Locke Down

Chapter 5

Laurel's POV

"L, wake up." I hear a voice calling out to me but I'm not quite sure where it's coming from.

"L..." I hear it again but this time it sounds more familiar. Is that-

"Laurel wake up!"

I jolt up and look to see Kline looking out of the cave. Everyone else is dressed and ready to go and I'm wondering what I've missed.

"Kline? What's going on?" I start to get up and pull my jacket and shoes on.

He glances at me oddly and one of the younger warriors, who I've learned is named Christian, begins to cough.

"Goddess it smells so bad." He says while trying not to gag.

I look around to see the same look of disgust on everyone's face and I try to take a whiff on my clothes. It's been a few day before any of us have had a real shower but I can't say I smell any worse than the rest of them. Plus I'm in a clean set of clothes.

"You don't smell that?" Kline asks after catching me trying to sniff my shirt.

"No?" I say a little embarrassed.

Shock is written all over his face as he looks at me.

"Geez L are you serious? It smells like death. There's got to be at least 10 rogues close by." He says to me.

I sniff the air, trying to pick up the scent of rogue that we were tracking the day before, but I get nothing. All I sense is the guys next to me in the cave.

"Hurry up, grab your stuff and let's go." He gestures to my things beside me.

I quickly stuff the rest of my belonging into my pack and throw it over my shoulder. The others have already began to walk out of the cave and I jog to catch up to them.

Kline grabs my arm, pulling me closer as we quickly walk through the woods.

"Where are we going?" I whisper.

"We got get out of here, we're being surrounded." He says as his grip on me tightens.

I've never seen him so serious before and it's scaring me a little bit. To make matters worse, I can't pick up the scent of a single rogue. If it was any other time, I'd think he was playing a joke on me, but judging by the way the others are acting I know he's not.

"Frazier." I call out to him through the mind link.

"Yeah?"

"Are they really that close? Can you sense them?"

I see him glance at me out of the corner of his eye before focusing his attention back on the path we're headed.

"Laurel, the air reeks of them. I think a regular human would be able to smell it the scent is that strong. You really can't smell anything?"

"No." I say back, slightly panicked. "But it's not like I've lost my sense of smell. I can pick up everyone's scent here and even a few deer nearby, just no rogues."

"Just stay close. It's hard to tell how many there are, but it's more than any of us have ever seen together."

We continue to walk and I'm grateful for the enhanced vision at night thanks to my wolf. Something lightly glowing catches my eye and I turn to see one of the symbols we had seen before carved into the tree. The swirl isn't very bright and quite honestly it would be easy to overlook if you were focused on something else. Once spotted, though, it's easy to tell it's not normal.