Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Clumsily, as best I could, I reached my arm around and tasered the sick fuck on the hip.

  That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But I was dizzy from being shaken again, and instead of making a clear connection between his skin and the two electrodes on the Taser, I think maybe one electrode brushed against his skin briefly. It was enough to get Remus to let go of me and stumble back a few feet, but it didn’t have nearly the effect it should have. I swayed from the dizziness.

  Remus was already starting to step toward me again when Jesse yelled, “Scarlett, down!” I dropped as fast as I could. Jesse flew through the space where I had just been, and hit Remus in a flying tackle that felt very satisfying to watch, especially after he’d just pulled the same crap on me. “Get out of range,” Jesse told me tersely, and I complied, scooting away from Remus on my hands and one knee. The full moon was high in the night sky, and as soon as he popped out of my radius Henry Remus began to change again. Jesse yelled something in French—later I learned that it was the word “release”—and suddenly, the bargest streaked into the picnic clearing like a flying demon dog from hell. I knew then that I had chosen the right name for her, because in the dark clearing she was nearly invisible, like smoke in the darkness. Jesse scrambled away from Remus, picking up one of the flashlights and pointing it at the nova werewolf.

  I’d never seen anything like Shadow’s attack. She was effortlessly fast, pouncing on Remus like a supernatural puppy on a squeaky toy. Remus was bigger, but in the few weeks that he’d been a werewolf, he hadn’t actually had to face a single challenge. His half-developed fighting instincts weren’t prepared for something that had been trained her whole life to kill him. The poor crazy bastard never had a chance. Shadow pinned him in an instant, and while he was still trying to squirm away, Jesse yelled, “Tuez-le!”

  Shadow tore out his throat.

  Remus fell back, panting shallowly as the skin reformed on his neck. As soon as it was more than translucent membranes, but before Remus could even take a full breath, Shadow reached down and ripped it off again, spitting the skin onto the ground next to Remus’s head. Then she did it again. And again. He began to visibly weaken after the third time she ripped his throat out, and by the fifth, he was barely moving his legs anymore. Shadow kept going until his blood stopped pumping into the ground. There was a brief shimmer as his body changed, and then Henry Remus was lying there dead.

  Shadow came over to me and sat down daintily, blood soaking her muzzle and front paws where she’d dug at the wound. Jesse and I both stared down at Remus’s body, and then Jesse went over and nudged it with one toe. “What about DNA?” he asked me. “Will his be normal?”

  I nodded. Werewolf magic, like most forms, depends on life to sustain it. When Remus had died, the magic had left him, evaporating back into wherever it had come from to begin with. “I don’t know about bargest saliva, though. Maybe your pathologist friend could do something with those tests?”

  “Mmm,” Jesse said noncommittally.

  “Where’s . . . ,” I began, but just then she came limping up from the bridle path, a tired-looking wolf with gray fur and bright blue eyes. Shadow stood, looking at Lizzy with a confused face like she’d just dropped out of the sky. I put a hand on her collar.

  Bereft of her alpha, Lizzy came cringing into the clearing, weak and injured. I was pretty sure that not all of those injuries were physical. I motioned for Jesse to take Shadow’s collar and he did, leading her a few feet behind me. Then I painfully knelt down on the ground and called, very softly, “Lizzy. Lizzy Thompkins.”

  The wolf’s eyes flicked to me once, confused, and she stopped, her paws dancing nervously on the ground like she was ready to bolt. No one has ever been able to really explain to me how much of themselves the werewolves retain when they’re not in human form, so I had no idea if any of this would work. “Lizzy, shh, it’s okay,” I said soothingly. “He’s dead. And we know someone who can help you.” I held out a hand. “If you could just come a little closer, I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  Lizzy edged a tiny bit closer to me, and when nothing bad happened, a little closer still. I felt the bargest shifting restlessly behind me, but Jesse stroked her and murmured reassuringly. Finally Lizzy took the last step she needed to get into my radius, and flopped to the ground, human again. I thought she was going to stay there, but she kept moving, crawling closer and closer, until she reached me. She was older than I’d imagined, maybe in her early- or mid-thirties, a skinny mixed-race woman with dark hair that spilled down her back in matted snarls. Then Lizzy pulled herself half into my lap and collapsed there, sobbing.

  I looked up at Jesse with surprise, but he just gave me a sad smile. Passing the bargest’s leash from hand to hand, he took off his jacket and handed it to me. I draped it over her shoulders. When that was done, Jesse asked, “Phase two?”

  I nodded, awkwardly patting Lizzy’s shoulder. “Phase two.”

  Chapter 47

  Jesse and Shadow took off for the van first, and I followed with Lizzy Thompkins gripping my free hand in both of hers. She still hadn’t said a word, but she seemed to feel safer when she was touching me; maybe because I was female, or maybe just because I’d spoken to her first. I’m not a particularly touchy-feely person, but after what Lizzy had been through in the last two days, I was willing to deal with a little awkwardness if it gave her the tiniest bit of security. Our strange procession made its way toward the road, and I felt the little pop of the Humans-Go-Home spell dissolving as I got close to it.

  Jesse put Shadow in the back of the van and grabbed a bag of supplies we’d prepared earlier. He dragged out his new gardening wagon, threw the bag in it, and hurried back to Henry Remus’s body.

  I led Lizzy around the van, to the side where we would be hidden from the street. As I helped her into a set of old sweats that I keep in the White Whale, I kept an eye on the pathway through the van’s windows. When Lizzy was dressed, she clutched my left arm and we stood guard together, leaning against the van and gazing across the street to where the path connected to the road. A few cars rolled past us on their way home from the Observatory, but no one went near the path to the little picnic area. Maybe five minutes later Jesse was back, walking briskly with Henry Remus’s corpse in the big garden wagon behind him. I held up a hand for him to stop, and then peered right and left, up and down, the road. No one in sight. I waved him on. He climbed into the van and stashed the body in the built-in freezer compartment in the very back. “Did you use the whole bag of dirt?” I asked Jesse, worried. If it hadn’t been for my knee, I’d have gone back and made sure the crime scene was covered up to my satisfaction.

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “And I dumped out some water and ketchup and left the empty ketchup bottle. It’ll look like picnic leftovers.”

  We got Lizzy settled just behind the passenger door, and Shadow moved over to hug the opposite wall of the van in response, as if she understood that Lizzy needed space. There was just enough room to squeeze the gardening wagon in sideways between them. As we pulled away from the park, I called Will on my cell phone. “It’s done,” I told him. “We’re on the move.”

  After Will, I called Dashiell and gave him the same update. Then I dialed Noah, since Jesse was driving. He was just returning from a run. “Yeah, I got it,” he said breathlessly. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get authentic shit like that on a moment’s notice?”

  We spent the next two hours driving from one part of the city to another. We swung by Jesse’s parents’ house to pick up a bag from Noah, and then went back to Huntington Park. Then we went north, up to Pasadena, where Hayne met me on the back of Dashiell’s property. “You sure you’re okay with this?” Jesse asked me, as he followed Hayne’s waving hand into a parking spot near a little detached garage.

  I looked at Shadow, still curled in the back. It wasn’t her fault she’d been turned into a weapon. But she wasn’t mine. I couldn’t decide her fate any more than I could decide
the fate of Jesse’s gun. “I have to be,” I said simply.

  Hayne walked up to my window, and I pushed the button to roll it down. “Hey,” he said. “We’ve got a space all ready.”

  “I can take care of this,” Jesse said to me, unbuckling his seat belt. But I shook my head.

  “I’ll stay by the van, for Lizzy. But I want to say good-bye.”

  We both got out, and Jesse got Shadow out of the back of the van. The bargest stepped out as gracefully as ever, still coated with drying blood. Hayne whistled, very unprofessionally. “That is one ugly dog,” he said admiringly.

  Jesse walked Shadow over to me, and I awkwardly crouched down and cupped her face with my hands, ignoring the blood on her muzzle. I pressed my forehead against hers for a moment. “You are a good girl,” I said meaningfully. A couple of tears trickled from my eyes, but I just ignored them. I didn’t care anymore. I gave Shadow a little scratch on the neck again. “Good girl. Go on.”

  When I looked up, Hayne’s face had softened. He handed me a handkerchief, and I wiped off the blood on my hands.

  “Burn this, please,” I said as I handed it back.

  He nodded. “No one’s gonna mistreat her,” Hayne said to me kindly. “We’ve got the biggest kennel on the planet set up for her, and Kirsten’s gonna come over in a few hours to brainstorm about how to put her down. I promise you it’ll be humane.”

  I nodded. I understood: the bargest was too unpredictable and too dangerous to be sent back to France, and if she stayed in LA she’d hunt the werewolves. Not to mention the fact that she barely passed for a dog. “Thank you, Hayne,” I said, meaning it.

  Jesse walked her all the way in to the garage, assuring me that it looked very nice in there and that Shadow had plenty of space before he got back behind the wheel. This felt like one of the longest nights of my life, but it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. We had more to do.

  I turned in my seat to check on Lizzy. She had drifted off with her back against the passenger seat. “She’s out,” I told Jesse. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 48

  We pulled into Will’s driveway at nine thirty. I coaxed Lizzy out of the van, and the three of us made our way to the door. I tried the knob, but it was actually locked, for once. I rang the bell, in full view of the street.

  The door was opened by twenty werewolves and one teenage girl, all of them wearing pajamas.

  I stared, momentarily speechless. Will’s jammies had little wolf pups all over them. Esmé was wearing a modest pink silk set with a matching robe. Even Lydia was there, dressed in simple baggy pajama pants and another ribbed tank top. And they were all packed together, as tightly crowded as I’d ever seen a group of people be.

  It was probably the funniest goddamned thing I’d ever seen.

  I couldn’t help it; I broke into laughter. So did Jesse. Lizzy simply stared, but she’d been through a lot and maybe didn’t see the humor. A young woman in a Hello Kitty sleep shirt, matching boxer shorts, and an oversized cardigan pushed to the front of the crowd, her ponytail bobbing a head lower than everyone else.

  “Hey, Scarlett!” Corry chirped. She looked down at her own clothes. “Yeah, I guess we look a little funny, huh?”

  At her shoulder, Will added. “Glad to see you guys made it. Come on in.” He was obviously trying to sound laid-back and friendly, but there was too much tension and exhaustion in his voice for that.

  “Backward march!” Corry called, and the werewolf pack began shuffling backward. It was clear they’d had some practice moving like this. “Where to, General?” she asked Will.

  He shrugged. “Back to the den, I guess.” To me, he said, “We can talk there.”

  Jesse and I followed the shuffling wolves through the house, with Lizzy in tow. The back living room in Will’s house has a huge picture window that looks out over the park. It also has a television attached to one wall and lots of simple, very durable furniture, complete with extra blankets and throw pillows. When we got in there, Corry went into the middle of the room and the wolves spread out slightly around her. I could feel some of them entering my radius too, which was okay. There was a movie playing on the TV, and I laughed again when I recognized it: Dog Soldiers, arguably the best werewolf movie ever made.

  The real werewolves went back to watching the movie, alternately jeering and cheering at the characters. Will, Jesse, and I stood in the doorway with Lizzy, speaking quietly so we wouldn’t disturb them.

  I started by making the introductions. “Will, this is Lizzy, the werewolf I was telling you about,” I said. Lizzy’s eyes widened at the word “werewolf,” and she shied away a little so she was standing half-behind my shoulder. Will must have anticipated that she wouldn’t want to shake hands, because he kept his in his pockets. “And Lizzy, this is Will,” I said very gently. “He’s the alpha in Los Angeles, and he’s a good man.”

  She looked up at me quickly, a little startled, and then she whispered something I could barely make out. “Pleased to meet you.” It was the first time I’d heard her voice.

  “And I’m very pleased to meet you, Lizzy,” Will said kindly, all trace of exhaustion now gone. “I hope you’ll want to stay within the LA pack, but if there are too many bad memories here, I would be happy to help you find a pack in another city. I want you to feel at home with us, so anything you need, please let me know.” He reached out very slowly, so she would see him coming, and patted her on the shoulder. Lizzy nodded, her back straightening just a little. She glanced at me nervously, and I nodded at her. It’s okay.

  “Can I use a phone?” she asked tentatively, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “My family doesn’t know where I am.”

  “Of course! It’s important that you don’t tell them about what you are, but you definitely want them to know you’re okay,” Will said amiably. “Let’s do that right now. My cell’s over there on the table. Help yourself.” He pointed to a side table next to where the werewolves were all congregating, and I admired the move. He wanted her to wade into her new pack mates, and for them to accept her. Motivated by the phone, she began stepping through the crowd. Corry, in the center of the werewolf pack, glanced up and smiled at her as she passed, then went back to talking animatedly to Esmé.

  Will watched them talk. “The pajamas were actually Corry’s idea, you know,” he said quietly. “Make it look like we were having a pajama party, to explain why we were all together. I don’t know if she intended this or not, but it actually calmed a lot of my people down, to have something kind of silly going on.” He looked at me. “She’s pretty remarkable, isn’t she?”

  I smiled proudly. “Yes, she is,” I replied. As if her ears were burning, Corry met my eyes. “Hi,” she mouthed, grinning. “Hi, yourself,” I said back. My gaze traveled past her and spotted Lydia, who was squashed in the corner of a couch, giving me the evil eye. No one was talking to her, or even looking at her. She sat there and scowled for a moment, then tapped her watch so only I could see it. Her message was clear: the clock is ticking. My skin went cold.

  I’d almost forgotten. I had eight hours to produce Eli or she’d come after me. It might as well have been eight minutes. I shivered and turned back to the men.

  “Have you seen any sign of her?” Jesse was saying to Will.

  Will nodded. “It went just like Scarlett predicted. She followed me home, although I pretended I was trying to lose her. She parked across the street until sunset, and then she started sneaking around the outside of the house.”

  “Is she still out there?”

  He shook his head. “She left about ten minutes before you guys got here.” He frowned. “Since you guys stopped her today, I’m guessing she’s going to come after you next. She’ll want the bargest back, and she’ll want to make you guys pay for humiliating her.”

  I looked at Jesse. “I thought we were very respectful. Except for the part where we made her pee herself.”

  He just looked at me blankly, uninterested in banter. “Scarlett,
” he said quietly. “Can we talk for a second?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said, taking a deep breath. The worst was over, and he wanted to finish our talk. I hadn’t expected him to ask right away, but it made sense.

  Will herded the outlying werewolves closer to Corry, and they all crowded together in front of the movie. Jesse and I went into the kitchen, where I could still see the group through the open doorway into the den.

  Jesse’s eyes searched my face. “At the picnic table, you thanked me like you weren’t planning to take me up on my offer.”

  I nodded. “I’m not,” I said simply.

  “Why?” he demanded. Then, with an embarrassed smile at the harshness in his voice, he said, “Sorry. I just don’t get it.” He reached across the space between us and added softly, “I’m in love with you.”

  I nodded, hitching up my courage. “No,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “You’re not.” He began to respond, but I held up a hand. “I know, I know. You think you are. I believe that, Jesse. But you’re not in love with me; you’re in love with the version of me that you wish I was.” I absently rubbed the fading burn on my wrist, from when I’d thrown Leah Rhodes’s body into the furnace at the beginning of all this. “You think you’re better than the things that I do, and you want me to be better than them too.”

  “So you think I’m, what, a snob,” he said incredulously, “because I don’t believe you should be destroying corpses?”

  “I think . . .” I paused, trying to choose my words carefully. “I think that you were right when you said what I really wanted was control of my life. But if I leave LA with you, start somewhere new, that’s not me getting control. That’s just me giving it to someone else.”

  He stared at me, wounded. “I don’t want to control you, Scarlett. I love you.”