Hounds on the Canal

Pale gray light poured into the hold. Radek leaned over the rectangular opening, his wide shoulders blocking out the dim bulb. His dark hair was damp, his jaw set like carved granite.

"Give me your hand," he said.

I reached up. My stiff, blue-gray fingers gripped his wrist.

Radek hauled me out of the black water with one smooth, effortless pull. My boots hit the cedar floorboards, shedding gallons of brackish river muck. I stumbled immediately, my frozen knees buckling beneath my weight.

Radek caught me against his chest before I could hit the timber.

His body was a furnace. Heat radiated through his soaked canvas coat, hitting my frozen skin like a physical shock wave. The scent of him—rainwater, crushed pine needles, and the sharp copper tang of his own healing wolf—flooded my senses, punching through the layer of mutton fat on my neck.

Mate.

The thought slammed into my brain, unbidden and raw.

My inner wolf leaned into the warmth of his chest, practically purring against his bruised ribs.

Get a grip, I told myself violently.

I shoved against his shoulders, planting my heels on the floorboards and backing away until my spine hit the damp concrete wall. My teeth were chattering so hard my molars clicked like dice in a cup.

"I don't... need help," I stammered.

"You're in stage two hypothermia," Radek said, his voice dry. He reached into a wooden supply crate by the workbench and tossed a heavy, scratchy wool blanket into my arms. "Wrap that around your shoulders before your heart goes into arrhythmia. I don't feel like using that defibrillator on you."

I snatched the blanket, pulling the thick wool tight around my chest. The warmth was immediate and agonizing, sending millions of tiny needle pricks through my numb skin.

"Vlasz knew about Anton Blazsek," I said, my voice hoarse.

"Vlasz is an old cop with a guilty conscience," Radek replied, walking toward the iron weapon rack. "He should have retired ten years ago."

"Anton's death was a murder," I said, stepping forward. The water squelched inside my work boots. "The police helped Tibor cover it up."

Radek pulled a box of heavy shotgun shells from a metal locker, checking the brass primers with practiced efficiency. "In this city, the law doesn't exist apart from the alpha. Tibor killed Anton on the bridge. Horvath stamped the paperwork. That's how power works here."

"That's not power," I said, my temper flaring through the chill. "That's butchery."

"It's the same thing when you're the one holding the knife," Radek said. He racked the slide of a short-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun. "Vlasz gave us twenty minutes. That means we have ten."

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere," Radek said, glancing toward the steel stairs leading to the upper dockyard. "The north canal is already cut off. If Zemanek's scout team is moving, they've set a perimeter on the road."

"Then we fight?"

Radek looked at me. His amber eyes narrowed, cataloging the mud on my face, the heavy skinning knife strapped to my leg, and the steadying rhythm of my breath.

"You know how to use that blade?" he asked.

"I know where the femoral artery runs," I said. "I know how fast a man bleeds out when you nick the carotid. You give me a target, and I'll open it."

A faint, dangerous smirk touched the corner of Radek's mouth. "Good. Let's check the perimeter."

He led the way up the rusted iron stairs.

We stepped out into the drizzling morning gloom of Pier Four. The rain had turned into a steady, freezing mist that clung to the rusted corrugated siding of the warehouse. The air smelled of rotten timber, river algae, and the faint, sweet trace of malt from the distant brewery smokestacks.

Radek moved along the shadows of the warehouse wall, his shotgun held low against his hip. I followed three paces behind, my hand resting on the hilt of the carbon steel blade beneath my blanket.

We reached the galvanized chain-link fence that separated Pier Four from the abandoned rail spur.

Radek stopped dead.

His head tilted, his nostrils flaring as he tested the wind.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Look at the third post," he said quietly.

I followed his gaze. Ten feet to the left, near the base of the rusted fence post, a small black cylinder was clamped to the chain-link mesh. It was no larger than a deck of cards, coated in matte black rubber.

A tiny amber diode on its upper casing blinked once every four seconds.

"Is that a police wire?" I asked.

"No," Radek said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet growl. "That's a commercial RF transponder. High-frequency telemetry. Military grade."

I stepped closer, keeping low beneath the rain-soaked wooden pallets. "Vlasz didn't plant that."

"Vlasz carries a thirty-eight revolver and smokes stale cigarettes," Radek said. "He doesn't use five-hundred-dollar frequency hoppers."

"Then who did?"

Radek reached out with gloved fingers, carefully tracing the wire running from the transponder into the gravel ballast of the rail spur. The wire had been freshly buried under wet cinders.

"Zemanek's vanguard," Radek said. "They didn't just track us. They've already boxed the pier."

The amber diode on the transponder blinked twice, casting a faint copper reflection across the wet wire.

Radek crouched lower, his thumb brushing the side of the housing. Stenciled in yellow paint beneath the mounting bracket was a four-digit serial number: 0412. The malt silo distribution grid.

"They mapped the perimeter before dawn," he said, standing up and sliding the transponder into his coat pocket. "The canal bridge is blocked. The rail tracks are watched. We have three minutes before the sweep team seals the slipway."

"Then we don't run," I said.

Radek looked down at me, his amber irises catching the gray river light. "You have a river behind you, Lenka. You can drop off the pier apron and swim for the South Ward precinct."

"Where Horvath can sell me to Tibor by lunch?" I shook my head, pulling the wool blanket tighter around my shoulders as the morning wind whipped across the dark water. "I spent twenty-four years running from things I didn't understand. I'm done running."

Radek reached into his canvas coat, produced a handful of red-hulled twelve-gauge shells, and pressed them into my numb palm. The brass bases felt heavy and cold against my skin.

I turned back toward the shadowed entrance of Pier Four, watching the river fog roll thick and gray across the abandoned tracks. Somewhere past the canal bridge, the diesel engines were idling, but the panic had cleared from my blood. I stepped across the iron threshold into the dark warehouse, chambering a round as the first rain of the morning began to drum against the corrugated roof.