I waited for something to happen. For me to die, maybe. For more pain. But there was nothing, only a feeling of calm. And Corey was holding my hand again, the way he used to hold my hand of bone and flesh.
He helped me up and took my backpack.
We climbed down into the garden.
“How are we getting there?” I asked him. I hadn’t even thought of it.
“I have something to show you,” Corey said, heading for the road.
Then, out of the shadows came the six figures. Their eyes were golden mirrors. They were brothers. Wolves.
I heard them though they did not speak in words.
Victor has been sacrificed.
All those killings—he was trying to protect you!
He thought you were his chosen bride, because he had never met a female like us before.
But you are nothing compared to him.
Bitch.
This is the third generation of our family that your family has taken.
Soon we will have our revenge.
Part of me had dreamed of a life with these men and their mother, deep in the forest where no one could find us. I would be the bride of the most handsome and most brutal of them all. I could live true to my animal nature, let the beast inside me come out whenever she wished, without having to wear a piece of metal to control her. But just as I was not my mother with her fear, I was not Sasha with her brutality. I would have to find who I was, and whoever that was lived somewhere between them. Nor was I a bride for Victor, who had taken my breath away in the shadows of my room and who had also killed all those men, men whose children (or, in the last case, whose friend) had hurt me in some way.
I lifted my silver hand in the moonlight and the six brothers lowered their heads to the ground, whining. So it affected them differently, my silver hand.
We were different. I would have been relieved at this proof that I was perhaps more human than monster. But their eyes were fixed on Corey.
He’s ours, they said. If you won’t be, sister. Our brother showed you compassion. He is gone. We are here now.
Corey squeezed my right hand so hard that it hurt. Victor was in prison and my father had put him there. I wore a silver hand but Corey had nothing to protect him, not even me anymore now that Victor was gone.
But Corey wasn’t asking me to protect him.
He was different now.
Corey’s eyes flashed. The hair on his face made him look a lot tougher. A sound stirred from his throat like the voice of the night.
A month ago, when Victor cornered us in the woods Corey had hidden behind me. But he had changed. Now he frightened me but he was also beautiful in his strength. He was everything I wanted and maybe he was different partly because of me. And it was going to be my fault when he attacked the six wolves that surrounded us and they tore him to shreds of flesh and blood.
“Corey!” I shouted. I moved toward him but he didn’t seem to hear or see me. He stepped closer to the wolves. “Corey, no!”
And then Joe Ranger was there.
He stood at the edge of the garden, wearing a plaid flannel shirt, his gun cocked on his shoulder and his eyes narrow slits. “Silver bullets, boys,” Joe said. “And it is time to leave.” Then, out of the corner of his mouth, he added, “You, too, kids.” And with his free hand he shooed us off.
Corey reached out and took the silver hand my real father had made for me in his own warm hand.
I looked back at Joe. He was standing his ground and the wolves slunk away. His eyes met mine.
“Be safe, my girl.”
Then he left, too. I watched my father become part of the trees along the gulley. My chest tightened as I realized I might never see him again. But I had ways to remember him; I had Joe Ranger’s red hair, his green eyes and his silver hand.
“Come on,” Corey said, bringing me back to him.
“Where are we going? How?”
“You’ll see.”
We were running along the road out of town but in another way I was running back through my life. Here was me lying in the hospital with Corey and Joe Ranger at my side. I looked into Joe’s eyes and saw where I had come from, the pain and also the beauty. I looked into Corey’s eyes and saw where I was going, the trepidation and the excitement. Here was me bleeding in the woods, bleeding from my ruined hand, the victim of my mother’s gunshot. Here was my mother fallen, weeping on the yellow linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor. She had not meant to hurt her daughter and destroy her family. She had been hurt, too, as she ran from her own pain, her own wild nature. Here was my father, so upright and respected by day, drinking by night, swallowing his betrayal and his rage in angry mouthfuls, sleeping in his twin bed. Here was my gentle grandfather who had not seen the destruction he caused in my mother’s life, calling her mother an angel and taking his daughter up in a helicopter to shoot wolves that showed up better against the white landscape. Here was Pace hanging from a rope in his closet, just like Michael Fairborn did long ago. Here was Pace dancing with me. Here was Victor, kneeling on my carpet, spreading roses on the bed. Here was Victor ripping the carcasses to shreds with his teeth. Here was Corey making love to me in the woods while our eyes sparkled with the light of a thousand fireflies. Here was Sasha with blood on her paws from the meat she had killed for me. Here was her husband and her father killed by my mother’s hand. Here was Corey and Pace and me exploring the ruins of buildings where ghosts mourned their unfinished lives. Here was me changing into something I had not understood, something with hair and teeth and hunger and ferocity and power. Here was me as a baby, sleeping peacefully in my mother’s arms while she dreamed of her wild lover who would never come back to her bed. Here was my mother in a helicopter, taking aim.
Corey led me to the shiny black motorcycle parked in the shadows at the side of the road.
“She’s ours,” he said, getting on. “Liv, meet Lupe, Lupe, Liv. She’ll take us all the way.”
I slung my thigh over the black leather seat and got on behind him. The engine revved and roared like a beast as we took off into the night. Wind grabbed at my hair, flaring red strands around us. I held on tight to Corey’s waist and I could smell his sweat—a scent of adventure and hope and love.
“How did you get this?” I shouted over the wind.
“I saved up for her all summer.”
“Your school money?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
On the way out of town I asked him to stop at the house on Green Street. Behind the wall of Christmas trees we could see the sharply peaked roof and the front parlor window. This time, two lights burned inside. Maybe they were fireflies. Or maybe not.
“Good-bye, Pace,” I said as we rode away.
I reached around Corey’s waist and placed my silver hand over his heart. It beat in perfect rhythm with my own. I no longer wondered who I was. I knew.
Acknowledgments
Sera Gamble suggested I take on the story of a female werewolf. Carmen Staton provided excellent werewolf research. My thanks go to my agent, Lydia Wills; my editor, Tara Weikum; and Jocelyn Davies, Laura Kaplan, Susan Katz, and everyone at Harper, as always, for supporting me and making everything possible. I would also like to thank Charlie Blakemore for his suggestions. Finally, I am grateful to Gilda Block for reading this aloud to me as I was recovering from eye surgery so that I could make the final changes to Liv’s story, and to my children for everything they are.
About the Author
FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including Weetzie Bat, Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books, the collection of stories Blood Roses, the poetry collection How to (Un)cage a Girl, the novel The Waters & the Wild, the illustrated novella House of Dolls, and the gothic vampire romance Pretty Dead. Her work is published around the world.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by F
rancesca Lia Block:
WEETZIE BAT
MISSING ANGEL JUAN
GIRL GODDESS #9: NINE STORIES
THE HANGED MAN
DANGEROUS ANGELS: THE WEETZIE BAT BOOKS
I WAS A TEENAGE FAIRY
VIOLET AND CLAIRE
THE ROSE AND THE BEAST
ECHO
GUARDING THE MOON
WASTELAND
GOAT GIRLS: TWO WEETZIE BAT BOOKS
BEAUTIFUL BOYS: TWO WEETZIE BAT BOOKS
NECKLACE OF KISSES
PSYCHE iN A DRESS
BLOOD ROSES
HOW TO (UN)cAGE A GIRL
THE WATERS & THE WILD
PRETTY DEAD
HOUSE OF DOLLS
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Frenzy
Copyright © 2010 by Francesca Lia Block
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01269-2
www.harperteen.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Block, Francesca Lia.
The frenzy / Francesca Lia Block. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When she was thirteen, something terrifying and mysterious happened to Liv that she still does not understand, and now, four years later, her dark secret threatens to tear her apart from her family and her true love.
ISBN 978-0-06-192666-2
[1. Shapeshifting—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Supernatural—Fiction. 5. Werewolves—Fiction. 6. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B61945Fr 2010 2009053453
[Fic]—dc22 CIP
AC
Typography by Alison Klapthor
10 11 12 13 14 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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