrowth and then, just as Mahlia was becoming annoyed at the charade of hiding, she would at last hear footsteps and people would be on top of them.

Twice it was people from the village. She was tempted to call out, but then remembered Amaya and knew the villagers were just as much of an enemy as the soldiers.

They lay under smoke and vines and watched the shapes of the refugees rise out of the smoke, sobbing. Clutching themselves. Old man Salvatore, but not his baby. Emmy Song. Alejandro, who had given her so much trouble, hurried past with two young children Mahlia didn’t recognize and didn’t think were his. People. Old, young, children. So much like other refugees she had seen.