“We’ll either have to catch the Rabid when he leaves the cabin, or we’ll have to lure the kids away from him.” Those were the only two options I could see, and I wasn’t fond of either of them.
“Problem,” Lake said out loud. “If we lure the kids away to attack the Rabid, we’ll have to split up.”
Needless to say, after the last time, none of them were fond of that idea.
“Problem.” Chase ran one hand up his arm as he spoke. I doubted he even noticed he was doing it. “We can’t just wait for Prancer to leave his house. We don’t have time.”
I looked down at my watch, as if there was even the slightest chance that it would tell me how long we had before Ali and Mitch figured out where Lake and I had gone, or how long it would take Callum to respond to the psychic beacon that had gone up the second I’d rewired Devon’s and Lake’s bonds. For that matter …
“Problem,” I said. “If the Senate is making the Rabid a deal, they’ll probably come here to do it in person.” That was the way it was with werewolf bargains. Like my permissions, the alphas’ deal with the devil would require a certain amount of ceremony.
“Okay, so we can’t just wait it out and hope the Rabid leaves his cabin sometime soon, and we can’t risk splitting up to lead his harem on a merry little chase. …”
The fact that Lake had referred to the wolves as a “harem” did not escape my attention, but I wasn’t about to touch that issue—or the vibes I was getting from the bond between us—with a twenty-foot pole.
“We’ll have to lure him out,” I said instead. Chase leaned toward me, the way a plant turns toward the sun. “If we can’t go to him, we’ll have to bring him to us.”
Now.
“Hmmmmm,” Devon said. “If I was a psychotic werewolf who had a fetish for turning small, defenseless children into my own personal lapdogs, what would it take to get me to leave my happy little family to come into town?”
In the back of my mind, an answer began to surface, but before I could verbalize my half-formed plan, Lake and Devon both started to glare at me.
I turned to Chase, looking for backup. His face was set, his expression stony. I laced my fingers through his and looked him straight in the eye, folding myself into his mind, absorbing his objections and showing him my need to do this.
“We’re not using you as bait,” Lake said, pulling me reluctantly back into my own body. “And don’t you argue with me, Bryn, because if this guy didn’t already have his own little party going on in the woods, you would never agree to let me lure him into town by letting him know there was a female Were there.”
She was right, but we also didn’t have any other choices. The Rabid didn’t need females. He didn’t want them. But he was in the business of making werewolves and apparently had a way of identifying the kind of people who could survive the Change. People like me. Resilients.
Naming the knack and those who had it satisfied me, but it did nothing to distract me from the fact that if our Rabid was a psycho, the fact that the Resilient in question was the one who’d gotten away might be more enticing than any of us knew.
“He has a girl out there,” I said. “About our age. Her name is Madison, and she died when she was six years old. Not really, but that’s what her family thinks, and that’s when her life ended. She was six; I was four. As far as we know, mine was the only attack that was ever interrupted by other wolves. Some of the Rabid’s other victims might have ended up dead, and Callum’s pack found Chase after the fact, but I’m the only one who got away absolutely unscathed. He never even got the chance to attack me, and he really, really wanted to.”
No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end.
But he hadn’t found me. Not in time. I knew Weres well enough to know that predators didn’t enjoy giving up their prey. If Callum hadn’t taken me into his pack, the Rabid probably would have come for me again. And again. And again, until he succeeded.
I said as much out loud, and my logic hung in the air.
Who better to play bait than the one who got away?
“I got away, too,” Chase said, bringing our joined hands to my stomach, like all of his problems could be solved by holding me tighter. “First when he attacked me, and later when we severed the hold he had on my mind.”
Chase was right. The Rabid would want him. Want to hurt him. Want to make him pay. An acidic, burning feeling flared inside of me at the idea of letting Chase play bait.
“Absolutely not.”
“God, Bryn! You are such a hypocrite. At least Chase isn’t human! At least he can protect himself. If this guy gets ahold of you—”
“Don’t throw my species in my face,” I said, facing Lake down. “How would you feel if your dad locked you up in a glass room somewhere because you were female, and male werewolves were always going to be bigger and physically stronger than you were? Maybe this Rabid would come if Chase was the bait, but he’d definitely come expecting a lot more of a fight than he would from little old human me.”
Support for my position came from the most unlikely ally. “Bryn’s right,” Devon said, his voice low and contemplative in a way that made me think his desire to Shift was strong but controlled. “Believe me when I say that I wish that she wasn’t, but girlie knows her business on this one. This guy is sick, and if he thinks Bryn is waiting for him in town with a little bow around her neck, he’s not going to be able to resist. Not even if he suspects it is a trap.”
Chase growled, and the sound seemed to jump from his throat to Lake’s. Neither one of them were happy with this plan, and the electricity in the air told me that we were about to be having a debate of a different kind. Once one of them Shifted, they all would, and then I’d be arguing with their wolves instead of people, and having seen the way Chase’s wolf thought of me, I doubted that would go down in favor of my plan.
Protect.
Protect.
Protect.
“Fine, I get it. You guys want to protect me. But what about the kids out there who Wilson hasn’t attacked yet? Who would we rather set him up against—me or them? Because if we don’t move quickly enough, if someone gets here and stops us, that’s what’s going to happen. At least I can fight back.”
Protect.
Protect.
Protect.
None of them were convinced—not even Devon, who’d spoken up on my behalf.
“I can fight back,” I said again, “and you guys can cover me. Lake brought a freaking munitions store with her. We’ve got every weapon imaginable. You guys stay just out of range, and as soon as he shows, you descend, and we pump him full of so much sterling that he’s puking silver.”
If they wanted to protect me, they could. They could be my backup; once we got Wilson into town, I’d even step back and leave the kill to someone else. But first, we had to get him into town, and this was our best chance to do it.
“How’s he going to know you’re there?” Lake asked finally. “We can’t exactly take out an ad.”
I glanced at Chase and thought of the way this Rabid had tracked us both, set us up, and moved in for the not-quite kill.
“How did he track us in the first place?” I asked, throwing out the rhetorical question. “Scent, genotype, Craigslist—I don’t care. Maybe he just has a knack for finding Resilients. And even if he doesn’t, at least one of those kids saw me in the woods. This guy’s a hunter, and I’d be very surprised if he didn’t already have my scent. He’ll come. But if we want to make doubly sure, I’d lay money on someone in town having his number.” As segregated as Ark Valley was, it still abided by the natural laws of small towns. Everyone had everyone’s phone number, if they had a phone. “I’ll go to the restaurant or the hardware store or wherever and ask whoever’s in charge to give Wilson a call, something along the lines of ‘There’s a girl here asking for you. She says her name is Bronwyn.’”
“That’ll do it,” Dev said. “Crankypants can’t possibly know that many Bronw
yns.”
None of them were happy with the idea, but at this point, we didn’t have any other options. It hurt my ego to admit it, but I could do more to hurt the Rabid as bait than I ever would as a hunter. As long as he ended up dead, that was something I could live with. And as I looked at my friends and at Chase, one by one, they gave me their silent consent, even though I knew that if something happened to me and victory came at too high a cost, none of them could live with it.
“Look at the bright side, guys. He’s not going to kill me. Worse comes to worst, he’ll attack me, and I’ll Change.” The words hung in the air, but no one was comforted by my bravado. Not even me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“CAN I GET YOU ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE?”
My cup was still three-quarters full, and the waitress hadn’t bothered to bring the pot back with her, so I recognized a fact-finding mission when I saw one. Towns like Ark Valley and Alpine Creek didn’t get many visitors, and I was well acquainted with the expression in the waitress’s eyes: a particular mix of boredom, curiosity, and suspicion. She hadn’t hesitated when I’d asked her to call “Mr. Wilson,” immediately replying “The one who lives in the woods?” and letting loose with a sound somewhere between a hmmm and a harrumph, I couldn’t tell which.
“I’m good, thanks,” I said. She waited for a moment and then gave me a look, one I’d seen before on a variety of other faces, telling me that I was different and editorializing on that fact. Out of habit, I held the woman’s gaze, and she made that same hybrid sound a second time. She wanted to look away and couldn’t seem to bring herself to do it. Finally, I let her go, decreasing the intensity of my stare without ever taking my eyes from her face. She looked down, and I turned my attention back to my coffee: too bitter for my taste and so rich in smell that I couldn’t keep from believing that maybe the next sip wouldn’t taste quite so bad.
“Suit yourself,” the waitress mumbled, and I could almost hear the admonition—you’re an odd one, aren’t you?—in her tone. “Mr. Wilson said to tell you he’s on his way.” The emphasis on the Rabid’s name told me that I wasn’t the only one this woman saw as an outsider, and not for the first time, I wondered why humans seemed to trust their eyes more than their instincts when their gut said something was off.
Wilson wasn’t just odd. He was a psychopath, and he wasn’t human. And there I was, playing bait. I steadied my hands on the coffee cup and let the smell of java stave off the shard of fear that wanted to jab into my stomach and my side and the oldest, most instinctual part of my brain.
Did you guys get that? I asked silently, sending the thought out to the others in the hopes of keeping them from noticing the slight acceleration in my heartbeat. The Rabid’s on his way.
From the edges of town, Devon, Lake, and Chase replied in the affirmative. It was killing them to hold off, to leave me in this two-bit restaurant alone, but our target might not come if he knew I had backup, so they had to stay far enough away that he wouldn’t sense them until it was too late. Once the Rabid got here, I’d stall. Devon, Lake, and Chase would get into position, and then I’d let Wilson lead me outside. He’d feel them coming, but we were banking on the fact that once he saw me, once I was so close to being in his grasp, he wouldn’t be able to just walk away.
Protect.
Protect.
Protect.
My pack, as small as it was, wanted to come. They wanted to come now. Their wolves were fighting for control, gnashing their teeth, tearing their way to the surface.
Calm. Down, I told them, and with my words, they settled. Waiting. Soon, they would attack.
I sat there for five minutes, ten, fifteen, and two cups of coffee, before a man with brown hair and kind brown eyes slid into the booth across from me. In the corners of my mind, I felt Chase, Devon, and Lake release, sprinting toward us.
Five minutes.
I just had to stall for five minutes.
“You were looking for me, little one?”
I recognized his voice from Chase’s dreams—Change. Change back. Change. Change back—and it disturbed me that he’d called me “little one,” the same endearment Callum had used the night he’d saved me from this man’s jaws. It disturbed me even more that up close, Wilson didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a man, the monstrous features in my dreams—teeth smeared with blood, sparkling eyes—melding into something almost run-of-the-mill in person. He could have been Callum or Chase or the one I’d once called “Daddy.” He could have been Casey, installing a nanny cam in the twins’ bedroom.
The monster under my bed, the wolf stalking my nightmares, the person who’d changed the course of my entire life in one night—he looked human, and he wasn’t supposed to.
“You hurt me,” I said. This wasn’t how I’d planned to stall, but I was struggling to remember that this was part of a plan at all.
“Hurting you was never my intention,” the man said. “I wanted to give you something. A gift.” He paused. “I would have taken care of you.”
Teeth ripping into Daddy’s throat. Someone laughing. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. The Big Bad Wolf always wins in the end.”
“Liar.”
I’d been in his head. I’d seen Madison through his eyes, felt his satisfaction in the way that children looked covered in blood, and I knew, just by looking at him, that this was a man who had killed long before he’d discovered the key to making new wolves. Maybe his attack on my family hadn’t been his first. Maybe there had been others, and by nothing more than coincidence, one of them had lived. Maybe he’d never planned on anyone surviving, but once someone had, he’d realized that he could have his cake and eat it, too. Kill people and then use them, from that day on, as his personal guard. He could feed his taste for blood and set himself up as king of his own mountain.
I didn’t want to understand him as well as I did. I didn’t want to be sitting at this table with him. I didn’t want him looking at me.
“Why did you want me to come here?” the man asked.
I’d had a story prepared, one that might have distracted him from the senses that would tell him my friends were getting closer and closer to us. That they were almost in position.
Two more minutes, Bryn. Two minutes, and then we’re there. Get him outside of the restaurant, and then get clear.
“I’ve been looking for you because I want you dead,” I said, staring into my coffee. Might as well give him a taste of the truth. “For what you did to me. And Chase.”
“Ah, yes, Chase. Rather ironic name, don’t you think?”
He was trying to be funny. He was trying to seem human. But he didn’t mind that I hated him. I think he liked it.
“Why Chase?” I asked him. “Why me? Why us?”
I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from his lips.
Instead, he smiled. “I’ll tell you at home.”
Home.
The word’s meaning permeated my mind. This man had come to town to bring me back with him.
“I could scream,” I told him. “You wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation in town, would you? If they saw you abduct me, it might bring the police out to the woods.”
“Ah, but if you screamed, little Bryn, then you’d attract an audience, and that would make it so much harder for your little friends to get their sights on me.”
Now, Bryn.
They were ready. They were in position. And he knew it.
“Shall we go outside?” the man asked.
In that moment, I had a choice. If I chose to stay here, I’d be safe, but somehow, I knew that he’d find a way around our plan. A back exit, a human shield, something that would let him waltz off and rob us of the only opportunity we would have to do this right.
So I went with him. He put his arm around my shoulder, and like a caring father, he led me out of the restaurant, leaving the waitress hmm-harrumphing in our wake.
Outside, his grip on me tightened, but I immediately dropped out of his grasp
and to the ground, rolling away from him.
A shot rang out, but somehow, Wilson—no, Prancer; he didn’t scare me—feinted to one side, and it barely grazed his shoulder. He dropped down next to me, grabbed my arm, and made a run for it.
I twisted my wrists, and the blades popped out and into his side, causing him to let go of my arm. I pulled them down and out and drove my fist toward his chin.
Bryn, get out of the way. We can’t get a clear shot. You wounded him, now get clear.
He caught my wrist and twisted it, and by some spiteful coincidence, he did it in the exact motion that drew in my claws. I went in with my other hand, and managed to drag my claws against his chest before—having learned how effective it was with my first wrist—he disarmed that one as well.
Now he had both of my wrists, still and immobilized. I jerked backward, trying to give the others a clear shot at him, and silver bullets rained down upon him: some hitting and some not. He pulled me tightly against him, using me as a shield against the gunfire and against the stares of people beginning to stick their heads out of nearby windows.
“Fight,” the Rabid whispered, directly into my ear, his voice high-pitched and giddy, his cadence bordering on musical. “Fight, fight, fight, and everything goes red. …”
His fingers dug into my neck, and they must have hit some kind of nerve, because the next instant—for only the second time in my life—I lost consciousness.
Only this time, I had no guarantees that I’d still be human when I woke up.
Back in Dead Man’s Creek, floating, only this time, the water was red, and the sky was blank, not a single star in sight.
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
The sense was vague, and I couldn’t remember what had happened or why I had come here before, but as I sank down into the red depths and breathed through them, the taste of blood filled my mouth.
Not my mouth. Someone else’s—moving and yelling. Chase’s. Then Devon’s. Then Lake’s. One by one, I flashed into their minds and bodies, hopping from one to the other, until I exploded into all three of them at once.
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