by Holly Hook
"I could brew up a drug with Leonora's help," Remo says. "Turns out potions and chemistry are pretty much the same thing. Sure, I'm no good with herbs, but I do have access to the chem lab at school. We could break in after school gets out and we'll make something to knock her out. Sure, I could break into the pharmacy, but the punishments are worse for that if we get caught. And Karina needs time to inhabit only her own head."
"I agree," I say, listening to the basement. Cayden's saying nothing and neither are the Colling Wolves. It's a silent stare-down. But at least Remo's a genius. If anyone can think of a way to incapacitate Karina, it's him. "You have my green light. I don't want her awake. I don't even think Brett wants her awake."
"School's in session, but I should be able to get in this afternoon," Remo says, pouring a glass of water. "I'm always in the labs so my presence there won't raise any eyebrows. Leonora, want to come with me?"
"I'm not much of a science girl."
"You'd never know. I think you'd be good at it," Remo says.
I've forgotten about it being the school week. So much for any kind of normal routine.
Downstairs, Karina spits again, breaking the silence.
And then I smell a now-familiar scent approaching the house. A mixture of nature and burning hay. Brett. He's back to face the music. I go and press the button to open the front gate for him, using the code I've memorized from Olivia. It swings open with an ominous squeak.
As Brett approaches the house, I can sense his nerves. It's in the way he drags the backs of his feet against the sidewalk and approaches the house slowly. He doesn't want to face this, knowing Karina might be awake.
"You took a long walk," I say as I open the front door for him.
Brett's dressed in his normal jeans and T-shirt today. He's also put his shades back on. He's shed all evidence of ever belonging to the cult. It's not that he has a choice.
"I know you can't imagine why." He steps into the house, stops, and listens. "She finally woke up, didn't she? I knew it would happen soon when she stopped groaning and twitching."
"You know, I can't blame you for taking off," I say. "Karina's a piece of work. The cult did a good job making her that way." I'm careful not to say a word about her father. Brett's only tolerating me as it is. "Cayden's down there with her, trying to get her to calm down."
"Did she spit at you?" Brett asks, leaning against the wall in that cocky way of his. I'm getting that it's his coping mechanism. Act cool and like a jerk to hide the pain.
"Well, she missed, so that's good news, right?"
"You might want to stay away from her for a while," Everly says, joining me in the entryway. "I saw how she was, Brett. She just seems so...selfish."
"And you get your diploma," Brett tells her. "I have to go down there and see her sooner or later, so I might as well get it over with."
"The cult warped her, Brett," Everly says. "She might be beyond saving, but at least she can't go back to them if she wants to stay alive. It won't be fun, but we have her with us."
I look at Everly, shocked she's even trying to talk to Brett. I sense she's trying to give me a break and I remember why. Aunt May. The Hunters still have her somewhere and they must have left a faint scent trail through the woods when they fled last night. We have to get her while someone's trying to get through to Karina.
I want Cayden to go with me. That's one thing he can help fix. A protective urge sweeps over me as I think of him trying to help guard Karina. Even tied up and turned, she's still a witch with the ability to do magic mentally. But to get to us using the Savages, she'll have to kill herself, too, and I'm hoping she still wants to preserve her own life.
So I go back downstairs without a word. What to say? Brett and Everly follow me. Cayden's facing off with Karina. He stands there as if waiting for her to react. Karina, on the other hand, stares at the ground and plays up the helpless girl role. The Colling Wolves stand at the edges of the basement, watching the silent showdown. No one knows what to do and I feel bad for leaving.
Then I notice the darkness lurking at the edges of my awareness, ready to strike. As I reach the bottom of the steps, it intensifies as if Karina has waited for this moment.
Panic seizes me. "Don't let her think," I say. "She can do magic in her head and--"
A low rumble fills the basement and a loud explosion rocks the corner of the basement.
Cayden jumps. "Get back!" he shouts at me.
Then I see the source of the noise. Water surges across the floor, boiling at first. Allen swears and jumps out of the way, climbing onto a chair, and his mother backs into the wall to avoid the scalding mess.
"What was that noise?" Olivia shouts from upstairs.
"Sis!" Brett yells from the steps. "You're not making this any better on yourself."
"The water heater!" Don shouts, looking at me as if it's my fault. "She broke the water heater!"
The expanding puddle on the floor loses its heat and stops boiling, but now half the basement has an inch of water on the floor that stops just before Karina's chair. As I watch, heart racing, it starts to trickle down the floor drain.
"Karina!" I shout, advancing on her. I should've told her not to destroy property, because technically she didn't hurt anyone. The whole basement smells of steam. On the other side of the room, a hole in the water heater continues to dribble water onto the floor. But at least the dark spirits she was using have receded. "Look up at me. I order you to stop using your dark spirits for anything."
Then she snaps her gaze up at me. "Why are you trying?" That dark hatred remains in her eyes.
"Did you hear me? I order you to stop working against us in any way. And if you have money, you're paying for a new water heater. Look at this mess."
She tells me where to go.
"What turned you into this?" I ask. "Wasn't it good enough for you to be your father's favorite?"
"It's none of your business!" Her shrieking words fill the basement.
"Maybe not, but you need to stop exploding things," I order. "I know you can feel my command washing over you. I don't like bossing people around, believe me, but we're all on the same side now."
"Let me and Brett talk to her," Everly says. "You need to go and find your aunt. Please."
"I'll go with you," Cayden says.
I kiss him on the cheek, almost in defiance of Karina's darkness. He forces a smile. We both want out of here.
I look to her and Brett nods at me, pale. He stands there, resigned to his fate. As much as I don't want to leave dealing with Karina to someone else, maybe it's not my place. She's putting up an even tougher wall than Brett was. I can feel it, like an invisible barrier between me and her. The reminder that I really don't have complete control over her is sobering. And terrifying.
"Good luck," I tell Everly. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" I hate asking this in front of Karina.
Brett make a face like he's not sure. "We'll get out if it looks like it's not going to be okay," he forces out.
I gulp as a wave of weakness sweeps over me. Brett's sucking the life out of me without even realizing it. He's back to a dark place. Cayden flinches, too, and approaches me. I sense the storm raging in the connection we share.
"Everyone out except for Brett and Everly," I order, waving the Colling Wolves and Leonora up the stairs. "Leonora, you might want to go home and take a break. Remo, you too. And Olivia." She's at the top of the stairs, trying to see the source of the noise. "We'll explain."
"What about your aunt?" Remo asks once we're up the stairs.
"Cayden and I will search for her," I say.
"And Callie?" Remo finishes.
Callie, fearing that the Savage King would take over while we were all sleeping, left with Earl late last night. Don glaring at her a lot, knowing she could get possessed thanks to Brett, helped her with that decision. "She went back to her motel," I say. "The one in Davidstown."
"Oh," Cayden says. "I didn't know that."
"Sh
e'd want to help recover my aunt," I say.
"'Recover' means retrieving a dead body," Leonora says. "I've read plenty of mysteries back in the era where my parents didn't let me go out and do anything. The term you want is 'rescue.'"
"Rescue," I say as a bad taste rises in my mouth. "Got it. Those Hunters might have been wearing that cloaking spray, but they all ran away through the woods last night. If we focus, we could find their scent and follow them to where my aunt is. They wouldn't leave her alone to die of thirst. Right?" I wish I had Callie right now. She'd clarify.
"They wouldn't," Cayden says, leaning close to my ear.
"Then that's our plan," I say. "None of them wanted to kill us and they know we didn't want to kill them. I hope."
Chapter Three
The woods behind Olivia's mansion are starting to smell of death.
Cayden gets a whiff of it, too, and grimaces as we jump down from the top of the stone wall. "We didn't bury him deep enough."
"Great," I say, pacing between a few trees. In wolf form, we shoveled plenty of leaves and old pine needles over the grave, but we couldn't dig very deep with the lower levels of the ground still frozen from winter. Edwin had to rest just three or four feet down. The grave's back from the wall about a hundred feet and very well-hidden.
"It's nothing a human would smell," Cayden says. "Leonora?"
Remo finishes jumping over the wall with her in his arms. He sets Leonora down and Cayden repeats the question to her.
"I can't smell it," she says, smiling and raising her hand. But I hear her stomach turn over as she bites her lip. No one's comfortable with this.
"Then we should move on," I say, looking at Cayden. He shakes his head. Having Leonora with us will slow us down, but if Remo's coming, then she's going with him. I don't know if they had a conversation about how Leonora held the truth about Callie from him, but they seem to be doing okay.
I pace around the area where the fight took place last night. It still smells faintly of gas, but at least that stench evaporates quickly. I pick up some adrenaline from the Hunters we pinned down and a pretty big area of it that must have come from Edwin near the end. The faint scent of blood lingers. And a few of the adrenaline trails fork off into the woods, just as I expect.
"This way," I say, waving my group into the trees.
The scent trails are hard to follow and we fan out, but they join about a half mile from the back of Olivia's property and form a faint pool of nerves. The four young Hunters met here last night, probably debating on what to do. It's as if the four of them leaked fear into this small clearing. Boot prints press down leaves into dirt. Even the masking spray couldn't completely hide their confusion and horror.
"This is where they listened to Edwin dying," I say, dread filling my insides. "That's going to make them less likely to want to work with us."
"I agree," Remo says, pacing around the clearing. "We should have killed him quickly. His screams--"
"Don't remind me," Leonora says.
I push the thoughts from my mind. Maybe this is the reason Noah didn't volunteer to go on this mission with us. He didn't even seem sour this morning about just being the normal guy. Since last night, things have changed.
"Let's move on," I say.
The Hunter scent trail continues into the trees, stronger now that the four of them must have joined and walked away together. Despite the fact that the fear scent slowly vanishes, their scents, like leather, fresh air, and even the fabrics from a sporting goods store start shining through. So Alex didn't lend them his cloaking spray after all. Good. And of course he didn't. He stopped working with Edwin when the warlock attempted to hurt the other pack members.
I wonder where he is now. Alex left last night with Callie and Earl, probably to keep an eye on her.
The Hunter trail stays together through the woods, circling around town. It's when we get a couple of miles away from Olivia's house that I realize something weird.
"The Hunters didn't head back to Colling," I say. "They looped around to the other side of town."
Cayden steps in front of a tree and inhales. "You're right. It's almost like the Hunters were heading back to our cabin or your house."
"My house?" I choke.
The four of us look at each other. Why would the young Hunters go back to one of our places? Unless they were--
"Maybe they took your aunt home," Remo says.
"If they'd let her go she would have found us by now," I say, breaking into a run. Home is the place I least expected them to have her and I'm not sure how to feel about that.
Remo carries Leonora as Cayden and I run ahead together. It doesn't take us long to circle around and follow the trail, which gets stronger the closer we get to our houses. I reach the trail Cayden and I have taken home from school many times and it's clear the young Hunters have found it and taken it. But instead of going all the way to Cayden's cabin, it veers off to the field behind my house.
I stop and face him. "The Hunters went to my house. They might shoot us if they see us coming."
"You're right. After the display we gave them, they could," Cayden says. He looks right at me, asking a silent question as he works his jaw.
He wants to go ahead of me and act as my shield.
"Why don't we just circle around and take the street to my house?" I ask. "No one will want to shoot us where there are witnesses."
"I was going to suggest that," Remo says.
"That works," Cayden says with a hint of disappointment.
So that's what we do. I'm glad Cayden won't put himself on the line for me again and glad that I won't have to hurt humans to defend him. Edwin was one thing. That was a group activity and none of us delivered the fatal blow. The guilt is spread among us all and I only got a small dose. The Hunters would be different.
As we circle around and walk through the Lowes' yard, I listen. By the time we reach the street, I can hear that there are five people inside my house and one of them is making tea. The kettle whistles and feet shuffle inside the kitchen. "That doesn't sound very threatening," I say. "Maybe Aunt May is just making her captors some tea?" But why not let us know she's okay? I can't imagine the Hunters are forcing her to make some for them.
Cayden forces a smile. "You'd never know. She might be. But why not tell us she's fine?"
I don't like that. I eye my house as we approach. The curtains are shut. Aunt May's car is in the driveway. But at least no one points a crossbow out of our windows as we approach the house. I wait for Aunt May to throw the door open--I can smell her meadow scent coming from inside--but she doesn't. Instead, one of the young Hunters parts the closed curtains, peeks through, and closes them again. Something's not adding up.
And something tells me I should knock.
"Let me go first," Cayden says.
"Go first," I tell him. The last thing I need to do now is cause more tension between us.
Cayden gets in front of me and knocks. Then he pulls on the door as I join him on the porch. Locked. Remo and Leonora stay on the steps. I breathe out. I have nothing against these young Hunters, these distant cousins of mine. None of them wanted to work with Edwin.
One of them opens the door for me, a young, well-built man in his twenties who's cursed with a baby face. Clad in leather, he stands there, speechless as he tips his matching hat. I expect his jaw to fall, but it doesn't, which is weird considering he's the Hunter Cayden pinned down last night and held in place.
"Is my aunt here?" I ask. "We're not here to fight anyone." Of course, that's a stupid question. I can smell her in the house, in the kitchen. I just want to know how much these Hunters want to cooperate with us.
"She is," the Hunter says. He's got a voice that's smooth and rehearsed.
"You know, we didn't want to fight you guys last night," I say.
"And we appreciate it." He offers a weak smile, which looks odd considering he's still clad in a leather jacket and hat. "I'm Steven. And you didn't hurt any of us."
&nb
sp; Well, an introduction helps drop the tension level. "Did Alex tell you what Edwin did and why we had to attack him?" This Hunter must be dealing with his own wave of nerves.
Steven nods as the color drains from his face. "We blame none of you for doing what you did to him. Alex showed us the journals late last night. My party was shaken up."
They did hear us killing Edwin. Awesome. I exchange a glance with Cayden.
"Well, we're glad that's cleared up," Cayden says. "We're just here to make sure Brie's aunt is okay. Can we see her?"
"She's fine," Steven says. He hesitates to let us in, then moves aside.
Something's bothering me about this situation. Linking hands with Cayden, I step into the house. Even though I can't see into the kitchen from here, I'm certain my aunt and three other Hunters are in there, standing around. "Hey, Aunt May."
"Hey, Brie." She doesn't sound scared, but nervous. And then I smell the adrenaline.
I march into the kitchen to find the other three young Hunters, who sit at the kitchen table while she mans the stove. The others come in behind me and Steven shuts the door. The kettle lets out steam with a squeal. She forces a smile, but there's not much color in her face.
"Why didn't you tell me you were safe with a full guard?" I ask as Cayden walks to stand next to me.
"You had too much going on," she says. "I thought you were getting caught up on sleep and I didn't want to interrupt your rest." Aunt May's giving me a good act, but it's still obvious there's something under the surface.
"Something doesn't feel right," I say. "You can tell me what it is. Edwin's gone."
"I agree," Cayden says. "Maybe you should just tell Brie what's really going on so we're all in the clear."
"I know he is," Aunt May says. "He was a horrible man. Alex just found that out. And now that I think about it, he acted the way he did because he knew what he did was horrible." Aunt May curls her fingers around the counter as if she can gouge it.
