Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles #2)

by Nancy Holder

  When they got home they watched some television and then her grandfather finally headed to bed. Katelyn stayed up, reading more of In the Shadow of the Wolf and wishing again that it just had an index so she’d know she wasn’t missing anything. She finally put it down again and went to get herself some water. As she padded into the kitchen, goose bumps broke over her body.

  This time when she saw Justin staring in the kitchen window, she managed not to act surprised. She went out the back door, slipping into her shoes, and headed with him into the trees. She rubbed her arms.

  “You shouldn’t be cold,” he said with a frown.

  “All that stuff comes and goes,” she said, unwilling to tell him that she hadn’t been feeling the cold, but had been remembering her brush with a bullet.

  Finally he stopped walking and she leaned against a tree.

  “What?” she asked when he didn’t speak.

  “Kat,” he said, placing his fingers over her lips. “Thanksgiving dinner was a nightmare. He should never have invited your grandfather over. And then when he started to change at the table . . .”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “We watched that damn train wreck and we couldn’t do anything about it. But this behavior endangered the pack. And, frankly, it endangered you.” His voice softened and he cocked his head, studying her. “And that’s not something I want to go through again.”

  She agreed with everything he was saying. It had been a terrible decision to invite them over.

  “Does that mean you’re going to challenge him?” she asked him.

  Ashen-faced, he didn’t answer.

  She could almost hear questions buzzing around her head like wasps. Had he discussed challenging Lee Fenner with Lucy? How would he do it? Would they fight as wolves? What if Justin lost?

  “Settle down, darlin’,” he murmured. “You’re not involved.”

  “I’m not stupid, Justin,” she retorted. “Don’t treat me like I am.”

  “Fair enough.” He reached out a hand, and pressed his fingertips against her cheek. Then he jerked back and stuffed his hand in his pocket. “You’ve got to stay well away from me,” he reminded her, cocking his head, staring at her hungrily. “Well away.”

  She scowled at him. “I did not touch you.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “God, I hate this.”

  Finally, very quietly, he murmured, “I’m hoping it won’t come to that. I’m hoping he’ll just pick me.” He pressed his fingertips against the bridge of his nose. “Oh, God, Kat. There is nothing in me that wants to challenge him. But how can I let this go on?”

  She didn’t say anything. After a minute he seemed to pull himself together. He looked at her intently. “You’ve kept the secret about your immunity to silver, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t told anyone?”

  “No, of course not. Who would I tell?”

  He nodded. “We’re going to get through this. It’s going to be okay. I promise you.”

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek and then disappeared into the night.

  Katelyn hurried back to the porch and made it inside without anyone seeing her or shooting at her. She stood in the kitchen for several minutes, staring out the window into the darkness.

  She was immune to silver and in the garage were a whole lot of silver bullets, enough to take down the entire pack. Certainly enough to take down Mr. Fenner. She felt a twinge of guilt for not having told Justin about them.

  Grabbing a flashlight, she headed back outside and crept into the garage to investigate the box with the ammo case in it. She opened it again and picked up one of the bullets. If she kept it, would her grandfather notice? She debated for a long time, and finally decided to leave them exactly as she had found them.

  Then she continued her systematic search through the other boxes in the garage, half expecting to find a special rifle or handgun made to fire silver bullets. But she found nothing to tie the silver bullets to anything else. The other boxes were filled with old pots and pans, clothes, and a lot of books and papers from Dr. Mordecai McBride’s years as a university professor. Sighing, she closed one box and opened another. She didn’t know how to tell a gun that shot silver bullets from a regular one, anyway. She didn’t even know if there was a difference.

  She was getting tired. One more box and then she’d give up for the night. She opened up the next box and discovered that it was full of old pictures, many of them on thick cardboard. She picked up a handful and scrutinized them by flashlight, then smiled, charmed. They were of her grandfather and a young woman with her father’s dimpled chin and long, straight nose. This had to be the grandmother she had never met.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  The couple had gone hunting together. And fishing. There was the same kind of canoe that was in this very garage — maybe the same one, even. She tried to remember what she’d been told about how her grandmother had died. An illness? She couldn’t remember.

  There weren’t very many photographs — not enough for an entire lifetime — and soon she was finished. There had to be more, somewhere. But they would have to wait.

  She was just about to put them back when she caught sight of a yellowed bit of paper at the very bottom of the box. Setting down the stack of pictures, she picked it up and unfolded it. It was a clipping from a newspaper article. She flipped it over, shining her flashlight on it and the title jumped out at her.

  RARE WOLF SIGHTING IN TAHOE?

  Her heart skipped a beat. There was some faint writing in the margins that she couldn’t quite make out.

  She began to read the article:

  Tahoe — A visitor hiking yesterday claims to have encountered an injured wolf. The animal appeared to have been shot but when the man attempted to help, the wolf bit him and ran off. Wolf sightings are extremely rare in the Tahoe basin. Since wolves are migratory it is likely that this creature is not native to the area but traveled down from Oregon.

  “We believe this was a coyote sighting,” said Fish and Game spokeswoman Georgia Fullerton. “Because of habitat encroachment, our coyotes are becoming more brazen in their encounters with humans.”

  However, the hiker, attorney Sean McBride from Los Angeles, vacationing with his wife, remains adamant that his attacker was a wolf. The injury was not deemed serious, nor was the wolf assumed to be rabid. McBride was treated at an urgent care facility, and then released.

  There was a roaring in her ears as Katelyn stared at the article, reading, rereading. Swaying, she reached out a hand and steadied herself against a pile of boxes. Her chest squeezed hard, and she grabbed her side, afraid her ribs were going to crack; she stumbled and leaned against the boxes.

  Her father, bitten by a wolf? How come she’d never heard anything about it? In a daze, she located the date of the article, and saw that it was the same year that he was killed. They’d come home from that trip without saying a word about an attack to her. Or maybe she’d forgotten. She’d only been eleven years old. But would she actually forget being told that a wolf had bitten her father?

  Maybe they didn’t want to scare me.

  Or . . . maybe they didn’t want her to know.

  But people did get bitten by wild animals. There were mountain lion warnings all over L.A. She remembered a story about a six-year-old boy who had been killed by a coyote in a park in Long Beach.

  Just because it had happened to her, it didn’t mean anything had happened to her father.

  Oh, yes, it does.

  Quivering, she tried to straighten the pictures and put them back into the box; but she dropped them and they scattered on the floor. In the nearest photo, the face of her grandmother smiled up at her. Surrounded by trees, she was calmly holding a hunting rifle. Groaning, Katelyn dropped into a squat to gather them all up. She couldn’t feel them in her hands. She was numb.

  She replaced the box lid and threaded her way out of the maze of boxes, clutching the article in her hand. She made it upstairs t
o her room, heart thundering, and shut the door. She sank down on her bed, clicked on her reading lamp, and shoved the article underneath the light, where she could make out the words scrawled in the margins in red pen.

  See, I told you.

  It was her mother’s handwriting.

  Katelyn stared at the words, clutching the newspaper article until her knuckles were white. Her mother’s distinctive loops and swirls blazed like neon. Why would her mom have sent the article to her grandfather? What had she told him? That there were wolves in that part of the country, that her husband had been bitten?

  Her father.

  Attacked by a wolf.

  She felt like she was drowning, being sucked down into a whirlpool of pain and fear and darkness that she didn’t have the strength to escape. In her mind, she heard the rumbling of the earthquake, the staccato tapping of the couch against the hardwood floor. The fire, already devouring the downstairs of their house.

  Her mother’s voice, penetrating the fog of the painkiller Katelyn had taken to ease her injury. Katelyn, so out of it she’d barely been able to function. Slowing her mother down, ruining her chance to escape. Killing her.

  Wheezing, she spun around on her bed and came face-to-face with the bust that Trick had made for her. She stared into the cold, unseeing eyes and felt the dam inside her break.

  “Mom, what did you tell him?” she whispered. “Please.”

  Rage, fear of the unknown dragged her under. Tears rolled down her face. Barely breathing, she stared at the article.

  “No,” she whispered, over and over and over again.

  ~

  Full sunshine roused Katelyn and she bolted upright. A glance at her phone told her it was nearly ten. Moving like someone in a dream, she dressed and stumbled downstairs.

  I can’t ask Grandpa about the article, she thought. I’ll say the wrong thing.

  And she couldn’t face him, either. She had to get away, be alone, make sense of this, make sense of anything.

  She stepped off the last stair and fixed her eyes on the front door. She didn’t know where he was, but if she could go—

  “Hey, sleepyhead.”

  She jumped. Her grandfather was standing in the entryway to the kitchen, sipping coffee with a look of amusement on his face.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you. Want some scrambled eggs?”

  “I have to go over to someone’s house to study,” she blurted. “I have to leave now.”

  “You can’t work on an empty stomach. C’mon. I’ll whip ’em right up.” He gave her a wink. “That’s an order, Private.”

  Defeated, she joined him in the kitchen, plopping down at the table.

  He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the egg carton, the butter dish, and a quart of milk. “I’ve still got some coffee left.” He opened the cabinet for a cup, and she spotted another one on the counter. “I could use some more myself. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  Alarm bells clanged. Had he heard her go into the garage? She hadn’t been very careful about how much noise she’d made when she’d come back in, because she’d been so upset.

  “Want some milk in your coffee?” he asked her. “It’s a mite on the strong side.”

  “I was going to leave early, stop by the library and grab some research books,” she said. That wasn’t what he had asked her, he’d asked about milk. A normal, rational girl would have just answered yes or no. But she wasn’t normal and the whole world was irrational.

  “I’ll make it quick.” He grabbed the other mug from the counter, filled both mugs with coffee, and poured a dollop of milk in one.

  She bit her lip, really wanting to leave, but she took the cup and held it, tracing the swirl of milk that hadn’t been mixed in. Maybe it would be good to have a late breakfast with him.

  Because . . . maybe she shouldn’t leave.

  Maybe she should ask a few questions.

  Don’t, she warned herself. Stop.

  “You okay?” he asked, cracking an egg into a bowl and dropping the shells into the trashcan under the sink. “You seem a bit jumpy.”

  “I had a bad dream,” she said, gaze fixed on the coffee.

  He grunted and she heard him moving around, then whipping the eggs.

  “Dreams are your brain’s way of telling you stuff that you’re too busy to pay attention to during the day.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, we see and hear so much during the day that we don’t consciously think about and our brains just catalogue it all when we go to sleep.” He got out a pan and put it on the stove. She heard the whoosh of the gas as he lit the burner.

  She took a sip of coffee. It was as strong as an espresso.

  “I didn’t dream about anything from yesterday.”

  “Not in any way you would recognize normally. The brain’s all about metaphor, imagery, when you’re asleep.” He added a pat of butter to the pan.

  And suddenly she had an in for asking him what she wanted.

  “I dreamed about my dad and playing in the snow with him in Tahoe.”

  “Happier times,” her grandfather said with a grunt, pouring in the egg mixture.

  Much happier.

  “I remember he and mom used to love to go up there. Sometimes they took me. But sometimes they left me home.”

  He nodded. “Moms and dads need some alone time now and then. It didn’t mean they didn’t want you around.”

  “No, it was all good,” she assured him, glancing up, then back down as her resolve began to waiver. “I always got to sleep over at a friend’s house. I was just remembering this morning, though, I didn’t get to go with them the last time they went. Daddy told me he was hiking in the woods and he found a — an injured wolf. And it — it bit him. He showed me the stitches.”

  Lies. No one had ever said anything to her about a wolf. But now her words hung in the air, and she clutched the cup hard as she waited to see what effect they had.

  At the stove her grandfather’s back stiffened.

  Oh, God, she thought, lowering the cup to the table. Feeling her chest hitch, her muscles tighten. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead. Her mouth tasted like acid.

  “Did he ever tell you about that?” she pushed.

  “No, he didn’t.” He grabbed a plate and scooped the egg on it. Then he took it to the table and set it down in front of her. But he didn’t look at her.

  “Maybe Mom told you? I mean, it was a pretty big deal.”

  “No,” he insisted.

  More lies. This time from him. And she could tell that he hadn’t simply forgotten, because he still wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Your pa should have known better than to approach a wild animal like that. I thought I taught him better.” He was staring off into space. “Damn fool,” he whispered.

  There was so much anger and bitterness in his voice that it felt like a slap against her cheek. But it wasn’t directed at her, and she knew it.

  Ask him. Tell him. Her blood roared in her ears. She braced herself.

  Stop.

  Every survival instinct she had clamped down on her, ordering her to be silent. If she did this wrong, if she screwed up—

  “Gotta run,” she said, sounding agitated even to herself.

  He didn’t seem to notice. He was lost in his own thoughts.

  “Have a nice time,” he said from the sink.

  She headed for the front door and ran to her car as horrible suspicions rushed in to fill the numb void in her mind, in her heart. The aching chasm. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror.

  She wanted to go away. She had a car; she could take the road to Bentonville. And do what? She didn’t have enough money for a plane ticket. Maybe she could call Kimi and ask her mom to buy her one. Or Trick—

  “You stupid, stupid . . .” She was yelling at her reflection, but in her mind’s eye, she saw her father. Her father, and a wolf.

  And her mother’s handwriting.

  Justin insisted on
leading her into the Fenners’ forest, then blindfolding her so that she would have to depend on her hearing. She protested, and he just laughed it off. He was in a better mood than he had been the night before. Somehow it made it that much harder to deal with her own drama, the fears that had latched hold of her and wouldn’t let go.

  Dad, what happened to you? she kept thinking over and over again.

  “Katelyn, do what I say,” Justin prodded, as they tracked into a stand of maples that had lost all their leaves. “Put this on.”

  He held out a black scarf. She made no move to take it. He narrowed his eyes at her, tapping his cowboy boot against a fallen tree trunk.

  “I’ll be nearby,” he promised. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Defeated, she positioned the scarf over her eyes and tied it at the back. Then she heard twigs crackling as he walked away.

  “Listen to the forest,” he said. “Tell me what it tells you.”

  She stood quietly, her heart pounding, raising her chin as smells swirled around her: pine needles, underbrush, wet earth, and the delicious collection of odors that made up Justin’s nearly irresistible scent. She even smelled her own smell; she had been using a bar of lavender soap she’d bought in a gift shop in Little Rock.

  And leather and soap: Trick. Was his scent on her?

  Then she heard a voice, echoing and dreamy, as if it were coming from inside her head:

  Katelyn.

  You are mine.

  Marked.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  And someone breathing near her.

  “Justin?” she called, reaching her hands to pull down the blindfold.

  “Cordelia?” Mr. Fenner said.

  As Katelyn peered over the scarf, she saw Mr. Fenner not five feet away. He was holding a rifle in his arms. She took a step backwards.

  “Honey,” he said, walking toward her, and she stood statue-still, terrified. “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

  “Um,” she said, scanning their surroundings. “Justin?” she called softly. “Help?”