Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Ana wasn’t home anymore.

  My own eyes widened, and I was glad she couldn’t smell my fear. “Hang on,” I said very gently, holding my hands up. “Ana, look, about Lydia . . .”

  She howled with rage, a wolf reaction but a human sound. “Don’t say her name!” she screamed at me. And she lunged.

  Social norms are funny. Anastasia was willing to break into my house, attack, and probably even kill me, but there’s something about someone’s unmade bed that you just instinctively avoid, because it’s not polite. So instead of the shortest route to me, over the bed, she launched herself around it. By memory and instinct I threw myself over the bed, scrambling for the hallway.

  I’d forgotten about my knee. I blamed the drugs.

  Pills or no pills, searing pain drove through my leg as I landed on it, and I screamed. The pain helped me focus, though, and I managed to scoot backward on my butt. Ana had recovered quickly and was on my heels, diving at me as I made it to the doorway. She expected me to turn right, toward the stairs, so I dodged left instead, and her grasping arms hit the wall with a loud crack that could have been either her finger bones or the plaster of the old house. She bellowed with rage and pain, and in the dim light I could just see her clutching at her right hand. I continued my useless backward escape, keeping my eyes on the werewolf. The stairs were behind Anastasia, and there was nothing down at this end of the hall but the bathroom and the little laundry area.

  With no other options, I dragged myself backward toward the bathroom, hoping I could lock myself in and scream for help. If I stayed right on the other side of the door, Ana wouldn’t be able to change into a werewolf; she’d have to break it down as a human, and if her fingers were broken—

  The half-assed plan turned out to be futile anyway, because the damned hallway was too long. I felt, rather than saw, when I scooted too far and Anastasia left my radius. Her howls of pain cut off abruptly, and I could see her backlit figure straighten up, flexing fingers as they healed, bones knitting together almost instantaneously. I froze with indecision: move forward toward Ana and keep her wounded, try to extend my radius again, or race for the bathroom door as best I could?

  I went for the bathroom. There were still at least five feet between me and the doorway, and I felt like the tendons and ligaments holding the parts of my body together were dissolving. I scrambled hopelessly for the door, dragging my leg behind me, even as Anastasia’s silhouette took a long, deliberate step in my direction. Stalking.

  She tackled me just as I reached the threshold of the bathroom. There was no time to even drag myself in before she was on top of me, her fingers clawing for my throat, her legs smashing down on my bad knee. I cried out with pain, but she cut off my air, hands around my throat. The tackle had pivoted me onto my back in the doorway, and my right arm flailed out, as I tried to punch her in the eye, the nose. But her reach was longer than mine and she dodged easily. I was panicking, every cell in my body screaming at me as I reached out, fingers scrabbling on the bathroom floor for anything that could help me—and they brushed against soft leather. A boot.

  Terrible hope erupted in my brain. Please be the right one, I begged silently. A fifty-fifty chance. Ana pressed down harder, trying to crush my throat as she strangled me. Haze started to darken my vision as I laboriously worked my fingers around to the opening of the boot . . .

  I pulled out the knife and thrust it between her ribs in one smooth movement, like I’d practiced it every day of my life.

  I gasped as her fingers finally loosened and sweet, glorious air rushed into my lungs. And then I let out a pathetic, wheezing scream, because blood was everywhere. On television, people never really bleed until you pull the knife out. But I had stabbed Anastasia in the heart, and her blood spurted immediately, pouring down onto my stomach, drenching my arms, my clothes, and finally soaking into the hallway carpet beneath us. It was so hot that it seemed like its own living thing, like her life was deserting her for me, and for the first time I understood what the word lifeblood truly meant. I managed to tilt my body enough to get her mostly off me, but after that the last remnants of my strength disappeared, and my head slapped down against the linoleum of the bathroom like it had been pushed there. For the first time since my fingers had touched boot leather, I looked at her face.

  It was slack and staring, no traces of surprise or hurt or pain left. She was dead.

  I closed my eyes and welcomed the darkness.

  Chapter 33

  When I was nine, there was a whole week in the summer where my mother just stayed in bed.

  My father, a history teacher who taught driver’s ed during the summer, was the one who called my mom’s boss at the veterinary clinic and said that she was sick. She didn’t sound sick when I heard the two of them talking in their room, so I kept trying to get to her, to show her my crayon drawings or beg her to play Crazy Eights. My father was usually the pushover of the two, but he kept intercepting me at the bedroom door. First he tried to calmly redirect me toward the backyard or my room, but I was stubborn and prone to running headfirst toward anything I was supposed to leave alone. Finally he came right out and ordered me not to bother Mom unless there was a fire. I momentarily considered starting a small controlled fire, but even I wasn’t willing to go that far. Plus they’d hidden the matches.

  By the third day I was sick of all of it: being alone, not understanding. After Dad had left for work, I stomped up the stairs and to my mom’s door, opening it just a bit before bumping it all the way open with my hip. “Momma,” I announced, with as much righteousness as my nine-year-old self could muster, “you have to get up now.”

  She didn’t move, so I sighed dramatically, like she did when I didn’t want to get out of bed to go to school. There was still no response, so I marched across the room and circled around the bed. There, I saw that she looked . . . like a ghost. Her face was pale and wrinkly, and her eyes were rimmed in red like she’d opened them underwater in the city pool. When she saw me, the line of her mouth trembled and she flipped back the corner of the sheet as an invitation. Temporarily shocked into compliance, I climbed into the bed and snuggled my back against her belly as she wrapped her arms around me. “I don’t get it,” I complained after a moment.

  “Scarbo,” she sighed into my hair, creating a circle of warmth on the back of my head. “I hope you never ever do.”

  Years later, I would learn that our long-estranged grandmother had died that week, and my mother had been torn up with grief and guilt and regret. And it was years after that, when I lay on the floor in Molly’s hallway, staring at Anastasia’s corpse, that I could finally understand why she had stayed in bed. Unmoving.

  I’d seen so much death. More in the last week alone than anyone should see in a lifetime. Ana wasn’t even the first person I’d killed, but while I hadn’t enjoyed killing Olivia, I hadn’t felt one moment of remorse about pulling the trigger. Olivia had been truly evil.

  Ana, though . . . Ana was never evil. She was just lost. And I’d killed her for it.

  The first thing I heard was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. My eyes opened, but a murky haze had settled over me like a lead apron, pressing me into the floor. I was curled on my side, still drenched in blood, and now staring at Ana’s forehead. Her eyes were still open, but I had stopped looking at them. The haze encouraged me to keep my eyes higher, to just focus on the smooth brown oval of her forehead and keep it in my sight line. And I listened. Because the haze was my friend.

  There was some more noise, but I was untouched. I ignored it with easy detachment, letting the haze keep me pinned and deaf. Then there was nothing else for a long time, and I ignored that too. Then there were more footsteps, and more noise. To my irritation, some of it was filtering through the haze.

  “Holy shit. Is she . . .”

  “Dead? No. I thought so too, but she’s breathing, and I don’t think any of that blood is hers. She’s in shock, I think, but then there’s the body. You’re her assis
tant, right? You can take care of the body?”

  “I . . . I mean, yeah, but I’d like to stay with Scarlett.”

  “I’ll stay with her.”

  “But in the room, right?”

  “Yeah. I have to . . . eat. Tonight. But I can wait until you get back from wherever.”

  “Okay.”

  Ana’s forehead disappeared suddenly, dragged out of my view. I could feel a vampire in my radius, but now it was quiet again, so I didn’t care. I preferred the quiet. I unfocused my brain, staying curled under the haze. Some more time passed, and then I grew annoyed because there were more fucking footsteps.

  “Scarlett? Scarlett!”

  “Oh, yeah, saying her name. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Not helping, Molly.”

  A pause. Then—“You’re right. Sorry.”

  Suddenly, there was warm breath on the back of my neck, and I felt hands underneath me, a little awkward, but so careful. Eli picked me up very gently, cuddling me into his chest like you’d hold a small child or a broken doll. His T-shirt was soft and smelled like ocean air and hamburger grease. The blood had dried tackily on my father’s jersey, and crusts of it broke apart in protest as we moved. I didn’t care, personally. It made no difference to me where I was.

  Then warm liquid exploded against my face, and for just a moment I thought it was more blood, and I almost screamed. But no, he had carried me into the big shower/tub stall in Molly’s bathroom. The shock began to wash away, down the drain with the tacky blood. Eli put my legs down and helped me stand, balancing me against his chest so I could keep most of my weight off my bad leg. I sputtered in the water, gasping for air with panicked breaths, my fingers knotting into his shirt. He made comforting shushing sounds. “You’re okay,” he murmured over the sound of the spray. “You’re going to be okay.”

  My haze had washed away too, and I screamed, a raw howl that may have started out as a word but I couldn’t tell you which one. “I can’t, I can’t,” I sobbed into Eli’s chest, smearing tears into his shirt. “It’s all over me, I can’t.”

  “I’ve gotta . . . I’m going to go get something to eat,” said Molly, from the doorway. Her voice was shaking, but I didn’t think it was from the blood. It was from the sight of me.

  Eli didn’t bother even looking at her as she left. He shushed me again, a sound of comfort, and gently pulled my bloody shirt over my head, then bent to pull my underwear down. The blood had soaked through everything, and I yelped when I saw how it had stained my skin underneath. Eli picked up a bar of soap, my plain everyday Dove bar, and helped me wash it off. Naked, crying, I went up on tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck so I could bury my face in his neck. “I can’t, I can’t . . .”

  “Scarlett,” he whispered in my ear, smoothing my hair. “Come back, come back to me.”

  We stood like that for a long time, with him murmuring my name. Eventually, he planted gentle kisses on the rim of my ear, distracting me. When he reached my earlobe he kissed his way down my neck, my skin calling for my attention wherever he touched it. Slowly, giving me every chance to pull away, he slid his hands under my butt so my legs could wrap around his waist, which they did before I’d had a chance to even consider doing it. He kept one warm hand cupped gently under my swollen knee, making sure it didn’t dangle. My hands began pulling up his shirt.

  This was how it always was with Eli, natural and explosive at the same time. There was such comfort in my body’s reaction to his, something so familiar, so safe. His mouth found mine, and I was home.

  Chapter 34

  I opened my eyes and registered pain. The pills had worn off, and my leg ached terribly. My back hurt where it had hit the floor when Ana tackled me, and my neck hurt where she had tried to strangle me. It all hurt, and reminded me that I was getting my ass kicked, just like Noring had said.

  But that wasn’t what had woken me. There had been a sound. What had it been?

  Knocking.

  Someone pounded on the door again, and I sat up. I was naked, and in a tangle of slightly damp sheets on my bed. There was enough light filtering through the window for me to make out a Post-it note on the pillow next to me. It said simply, You have no breakfast foods. Back soon with Coffee Bean. -E.

  Eli.

  Anastasia.

  I remembered all of it. And as someone knocked on the door for a third time, I pushed it all away.

  Numbly, I grabbed a robe off the floor and my cane. Tying the robe, I limped to the bedroom doorway and yelled down the stairs. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Lydia.”

  She didn’t give a last name, but I didn’t need one. The only Lydia I knew of was Anastasia’s girlfriend, the woman who Caroline had changed. We hadn’t officially met, although I’d seen her after the attack while she’d been unconscious.

  When I didn’t respond right away, she knocked sharply on the door again. “Open up, Miss Bernard. We need to talk.”

  I let my head fall forward with a thunk against the door frame, which was unhelpful on so many levels. Lydia was here? Was she looking for Anastasia? Oh, God—I glanced down the hall, expecting to see the red pool of Anastasia’s blood, but instead I saw that the floor on either side of the bathroom floor had been ripped up. Eli must have gotten the carpet knife from my duffel and cut out a big piece of carpet and a smaller piece of linoleum. I stepped closer. There was still a pinkish stain on the floor underneath, but it looked damp. I sniffed the air.

  Bleach. I’d trained him well.

  “Miss Bernard!” Lydia yelled again, through the door. “I know you’re in there. If you don’t open this door, I’m going to come through it.” There was no anger in her voice, just determination.

  “One second,” I called down. “I need to get dressed, and I’m injured. I’ll be right there.”

  There was a brief silence, and then another shout from the other side of the front door. “Three minutes.”

  I had to get her away from the house before Eli returned. On autopilot, I yanked open the drawer where I kept my running clothes and pulled out baggy sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a running jacket with a collar. I dressed as quickly as my knee brace would allow, zipping the running jacket all the way up. I checked the mirror. The jacket hid the bruises that Anastasia had left on my neck. I rushed out to bump down the steps on my butt, the fastest way to get down.

  How much did Lydia know? What would happen if she found out that I’d killed Ana? Did she already know? How could she already know? Stop, Scarlett, I told myself. The important thing was to get Lydia away from the house before Eli got back. If she found out that he wasn’t a werewolf anymore, my whole life would implode.

  Before I opened the door I grabbed my dirty coat o’ nine pockets off the floor so I could transfer my wallet and keys to the pockets of my sweatpants. After a moment of hesitation, I put the Taser in my jacket pocket too. Just in case. I felt terrible about Ana, but not enough to let Lydia kill me, if it came down to it.

  I swung the front door open. Lydia, who had been surveying the street, turned her head to eyeball me. She was a petite Asian woman with the kind of enviably glossy hair that women are always flipping around in shampoo ads. I knew from when I’d seen her before that she had a climbing vine tattooed on one arm, but today it was hidden by a leather bomber jacket that she wore over tight jeans and a ribbed tank. You could see her lacy black bra pretty clearly through her shirt. Lydia’s eyes were outlined in thick rings of black kohl, which would have looked trashy on me. On her, they perfectly complimented the whole “exotic badass” look.

  I had an instant to take all of that in before Lydia’s eyes widened, and although she was motionless, she seemed to lose her balance suddenly, putting a hand out to the door frame to steady herself as she bent almost double. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Oh . . . you . . . wow.”

  “Sorry . . . ,” I said uncertainly. I had been expecting her to . . . I don’t know, slap me across the face the second I opened the door. But I’d fo
rgotten that Lydia was a new werewolf. “It has kind of a strong effect the first time. Are you okay?” I saw something clear dripping onto the porch underneath her, and for a stupid moment I thought the overcast gray skies had yielded some rain. But when Lydia lifted her head, I saw her wet eyes. Her lips trembled like she was struggling to speak.

  “There’s a diner a couple of doors down,” I offered, desperate to get away from Molly’s house. “We could talk there.” She nodded, and I stumped down the porch steps to the sidewalk, taking off at as brisk a pace as I could manage. Which wasn’t very brisk at all.

  I was discovering that you could learn a lot about people by how they walked when you couldn’t walk very well. Lydia was fairly patient about it, taking small, slow steps to accommodate my speed. Or maybe she was still off balance because of my radius.

  “This is the place?” she asked, as we rounded a small apartment building and the diner came into view. It was the first time she’d spoken since we’d left Molly’s house. I nodded. It was just a greasy spoon, with lots of emphasis on the “greasy.” I generally only stopped in when I was hungover or hiding from Molly, who would never frequent a place that allowed homeless people to sit at the counter for the cost of a cup of coffee.

  A little bell chimed as Lydia opened the front door. We didn’t talk to each other as we passed the Seat Yourself sign and headed to one of the booths against the far wall, nor as a depressingly indifferent waitress took our orders for coffee. I don’t know about Lydia, but as I looked around, I found the atmosphere comforting. It was so steeped in the tiny rituals of humanity: fixing your coffee, checking your teeth in a compact, signing credit card receipts. If we had to have this very uncivilized conversation, I was grateful we could have it somewhere so civilized. Well, relatively speaking.

  “Ana didn’t come home last night,” she began abruptly. I didn’t speak, but Lydia didn’t seem to be expecting me to. She paused for a moment, expressions flickering across her face like changing TV channels. “We heard about Terry and Drew yesterday. They were our friends. Last night, I . . .” Lydia broke off, shaking her head. She tried to speak again, but choked on the words.