by Anita Oh
The main room of the Golden House had extra security. Although it was only one room in the house, it functioned on a grid so the room could change depending on what was needed. It had boggled my mind when I first saw it. They’d just pressed a button, and it had seemed as if the whole room had transformed, but that wasn’t it at all. The rooms were like interchangeable boxes, and a button was pressed, one box was taken out and replaced with another. It hadn’t occurred to me that this could be a security feature until we were discussing the booby traps, but the idea was that if the enemy gained entrance to the house, we’d change the room while we were inside it so they couldn’t access it, and then change it again once they’d entered, effectively trapping them within the grid of rooms under the house. For that to work, though, the room had to be completely secure while we were inside it. And we would’ve been if they’d attacked on Thursday like we’d expected.
It had seemed like a good plan.
Just as Nikolai was about to draw the last bolt and Sam pulled down the last shutter, there was a massive crash from somewhere upstairs and the power went off.
“What do we do now?” asked Nikolai. He tried to sound calm, but his voice trembled. I wanted to comfort him, but the feeling was weaker than it would’ve been a day or two earlier. I didn’t know if that meant the potion was wearing off or if it was just because I was so freaked out, but I didn’t really have the time to sit around wondering.
“Let’s get this room moving,” I said. “Come on!”
“We can’t,” said Tennyson. “We need power to change the rooms.”
“Okay,” I said. “Plan B.”
We didn’t actually have a plan B. We might’ve had time to think of one by Thursday. Man, I was so angry at my dad. Couldn’t he keep to a schedule like a normal person? Still, that couldn’t be helped now. We had to do something, and do it fast. We could hear footsteps upstairs, people crashing through the tower windows above us.
“We need to get Tennyson out of here,” I said. “They’re in the house. They’re expecting him to be here. We need to get him as far away as possible.”
“Agreed,” said Althea. “Do you know somewhere?”
The Golden House was the safest place on the school grounds and they’d easily broken in there, but then I thought about how easy it had been for Katie and me to leave the school grounds. I didn’t exactly trust Katie, especially since she’d given me the wrong day for the attack, but even so, she wouldn’t exactly be expecting me to steal her scooter to use as a getaway car.
“I think I can get us away,” I said. “But we might need a head start.”
Althea nodded. “He’ll be safest with you. Your father doesn’t need the rest of us alive, but he won’t hurt you.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but it wasn’t as if we had any other options.
“Protect him,” Althea said. “We’ll hold them off as long as we can to give you some time.”
“I can actually protect myself,” Tennyson said as Althea nodded to Nikolai to start unbolting the doors.
We could hear the noises getting closer, so as soon as Nikolai had the doors open, I pulled Tennyson through and toward the front door. For the first time, I was pleased Tennyson had made me do all those stupid stealth drills. We were silent as we escaped from the house. If there had been ninjas in the forest, they’d have been impressed. But there weren’t, and it was up to me to protect Tennyson.
We took a running leap at the massive stone wall that encircled the house and landed at the top of it at the same time. We crept along in a crouch. I looked around to see if the way was clear ahead, trying not to be distracted by the sounds of fighting coming from the house behind us. It was safest to stick to the forest so that we weren’t out in the open, so we made our way around and then leapt off the wall into the clearing behind the house.
While we were in mid-air, I heard a loud crack. There was a flash through the air like a shooting star, only bright red, and when I landed on the ground, Tennyson was no longer by my side.
I turned around to run back toward the house. I’d felt him jump beside me, but maybe something had happened. Maybe he’d fallen or turned back for some reason. But before I got more than two steps, I hit something. There was nothing in front of me but air, but I couldn’t move forward. I tried to go to the right, and the same thing happened. After a few steps, I couldn’t go any farther. When I turned back again, the reason became obvious.
My father was standing behind me.
“Where’s Tennyson?” I demanded.
“Where’s your manners, more like it,” my father said. “I know you’re angry with me, Lucy, but really, that’s no excuse. You were raised better than that.”
“This isn’t funny,” I said, trying to push forward.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere. Look down.”
I looked at the ground and saw something glinting in the grass. There was a line of it going around me in a ring, trapping me inside it.
“Ring of silver,” said my dad. “It was a bit of a gamble, I wasn’t sure if your lycanthropy had manifested yet, but there was a reasonably high probability.”
I gritted my teeth. My lycanthropy had manifested enough to rip his face off, that was for sure.
“Where’s Tennyson?”
My father shook his head. “You didn’t feel it?”
I didn’t know how much he knew. If Katie had been playing me, then he’d know everything. If she hadn’t, he knew nothing. She was probably playing both sides, so I couldn’t be sure of anything.
“He’s dead, Lucy.”
I shook my head. Even without the soul bond, I would’ve felt that. He couldn’t be there by my side one second and then just nowhere.
“You’re lying,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Believe me or don’t. It doesn’t change anything.”
Probably, the silver ring muted the pack bond or something. My dad had done some hocus-pocus so I couldn’t see Tennyson, and the ring muted the pack bond. That was definitely it. Tennyson was probably going through the exact same thing like a yard to my left.
“You need to come with me, Lucy. I want to help you.”
“You’re actually insane,” I said.
I pushed against the silver ring, but it completely resisted. I could actually lean against the air above it like a solid wall. I wondered if it went up and up, or if it was more like a dome. How had I even entered it? Maybe he’d sealed it up after I jumped. There had to be some way out of it. All I had to do was keep him talking until I found it, then I could go find Tennyson.
“The insane thing is you hanging around with a bunch of werewolves,” he told me.
“Lycanthropes,” I said.
“Their lives are dangerous, Lulu. You need to come with me so I can keep you safe.”
“You’re the one making it dangerous,” I yelled. “You’ve just attacked a bunch of teenagers. You’re supposed to be adults.”
I couldn’t even think about that, about Sam and Althea and omg, Nikolai.
“And what was the point of that potion?” I asked. It didn’t make any sense to me. “What possible outcome were you hoping to achieve by slipping Tennyson a love potion, of all things? There is absolutely no logic in that.”
My father laughed. “What are you talking about, Lu?”
I stopped leaning against the invisible wall and took a step toward him. “You’re lying.”
“If I slipped that boy anything, it would be a lot stronger than a love potion. Why? Did he do something to you?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, of course not.”
“Did he go off with some other girl and blame it on a potion? Lulu, boys are like that. You can’t trust them, especially boys like Tennyson Wilde. You’re better off without him.”
He didn’t seem as if he was lying about the potion, but then he was crazy. Still, he had no reason to give Tennyson the potion. It hadn’t made sense in the first place. But then, why?
&nbs
p; “You don’t know anything about Tennyson,” I said absent-mindedly as I tried to sort through my thoughts.
I’d blamed my father’s organization for the potion because the timing had fit. Katie had said Tennyson would be poisoned, and then the potion had been in his tea, it had seemed the only logical assumption. There was something I was missing, something I couldn’t see. But if it had nothing to do with my father, I could think about it later.
My father was banging on about how he didn’t need to know Tennyson to know that type.
“He’s alive,” I said suddenly. “You wouldn’t be this bothered if he was no longer a threat to you. He’s alive, and he’s going to come for you. If you try to take me away again, he’ll come.”
My father stopped talking, and then an awful smile began to bloom across his face.
“You worked that out through logic, didn’t you? Not because you could feel him, but because you deduced it.” He laughed. “The bond is gone? How did you do it? I thought that kind of thing was unbreakable.”
I stalked across the circle toward him. “It is unbreakable. Now, tell me where he is.”
“He’s alive, but not for long. Agree to come with me, and maybe we’ll spare his life.”
Chapter 18
The transformation came so suddenly that I barely registered it. I roared in my father’s face, clawing against the invisible barrier as I tried to get to him. My father stood silently, observing my half-human form as I spent all my energy trying to get to him and eventually fell back in a heap. I glared up at him, breathing deeply as I returned to human form. My father nodded to himself as if he was confirming a theory he’d had.
“There are two ways to leave a werewolf pack,” he said finally. He had the air of a teacher giving me a lesson, rather than a crazy man threatening murder. “The pack can be renounced. There’s a specific ritual that must be observed. Some words must be recited, and then you spill some of your blood. It’s fairly simple and painless. Or, the pack can die. As your father, I forbid you from being in a werewolf pack. You must leave, but it’s your choice how you do it.”
I snorted. “There’s no way you can kill the entire pack.” I’d have liked to see him face down Alpha Wilde, though. That would be badass.
“I don’t need to,” he said. “Only your ties to it. At the moment, you only share the pack bond with the children at this school, so their deaths would be enough.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I asked him. “You’re talking about murdering kids.”
I sat on the ground, glaring at the silver ring as I tried to come up with some way to escape. I needed to break that ring somehow. On TV shows, when people were in this kind of situation, there was usually some sort of convenient breeze to blow away the magic powder, but this wasn’t powder. I squinted at it, trying to work out what form of silver he’d used. It wasn’t solid, like silver bars. It looked as if he’d mixed it up some sort of paste and painted it on the ground. That, I could work with.
I got to my feet.
“And if I renounce the pack,” I said, moving as close to the edge of the ring as I could. “What then? I just go off and live in your creepy laboratory with you? Are you going to keep me chained up again? Because that wasn’t so fun last time.”
I barely listened to his answer, only enough to nod or comment in the right places. I needed to keep him distracted enough that he wouldn’t notice that I was pushing dirt forward with my foot. I couldn’t break the barrier myself, but I could use something else to break it.
I wasn’t sure if pushing dirt over the top of the silver would be enough to break it; I needed to move a whole section of the ring by pushing it out of the way. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t exactly slip off my shoe so I could get right in there. Luckily for me, my father loved to monologue.
I didn’t care what he said. Nothing he had planned could justify killing four innocent kids, even if it wasn’t for his own selfish reasons.
When the ring finally broke, I felt it. That loud crack rang through the air again, and the air shimmered in front of me. My father stepped back in shock, but I didn’t give him time to react further than that. I leapt for him and knocked him to the ground.
I held my claws to his throat and growled, “Where is Tennyson?”
“You would attack your own father?” he demanded, his voice croaking as my hand tightened around his throat. “Don’t you see what you’ve become? You’re a monster. I’ll do anything to save you from that, even if you kill me for it.”
I’d get no information from him. I had to find Tennyson myself.
“You’re the monster,” I said, then smacked his head back against the ground hard enough to knock him out.
I got to my feet and ran back to the house.
There was no sign of Tennyson. He wasn’t hidden in his own silver ring, or conveniently knocked out somewhere close by. That didn’t mean anything, though. I still couldn’t feel him through the pack bond, but that didn’t mean anything, either. My father wouldn’t have let Tennyson be killed if he could be used as leverage. He was fine. He was safe. I just had to find him.
As I got closer to the house, I realized I couldn’t hear fighting anymore. I leapt from the stone wall toward the west tower, using every superpower I had to propel my body high enough. I climbed in through one of the broken windows and crept toward the main room, straining to hear anything that would give me a clue as to what was going on, but everything was silent. When I got to the main hall, I saw two guys standing outside the door of the main room. That must be where everyone was, or they wouldn’t bother guarding it. I hung back in the shadows for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to get past the guards without alerting whomever was inside to my arrival. Man, if we all got out of this, I was signing myself up for some combat training. This kind of thing was tough. Not just the fighting part, but the tactics. All my training on paranormal rescue missions had come from Netflix, so I wracked my brains trying to think of a similar scenario. Nothing helpful came to mind. People on TV always had backup or handy props. I only had myself. That would have to do.
I walked toward the guards, trying to look confident.
“Hey, guys. My dad sent me in here to do some ritual to get me out of this pack,” I told them.
They looked surprised and a little suspicious, but they didn’t immediately attack me, so I took that as a win. I’d expected them to be armed with massive werewolf-killing machine guns or something but I couldn’t see any weapons on them at all. They had little walkie-talkie things clipped onto their shirt pockets, but apart from that, they looked like regular security guards at the mall.
“Yeah, he’s just outside,” I went on. “Man, I hate all this werewolf stuff. Can’t wait for things to get back to normal.”
One of them reached up for his walkie-talkie, and I moved as fast as my superpowers allowed. I smacked their heads together hard enough to knock them out, and they both fell to the floor. I moved them over to the side so I could open the doors. For a moment, I was worried that they’d changed the rooms and the pack was stuck somewhere beneath the house where I couldn’t reach them, but the power was still off, and when I pulled open the doors, I saw Althea, Sam and Nikolai tied together in the middle of the room. Even from the doorway, I could see the glint of silver in the ropes that bound them.
The guards inside the room were armed. And there were a lot of them. But that wasn’t what bothered me.
“Where’s Tennyson?” I said, edging into the room with my back to the wall.
Althea’s eyes went wide in shock, but there was no time to explain to her what had happened.
One of the guards laughed. That sound, that mocking laughter, triggered something deep inside the worst part of me. It was dirty and ugly, and it wanted to rip the faces off them all. Not just the one who had laughed, but every single person standing between me and Tennyson, who had put us in danger. In that moment, I had no mercy at all. I had less regard for human life than even my father. Maybe th
at was where it had come from, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that my claws came out and I was ready to use them.
It happened in a blur. The whole world turned red, and I seemed to move automatically, as if my body were being controlled by a remote power. This wasn’t just giving in to my lycanthropy, it was letting it take over. I wasn’t just out of control; it was so far beyond that. For that brief moment, anything human in me ceased to exist. I became the monster my father thought I was. There was no thought in my head, only instinct. I had to save my pack, save Tennyson. Anything standing in the way of that had to be destroyed.
But my movements were too frantic, too imprecise. I struck out at them with all my power, but no skill. For every guard I took down, another was able to retaliate just as hard.
When I came back to myself, four of the guards were holding me down. They were covered in blood and panting for breath. To my left, I could see Althea out cold on the floor, and beyond her, two more guards had Sam and Nikolai restrained. Even after all that, I hadn’t been able to help them.
“Tie her up with the others,” one of them said in a gruff voice. “I’ll go find the boss. If she tries to get free, shoot her.”
I’d failed. I’d lost control, and because of that, any hope of our getting out of this was gone. And Tennyson wasn’t even here to gloat about being right.
Chapter 19
They left Althea sprawled out on the floor and tied me together with Sam and Nikolai. They weren’t gentle about it, either. Looking around the room, I could understand why. I didn’t think I’d killed anyone, but there were a lot of guards incapacitated, knocked out or shredded up by my claws.
“Are you okay?” I asked Sam and Nikolai as they bound our hands together behind our backs so that we were standing in a circle, facing outward in different directions. Even with everything else going on, my body flushed warm at being pressed up so close to Nikolai.
