Red

by Kait Nolan

  ~*~

  Elodie

  “Let’s take a break,” said Sawyer.

  “Again? We just stopped an hour ago.”

  “You should have some jerky.”

  “I just had trail mix at the last stop,” I grumbled. Since he’d managed to get oatmeal down me back at camp, he’d been foisting food on me every hour or so.

  “Werewolves have much faster metabolisms. You have to keep refueling.”

  He handed me the jerky. I glared at him but tore open the bag and started chewing, more because it seemed to make the strain around his eyes ease a little than because I was hungry. In truth, my stomach was still pretty raw and unsettled after the partial shift this morning. My strength had mostly returned, but I wasn’t at all as steady on my feet as I was accustomed and my wolf and I were still wary with each other.

  Sawyer was worried. It seemed almost nothing of my transition was going normally. He hadn’t said anything about it directly, and I knew that was meant to keep my own anxiety down. But I was learning to read him. He was covering up his fear with this mother hen routine, doing the only things he knew how. But he wasn’t pushing me to go back, to consult with his dad. Probably because his dad wasn’t likely to have any answers either. Because I and my family line were freaks even among werewolf kind. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But I was less scared knowing all my ancestors had survived this part. None of them had died in transition. The problems all came afterward.

  Since we were stopped, I pulled out the map and checked our location. We were at least two hours behind where I wanted us to be. I wanted to get to Kennicott Ridge tonight. At this point, that meant we’d be hiking after dark. Sawyer would probably fight me on that. But I felt this inexplicable sense of urgency about the whole situation. As if we didn’t manage to find the cabin soon, it would all be too late. I couldn’t peg down why.

  There was no evidence so far that we were being tracked or followed. If Dad had done as he’d promised and passed around the cover story, then no one should even realize I was gone. Except probably the hunter, who shouldn’t be able to pick up my trail. I guess maybe in the back of my mind, I felt like the longer it took us to find the cabin the more likely any traces of the kidnapper would disappear. As if a month wasn’t already enough time for that to have happened. I just . . . needed to keep moving.

  I folded and put away the map. “Let’s go.”

  Sawyer opened his mouth to protest again, but I skewered him with a look and he closed it again.

  We continued to pick our way upstream, sometimes being forced by terrain to leave the bank but always coming back and following the sound of flowing water. The country was wilder here, certainly not groomed for easy hiking. The heat was oppressive, the sun beating down, making us sweat. Yet I was cold. It got worse as the day grew later, until I could hardly hold back the shiver.

  “What’s wrong? You’re scowling,” said Sawyer.

  I wasn’t scowling. I was gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  “Nothing.”

  “Haven’t I told you you’re a lousy liar?” Sawyer grabbed me by the arm and put a hand to my cheek. “You’re burning up!”

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m freezing. It’s fine. It’ll pass.” I wanted to lean into the warmth of his hand, curl into the heat I knew his body would promise because right that moment I didn’t feel like I’d ever be warm again. I could call it quits, ask to camp. He’d absolutely agree. But then we’d lose another day.

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard. You need to rest,” he said, tugging me closer.

  The embrace was awkward because of our packs, but I still snuggled in, laying my head against his chest, wanting to just lounge there like a lizard on a sun-warmed rock. “I need answers. I can rest when I’m dead.”

  He stiffened.

  “Okay that totally came out wrong. Black humor. Sorry.” I pulled back and caught a glint of something in the setting sun. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  I pushed around him to get a better look. It was so covered in vines and saplings that I could hardly make it out, but I smiled in triumph. “A window.”

  “It might not be it.”

  “But it might be. C’mon.”

  We picked our way across the creek and up the other bank. The cabin was nestled high on the ridge with little more than a deer track leading up to it from the water. If the sun hadn’t caught that lone bit of window, I doubt I’d ever have noticed it. Kudzu swarmed up the walls and swallowed the roof, which seemed to be some kind of corrugated metal, maybe tin. As we circled the structure, looking for the door, Sawyer began whistling the theme from Deliverance, which might have been funny if we weren’t looking for a kidnapper’s lair. Not that this place ranked high on the Supervillain Lair Scale. I was guessing maybe it used to be a trapper’s cabin.

  The door was as covered in vines as the rest of the building. I started to reach for the rusty iron knob, but Sawyer stopped me.

  “I’ll go first,” he said softly.

  “Oh, because your whistling didn’t give it away that we’re out here?” I whispered.

  He just waved me back. I rolled my eyes, but let him have his way. A door that old, that dilapidated should have screeched on rusty hinges. It didn’t. When he twisted the knob and shoved, it swung open with barely a whisper. The entry was so low and narrow, Sawyer had to stoop and twist sideways to go inside. Naturally I could walk straight in. Sometimes being vertically challenged isn’t a curse.

  The room was maybe ten feet by ten feet, with a line of crumbling stones down one wall that ended in a rubble pile that used to be a hearth. Other than the detritus of the chimney, the rest of the room was strangely clean. It was entirely bare of furniture. I slipped off my pack and set it beside Sawyer’s, then wrapped my arms around my torso, already regretting the loss of warmth from the sun.

  “Either the raccoons have opened a maid service, or somebody wiped this place down,” I said.

  Sawyer stood peering through a doorway into the next room—the only other room I saw when I crossed to join him. Here there was an old iron bedstead, canted to one side from age. There was no mattress atop the interlocking wires of the frame. In the corner sat a solid wood chair, one of those hand-carved affairs with a rounded back and arms. The wood was rubbed raw around the arms, as if someone had been tied there and fought to escape.

  I inhaled. The scent of the mountain, of the green, growing things that were claiming the cabin for their own came in loud and clear, even though we were inside. Beneath that, the dust of ages, though here, as in the other room, everything was strangely clean. Under that faint traces of something kind of cloying and sweet, almost antiseptic. Chloroform? The reports said Rich and Molly had been drugged. There was something else too. A sharp, peppery odor that I didn’t recognize. My head swam a little.

  I moved to the chair, bending to get a better whiff of the arms. There were faint traces of blood. Not enough for me to tell if it had been Rich or his sister but enough to set my teeth to aching. We needed to hurry. I was starting to learn the signs, and I’d be having another attack soon. Probably worse this time given the fever I’d had all afternoon. We didn’t want to be caught here when I did, with me helpless and Sawyer too worried about me to act with clear thought.

  Across the room he checked the wardrobe in the corner.

  “Anything?”

  He was very still, his back ramrod straight with tension. Something was very wrong.

  “Sawyer?” I wandered over, laying a hand on his back and trying to peer around him into the depths of the wardrobe.

  He held some kind of syringe in the palm of one hand. Except, no, it didn’t have a plunger at the end.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Tranquilizer dart,” said Sawyer. His voice cracked as he turned his eyes to me. “One of ours.”

  “What do you mean? Like from the lab?”

  He nodded.

&n
bsp; “So, what, you think one of our team is the kidnapper?” My brain couldn’t seem to wrap around that idea, that any of the people I’d been working with all summer could possibly have been stalking me for months. That any of my coworkers could have assaulted and kidnapped Rich and his sister.

  Sawyer handed me the dart, and I lifted it to my nose. I caught the scent that Sawyer had, faint but unmistakable. Utterly horrifying. Incredulous, I looked at Sawyer. “No. No, that can’t be right. It has to be some kind of mistake. Maybe he handled this box of darts in the supply closet or something before it was taken. It can’t possibly be—”

  “Patrick.” Sawyer’s voice broke on the name. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind me, at the doorway.

  Chapter 12

  Elodie

  I whirled and backed into Sawyer.

  Patrick was framed in the doorway. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. Which was a ridiculous thing for me to focus on, but they were so much a part of how I visualized him that it was almost like looking at a stranger. His eyes, usually hidden by those Coke bottle lenses, were flat and gray. The mouth usually curved in a slightly amused smile now had a cruelty about it that I’d never noticed. His shoulders, usually slightly hunched, were straight and confident. He no longer looked the part of absent-minded professor, what with the military-style fatigues and the gun in his hand.

  Maybe Superman’s disguise wasn’t so stupid after all, I thought.

  The silence spun out, and none of us moved. A bead of sweat trickled down my back, like an ice cube dragged the length of my spine. My body ached with the effort to hold perfectly still so I wouldn’t betray the fact that I was burning with fever and my wolf was near the surface. My eyes hadn’t changed. Yet. But I wasn’t sure how long I could hold out.

  And Patrick was standing between us and the exit. With that very wicked looking gun that was every bit as flat a gray as his eyes. And it was still pointed at us, almost like a confession. A blinking neon sign that said I am the bad guy.

  Still nobody moved.

  My fingers curled around the tranquilizer dart. Could I hit him with it? Would it even engage? I had no idea how they worked. Something to do with the force of being fired creating the motion of injection maybe. Would it even start to affect him before he could fire on us?

  Bad idea, I thought. Sawyer was the one with the dead eye aim. I’d barely been able to manage whipping aluminum plates like frisbees with any kind of accuracy. If I managed to pass him the dart, would he understand my intent?

  “Put the gun down, Patrick,” said Sawyer, breaking his paralysis to shift in front of me. I didn’t know what was going through his head. He’d known Patrick so much longer than I had. I couldn’t begin to imagine the betrayal he must be feeling.

  Patrick’s attention shifted from me to Sawyer and the smile faded. He looked almost regretful as he shook his head. “You have the worst taste in women, my boy. I really wish you weren’t here. It’s unfortunate.”

  He doesn’t know, I realized. He doesn’t know what Sawyer is. He thinks it’s just me. I needed to keep it that way if we were going to have a chance.

  I stepped around Sawyer, placing myself as a shield in front of him. “It’s me you’re after. Leave Sawyer out of this.”

  Patrick swung his attention back to me. “And how exactly do you think that’s going to work? You think you’re going to come away with me and that Sawyer here isn’t going to do everything he can to get you back? You don’t know your suitor very well.”

  I took a step toward Patrick, toward the gun. Despite all my trials, all the time I’d spent facing death, it was a very different thing to face it with someone else in control. My heart rate shot up, and I could no longer totally hold back the trembling. Sawyer reached out and yanked me back, as I’d known he would. And as his hand curled around mine, I shifted the dart into his. He squeezed my hand, and I thought he’d gotten the message.

  “Don’t do this, Patrick,” he said. “Whatever this is about, just let it go.”

  “My dear boy, I can’t let it go. My entire life has been leading to this. To her.”

  My wolf shoved for release, and I doubled over with a low moan. Wait, I begged her. Not yet.

  Sawyer looked back at me in horror because now was the worst possible time for me to change.

  Patrick saw the look on his face and misinterpreted it. “She hasn’t told you what she is. Well then, that may change things. Step aside and wait. In a few minutes, you’ll see and you’ll understand why the beast has to die.”

  Use it, I thought. Keep up the act and use the opportunity to get closer to him.

  “Sawyer, don’t listen to him,” I said, deliberately choking on the words as if my mouth were crowding with extra teeth. “I can explain.”

  With an agonized look, he shifted toward Patrick, backing away from me. I knew how hard it was for him to leave me unguarded in the face of that gun.

  “I’ll save you the breath,” said Patrick, “since it looks like you need it. She’s not human.”

  “Not human,” repeated Sawyer in an I’m humoring you because you have a gun in your hand, but really you’re crazy tone of voice. “Then what is she?”

  He was only a few feet away from Patrick now, still not looking directly at him, doing nothing to telegraph his intent.

  “Your lady fair is, in fact, a werewolf.”

  “A werewolf? Like shape-shifting, howl at the moon, allergic to silver werewolf?” Given that most of those things were, in fact, not true about our kind, his incredulity was fully believable.

  “Yes.”

  Sawyer raised his hands as if to cover his face and stumbled the last few steps to Patrick, who used his free hand to pat Sawyer on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry to have to break it to you, my boy.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Sawyer. Then he raised his hand and struck lightning quick, jabbing the dart into Patrick’s neck.

  Patrick yelled, trying to hit at Sawyer with the butt of the gun, but Sawyer grabbed his wrist forcing the gun up. It fired once, into the ceiling, and I screamed as they both stumbled into the front room. My wolf surged, trying to push free, and I fell to the floor, fighting her.

  Not here. Not now. Just give me a few more minutes.

  I shoved to my feet and lurched into the other room. They were still grappling for control of the gun. Something was wrong. If the dart had worked, Patrick should have been fading by now. Sawyer shouldn’t be having trouble subduing him. He should’ve been able to take him down even without tranquilizers.

  “Elodie, run!” The order was punctuated by a crack as Patrick landed a punch to Sawyer’s jaw.

  Was he crazy? Of course I wasn’t going to just leave him here. He was my mate.

  Sawyer slammed Patrick’s gun hand against the floor and another shot rang out, ricocheting off the remainder of the chimney. The bullet pinged so close to my head, I actually heard it whiz past my ear as I leapt back and fell hard. As soon as I gained my feet again, I was looking for an opening, some means of launching myself into the fight to help Sawyer. But every time I managed to get near, the struggle over the gun had it pointing in my direction, forcing strategic retreat.

  “Go!” Sawyer shouted.

  “I won’t leave you.”

  He cracked an elbow against Patrick’s nose and blood gushed, hot and bright. The scent of copper curled around me, a seduction my wolf was unwilling to resist. My body seized, muscles tearing, joints popping in a rush of agony that left me blind.

  “Elodie!”

  I wanted to say something to reassure him that I was okay, that he needed to focus on the fight. But my jaw was locked tight. Instead, I turned my sightless eyes toward them, trying to parse out from sound what was happening just a few feet away. Grunt. Scuffle. Roll. Snarl. Thwack.

  The gun fired again, and I found myself caught in a fine spray of blood. At the sudden silence, my heart threatened to beat straight out of my chest. Someone drew a very wet, sucking
breath. Panic had me scrambling to my feet, despite limbs that were not fully human, not fully wolf. When my vision came back, everything about the scene was sharp and magnified.

  Shock and grief were etched on Sawyer’s face as he stared at Patrick. My gaze shot to Patrick, searching for the mortal wound. But though blood soaked his shirt, he was backing up, watching Sawyer. My attention swung back as Sawyer fell, collapsing on the too clean wood floors. My eyes moved inch by terrifying inch down Sawyer’s chest to the hole spurting a small fountain of blood with each beat of his heart.

  Mine stopped.

  No.

  Sawyer struggled to take another breath, and I could hear the gurgle of blood filling his lungs. He turned his head to find me, his eyes, those beautiful eyes, dark and full of pain. Blood spread out from beneath him. The shot had gone clean through then, hitting God knew how many vital organs in the process.

  I was beyond human speech, at the threshold of losing my human intellect, paralyzed by the sight of my mate dying.

  “You have to . . . ” He coughed, and blood trickled down the corner of his mouth. “You have to go.”

  No!

  “I’m so sorry, my boy.” Patrick was on his feet, the gun held loosely at his side. “I didn’t want this for you.”

  Your fault. You did this. My eyes narrowed, calculating distance and speed, wondering if I could get to him before he could get the gun up again.

  Sawyer tried to speak again. “Elodie, g..go.” He was choking on blood.

  I was breaking into a million pieces.

  “I l..love . . . ” He didn’t finish. On a bubbling sort of sigh, he closed his eyes.

  I love you.

  Pain, stunning and sharp, drove past my ribcage and into my chest. I couldn’t breathe. There was no oxygen left in the world.

  Breathe, I thought. But the order was for him, not for myself.

  I stared at Sawyer’s blood-soaked chest, willing it to move. But it did not rise. Neither did his hands or feet twitch or his eyes open. He was still. Unnaturally so.