NO, THIS WAS NOT-CLAW. A wily alpha, but a dangerous one. He bared his teeth, his feet dancing on the snow so he wouldn’t melt through the surface and trap himself. The chances of me getting a wary hellhound into the hole and slamming the gate shut behind him were zero.
Good thing I had one other option left to call upon.
Dropping the snowshoes, my hand slipped into my pocket. The warm head of Jacob’s effigy nudged into my palm like an adoring pet.
Benjie had dismissed the statue as insufficient when I’d mentioned it earlier. “One statue, one wolf,” he’d told me, sounding as sure of himself as if he dealt with shifters and hellhounds daily.
I’d agreed at the time. A single statue probably wouldn’t have made a dent in the pack that had streamed into the hole moments earlier.
But here b
