Thornhill h-2

by Kathleen Peacock

  The injured had gotten off lucky.

  Bodies littered the ground like broken toy soldiers. Some were Thornhill guards or staff, but most seemed to be wolves who had stormed the camp as part of the second stage of the breakout.

  I tried not to stare too long or too hard at the bodies as I followed Kyle and the warden down a paved path, but I couldn’t stop checking for familiar faces.

  I had wanted the breakout. Had pushed for it. No matter what happened, I was partly responsible. I paused and looked down into the sightless eyes of a woman with graying hair and a plump face that was slack in death. She looked like someone’s grandmother. With a pang, I wondered whether or not there was a family waiting for her to come home.

  “Casualties were inevitable. We all knew that.” I started at the familiar sound of Jason’s voice.

  “That doesn’t make it any better.”

  “No,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

  “Serena?”

  “Hank said she was near the gate with Eve.”

  I let out a deep, relieved breath. It was almost over.

  We fell into silence as we walked through the camp. Ahead, the olive and gray uniforms of the Thornhill wolves were a churning mass. I should have felt ecstatic—after all, we had actually done it, we had liberated an entire camp—but all I felt was a bone-deep longing to go home.

  I was so lost in thoughts of Hemlock and Tess and how the hell I was going to tell Trey what had happened to Serena, that I didn’t realize Kyle and Sinclair had stopped until I almost collided with them on the edge of the courtyard.

  The smell of smoke had been growing steadily stronger and here it became so thick that it coated the back of my throat.

  I stared, stunned, as I realized why Kyle had stopped.

  The sanatorium was on fire.

  Flames stretched out of every window, bathing the courtyard in an orange glow. The roof was completely engulfed. As we watched, part of it caved in, sending a shower of sparks into the night.

  I took several steps forward and then tore my gaze away to look at the warden.

  A small, satisfied smile tugged at the corner of Sinclair’s mouth, but her eyes were those of a woman on the verge of weeping.

  Hank made his way back to us.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You were supposed to bomb the entrance, not the sanatorium.”

  I glanced toward the gate to confirm that it was gone and caught sight of a small, dark figure near the admission building. Serena.

  Thank God.

  She stood in the shadows, but her white tunic and pants made her easy to spot. She seemed completely oblivious to the three hundred wolves streaming out of the camp or the fact that she could join them and walk out of Thornhill. She just stood and watched the sanatorium—watched Willowgrove—burn.

  I thought I saw her smile, but I knew it was my imagination: I was too far away to actually see her expression.

  “—blew the detention block while we were getting the wolves out.” Hank was speaking. Reluctantly, I tore my gaze from Serena. “They were trying to keep us from getting our hands on any of the files or records.” His eyes locked on Sinclair and the look in them sent chills down my spine.

  The full implication of his words hit. “So any proof of what they were doing? Any notes on how to reverse it . . . ?”

  “Gone,” said Hank. “The wolves are the only proof we have. We at least managed to get them out.”

  “So we don’t let her go.” Jason nodded to Sinclair. “We take her with us and keep her until we get the information we need.” He glanced toward the admission building and I knew he had seen Serena. “We hold her until she tells us how to reverse what she did.”

  “Do that and you’re signing your own death warrants,” said Sinclair, apparently deciding she’d rather risk Hank’s wrath than stay quiet. “Besides, I can’t tell you how to reverse it.”

  “You’re lying,” said Jason.

  When Sinclair didn’t immediately reply, Kyle tightened his grip on her arm, digging his fingers in until most people would have cried out.

  Sinclair didn’t protest or flinch. She didn’t take the words back or beg. Her blue eyes met mine and in them I saw a shadow of regret. The same shadow I had seen in her eyes when she told me about her sister.

  “She’s not lying,” I said softly.

  Before anyone could respond, six guards approached. The last of the Thornhill wolves had made it through the gate—even Serena seemed to have slipped out—and the guards must have wondered why we had stopped on the edge of the courtyard.

  Two of the men had their hands on the butts of their guns. A third man was familiar: Tanner. The light from the fire made his red hair look like it had been set aflame. He didn’t show any sign that he knew Hank as he stepped forward. “We held up our end of the deal. You’re the only wolves remaining in the camp.”

  Kyle glanced at Hank. My father nodded, and he let go of the warden. He stepped back and flexed his hands, then wiped them on his pants as though trying to brush away the memory of her skin.

  The warden seemed to become smaller as the guards surrounded her protectively. The look on her face was worn and defeated, and she suddenly appeared decades older. It was almost as though she was only just now really accepting that she had lost.

  Kyle and Jason waited until the guards began ushering her away and then they started toward the gate. I hesitated, watching the smoke and flames lick the sky as the sanatorium burned. I wanted to believe it was all over—I wanted to go home and put all of this behind us—but it was hard to turn away.

  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. The touch was familiar, but not in the easy, comfortable way Jason’s or Kyle’s would have been. “You all right, kid?”

  I nodded—I might even have said yes—just as a guard shouted.

  Everything took on a slow, dreamlike quality as I looked toward the guards. Sinclair had broken away and held a gun—Tanner’s, given the expression on his face—in her hand. She aimed it at my chest, and it was as though all trace of the woman I’d seen when I first came to Thornhill had burned along with the sanatorium. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve worked for this? Do you have any idea what you destroyed? I tried to help you—I tried to help all of them—and you took everything.”

  The gun was pointed at me but her gaze slid to Hank. Suddenly, I knew I wasn’t the one in danger. Everything Sinclair had done had been motivated by the loss of her sister. She wanted to hurt me, and she would do it by taking away the thing she assumed would destroy me most to lose: my family.

  Without thinking, I threw myself at my father, trying to knock him out of the way as Sinclair swung the gun and pulled the trigger.

  Something slammed through my body, setting it on fire. I fell back—fell so slowly it was like moving through liquid—and just before I hit the ground, I saw a dark shape tackle Sinclair: Serena.

  My last thought was that at least she and Kyle would be all right, that Hank and Jason would make sure they both got out. Then the world exploded in a burst of white.

  27

  “WE REALLY HAVE TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS.” AMY picked up a stone and skipped it over the dark water. We were on the shore—she was standing, I was sitting—but it wasn’t the lake near Hemlock. Even though a wall of fog—thick and impenetrable—rose twenty feet out and obscured my view, I had a feeling the water went on forever. There were no waves, and only Amy’s stone disturbed the still surface.

  She was wearing a familiar white dress—the dress she’d wanted to wear to prom. I glanced down. I was wearing jogging shorts and a T-shirt. Both were too big and both looked suspiciously like they had come from Kyle’s closet. I should have been cold, but I wasn’t.

  “Am I dead?”

  Amy looked at me sadly. “Maybe,” she admitted. She crossed her arms. “Seriously, I’m beginning to worry you have a death wish. When I wrote ‘BFF’ in your yearbook, I didn’t mean it as a suicide pact.”

  “Shut up
,” I muttered as I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. Secretly, though, I was glad to see her. I didn’t want to be alone.

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to be dead.” I felt guilty saying it—she hadn’t wanted what had happened to her—but the words slipped out.

  “I know.” Pebbles rolled under her feet as she crouched next to me and put a hand over mine. Hers was cold to the touch, but for once I didn’t mind. “I don’t want you to be dead, either,” she said.

  After a moment, she lifted her hand and sat next to me. She stretched out her legs. She was wearing black tights, but they were ripped in a dozen places, and her pale skin showed through the holes.

  “What happens now?”

  She pulled at one of the runs in her tights, stretching it out until her whole knee was exposed. “Now, we wait.”

  “For what?”

  “Some sort of resolution.” Amy nodded toward the fog. “Everything you left behind is on the other side. That moment when the bullet tore through you? It’s still playing out. The universe rolled the dice but they haven’t come to rest.”

  “What happens when they do?”

  She shrugged and stared out over the water. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m still waiting for my moment to play out.”

  “But you’ve been dead for months.” The words were like jagged pieces of metal: they sliced my throat on the way out and left the taste of copper in my mouth.

  “There’s more than one reason people get stuck.”

  I picked up a handful of gray stones and let them fall through my fingers. “Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you really you, or is this just another dream?”

  She smiled her Cheshire cat grin. “Does it matter?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that of course it did, but pain exploded across my chest. Sharp and immediate and ripping me to shreds. Amy and the shore burned away in a flash that was as bright as an atomic bomb, and I fell into nothingness.

  It felt as though someone had taken a hot poker and thrust it into my shoulder. I could barely breathe. Barely think. Barely move.

  Somehow, I managed to open my eyes. Everything was blurry—like I was underwater—but I could make out an oval of dark skin and a familiar brown gaze.

  “Serena?” My voice was the rustle of leaves over pavement.

  There was shouting around us—so much shouting—but I couldn’t make out any of the words.

  Another person—another voice—leaned over me on the other side. “It’s all right, Mac.” Jason. The words were raw, like he was having a hard time speaking. “Hank went to get a car and Kyle’s getting the doctor from the infirmary. You’re going to be okay.”

  Hank was alive, then. Good.

  There was sudden pressure on the space below my shoulder. The world went dark at the center and too bright at the edges and everything was on fire. I screamed.

  “No, Serena!” Jason’s voice rose over my own and the pressure fell away.

  Darkness threatened to pull me back under and I fought against it even though some distant part of my brain pointed out that the pain would stop if I passed out.

  “I was trying to keep it inside,” Serena whispered. Her voice was halting, like a child’s. She fumbled for my hand and cradled it gently. “You have to cover the red so they can’t see it. It makes them so excited.”

  The red? The hand that held mine was sticky and I struggled to turn it over. Serena’s palm was covered with blood.

  My eyes sought out Jason.

  “She was trying to help.” He brushed the hair back from my face, the touch so light it was lost to the pain. “She went crazy when Sinclair shot you. You should have seen what she did to her.”

  At the mention of the warden, Serena flinched.

  It was getting so hard to keep my eyes open. Almost impossible.

  Not yet, I thought.

  “Bloodlust . . . ?” The word came out a rasp as I fought to hold on.

  Jason shook his head. “No. Whatever they did to her, it’s not bloodlust.”

  Time twisted and turned. Minutes stretched out and snapped back.

  Eve came. Serena left.

  Kyle took Jason’s place at my side.

  A man in a white coat gave me something for the pain.

  I began to drift.

  Strong arms lifted me. The movement should have hurt, but everything was numb and far away.

  “Dad?” The unfamiliar word slipped out as Hank carried me through the gates.

  “I’m here, Mackenzie. It’s all right.” He eased me into the back of a waiting car.

  I opened my mouth to ask him not to leave me, but the drugs made it hard to string the words together and the car door slammed shut before I could get them out.

  Epilogue

  HEMLOCK’S A TYPE OF POISON, YOU KNOW. THE PLANT, NOT the town. Though I guess both are pretty toxic. Amy’s words—uttered so long ago that I couldn’t remember why or when—drifted through my head as we passed the town limits.

  It was strange: Amy had always seen Hemlock as something that was holding her back whereas I had always seen it as a safe harbor—at least until the attacks last year. It was the first and only place that had ever been home.

  I glanced at Kyle’s profile in the dashboard light. He was a big part of that.

  Him. Jason. Tess. Hemlock was home because it was where they were.

  I shifted in the passenger seat and sucked in a sharp breath.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just moved the wrong way.” I slipped a hand under the collar of my shirt and traced the edge of the heavy bandage on my shoulder. I’d been lucky. Way luckier, according to Eve, than I deserved. As soon as I had retained consciousness long enough for a lecture, she had wasted no time in reminding me that a werewolf had much better odds of surviving a gunshot wound than a reg.

  I hadn’t argued. A few inches in any direction and Sinclair’s bullet could have left me with permanent loss of mobility in my arm—that was if it hadn’t just killed me outright. Miraculously, it had missed just about everything important. I had spent a few days in bed and would have to undergo some minor physical therapy.

  That was it. I was lucky.

  The same couldn’t be said of Sinclair.

  Serena had lost the ability to shift completely—at least temporarily—but she was still able to change the shape and structure of her hands. Eve had hauled her off the warden but not before she had almost ripped the woman to shreds.

  Sinclair would live, but she’d be disfigured for life. Not to mention infected. If there was any justice, she’d end up in one of the camps she had worked at, completely at the mercy of the wolves she had once overseen.

  Kyle pulled up in front of my apartment building and killed the engine. The familiar street seemed so normal that it almost felt surreal.

  He didn’t say anything. He’d been unnaturally quiet since we left Colorado, but every time I asked what was wrong, he insisted he was fine.

  “Tess is going to kill me.”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “What are you going to tell your folks?”

  “No idea. Not the truth. Maybe I’ll just tell them I joined a militant cult. It would at least explain the hair.”

  “I think Jason’s already using that one.” Of the four of us, the only person whose family could handle the truth was Serena.

  As quickly as that thought came, I blocked it out. The afternoon had been long and painful, full of blame and difficult questions—all of which I deserved, but none of which I felt up to thinking about at the moment.

  Instead, I leaned toward Kyle—carefully because of the whole just-being-shot thing—and brushed my lips against his. “In case you get grounded,” I murmured, before moving in and kissing him again.

  Kyle hesitated—in the days and hours since I’d been shot, he’d treated me as though I were made of glass, barely touchi
ng me and only giving me chaste pecks on my forehead or cheek—but then he kissed me back. Tentatively at first and then so hungrily that every nerve in my body sparked.

  After a few minutes, I pulled back, breathless. Not because I wanted to, but because I was actually starting to get light-headed.

  A light burned at the bottom of Kyle’s brown eyes. I half expected him to kiss me again, but he just ran his fingertips along my temple and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I never got the chance to tell you thanks.”

  The words were soft and serious and seemed out of place with what we’d just been doing. “For what?”

  “For coming after me. For risking everything to get me out.” He smiled, but there was something sad and almost uncertain about it. “For knowing what I am and what I’ve done and not acting like I’m less than human even when it scares you.”

  I bit my lip. The werewolf thing did scare me. Sometimes. But Kyle was human—more human than most regs. I just didn’t know how to make him see that. How did you convince someone of something they didn’t want to believe?

  “Kyle . . .” I struggled to find the right words.

  He shook his head. “It’s okay, Mac. Sometimes there isn’t anything to say.”

  . . . there’s something I have to tell you.

  The words Kyle had said that night in the sanatorium came back to me as he opened his door and climbed out of the car. He pulled my knapsack from the backseat and waited for me before heading up the walkway.

  I stopped when we were halfway to the building. “Kyle?”

  He paused and turned, my bag held loosely in his hand. “Yeah?”

  “Back in Thornhill, you said there was something you had to tell me—something I might not like—and I asked you to wait. . . .”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I felt my body tense of its own accord, as though bracing for an impact.

  Finally, the words so soft I had to strain to hear, he said, “I really never thought you’d come after me. If I had . . .” He set my knapsack down. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger, more certain. “I joined the pack, Mac. The night before I saw you at the club.”