by Mary Lindsey
Rain had never heard of Jeremiah Brand.
“You look confused. He said he was a friend of yours. That you guys were really tight and hung out all the time.”
Rain shook his head. “I don’t know anyone named Jeremiah.”
“That’s odd. He said he was with you on the night Lynn died.”
It felt like the earth had opened and swallowed him whole. Pressure closed in on all sides as if he were far underwater. He grabbed his phone from his back pocket and shot off a text to Grant.
What kind of bug were the boys ordered to kill?
His answer came immediately: A moth.
Thirty-Seven
“Listen, Aunt Ruby. My friend Moth… Um, Jeremiah is gonna be freaked out if he’s picked up by a police cruiser. He’s lived on the streets for a while.”
Ruby’s face flipped into that expression she wore when she was covering up how much his mom and dad had hurt her.
“I mean, I almost pissed myself when you came rolling up in a cruiser that first night.” Damn. He was breaking her heart and he hated it, but he couldn’t let her go to pick him up in case some magical Moon Creature shit went down.
Freddie must have picked up on how serious things were, because she pulled her keys out of her pocket and gave him a quick nod before putting her hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “Why don’t Rain and I go get him in my Explorer while you heat up that pie I saw in the fridge? We’ll be back just in time for hot apple pie and ice cream. He can’t freak out about a cop if she serves him hot pie, right?”
“I guess not,” Aunt Ruby said with a shrug.
Rain could tell she was troubled from that crease between her eyes.
“Awesome,” Freddie said. “And then you can finish that story about Mr. Parker’s haunted chicken coop.”
A smile broke through his aunt’s frown, finally, and Rain headed for steps. “Thanks for the surprise, Aunt Ruby. Moth’s a cool kid. You’re going to like him. We’ll be back soon.”
Neither spoke as they ran down the walk to Freddie’s car. Ruby watched from the porch as Freddie backed out of the driveway slowly, not punching the gas until she hit the end of the street. “So, it’s the boys, right?”
“Yeah. They’re going to hurt Moth.”
She rounded the corner out of the neighborhood and took off down the freeway toward the gas station where Greyhound dropped off. “Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” Rain took his phone out of his pocket and put it in the glove box along with his wallet and motorcycle key. Last thing he needed in a fight was a lot of extra crap in his pockets to break the skin. “Chief Richter used the term ‘blood-in.’ That’s a gang term used to describe an initiation into the group by hurting or killing an outsider to prove loyalty.”
“Sonofabitch,” she muttered, accelerating to well over ninety miles an hour.
“Is this something you guys do?”
“No. Not in the last hundred and fifty years.” She passed a pickup truck and swerved back into her lane. “Up until the 1860s, in order to prove worthiness, when a male Watcher came of age, he had to demonstrate he was willing to take risks for the pack and his coven of Weavers by killing a human.”
He could see the red and white sign of the Stripes gas station in the distance. “Do you think that’s what’s going on?”
“I have no clue what’s going on.” She shook her head, eyes never leaving the road. “Not with them, or Mrs. Goff, or you. Nothing makes sense anymore.”
She slowed when they neared the station. A bus pulled out before they got to the driveway. Rain didn’t see any sign of Moth or anyone else for that matter.
Freddie pulled into a parking space in front of the gas station convenience store and killed the motor. Everything in Rain was on high alert, his skin prickling with gooseflesh. He put the window down, listening for the sounds of the nighttime creatures in the fields surrounding the place. It was silent. Dead silent, which wasn’t right.
Freddie lowered her window, too, and put her finger to her lip to silence him, then pointed toward the dumpster past the far end of the building. Then, she swung her finger toward the field to the left. She tilted her head and held up two fingers. Her face pinched with concern and she added a third finger. With incredible speed and force, she shoved him down to where he couldn’t be seen from outside the car. Stay here, she mouthed.
“Hello?” Moth’s frightened voice called from the far end of the building near the dumpster. “Anybody here?”
Freddie clamped her hand over Rain’s mouth before he could answer. “Stay here. If they see you, they’ll kill him.” She said it so quietly, he had to read her lips.
“Hey, Moth?” she called out, opening her door. “I’m a friend of Rain’s. I’m here to take you to his house.”
“Oh, thank God,” he answered. “I thought I’d gotten off at the wrong stop.”
Rain knew she’d told him to stay down, but he couldn’t help peeking over the dash. Moth was striding toward Freddie, who was almost to the end of the building, with a huge grin on his face. Before he got within twenty feet of her, three sets of gold eyes appeared in the tall corn stalks in the far field. Freddie must have seen them, too, because she crouched as if ready to leap.
Moth spun to look behind him just as two brown wolves stepped out of the cover. His hands flapped at his sides as his eyes flew wide. “Oh shit.”
Freddie stood straight, as if relieved by the sight of the two wolves. “What the hell do you two think you’re doing?” she asked.
One looked over its shoulder at the corn, then both moved between Freddie and Moth.
“Is that you in that corn, Merrick? I’m going to kick your ass if you’re a part of this nonsense.”
There was no reply or movement from the field. The bigger of the two wolves narrowed its eyes and growled. The thinner one next to it with the long legs looked back at the corn again.
“Both of you get back to Haven right now, or I’m going to make you suffer for the rest of your worthless lives for this stupid game.”
A loud, deep snarl answered from the corn, and Freddie stiffened. She took a step back, and Rain knew right away, this wasn’t a game.
“Who’s there?” Freddie shouted.
Still crouching behind the dash so as not to be seen, he prepared to join in, muscles bunching, ready to go when needed.
Growls filled the air as both the wolves closed in on Moth.
“You so much as touch him, and you’re both dead,” she said.
Moth whimpered and flapped his hands frantically.
A vicious snarl came from the field, and the bigger of the two lunged, knocking Moth to the ground. The other wolf stood still, as if confused. Like a strobe light, his form wavered, and Rain was certain he saw Kurt, crouched on all fours, flickering back and forth to a wolf.
“Back off, Thomas.” She shoved the wolf standing on Moth’s chest, and he reacted quickly, lunging forward and biting her arm. She kneed him in the chest, but he didn’t let go. With her free hand, she ripped the necklace out of her shirt and yanked it so hard the chain broke.
“Moth, run to the car,” she shouted, then instantly fell to her knees, her back bowing. The transformation process was much faster than it had been in the cave at Enchanted Rock, probably because she wasn’t fighting it this time.
Watching Freddie change was like a time-lapse film of horror makeup being applied. Her spine protruded and silver hair sprouted all over her body. Her pants fell away as her limbs thinned and shortened, but her shirt stayed around her ribs like an ill-fitting pet costume.
Rain found himself bouncing between horror and wonder, gripping the wolf belt around his waist as Freddie’s ears migrated to the top of her head and peaked into triangles. As soon as her face elongated, she growled and sunk her fangs into Thomas’s neck. He immediately released his bite with a yelp.
Moth, still on his back on the pavement, appeared too stunned to even flap his hands. While Freddie and Thomas fought
, the other wolf, who’d flickered as Kurt earlier, stood over him, growling.
Freddie was holding her own with Thomas, but if Kurt lost his common sense and attacked Moth, he could kill the kid with one bite. Rain decided he’d had enough. It wasn’t in his nature to stand by while people were in trouble. She’d told him to stay in the car, but that was before shit went down and before they knew there was someone else in the field making the calls. The wolf in the corn worried him far more than either of these two.
Rain checked under the front seats but found only some random clothes and shoes shoved underneath. Then he climbed over into the backseat, looking for a weapon of some kind. Nothing. The car was way too clean.
“Fuck!” He stretched over the backseat into the way back of the vehicle. There had to at least be tools to change a spare stashed somewhere. He ripped up the carpet mat on one side. Bingo. He yanked the plastic storage sleeve off a tire jack and grabbed the metal handle. It wasn’t as big as he’d like, but it could crack a wolf skull.
He opened the back door, planning to grab Moth and bring him back to the safety of the car, knocking the shit out of any wolf that got in his way. Surely Freddie would follow his lead and return to the car so they could get the hell out of there.
He transferred his makeshift metal club to his right hand, leaving the door open for an easy access for Moth.
Freddie and Thomas seemed evenly matched and not too serious about killing each other—mainly circling, nipping, and growling. Kurt in wolf form, no longer flickering between wolf and human, stood guard over a catatonic Moth.
Keeping his eye on Moth, Rain slunk around the door of the car. As he took his first step, his entire plan went straight to hell. He froze when a low, rumbling snarl came from only a few feet behind him.
As adrenaline coursed through every cell of his body, Rain tightened his grip on the tire-jack handle and turned, feet wide, ready to swing. For a moment, his body seemed to short-circuit as he met the eerie gold eyes of the black wolf from his vision.
Its lips drew back beyond its gums, revealing enormous teeth—teeth that Rain recognized. The growl turned into a snarl as it crouched lower to lunge.
Get your shit together, Rain coached himself silently. You’re gonna die lying on your back in a field full of grapevines, not here at a gas station. He visualized his strike before he made it, but when he swung at the animal, instead of nailing it in the side of the head as planned, it reared up and took the hit in the ribs. The thwack of crunching ribs wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would have been to hear the dull crack of the black wolf’s skull. Still, it would buy him time to get to Moth.
In a full sprint, clutching the tire-jack handle like a relay baton, he headed for Moth. Kurt, still in wolf form, went through the motions of defending his prey but backed off when Rain swung at him with the metal bar.
“Get up, Moth,” he shouted as he grabbed his friend under the arm, trying to haul him to his feet. The kid was as floppy as a dead fish. When he made a scan of the parking lot, the black wolf was nowhere to be seen and the path to the Explorer was clear.
“Freddie, let’s go!” He pitched the jack handle aside and grabbed Moth under both armpits, dragging him toward the car.
Thomas yelped as Freddie gave him a ferocious bite before she ran, still in wolf form, toward the car.
Rain shifted his hold on Moth when he got to the front of the car to make it easier to shove him in the open door when he reached it. Once around the door, he practically pitched Moth onto the backseat, only to realize his mistake too late.
The black wolf leaped over the seat from the far back where he’d been hiding and sank its teeth into Moth’s neck just above the shoulder before Rain could intervene.
Reflexively, Rain punched the animal as hard as he could in the head, then the body. Over and over he slammed his fists into it, focusing on nailing the ribs he’d broken earlier, but it didn’t let go of Moth, other than to adjust its bite to get an even better hold.
Freddie, in human form, wearing only a tattered shirt, flung open the back door on the other side of the car and climbed in. She grabbed the wolf’s tail and yanked it, pulling the back half of its body from the cargo space in the back, fully into the backseat, then, using her leg for leverage, she tugged its tail out the door and slammed it shut. Once. Twice. Three times.
The wolf released its hold on Moth’s neck and spun to face Freddie through the closed door, its blood gushing all over the leather seat, mixing with that pulsing from Moth’s neck. She held up its amputated tail and flipped the bird.
Rain wanted the wolf dead but knew that wouldn’t happen now. He just needed it out of the car and away from his friend. While Freddie taunted it from outside the car, he ran and grabbed the metal rod.
Before he made it back to the car, Moth screamed, and then the black wolf leaped from the car and bolted into the cornfield. Thomas and Kurt were nowhere in sight.
“Hurry, Rain,” Freddie shouted. “Hurry or he’s gonna die.”
Thirty-Eight
Rain’s hand ached, but there was no way in hell he was letting up pressure on Moth’s wound. The kid had lost consciousness before they’d even made it out of the Stripes station parking lot. It seemed like they’d been on the highway for hours, but Rain knew it had been less than ten minutes from the time Freddie pulled on a pair of pants from her floorboard to now. Were it not for the blood coating his hands and Moth’s T-shirt, it would look like his friend was sleeping. “How far is the hospital?”
“Can’t go to a hospital.” Freddie turned on her blinker. “He’ll tell them he was attacked by wolves, or they’ll figure it out from the bite pattern. Wolves don’t live in this region. We can’t risk that kind of exposure.”
The entire backseat was slick with Moth’s blood. “He’s bleeding out. We’ve gotta get him to a doctor.”
“Petra will know what to do.”
Hopefully they wouldn’t need Reinhardt Funeral Home’s other services. Why the hell had Moth come to New Wurzburg in the first place?
Freddie took a sharp turn, and Rain struggled to keep pressure on the wound. The black wolf had given Moth a parting bite on his side, too, but the wound on his neck was much worse, though not as bad as the one Rain knew he’d receive some time in the future.
Freddie pushed a button on her dash. “Call Grant,” she said.
Moth moaned and turned his head. Blood oozed between Rain’s fingers. “Stay with me, buddy. We’re almost there,” Rain whispered.
“Freddie?” Grant’s voice said from her dash speakers.
“Yeah. Call Petra. We’re bringing in an emergency. Meet us.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s a human down. See you in five.”
Rain knew now for sure that Grant was on the right side of this. His first question was to confirm Freddie was safe. He figured at least Grant, Merrick, and Petra had all stepped up to the plate and were allies. After tonight, he had no idea where Thomas and Kurt stood, other than at the top of his ass-kicking list.
“This is why I don’t want you to be a Watcher. Nobody should be dragged into this,” Freddie said through gritted teeth.
Rain remained silent, willing his friend to live.
As they pulled under the covered area at the back of the funeral home, Petra was pacing outside the loading door. Grant drove up right as they got out. In no time, Moth was transferred to a rolling gurney and wheeled into the same room where Petra had worked on Doctor Perkins. Rain kept his hand on Moth’s neck.
“Put him here,” Petra said, pulling on a pair of gloves from a rolling cart next to the stainless steel table where she’d sewn the doctor’s lips shut. “Friederike, please go close both the doors in the hallway. I don’t want to involve my family.”
“I wonder why not,” Grant said with a sneer.
She leveled her enormous eyes on him and sneered right back. “For the same reason you won’t involve yours.”
Moth groaned,
opened his eyes, and let out a sound like he was gargling with Scope. Blood trickled out the sides of his mouth and spurted between Rain’s fingers from the wound. Grant paled and turned away.
“If you’re going to vomit, do it in the basin on the far wall,” Petra said as she put on safety goggles. “I need to keep a sterile field over here.” She picked up a large square of gauze. “Please move your hand, Rain. I need to get a look at it.”
When Rain lifted his palm, blood pulsed from the wound in time to Moth’s frantic heartbeats. Petra wiped it and leaned close, then wiped it again. “Please reapply pressure for a moment, Rain, while I get the supplies I need. Friederike, thoroughly wash your hands and put on gloves. I’ll need your help.”
While Freddie scrubbed her hands, Rain pressed his palm over the worst part of the wound and held it there while Petra threaded a small, curved needle with a fine, dark thread. Nothing like the materials she’d used on Doctor Perkins.
“I don’t stock anesthetics because corpses don’t feel anything. Grant, could you please influence his thoughts to not feel pain?”
Grant took one of Moth’s hands and held it between his palms, eyes closed. Immediately, the boy’s strained features relaxed as he received the Weaver’s magical novocaine.
“That’s better,” Petra said. “I need to sterilize it first. Freddie, please grab that tall bottle with the bent plastic straw on top and bring it here.”
After the wound was washed and sterilized, Petra went to work. She repaired the damaged blood vessel first, then meticulously closed the wound in phases. When she was done, it didn’t look anything like the gaping hole it had been. Then, she closed the couple of larger lacerations on his side left from the black wolf’s parting shot. “I made a few incisions through the tooth punctures to disguise the bite pattern in case he dies and falls into the wrong hands.”
“Dies?” Rain didn’t even recognize his own frantic voice.
Petra dumped the surgical tools in a stainless steel pan and then pulled off her gloves. “Working on living things isn’t my gig. He lost a lot of blood. Probably needs a transfusion.”
