His brother's life was so weird. "He can do it then?"

Shaw looked away.

Atticus turned to Hellena. "Can he or can't he?"

"Our Cub . . ." Hellena's voice quavered with strong emotions. "He believes strongly in doing what is right—no matter the cost to himself."

And a wave of sorrow and anger went through the Pack.

They know Ukiah won't cooperate.

From the pond's edge, the bikers started into a drunken chorus.

"Why aren't you out looking for him?" Atticus asked. "What are you doing here—having a party?"

"We've tried looking blindly all day," Shaw snapped. "Now we're waiting."

"For what?"

Stillness ran through the Pack. Atticus could sense them listening, focused on the rumble of incoming motorcycles.

" It's them," someone near the road mentally reported.

The Pack melted into the woods, leaving him alone with Shaw, Hellena, Degas, and the Demon Cur's alpha female, Blade.

"You should leave." Shaw gave him a slight push toward the clearing's edge, back toward the Jag.

Atticus resisted. "What's happening?"

"We don't have time for niceties anymore. Things are going to get messy."

"What are you going to do?"

"Daggit knows where the cult is. We're going to do everything short of tearing his head off his shoulders to get that information. And the only reason we're stopping there is because dead men don't talk."

"You can't torture him."

"We're in this mess because that's what your brother said," Shaw said. "Go home. Better yet, go back to Washington."

"No."

Oddly, Shaw's stare was neither as feral nor penetrating as Ukiah's. "Don't interfere. We will kill you and drop your body with your team if you try. We won't let even you stand between us and getting our Cub back."

"Fine."

The Iron Horses entered the campground cautiously, but the noose was already tightening around them. The Pack moved silently through the woods, surrounding the bikers, communicating mind to mind.

They took Daggit down hard, knocking him from his bike. After disarming him of various knives and guns, they dragged him kicking and swearing to the clearing. Having suffered the same treatment just days before, Atticus found himself wincing in sympathy.

As the Blue Oyster Cult sang "Don't Fear the Reaper" on the distant stereo, two Dog Warriors—Bear Shadow and David Stein—flung Daggit to the ground in front of Shaw, and the Pack closed ranks around the man.

"Let's try this again, Daggit," Shaw rumbled, his voice full of menace. "Where is the Temple of New Reason?"

Daggit scrambled to his feet, his sweat sour with fear, his nose running with blood. Still he managed, "Go fuck yourself, Shaw."

"They have our Cub, Daggit." Shaw began to circle Daggit.

"You should have watched him a little more carefully then." Daggit backed as far away from Shaw as the watching Pack allowed, turning to keep the Pack leader in front of him. "You knew they were after him."

Shaw lashed out, faster than even Atticus could see. In a blur of savage motion, he had Daggit down on his knees, right arm dislocated and forced up behind his back. As Daggit flailed at him with his left arm, Shaw leaned down and growled into Daggit's ear. It wasn't the sound of a man imitating an animal, but the deep chest growl of a true beast that raised the hairs on the back of Atticus's neck.

"I'm not going to tell you squat!" Daggit cried.

"We're not going to take 'squat' as an answer." Shaw shifted his hold and broke Daggit's right pinkie.

Daggit grunted but otherwise remained stoic in the face of the pain. The ring finger broke with the snap of a dry branch. On the middle finger, Daggit cried, "I don't fucking know!"

"Animal said you knew."

"Animal was wrong." Daggit panted and peered at the encircling Pack. "Funny thing, I don't see him here."

"Focus. Your life is on the line, Daggit. Blink wrong and you're dead. Now, where are they?"

"I don't know." This time Daggit's voice quavered with fear.

"After we break your fingers, we'll cut them off. And we'll keep cutting till we hack off your dick." Shaw snapped the next finger.

"Okay! Okay, okay! They've got this island. They were talking about it last time I saw them. They've been digging in. They wanted claymores and napalm. They were getting ready for a fucking war."

"Not good enough." Shaw growled, drawing a bowie knife.

"I really don't know!" Daggit shouted. "It's out of Salem, like out by South Goosberry, or Bakers Island, but farther out! I think it's like three or four miles from shore! A little shit of an island. There's just one fucking house on it!"

Shaw ignored him, putting the blade up against the base of the broken pinkie.

"Wait." Atticus caught Shaw's arm. "Parity kept a boat on the Charles River. Ice took it out this morning. That's what I was doing in Cambridge. And Ascii was taking Ukiah to Salem, before I got him out of the trunk."

Shaw grunted and released Daggit. The big man cradled his broken hand, glaring at the Pack. "If you're lying to us, Daggit, we will hunt you down and cut out your liver and feed it to you."

As Stein dragged Daggit away, Atticus's mind was filled with images of the Pack waging war with the cult, leaving a trail of stolen boats and dead humans floating in their wake. "I'll set up a raid with Zheng. We'll get Ukiah back. Just give me twelve hours."

"No," Shaw growled.

"What about the Ontongard? Why do you think they were in Cambridge? They were down at the marina. They're hunting the cult. If you go after the cult, you'll be caught between them."

"All the more reason for us to go, not you and Zheng."

"You can keep the Ontongard busy. That's what you were made for, right? To fight the Ontongard."

Shaw snarled as an answer.

"There's the problem of finding Hex's Gets," Grant said. "We know where the cult is."

"If the cult really have been killing and burning these Gets," Atticus said, "then a profile of the victims from the cult's burn sites probably will give last known addresses and such. All you have to do is get close, right? Then you can feel them? My team's already working on the information."

Consensus moved through the Pack, with hard knots of resistance coming from the Dog Warriors, who knew Ukiah best.

"Fine, twelve hours," Shaw said. "Make it noon tomorrow."

***

"Well?" Ru greeted him when he pulled the Jaguar in beside the Explorer.

Atticus could feel the Pack following behind him, waiting for the information he'd promised. What the hell was he thinking? "We have to pull rabbits out of our ass to save my brother." He explained the situation as quickly as he could. "They think Ukiah is too moral to cooperate with the cult."

"Possibly. He's actually quite sweet."

Atticus frowned at Ru. "Based on what? We barely got to talk to him."

"I ran into him this morning. Things got so crazy, I forgot to mention it." Ru hesitated, looking troubled. "But there's something wrong with him."

"Which is he? Sweet or screwed in the head?"

"I gave him a street test. He failed so bad."

"Street test" was what Ru called his method of seeing how street-smart a kid was. A lot of kids who crossed their paths were already hardened criminals. Others, though, were good kids about to be swallowed down; those were the ones they tried to steer toward havens, getting them off the street before they could be eaten.