Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  “Our best chance to get out of this unscathed is to split up. One person goes in and plays sniper. The others rush in once the target is hit.”

  I could see the logic worming its way into their thick skulls, and I pressed on. “If we all go, the Rabid will know it’s an attack. There’s no other reason three werewolves would show up unannounced in his woods. If one of us goes in and the others fall back, it won’t be considered as much of a threat.”

  Lake ran a hand through her blonde hair, twisting her ponytail around her wrist. “He won’t expect us to be armed to the hilt.”

  That was a near certainty. Lake was the only Were I’d ever met with a fondness for weapons. Weres rarely fought in human form, and with any luck, the Rabid wouldn’t be expecting a long-range attack. One werewolf killing another with a series of well-placed bullets would have seemed as absurd to most Weres as the idea of natural wolves settling dominance disputes with pistols at dawn.

  “I’ll go,” Chase said quietly. “He won’t consider me a threat at all.”

  It cost Chase to say those words, to know that they were true. To the Rabid, Chase would never be a real person, let alone one who deserved to be viewed with any kind of wariness or respect.

  “He might not perceive you as a threat, but he’ll know you’re coming,” I said, my voice matching Chase’s for lack of volume. “He’ll smell you a mile off, and he’ll know it’s you. He’ll be waiting. He’ll have something planned.”

  “He won’t expect me to have a gun.”

  At the word gun, Lake leaned back against the dilapidated nightstand, crossing her right foot over her left. “Do you know how to shoot?” she asked Chase.

  He shrugged. “Point. Pull trigger. How complicated could it be?”

  Dev reached out one arm in a show of holding Lake back, even though she hadn’t moved a muscle. “Down, girl! The boy knows not what he says!”

  “I’ll go,” Lake said, rolling her eyes at Devon’s theatrics. “I’m the best shot.”

  Devon echoed her eye roll with one of his own. “And I stand the best chance of coming out of this alive if Mr. Crankypants catches on to the fact that someone has him in their sights.”

  Dev was young, but he was purebred, and Lance had trained him to fight the same way that Callum had trained me.

  For a moment, I let the three of them stare each other down, and then I put an end to it.

  “It has to be me,” I said.

  All three of the others looked at me like I’d suggested inviting Prancer to a Very Special Tea Party.

  “If any of you get close to him, he’ll know that there’s a Were here,” I said. “If he senses me, he’ll sense a human. Outside of the Stone River wolves, most people can’t tell that I’m Pack from a distance.” The distinction between my scent and the others’ was the difference between someone who’d spritzed themselves with body splash and someone who sweated it from their pores. “I won’t even register on this guy’s threat meter. He’ll probably just assume that I’m some kid from town, poking around the woods on a dare.” I knew better than to pause and give them a chance to interject. “Besides, next to Lake, I’m the best shot. If I go, the Rabid won’t be on guard, he won’t be expecting me, he won’t recognize me, and I can hit him first try.”

  Every single one of my friends knew that I had the best argument, but none of them wanted to admit it.

  “And besides,” I added, “it’ll take me three times as long to get to the cabin as it would any of you. If I stay out of range and someone needs me, they’re out of luck. Any of you could get there in seconds.”

  Through the bond, I got the feeling that none of them would mind keeping me out of the range of fire indefinitely.

  “No.” I said the word and spoke it into their minds at the same time. “I’ve got guns, I know how to shoot, and I’ll be careful. If I can’t get him in my sights, then I’ll come back. He’s not going to want to attack a human in his own backyard. None of his previous victims have lived within a hundred miles of Alpine Creek. He’s lived here for more than a decade. He has a vested interest in going on vacay to snack. Unless he realizes that I’m there to attack him, he won’t attack me.”

  And, I promised silently, I won’t shoot unless I’m sure I can kill.

  They still didn’t like it. I’d always known that Devon was protective, and it had been perfectly clear from day one that Chase and I hurt more for each other’s suffering than our own, but I’d never realized that Lake felt the same way, that every illicit adventure we’d ever been on, she would have thrust me behind her in a second, the instant danger appeared.

  I-am-doing-this.

  Out loud, all I said was, “You guys.”

  “Fine.” Chase was the first to agree. Even as he did, he lowered his head to mine and nuzzled me—the universal wolf gesture for Come home safe.

  Lake fixed me with a steely glare. “You die, and I’ll find someone with a knack for raising the dead, bring you back all zombified, and kill you myself.”

  “I’m not helpless,” I told her, dropping my gaze to my wrists. She nodded.

  Ultimately, Devon was the hardest sell. “I would rather shave my head and mold my personal look after a prison guard named Bubba than let you do this.”

  Of all of them, Dev had been protecting me the longest. He was also the only one who’d seen me after my first run-in with our Rabid. I could sense that image, of a skinny, blood-soaked child, close to the surface of his mind.

  Taking a step back, I twisted my wrists sharply and settled into a fighting pose as the claws came out.

  I’m not that little girl anymore, Dev. I’m tougher than I look. If you don’t let me do this, you’re saying I’m helpless. You’re making me helpless, and I’m really sick of playing the victim.

  In the back of my head, it occurred to me that I might be able to make Devon agree—the same way I’d forced Chase to promise to stay out of it when Callum had Sora beat me. But Dev had an incredible ability for holding grudges, and I wasn’t sure that I could put up with the dramatics inside my head as well as out.

  “Fine. But Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare, I’d not have you endangering yourself on my watch.”

  I smiled. “My stubbornness is my folly?” I guessed.

  “You said it. I didn’t.”

  Somehow, I doubted he was joking this time. Rather than reply, I twisted my wrists inward, and the silver blades whooshed in, hidden again.

  And then, I went to kill the Rabid.

  Devon, Lake, and Chase were all in my head. My senses—human and therefore dulled—confused them and put them at a handicap for fully understanding what was going on, but I trusted that they’d get used to it. I knew the way into the woods as well as the Rabid who lived there did. I’d seen it through his eyes, and even though the glance had been fleeting, I’d discovered that the knowledge behind it stuck in a way that made me feel closer to my prey than I’d ever wanted to be. For better or worse, I knew where to find the Rabid. The only difficulty was staying downwind and keeping to the upper ground. My Glock ate into my back, a solid reminder that from this point forward, we were playing for keeps.

  As silently as I could, I moved toward Wilson’s cabin, my path twisting enough that if he did hear or sense me, he might not read anything into it.

  Wolf. Close by.

  I wasn’t sure which of the little hitchhikers in my head had sent that message, but as soon as they pointed it out, I recognized the feeling in my gut for what it was. A wolf. Not Pack, but a wolf.

  Burnt hair and men’s cologne. Baby powder.

  I wondered at the additional component to the Rabid’s scent but didn’t let it throw me. Even monsters could pride themselves on good personal hygiene.

  I crouched, covering my back with a tree, and I looked. From this distance, I could make out the cabin, which was much larger than I’d realized from what I’d seen inside the Rabid’s head. The difference gave me the illusion of distance, let me forget how close to th
is man I’d come in my mind.

  Settling into my crouch, I scanned the perimeter of the cabin, identifying each and every point of entry. Unless Prancer decided to do us all a favor and take an early evening stroll, I wasn’t going to be able to get a sight on him.

  That silent admission had the other three nipping at the heels of my mind, pushing against our bond, willing me to call them in.

  But I didn’t. I held my position, and I watched.

  Wolf, I thought, feeling it. Baby powder and burnt hair and men’s cologne.

  And then there was movement behind one of the windows. With steady hands, I reached for my gun and pulled it out of my jeans. I could almost make out the edges of a person’s form, but given my inferior human senses, it could just as easily have been an armchair. And then, I got unbelievably lucky.

  The front door opened.

  I moved my arms, aiming my gun at the door, and my finger began to press down on the trigger, little by little, as I waited for my target to appear. A mile away, Lake, Devon, and Chase prepared themselves to converge on me. To protect me.

  Closer. Closer. Closer.

  The door was almost open. I could almost see … there, a body—

  No.

  The instinct surged up from my stomach, like vomit in the back of my throat. This wasn’t right. Something didn’t feel right. It didn’t smell right. It smelled …

  Female. I eased my finger off the trigger, just a hair, as my intended target cleared the door.

  It wasn’t the Rabid.

  The realization shook me, but I didn’t lower the gun.

  A girl. My age, maybe, or a little older. She had light brown hair and pale gray eyes, and there was something horribly, gut-wrenchingly familiar about the lines of her face.

  Madison.

  My gun lowered itself. My mind reeled. This was impossible. Madison was dead. She’d been declared dead when she was six years old. The Rabid had torn her so far apart that there was nothing but scraps left to bury.

  Nothing but scraps.

  No body.

  Not dead.

  I tried to adjust to that information, to reconcile the waiflike teen in front of me to the little girl, but before I could do that, I was body-slammed with another realization.

  She wasn’t alone.

  They poured out the front door, one after another, and it finally sank in that the Rabid wasn’t the only person who lived in this mammoth house in the woods.

  He had people with them. Children. And every single one of them was a Were.

  Retreat wasn’t in my DNA any more than it was in the average werewolf’s, but I couldn’t stay there, not when I’d almost shot a dead girl who couldn’t have been more than a year older than me.

  Where had Wilson gotten all of these werewolves?

  The answer was obvious. I’d always assumed that the Rabid was killing the targets we’d so painstakingly marked on our map. Hunting them. Feeding his bloodlust with prey more satisfying than a rabbit or deer. I’d assumed that Chase was a mistake, an aberration who’d gotten away and survived.

  Apparently, I’d been wrong.

  Wilson hadn’t been killing the children he’d attacked. He’d been turning them. Creating his own little werewolf army. It was sick.

  Sick and impossible. According to what Mitch had told Keely, there had been a grand total of three, maybe four cases of a human being changed into a Were in the past thousand years. One case every two hundred and fifty years, even though the prevalence of attacks was much, much higher.

  Yet somehow, this Rabid had managed to change dozens.

  The girl I’d almost shot—the one who’d come outside when she’d sensed me near, the one who was my age and my height and my build almost exactly—Madison—she could have been me.

  If Callum had arrived at my house a few minutes later, she would have been.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are. I won’t hurt you. The Big Bad Wolf always wins in the end.

  Had I been the first? A trial run? Away for him to test whatever method he’d found for changing humans? Were my parents just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had they died because of me? Why hadn’t they changed? If this Rabid knew the secret to making new werewolves, why had he only used it on children? Did it work on adults? How could a six-year-old even survive the kind of ravaging it took to trigger the change?

  My pack—my friends—descended on me the second I came within their range. Their questions pushed mine out of my head, and their touches—soft on my face, my arms, and my stomach—calmed me enough that I was able to make a sound. And unable to keep from crying.

  It was supposed to be me.

  They heard the words, and they absorbed them. They let me break, and then they put me back together again, all in a matter of seconds.

  I straightened and cleared my throat, but when I spoke, my voice still came out husky with tears. “We’ll be needing a new plan. As it turns out, the numbers are in his favor, not ours. And also, we can’t kill them.” I paused, because the irony of the words I was about to say didn’t escape me in the least. “They’re just kids.”

  “One of us should go back to the cabin,” Devon said softly, his voice cutting across mine, quiet and insistent. “Just close enough to try to scent their numbers.”

  “Does it matter?” I asked, meeting his eyes and wondering how exactly the two of us had gone from algebra and the safety of Stone River to here, all in a matter of months. “If Wilson has twelve Changed werewolves, or if he has forty, does it really matter?”

  Either way we were outclassed, outnumbered, overwhelmed, and screwed. In that order. Since I’d both been there and done that, I made an executive decision, one I begged the others with my mind and with my eyes to follow.

  Retreat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  BACK AT OUR TEENY-TINY MOTEL ROOM, I TRIED TO catch the boys up on everything Lake and I had discovered with our internet sleuthing. “It’s hard to get a real count of how many attacks this guy has been involved in. There are at least four or five confirmed deaths—with bodies and everything—that might fit his profile.”

  Those would be the Rabid’s failures. The people he’d tried, but failed, to change. Or maybe he’d never tried to change them. Maybe he’d just been thirsting for blood.

  “We found several other attacks, too, where the victim was either missing or presumed dead. I’m not sure how many. Less than a dozen, more than six, but that doesn’t really tell us how many wolves Wilson has in that cabin. Who knows how many of his attacks we missed? This is Google we’re talking about here, not science. Lake and I aren’t professional profilers. The only thing our research really told us is that there was a very good chance he’d attacked a lot of people in a lot of different territories. The numbers are fuzzier.”

  I thought of the missing-children database Lake had found online, put up by parents hopeful to get their kids back. How many of those “missing” kids were dead? How many of them were here in Alpine Creek, older and less human than they’d been when they disappeared?

  “I saw fifteen or sixteen at the cabin,” I said, thinking back. “There might have been a few more inside. The youngest was maybe four or five, the oldest probably about seventeen.”

  “Were they all female?” Chase asked, an odd expression on his face, like the word female had taken on a whole new meaning the moment he’d become a Were.

  I shook my head. “About half and half.”

  Lake laughed, but it was a sad, grating noise. “Half of sixteen is eight. Looks like Katie and I aren’t quite so special anymore.”

  Lake was right. The only way a female werewolf could be born was as half of a set of twins, but apparently, if you knew the secret to making new werewolves, females were just as easy to make as males. I thought about what that could mean for a pack. Fewer human wives, fewer babies lost in childbirth. More purebreds. Stronger wolves.

  A stronger alpha.

  “I guess we know why the Senate was will
ing to deal,” I said, my voice like sandpaper on my throat.

  Werewolves were so long-lived that it didn’t make much of a difference for the species if there were years when not a single live birth took place. The birthrate, however low, was still usually higher than the death rate, because Weres were nearly impossible to kill.

  But expanding a pack’s numbers? Trying to stay head to head with a pack as old and large as Callum’s?

  That was a real concern.

  “The other alphas want stronger numbers.” I looked down at my fingertips, like they’d tell me my sickening logic was false. “The Rabid can give them numbers.”

  Suddenly, I understood why the alphas had really wanted to see Chase. They’d wanted to see how a changed werewolf compared to someone who was born that way, and they’d wanted to know the details of the Rabid’s attack, because they were hoping to figure out what the monster knew that they didn’t.

  “The Rabid isn’t going to give up the secret to making new werewolves.” I said the words decisively and wouldn’t have been able to keep from saying them, even if I were the only person in the room. “The moment he tells the alphas how to make new wolves, he’s dead, and we have an even bigger problem.”

  One Rabid out hunting humans was bad. A half dozen or more alphas doing it was a problem that no amount of trickery on my part would solve.

  “So if he’s not giving up the secret, what do the alphas stand to gain from letting him live?” Chase asked, sounding more human than I’d heard him in a very long time. If he’d let his wolf take over, he would known the answer.

  Numbers were power.

  “He’s bartering them,” Lake said, flopping down on the bed and pulling her knees to her chest. “Those kids back at the cabin. Those are his bargaining chips.” I reached out to Lake’s mind and saw how close this hit to home, how many times she’d wondered if someday, her own alpha might decide to barter her.

  Never, I told Lake silently, putting all of my force behind that single word. Callum was an alpha of alphas. His first instinct was always, always to protect.