Alec nodded. “Thanks.”
And Then There was One
Tony had been distant during first period, but Collin thought it was best to give him his distance to let him figure things out for himself. He watched Tony out of the corner of his eye, and he could tell Tony was observing Ms. Ruhl, Mark, and the other students. Now, it was lunch, and he wanted to ask Tony his thoughts. He scanned the cafeteria, but he didn’t see Tony. He sat an empty table. He looked down at the disgusting mound of food and then looked around the room again. Still, no Tony. Suddenly, he felt someone bump his chair.
Collin turned to see Mark behind him with three other boys. “You looking for your boyfriend?” Mark said with the tone of a schoolyard bully.
“What’s going on, Mark?” Collin asked evenly, as if he thought they were just friends ribbing each other.
“Tony got in a fight in second period. He was eyeing my friends here, and they didn’t like it.” Mark knocked Collin’s chair again. “He’s in the infirmary.” Mark kneeled down to whisper in Collin’s ear. “So, I wouldn’t count on seeing him until late tonight.” He clutched Collin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re going to the infirmary, too.” He added a quick, hard smack to Collin’s face as he stood to walk away.
Panic seized Collin’s insides as Mark’s threat rang in his ears. They’re coming for me tonight. But what time? When is ‘late’? He looked around and saw dozens of eyes on him. His stomach boiled as he realized he couldn’t even leave the cafeteria unnoticed. He rolled scenarios around in his head: if he caused a scene, no doubt he’d be dragged straight to the infirmary for—what they were doing he didn’t know, but he didn’t want it to happen to him. His mind turned to his friend. Is it already too late for Tony, like Mark? Should I just run for it? And try to get help? The hopelessness of his situation stung him, and his eyes teared up.
Collin glanced around the room. His knees shook under the table, but he stood. He walked, as steadily as he could, directly to the cafeteria door and addressed the guard. “I need to use the restroom.”
The guard’s eyelids flicked slowly over his cold, green eyes, and his lip curled up in a knowing snarl. “Go ahead.” And he waved Collin on.
Collin walked toward the restroom sign and thought that he felt eyes on his back. He turned. The guard was watching, but in the doorway, Mark stood with his new friends. Collin turned and smacked into proctor Roth.
“Easy, Collin,” Proctor Roth said, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Sorry, sir,” Collin apologized, his eyes on the floor.
“Where are you heading?”
“Restroom.”
“So was I,” Proctor Roth said, and he waved his hand toward the restroom. Collin kept his face down as he walked into the restroom. He felt Proctor Roth at his back, so close he could feel his breath on his neck. Collin’s lips trembled and his hands shook as he approached the urinal. Proctor Roth took the urinal one down from him. He smiled at Collin before turning his gaze to the wall. Collin unzipped and tried to force himself to go unsuccessfully. I don’t even have to pee.
Proctor Roth finished and flushed the urinal. Collin kept his eyes on the wall directly in front of him. He heard Proctor Roth’s shoes click on the floor behind him. The sound stopped, and again he felt Proctor Roth’s hot breath on his neck as he spoke to Collin over his shoulder. “Don’t stay in here too long. Restrooms can be a dangerous place, even in a school as strict as this one.” Proctor Roth exited the restroom.
With trembling hands, Collin zipped up and stepped back from the urinal. He rubbed his hand through his hair and looked out the glass block window in the wall. He could see a wavy, frosted view of the world outside, and he thought, I’m never getting out there. Never.
* * * *
Shadows cloaked the room as Maxwell startled awake. Panic swept over him until his eyes adjusted and he remembered that he was sleeping on the floor of a living room in Detroit. Among friends, he reminded himself.
“Hey, what is it?” Haley mumbled from the couch. She was a notoriously light sleeper.
“Nothing. Bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
She propped herself up on a pillow. “Bad dream or premonition?”
“Bad dream, I hope,” his voice quivered.
Haley sat up and slid off the couch onto the floor beside him. “Tell me.”
“I was locked in a small room. It was a strange room I didn’t recognize,” he recalled the images. “I was trapped. With a werewolf.”
“Just you?”
“Yes, just me and, well, the werewolf.”
“Well, we’re not going to leave you alone,” Haley assured him. She lay down next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. “Any other details?”
“I had a flashlight.” He stopped. “This is why I think it’s a dream.”
“Why?” Haley prodded.
“The flashlight killed the werewolf, like it was a bomb. It was weird.”
“Some dream,” Haley replied, but Maxwell could tell that the wheels in her head were turning.
Island in the City
A week of scouring the city had proven fruitless. Concern fluttered across Alec’s face as he crossed another potential location off the list he had made.
Sitting in the passenger seat next to him, Helena patted his hand. “We’ll find a safe place for your sister.”
“I’m losing my confidence,” Alec admitted.
“Let me see,” Helena said, taking the map of Detroit from Alec’s hand. He watched her face wrinkle in concentration. He fought the urge to be annoyed by her helpfulness, but he didn’t know how someone new to the city would find a place he hadn’t thought of. He looked out the window to the empty building he had just crossed off his list of candidates. The building was getting rehabbed into apartments, and his options were diminishing.
“What about this,” Helena enthused. “This island.” She poked her finger into the map.
Alec looked at Belle Isle, a park situated in the middle of the Detroit River. Only one bridge led to it, and the park was closed at night. “It’s isolated,” he agreed.
“Let me see your phone.” Helena held out her hand. She pressed around on the phone and brought up a map. “This says there’s an abandoned zoo on the island. Abandoned zoos mean cages.”
Alec smiled at Helena as he started the car. “Let’s check it out.”
Training Wreck
Lucy looked across the living room at Maxwell and Nadia and tried to keep her frustration from showing in her face. She had worked with them for a week, and felt neither had made substantial strides. When it came to meditation Maxwell lacked the attention span to concentrate on his breathing. Every time Lucy opened her eyes, he was fiddling with his phone or looking around the room. Nadia managed well with the balancing poses, but she shied away from self-defense moves with a snobbish sneer. Lucy decided that trying to teach others the moves she had learned in her classes was more difficult than Mitch had ever made it look.
“Take five,” she muttered. She walked down the hall and entered the bedroom study. The room looked like a command center with a dry erase board marked with everything they knew about the werewolves in addition to the translated pages strewn around the room.
“How’s the morning regimen?” Jared asked as Lucy entered.
“Brutal, apparently.”
He chuckled. “We’re not soldiers, I’m afraid.”
“I’m thinking of enlisting help.” Lucy approached Jared and sat next to him. He cocked his eyebrow with his question. Lucy continued, “Mitch. As much as I can’t stand him, he’s really, really good at teaching.”
“And how are you thinking of arranging this?”
“I was thinking I’d pay him for a class for me and some friends.”
“Here?”
“At the gym if we can swing it.”
“I like it.” He took his glasses off his face and placed them on top of his head. He scratched his bearded chin, and looked so much like a pr
ofessor that it made Lucy giggle.
“We were supposed to have different lives, weren’t we?”
He nodded. “Yes, I’d like to think so, but, if things were different, I wouldn’t even be here. Darius was my father after all.”
Lucy took the thought in. “Maybe everything will work out.” She eyed the papers. “Anything we can use to our advantage?”
“Maybe. I’m so distracted looking for information, I haven’t translated anything completely.” He looked at the dry erase board. “Haley did a great job with the board. I may enlist her help with the translating.” He smiled. “Since you’re preoccupied training.”
Alec breezed into the room, as Helena trailed behind him. “We found the perfect place for Lucy to change. Belle Isle.”
“Why the park?” Lucy asked.
“It’s an island. It’s closed at night. And it has an abandoned zoo on it with empty, solid buildings,” Alec enumerated. “It’s the best place to wait out a full moon.”
“Great job, Alec,” Jared said.
“Actually, it was Helena’s idea,” Alec admitted.
Lucy took Helena’s hand. “Thank you.” She turned to Alec and Jared. “Now we just have to get ready to fight Griffin and Vincent,” Lucy said.
Alec added, “And figure out what the hell the other werewolves are up to.”
* * * *
Inside his office at the Cornerstone Boys Academy, Nigel studied his fingernails and then shifted his half-lidded gaze across the desk to Griffin and Vincent. “Chicago is set, I presume?”
“We made 50 new werewolves in one night,” Griffin gloated. “That city won’t know what the fuck hit it.”
“Neither will Los Angeles, New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aries...The list goes on to every sizable city in the world.” Nigel turned his attention more fully to Griffin and Vincent as he righted himself in his chair. He folded his hands on the desk. “We have operatives stationed with every major head-of-state around the globe. Imagine every world leader dead at once. Imagine every Congress and Parliament torn to shreds.” His face lit with the wicked glow of a jack-o-lantern. “After this full moon, human civilization will be thrown into chaos and crumble.” A perturbed smile puckered his mouth. “You are the only members of the Gen5 Pack to join us.” He leaned closer. “Why is that, Griffin?”
Griffin looked down and sucked in his cheeks. “I guess you underestimated their bonds with their families.”
“Maybe I overestimated your ability to be persuasive.”
“And Darius’s failures?” Griffin contested. “I’m to be blamed for those too?”
Nigel’s face blossomed into a full smile. “I’m not looking to assign blame. I’m looking to make this a learning opportunity.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “How do we stop them?”
“You see them as a threat?” Griffin scoffed.
“Never underestimate your enemy.”
Griffin sighed. “You want me to take care of them?”
“It’s what you’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to be your pack.”
“The night of the full moon, they will predictably be looking for a place for the sister to change. It’s the perfect opportunity to...set things right.” Griffin smiled with wicked confidence. “Let me take a few boys from the school here.” He turned to face Vincent. “If they don’t want to be werewolves, then they can be dead, right Vincent?”
Vincent wagged his eyebrows comically. “The only good human is a dead human.”
* * * *
Drizzle shimmered on the pavement under a March-gray sky. Lucy checked her refection in the window of the gym, and, in doing so, spotted Mitch inside. Her stomach knotted instantly, just at the thought of asking him for a favor of any sort. She imagined his snarky, self-confident response, and she became irritated before she even asked him.
Mitch leaned against the counter of the juice bar, and he nodded toward Lucy as she approached. “Rune, haven’t seen you for a while. I thought maybe you decided I was too tough.”
“I’ve been traveling,” she said. Keep cool.
“Anywhere interesting?”
“Iowa.”
“I guess not.” He shifted his weight, indicating boredom. “Getting a little catch-up in? You gonna make class?”
“Actually, now that you mention it, I was wondering something.”
He cocked his eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
“I have some friends who would like to learn, um, basic self-defense techniques.”
“Aw, and you told them about my class. You’re the best.”
“No, actually, I was wondering if you could teach a special class for us.” She added hastily, “We’d pay you, of course.”
He pulled back in mock surprise. “This sounds like, a—what’s the word?—favor.”
Lucy clenched her jaw. “It is.”
“Aren’t you the one who tried to embarrass me in front of my class a few weeks ago?”
“Look, if you don’t want to do it, don’t. I’m not gonna beg, you.”
His merry laughter annoyed her further. “It’s so easy to get you going. Sure, I’ll do it, but you really need to work on your favor-asking skills. Heaven forbid you beg—or even ask politely.”
“How much?”
“We’ll call it community service, and I’ll arrange to use a room here.”
“Could we do it soon?”
He leaned over the counter of the juice bar and retrieved the calendar of room availability. “We could do it tonight. Eight o’clock?”
“Great. Thanks.” She turned to leave but stopped to turn back. “Really, thanks.”
“You’re really welcome.”
* * * *
Alec double-checked his shopping list as he picked up supplies at the sporting goods store. Looking up from his list, he scanned for Maxwell and Haley who had run off like bored children. He was beginning to regret accepting their offer to help him.
With items like sleeping bags on his list, his total climbed quickly. But, his two extra campers had to be prepared to stay the night on Belle Isle. He started to walk toward the checkout, planning to snag his prodigal shoppers on the way.
“Can we get this?” Haley bounded toward him with Maxwell at her heels. She held out a flashlight.
“We have flashlights,” Alec countered.
“This is a special flashlight,” she insisted.
Alec took the flashlight and looked it over. “It’s expensive.”
“It’s long lasting,” Maxwell explained. He looked at Alec with large, doe eyes. “I’m afraid of the dark.”
“No problem. We’ll get it.” He huffed. “I’ve never heard of a werewolf who’s scared of the dark.”
Maxwell and Haley fell behind Alec as they walked to the checkout. “I looked it up online,” Haley assured Maxwell. “It’s just like the one in your dream.”
Night Falls
As the day passed, Collin felt like a man who knew a bomb was strapped to his chest, but he had no idea what time it would detonate. He failed to concentrate in his classes; he nibbled at his plate of food; and, after dinner, he secluded himself to his room. He lay quietly on the bed, eyes on the door, jerking in fear every time he heard steps outside his door. He could taste the anxiety in his dry mouth, feel it churning in his stomach. Collin glanced at the clock, waiting for lights out, wondering if that was when he would have a chance to look for Tony or if that was when they would come for him.
The lights shining on the exterior of the building radiated through the window like a thin mist. Collin walked to the window and looked down at the lawn. The daytime drizzle had frozen on the grass and shimmered in the landscape lights. Pressing his forehead against the cold glass, he judged the sheer drop to the ground. The drop would certainly break his leg or at least twist his ankle. He looked at the sheets on his bed and thought about trying to create a rope to lower himself. He could tie the sheets to the radiator, he thought.
>
And then what?
He had no cellphone and only his uniform. No coat or hat or gloves. And certainly, no stranger would pick him up once they saw his reform school uniform. So, it would only be a matter of time until he was caught and brought back. Collin heard footsteps in the hall and spun as the door scraped open. Pale and drenched in sweat, Tony stumbled in and staggered to his bed, where he collapsed. Mark and another student stood in the hall. As Collin closed the door, Mark pointed his finger like a gun and arched his eyebrow.
Collin helped Tony to his bed where he collapsed. He curled into the fetal position, clutching his sides and moaning. Sweat soaked his hair and clothes, beaded on his skin. “They gave me the shot,” he said through chattering teeth. “We shoulda just run.”
Collin stepped back from Tony, the idea of contagion shooting through his mind. He stopped, and instead of running, retrieved a wet washcloth and patted Tony’s head. “I’m gonna be sick,” Tony sputtered. Collin snatched the wastepaper basket and handed to Tony. He stood aside as Tony heaved a thick green bile. “I’m cold.”
Trying not to disturb Tony too much, Collin tugged the covers out from under him. He pulled Tony’s shoes off and dropped them on the floor and then draped the covers over Tony.
“It feels like I’m dying,” Tony moaned.
Collin started pacing, and thought, I’m afraid it’s worse.
Outside in the hall, a guard called, “Lights out.” Collin flipped the light switch and sat on the edge of his bed. He listened to Tony’s labored breathing, his occasional gagging, and feverish dreams. Cutting his eyes to the door, Collin crept from his bed to the desk, and then quietly jammed the back of the chair under the door handle, hoping for at least a warning if someone tried to come in.
Collin closed his eyes, wanting a brief rest. When he opened his eyes, Tony was standing between their beds, looking in a mirror. The bedside lamp was on. Collin blinked at the clock. He had fallen asleep for three hours. “Tony?”
Tony turned to face him, his face trembling, looking old. “Look at my eyes.”
The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) Page 21
