Thornhill h-2

by Kathleen Peacock

  “Do we spit on our palms and shake on it?” I asked.

  Eve rolled her eyes and started walking again. “You know,” she said after a minute, “even before the stuff Dex said, this place wasn’t adding up. Did anything seem strange about Sinclair’s overcrowding explanation to you?”

  I thought about the raid, about the memory that didn’t quite fit. Kill her and it’s one less head we get paid for. “If the camps are so overcrowded,” I said slowly, “why are they paying Trackers to go on raids?”

  “Exactly.” Eve started to say more but her voice trailed off as a guard came into view. Even at a distance, I recognized the lanky figure and red hair of the man who had helped them take Serena, the man the female guard had called “Tanner.”

  He left the path and headed for the trees, his stride quick and purposeful. One hand gripped the handle of a black case the size of a toolbox.

  “A guard heading into the woods with a big black box,” said Eve. “Because that’s not suspicious.”

  “Follow?”

  “Follow.”

  We shared a glance and a split second of camaraderie, which left me feeling awkward and confused as we trailed the man into the woods. I wasn’t sure I wanted to like anyone crazy enough—or blind enough—to trust my father.

  The guard followed a wide path, but Eve and I glided through the underbrush. Well, she glided. I stumbled awkwardly behind, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  The trees began to thin around us and I caught glimpses of a chain-link fence through the foliage. What on earth could they possibly need to fence off way out here?

  The guard stopped in front of a metal pole. He set the toolbox on the ground, crouched down, and hauled out what looked like an iPhone. He pointed it at the top of the pole, waited, then sighed and tossed the device back into the box.

  He stood and slipped a radio from his belt. “Number thirty-five is working fine. Were you guys just messing with me?”

  The reply was lost under a burst of static. “Funny,” muttered the guard. “Real funny.” He picked up the toolbox and headed back the way he had come.

  We waited until we were sure he was out of visual range and then crept forward. I tugged on the fence. It wasn’t as impressive as the one surrounding the camp and it wasn’t electrified, but it was solid and secure.

  I approached the pole the guard had examined. It was about twenty feet tall with spikes on the sides that formed a sort of ladder. On top was a box that looked like a small speaker.

  I turned back to Eve.

  She was on her knees, her hands clamped to the sides of her head. I hadn’t heard her go down.

  I glanced from her to the box and then quickly ran to her side.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, crouching next to her.

  “I’m okay,” she groaned as she pushed me away. “I’m all right.” But she retched until it sounded like she was on the verge of bringing up internal organs.

  Wiping her mouth with the edge of her sleeve, she climbed unsteadily to her feet.

  “There’s an HFD on top of the pole,” I said, standing. “They must be motion activated.”

  Eve frowned. “Then why didn’t it go off when the guard was near it?” She glanced down at her wrist and ran a hand over the metal cuff. She held out her arm and slowly walked forward. When she was about five feet from the pole, she flinched and yanked her arm back. After a moment, she held out her other hand. This time, she seemed perfectly fine.

  “It’s the cuffs.” She twisted the metal around her wrist. “They must have some kind of sensor in them that sets off the HFD when you get too close.”

  I glanced from Eve to the pole and then back. Careful to stay out range, I walked to the fence and peered through the links.

  There was a path. It ended about thirty feet away with a waist-high gate. It was the kind of barrier that would be easy to slip over. With the HFD covering the path, they probably didn’t worry about wolves just hopping the gate.

  But I wasn’t a wolf.

  “What was it Dex said at breakfast? That there were two places in the camp they didn’t want wolves to go?”

  “You think this is number two?”

  “I think a fence and an HFD is going to a lot of trouble if it’s not.” I turned back to Eve. “I can get over the gate. If I waited five minutes, do you think that would be enough time for you to get out of range?”

  Eve shook her head. “I’m staying.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “The second I get within five feet of the pole, it’ll go off.”

  “Not for long. Unless you’re planning on strolling at a leisurely pace, it should only hit me for a minute.”

  I opened my mouth but then shrugged. Who was I to argue if Eve wanted to sign up for another dose of pain?

  Still, just because I wasn’t going to argue with her didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her any more than necessary. I made a run for the opening of the path, not slowing or glancing back as I raced past the HFD. She’d be all right once I was out of range; I just had to get there as quickly as possible.

  I rounded the edge of the fence and almost did a face plant as I clambered over the gate. I caught a glimpse of Eve’s red hair out of the corner of my eye as I hurtled down the path, but I didn’t stop until I had gone another fifteen feet.

  Eve was already standing by the time I looked back. She nodded at me, once, and I did the same before continuing on.

  The chain-link fence rose at least ten feet into the air on either side of the path and left just enough space in the middle for a jeep to squeeze through. It was creepy and claustrophobic and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing was going to snap down on me. The breeze—which had been gentle and welcome when we left the laundry building—picked up strength and pushed at my back.

  After a few minutes, the path curved to the right and then ended in a small, overgrown clearing. The fence branched out on either side, looping around an area that was too perfectly square to be anything other than man-made. When I glanced around the edges of the clearing, I noticed HFDs along each side of the fence.

  The space was completely empty. I bit my lip. Why go to all this trouble to keep people out of an empty field?

  I waded into the straggly grass and tripped as my sneaker caught on the edge of something hard.

  I pitched forward and barely caught my balance. Letting out a low curse, I glanced down. A small rectangle had been set into the ground. I crouched and brushed thick weeds away from a granite slab. It was a grave marker, the name and dates worn smooth by time and weather.

  I stood and walked down two rows of identical stones. There were fourteen in total, and only one had retained a legible date: 1933.

  If the main building had been a hospital for tuberculosis patients, it made sense that there would be a graveyard, but why hide it? Who would care?

  The markers in the next row looked different. Curious, I walked forward. The grass was slightly less overgrown, here, and the markers were metal, not stone. They weren’t decades old—the oldest was dated just five months ago—and each had a four-digit number where a name should be.

  My blood turned to ice as I glanced at my wrist: four digits.

  What if Dex was right?

  Pulse thudding, I walked forward, counting as I went. There were six rows of seven markers and each row was progressively less overgrown. When I reached the last row, the graves were covered with plain dirt that looked like it could have been turned yesterday.

  All of the dates were within the last four weeks.

  I reached the last marker.

  I couldn’t look down.

  I had to look down.

  My knees threatened to give out in relief as I stared at the slab of metal and read the date. Six days. The date was six days past. Whoever was buried here, it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t Serena.

  A gust of wind whipped my hair around my face as a low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. A flutter of yellow a few feet away caught
my attention and all the relief died in my chest.

  A wooden stake—the kind they used on construction sites to show where things should be placed—had been driven into the ground right where the next marker would be.

  A roaring sound filled my head, louder than the distant thunder.

  There were only two reasons why a stake would be there: either a body had been buried and the marker hadn’t been placed yet or . . .

  I stumbled back, struggling to keep my balance as the first drops of rain hit my face.

  . . . or they were marking where the next body would go.

  13

  “POP QUIZ, MACKENZIE DOBSON . . .”

  “I’m not playing.”

  “Spoilsport.” Amy laced her fingers through the links of the fence and stared at the cemetery. Her pale-blue sundress seemed to glow slightly in the dark and her bare feet and legs were splattered with bits of mud and grass.

  She stared at the markers—small, dark shapes barely visibly in the mist. “Why do you think they took their names? They took their names and left them with numbers no one would remember them by. It’s sort of sad.”

  Blood dripped off her hands and landed on the grass. For a moment, I thought she had cut herself, but then the moon slipped out from behind the clouds. The entire fence was coated in blood. Thick red beads ran down the links and fell to the dirt below. The earth soaked it up like a sponge, and when Amy shifted her weight, the ground beneath her gave a soft, wet sigh.

  “If I could see them,” continued Amy as though nothing were wrong, “if I could talk to the Thornhill ghosts, do you think they’d talk back?”

  “Amy . . .” I swallowed, fighting the urge to run, “whose blood is that?” A better question would have been Why is it on the fence? but I could only handle one thing at a time.

  “It’s everyone’s.” Amy shrugged and nodded toward my arm.

  I followed her gaze. Blood soaked the sleeve of my shirt and coated my hand like a glove.

  “Everything runs red here.”

  A gasp lodged itself in my throat as I woke in a tangle of sweat-damp sheets. The room was filled with blue-black shadows, but early morning light slipped past the curtains. I had overslept.

  I dressed quickly, making sure to pull my sleeve down to hide my arm—the same arm that had been bleeding in my dream. I wasn’t sure how my dorm mates would feel if they discovered I was a reg, and I didn’t want to find out. Hank always said people hated being lied to almost as much as being stolen from. He oughta know: he was an expert at both.

  Eve raised herself up on her elbow.

  From liar and deserter to pack leader and caregiver. How was it possible for two people to have such different opinions and expectations of the same man?

  “Sure you’re up for this?” she whispered. Her gray-green eyes reflected the light from the bathroom doorway.

  I nodded. After what I had found in the woods, Eve and I had regrouped with Kyle. There was no way I could wait another day before trying to get into the sanatorium—not with the implications of the grave markers and that yellow stake.

  Since injury and detention were the only excuses a wolf had for being in the building, Kyle would injure himself. I’d play the part of the hysterical girlfriend and insist on going with him. Once inside, I’d try to slip away and find some sign of Serena. Eve had volunteered for the job, but given that we didn’t know if there were HFDs inside, I was the logical choice.

  Plus, there was no way in hell I was letting Kyle go in there without me.

  As far as plans went, it was about as sturdy as a house of cards in Tornado Alley. We just didn’t have much choice.

  “Good luck,” said Eve. Then, just in case I was in danger of thinking we were on our way to becoming BFFs, she added, “Don’t screw it up.”

  Tossing her a glare, I bent down and grabbed my shoes. Then, sneakers in hand, I walked past the sleeping girls and out of the dorm.

  Puddle water soaked my socks as I stepped outside.

  It had stopped raining sometime during the night, but the paths and grass still shimmered wetly as the sky lightened to mauve.

  A shadow broke away from the side of the building: Kyle.

  Warmth flooded his eyes, and for a brief, heady second, I actually believed I could be the center of someone’s world. A small voice in the back of my head reminded me that he had left me and run away to Denver, but I pushed it aside.

  “Tired?”

  “Exhausted,” I admitted as I pulled on my sneakers. I curled my toes inside my damp socks. “I spent most of the night trying to figure out if there was a way to get inside the building that wouldn’t involve you hurting yourself while trying not to think about the graveyard and trying to convince myself that Serena is all right.”

  Kyle wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we started walking. “She’s okay,” he said. “We’ll find her and figure out what’s going on.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I knew he was just telling me what he thought I needed to hear.

  We walked in silence until the sanatorium came into sight. If possible, the building was even more imposing in the early morning light. It threw a shadow over the entire courtyard and loomed over the admission building and the small cluster of white vehicles near the gate. It was a photographer’s dream—all harsh angles and creeping ivy. In its own way, it was oddly beautiful, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that its dozens of dark windows were somehow watching us.

  Kyle let his arm fall from my shoulders as we stepped off the path and headed for the side of the sanatorium where an extension was being built. We reached the edge of the construction site, and he gracefully hopped up into the partially completed wing.

  I hoisted myself up after him—much less gracefully—then brushed wood shavings from my clothes as I stood and looked around.

  There wasn’t much to see. Piles of lumber and discarded tools littered the floor while skeletal walls supported wires and plumbing. The wing was larger than it had looked from the outside. Almost cavernous.

  I turned to Kyle. There was a familiar, unsettling expression on his face: it was the one he always got right before telling me something he knew I’d hate.

  He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking. Me slicing my arm might not be enough.”

  I tried to ignore the twinge of alarm in my chest. “What do you mean it might not be enough? What do you want to do instead?”

  “We’re not supposed to shift outside the zone and class. I have to be hurt badly enough that the injury won’t heal without shifting but not so badly that I lose control.” Kyle hauled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the floor. “It’s going to take more than my arm.”

  I swallowed. “How much more?”

  In response, Kyle walked a few feet away and picked up a long copper pipe. It was at least two inches in diameter and the edges were jagged, like it had teeth. He came back and held it out to me. “I figure it’ll look like I fell and accidentally impaled myself.”

  “Kyle, no. . . .” I took a step back as bile rushed up my throat. “This isn’t what we agreed on.” This was crazy. Insane.

  Kyle let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m a werewolf, Mac. I’ll heal.”

  “Like you healed after the fire at Serena’s? You were in a coma for an entire night! They weren’t even sure you would wake up.” The memory of sitting at his bedside—scared and bargaining with God—sent a shiver rocketing up my spine.

  Kyle shifted his grip on the pipe. “This is different. I know how much damage my body can take.”

  “Bullshit.” I meant the word to sound fierce; instead, my voice broke over the second syllable. “You’ve only been a full-fledged werewolf for a couple of weeks. How do you know?”

  “Think about Serena,” he shot back. “This is our best chance of finding out if she’s okay.”

  My vision blurred. “We’ll find another way.” Without giving Kyle a chance to respond, I turned and headed for the edge of
the construction site.

  There was a sudden clang—metal on wood—followed by a heavy thump.

  I spun.

  Kyle was on his knees, fumbling for his shirt. He balled it up and pressed it to his stomach. Blood soaked the fabric in the three seconds it took me to reach his side.

  He pushed himself to his feet and swayed. I caught his weight and just barely managed to keep him from hitting the floor.

  I pressed one hand over his, trying to help him hold the bloodstained shirt against his stomach. “Shift.” I swallowed. “Please, just shift.” He was hurt badly—a reg would be in real trouble—but if he shifted, he would be okay.

  Probably.

  Panic threatened to pull me under.

  “I’m fine.” Kyle’s voice was pinched and far away. “Werewolf, remember?” A shudder wracked his body, and his face shone with sweat. “I’ll be okay. I can hold on.”

  The muscles in his back writhed under my arm, jumping and crawling like things lived under the skin. It took everything I had not to cringe back.

  The only way this would work would be if Kyle had the self-control not to shift. When the plan had been for him to cut his arm, I hadn’t been worried. But this . . .

  He started walking and I supported as much of his weight as I could. “Just need to get inside,” he said through gritted teeth. He repeated the words like a mantra.

  By the time we reached the glass doors at the front of the building, his voice had faded to barely audible, nonsensical mumbles. At one point, he called me Amy and the mistake cut like a blade.

  The guard at the door took one look at Kyle and told us to take a left followed by a right.

  We finally staggered into the infirmary, and a doctor with hair as white as his lab coat looked up from his coffee and donut.

  “What happened?” Keeping just out of Kyle’s reach, he ushered us through a door and into a tiny room with metal walls. It was like a vault.

  I hesitated on the threshold, holding Kyle back as I bit my lip and took in the heavy bars and locks on the door.