Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I think everyone in the room—and those guarding my mind—knew that Valerie meant the words as a threat.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE SUN DIDN’T RISE UNTIL SEVEN THIRTY, SO I had hours to kill, ensconced in a faded denim comforter and all too aware that the moment I went to sleep, my Keep the Psychics Out of My Head plan would be tested to the limit. There was a part of me—a sizable one—that wanted nothing more than to keep my eyes and ears open and my back to a wall, which was probably Valerie’s intention all along. She wanted me tired, off my game, and out of it enough that I’d stop resisting her assaults on my emotions.

  She wanted me scared.

  I closed my eyes and allowed my breathing to slow. Sleeping in their house—if I could manage it—would be like staring another alpha straight in the eyes.

  I’m not scared of you, I thought as the rest of my mind went blank. You have no power over me.

  For the longest time, I didn’t dream. I just lay there, my body relaxed, my senses perfectly attuned to the world around me, and then a dam broke somewhere in my mind, and in a rush of color and sound, I was gone.

  Back in the forest, dressed from head to toe in white, I waited. One by one, my friends came out from behind mounds of snow and tree trunks the color of black cherries, the pads of their paws skating lightly over the frozen ground.

  Lake and Devon and Chase.

  Anyone else would have gone stiff with terror the moment they saw the three of them, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. I knelt on the ground and waited, unable to shake the feeling that someone else was supposed to be here.

  Someone or something was missing. It took me a moment to realize what—who—I was looking for: the wolf from my other dreams, the one I could never quite catch.

  She wasn’t there.

  The world around me flickered, like someone was trying to change the channel on an old-fashioned TV. Within the span of a single heartbeat, I was surrounded on all sides by muscles and fur. They kept their backs to me and their eyes forward. My lip curled, baring my useless human teeth.

  Archer’s trying to get in, and he can’t, I thought, buoyed by that realization. Still, I turned—wary, ready—taking in a three-sixty view of the forest.

  Silence.

  Pressure built at my temples. Sweat rose on the surface of my skin. I held my position, and as my friends circled around me, their wolf eyes scanned the darkness for signs of life.

  Bryn. Bryn. Bryn.

  My guards held the perimeter, my name a constant hum in their animal minds.

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard a wolf—the wolf—howling, and the sound resonated with me, blood and bones and bittersweet longing. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, I woke up.

  “Good morning.”

  The words took me by surprise, but I had enough presence of mind not to go for my knife. Years of dealing with frustratingly stealthy werewolves had equipped me with an excellent poker face, and I refused to let a human—particularly this human—know that he’d gotten the drop on me.

  “Anyone ever told you that watching a girl sleep is pretty much the textbook definition of creepy?”

  Archer inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the point. “You were blocking me. I was curious. Shoot me.”

  “That an invitation?”

  Channeling Lake was second nature, and I felt a snuff of agreement in my head. Both Lake and her wolf approved of the threat, though her wolf half would have preferred if I’d delivered the threat while digging my fingernails into the fleshy part of the intruder’s throat.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Archer replied, completely unbothered. “If any teenage girl is going to put a bullet in me, it’s going to be Caroline when Valerie finds out that all I got out of your dreams last night was two smells and a sound.”

  He waited for me to ask him to elaborate, but I didn’t.

  “Wet dog, pine needles, and howling.” He shrugged, but his eyes went cold, and he clenched his jaw. “Werewolves.”

  I snorted. “You’re scared of Caroline. You hate werewolves. Your pupils are on steroids. Shocking.” I paused, letting my words sink in. “You do realize that those emotions aren’t really yours, right? That Valerie’s messing with you?”

  Archer’s pupils spread outward, blocking the color of his eyes altogether. Just like that, it was as if the words I’d spoken were completely uninteresting, like my warning that Valerie was messing with his mind was the most boring thing he’d ever heard. Ignoring me, Archer reached for his back pocket. As a matter of reflex, I went for my knife and wrapped my fingertips around its hilt, but instead of pulling out a weapon, he brandished a piece of charcoal and turned to the wall.

  I watched as he began to draw, and after a moment, I let go of the knife. Based on the size of his pupils, I was going to go out on a limb and guess that Valerie had programmed him to disregard anything she didn’t want him to hear, and I forced myself to remember that the man who’d infiltrated my dreams, stalked me, hurt me, and called me a mutt-lover wasn’t the real enemy here.

  Archer was just a symptom. Valerie was the disease.

  I’d come here to find out what I could about Shay’s connection to the coven and to take Valerie out of commission long enough for the rest of the coven to clear their minds. I hadn’t come here to fight Archer, make him bleed.

  Just a taste? Lake asked plaintively. Wouldn’t hurt to show him that messing with you is about as far from a good idea as ideas get.

  Lurking in my mind, Devon wasn’t as opposed to violence as he otherwise might have been, and Chase was even more bloodthirsty than Lake—which, as a general rule, was really saying something.

  If he touches you, I will kill him.

  Coming from Chase, the thought wasn’t a threat as much as a statement of fact. If Archer was smart, if he had any common sense whatsoever, he wouldn’t keep his back turned on a Were.

  Human, I reminded myself. You’re human.

  “You’re not one of them, little Bryn.” Archer’s tone was completely conversational. “Do you wish you were?”

  I didn’t reply, and he turned to face me, stepping aside so that I could see the image of a wolf staring back at me from his makeshift canvas. I recognized her instantly: larger than some, but not full grown, light fur giving way to darker markings around her face.

  “I may not have gotten into your dreams this morning, kiddo, but I’ve been there before. You flashed back to a memory of the werewolf who raised you, and the marks he left on your body were suddenly larger than life. You ran with your pack, and then you dreamed about a female wolf—a wolf that forever hovers just out of reach. If I recall correctly, you’ve even dreamed that you’re hollow inside. I’m not Freud, but I’d say that has some pretty disturbing implications, wouldn’t you?”

  Apparently, keeping Archer out of my head was no protection against more mundane mind games. Even though I knew he was trying to get to me, I couldn’t help staring at the image on the wall and wondering if he was right.

  “Admit it, little Bryn—they’ve done a real number on you. Not a werewolf, barely human. They took you and they raised you and they used you. You’re just a kid, and you never even had a chance.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply. Blow me and screw you both seemed like strong contenders, but the peanut gallery in my head appeared to be favoring castration.

  To his credit, Archer seemed to sense that it was time to retreat. “Breakfast’s downstairs in five, wolf girl.”

  This time, I couldn’t help hearing the words wolf girl a little differently, but I pushed the thought out of my head and concentrated on the business at hand. If Archer was Valerie’s version of a wake-up call, it was probably safe to assume that breakfast was a thing to beware.

  “Good morning.” Valerie smiled. Needle-sharp pinpricks bombarded the base of my skull—but this time, Valerie’s attempt to manipulate my emotions wasn’t my biggest problem.

  Gathered around the kitchen tab
le were the handful of psychics I’d already met and several I hadn’t. The old woman whose knack allowed her to influence animals was feeding part of her muffin to a snake. A pair of college-aged girls were engaged in some kind of staring contest, their eyes bloodshot and their irises ink black.

  “Valerie, could I have a word with you? Alone?” I was tired of skirting the issue, tired of pretending that I’d come here to join the coven when both of us knew I’d come here to test my mettle against hers.

  Valerie’s smile broadened, cutting through the smattering of wrinkles near the edges of her lips. Her eyes zeroed in on mine, and I felt a stab of loneliness, confusion, rage—before the sound of snapping teeth and a guttural growl pushed her back out.

  Sooner or later, she’d get tired of testing me, tired of losing. I needed to make my move before that happened.

  “What would you like to talk about?” Valerie asked, moving around the kitchen table to pour herself some tea.

  “Shay.”

  Her stride broke, just for a moment, and I knew I’d hit my target.

  “Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of everyone. We don’t have secrets here, Bryn.” Her tone sounded genuine, but her eyes were steely, merciless, hard. There were six other people at the dining room table and more coming into the room the longer I stood there, and in unison, their pupils surged.

  The old woman whispered something, and her snake began writhing its way slowly toward me. The girls in the staring contest suddenly turned those fathomless black eyes on me.

  “Was there something you wanted to say, Bryn?” Valerie sipped her tea.

  There was a lot I wanted to say to her—once I managed to get her away from her little army of marionettes.

  “Go ahead, Bryn. Say it.”

  There were too many eyes on me, too much power in this room. I felt trapped, and things began to go red around the edges. The instinct crept up on me, dark and sure, and for a second, it was more of a presence in my mind than Devon, Lake, or Chase.

  Trapped. Trapped. Need to escape. Survi—

  “Easy there.” A strange hand clapped me on the shoulder, and without thinking, I grabbed the hand and the attached arm and moved to flip the owner onto the kitchen floor. To my surprise, the hand’s owner ducked out of my grasp and took a step back, palms held up, facing me. “I come in peace.”

  His delivery of that line sounded so much like Devon that I almost smiled, and that cleared my mind enough that I was able to really look at him. My opponent was much older than I’d expected: sixty-five if he was a day, and though his eyes sparkled, I could see each one of those years literally carved into his skin.

  He had more scars than anyone I’d ever seen.

  “I’m never quite myself before my morning walk,” he told me. “I’m sensing maybe you’re not much of a morning person, either. Care to join me?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say no, but annoyance flashed across Valerie’s face the moment the man extended the invitation, and that made me reconsider.

  “Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s not.” Caroline stepped out from the shadows and made her presence known. I wasn’t the only one who turned to track her progression into the room. In fact, the only two people who didn’t react that way were Valerie, whose eyes were locked on mine, and the old man, whose weathered face softened the moment Caroline appeared.

  “Rule nineteen, Caro,” he said, his voice gruff. “And for that matter, twelve.”

  I got the feeling that unlike the facetious “Bryn Rules” my friends like to reference, Caroline and the old man really did have a numbered list.

  “Rule seven,” the girl in question countered.

  The man rolled his eyes. “Fifty-three.”

  That, apparently, was something Caroline couldn’t argue with, and my companion turned his attention back to Caroline’s mother. “Don’t worry, Val,” he said, brown eyes shining against white-scarred skin. “I’ll bring our little visitor back. Scout’s honor.”

  With those words, he put his hand on my shoulder again and guided me to the door. This time, I didn’t resist—not because of the way he’d handled Valerie and Caroline, but because the moment he touched me, I felt a familiar sensation, like I knew him.

  Like we were the same.

  He’s Resilient, Chase whispered from his place in my mind. Like you. Like me.

  Like us.

  I tried to remember what Valerie had told me the day before, but all I could remember was the man’s name—Jed.

  The two of us walked in silence, each taking the other’s measure. Once we were out of earshot of the house, Jed spoke. “Came close to flashing out in there, didn’t you?”

  “Flashing out?”

  He strung his thumbs through his belt loops and kept walking. “It’s what happens when people like us get backed into a corner. Smart girl like you must realize that woman was backing you into one on purpose.”

  I knew other Resilients. The majority of our pack was Resilient. But this was the first time I’d met another human whose gift was being scrappy and stubborn and coming out unscathed when other people would be dead.

  “I wasn’t going to lose it,” I told him.

  The man grunted.

  “I’m better at keeping my head than people give me credit for.”

  He grunted again. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but she was pushing the others, and if you’d flashed out, they would have attacked.”

  “She doesn’t want me dead—not if there’s a chance she could turn me into one of her little sock puppets instead.”

  My use of the phrase sock puppet seemed to throw Jed for a loop, but only for a moment. “If Val can’t get inside your head, she won’t have any other use for you. Lucky for you, woman’s not the type to accept defeat. She’s been trying to get in my head going on eleven years now. Most of the time, I shake her off. Doesn’t put her in the best mood, but as long as I keep my mouth shut about it, ’bout what she’s doing to everyone else, she lets me be.”

  As I processed Jed’s words, I realized that I was talking to the one person in the entire coven who was able to insulate his emotions from Valerie’s influence. From that, I concluded two things: first, that even without the others in my head, I might be able to do the same; and second, if I wanted to figure out what was really going on in this coven, my current companion would be a good place to start.

  “Eleven years—is that how long you’ve been with the coven?”

  Jed shook his head. “That’s how long she’s been with the coven. She showed up on our doorstep, same way you did, with a little blonde moppet in tow. Cutest kid you’d ever seen—real solemn, except when Valerie wanted her otherwise. Two months after the two of them showed up, Valerie married Wes.”

  “Wes?”

  “He was a good kid,” Jed said. “Great leader. I’d been with him since he was seventeen. He was the one who talked me into finding others like us. He found them, saved them, made them family.”

  Your coven has lost someone. You must have loved whoever it was very much. The words Ali had used to spur the psychics into showing their hand echoed in my mind.

  “He’s the one who got killed by a werewolf?” I said. Doing the math, I hit a snag. “He wasn’t Caroline’s father?”

  “Not by blood.”

  That shouldn’t have surprised me. I knew better than anyone that blood wasn’t what made people family.

  “Valerie was with us three years when Wes died. By that time, it seemed natural to most folks that she’d be the one to take over.”

  “Most folks,” I repeated. “But not you.”

  He shrugged. “Never wanted to lead much myself. Filling Wes’s shoes would have been tough on anyone, but Valerie took to it.” He paused. “I always thought she took to it a little too well.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why he’d stayed. It couldn’t have been easy, watching Valerie work her way into everyone else’s
emotions, making them feel what she wanted them to feel—about her, about their former leader’s death, about Caroline. But before I could even ask the question, I had my answer, because in the brief exchange I’d seen between Jed and Valerie’s daughter, there’d been shades of Callum and me.

  Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.

  Now was not the time to get caught up in memories—not with company in my head and a slew of questions Jed might be willing and able to answer.

  “Valerie had Caroline give me an ultimatum—either I hand over a Were under my protection, or your coven is going to attack my pack.” I measured Jed’s response. Nothing I said surprised him, but his jaw tightened when I mentioned Caroline, scars jumping to life on his face as the muscles underneath them tensed. I pushed harder, further, testing my intuition that Jed’s weakness, the whole reason he’d stayed with the coven, was the girl. “How do you think Caroline is going to feel if her mother uses her to murder a bunch of little kids?”

  Jed reached out, lightning quick, and grabbed my arm, his fingernails digging into my flesh and sending my pack-mates into a defensive roar in my head.

  “I know what’s at stake here,” Jed said, his voice surprisingly quiet given his viselike grip on my arm. “Know it better than you, so if you’ve got questions, ask them, but don’t play with me, Bryn.”

  He had one of those tones—one that said that I was a kid and he wasn’t and he’d been waging wars since before I was ever born.

  “Fine,” I said. “Question: why does the coven care so much about getting Lucas back? What’s he to Valerie?”

  Jed let go of my arm. “I’m no expert on the workings of that woman’s mind, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that odds are that one teenage werewolf is not what she’s after. She’s just using him to get the others all riled up, same as she’ll use you.”

  It had occurred to me that Valerie might not want Lucas—that she might want me—but I’d never thought, even for a second, that maybe neither one of us was the point. That if I met Valerie’s ultimatum, she might find something else to demand, some other reason to set her coven against my pack.