“It’s me, Deputy,” I call.
The beam falls and he waves a hand. “Hey! I didn’t think you’d make it. We could use another referee out here. They’re being a little rowdier than usual.”
I halt beside him and he slouches from his towering view at six feet and some inches to peer at me.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asks. “You look terrible.”
“It’s been a long day. Where’s my brother? He’s supposed to be here.”
“Yeah, he was helping me out until about half an hour ago.”
I squint at him against the harsh lights we hold. “What do you mean ‘had been’?”
Deputy Graham points through the trees to the west. “A couple of knuckleheads split off from the game that way, outside the perimeter we set. He ran after to haul them back and I haven’t seen him since. Do you mind—hey, where are you going?”
I’m already running through the snow in the direction he pointed. Hawk’s been out here by himself, without my anti-werewolf ability, in the middle of a game full of wolves. He ran off and hasn’t been seen? Nightmare scenarios race through my mind. Hawk promised he would take the serum if he needed to but a small voice in the back of my head knows he wouldn’t. Hawk swore ages ago he’d never take it again. If he couldn’t fight a compulsion tonight without me here—oh, sweet majestics. Hawk.
The snow is thicker here between the trees where it hasn’t been disturbed in a while or melted by the sun. It rises and falls in enormous drifts that I struggle through since I’m already so drained. I stop and swivel about to locate some kind of trail indicating where he might have gone. Who had he gone after? Where were they going? The anxiety crawling under my skin gets worse the more I think about it.
My flashlight flickers across a deep path cut through the snow. I jog over, breathing hard already as I have to lift my feet way up and down to get through the thick stuff. I stop and inspect the trail. It’s a mess but I can clearly make out paw prints here and there. A group of werewolves must have broken off. In the middle are some clean boot tracks. Those must be Hawk running after them. I pick up my feet and run.
He’s been gone a half-hour. Why didn’t the deputy go look for him? Why didn’t he help him? A lot could have happened in that span of time. The trail continues on and I’m not sure if I’m even on Mr. Wick’s property anymore. If I leave the trail I’m on, I’ll be lost. I pause to catch my breath and lightly touch the bandage at my neck. There’s already blood seeping through. Crap.
Noise up ahead has me drawing my bio-mech gun and flashlight together. Figures emerge from the shadows and into the light—three boys, none of them my brother. Their muted laughter stops the instant they realize they’re in a beam. None of them speak. Matt Jones spearheads the small group of his friends and holds up a hand to shield his eyes.
“Hey, man. Sorry,” he says. He must not be able to see who I am. “We got lost out here. Could you point us towards a road?”
I storm forward, tuck the gun into my pocket, and grab Matt by the collar of his jacket. My hand aches but in the moment I feed off that pain. Matt’s eyes go wide.
“Where’s my brother?” I shout in his face.
“Woah, woah, woah. Phoenix?”
I lower the flashlight so it’s pointed at the ground instead of their faces. The other two back up a step. “I asked you a question,” I snarl.
“Oh, Hawk?”
“No, my other brother. Of course I mean Hawk!” I shake him and even though I mean to do it lightly, I end up over doing it. His hair flops back and forth from the force of my grip. “Why did you run off? He followed you.”
He looks to his friends who turn sheepish. Guilt. That’s what I’m seeing. Guilt at getting caught in the act. My hand tightens on Matt’s jacket and the fabric tears beneath my fingers.
“You lured him out here on purpose, didn’t you?” I say, my voice dark and deadly. “What did you do?”
Matt’s starting to turn purple in the face and he gasps for air. His friends don’t even bother trying to help him as I begin to suffocate him. I blink and realize what I’m doing. Who’s the monster now? I let him go and shove him back a pace.
“Phoenix, we didn’t mean to—”
“WHERE IS HE?” I scream in his face. They have no idea what I’ve been through today and what nightmares I have imagined happening to my brother in this moment. I beheaded people today. If they knew that, maybe they’d speak a little faster.
The three try to talk over each other in a jumble so I raise a hand and point to Matt alone. They quiet and Matt says in a strained voice, “Last we saw, he was running off that way.” He points to the area they just came from. “Towards the Nelsons’.”
I’m sick to my stomach and sway on the spot. “Did he shift?”
“I think so.”
It’s like I don’t even see the three boys anymore. I push past them in a daze, throwing Matt bodily to the ground, and run head long into the trees continuing to follow the trail.
With a shaking hand I pull out my bio-mech gun again.
I get dizzy from the light in my hand bobbing across the uneven ground. The trail turns into a right mess before I find a single trail leading out instead of four. It continues on through the woods, weaving away from the sound of a road nearby and deeper into the wilderness. I cross a frozen stream and a few tears I don’t even realize I’m shedding splatter the jacket of my arm as I cut through the air.
Not Hawk. Not my brother. Oh, please, not my brother.
Please, don’t let that monster inside him get the better of him.
We should have run. We should have left ages ago. We knew this was dangerous and yet we stayed. We played werewolf games and ignored the monsters hiding underneath. We dismissed the serum because we thought we were stronger.
Please don’t let anyone pay for our mistake.
The light hits something dark and I stumble to a stop. I flick my flashlight up and down until I spot it again. Blood. Droplets of blood in the middle of a messy trodden patch of snow. Breathing hard and dreading what I’ll see, I move forward slowly along a wider path dotted with more red. The tracks are swept away in a wide swath where it looks like something had been dragged.
A threatening growl ahead makes me raise the bio-mech gun next to my flashlight. Taking one cautious step in front of the other, I soon reach a furry body crouched low in the snow. Green eyes tinted gold reflect the light like a demon, bright and terrifying in the cold face of a wolf. Red fur encases the top of its head and there’s no mistaking who it is.
“Hawk,” I breathe.
He snarls and saliva drips from his mouth. Not just saliva but blood. There’s no trace of my brother in those vicious snarls, raised hackles, and flattened ears.
“It’s me. Hawk, please don’t make me shoot you,” I choke out. Heat rushes up my back and down my arms. I shiver against the power shifting inside and making me sway as it takes too much out of me.
The wolf shell of my brother takes two fast steps forward and pauses again.
“Hawk, please.”
Warmth radiates from me in waves and my hands shake. His snarls begin to quiet. He shakes his head and scratches his muzzle with his paw. Then he tucks in his tail and a keen howl escapes him. The fur recedes or falls away into nothingness. Before long the wolf is gone and Hawk is on all fours in the snow breathing hard. I don’t move as he turns to the side and wretches into the blanket of snow. He does so again and a third time before he finally falls back on his knees and makes a horrible, anguished sound.
Slowly he brings up his trembling hands before him. They’re spotted with blood. Tears streak his cheeks and run through the drying blood around his mouth.
I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do? I take a step forward and he quickly scampers back from me holding up a hand.
“No, stop!” he cries. “Don’t come any closer. Don’t . . .”
Something ugly is climbing up my throat, burning my eyes, and drowning out t
he rest of the world. I take another step closer and Hawk hangs his head, still keeping one hand up telling me to stay away. His body heaves with his panicked breathing and he keeps making that wretched, hopeless sound.
No words form on my lips. I’m petrified. What do I say? How am I supposed to make this better?
I kneel in the snow in front of my brother and hold the flashlight down so I don’t blind either of us. I reach for him but he shies away. With only a couple feet between us, I can see the streaks of blood on his neck and staining the top of his shirt and jacket.
His tortured green eyes meet mine at last.
“Help me.” It’s the plea of a little boy, not my joking, confident twin. “I don’t know what I’ve done, Phoenix. I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t remember.”
He finally lets me put a hand on his upper arm and I give him a reassuring squeeze. I have to be strong. That’s the true reason for my strength. It’s so I can be strong for him. Who cares what happened earlier today? My brother is in pain.
“Then we figure it out,” I say evenly. “Just you and me. Okay?”
He sucks down air. “Okay.”
“Come on.”
I help him to his feet. When he staggers, I let him lean on me for support until he manages to even himself out. I force myself to look at our surroundings calmly despite the panic I’m battling inside.
“I came from that direction.” I indicate with the flashlight, then turn in the opposite direction to paint another trail with the light. “So that must be where you came from. We’ll go together. We take this one step at a time.”
He nods and brushes the back of his hand across his mouth. The second he sees the blood smeared onto his hand, he grabs a handful of snow to scrub at his face and neck. Each movement is desperate and panicked. I’m tearing apart at the seams.
I take the first few steps and he hesitates before following. Our pace is slow. Neither of us wants to know what’s at the other end of this trail. More blood droplets line the tracks, more signs of struggle. Tuffs of fur catch my eye here and there. I’m not sure if they’re from Hawk or from some other animal. What if he only attacked some random creature out in the wild? That could be it. If he went after a deer or a bobcat or something, we’ll be okay. Wolves hunt other animals. It’ll be fine.
The trail expands into a sprawling trodden patch stretched between the trees. This must be it. Whatever Hawk did when he wolfed out happened here. Please, let it be a deer. An old deer ready to die. A deer that would have fallen during hunting season anyway.
I halt and Hawk falls to his knees in the snow again. The beam of light wavers at the force of my shakes.
Lifeless and cold in the snow lies a golden lump, blood matted in its once glossy fur.
It’s Ashley’s dog.
It’s Duke.
Chapter 19
A hollow ringing fills my ears. The body in front of me isn’t some random cow, a piece of livestock that can be easily replaced. I know . . . knew Duke. Ashley loves this dog, this beautiful, happy dog that’s dead at my feet.
“We did this,” I whisper to the darkness and let it consume my words.
We always knew the risks and yet we pushed our boundaries. I should have seen this coming and stopped Hawk, but we thought we were stronger than the disease. What fools we’ve been.
“It was me,” Hawk says weakly beside me. “This is on me. I killed—oh, pixies—”
He vomits to the side again but there’s little left in him.
How can I ever explain this to Ashley? If she found out what Hawk did, they’d haul him away just like Jason. He’d be held like a prisoner and forced to take the serum. He’d go mad. I might not ever see him again if the stories are true of the other werewolves that have disappeared. I can’t let that happen.
A dangerous plan forms in my mind and it makes me sick to my stomach.
“No one can know,” I say quietly. “Not a soul.”
Hawk’s lifeless eyes stare up at me as a grimace lingers on his face. “Phoenix . . .”
“I’m going to bury Duke.” I swallow past the horrible taste in my mouth. Ashley is going to be frantic looking for her dog and I’m going to have to lie straight to her face. I am a monster. “I’ll bury him out here beneath the snow so no one finds him. Then we’re going to sneak back to the car. We’re going to clean you up.”
“And what happens the next time I can’t control myself?” Hawk retorts.
“I’m not leaving you again,” I say sharply. Shadows fall under his eyes and he doesn’t argue. “We’re going to clean you up and pretend like this never happened. We can’t—” What I suggest next hurts even more. “We can’t tell Jefferson. He can’t know.”
“What if he finds out?”
“He won’t unless we tell him. You got that? You keep your mouth shut, Hawk.”
I don’t know who this person is that’s speaking with my mouth and walking around in my skin. I don’t recognize myself, this person that would lie to her friends and hide such a dangerous truth. But I can’t let them take Hawk. The cure is in my blood. I can still make this right.
The brutal work begins and I force Hawk to sit off to the side as I snap a branch off a nearby tree and use it to clear away the snow and break open the frozen ground. The branch splinters under the force I put into it and I have to grab branch after branch to dig open the ground, occasionally the earth to break it apart more easily, but I’m so, so tired. Every other minute I have to stop to catch my breath. Dirt covers me and I can hardly breathe as I lift Duke’s stiff body and lay him gently into the grave. I rest a hand on his foreleg.
“You were a good boy,” I murmur and fight the burn behind my eyes. “Ashley loved you but I think you already knew that. You’ll be missed, big guy.”
I give him one last pat to send the faithful dog on his way and then rise to give him a blanket of soil for his long sleep. No stone or makeshift marker is left to draw attention to where he lies. And to my everlasting shame, I push the snow over the grave until no one passing through could possibly know what lies beneath.
It’s a long walk back through the woods. No words pass between us. Shivers wrack me and my shoes are completely sodden. I’m in real danger of frostbite at this point. Yet that somehow feels justified.
We’ve been out so long that the sounds of capture the flag have vanished. Everyone must have left already. Even so, I have Hawk wait in the shelter of the trees as I jog to our SUV parked outside the farmhouse. Nearly all of the cars are gone but to my horror, Deputy Graham is still there and sitting in his squad car with the door open on a phone call. He notices me before I can decide if running is a good option and he instantly gets out of his car to meet me.
“I’ve been worried about you,” he says. “You and Hawk never came back. I’ve got Jefferson on the line right now.”
He holds up the cell phone in his hand for emphasis.
I can’t muster the courage to talk to Jefferson in this moment, so I say, “Let him know we’re fine. Hawk got stuck out in the woods but I found him.”
The deputy looks around past my shoulder. “Where is he?”
He has to be observant. “Behind the house. He’s picking up a few of his things before we leave.”
“I can go help him.”
Without warning he starts to walk around me so I throw out an arm. Despite his size and how frail I am right now, my arm acts like a steel railing and forcefully stops him. He squints down his pointed nose at me.
“Everything okay, Phoenix?”
“Everything’s great, Jared. It’s just been a really, really long day.”
His stern expression lets me know he’s not buying it but he eventually gives a short bob of his head with a murmured “Have a goodnight,” and heads to his squad car. Once he’s gone I start the SUV to get the heaters going and jog back to find Hawk sitting against the barn. One of the horses inside keeps blowing its nostrils in his direction, clearly agitated. It could be the blood that covers
him—or it senses what lies beneath that hollow expression. Hawk’s a shadow of himself.
“Time to go,” I say.
He stands and follows me to the SUV but it’s like he’s going through the motions. There’s no thought to what he’s doing. This whole thing didn’t rattle him—it broke him. All this time I’ve been worrying about vampires and Dasc and becoming a lousy shot when I really should have been focused on my brother.
We sit in the growing warmth of the SUV for a time before I put it into gear. I don’t take us to Jefferson’s. We’re not ready for that confrontation yet. Instead I make for town and stop at one of the lesser-travelled gas stations. Hawk stays in the car as I go in, pay for a tourist sweatshirt that says “Got Moose?” and get the key to the bathrooms outside. After making sure the coast is clear, I grab the first aid kit and pull my brother into the bathroom to clean up.
The mirror reflects two really awful looking teenagers. I’ve still got a cut healing that trails up into my hairline, a black eye, and a big sodden bandage on my neck. My face, hands, jacket, and pants are splattered with muck. Beside me, Hawk is a gaunt ghost, pale and smeared with blood. When he freezes in front of the dirty bathroom mirror and doesn’t move, I have to direct him to pull off his jacket and offer him a wet pad of gauze to clean himself with. He does so with robotic motions.
Once most of the evidence of our secret in the woods is gone, I pass Hawk the sweatshirt, and gather up all the dirty bandages and Hawk’s filthy jacket. We climb back into the SUV and I glance at the clock. It’s nearing midnight. I check my phone and see a slew of missed calls and texts from Jefferson wondering where we are. I shoot him a single text confessing that I need some time alone with my brother after what happened today. I can only hope he buys it.
We pull out of the parking lot and I don’t know where to go. Hawk’s still too far gone to face Jefferson. I just start driving and wander through Moose Lake. Without realizing where I’m heading, within ten minutes we’re pulling up the driveway of our parents’ old house. It’s eerie with no lights in the middle of the night. Hawk shows his first sign of life by looking to me in confusion.
The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2) Page 27