Cold Blood

by Heather Hildenbrand

  I looked up sharply. “What do you know about metal?”

  Logan blinked. “Um, just what every Hunter knows?”

  It came out as a question, and he was staring at me with raised eyebrows, surprised by my ignorance, no doubt.

  “Which is?” I prompted.

  “It kills Werewolves faster and cleaner than a lethal blow landed in hand to hand combat. How do you not know this? It’s basic.”

  I rolled my eyes, impatient. Ever since the moment I’d killed Leo and felt the weird vibration stemming from the metal, I’d wanted to know more about this. Unfortunately, it was one of those things my mother had shut down over. She’d insisted I wait until I’d reached that point in my studies to learn about it with my classmates – which, I’d learned, didn’t officially happen until senior year. And in the whirlwind of almost dying I hadn’t exactly had the extra time to ask someone like Grandma or Fee, who would’ve actually told me.

  I sat back in my chair, completely forgetting about the family tree assignment.

  “No details, remember?” I said, pointing to myself. “Start from the beginning.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. He cleared his throat, and his voice took on this lecture-like quality that reminded me way too much of Professor Olbermeyer from Science. “Metal is a chemical element that conducts two things. Heat and electricity.” He counted them out on his fingers as he talked. “It also attracts and forms bonds with non-metals. Which means, when it comes in contact with a Werewolf spirit, which are transient enough to begin with, the metal bonds with the second spirit, and is able to slice through it or pull it from the Were’s body, making it a more effective kill.”

  “Uh-huh.” I straightened in my chair. “I understood everything except second spirits being transient and forming bonds and pulling a spirit from the body.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What did you understand?”

  “And. Is. When. Kill.”

  Logan shook his head. “Look, I’ll dumb it down. Werewolves have essentially two spirits – or souls – where we have one. You can kill a Werewolf by killing the human part of them, but it’s not easy, which is why Hunters were created in the first place. We can actually compete with their physical strength and stamina. But their second spirit, the one that makes them a Werewolf, is susceptible to more than brute force. Its transient, which means it passes in and out of the body very quickly. That and the way it bonds to metal makes for a cleaner–and easier–kill, when done right.”

  “Huh.” I chewed my lip, thinking back to those last few minutes with Leo. “So, why aren’t we taught to fight with it until senior year?”

  “Besides the side effects?” He shrugged. “They want to make sure you don’t use it as a crutch in battle, obviously. I mean, metal’s not always available to you. Fists and feet are.”

  “What are all the side effects?”

  “Not many, if you do it right. You do feel it, though. You’re essentially absorbing another living thing’s life force into an object in your own hand–killing two living things at once–so you’ll always feel something. If you do it right, it’ll be a lot of vibrations, maybe some dizziness, elevated heart rate.”

  “And if you don’t do it right?”

  “Heart palpitations, seizures, vomiting, exhaustion, heart attack. Or worse.”

  I stared at him. “Worse?”

  He shrugged. “It could kill you.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “It’s been a long time since a death was recorded due to killing with metal. The research your dad is known for has the last recorded case.”

  “Right. My dad.” I eased forward, finally remembering the assignment at hand, and what had started this conversation in the first place. “He discovered stuff about metal?”

  “What we know about life force absorption largely came from his research. The way it affects the Hunter, and why. Before that, people thought it was magic.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Magic is nothing but unexplained science. But if you want to believe in that sort of thing, the metal isn’t magic. It’s the spirit inside the Werewolf that is.”

  “I’m not sure what I believe,” I mumbled. “What you’re telling me is that my dad helped find ways to kill his own kind.”

  “It was all to help The Cause and deal with those who resisted peace, but yeah. I guess he did.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. Logan was watching me with an expression that looked a lot like pity. I didn’t meet his eyes.

  “You okay?” he asked, finally.

  I shrugged. “Whatever. It’s nice to be filled in, finally.”

  He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again, his gaze locked on something behind me. I turned and found Cambria hurrying towards us through the stacks. Her black eyeliner was running vertical down her cheeks and it smudged sideways where she kept trying to wipe the tears away. She reached our table and fell into the chair beside me, looking somewhere between heartbroken and murderous.

  “What happened to you?” Logan asked.

  “Phillipe is what happened,” she said, her voice cracking. “I went to meet him for our date, but he wasn’t there, so I went looking for him.” She sniffled, which made her look a tad more heartbroken than violent.

  “Let me guess. You found him and he wasn’t alone,” I said.

  She nodded, and her eyes narrowed, putting her right back in the murderous category. “He was with Demi. Of all the trampy, hooker-ific broads at this school, he had to pick Demi. He might as well have shacked up with Victoria.”

  “Oh.” I looked to Logan for help, but he shrugged. I turned back to Cambria, who was sulking and chewing on a pen. I looked closer. My pen. I snatched it back. “This might be a bad time, but who is Demi again?”

  “She’s Victoria’s second in command. Long brown hair, twisted smile. Possibly more evil than Victoria. She’s been through pretty much the entire junior class and half the seniors.”

  “Oh, right.” I remembered the girl I’d seen holding court instead of Victoria at lunch the other day.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Cam. Are you sure? Maybe you misunderstood.”

  Cambria let out a harsh laugh. “I’m pretty sure there’s no mistaking that pose. Not unless it’s for medical reasons.”

  “Oh.” I shoved the mental picture aside. “Want us to jump him?” I joked. “Or her?”

  “That’s really sweet of you, but I’ll figure something out.” Cambria was swiping at her makeup now that the tears had dried, and the way she said it let me know she hadn’t been joking, like I had. I tried not to let that make me nervous, because Phillipe and Demi obviously deserved it. But then I remembered the boys who’d gotten busted for trying to check out gay porn from the library. It hadn’t been pretty.

  Logan and I exchanged a look while Cambria leaned forward and scanned the page I’d been taking notes on, already moving on from the horrific breakup – and then breakdown – she’d gone through.

  “Jeremiah De’Luca, we studied him. Some scientist. Genius with metal. But wasn’t he a Were…?” She looked at me with wide eyes, then back to the paper, tracing the lines of the tree I’d drawn, connecting all the names. “Crap. Is he your–”

  “Dad? Yes.”

  “Geez. Sorry. I mean, not that he’s your dad because I think it’s totally cool to be half and half. I meant, sorry I didn’t realize.” Her brows knitted and she stared at me. “Wait. Dad was a science genius. Does this mean you’re going to get all science-y on me and BFF it with Logan and do homework all the time?”

  I laughed. “Uh, no. I must take after another part of my family. Trust me, no chance of that.”

  “Good. Does that mean you can take a break?” She glanced at Logan. “I’m already bored.”

  I laughed again. Logan rolled his eyes and looked genuinely irritated. “We just took a break. To hear about your–”

  I cut him off, already anticipating the argument coming. “I’ve got som
ething we should talk about. Victoria.” That did the trick. Both of them shut up and looked at me.

  “Why? I thought you said she was gone. Oh, do you want to brainstorm now?” Cambria asked.

  “Brainstorm what? Where did she go?” Logan asked, looking suddenly very interested. He pushed the textbook aside.

  “She left for the weekend,” I explained to him. “Only, she didn’t go visit her parents.”

  Cambria’s brows furrowed. “But you said–”

  “I know what I said. I was waiting until we were all together before I told you.”

  Cambria leaned forward. “Well? We’re together. Spill.”

  I filled them in on what I’d seen and heard between Vera and Victoria that night on the balcony. I left out the part about running into Alex. That part was still confusing, and I didn’t think I could handle Cambria’s inevitable hot flash.

  “She’s on an official mission? That is so not fair,” Cambria said when I was done. “We’re not allowed to do that stuff until we’re seniors.”

  “It makes sense, though,” Logan said. Both of us looked at him with brows raised. “Because of her tracker thing.”

  “What tracker thing?” I asked.

  “It’s her gift. If you can take her back to the last known place of a Were, she can pick up on them. Sort of like an internal or mental scent. Then she can follow them, and if you follow them long enough, you’ll find them. I bet they’re using her to find the pack that kidnapped those Hunters.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked.

  Cambria snorted. “Because it has to do with Victoria and Logan can’t help himself.”

  “What?” I looked back at him in confusion because I couldn’t bring myself to accept what it sounded like Cambria meant. Logan wouldn’t answer or look at me, but I was pretty sure I’d never seen a guy get that red before. “No way,” I said.

  “Oh, yes way.” Cambria laughed.

  Logan glared at her. “Don’t you have underclassmen to torture somewhere?”

  Cambria chuckled and looked over at me, gesturing to Logan. “See?”

  “Logan, but how? I mean, you know what she’s like.”

  “She’s not as bad as she pretends.”

  I gaped at him, positive I hadn’t heard correctly.

  “Whatever,” he mumbled. “Can we get back to the project?”

  I shot Cambria a look that said “what the hell?” She rolled her eyes. I looked back at Logan. He had his reddened face stuck deep into the Draven and was pretending to read some passage about my great-times-eight-grandfather. At least I assumed it was pretending, since the whole thing was in Latin.

  “Let’s get back to work,” I said.

  Cambria groaned.

  “Ten more minutes,” I promised.

  We went back to the Draven, with Logan reading the names aloud and me taking notes. Cambria pulled out an iPod and began scrolling through playlists. We were up to my grandma’s siblings and their children when a name caught my attention.

  “Wait, go back. What was that last one?”

  “Julia Crowne, married to Henry Gallagher.” Logan re-read the ‘born’ and ‘died’ dates again, and I nodded, waving my hand to hurry him up. “One offspring. Vera Gallagher, born Nineteen-fifty-five. Still living.”

  Cambria looked up from her iPod. “What’s going on now?”

  I looked at Logan, trying to do the math. “Vera Gallagher. She’s my…”

  “Great aunt,” he supplied.

  “The Vera who has weird visions about you?” Cambria asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  I stared back at Logan, without really seeing him. I couldn’t focus. Part of me felt like this was par for the course. I mean, it’s not like anyone had told me anything else important before now. At least not until I’d already figured it out for myself. Still… I’d sat in the same room with this woman. She’d been there when my mother had supposedly come clean about everything. I couldn’t help but wonder what reason they’d had for keeping this from me. If it had been no big deal, then why hadn’t they told me?

  Lucky for me, Vera was here at school. And I was going to find out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Training on Saturday sucked. Training any day sucked, but Saturday was bad because I had to wake up early to run. I thought that would mean my poor, tired body would reject itself by the end, and I’d finally throw up. When that happened, I was definitely putting my foot down that we end this and skip to the part where I actually learned something.

  Alex still wasn’t talking. Which had finally managed to crawl so far under my skin, I didn’t care if we got into a knock-out, drag-down fight if it meant we were at least grunting at each other to break the silence. I waited until we were about a mile in, and I’d managed to level out my breathing, before I spoke.

  We were out in the front field now, running parallel to the fence that separated the school from state property, about halfway through the course Alex had set for us. That left us roughly twenty minutes to converse without trying to kill each other.

  “So. What exactly do you do when you’re not running?” I asked.

  He continued to watch the path in front of us. “Study,” was his reply.

  But I was determined not to be put off. “That can’t be all. What do you do for fun?”

  “Run.”

  I almost laughed, but then I realized he was serious.

  “I haven’t seen you on the roof lately,” he said.

  I looked up at him, surprised he was bringing it up. We’d spent the past week pretending it hadn’t happened. “Um, yeah, I haven’t had to make any calls…” I trailed off, knowing how lame that sounded.

  “Don’t worry, you haven’t missed any good eavesdropping opportunities,” he said.

  I whipped my gaze up to his face, feeling myself reddening, and was surprised to find him looking back at me with a small smile. He was joking.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  “All the good stuff goes down when Vera’s around anyway.”

  I nodded like I agreed or had any idea what he meant.

  “How’s the hazing going?” he asked.

  “What hazing?”

  He glanced down, one eyebrow raised. “The paper bag?”

  I groaned. “You heard about that?”

  “Everyone heard about that. It gave the freshmen one more thing to be afraid of. Now, no one carries brown bags anywhere, and if they see one it’s like a bomb threat. No one goes near it.”

  “I’m getting it worse than the freshman?”

  “Victoria must really like you. She’s pretty choosy about who she tortures on a regular basis like this.”

  “It probably doesn’t help that we’re roommates.”

  “Seriously?” He laughed and shook his head. “You never had a chance.”

  “You’re trying to tell me you don’t mess with the underclassmen like this?”

  “No exploding presents. Although, I did steal a kid’s underwear once.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Was he wearing it?”

  “How evil do you think I am?”

  “You forget my experience is with the Victorias of this school. I assume the worst.”

  “Good point. No, he wasn’t wearing it. Still, I don’t think he was too happy when he kept waking up with no underwear. He started carrying it around in his backpack after that, so I let it go.”

  Logan. I bit my lip and tried not to laugh. “Maybe if that’s all I had to deal with, I could handle it. Grandma keeps telling me to rise above, but one of these days I’m not going to be able to do that.”

  His expression turned serious. “You can’t use physical violence against another Hunter. It’s grounds for expulsion.”

  I sighed. “What’s the down side? I’d get to go home.”

  Alex shook his head. “Probably not. There are plenty of other Hunter schools to choose from. And you’re a Godfrey. They’d take you. You’d just be farther from home.”
>
  I tried to figure out what he meant when he said I was a Godfrey. Did that have some special meaning? But I was stuck on the part where he’d said I’d be further from home. That wouldn’t be good. I was already a few hours away, and Wes and the rest of my friends felt millions of miles away. I couldn’t imagine having to put any more distance between us.

  We reached the place where we should’ve continued back up the hill to the clearing, but instead, Alex made a sharp right and took us back into the woods.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see. Come on.”

  I followed him down and around a trail that eventually let us out onto a one-lane paved road. Thick trees lined both sides so we ran on the thin strip of asphalt which felt weird after so many days of running on grass and dead leaves. At the end of the road stood something I hadn’t expected to see; an old garage, weathered and sagging in one corner, with a carport attached that looked like it had been pieced together from old scraps of siding and random plastic. A primer-gray pickup truck was parked underneath the carport. Various tools were scattered around near the hood.

  Alex went to the front of the truck and felt around inside the seam of the hood. A second later he yanked and the hood came up. He propped it open and stood back.

  “Is this yours?” I asked.

  “You asked what I do in my spare time. This is it.” He gestured to the truck.

  I came around and looked under the hood. I had less than no clue about cars, but I did notice several holes where I suspected parts were missing. “You work on this in your spare time?”

  “It relaxes me.”

  I felt my eyes narrowing and even though I didn’t want to ruin the friendly moment, I couldn’t keep from asking, “Why are you telling me this?”

  He was slow in answering and there was an odd look in his eyes, like maybe he didn’t entirely know. “If we’re going to be spending so much time together, we should try to be friends.”

  “You want to be friends with me?”

  “Why do you look so surprised?”

  “Because you haven’t spoken to me in days.”

  “We had an entire conversation on the way here.” He eyed me. “Don’t you want to be friends?”