Wolf's Curse

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Like a supernatural teen leadership conference,” I say. “But you didn’t just randomly decide to check it out. You heard something. Something that concerned you.”

  They look at each other. Derek sighs and shakes his head, and Chloe pats his arm and then turns to us.

  “We actually did just come to check out the camp,” she says. “Anything that involves supernatural teenagers makes us nervous. Maya and Daniel had exams, so we came by ourselves.”

  “Seeing whether the Edison Group—or some branch of it—was gathering supernatural teens for nefarious purposes?”

  “Hey, considering our past . . .”

  “I am neither judging nor questioning. We actually wondered about that ourselves when things went wrong.”

  “But if it was an experiment, they’d have swooped in by now,” Chloe says. “Instead, we’ve stumbled on a very different problem, and so we’re happy to help until the council arrives.” She pauses. “We might even talk to them if that’s okay.”

  Derek grumbles, but when she looks his way, he lifts a shoulder, as if to say he’s registering a lack of enthusiasm for the proposal but not disagreement.

  “Excellent,” I say. “Paige is on her way, and she’s always the best one to talk to. Let’s get the others and find a place to call and give her the bad news.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Logan

  I’m not walking away from the cabin without a thought for my missing sister. When Mason and I do leave, I circle the property, ignoring Marchocias’s sighs as I hunt for my sister’s trail.

  “She’s not here,” the demon says, leaning against a tree. “I would smell her. She isn’t nearby and didn’t come this way when she left.”

  “Then where is she?”

  Marchocias shrugs. “Ask the witch. She seems to have a knack for sneaking in and out. I would say your sister found her back door.”

  I continue to pace.

  “We have a deal, Romulus,” Marchocias says. “I would suggest that the sooner you complete it, the sooner you can hunt for your sister, which I will allow under the terms of our bargain. You and your compatriots may remain in my forest until she is located, and she will come to no harm from me or mine.”

  Mason looks from her to me, and I brace for him to snap that we need to get moving. Instead, he lowers his voice and murmurs, “You want me to handle this camp bullshit while you hunt for her?”

  Yes, I do. But that isn’t fair to him, and it isn’t the bargain. So I shake my head and leave the cabin behind with one last glance over my shoulder as we go.

  In everything that has happened so far, I’m not certain I can say that there’s been a moment yet when I’ve been truly afraid. That isn’t bravery. It’s the fact that it’s all happened so fast, and I’ve been so busy worrying about my sister and everyone else that I haven’t had time to process anything more. Even with Kate gone, as concerned as I am, my gut says she’s fine, that I’d know if she wasn’t. The threat in this forest right now is Marchocias, who has given her word that neither she nor her hounds interfered with Kate. So I’m worried about my sister but not afraid for her.

  What I’m doing now, though? That scares me.

  What I fear isn’t the journey or what will happen to us when we arrive at the camp. I fear what has already happened. I fear what we are about to see.

  Our fellow campers turned on us, but when we ran, they weren’t the ones who followed. They were too busy attacking each other, that chaos madness ignited, sparks jumping to anyone who came near. Among those were non-half-demons, campers unaffected by the madness who did not participate in the attempted burning . . . and we left them behind.

  We also left the half-demons, who were no more responsible for their actions than if they’d been brainwashed. We ran because we had no choice. We escaped the pyres, and then we had to keep running from the hell hounds on our tails, and then those hell hounds trapped us in the cabin, leaving us no way to go back and help.

  Is that last point an excuse? If not for the hell hounds, would we have returned? Kate would have wanted to go back, but we had others relying on us, and yes, even without that, I am not suicidal.

  Marchocias said that werewolves look after their own first, and she is correct. Back at camp, one of the counselors snarked about our little “starter pack,” and while that insults Mason, Allan, Holly and Elijah, it is not wholly incorrect. In just a day, Kate and I had carved out a small group of allies and potential friends. Now we’ll protect them and ourselves as if we were a pack. As for everyone else? We care. We just don’t care enough to risk the lives of those with us.

  Some campers—kids we’d talked to, eaten with, argued with—might be dead, and we will feel the full weight of that guilt. Yet we still wouldn’t have gone back of our own accord. We’d have gotten to safety, and our parents and the council would have helped those still at camp. And perhaps, as cowardly as it feels, I wouldn’t have been volunteering to go back later and see what happened. I’d spare myself that memory.

  Now I’m going, and part of me is relieved at the excuse to help, and part of me is terrified of seeing what we left behind.

  “You holding up okay?” Mason asks.

  I nod. It’s a little abrupt, and I feel the urge to add something to soften it, but I can’t help feeling Mason-being-thoughtful is like a wolf faking a limp. Once your guard is lowered, it’ll attack.

  We’re walking through the late afternoon forest. I keep glancing at the sun, as if to double-check that it’s actually still daytime. We fled the camp only hours ago. We arrived at camp only yesterday morning. I keep thinking we’ve been out of contact so long that, any moment now, Mom and Dad will come ripping along the road, panicked because they haven’t heard from us in . . . twenty-four hours?

  Yeah. Even Mom won’t panic until tomorrow. She might have hoped for a text last night, but she knew our phones had been confiscated, and she’ll presume we got too busy to check in. She’ll hope my sister has overcome her strident objections and made new friends, maybe met a boy and got busy with conference stuff.

  Well, Mom . . . she did. Friends. Boy. Busy. Just . . . not quite the way you hoped.

  “You don’t need to do this,” Mason says.

  I look at him. Just a look. His gaze shifts to the side.

  “Yeah,” he says. “That was a stupid thing to say. Not much choice when a fucking demon is holding you hostage.”

  He glares at Marchocias, who walks ahead, tramping through the forest like the hiker whose body she inhabits.

  “I heard that, Edward,” she trills back. “I would argue that I am the hostage here. My forest being held hostage as a battlefield in one of your petty supernatural squabbles.”

  She’s not wrong. Of course, I wouldn’t say that.

  “I am going to leave you boys here,” she says. “I can’t enter the camp.”

  “Because it’s warded,” I murmur. My head jerks up. “When was it warded? Before the conference started? Or after?”

  “From the moment the foundation was laid. Strong magic to keep their little children safe. Which does not help one whit when the danger comes from those children themselves.”

  “Strong magic. How strong?”

  She grins back at us, and that illusion flashes again, her teeth sharp as a wolf’s. “The strongest.”

  “Blood magic. Ritual sacrifice.”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  “Does it have anything to do with that cabin in the forest?”

  She leans against a tree, and the air shimmers around her, her wolves settling in like loyal hounds. “Once upon a time, there was a cabin in the woods. The witch who built it made a deal with me. She could have her cabin and practice her arts and gather her herbs, like a healing woman of old, and I would not harm her, in return for”—she flutters a hand—“various accommodations.

  Despite our deal, this witch, being a paranoid sort, built her cabin to ensure I cannot pass her threshold in the night and slaughter her. Or st
eal from her.” Marchocias’s nose wrinkles. “Most likely the latter. I am something of a magpie. Our witch builds her cabin, and the two of us live in harmony. Then along come those who built your camp. They offer to hire the witch to work her enchantments to keep me out.”

  “Bullshit,” Mason says. “There is no way in hell the council is plunking a bunch of supernatural teenagers in a demon-infested forest.”

  “One demon hardly makes for an infestation.”

  “You know what I mean. We’re teenagers. You can’t tell us to stay in camp and expect us to do that. Personally, I think the interracial council is a bunch of ineffectual handwringing do-gooders who wouldn’t know how to actually do good if the opportunity leapt into their path. They play it safe. They don’t take chances. That makes them as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. But it means they are never, ever going to ward the conference center and let supernaturals bring their precious babies.”

  “I get the feeling you aren’t a fan of the council,” Marchocias murmurs. “However, in this, you are correct. It was the builders who warded it.”

  “Hiring the local witch.”

  “Mmm, no, she refused their offer. Tried to warn them out of building here, too. They ignored her. They weren’t too happy with her for refusing their offer. That might explain why I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  I think of the mummy in the attic. Could I have mis-gendered it?

  I say nothing. What matters is that the warding was done by those who developed the land. The witch, dead or alive, does not seem connected to whatever happened at camp, and the council had no idea there was a demon in the forest.

  Is it possible that there was no outside influence? When you combine the factors—demon plus half-demons plus demonic warding—was it the magic that inadvertently caused the half-demons’ reaction?

  “Now,” Marchocias says. “This is where I’ll take my leave of you. The camp is just beyond that stand of trees.” She smiles. “Enjoy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kate

  When we near the cabin, we can’t just walk up to the front door, especially when, the last time I checked, it was being guarded by hell hounds. Chloe and I decide to scale a nearby oak for a better look. Derek and Elijah stay at the base.

  Once we’re high enough to see the roof of the cabin, I stretch out on a branch, Chloe climbing to the one over me.

  “I don’t see hell hounds,” she says, “unless they look like trees.”

  “They’re invisible.”

  “Now you tell me.” She shades her eyes against the falling sun. “It seems like the boards on one window are broken.”

  “We did that to get inside.”

  Chloe leans over the branch. “Derek?”

  “He’s right over th—” I look down to see no one below us. At the crunch of undergrowth, I see Elijah and Derek heading straight for the cabin.

  Chloe groans and scrambles down. I go after her, and we catch up twenty feet from the cabin where the guys have paused.

  “Uh, what happened to approach with caution?” Chloe says, poking Derek in the ribs.

  “I’m always cautious,” he says.

  “We just wanted to get you girls safely in the tree first,” Elijah says, meeting my rude gesture with a grin.

  “The hell hounds are gone,” Derek says.

  Elijah’s crouched on the ground, touching the dirt. He looks at me. “Logan didn’t bring Mason here yesterday, did he? Before we all came by?”

  I shake my head as I walk over to him.

  “I still suck at telling a scent’s age,” Elijah says. “But they’re both here, and we came in over there.” He points.

  I sniff the ground. Logan and Mason walked past here not long ago. Someone else, too. I inhale deeper. A scent I don’t recognize.

  “There was someone with them,” I say. “A woman.”

  Elijah’s brows raise. “You can tell a person’s sex from their scent?”

  “Debatable. Some werewolves say you can. I think it’s mostly associated scents, and this one says female. The witch is covering her scent, so it isn’t her. Marchocias is female, but she wouldn’t have a scent . . . unless she possessed a female human body.”

  “Definitely possible,” Chloe says.

  I realize what I’m saying. The demon has taken human form, and she’s with my brother.

  I swivel in the direction they went, and every fiber in me screams to run after Logan. But I stop myself and process logically. Whatever has happened here, Logan is with Mason. The guy threw himself to hell hounds to protect my brother, who doesn’t actually need protecting in the first place.

  Logan and Mason weren’t forcibly marched off by a demon. I’d see signs of a fight or a struggle. They went willingly. As much as I want to know why, there’s another problem niggling at me. I drop to my knees and sniff the ground again. Three scents. Logan, Mason and an unknown female.

  So where are Allan and Holly?

  “No sign of them,” Elijah says as he jogs into the bedroom where I’m standing. “There’s an attic we didn’t see before, and I went up there with Derek. Just boxes and a weird mummy sitting in a chair. No one’s here.”

  “Shit,” I say.

  What I expected to be a five-minute detour has already cost us twenty as we search the tiny house.

  Chloe appears at the bedroom door, Derek behind her.

  “They must have gone into the tunnels after you,” Derek says.

  “That was my first thought,” I say. “The only problem . . .” I point at the floor where the throw rug has been pushed back.

  “What the hell?” Elijah says. He drops to one knee, running a hand over the wood. “Where’s the hatch?”

  “It must be there,” Chloe says. “It’s just well concealed.”

  Elijah and Chloe are on their knees now, running fingers and fingernails over the floor and bending to peer at it from other angles. Derek only looks at me, and arches a brow and then settles back, thinking and waiting until they both rise.

  “There’s no hatch,” Chloe murmurs, rising. “Could it be in another room?”

  I shake my head. “I’m presuming it’s concealed by magic, but I have no idea what would do this. That said, I’m no expert on spells.”

  “Neither am I,” she says. “But yes, if there’s no hatch where there was one before, that implies magic.”

  “We also couldn’t find our way back through the tunnels,” I say. “We found a room exactly like the one where we’d come in, except no hatch.”

  “And instead of preserved vegetables, there were preserved body parts,” Elijah says.

  “I was almost hungry enough to eat them,” I say. “Even after I knew what they were.”

  “Ah, right.” Chloe digs into her small backpack and comes out with a handful of glorious granola bars. She hands Elijah and I each two.

  “I should have offered earlier,” she says. “I know what werewolf metabolisms are like.” She passes one into Derek’s outstretched hand. “I have a few more if you need them.”

  She surveys the room. “We could rip out the boards to get down into the tunnels, but with the magic, we’d risk getting trapped.”

  “It also won’t do any good,” Elijah says. “I don’t think they went that way.” He gestures around the spot. “I only smell Logan and Mason here. I think Logan followed your trail here, Kate, but the hatch was gone. Then he left with Mason and a woman. My guess is that Holly and Allan went, too—they just weren’t close enough to leave an overlapping trail.”

  “Either way,” Derek says. “They aren’t here, so there’s no reason for us to stick around.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan

  Mason and I stop ten paces from the edge of the clearing. Ahead looms that monstrosity of a building, and in a blink, I’m transported back to yesterday morning, seeing it for the first time, trying not to laugh at the horror on my sister’s face.

  In a city, it would be an interes
ting architectural choice, and I can imagine people raving about the symbolism of it, which is just what the head counselor—Tricia—had done . . . back when Tricia was just an overly cheerful millennial chirping endlessly. The last time I saw her, she’d been pouring gas on our funeral pyres.

  I shiver and force myself to focus on the building. Yes, in the city, it might be interesting, if not to my taste. In the forest, though, it is a monstrosity, a box of solid steel, erupting from the earth without a window to be seen, the roof a giant skylight that turned the upper floor into a sauna and the lower one into a dark cave. It’d seemed a mockery of the worst aspects of architecture—so intent on form that it completely overlooked function. Now I wonder whether that’s too simplistic an explanation. The builder knew what was out here. Is the design intended to protect the occupants? Or is it something more sinister—those solid walls concealing magic that made us turn against one another?

  The camp is quiet, though I’m not sure how reassuring that is. In fact, I’m quite certain it’s the opposite of reassuring. Why are we not hearing anyone?

  There’s only one way to find out. I take a deep breath and turn to Mason, but he’s staring at a red smear on his arm.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “You’ve cut—”

  “It isn’t mine.”

  He runs his thumb over a dark spot on the tree beside him. It comes away red. My stomach clenches as I look up into the branches, but there’s nothing there.

  “Someone must have banged into that as they ran by,” I say.

  He nods, still staring at the blood.

  “Are you okay?” I ask as I move toward him.

  “I smelled it.”

  I nod. “It’s faint, though, which means there isn’t a lot more of it nearby. Like I said, just someone running and . . .” I trail off as I realize what he’s saying.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Smelling blood is normal for you. It’s not for me. Or it wasn’t.” He rubs his mouth. Then he realizes he’s rubbed it with the blood-smeared hand and yanks it away, scraping it against his jeans as he shudders. He recovers with a snorted laugh and a gruff, “Least I didn’t want to lick it off. Not yet, anyway.”