Screw democracy. And screw Callum, too.
Ali sat beside me on the bed. “It must have been some dream,” she said, stroking my hair back from my eyes.
I reminded myself that Ali was family. Ali would never have betrayed me like this. But Ali wasn’t a fighter, and she wouldn’t understand that I had to fight. That if the Senate wasn’t going to kill the Rabid, I was.
She’d worry, and she’d yell, and she’d lock me in my room until I turned thirty. And while I sat around doing nothing, other people would die.
“It was a really bad dream,” I told Ali, forcing the tremors out of my voice. “But on the bright side, I don’t think I have a fever anymore.”
“You never had a fever,” Ali replied. The tone in her voice reminded me that Ali wasn’t stupid, and that oatmeal or no oatmeal, there was a good chance my “illness” hadn’t fooled her as well as I’d thought. “You needed to be alone. I get that.”
I felt like maybe she did understand, even though her actual words reinforced the fact that she had no idea that this had nothing to do with me struggling to deal with the events of the last few days and everything to do with the events of the last few minutes. It wasn’t Ali’s fault that I’d neglected to mention that Chase and I could hop in and out of each other’s heads at will. There would be time to feel guilty about that little omission later. Right now, I had other things to hide.
Like the fact that the dull roar in my gut—telling me to hunt, to kill, to protect—had gone nuclear.
On the other side of our bond, I felt Chase’s approval, felt him tear into an animal’s throat with a ferocity that should have scared me, but didn’t.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ali asked, doing a 180 from the moment before and laying a hand on my cheek. “You actually do feel a little warm, and you look … strange.”
“Thanks a lot,” I replied. It wasn’t like I could say, Well, the werewolf who shares my brain just killed a deer, and the two of us are planning on hunting down the Big Bad Wolf like the woodsman of yore.
Hmmmm …, I thought, the mind bunnies multiplying. Woodsman. Ax. Silver ax.
If I was going to hunt a Rabid, I needed weapons, and I needed to figure out where exactly the Rabid was. I’d counted on eavesdropping to tell me the latter, but things hadn’t worked out that way. I’d have to figure it out myself. As for weapons …
“I think I’m going to go to the restaurant and harass Lake,” I told Ali. “She’s waiting tables this afternoon, and I’d kind of like to see her in action.”
I didn’t mention that the action I most wanted to see Lake enact was the way she’d respond when I asked her if she had any weapons other than a shotgun. If she didn’t, she’d know where to find them and she’d take disturbing joy in doing so. I’d be Santa Claus, just for asking.
And while Lake requisitioned supplies, I’d track our Rabid. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew I’d do it, the same way I knew that Ali wouldn’t object to me going to talk to Lake.
“She doing okay?” Ali asked, transferring her maternal instincts from me to Lake.
“She’ll be fine until the alphas come back through, and then she’ll be fine again after that.”
If I could figure out where our prey was hiding, Lake wouldn’t have to stay inside when the alphas came back through Montana. We’d be well on our way to No-Man’s-Land by then.
The Wayfarer was nearly empty when I slid into a corner booth. Lake, notepad in hand, slid in across from me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking my order?” I asked.
“Bite me. And then you can tell me what’s wrong.” She paused. “Aren’t you supposed to be with …?”
She gestured elaborately, and I filled in the blank. Lake had known my plan for this morning. I’d promised to report back, and here I was.
“Been there. Done that. Didn’t go so well.”
Lake threw her notepad to the side, summarily ignoring the three other occupied tables in the restaurant. “Didn’t go so well as in you didn’t see anything, or didn’t go so well as in you didn’t like what you saw?”
“More like heard,” I corrected her. “But the second one.”
“The Rabid escaped again?” Lake guessed. “They have no idea where he is?”
“Oh, no,” I replied, my voice forcefully cheerful, because it was the only way I could keep from yelling. “Nothing like that. Apparently, he has something the alphas want, so they’re not going to hunt him. They voted.”
“Voted?” Lake asked incredulously. Clearly, she couldn’t imagine Callum voting on anything, not when his word was, in her experience, pretty much law.
“Callum was in the minority. They outvoted him. Nothing he could do.”
Lies, lies, lies. He could have done something. If he’d wanted to.
“Sucks,” Lake opined. “So when are we leaving?”
She didn’t even have to ask what I intended to do now. She knew, and she was with me, the same way Chase was. Two teenage werewolves and one human girl against an enemy the pack had chosen not to cross.
This Rabid was going down if it killed me. I tried not to think about the fact that it probably would.
“We leave as soon as I figure out where we’re going,” I said, concentrating on what needed to be done, right here, right now. “In the meantime, can you rustle up some …?” I didn’t want to say the word weapons out loud, but Lake took my meaning.
“Supplies?” she asked, her eyes sparkling, but hard. “I might know where we could get some. Just let me tell Keely I’m out of here.”
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Lake “telling” Keely anything—not when I knew that it was disturbingly easy to tell Keely way too much—but Lake couldn’t exactly take off without explanation. Not if we wanted to keep Ali and Mitch in the dark.
“Be right back,” Lake told me, heading for the bar.
“Excuse me,” a man—human—at a nearby table called. “Could I get a refill on my—?”
“Nope.” Lake didn’t even look for him as she zeroed in on Keely. I hung back, figuring that the less I spoke to the World’s Best Listener, the better.
For her part, Keely took one look at Lake and frowned. “Whatever it is, the answer is no.”
“But you don’t even know what the question is,” Lake said.
“I don’t have to. I know that look. That look is trouble.”
Lake wheedled. “I just need to cut out early today. Bryn needs my help.”
Keely blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “Fine, but you breathe a word to your daddy about me letting you out of here without a cross-examination, and you and I are going to have words. Clear?”
Lake smiled in response, and I added Keely to the list of people, including Ali and Mitch, who’d be ready to kill us the moment they figured out where we’d gone.
Five minutes later, Lake and I were outside and on our own.
“Cabin twelve,” Lake said.
“What?”
“Cabin twelve. That’s where my dad keeps the weapons. The lock on the door is kid’s play to jimmy open.”
I didn’t ask how Lake knew this, and I didn’t question the fact that Mr. Mitchell had an entire cabin full of weapons. Under normal circumstances, I would have, because—Lake’s fondness for shotguns aside—werewolves didn’t need weapons. They were weapons. But thinking back to the look on Mitch’s face when he’d told me, all calmlike, that male werewolves could get funny around females, I wasn’t surprised.
Against humans, werewolves didn’t need weapons. Against other werewolves, being armed to the hilt might come in handy, at least in human form.
“Okay,” I said. “So you’ll take care of the weapons situation. Now we need to know where we’re going and we need a way to get there.”
I kept coming up with small problems, like transportation, because no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind, I couldn’t come up with a solution to the bigger one: we didn’t know where the Rabid was. We’d have o
nly a few hours’ head start once we left here, before Ali and Mitch figured out that we’d gone. We couldn’t afford to wander around aimlessly. We couldn’t act on some unformed hunch.
We had to be sure.
“Transportation is easy,” Lake said when I brought up the issue. “My dad got a new car, but he hasn’t gotten rid of his truck yet. We’ll take that.”
“Can you drive?” I asked. I wasn’t sixteen yet, and though I’d managed fine with all stolen motorcycles I’d come in contact with, I wasn’t sure I could handle a stick shift.
“Bryn, I live in the country in the middle of nowhere. The school’s thirty miles away. My daddy’s had me driving since I was twelve.”
I followed her words enough to know that transportation wouldn’t be a problem, but beyond that, all I could think about was the Rabid.
Madison.
“You look like you have an idea,” Lake said.
“I might,” I replied. Everything we’d discovered about the Rabid so far, we’d discovered because the last time he’d come after Chase’s dreams, Chase and I had seen a glimpse into his mind. Marks, bonds, connections—they went both ways. The only reason the Rabid stalked Chase’s dreams was because Chase was blocking him when he was awake.
But what if that stopped?
What if Chase opened up the bond with the Rabid, just enough to get inside his head? Just enough to tell us where he was?
“Bryn? Idea?”
“I have one,” I said, “but Chase isn’t going to like it.”
Chase was in human form when I found him, but I could till taste the faint tang of blood on his tongue from the hunt.
Chase?
I didn’t come completely into his mind. I pulled myself back from his senses and concentrated on keeping my own.
Bryn?
Just thinking my name seemed to calm him, remind him that he was human, even when he was wondering at what point along the line he’d become a beast.
You went hunting, I said. Plenty of men do the same.
Of course, most men hunted with guns instead of their teeth, but that wasn’t what Chase needed to hear, so I left it unsaid. Instead, I concentrated on the thing that had sent Chase into hunting mode in the first place.
We’re going to kill the Rabid, I told him, my voice steady and calm. I promise you, he’s going to die.
For a moment there was silence on Chase’s end of the bond, and then he spoke again, his words broken, like he couldn’t remember quite how to put them together into thoughts. Prancer—want—dead—protect.
We’re going to kill him, Chase. Lake and I are gathering up some weapons. If we shoot from far enough away, he might not even hear us coming. He’ll think he’s safe because the alphas aren’t coming after him. He won’t be expecting us.
Another pause, and this time, when Chase spoke, his words made perfect sense. I’m tired of fighting him.
I thought of what I was about to ask Chase to do and blanched. We need to find him, I said slowly. And the only way to do that is to get inside his head.
I didn’t say the next part, couldn’t make myself spell out the fact that the only way for me to get into the Rabid’s head was for Chase to let him into his.
I won’t let anything happen to you, I swore. We just need a few seconds. Just long enough to figure out where he is.
He’ll want me to hurt you, Chase replied, his voice weary, even in my mind. He always does.
I thought of Chase slamming his wolf body into the cage in Callum’s basement, because to him, I smelled like food. I thought of his body trembling as the smell of a foreign wolf flooded Callum’s living room and of the way Sora’s first instinct had been to get me out of there.
You wouldn’t hurt me, I told him. You’d die before you’d hurt me.
Asking him to do this was killing me. It wasn’t fair. I felt like Callum, treating Chase like a detail that didn’t matter as much as the big picture. But as much as I wished I could do this myself, I wasn’t the one with the connection to the Rabid. I wasn’t the one who could track him.
Chase was.
You have to promise to get out of my head, Chase said. If Prancer takes over, if I can’t fight him off…you have to leave. I won’t let him get to you, too.
I didn’t promise, because I had no intention of abandoning ship the moment things turned sour, not when I was the one asking Chase to put himself at risk.
I won’t let him take you, I said, pushing the words into Chase’s head with a ferocity that he must have been able to feel from head to toe. You’re mine.
For a moment, there was a pause, and then Chase’s voice went very dry in my mind. In a non-freaky, non-ownership, we-both-retain-our-independence kind of way? I could practically see his lips curving upward into a subtle grin.
Yes, I replied hastily. Exactly.
Okay.
Okay? I asked him.
Okay, he repeated. I’ll do this.—Don’t leave me.—
He didn’t mean for me to hear that last part, but the second I did, I let down some of my own guards, brought myself further into his mind, telling him over and over again, in every way I knew, that he wasn’t alone.
He breathed in.
I breathed in.
He breathed out.
I breathed out.
And then, Chase let in the flood. I should have been prepared. I knew more about closing off and opening up bonds than just about anyone, but still, the rush of scent and the oily feel of a snake slithering down the back of Chase’s neck took me by surprise. His scars, each and every one, began to burn, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
Well, well, well… if it isn’t the prodigal son.
The voice sounded so normal, so human, but the sound of it hurt Chase’s ears. I pictured him bleeding, torn to pieces, the way the Rabid had left him that day.
Not your son, Chase thought. Not your anything.
That’s right, I echoed, my words for Chase’s ears only. He was his own person, and he was mine, the same way that I’d been his from the moment we’d touched. The Rabid thought he knew so much, but he didn’t know that I was there.
Change.
The word was a whisper, but also a command. This wasn’t Callum telling Katie to change back to human form. This wasn’t me asking Chase to become a wolf.
This was domination. And punishment. It was cruel.
You don’t have to, I told Chase, even as I felt the pressure the Rabid was applying.
He’ll know something is wrong if I don’t.
I heard Chase’s bones breaking, felt his skin give way as he lost his human form. The Rabid laughed.
Change back.
Shifting took energy. It was painful. Chase needed to recover.
Change.
Change back.
The Rabid didn’t let Chase settle fully into one form before forcing him into another.
Stop, I wanted to scream. Stop!
But I didn’t. Tears streaming down my cheeks, my own body shaking with Chase’s burning white pain, I pushed. Pushed my way from Chase’s mind into the Rabid’s.
Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
The smell was overwhelming. Suffocating. I needed to throw up, but I couldn’t. I had to do this, because Chase couldn’t. Because his body was being forced to break itself and reassemble, over and over again.
Sweat mixed with the tears on my cheek. A white-hot poker pressed into my stomach, my legs, my jaw.
Change. Change back.
I had to concentrate. I had to find out what we needed to know so Chase could throw his walls back up.
Protect, my pack-sense demanded. Chase was mine. I had to protect him. I had to push the Rabid away—
But first, I had to track him.
I closed my eyes. I pictured the wiry bond that connected Chase to this madman. I followed it to its roots. I let damp, overwhelming darkness wash over me, until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm.
Blood. The Rabid liked blood.
He liked power. His name was Wilson.
The information came all at once, but it wasn’t enough. I pushed further.
Where are you? I thought, knowing he couldn’t hear my words. Tell me where you are.
I saw a cabin. And blood. A forest. And blood. A town—one stoplight. A store called Macon’s Hardware.
A path into the woods.
Trapped. The word was a whisper in my mind, and the second I heard it, Chase’s own instincts flared to life. Trapped, he echoed. He struggled not to fight the Rabid. Not to push him back.
We needed to fight. We needed to get out of there. We needed to take care of each other.
But first, I needed more. A cabin. One stoplight. Macon’s Hardware. A path into the woods.
Tell me where you are.
For the first time, the Rabid stopped in his onslaught against Chase. He paused, and I wondered if he smelled me, the way I smelled him.
No time. I had no time. Chase was hurting. If the Rabid smelled me, he’d punish Chase. Hurt him. Hurt him more.
No-Man’s-Land. Macon’s Hardware. Images flashed from the Rabid’s mind to mine. He pulled back, but once I got ahold of something, I never let go until I was ready.
Macon’s Hardware. Path into the woods. And then, finally a name. A town.
The Rabid roared, a noise more fitting to a bear than a wolf, and then he laughed a horrible, mad sound that made me picture blood running from his human lips, down his human face, soaking his human hands.
My stomach rolled. This was a man who killed his victims and laughed.
Time to go, I told Chase.
I can’t. He’s too strong. Walls are gone. Callum helped me. I can’t—
You can, I said back. Think of me, Chase. Think only of me.
He did. He thought of me, and the Rabid thought of me, and their mental images mixed together in my mind. Wet cardboard and drain cleaner and the smell of little-girl fear. Brash and beautiful and home.
That’s right, I told Chase. I’m home. Come back to me.
I had to protect him. I had to undo this. There had to be a way. The panic rose in both of our throats. I saw Chase’s field of vision bleed into a dotty, hazy red.
Trapped.
This time, I grabbed on to the word. Made Chase hear it. We were cornered. We were scared.
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