by Jeff Sampson
But Nighttime Emily could possibly do something. And Werewolf Emily most certainly could.
That night, I wasn’t going to take the sleeping pills. I was going to let the change happen. And then I would go to Orchard Road, where Patrick lived, where I’d seen the other werewolf run.
And I was going to find whoever was behind this and stop him before anyone was killed, anyone else’s life snuffed out like artistic, scatterbrained, witty Emily Cooke.
Chapter 16
The Wolves Must Die
I lay in bed, Ein clutched to my stomach, waiting for night to fall and the change to happen.
I’d decided to make it easy for Nighttime Emily. I’d pulled on a formfitting black turtleneck that Dawn had made me buy when she tried to give me a makeover last year, and a pair of black pajama pants. With dark shoes and a knit cap pulled tight over my head, I was a cat burglar by way of an Angelina Jolie movie.
Now all I had to do was wait.
I almost chickened out several times, wavering between anger-fueled confidence and rational Do not go after a killer! thoughts. But I realized I didn’t have much of a choice—I couldn’t tell anyone of authority about my secrets, couldn’t call my one friend to back me up without risking her getting hurt. From the articles I’d read about Emily Cooke and Dalton, the police were baffled by the complete lack of evidence left at the crime scenes. They were no closer to finding the shooter, which meant he had another night to stalk the streets, to find me or the other werewolf, to sneak into Dalton’s hospital room. . . .
Darkness settled outside. The houses and trees disappeared into blackness, making the whole world seem a frighteningly empty void.
“So,” I said aloud as I waited. “Other Emily. I just wanted to thank you for not actually possessing me. Murdered or no, that wouldn’t have been cool.”
I was met, of course, with silence. All I could hear was the buzzing of my computer.
But I imagined she was there. Sitting in the corner, dressed fabulously, beaming at me. In my head, she had been bled of color, was just black and white and shades of gray. It was hard for me to picture her in full Technicolor.
“I wish I’d known you,” I went on, just to fill the silence in the room, talk over my worried thoughts. “I wish I hadn’t been too afraid to talk to you. Because I think we could have been friends, you know? You could have showed me how to not explode into nerves around new people, and I could have showed you a bunch of great movies that would totally make you laugh.”
My imagined Emily Cooke crossed her legs and tilted her head, her expression not changing. I tried to imagine her saying something back to me—but, I realized, I didn’t actually remember how she used to sound.
I took off my glasses and closed my eyes. Lowering my voice, I whispered, “I’ll do this for you, Other Emily. Because you didn’t deserve what happened to you. And I’m really sad that you’re gone.”
I couldn’t hold on to the image of my fake Emily Cooke, and she faded away. Sadness lurched through me, heavy in my stomach. Which was strange, because I hadn’t even known her.
The sadness gave way to a pulsing, determined anger. I was going to find whoever the killer was. And he was going to pay for what he’d done.
The change happened, and for the first time I accepted it without even an ounce of resistance. My stomach cramped, my chest tightened, but it wasn’t as bad as before. There was no queasiness, no pain. Just a whirling sensation in my head and a pleasant fluttering in my gut, like the feeling you get after an amusement park ride. The transition was over in just a few seconds.
And I was back.
Strength surged through my muscles. Stretching, I tossed Ein off of me, then leaped to my feet.
I raised my eyebrows at the sight of myself in the mirror. I thought I’d looked good while I was Daytime Emily and I was . . . right. Maybe there was hope for my daytime self’s fashion sense after all.
Remembering why I was dressed like the next Bond girl, I grinned dangerously. I had a mission: go find the guy who’d dared to trick me on Friday night, who’d tried to shoot me, and finish the job I started when I threw a Dumpster at his face.
I slid up the window, swung over the sill, and leaped to the grass below. I landed softly, delicately—as fugly as they were, the sneakers I’d picked out for myself earlier were certainly practical. Much easier to land on than heels, at least.
I glanced side to side, making sure I was alone, then ran down the street to my left, toward the woods.
I padded beneath the tall trees, my feet crunching over fallen leaves as I moved nimbly around logs and scrubby bushes. There were dirt trails—that was what the woods were for, anyway, a sort of hiking park—but I didn’t bother following them. I felt more at ease in the thick of the woods, liked the challenge of finding places to step without making a sound. Besides, I knew exactly where I was headed, and the dark night and the overgrown underbrush weren’t going to keep me from making a beeline there.
I emerged from the trees exactly where I’d tracked the other werewolf the other night—in fact, I could still see the deep indents of our clawed footprints in the dirt of the path. Orchard Road was laid out before me, a row of boxy, semi-run-down, small houses. The two houses straight ahead were where I’d seen the other werewolf vanish.
I crouched down behind some bushes as a car drove by, its headlights flaring up over the trees behind me. Blinking to gain back my night vision, I studied the two houses.
One had a shorn, patchy lawn, and hokey painted wooden signs jutting out from a front garden filled with weeds—you know, little gnomes and the backside of someone in a polka-dot dress made to look like she was gardening. There were a few lights on inside, but I couldn’t see anyone.
The other house, the one on the left, was similar—minus the corny signs but plus a brand-new, untouched basketball hoop set up in the driveway. I spotted a pair of trash cans on the side of the house, behind which were broken-down moving boxes.
That was the one.
Making sure no one was out on the street and no other cars were coming, I stalked across the road, my sneakers making almost silent little smacks as I stepped on the asphalt. I went around the side of the house with the basketball hoop, running my hand against the plastic siding as I crept along.
At the back of the house, I found one window lit up, the blinds open just enough so that I could see. Gripping the edge of the windowsill, I peeked in and saw Patrick.
He was wearing a pair of long pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. For a moment I just watched him through the slatted blinds—he looked incredibly hot with his dirty-socked feet crossed, a pair of oversize headphones on his ears, and his sharp brow furrowed in concentration as he read his book.
Then I saw the title of the book and realized it was the same serial killer one I’d seen him reading the other day at the library. He must have gone back and checked it out.
“Getting tips?” I growled to myself.
His room was bare, except for the bed and a desk. Boxes were stacked in the corner with clothes haphazardly hanging out. Probably not a lot of time to decorate when you spend your evening massacring teenagers.
So what was his deal? I wondered. He was so cute that I didn’t particularly want him to be a murderer, but I’d read enough of the R. L. Stine paperbacks my dad kept from when he was a teen to know that you can never trust the cute new guy not to go all wild-eyed and stabby. But me, I was a werewolf, and Patrick, he was from London. Maybe he was from some secret Londonian cult whose sole purpose was to snuff out a werewolf epidemic, like a young priest who needed to rid the world of us devil spawn.
I swallowed a laugh. Certainly my nighttime self was more than a little devilish, but the thing the movies and books had gotten wrong about werewolves: I wasn’t some vicious, uncontrollable monster. I was something all right, but as I had run through the Seattle night with Dawn’s dress clutched in my jaws, I knew I most certainly was not a crazed beast. Part of me had still been in t
here. If I hadn’t been so afraid, I could have been far more in charge of the situation, I was certain.
Letting go of the sill, I crouched down and put my back against the siding beneath Patrick’s window. I could hear the faint beats of the music he was listening to way too loudly on his headphones, the creaking of his bed as he moved his long, restless legs. Maybe this was how he psyched himself up, listening to death metal while reading about serial killers. Whatever the case, when he left the house, I would be ready for him.
A door slammed to my right, and I heard someone gasping, gagging as he lurched into the backyard of the house next door. Still keeping an ear toward Patrick’s window, I got down on my hands and knees and crept forward. I could barely see from the pale light of the quarter moon, but someone stumbled across the patio, clutching at his stomach as he bumped into lawn chairs.
And I smelled it. Smelled him.
The other werewolf.
What a coincidence, right? A werewolf living right next door to a werewolf hunter. But if that was the case, why hadn’t Patrick taken out the guy next door first?
I decided to make sure Patrick was still where I left him, then go finally grab the other werewolf and find out who it was.
And he was there, right behind me. The shooter.
I froze. He was dressed the same—long overcoat, brimmed hat. But in the light that beamed from Patrick’s window I could see his face.
He was old—at least midforties. His face was slender and long, his stubbled jowls slightly droopy. His dark eyes were manic behind a pair of round spectacles that flashed white, reflecting the light.
I had no idea who he was.
“Emily Webb?” he asked, his deep, raspy smoker’s voice echoing in my head and bringing back terrified memories of our first encounter.
Without another word, he raised a gun, his finger on the trigger.
I didn’t stop to think. I couldn’t. Rage coursed through me. Before he could pull the trigger, I snarled and barreled forward, tackling him.
We fell to the grass in a heap, his hideous stink invading my nostrils. I grappled with his flailing arm as he struggled to toss me off, to lower the gun and shoot me. Gripping his torso with my thighs, I grabbed at his gun hand. He kept punching at my side, so I clenched my right hand into a fist and backhanded him.
The force of my blow was hard, harder than I’d expected it to be. He stopped struggling, stunned. I smacked his left hand against the ground so hard that he let go of the gun. It skittered across the grass, disappearing into the darkness of Patrick’s backyard.
“So you thought you could screw with me, did you?” I screamed in his face, spittle flying from my lips and speckling his glasses. “You messed with the wrong girl.”
Leaning back, I hefted my right arm and punched him in his pasty face. His head snapped to the side, and he let out a startled cry.
“Why?” I shouted. “Why did you kill her? Why are you after me?”
He glared up at me with black, furious eyes. “You . . . ,” he snarled.
Grabbing his neck with my left hand, my nails digging into his soft flesh, I drew back my right fist. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”
He heaved for breath as I prepared to smack him once more. So much anger surged through my limbs that I thought I could sit there, beating his face in until he was nothing but an unconscious pulp.
And it wasn’t just Nighttime Emily there in that moment. Daytime Emily—me—was there as well, just like with the wolf, feeling all the anger. And I wanted to feel it. I’d been made a stranger to myself, been put through a schizophrenic hell, and now this man wanted to kill me just like he’d killed Emily Cooke, just like he’d almost killed Dalton.
“The wolves,” he sputtered, blood flowing over his thin lips. He wasn’t talking in an American accent anymore. His voice was guttural and distinctly European. German?
“What about us?” I asked. “Spit it out!”
“The wolves must die,” he growled. “You must not be allowed to find them. . . .”
“Who?” When I got no answer, I grabbed his shoulders, hefted him up, then smacked him back down against the ground.
“Who aren’t we supposed to find?” I screamed into his ear. I half expected Patrick to come to the window with all the screaming I was doing. Guess his music was up really loud.
Then a sharp, searing pain in my left leg. In his hand, the same hand I’d let go to grab his shoulders, the killer held a heavy, serrated hunter’s knife.
With a husky cry, he slashed at my chest. I jumped back as his blade sliced in front of my gut, almost splitting me open. Floundering, I slipped on the grass and fell on my butt.
He was on his feet so quickly I almost didn’t have time to react. He leaped at me, knife flashing as I crawled backward, my heels kicking up grass. With a grunt, he stabbed down with the knife, and I rolled out of the way. The knife sliced into the earth with a soft thunk.
I shouted and lashed out with my leg, my sneaker catching him in his ribs. He sprawled left, hand flailing wildly to grab the side of the house.
I jumped to my feet, half crouched and arms spread wide like a linebacker. The killer’s eyes darted frantically over me, as though unsure what to make of it when one of his victims actually put up a fight. Then he matched my position, standing across from me in the house’s shadows. We circled each other warily, tensed and waiting for the other to make a move. He twirled the knife in his fingers.
My lips curled into a smile, and the killer’s brow furrowed with confusion.
“Oh the tables, how they’ve turned,” I said.
Behind him, the other werewolf tilted back his long head and howled up at the night sky.
The killer froze, then very slowly turned around. The werewolf, the one I’d heard stumble from the house next door and whose smell was so overwhelmingly attractive, stood on his hind legs, dwarfing the shooter. The wolf snarled, baring long, skin-shredding teeth, and his yellow eyes flashed dangerously in the light from Patrick’s bedroom window.
I could still hear the loud music leaking from Patrick’s headphones. I almost laughed—a battle was raging outside his room and he hadn’t a clue.
For a long moment, we all stood still, tensed and waiting. A panicked sweat wafted off the killer in waves, and his knife hand trembled.
Then the killer half shouted, half screamed, and slashed at the wolf with his knife. The other werewolf dodged the blade easily, growled, and swatted the killer across the face with his sharp claws.
The killer ducked, his free hand clutching at his bleeding face as he ran into the neighboring backyard. He slipped on the grass, but managed to right himself as he reached the other house’s patio.
The other werewolf bounded after him. I heard a loud clang and a thump as patio furniture was tossed aside; heard the killer’s angry cries, the wolf’s deadly growling.
I stood where I was, my chest heaving, my vision red with anger. My fingernails and toenails ached, my stomach and chest squirmed beneath my turtleneck. Like Daytime Emily awaiting her transformation into me, I welcomed the transition to Werewolf Emily with open arms. I was strong, but the wolf was stronger. And right then, all I cared about was getting the man who’d killed Emily Cooke, put Dalton McKinney in the hospital, and tried to kill me not once, but twice.
It hurt. I didn’t care. My face was molded into a new shape as though I was made of clay. A tail sprouted from the base of my back and slipped through the hole I’d cut in my pants. The sneakers I was wearing tore into leathery shreds as my feet grew, but the turtleneck and pajama pants stretched along with my mutating body. I was certainly the most fashionably dressed werewolf in town.
And then it was done. My vision had gone gray and my brain was overwhelmed with smells: the wet grass, the metallic scent of freshly drawn blood, my mate’s musk.
A terrified, pained howl sliced into the night, and my pointed ears perked to attention. My mate—he was hurt. The killer had hurt him!
Snarlin
g, I got on all fours and darted into Patrick’s backyard. I saw them there, the werewolf and the killer, facing off on the patio. Wicker chairs lay on their sides, used charcoal from a fallen grill was scattered over the concrete. The other werewolf stood there, clutching at his gut, dark blood oozing between his claws. He whimpered, then snapped his jaws at the killer as the man looked for another in with his knife.
I crept forward behind the man, my sharp nails clicking against the patio floor. He whirled and faced me.
Surprise, I wanted to say. But all that came out was a snarling yowl.
The other werewolf’s eyes narrowed with resolve. As though we’d been hunting together all our lives, we both lowered our bodies and circled the killer. We took long, sidling steps, growling from deep within our throats.
The killer made a break for it. He dashed between me and the other werewolf, running for all he was worth through the yellowed grass of the backyard.
Not fast enough.
With a howl, I bunched my legs and leaped. I soared through the air before landing right at the killer’s heels. Then I opened my jaws wide and grabbed his right arm between my teeth. He screamed as I dug my clawed feet into the grass and pulled back. His hand loosened, and the bloodstained hunting knife fell to my feet.
Struggling out of his long overcoat, he continued running, but the other werewolf was in front of him, and the man had nowhere to go.
The wedge moon lit his face up to my wolfish eyes as though he was standing in broad daylight. This droopy old man had tried to kill me. Tried to kill Dalton and the other werewolf. Had succeeded in killing Emily Cooke.
Emily Cooke.
One of my pack, I realized.
The thought came from my wolf brain, and though I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, it felt right. This man had stolen from me one of my own, and fury sizzled through my veins, pounded in my head. My human brain shut off, Daytime and Nighttime both, so enraged that I couldn’t handle the way it made me feel.
But the wolf brain knew how to handle it just fine.
In unison, the other werewolf and I growled. Saliva dripped from our fangs. We closed in on him on all fours—one step, two. The mania was gone from the man’s eyes, replaced with fear.
