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"Aaaarrrgh!" Drake shouted He raised his tentacle and snapped it down,a loud crack

The coyotes watched impassively

"I need to hide," Drake said It was a shaht coled speech said, "Human hunter sees Does not smell or hear"

"Brilliant observation, there, Marmaduke" It was true: Brianna was not a coyote She couldn’t smell him or even hear him unless he was pretty loud He just needed a way to stay out of sight "Okay, get h place with deep cracks"

"Let’syour friend Swift Girl after us"

The coyotes did not dawdle They took off at a quick lope,with a sort of relentless fluidity around obstacles It was uphill at first until they topped a rise There Drake saw the barrier within a quarter mile

He stopped and stared

It was as if his round with black claws Like he was reaching to grab and then envelop this unnatural world with thousands of fingers

It should have been inspiring But it made Drake uneasy This was the sae itself

It was a reht with the Darkness It was a ree’s aed anxiously They were partially silhouetted atop the bluff Drake ducked low He could see the lake spread out below If he could see, he could also be seen

Drake hurried along behind Pack Leader, disappearing quickly amidst a maze of fallen rock and rain-etched bluff

He had to suck in his breath to squeeze through the crack they’d found for hi out with coyotes: no one knew the terrain better

There was no room to sit, barely room to stand But Brianna wouldn’t find him; he was confident of that

And he could see a narrow slice of the lake, a few boats, and a sliver of the sky

Night was co on

OUTSIDE

NURSE CONNIE TEMPLE sed the Zoloft It worked better than Prozac for her, left her less tired

She chased it with lass of red wine Which would make her feel tired

She turned on the TV and clicked without any real interest through the movies on demand She wasn’t in her trailer She was at the Avania Inn in Santa Barbara It here she regularlyout months earlier He had shown up at one of the Friday cookouts And soon after that they had realized that they would need to keep their relationship secret