Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles #2)

by Nancy Holder

  “If you say so,” she replied.

  “I say so.” He bent forward and offered his cheek. As she rose on tiptoe to kiss it, he swiveled his head, as if he was going to try to kiss her on her mouth. Then he stopped himself and, sighing, accepted her gesture of pack kinship.

  Tuesday, Beau was looking pretty tired during history. After class she stopped him.

  “Everything okay with your grandmother?”

  “She was a little worse, but she’s doing better now.”

  “Did you find a gun in your grandmother’s room?” she asked, trying to force a smile. Mostly she wanted to figure out if he’d had any time to think about what his grandmother had said and get suspicious of her, Katelyn.

  “No.” He flashed a disbelieving smile. “Granny wasn’t loaded. I did find something else interesting, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The missing book.”

  She stared at him, mind racing.

  He grinned. “Yup, like some crazy old hoarder, my grandma was the one who had In the Shadow of the Wolf out from the school library. Heaven only knows how she got it or when. For all I know she checked it out when she was still in high school.”

  He was trying to be funny, she registered that, but she couldn’t connect on that level because all she could think about was the book and what it might say about the Hellhound. “What did you do with it?”

  He reached into his backpack. When he handed it to her, she swore her fingers tingled on the old leather cover.

  “You can take it home and start reading,” he said. “I didn’t know where to start, but you did that paper.”

  “Thanks,” she said quickly, tucking it against her chest.

  “Let me know what you find.”

  “Of course.”

  Never.

  All through training with Justin she was miles away, thinking about the book in her backpack and praying that no one went snooping and discovered it. They were working on her sense of hearing and she just couldn’t get it to go into overdrive, too busy focusing on what she might find in its pages. Justin seemed distracted, too, and sent her home early. When she finally made it into her room, she slipped the book out of her backpack. It was dusty and worn, the white letters stamped into the blue cover practically illegible.

  She flipped it open, eager to read the secrets it kept. But the print was tiny and there didn’t seem to be any kind of table of contents. No index, either. She was going to have to read from the beginning.

  The entire first page was one paragraph.

  Welcome, Gentle Reader, to the myriad stories of the founding of Wolf Springs. This bucolic town, nestled in the beauteous mountains of the Ozark Region, was first settled by Spanish missionaries, in hopes of converting the local savages to the joys of the Gospel, as set down by our Lord, Jesus Christ. Ah, what a task lay before the good padres, faced with the stubbornness of the primitive innocent—

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Katelyn muttered, skimming the rest of the long-winded introduction. She turned the page.

  — for is it not true that salvation can only be found in a society based on Christian values?

  With a groan, she flipped back to the first page and picked up where she had left off.

  And as many have often surmised, the soul of the childlike native must also be brought to the Lord—

  The book progressed from describing the attempts of the missionaries to convert the natives to a detailed description of the building of each structure in the town. The dry goods store. The barber shop.

  The blacksmith also ran a foundry, kept busy by hunters who requested peculiar casings for their ammunition. Horses for hire were stabled there as well.

  She remembered that when she’d been in the sick room at school, Mr. Hastings had called Sergeant Lewis about Mr. Henderson’s absence. And he had described Mr. Henderson’s house as “by the old stables.”

  She made a second mental note, and kept on reading.

  And then . . . a secret.

  The Lost Mine of Wolf Springs. A Discussion.

  The author laid it all out — the Madre Vena, the claims by Xavier Cazador to have found it in the nineteenth century. The outlaw, Jubal DeAndrew, who had threatened to kill him if he didn’t reveal where it was.

  It is said that a painting of the mine’s entrance was created by Xavier Cazador for Jubal DeAndrew. In the foreground stood a heart-shaped boulder, and in the background one could view a silvery waterfall. But the true artistry of the painting lay in this: a false signature could be scraped away, and beneath it one could learn the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates for the mine.

  Her mouth dropped open. She had been right about the sketch, and the painting of her grandfather’s that had been stolen showed the mine’s entrance. Was it possible that the stolen one had been the original and had the coordinates on it?

  It is said that although Cazador created this painting for DeAndrew, it was never given to its intended recipient. Cazador died, and DeAndrew went missing. One surmises that foul play might be blamed, perhaps by a rival interested in the painting.

  Her head swam with the possibility. People were born, lived, and died in Wolf Springs. Their attics had to be bulging with things that might hold the key to unlocking so many of the town’s dark secrets. Her grandfather might have had a fake — a replica — or it could have been the actual painting. He said his father had picked one of the paintings up at an estate sale. Was that the one? And was it the original?

  The question was: had someone else figured out that he had it? Had they stolen the silver and the other painting only to cover up the theft of this vital clue?

  She tingled all over and eagerly turned the page.

  The mine is said to be guarded by a monstrous beast, a Hellhound, who keeps thieves at bay and protects the treasure as if it is his own. A notable detail about the legend surrounding the Hellhound is that the creature shows up in historical accounts of the area years before there is any mention of the mine. Whether this is an oversight is unclear. It is possible that when people learned of the mine they connected the creature to it as a means to scare others away.

  To her disappointment there was nothing else she didn’t already know about the Hellhound, at least not in that section. Her eyes blurred, as she realized that she had to be more tired than she thought. She kept trying to read the tiny words, but her head bobbed. With a reluctant sigh, she closed the book. It would have to wait until the morning.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The clicking mixed with the sound of drums. Both getting closer. Both in time with the beat of her heart.

  “I found this for you, a perfect fit,” Babette said, holding up some coveralls.

  “But I won’t be digging in the dirt,” she protested.

  “Don’t think you won’t before it’s over.”

  Click.

  She turned around, but no one was there. Just the walls of the cave. They were closing in on her and she smelled . . . something.

  Aluminum.

  No! Silver. Far more precious. Lovely but deadly.

  “Just like you,” Justin whispered in her ear.

  His breath was hot; it tickled.

  But then he was gone and the cave was shrinking around her. The walls were closing in and she knew that they were going to bury her.

  And in the darkness something growled.

  Laughed.

  Cried.

  “Katelyn,” it whispered.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Katelyn opened her eyes with a gasp. She was in bed and something was scratching at the skylight above her head. Nails on the glass going click, click, click.

  She looked up.

  There: a shadow darker than any shadow, and eyes that burned like the fires of hell.

  She screamed.

  14

  As she screamed, the eyes disappeared. She leaped for the door at the same time her grandfather barreled in, wild-eyed,
a gun in his hand.

  “Katie, what is it?”

  “I saw it,” she whispered.

  “What? What’d you see?”

  And as her senses came back to her, she realized she couldn’t tell him. She was sure that what had been on her skylight had been more than just a werewolf: she was certain it had been the Hellhound. But either way she couldn’t risk her grandfather going to investigate.

  “What?”

  She wiped her forehead and managed an embarrassed, if extremely forced, smile. “Sorry. I — I guess I was having a nightmare.” She crossed her arms. “I feel like such an idiot.”

  He visibly relaxed. “You need anything? Drink of water?”

  “No, I think I’ll be fine,” she managed to say.

  She strained her ears, listening for the sounds of something walking around on the roof, but heard nothing. Was it possible she had just imagined something staring down at her?

  “Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “I will,” she barely managed to choke out around the sudden lump in her throat.

  As soon as he closed the door, she wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against it. She thought of Beau’s grandmother stroking out because she had seen “a demon” at her window. Why would she and Katelyn both be getting visits? As far as she knew, Beau’s family had no connection to the werewolves.

  Maybe it was because she knew there was something wrong and she told people.

  Katelyn hugged herself even tighter. It was one more reason not to endanger those she loved. But she couldn’t just roll over and stay ignorant instead of asking questions that someone needed to answer.

  Like who is killing people. And what happened here forty years ago.

  A sleepless night led to a difficult day trying to focus at school. As soon as it was over, she drove over to Babette’s. Cordelia had once said that Babette was “gossip central,” that the store owner knew everything that was going on in Wolf Springs. Katelyn wanted to know what Babette knew about the killings — or even what the woman thought she knew.

  Babette waved at her from behind the register as she entered, and Katelyn’s stomach tightened at the thought of talking to her. Katelyn didn’t know her well, but Babette had seemed very shrewd the first time they’d met. Katelyn was anxious that she’d reveal too much of herself from the questions she asked.

  To her surprise, though, Babette turned away from her. It was then that Katelyn saw that the store owner was talking to a police officer in a khaki uniform — not Sergeant Lewis, so it had to be Wolf Springs’ other one, whose name she didn’t know. She was a woman, about five-eight, with heavy dark eyebrows, a round face, and brown hair pulled back in a bun.

  A bolt of unease shot through Katelyn. Something about the woman was off and it was all she could do to keep herself from walking backwards out the door onto the street and running for her car. Babette’s brow was furrowed and she was drumming her fingers on the countertop. Babette was nervous, too.

  Pretending to examine a couple of Fifties poodle skirts, Katelyn surreptitiously studied the shop owner. She could see the pulse in the woman’s throat beating hard and fast and she could smell the tantalizing scent of fear coming off her. What on earth could Babette possibly have to hide?

  “Becky was in to buy a new dress just before she got killed. She didn’t say or do anything strange,” Babette said to the police offer.

  “A new dress? Special occasion?” the officer asked sharply.

  “A party, maybe. I heard that she was dating Trick Sokolov.”

  The officer nodded. “Yeah, I heard that, too.”

  No, no she wasn’t. She made that up, Katelyn thought, afraid for Trick. Except . . . that was what Sam had told her. Maybe Sam had been covering for Trick because Sam knew he liked Katelyn. Maybe Trick had been dating Becky, and did heartlessly dump her.

  “Okay. What about Haley?” the officer was asking. “Did she say or do anything out of the norm?”

  Babette shook her head, unconsciously running her fingertips back and forth along the counter. “You knew those girls, Luanne. They were lovely young ladies.”

  Intrigued, Katelyn drifted from the skirts to some neon-colored fringed Sixties purses, which were hung on a display closer to the register.

  “Well, thanks, Babette. I’ll be in touch if I have more questions,” the policewoman — Luanne — said.

  Katelyn kept her head lowered, hoping Officer Luanne wouldn’t take the opportunity to interview the rest of the people in the store. There were only a couple of other shoppers, older women Katelyn didn’t recognize.

  But the policewoman left, and Katelyn sagged with relief. She set down a lime-green purse as one of the two women scurried over to Babette.

  “Was it awful?” she asked, and Katelyn blinked at the weird question.

  “It sure wasn’t pleasant,” Babette said with a humorless laugh.

  “I just know they’re going to ask me questions I can’t answer,” the other woman said, wringing her hands. And she, too, smelled of fear.

  Katelyn blinked, surprised. The women weren’t werewolves. She had met the entire pack. What secrets could they be hiding that were terrible enough to cause them to be afraid of talking to a cop that at least one of them knew on a first name basis?

  Did they know about werewolves, or were there skeletons in their own closets they didn’t want seeing the light of day?

  Welcome to Wolf Springs, she thought.

  “Now, Estelle, you have nothing to worry about,” Babette reassured the other woman. “I’m sure none of us have,” she said, much louder and more pointedly.

  Katelyn didn’t flinch. She wouldn’t let her know she’d been eavesdropping. She set down the purse and glided soundlessly to a rack of dresses.

  A glorious red dress caught her eye, strapless with a long, flowing skirt. Red was the color of boldness. And right now she felt she could use some. She took it into the dressing room to try it on and attempted to listen in on more conversation, but the bell on the shop door tinkled. She assumed the two shoppers had left.

  The dress fit and she hurried to the register to pay for it. As Babette rang it up, she told herself to ask questions. That was why she had come.

  “So, um,” she said, and she smelled Babette’s fear again. It was contagious. Katelyn didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing around this woman. So much for bold. “Thanks,” she said. She told herself she could come back another time, when she wasn’t so rattled.

  “Of course, honey,” Babette said, without looking at her.

  Katelyn’s cell rang. She fished it out of her pocket and realized when she saw that the number was blocked that it must be Cordelia or Dom. She grabbed her purchase.

  “Thanks,” she said again as she struggled to get out the door.

  “We have better reception inside the shop than out there,” Babette said.

  “Thanks, it’s okay,” Katelyn replied, practically tripping over a mannequin in her effort to get somewhere private in time to answer the phone.

  Once on the street she had to risk it. “Hello?” she answered, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Kat.” It was Cordelia, sounding tired and upset, nothing like the girl Katelyn had first met. Being away from her family — from all she had ever known — was changing Cordelia. Turning her into someone far weaker. Or is it from being around the Gaudins?

  Katelyn wrestled her Subaru’s door open and threw the bag inside, following it quickly. She slammed the door closed.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Have you found the mine yet?”

  “No,” she said, hating to admit it. “But I have that sketch of the heart-shaped rock and the waterfall that shows the entrance to the mine. Now I just have to figure out where they are.”

  She had only spent a couple of minutes staring at the sketch, just enough to realize they were identical to the elements of the painting that had been stolen from the cabin. She was fairly certain
that that, and not the silver or other valuables, had been what the thief had really been after. But who else knew that her grandfather had owned the painting all this time?

  “Kat, you have to find it. You have to help me.”

  It was too much. Katelyn was sick of other people telling her what she had to do. Everyone was threatening her, telling her the way she had to act, the things she had to say. And all the while something was stalking her and she still had no idea who it was that had shot at her.

  “You know, I’m doing my best, but I don’t understand what exactly the urgency is. I mean, you like Dom. You told me so. Do you hate him now? Has he hurt you?”

  Cordelia sighed. “You don’t understand. How could you? This world is so new to you. Of course I still like Dom — I wouldn’t have called him if I didn’t. Even if it meant dying on my own. But this is so messed up. I don’t want to be cut off from my family, from my father and everyone I’ve ever known. Every minute I’m here I feel like a traitor. And that’s how everyone thinks of me. I’m going to have to declare loyalty, and I — I don’t know if I can do that.” She said the last words in a whisper.

  “Didn’t you tell me your dad used to be into you marrying him?”

  “If we formally allied the packs,” Cordelia said. “If I was alpha of our pack, like Dom is the alpha of his. Then it would have been sort of like one pack. But obviously, that’s not the case.”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” Katelyn said, hearing her own misery.

  “You need to do more and you need to do it soon. So, um, Dom . . . Dom wants you to spy on my family for him.”

  Katelyn’s stomach did a flip. “No way,” she said.