Daniel loved playing wolf with them, prowling the city and seeing how much he could get away with. The shooting star could take a cheap shot at Bwana on the basketball courts and skip school once or twice. But bawling out a teacher? Causing mayhem in class? Those things would get back to Cornell, prod them to reconsider their acceptance.
In Mrs. MacKaye’s class today, it had finally come time to refuse dreams of escape, to wipe the bluestone towers of Cornell from his mind and stand by his packmate. Daniel had been afraid, though. He’d sat cowed and quiet.
He watched traffic speed by in both directions. He looked up at the pack’s sign again, then headed to class. It made him sick, but Daniel knew that—no matter how much he had to cheat to do it, how many hands he had to lick—he was one of the blessed few who’d ever get to cross this border out of Birmingham.
CHAPTER 14
Daniel spent all Friday and most of Saturday trying to figure out how to tell Misty and the pack he was leaving in the fall. It was too late. No matter what he said, Misty would hate him. And the pack, to whom loyalty meant everything, would kick him out. And even worse than facing those fates was knowing he’d deserve them.
For a few months Daniel had slipped off his destined path and run mad. He’d seen a world—a lush world, as beautiful as it was harsh—humans didn’t know. As soon as Daniel confessed who he really was, all of that would snap closed to him once again, this time forever.
Daniel decided to put it off until the end of school, maybe through the summer. He couldn’t do much more harm than he’d already done. So, adding a few more lies to the already leaning pile, he took Misty out Saturday. He stole kisses from her and did whatever he could to make her smile. Every moment was sweetened by the knowledge that he’d betray her soon.
When night fell, they went to the furnace. Barn swallows had built mud nests in the eaves of the casting shed. They squawked and wheeled overhead while the pack smoked a bowl and waited for the mushrooms to cook.
Misty wore cargo pants and a tank top in the warm-as-skin night. Months of prowling had hardened the muscles in her shoulders and arms. Daniel relished how they felt under his hands. They talked about ISS, joking that Misty would come out with prison tats or her ears chopped off like Charlie Say What.
Crouched by the fire, Marc chuckled. “Know what we should do? We should tag that fucking school.”
Eric grinned. “That’d be funny as hell if they didn’t have security cameras everywhere.”
“So where are we going tonight?”
Before Eric could answer, Daniel spoke up. “Let’s tag the school.”
“Seriously?” Marc looked startled somebody had listened to him.
“Security cameras everywhere,” Eric repeated. “We go to that school. They’ll recognize us on the tapes. And if we get caught shifting—”
“We go to that school. We know where all the cameras are.” He nodded at Marc. “Think you and me can get up to the roof?”
“Shit, yeah. No problem.” Marc beamed.
Every sugary note Daniel had slipped into Misty’s textbook had been a lie. The plush wolf he’d gotten her for Valentine’s Day, the T-shirt he’d bought because it made her laugh, had all been part of pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Getting revenge for Mrs. MacKaye’s tossed-off cruelty might be the one real gift Daniel could ever give Misty.
This was bigger than that, though. Finally accepting that he, too, was a domesticated pet had only sharpened Daniel’s resentment of the hand-lickers. Hidden under wolf skin, he could vent his anger at them, at his own weakness, in ways the shooting star never could.
Between the school and the girls’ gym lay a paved courtyard where delivery trucks backed up to the cafeteria. From the corner of the roof, the glass eyes of cameras watched both entrances to the courtyard. All they recorded that night was a pair of large dogs padding across the asphalt.
Once he and Marc were inside the courtyard, Daniel shifted into human form, catching the can of spray paint as it fell from his jaws and shoving it into his pocket. Marc carried a piece of rebar scavenged from the furnace. Flowing between skins had become easier over the months. Underneath, Daniel’s mind wasn’t exactly human or lupine. Cunning as the first, relentless as the second, it had become more dangerous than either.
A metal roof covered the path from the school to the gym. With Marc following him, Daniel climbed to the top, then to a second-story window ledge. Fingers grasping the metal grills protecting the windows, Daniel inched to the corner of the building. It was easy if you were brave enough, or brimming with enough hate.
The school had been built just as televisions began replacing radios in homes. A pipe ran up the brick wall, housing coaxial cables and more wires than the school’s architects ever dreamed it would need. Using grills, ledges, and the pipe, Daniel pulled himself upward.
Reaching the top, Daniel took the can from his pocket, sprayed the camera lenses until paint dripped into his face, then heaved himself over the lip of the roof.
After blinding the rest of the cameras, he went to crouch over Thirteenth Avenue. A car passed below. Once the street was clear, Daniel let out a low whuf. Marc swung the rebar into one of the floodlights washing the campus hill in a pallid glow. Two strikes and a shower of sparks dripped to the ground below. Marc moved to the next light and the next.
The school campus went dark. Daniel howled, and Val emerged from across the street. She shifted into human skin and pulled out a second can of spray paint. She wore a heavy work coat also scavenged from the furnace. With the collar pulled up, it looked like the shadows clung to her. She approached the sign at the head of the curving front drive.
McCAMMON HIGH SCHOOL
HOME OF THE FALCONS
She slashed a dripping black wolf head across the faded plastic, then ran toward the sign on the other end of the drive.
Daniel stalked along the edge of the roof. Below, Misty and Eric lurked, unseen but watching. When Marc whined, Daniel turned to see what was the matter. Marc pawed and sniffed at something in the middle of the roof and started yip-ping for Daniel to come look.
A circle of wood was nailed to the roof and caked with old tar. There had been an air-conditioning unit there a decade ago, the wood covering the hole where the duct work snaked down into the school.
Marc scraped at it. His muzzle yawned open, trying to form sounds a wolf couldn’t. The effort pushed him back into his human form. “Books,” he said, anxious to please. “I smell paper. Ink.”
Daniel sniffed at the covering. It looked solid, but he breathed in the acidic scent of mold. Below the rotting wood, he smelled a classroom, its books and ammonia-scrubbed floors.
Marc smashed the heel of his sneaker down. There was a wet crack, and a small wound opened in the roof. He kept kicking at it. Daniel ripped at the ragged edges with his fangs. As the hole widened, a nest of beetles plinked to the duct work and scattered for deeper dark. Soon, Marc kicked through insulation and plaster into ash-colored light.
They looked down at evenly spaced desks. A neat row of extra-credit projects lined the windowsill. Daniel stared down at the classroom, all right angles and order. He wanted to avenge Misty. He wanted the pack to remember, even after he betrayed them and ran off to Cornell, that he’d been a wolf once. And he wanted to remember himself. Tipping his head back, Daniel summoned the pack.
A human couldn’t have fit. The wolves, though, with lanky legs and narrow chests designed for plowing through snow drifts, were able to slink down the hole to a support beam and into the classroom.
Daniel led the way. Moving through the corridors, dark against dark, they disabled the cameras inside and broke into the nurse’s office. They pulled on thick blue latex gloves to make sure no fingerprints were left behind. Then, with the school splayed as helpless as prey, they lunged for the kill.
They danced between human and wolf skins, between hands and fangs, depending on how they could cause the most destruction. The school’s black-booted misfits
tipped over trophy cases, cracked necks of fire extinguishers to send them rocketing up the halls, and broke into the cafeteria’s cooler. Wolves gorged on frozen meat, bit through chair legs, and pissed on carpets. Glass shattered. Metal crumpled. Every tiny hate, every splinter-sharp rumor, every moment of frustration and impotence the pack had absorbed through four years of high school came bursting out all at once.
Eric knocked over a filing cabinet, hundreds of permanent records spilling to the floor. Daniel remembered somebody and pawed through the files searching for him. He passed the file he wanted several times until recognizing the name on the tab.
Morning, Daniel J.
He knew what the papers inside said without having to read them. Grades and scores and extracurriculars. A form stating he suffered from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Letters of recommendation. Daniel glimpsed the word “Cornell” over and over.
Reaching out with a human hand, he grabbed Marc by the scruff of his neck, lifting him onto his hind legs and growling until Marc shifted out of wolf shape. Daniel took Marc’s lighter from his pocket, letting the flame lick the corner of the file.
Daniel yipped joyfully while the shooting star burned. He waved the file in his hand, watching it blacken and crumble, then shoved it back into the pile. Flames ate other names. Laughing, Eric and Marc broke into more filing cabinets. Soon, the fire swept up the wall with the shape and whoosh of a wave.
Smoke detectors began screaming. Water sprayed from the ceiling but wasn’t enough to douse the flames. A computer monitor imploded from the heat. The blasting, blistering air—how the furnace must have felt when it had been alive—pushed them to the far side of the high counter, then out into the hall. They had stacks of records in their arms, flinging them back through the double doors, watching discipline forms and class rankings burn. The pack danced while the school sank into chaos, into wilderness.
Misty had disappeared. Dropping to his paws, Daniel pad-ded across the lobby. Hundreds of scent-ghosts drifted through the school, but he found his companion’s easily. He followed it to Mrs. MacKaye’s room.
Misty had the spray paint. She was decorating the walls with wolf heads. When Daniel came in, she turned.
“No stray” Misty chucked the can at Mrs. MacKaye’s blackboard. “I am a wolf. I have a pack. This is our territory. Ours.”
The effort to speak twisted Misty’s mouth into a wide, snarling grin. Giving up, she snatched up one of the desks, swinging it against a window. It bounced off the metal grill. Slivers of glass sprayed to the floor and a warm breeze swept in. Misty grabbed the desk again as it crashed to the floor, busted a second window, kicked out a third, then flung the desk across the room.
The fury ended in hard pants and the angry grin fading. Her face became as inscrutable as the moon. “Not a stray.”
Daniel nodded. The sound of shattering glass, Misty’s heaving breaths, and the fun of breaking things excited him. Taking Misty around the waist, he lifted her onto Mrs. MacKaye’s desk. She swept clear a stapler, a coffee mug full of pens, and other litter.
Daniel pushed Misty’s tank top up. Boot soles squeaked against the laminated wood. A wailing siren approached. He kissed her breasts, licked salty sweat from her throat. Spinning red and blue lights stirred the room’s shadows around them. The school hadn’t been as defenseless as it appeared; the smoke alarm had summoned help. Misty’s lip ring, her tongue in Daniel’s mouth, felt electric.
A spot beam swept the front of the school, halting at the broken windows. The harsh white light steadied on them, and they finally glanced up at the fire engine outside.
Time to go. Rolling off the desk and shifting into wolves, they slipped out of the room beneath the beam. Heading for the curving staircase, they heard the pack’s voices farther up ahead. Eric was angry. Val spoke in hard whispers.
Misty barked, then howled, trying to get their attention. They just kept talking.
“What did this have to do with them?” Eric screamed. “This didn’t have anything to do with them.”
Crouched low, Daniel slunk across the lobby with Misty close by his side. Inside the main office, fire crawled across furniture and computer components. Smoke boiled across the ceiling, so black, a wolf’s night-stalking eyes couldn’t see through it. Scraps of burning paper swirled lazily through the doorway and into the lobby.
Daniel and Misty followed the voices to the head of the east hall. The others crouched in human shape surrounded by student files. Eric clutched one. Coughing, Val said, “They’re coming! Coming!”
Marc snatched the file from Eric’s hands, throwing it down. “Need to run. Sirens. We need to shift.”
“I can’t anymore.” Eric beat his palms against the tiled floor. For a second, his skin twitched, then settled back around human muscle and bone. “That didn’t have anything to do with them.”
In the fire’s agitated light, Daniel picked up the crumpled pages Marc had thrown. Sometime, Eric had drawn two portraits of the same man in heavy lines and ballpoint pen shading. Now, they were in his file, paperclipped to a sheaf of notes from the school psychologist. The man wore dog tags in one picture. Unable to read the name, Daniel recognized Eric’s long nose and thin lips and knew they were pictures of Andrew.
Eric had to become an animal in his mind before he could become an animal physically. Memories of his brother clutched him, holding him in human shape.
Misty’s voice joined Val’s and Marc’s. “Cruisers are coming. Plea—”
A diesel motor roared to life outside the lobby. Marc scrambled back from the shriek of bending metal. The others flattened themselves almost to the floor. Flashlight beams bobbed through the windows, silhouetting firefighters in helmets and heavy coats. They were forcing their way into the school, prying one of the front doors out of its steel frame.
Flinging Eric’s file into the inferno of the main office, Daniel barreled forward and shifted skin. Under fur, fangs, and flaring eyes, he threw himself against the door. His muzzle shattered the window. Glass cut his skin. He barked and bit at the wire mesh. The bulky shadows stumbled back, dropping equipment.
He’d only startled them. As he started driving the pack upstairs, flashlights already peered through the windows behind them.
Kneeling beside Eric, Val raised her voice above Daniel’s snarl. “He can’t—”
Daniel tore Val’s sleeve, pulling her to her feet. He got Eric up too. The pack raced up the staircase. Skidding around landings and down the third-floor hall, they found the math room where they’d entered the school.
Stepping onto Mr. Nguyen’s desk, Marc climbed into the ceiling. Inching along the support beam, he changed shape and crawled through the hole to the roof. Watching, Daniel realized what Val had been trying to tell him. The hole was only wide enough for a wolf’s lean frame. If Eric couldn’t shift, he was trapped.
Voices buzzed over radios downstairs. The firefighters were inside. Misty stood on the desk but couldn’t leave her friends yet. “Forget. Please,” she begged Eric. “We have to go.”
Eric knelt, slapping his palms against the floor again. “I can’t! I can’t! I keep …” He didn’t say his brother’s name, but it didn’t help. “What did that have to do with them?”
Daniel saw the despair starting to spread. Val worried for her boyfriend. Misty worried for both of them, and Marc and Daniel for her. He had to do something before emotion kept all of them from shifting.
Pressing his face to the windows, Daniel took in as much of the campus as he could. Lights flashed everywhere now, cruisers and fire trucks that hissed like dragons. He studied the window itself. It was designed to only tilt open a few inches. Misty had bounced a desk off the ones in Mrs. MacKaye’s class without breaking the metal grill. Eric was caged.
Daniel wiped warm blood from his mouth and winced at a stab of pain. When he’d thrown himself against the front door, a piece of glass must have lodged under his skin. He’d deal with that later.
Val was trying
to comfort Eric even though he pushed her away. Daniel took her arm. “Police in the student lot.” His teeth and tongue worked carefully to form the words. “Keep them back. Back from the west side.”
“I can’t—”
“I will get him out. Downstairs. Keep police away from west side.”
Val tried to say a few words to Eric, but Daniel wouldn’t let her. “Go!” He snapped at Misty, too. “Run! Run!”
The girls scrambled through the ceiling. The smoke from the lobby was rising to the third floor. The thickening haze made Daniel dizzy and his chest burn.
Dropping to all fours, he ran into the hall, ears pricked forward. He heard firefighters in the lobby, shouting mixed with the roar of fire hoses. Others moved upward in groups, searching for victims.
Daniel listened to heavy footsteps, the creak and clank of equipment on straps. Their gear made them move even more clumsily than other humans. It was designed to protect from heat, not fangs. Daniel could take one down easily, but four in a group would be hard.
The humanity left inside him cringed from the course his thoughts were taking. He couldn’t kill the firefighters, but he couldn’t let them catch Eric, either.
He ran back to Mr. Nguyen’s room. Fear and rushing adrenaline made it hard for Daniel to shift to human shape. He struggled to hold it, the mirror opposite of the struggle Daniel once had staying in wolf skin.
Eric watched him, still slumped on the floor. Tears, from the smoke or over his brother, cut tracks through the soot on his face. Daniel grabbed Eric and made a stooped run to the doorway. They crouched on the balls of their feet. Around them, the school was pitch-black but alive with sound.
“Down stairs. Down west hall. Down hall behind the gym. Out fire door. The humans are carrying light. I’ll run ahead. Kill their lights. Turn them blind, scared of the dark.”
“But I’m huma—”
Daniel squeezed the back of his neck. “You are a wolf. You don’t need to see to know where they are. Listen.”
“I’m a wolf,” Eric wheezed, and Daniel let go. In the stairwell, the clatter of footfalls hardened, growing louder and losing its echoes, as the firefighters neared the third floor. Daniel leaned forward, balancing on his fingers. “Down stairs. Down west hall. Down hall behind the gym. Out door.”
Unleashed Page 15