by Reine, SM
Rylie picked at her bacon while her aunt read the newspaper. She was still full from the night before, so nothing looked edible.
“I’ve got a lot to do today. I’m going to have to take you into town early,” Gwyn said, offering her the section of the newspaper with the comics. She shook her head. “Suit yourself. Is everything ready for school?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Throw your dishes in the sink and we’ll go.”
Her nerves grew tighter as they walked to Gwyn’s truck with her knapsack over her shoulder. They passed the coop. It was too far away to see what Rylie had done, and the henhouse faced in the wrong direction.
All they needed to do was walk five feet to the truck, shut the doors, and drive. Then she would be safe. Gwyn wouldn’t find out. She might not notice until…
“Have you heard the rooster this morning?” her aunt asked, stopping at the tailgate of the truck.
Rylie’s heart plummeted. “I thought I heard it around sunrise.”
Gwyn tilted her head as she listened. Rylie’s sensitive ears picked up buzzing flies, but her aunt would hear nothing but silence.
“Hang out here a second,” Gwyn said, jogging down the hill. She walked around one side of the coop first, then the other, and then opened the gate to go inside.
Rylie hadn’t realized her aunt knew so many swear words. She hurried down to stand on the other side of the chicken wire, hesitating to go inside. She had seen enough dead birds for one day.
“Jesus,” Gwyn muttered. “Some coyotes.”
She swallowed a burp that tasted like chicken and turned it into an awkward cough. “That’s what I told you the other week. Coyotes are really bad around here.”
Her aunt gave her a hard stare through the fence. “Do you know anything about this?”
“No.”
Even though Rylie didn’t sound convincing, it was ridiculously implausible for any human to have caused the carnage in the henhouse, so Gwyn shook her head.
“Let’s head to town. Looks like I need to buy some new chicks.”
Six
The Newest Student
Rylie didn’t notice the passage of time in terms of days or weeks anymore, but the school did. October snuck up on her, and the school was soon draped in orange streamers and grimacing cardboard pumpkins.
She studied the announcements board—which, in a school so small, mostly involved birthdays and straight A report cards—and was surprised to see there would be a party at the end of the month.
For her last Halloween, Rylie had gone to a huge party at Lance Cunningham’s house. She dressed up as a sexy nurse and glared at anyone who tried to flirt with her. Tyler had gotten so drunk that he barfed orange Jell-o shots everywhere and had to go to the hospital.
It wasn’t her favorite time of year.
This party wouldn’t be anything like that, but there would be a costume contest during the lunch period. She rolled her eyes. Rylie hadn’t had a costume contest in school since fourth grade.
There were murmurs in the halls when she went to her morning class, but this time, nobody was staring at her. Something—or someone—else had gotten everyone talking. Rylie didn’t care. Grateful for the distraction, she took her usual seat with Tate and tried not to doze off on her text book.
“Did you hear? There’s another new student!”
Rylie lifted her head from her paper. She had been doodling a wolf eating a turkey. “Huh?”
“There’s another new student,” Tate repeated. He didn’t bother to whisper even though they were supposed to be taking a quiz. Rylie had gotten three questions done before giving up. “That means two of you in one year. It’s too exciting for the small-minded rabble in this urinal of a school.”
“Is he our age?”
“Naw. He’s a senior.” Tate’s expression went dreamy. “I wonder if he likes to smoke.”
Rylie snorted.
She barely got through the quiz by the time the bell rang. She dropped her packet on the teacher’s desk, and Tate did the same, although his was completely blank other than a drawing of a pot leaf on the first page.
There were clouds on the horizon when they went to eat lunch on the quad. Tate’s friends were already at their usual bench, and Rylie got the impression they had never gone to class. One of them was too busy with his laptop to look up, but the other gave her a nervous smile before going back to his video game magazine.
She half-listened to her idiot friends talking about games while eating lunch. Two new students in a year. That would have been unremarkable back home, but it seemed unlikely in such a small town. Rylie had a bad feeling about it, but she wasn’t sure why.
Someone walking across the quad caught the wolf’s attention. His gait was strange. He was swinging on crutches with one leg in a brace below the knee.
“Who’s that?” she asked, interrupting Tate in the middle of a tirade about evil corporations assimilating small video game developers.
He glanced over. “Oh, him? That’s the new guy. Picked a good time to break his leg, huh?”
She glanced around to make sure nobody was watching before shutting her eyes and taking a deep sniff. Even without her eyesight, she could vividly envision the quad. The two kids leaning against the tree had sex that morning in the locker room. The girl over there was on her period. Half of the people had been eating cafeteria pizza, and the other half were eating leftovers, nachos, Funyuns, cookies, or a dozen other types of junk food. A slight breeze from a passing group tickled the hairs on her arms. She could tell it was the football team by their sweat.
Picking out the smell of the injured boy wasn’t hard. “I’ll see you guys in English,” Rylie said, picking up her knapsack and following the scent trail.
The boy moved fast considering his handicap, but she was faster. He went into the cafeteria, where all the food smells would making tracking harder, so Rylie closed the gap between them.
When he opened the door to the multipurpose room, the blowing air wafted his smell in her direction. Her nose twitched. Rylie smelled something familiar—something she hadn’t expected to ever encounter again.
The boy with the cast kept moving toward the doors on the opposite end of the building. He slowed down as he struggled with his crutches. The sight of such easy prey made the wolf stir, but Rylie suppressed her violent thoughts.
She took another sniff of his trail.
No way.
She recognized those broad shoulders and that dark hair. Even better, she recognize the smell of gunpowder and leather that always hung around him, even though he wasn’t carrying a gun or wearing his leather jacket.
He stopped at the door and took an arm off one of the crutches to push it open. She stopped behind him and found the strength to speak.
“Seth?”
He turned, and Rylie couldn’t breathe.
It was Seth, just as she remembered him. His hair was shorter now, but nothing else had changed. He wore his usual uniform of a black t-shirt and jeans. She had only seen him wearing something else once or twice.
They looked at each other. A moment of blank confusion flashed across his face, and then he dropped his crutches.
“Rylie?”
She didn’t remember crossing the space between them. All of a sudden she found herself wrapping her arms around him, and he was holding her, and for the first time in months Rylie felt right.
Burying her face in his neck, she took deep breaths of his skin without caring how weird it must look to the other students. The smell behind his ear was rich and earthy with the tang of steel around the edges. Rylie wanted to melt into him.
“You’re alive,” Seth said, leaning back to search her face.
“Are you hurt? Your leg wasn’t... I mean... I didn’t do anything to you, did I?”
His smile faltered. “You don’t remember?”
“Everything that happens when I change is still kind of hazy. I had no idea what happened to you. I thought you wer
e...” Rylie trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
“It was Jericho,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “You stopped him before he could kill me. I got lucky.”
“Did he bite you?”
“No. He didn’t even break my leg, actually, and I had almost completely healed, but then I was practicing some moves with my brother and... What am I saying? Rylie, what are you doing here?”
“I’m going to school,” she said. “I’ve moved in with my aunt, who has a ranch about fifteen miles out of town. I didn’t think the city would be safe for someone like me. There’s a lot more room in the country. What are you doing here?”
Realization dawned in his eyes, and his hands dropped from her shoulders, leaving her cold.
“Oh no. This is bad. This is really bad.”
“What?”
Even though it didn’t look like anyone was watching, Seth put a finger to his lips to silence her. “Not here. Follow me.”
Seth picked up his crutches and limped outside to the tree. Its roots sprawled across the ground in thick knots, and leaves showered around them with every gust of wind.
“We came to hunt,” he said in a low voice. His dark eyes glimmered like coals. “Me and my brother and my mom. We keep an eye on the news for signs of werewolves, like weird attacks on livestock. When we saw what happened to the herd here, we jumped on it.”
“You’re here to... oh.” Hunt werewolves.
Hunt Rylie.
She remembered Seth telling her about his family, but she had never met them. It made too much sense now. His brother had been attacked by a werewolf and almost transformed. That trespasser with a mangled face was Seth’s brother, that woman was his mom, and they were here to hunt.
Seth’s family wanted to kill her.
He looked grim. “I said it was bad.”
“I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks,” Rylie said.
“But you killed those cows, didn’t you?”
Rylie focused on a line of ants marching across the roots of the tree. She shouldn’t have been so embarrassed. Seth had already seen her at her worst when she slaughtered a deer, but she hated having him know she wasn’t controlled.
“They belonged to my aunt,” she said.
He didn’t reply for so long that she finally met his solemn gaze. She couldn’t read his expression. “You have to leave.”
“No. Your family needs to leave, Seth.”
“This isn’t the right place to have this talk. Why don’t I come see you after school? We’ll talk about it at your aunt’s house.”
“Sure. Her address is—”
“I know where you live, Rylie,” he said. He looked uncomfortable. “My brother was scoping it out.” Seth’s hand traced a line down her cheek, and she closed her eyes to savor his touch. “What happened to you after that night at camp?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I woke up alone. Where were you?”
Seth’s fingers dropped to her hand. “I looked for you, but I thought you didn’t make it.” A hint of that easy smile curved his lips. “I’ve thought about you every day.”
Footsteps approached, and a man spoke. “Are you going to introduce me, Seth?”
He pulled his hand back quickly, and ice shot through Rylie’s veins. The newcomer looked like Seth, but taller and older, like he might have been in college. His facial scarring wasn’t as scary in the daylight. The shadows of night had twisted his face into something more monstrous.
But even with a smile just like Seth’s, Rylie could remember seeing Abel on the road in the dark, holding a rifle loaded with silver bullets.
“Oh yeah,” Seth said. He sounded totally normal. How could he be so casual standing between a werewolf and a hunter? She felt like she was going crazy. “Rylie, this is my brother, Abel. Abel, this is Rylie. She’s a friend of mine.”
“You make friends fast, little man,” Abel said. It stretched his scar when he smiled.
She could imagine raking her claws down his flesh, leaving him ragged and screaming. That was how he had gotten the scar in the first place, wasn’t it?
Rylie gazed at him mutely, unsure of what to say.
“She’s helping me get around school,” Seth said.
Abel held her gaze, challenging her to keep staring at his scar. “That’s awfully nice of you, Rylie, but I don’t think Seth will need help much longer. We’re going to the doctor to get his cast removed right now.”
She finally dropped her eyes.
“That’s great,” she mumbled.
“Come on, bro,” Abel said, taking Seth’s backpack. “Let’s get going.”
Seth flashed a smile. “See you later, Rylie.”
I know where you live.
The more she thought about it, the more menacing that sounded.
Rylie’s concentration was wasted for the rest of the day. She could only stare out the windows at the sweeping landscape and think of Seth. What were the odds that a guy she met at summer camp would come to her new school in the same year?
She supposed he odds were actually pretty good, if that guy happened to be a werewolf hunter, and she was a werewolf. It hadn’t occurred to Rylie that people might see the news about the cows and connect the attacks to her.
Rylie had to excuse herself from chemistry. She knelt in the handicapped stall of the girl’s bathroom and pressed her hands to her forehead to hold in the throbbing ache that settled behind her eyes.
The same sentence kept running through her mind over and over again: They came to kill me. They came to kill me.
She was lucky it was the day after her transformation, because the werewolf was exhausted and silent. Her adrenaline ran high. On any other day, Rylie was sure it would have come raging out to do damage.
Her eyes burned and hot tears rolled down her cheeks.
They came to kill me.
It was one thing for him to tell her that he hunted werewolves, and another to have him come after her.
Had he been out there last night with Abel? Had they been looking for signs of another attack as they tracked her across the farmlands? If she had gone the wrong way and stumbled across them, would they have shot and skinned her and mounted her head on their wall?
Hysterics rolled through her, and now that she had started crying, she couldn’t stop. Her whole body shook. Rylie smothered her sobs against her arms.
She wanted to be happy to see Seth, but instead, she felt betrayed.
Seven
Family
Rylie didn’t make it back to chemistry. She sat in the bathroom soaking paper towels in water, rolling them into balls, and flinging them at the ceiling hard enough to stick. When a girl came in to use the toilets, Rylie glared at her with fierce golden eyes until she left again.
She managed to compose herself enough to attend her last class, but she still couldn’t focus. The teacher noticed. Rylie saw him whispering with Dean Block at the end of the day.
When she and her aunt got home, there was a message blinking on their answering machine. Rylie knew it had to be about her, but she left the room so she wouldn’t have to listen to it with Gwyn.
“Are you having a hard time adjusting?” her aunt asked later.
Rylie made herself smile. “No. I’m happy. I love it here.” She couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic if she tried.
“All right. Do you have much homework tonight?” she asked, letting her niece’s obvious lie slide past without remark. Rylie shook her head. “Then I need you to work in the garden. The boys and I are taking some cattle to auction, and the squash are ready. Get the weeds while you’re at it.”
She nodded, happy to have a distraction, and took a trash bag out to the garden.
Rylie put on gloves and tugged at the weeds halfheartedly. It was a beautiful day to work outside, but she couldn’t make herself focus on anything but the memory of Abel’s scarred face stretching into a smile.
A cloud of dust rose on the road. Rylie shielded he
r eyes against the dropping sun to see who approached. She was just wondering why someone with a motorcycle would visit her aunt when Seth came up the hill and stopped on the other side of the garden.
He took off his helmet as he dismounted. His hair stuck up in the back. “Hey,” Seth said.
Rylie felt a smile growing, and she ducked her head to hide it. How could she be so excited and so scared to see him all at once? “How’s your leg?” she asked.
“Perfect. I’m a fast healer.”
“I didn’t know you can ride motorcycles.” Was that a holster for a shotgun on the back? Rylie wasn’t sure if that was awesome or terrifying.
Seth looked embarrassed. “I don’t have a license. It belongs to my brother. He lets me borrow it sometimes.”
He ran a hand through his rumpled hair as he floundered for words.
They spoke at the same time.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, just as he said, “You have to leave.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. You know why I can’t go back to my mom. This is pretty much all I have left.”
“Then go somewhere else. Somewhere far away. I have a little money, so I can buy you a bus ticket.”
“It’s not a money thing. My dad left plenty of money for me when he died. But I’m only fifteen! I can’t live alone. I can’t even drive a car yet.”
Seth looked serious. Very serious. “You’ll die if you don’t.”
A chill settled over her, and it wasn’t the breeze. Rylie buried her spade in the ground. “Tell them to call off the hunt.”
“Call it off?”
“Yeah. Tell them I’m different and harmless and that you guys can’t hunt me.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Harmless? You killed those cows.”
“So do you think that means I should die?”
“No! Jesus, Rylie.” Seth all but collapsed beside her, pain twisting his face. “I know you’re different. You had the chance to kill me when you first changed, and you didn’t. I’ve never seen a werewolf show mercy. They can’t do it. You’re... special...”