Wolf's Curse

by Kelley Armstrong

  I remember when Logan and I were kids, we once snuck into the forest behind our house and got lost. It’d been night, so our parents didn’t realize we were gone, and we’d been old enough to pray they didn’t find out. Logan finally suggested we walk toward the moon and keep that as our beacon. It worked. We got out of the forest . . . only to realize we had no idea how to get home. Same principle here. Elijah and I had been so focused on getting out of the tunnel that we didn’t think of the next step. Escape was all that mattered.

  Escape is not all that matters. We’re in thousands of acres of empty forest without even a scent trail to guide us. We do, however, know the general direction to walk, using the mountains as our guide.

  We try not to panic as we seem to be walking through the same stretch of forest over and over just like when Logan and I had stumbled around in those dark woods. Yet while the forest looks the same, I only need to slow down to spot the differences in flora, scent and even sound. We’re making progress, and the mountains loom as distant beacons to guide us.

  When we finally see the hard lines of a building ahead, we break into a run until it appears through the trees, and we both stop short.

  The building is a steel monstrosity shooting from the ground like a misshapen meteorite.

  The conference center.

  “Okay,” Elijah whispers. “So we know where we are now. The cabin is that way.”

  He points. I don’t follow his finger. I don’t even glance in that direction. I just keep staring at the building. Then my gaze drops to the surrounding yard, hidden by trees.

  We could leave now. Walk away without taking those last few steps that will show me what remains of the youth leadership conference.

  The last few steps that will show me the bodies.

  I swallow.

  “We aren’t walking away, are we?” Elijah whispers.

  When I glance over, he gives a rueful smile. “I was kinda hoping you’d talk me into leaving. Silly thought.”

  “Sorry. You can—”

  “Don’t even finish that sentence, KitKat. I don’t want to walk away any more than you do, and I’m sure as hell not leaving you behind. We just need to be careful. It’s quiet, but that doesn’t mean the danger has passed.”

  It’s quiet.

  I haven’t even realized that until he says the words. It is absolutely silent. A chill tickles down my spine. When I can’t repress a shiver, Elijah lays a warm hand on my shoulder.

  “We’ve got this, right? We’ll have a look. Do what we can. Then get back to your brother.”

  I nod and take two more steps. I’m about to say something to Elijah when I catch a girl’s voice. Another step, and there’s a girl, standing as if in a trance, listening to voices no one else can hear.

  She’s fifty feet away, and I only see her in profile. Small, both in stature and size, with blond hair pulled back at the side. There’s a touch of red in that hair. Strawberry blond.

  Recognition ping-pongs through my brain like a ball bouncing in a carnival game and refusing to land in a slot. She’s older than I first thought, more college aged. A counselor? There were only five of them, and she isn’t one . . .

  No, there was another counselor who hadn’t arrived.

  This is the latecomer, newly arrived to find . . .

  I swallow. I still can’t see the yard. We’re coming in from the east side. The pyres—and any dead campers—are on the west side.

  “Shit,” Elijah whispers.

  I follow his gaze, and my gut twists as I realize my mistake. There is indeed a camper here, on the ground at the young woman’s feet. A boy, curled up in the fetal position. And blood. When the breeze flutters past, I smell the blood.

  “I’m going to slip around,” Elijah whispers, “and approach from the other side in case she’s infected. She’s definitely out of it.”

  Out of it.

  I see the new counselor again, the way she’s standing there, straining as if to listen, nodding to an unseen companion.

  Necromancer.

  They said the last counselor was a necromancer.

  She’s not in a trance or in shock. She’s listening to the ghost of the guy at her feet.

  The ghost of the dead camper, his empty eyes staring up at the late-day sun.

  I glance over to stop Elijah, but he’s already out of sight.

  The girl speaks again. Her tone is low and sympathetic, but there’s steel there, too. She’s questioning him. Trying to figure out what happened.

  She arrived to this horror, and instead of fleeing in a panic, she’s getting answers. I take a step to go to her, to help her. Then I pause as she adjusts hair fallen from its clip, and I get a full look at her face.

  I know that face, that hair . . .

  An image flashes. A photograph of this girl when she was about my age. Of her and her boyfriend. That’s why we’d been looking at the photo. Not at her but at her boyfriend because—

  Dirt whisper-crunches underfoot. The smell of werewolf washes over me, and I spin just as someone slams into me.

  Now, when being knocked flying through the air by a werewolf, my first thought probably shouldn’t be, Shit, what’s his name again? But that’s exactly what I’m thinking.

  His surname is Cain. His cousin, Davis, is a pack member, and this guy has the same first initial. David? Dennis?

  Yep, I should be more concerned about being attacked, but I grew up with werewolves who were as likely to send me flying as clap me on the back to say hello.

  David—Dennis?—Derek!—isn’t knocking me flying in greeting. Still, I’m not overly concerned. Even as I’m struggling for his name, I’m hitting the ground in a roll and then bouncing up, ready to throw down when he dives at me, which he predictably does. To his credit, he sees how fast I recovered and twists in time to avoid being grabbed and thrown himself.

  In a serious attack, when he twisted, I’d have tackled him. But since this is all just a grave misunderstanding—or so I hope—I only dance back, fists raised.

  He stops. And he stares. Blinks. Blinks again.

  “You’re a . . . ?”

  “Werewolf?” I say. “Wait, no, the word you want is girl, isn’t it? Yep, that’s the real shocker here. Might want to get your nose checked, Derek, if you didn’t realize that before you attacked me.”

  And that’s when Elijah jumps on Derek’s back. Now, Elijah isn’t a small guy, but Derek is a Cain, which means he’s big, really big. But his size only proves that old adage, “The bigger they are . . .”

  Yep, he drops like a felled oak. Elijah is on Derek’s back, arm around his throat as they crash to the ground. That’s when the necromancer rushes over, penknife in hand.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say. “Kate Danvers. I’m the Alpha’s daughter. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not so sure about him . . .” I jerk my thumb toward Elijah. “But I think he can be convinced once he realizes how big your boyfriend is. Hey! Elijah! See that guy you just knocked down. He’s a Cain.”

  Elijah’s already backing off his quarry, hands up. “Yow. Yes, he is. Dad told me about the Cains. Built like brick shithouses and—”

  He stops before saying the rest. I’ve heard it enough times to finish it. Twice as ugly. I wouldn’t exactly call Derek Cain ugly, but he’s not getting a magazine cover anytime soon.

  In the old photo I saw, Derek had bad acne. That’s long gone, leaving only minimal scarring. When he had the acne, people probably blamed that, but . . . yep, it wasn’t just the acne. With his broad face, heavy jaw and brow, he’s definitely a Cain, and sadly, that’s no compliment.

  If the clan had a motto, it’d be Big, Ugly and Stupid. Yet Derek’s green eyes flash with intelligence, and from what I’ve heard, he isn’t just smart for a Cain—like Davis—but a freaking genius, which means, thankfully, that he assesses the situation instead of just kicking our asses.

  “Now, let’s all play nice,” I say. “I’ll ignore the fact that I was attacked unprovoked.”


  “Unprovoked?” Derek snorts. “You were sneaking up on Chloe, watching her from the forest.”

  Chloe. Right. I have heard her name before.

  I point at the dead camper. “See that guy? This morning, he helped tie my brother and me to stakes for burning. I’m sure you saw the remains of the fire around the west side. We were part of the leadership conference until our fellow campers decided to roast us. So we took off, hell hounds on our heels—”

  “Hell hounds?” Derek rolls his eyes. “Someone’s been watching too much TV.”

  “Hell hounds. Hell beasts. Call them what you like. There’s a demon in this forest. Marchocias, if that means anything to you.”

  “I don’t give a shit about demons,” Derek says.

  Elijah rolls his eyes. “Yeah, go with that, Cain. You see the demon? Just tell him that you don’t give a shit about him. See how that works out for you.”

  “She,” I say. “Marchocias goes by the feminine.”

  “And I don’t go by Cain,” Derek says.

  “It’s Derek Souza.” Chloe steps forward, hand extended. “And I’m Chloe Saunders. Pleased to meet you, Kate. Since it seems we skipped that part.”

  I smile and shake her hand. “Pleased to meet you, too. This is Elijah. Not a Pack wolf. Just a fellow camper.” My gaze slides toward the fallen camper. “And I guess he’s . . .”

  “Dead,” she says softly. “I’m sorry. Though if he tied you to a pyre, you did what you had to do.”

  “We didn’t kill anyone. As for roasting us, it wasn’t his fault. Something infected the half-demons. Are there . . . survivors?”

  She nods. “Lots. Only three dead. The rest seem to be unconscious—in some kind of deep sleep.”

  “If there are injuries, I can help before we go back to my brother. I’m trained as a medic for our Pack.”

  “And I’m—” Elijah begins.

  “I am not working with Clayton Danvers’s daughter,” Derek says.

  “Fuck, not this bullshit. Just when we were acting all civil, too.” I meet Derek’s gaze. “Have you met my father?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “That’s a no, then, isn’t it? Never met my father. Never met my mother. Refused to accept her invitation to introduce herself. Couldn’t even be bothered to come meet your cousin, the only other survivor of an attack that wiped out your branch of the clan.”

  Derek bristles. Chloe lays a hand on his arm and says, her voice quiet but firm, “We’ve had trouble with Derek’s family. The Cains tried to forcibly reintegrate him years ago. As for the Pack . . .” She shrugs.

  “You’ve heard things, right? Seen photos, probably, of my dad’s handiwork.”

  She blanches before she can hide it.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “Photos of two mutts my dad cut up with a chainsaw when he wasn’t much older than me. My brother was nine when someone told him that story. A mutt who ‘thought he should know.’ I can still remember my dad’s face when he explained. Had to tell his daughter what he did, because if he didn’t, someone else would.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chloe says.

  I shrug. “I’d explain the photos, but you don’t want that. Clayton Danvers is a psycho who hacks up mutts with chainsaws. That makes a better story.”

  Chloe sneaks a look at Derek. “I’d hear the truth if you’ll tell it.”

  “The truth.” I meet Derek’s gaze again. “The truth is that it’s true. I can say that the guys were heavily sedated, but that’s incidental. The truth is that the mutts kept coming to Stonehaven to challenge Jeremy, who was never much of a fighter. Jeremy wanted to overhaul the Pack, get rid of the archaic bullshit, but he couldn’t do that if he was constantly fighting mutts. So Dad did something that guaranteed no mutt would set foot on Pack territory again. Something that freed Jeremy to lead and the Pack to live without constant challenge fights from outside werewolves. You can curl your lip and call me Clayton Danvers’s daughter, but I respect the hell out of my father, and if you’re going to snark about him, then I’m going to ask you to just let us pass. We’ll help the wounded, and you’ll do whatever the hell you came here to do, and you can just go on believing that the Pack is a bunch of psychos, rather than meeting us and making up your own mind.”

  There’s a moment of silence as I inhale after that long speech.

  Then Chloe says, “Thank you. I’m not sure anyone who didn’t grow up with the Pack can understand what it might take to protect it.” Her gaze slides Derek’s way. “We keep a low profile, and he doesn’t need to deal with . . . challenges?” Her voice rises on the last word, uncertain.

  “Think of it like a boxing league,” I say. “The more fights you win, the higher your profile, and the less you need to fight. Except those fights are often to the death, and you can’t opt out.”

  I nod to Derek. “If other werewolves find out about you, you will be a prime target. You’re Zachary Cain’s son and a genetically modified werewolf. They’ll want to say they were the one to beat you.”

  I ease back. “The Pack could offer you advice without membership. On the other hand, you’ve made it this long without trouble. You could be fine.”

  “I wouldn’t say we’ve made it without trouble,” Chloe murmurs. “But thank you for the offer, and we will think it over.” She clears her throat. “And I have to ask whether there’s any chance of us . . . encountering your family.”

  “You mean are they out here looking for us?” I shake my head. “We left yesterday, and our cell phones were confiscated. Mom will be hurt that she didn’t get a goodnight text, but she’ll presume we’re just too busy. Mom might be Alpha, but she’s also the mother of teens. She won’t worry just yet.”

  “Are we going to figure out what happened here?” Derek cuts in. “Or just stand around talking?”

  I smile. “Oh, you really need to meet the vampire I left with my brother. You and Mason will get along great. Okay, I’ll give the condensed version of our short-lived summer camp, and then we’ll see what we can do here before I get back to my brother.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Logan

  We’ve left Marchocias at the broken window and retreated into the cabin to talk. Mason insists on going with me, and I won’t argue. That’s his choice, just as it’s Holly’s choice to stay behind for Kate and to investigate the cabin further. Allan wavers but ultimately agrees that someone should remain with Holly.

  That, however, leads to a problem.

  “Holly?” I say. “May I speak to you, please? In the attic.”

  “The attic?”

  I nod. The setting is significant, but more importantly, I want this conversation to be as private as possible. I turn to Mason. “Give me ten minutes.”

  He grumbles and makes a show of looking at his watch. Yes, we don’t have time for delays, especially with Kate missing. This can’t wait, though, and so I usher Holly to the attic.

  Once we’re up there, I walk to the mummy. “You said you know nothing about this?”

  “I said I don’t practice dark magic.”

  I nod, circling the mummy as I examine it.

  “I don’t,” she says. “Not the kind that requires this.”

  “Yet you understood what Marchocias meant when she warned you not to poke about. When she warned you to leave her alone. The witch who did this, I presume.”

  “Kate is missing, and we’re trapped in this cabin. At that point, I was willing to agree to whatever that demon said whether I understood it or not.”

  Whether I understood it or not.

  Her wording is significant. She could have said, “when I have no idea what she’s talking about.” She didn’t because she’s avoiding a lie.

  “So you don’t know what she’s talking about?” I press.

  “I’m a witch,” she says. “This is the home of another witch, one much more powerful than me. It makes sense that I might poke around. I’m not interested in magic this dark, but sure, I’d see what I could find
in the way of other magic, new spells that don’t require human sacrifice. Having promised I won’t, though, I’ll stick to figuring out where Kate went. Now, you need to—”

  “Marchocias said the witch doesn’t want or need your protection. Do you know what that meant?”

  “Logan, your sister is—”

  “—missing. I am well aware of that. However, I stand a greater chance of finding her by staying here than going back to the conference center, so perhaps I’m stalling. Also, perhaps I’m thinking that it isn’t a coincidence my sister vanished in the home of a dark witch. Maybe what I should be doing is tearing out the walls, plank by plank, until I find Kate before she’s turned into that.” I point at the mummy.

  “She wouldn’t—” Holly clears her throat. “I don’t believe that’s what we have here. Whatever happened to him”—a nod toward the mummy—“I don’t think whoever owns this cabin would murder an innocent teenage supernatural for spell ingredients.”

  “Because you know her.”

  “What?”

  I step toward Holly. “This witch. You know her. And you didn’t just happen to come to a camp where a dark witch lives in the forest. She’s the reason you’re here. I don’t know what Marchocias meant about protecting her, but you came here to find her. To speak to her or read her grimoires or—”

  “No.” Holly backs up, arms crossing. “You really think I’m stupid enough to break into a dark witch’s lair to get a few extra spells? Sure, if I’m already inside, I’d look but—”

  “Then you weren’t looking for her in the forest? You weren’t looking for this cabin, which we conveniently found for you?”

  She meets my gaze. “If I tell you that I’m not here to hurt anyone, is that enough? I don’t use this kind of magic. I did not trick you into bringing me here. I will not endanger anyone while I’m here. I will do as Marchocias asked because I want to get us all out of this mess, which I had nothing to do with. If I promise you all that, is it enough? Or are you going to insist on answers that won’t help Kate and Elijah?”