What they all were.
What I might become.
I fought down the urge to throw up for the umpteenth time today.
“And the person we heard a minute ago…?” I asked, trying not linger on thoughts about the future.
“That’s what he’s making all that noise about—he’s giving whoever’s walking around out there fair warning.”
“Warning?”
“Werewolves and lycans alike are very territorial,” Kael explained. “It’s not normally an issue for us, living all the way up here in the middle of nowhere. The closest real pack to ours is down in Jonas Ridge, and they usually do whatever it takes to stay away from us.”
“Why?”
“We have our differences.”
“Don’t be vague or anything.”
“Don’t be nosey or anything,” he said with a smirk. “It’s got nothing to do with a human.”
“I might not be a human this time tomorrow,” I pointed out.
“Maybe not,” he said offhand. “But anyway, it sounds like whoever’s out there is moving away from us now. We should go before they change their minds and decide to join us.”
He didn’t give me a chance to argue before he disappeared into the darkness. I hurried after him. This forest was growing creepier by the second, and I didn’t like the idea of being alone in it.
I caught up with Kael a few seconds later, and I managed to keep up with him for most of the journey back. Our pace was steady at first, but once we reached the less rocky landscape we got gradually faster, and faster, and faster still— until the trees lining the path started to blur, and we darted in and out of them so fast that I don’t know how I didn’t smack into any of them.
And what was really weird was that, no matter how long we ran, I never seemed to get tired.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I could feel my leg muscles tightening with each stride I took. And I kept waiting for my body to start protesting, kept waiting to lose my breath, kept waiting for my muscles to give out on me. Kept waiting for some sign—any sign—that would tell me I had reached my limit.
It never came.
We reached the edge of the woods surrounding my house in what seemed like no time at all.
Kael stopped so quickly I nearly crashed into him. I stood silently, trying to catch the breath that the exhilaration of running so fast had taken away. Kael pushed aside the tree limbs blocking our view and then looked back at me, nodding toward our driveway.
Toward the two police cruisers parked there.
“Still there,” Kael muttered. “Don’t they have anything better to do?”
“This is Dayton. So, no. Probably not.”
“Fair point.”
“What am I supposed to tell them?”
“Anything but the truth? Not that they’d believe you if you did tell them the truth. So, I don’t know…Tell them you just wanted to run away with some friends for awhile? You’re a rebellious teenager dealing with stuff, right? Maybe they’ll buy that.”
“Oh, speaking of ‘rebellion’, I’m guessing you so-called friends of mine were responsible for the state my mom found me on the porch the other night, too?”
“It was Will’s idea. I mean, he suggested it as a joke but—”
“But you took him seriously,” I interrupted in a terse whisper, “because you have an incredibly twisted sense of humor, as we’ve already established.”
He lifted his shoulders and casually let them drop. “We were trying to avoid the complications of your mother realizing what had really happened.”
“What about the complications it caused me?”
“It’s going to get even more complicated if you don’t deal with that before your mom gets home,” he replied, pointing toward the light shining from our living room window. “So you better hurry up.”
My focus fixed on my house once more. Dread flooded through and distracted me, and it took me a moment to realize that the sudden noise of leaves crunching was the sound of Kael walking away.
“Wait!” I called without thinking.
He slowed to a stop and glanced back over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Are you just going to go back home then?”
“That was my plan.” He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Is it...safe? I mean, the person in the woods… that other pack you mentioned, I…”
“Whoever that was, they’re long gone now,” Kael said, the corners of his lips turning up slightly. “There’s no need to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Right.” He rolled his eyes. “Then I’ll just be on my way.”
“I just don’t think I should be alone, given the circumstances,” I grumbled to his retreating back.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kael said as he paused and looked back again. “You haven’t been alone since your father was killed.”
I couldn’t help but wince at the word ‘killed’.
“We’ve been patrolling the borders of your house constantly,” he continued. “And right now? You met Jack earlier, right? Well, he’s been following us, and he’s going to switch off with another friend of ours—a guy named Sam. Sam’s been running circles around this place for the past twelve hours or so. He’s a good guy, and he and a few buddies of his have been traveling a long way back and forth from their home in Brookford to help us keep you safe. The packs may be territorial, but they can cooperate when they need to—especially when there are human-hunting werewolves that need to be dealt with.”
I dragged my foot in a circle along the ground. In my mind, I pictured Jack with his scarred face and stringy blonde hair. I remembered how uneasy he’d seemed, and I couldn’t help but wonder—what was making him so nervous?
How had he gotten those scars?
What had he and the others been speaking of in their weird thoughtspeech?
I still had too many unanswered questions, and without a clear picture of the threats truly facing me, my mind was doing a great job of creating the most terrifying things possible.
So I probably wouldn’t have felt safe even if I had an entire army constantly stationed around my house.
“Look, if it makes you feel any better,” Kael began with a sigh, “I probably won’t go straight back to the house. I might hang around with Jack for a bit.”
I still didn’t move from where I stood.
“You’ll be fine,” Kael said, his tone growing a bit impatient. “As long as you’re here, you’ve got more protection than you could ever need.”
“As long as I’m here?” I repeated before I could stop myself. “What, so I’m under house arrest now?”
“Of course not,” he said flatly. “Go wherever you want. But...”
“But?”
“But I, for one, am not going to chase you all over the place if you decide to make this difficult for us,” he said with an irritable sigh.
“I never asked you to chase me anywhere.”
“I can’t say the same for the others,” he continued without acknowledging my comment. “All I’m saying is that it would make things a lot easier for them if you would just stay in one place for the time being—preferably near your family so they can keep a better eye on them too. And you really shouldn’t—”
“Okay. I get it.” I really wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. “I’ll stay here.”
“Good,” he said. “Now go. Quit stalling and go get rid of the cops. I’ll see you later.”
I watched him disappear into the shadows of the forest, feeling a bit disgruntled. “He’s awfully fond of ordering people around,” I muttered, hoping he was still within earshot.
With a frown, I turned and began a very long walk to our back door.
I actually managed to get rid of the cops.
I was as surprised as anyone.
Of course, I had several things working in my favor: first of all, it was well after four a.m. when I walked in the backdoor, and both officer
s that greeted me looked like they must’ve been reaching the end of their shifts, judging by their bloodshot eyes and the frequent yawning accompanying their questioning. Besides that, both of them were long-time friends of our family (living in a town where everybody knows everybody does come in handy sometimes), and I think that made them more inclined to accept the bogus story I fed them about ‘just needing to get away for awhile’.
Once I’d convinced the officers they had, indeed, been falsely alarmed by my overly-concerned little sister, I showed them out the door and dead-bolted it behind them with a sigh of relief.
They’d seemed sympathetic. Still, there was a pretty good chance they were going to tell my mom about this, even though I’d begged them not to.
But I could deal with that when the time came.
Now I just wanted to attempt to sleep again.
Unfortunately, when I turned around, my sister stood waiting in the foyer behind me, her arms folded across her chest and an incredulous look on her face.
“Is that really the best you could come up with?” she asked. “You just wanted to get away with your friends for a little bit?”
“Yeah,” I said, brushing past her and heading for my room.
“Except those weren’t your friends.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked with a yawn, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I’ve never seen them before, and I know everyone in this town. Plus, I know you better than anyone— and I’ve never seen either of them with you before. Not that strange guy that was here the other morning, and not that blonde girl, either. Who are they? And what were they doing at our house so late?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“It’s none of your business,” I said. “And why did you call the cops, anyway? That was overreacting a bit, don’t you think?”
Lora didn’t answer at first. I turned and glared expectantly at her, and she took a half-step away from me.
“Mom said to keep an eye on you while she was at work. And I…I don’t know. I panicked. I’m worried about you, and about the kind of things you might be getting mixed up in, the people who—”
“Well don’t,” I said as I reached the door to my room. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I can take care of myself.”
Lora shouted something back at me, but I didn’t hear it over the slamming of my door.
I listened until the sound of her footsteps stomping down the hallway faded away, and then I slumped against my door and slid to the floor, burying my face in my hands on the way down.
“Well I handled that beautifully,” I said, my voice muffled by my palms.
Lora hadn’t done anything wrong. I knew that. But if she was mad at me, she wouldn’t talk to me, which meant she wouldn’t insist on me telling her what was going on. As far as I was concerned, the less she knew, and the less involved she was, the better.
This was my problem.
This was a situation I was facing.
And as much as I hated the idea of facing it alone, the thought of dragging anyone else into this mess—especially my little sister—was ultimately worse.
So alone was how life was going to be for a while.
* * *
When I woke up the next morning, I definitely wasn’t alone.
“Allllllex! Get up! Get up, get up, get up!”
My eyes opened to the blurry sight of my dresser bouncing up and down as the sound of creaking bedsprings filled the air. “Lora, what are you—ow!” I’d been about to sit up when I received a hard kick to my left side. “What the hell was that for?” I asked, shoving her as I sat the rest of the way up.
Lora toppled backwards off the bed, but somehow still managed to land gracefully on the floor.
“Aren’t you a little old to be jumping on the bed?” I asked grumpily.
“No,” she said. “Now get up, we’re going to the mall. I need new cleats.”
“Yeah, thanks for the invite, but I’m going to go ahead and go back to sleep now. Maybe you should try me again at a more reasonable hour?” I suggested, pulling the covers up over my head.
“It’s almost ten in the morning! There’s nothing unreasonable about it,” Lora protested. “And besides—I’m not inviting you. You’re taking me.”
“Says who?” I asked from underneath my makeshift tent of sheets and blankets.
“Says me. Unless, of course, you want Mom to know that those people were here last night.”
I threw the covers off and glared into the triumphant eyes of my little sister. “Blackmail?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“What about that sisterhood bond we’re supposed to share?”
“Yeah, what about it? It didn’t seem to be here last night either—you know, when you slammed the door in my face?”
Ouch.
She had me there.
“You fight dirty,” I said with a frown.
“Get over it,” Lora said. “I’m kind of doing you a favor, anyway, by convincing Mom to let you take me. You’re supposed to be grounded, remember?”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay your generosity.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of a way for you to,” Lora said with a saccharine smile. “Now hurry up and get ready, will you?”
I rolled reluctantly from my bed and stared sleepily into my mirror as Lora left, closing the door behind her.
In zombie-like fashion, I grabbed a brush that was balancing on the corner of the dresser and pulled my hair into my trademark messy bun. I contemplated putting on make-up for about five seconds before deciding against it (I was way too tired to be waving a mascara wand anywhere near my eye), then stood up and walked slowly over to my closet.
As I crossed the room, the fog of sleepiness hovering over my mind began to lift, and memories of last night flooded in.
I thumbed absentmindedly through the shirts hanging in my closet while the conversation I’d had with Kael played through my mind. There was one part that kept repeating itself: he didn’t want me to leave the house.
Had he been bluffing when he’d said he wouldn’t follow me? Something inside me doubted it; he didn’t really seem like the bluffing type.
But they couldn’t really expect me to stay home for the rest of my life…Could they?
I realized then that I had no idea how to answer that question. I mean, we’d all known each other for what? A grand total of a few days? So I had no idea what they might have been thinking—and I also had no way of even knowing if they really had my best interests at heart.
Maybe I was being paranoid, or maybe I was just making up excuses because I really wanted to get out of the house.
But whatever the reason, I suddenly found myself determined to spend the day somewhere other than Dayton.
I moved to a window and pulled the blinds up. My eyes scanned the yard and the trees surrounding it, wondering if Jack was still out there, or if someone else had taken over for him by now. And if Jack was out there, how could I flag him down?
I guess I should’ve gotten a phone number or something.
Then I remembered what Vanessa had told me: they could use something that worked much better than cell phones.
The only problem was, I had no idea how to do that weird thought-speech thing.
“Alex!” My sister’s voice and the sudden rap of her knuckles on the door made me jump. “You ready?”
“Just a minute!”
I took a deep breath and turned back to the window. It couldn’t be that hard, right? Kael definitely didn’t have any problems reading my mind last night. With that in mind, it was him I tried to focus on.
(Hey...Kael?) I thought, feeling kind of silly.
I waited silently for nearly a full minute, but he didn’t reply. I
’d tried imagining I was talking with him face to face, but maybe that was the wrong way to do it? I couldn’t imagine any other way, though, so I just tried again, and waited some more.
Five seconds passed. Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds, forty seconds, a minute—
This is stupid, I thought to myself, shaking my head in frustration. (If you’re listening, I’m leaving now. Just so you know. I won’t be gone long. And I’m staying close to my family, like you asked, so…)
Still nothing.
With a sigh, I pulled the blinds shut. Then I turned around, grabbed my purse and a light jacket, and headed for my car.
The closest mall to Dayton was in a town called Boone. And it was one awkward car ride. I kept the radio turned up for the sole purpose of discouraging conversation, which it did; Lora and I didn’t exchange so much as a glance until I pulled into the mall parking lot what felt like hours later.
Boone was a relatively small town, especially at the moment; the majority of its population was made up of students who attended the university there, and most of them had already gone home for the summer. Combine that with the fact that it was a weekday, and the result was a mall parking lot that was almost completely empty— and kind of eerie because of it.
Inside the mall, things weren’t much different. As we strolled between stores, we had only each other and the sound of our footsteps for company until we decided to take a break from shopping and head to the food court. There, about twenty other people were scattered amongst the tables and chairs, including a group of people I recognized from my high school. I waved to them as I sat down with my plate of Chinese food.
My sister joined me a few minutes later, wearing a stony expression on her face. I was beginning to think that might be a permanent look on her.
We ate in silence for as long as I could take, and then I stabbed a piece of sesame chicken with unnecessary force and asked, “How long is this silent treatment going to last, anyway?”
“How about until you explain what’s going on with you?”
I laid my fork down, my appetite rapidly disappearing. “So, it’s going to last forever then. Great.”
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