CHAPTER 9

RAMOS’S RIGHT claw punctured the padded handle he gripped as Angela careened around a bend in the road. His left arm held the priest upright because the man had gone limp upon seeing the wolf spirit, and every muscle from Ramos’s chest down was clenched to keep him wedged in the seat. On top of that, he’d placed his wolf spirit in the back to avoid frightening the old man again when he woke and now found his limited vision from that position frustrating enough to howl over.

Then again, the wolf kept looking at Angela in the moonlight and not the road ahead or the jungle passing by in a blur—at least he blamed the unwarriorlike behavior on the wolf and not the growing desire inside him to do nothing else.

It didn’t help that with every jolt and jerk, his fangs gouged his lip and the burning in his head from the fire strike throbbed to the point of madness. He couldn’t think clearly —a condition that worsened beneath the full light of the moon.

From the spirit world, he’d seen the effec