by Reine, SM
Abel stared at him in stony silence. There were gold flecks in his eyes much like Rylie’s. Even though he had never become a wolf, he looked more animal than she ever had.
Seth wasn’t afraid of his brother like other people were. They watched each other’s backs. He would have given his life for Abel a hundred times if he could have. But that look was terrifying, and he had to swallow hard to keep the bile from rising in his throat.
“This summer,” Abel said finally, carefully enunciating every word as if to make absolutely sure Seth understood him. “You didn’t kill the wolf at Camp Golden Lake, did you?”
“The werewolf is dead, but that’s kind of why it’s complicated. I didn’t kill him. Rylie did it.”
He folded his arms. They were so muscular that they couldn’t lay flat on his chest. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot to tell me.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you everything.” Two trailers down, someone hauled a bag of charcoal out to their barbecue, and Seth lowered his voice. “But not here. Can we go for a walk?”
His brother nodded stiffly.
They left the mobile home community, walking along the side of the empty road away from town. His sweat made the wind feel chillier, so Seth patted his chest and underarms dry with his shirt. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“Well?” Abel demanded.
Seth pulled his shirt over his head and smoothed down his hair to give himself time to think. “The werewolf at camp was trying to make a pack. He’d already turned one other girl before he bit Rylie. I tried to save her. I wasn’t fast enough.”
“So what? You feel responsible for her?”
“Well, I just thought I could help her. You didn’t change when you were bitten. But… on the last moon, the other werewolf almost got me. So Rylie chose to change. She wanted to save me.” Seth stopped to face Abel. “She changed for me.”
Abel’s expression froze. “They lose their souls after they transform. She’s not the girl you knew.”
“But she’s different,” Seth insisted. “She had a chance to kill me after she changed, but she walked away. My leg was a wreck. I couldn’t have fought her. Have you ever seen a werewolf walk away from easy prey?”
“No, but a werewolf under control wouldn’t eat living cows, either.”
“You would do it if they held still long enough.” Seth tried to make himself smile, but he couldn’t put any feeling into it. “You can’t tell Mom. She’ll blow her lid.”
“Are you going to feel this way when she starts eating people? Do you want to be responsible for those lives?” he asked.
“She won’t do it. I’m serious, Abel.”
“I am too! I’ve been studying up on your little girlfriend. Did you know she got into a fight on her first day at school here? And she attacked a ranch hand with a shovel.”
“She has it under control,” Seth said stubbornly.
They stared each other down while the wind blew and the sun slowly set. He would have given a lot of money to know what Abel was thinking.
“Come on, bro,” he finally said. “A werewolf? At least cheerleaders aren’t going to rip out your throat when you take them on a date.”
“You only think that because you never went to high school. Promise, Abel. Promise me you won’t tell Mom.”
He could tell he won as soon as Abel’s gaze dropped.
“Fine.” He held up a finger. “But I’m not going to lie if she asks me, and when she goes out to hunt on the new moon, I’m going to go with her. And you have to stay away from Rylie.”
Seth nodded reluctantly. It was the best he could ask for.
Abel stalked back to the trailer park, leaving his brother alone by the road.
Ten
The Process
Abel showed up at the ranch late on Friday. When he finally arrived, he didn’t even look at Rylie even though he passed right by her. He immediately joined Jorge in the fields and got to work.
She climbed to a ridge overlooking the fields, shaded by the half-bare branches of a tree, and watched him walk through the pasture. Having him ignore her didn’t make her feel any better. Instead, she wondered what he was planning to do next.
Rylie couldn’t stand to watch. She went inside the house.
The smell of nutmeg and ginger wafted through the air. Gwyn was using butternut squash and the last of their eggs to bake pies. There was already one in the oven and another cooling on the counter.
Her aunt was hunched over her barstool, slowly rolling out the dough for the next pie. She looked terrible.
Rylie felt a tremor of worry. Gwyn never sat inside for long. “What are you doing?”
“Wash your hands,” she ordered. She may have looked bad, but she sounded just as authoritative as ever. “You know, your dad made great pumpkin pies when we were kids. Nobody made crusts better than Brian. They came out even flakier than your grandma’s.”
“He said the secret was ice water and careful math.” The thought of her dad’s smiling face gave Rylie chest pangs. “Pie was the only thing he could make… and extra crispy bacon.” Her voice caught on the last word. She swiped at her eyes with the towel while she dried her hands, hoping Gwyn wouldn’t nice.
“I could sure use Brian’s magic for these pies. Why don’t you make the next batch of dough?”
Rylie pulled on an old apron to protect her denim skirt from flour. “You didn’t come to his funeral,” she said, trying to make it sound casual. A tear plopped on the counter.
Gwyn sighed and set down the rolling pin. “I’m sorry, babe. I’ve been waiting for you to ask about that.”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to explain. You gotta trust me when I say I wouldn’t have missed it if it wasn’t for a real good reason.”
“My mom told me that it was because you were busy selling your old ranch and forgot,” Rylie said. “She thinks you’ve always liked your work better than your family.”
“Jessica doesn’t know anything about me.” Gwyn’s voice slashed through the kitchen. “Got that?”
She gave a sullen nod to the bag of flour. “Then why?”
“I’m not ready to tell you.”
Rylie chewed on her lip as she retrieved ice from the freezer, setting it in a half-filled bowl of water. She knew she should leave it alone, but the questions were bursting inside of her, and she didn’t know how to keep quiet.
“Was it a new girlfriend?” she asked, setting the bowl down. “Were you fighting with my dad? Was it—”
Gwyn smacked her hand on the kitchen island to silence her.
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I can’t know unless you tell me,” she said.
“I love you, kid, and I love your dad, but it’s none of your business. Got it?”
Rylie forced herself to shut her mouth. Her aunt’s cold blue eyes lit up with fire, and that expression left no room for argument. The threat of getting sent back to the city hovered between them. She couldn’t forget she was only at her aunt’s as a favor.
She changed the subject. “So why did you say you’re not working outside with the guys?”
“I didn’t. The men are doing fine on their own.” Gwyn laid the crust in a glass pie dish and pressed down the edges with a fork. She shot her niece a sideways look. “Is that Abel bothering you? I’ll get rid of him if you want.”
The offer surprised Rylie. She hadn’t expected Gwyn to notice the tension, much less care enough to fire Abel. There was too much work to be done before the winter. It was tempting, though, and Rylie kneaded the dough as she considered it.
The wolf didn’t want him to go. The wolf liked having Abel where they could watch him.
“I don’t know,” Rylie said, and she was surprised when the words came out in a half-growl like it did before she changed on the full moon. She coughed to clear her throat. “I thought you were his number one fan. You’ve practically written poetry about him.”
“I’m nobody’s number
one fan but yours,” Gwyn said. She managed to make even that compliment sound half-insulting. “Give it some thought. Say the word and he’s gone.”
She slopped the pie mix into the dish, and they shared a smile. Rylie’s was much toothier than her aunt’s.
Once the remaining pies were cooking, Rylie went down to the pond and sat on a bench the last owner’s had left behind. It was covered in ivy. She plucked at the brown leaves as she mulled over the idea of firing Abel. Seth’s brother terrified her. It would be much safer to keep him away.
But what if he found out that Rylie asked for him to get fired? Would that be the last piece of the puzzle he needed to confirm that she was the werewolf?
Jorge and Abel went into the house to talk to Gwyn, kicking the mud off their boots by the front door. They were gone for several minutes. Rylie kicked at her little pile of shredded leaves, pushing it into the edge of the pond.
When the men left again, Jorge went to his car and Abel came to stand in front of Rylie’s bench.
“I know the truth about you,” he said in a low voice.
She leapt to her feet, baring her teeth. She might have gone for his throat if the back door hadn’t opened again.
“Rylie!” Gwyn called.
Thick cords of muscle stood out on Abel’s neck. Tension shivered between them.
“Well?” Rylie whispered.
She wanted him to attack her. She wanted an excuse to kill him. The wolf envisioned reopening his old wounds and finishing the job, and it could almost taste the blood.
Could she turn Abel if she bit him again? Could he be her pack? Or would she have to eat him piece by piece?
“Rylie!”
“Stay the hell away from my brother,” Abel hissed.
She stared after him as he jogged to his motorcycle and roared away. It was all she could do not to chase him. Her thoughts were buzzing around in her skull too fast to process.
“I’m not calling your name again!” Gwyn shouted, and the screen door slammed shut.
Her knees wobbled, so she sat back down on the bench. The wolf faded away, leaving nothing inside of her but the shivering embers of fear.
He knew.
And the next moon was only three days away.
Seth walked home alone. Abel had told him to come back as soon as he finished school, but he wasted time exploring instead, wandering through the streets with no destination in mind. Everything in town was close enough to reach on foot—the west edge was only three miles from the east edge, and their community was a half mile past that.
He fantasized about his mom getting angry at him for disappearing. She could ground him. No TV or games for the week. The idea of it made him laugh.
By the time he got to their mobile home, it was getting dark. Their trailer was in the position his mom considered to be best for defense, and he didn’t make eye contact with anybody living around them to make sure he remained detached. If he started to like people, he might want to stay—and that wasn’t an option.
Abel pulled weeds in the yard without a shirt. It used to be that women flocked to gaze at him, but now that he was scarred, everyone watched from an uneasy distance as if they were afraid he would attack.
He wasn’t trying to make the trailer look better. Seth knew that. It was part of his ongoing physical conditioning. Just one more thing to make him stronger and harder.
“Done wasting time for the day?” Abel called when Seth approached. Four silvery, parallel scars striped his ribs down to the navel. It was a permanent souvenir of the night he had been bitten by a werewolf.
“Done stalking the Greshams for the day?” Seth snapped back.
“Nope. I’m pulling a double shift today. The old lady insisted I go home for dinner, but I’m going back to repair the tractor tonight so we can use it tomorrow.”
His voice sounded funny. Seth lowered his voice. “You didn’t do anything weird, did you?”
“No.” Abel stuffed a fistful of foxtails in a trash bag. “But I should have.”
“We don’t kill humans,” he whispered.
His brother’s eyes glowed like he was considering making an exception.
Eleanor sat on the floor inside their trailer, surrounded by newspaper clippings. A small stack of banker’s boxes stood against the wall. She was in the middle of what she called the process. She would sift through crime reports, write headlines in her notebook, and rank how likely she thought they were to be related to the werewolf.
The only decoration on their wall was a map of the region printed onto several pages. This was part of the process, too. Once she picked the most likely werewolf articles, she would stab color-coded pins into the map to mark where they occurred.
Piece by piece, Eleanor would mark the werewolf’s territory. She would use that map to find its den.
And then, on the next moon, they would kill it.
His mom looked like a snake coiled in the middle of the room waiting for someone to wander close enough to strike. She had been born in the wrong era. She was meant to be Boadicea or Wu Zetian—a queen conquering the old world. Eleanor was beautiful and smart and ruthless. She had killed a dozen werewolves on her own.
One red pin marked the map on the wall. It was centered over Rylie’s ranch.
“Found anything yet?” he asked.
Eleanor responded by pointing at the boxes. “I’m looking at domestic violence cases. Help me sort.”
“I’ve got a lot of homework to do.”
“Did I ask you if you have homework? No. I told you to help me sort. Sit down.”
He dropped his backpack and did what she ordered, making sure not to disturb her piles. “Why domestic violence?”
“I got no other leads yet, so I’m working with the basics. Werewolves are often batterers,” Eleanor said by rote.
Her husband—Seth and Abel’s father—was considered the expert on werewolves by most hunters. He had literally written the book on tracking and killing them, and he used to make everyone in the family recite passages until they had them memorized.
Eleanor hadn’t stopped studying his work after he was killed.
“What are we going to do for dinner?” Seth asked, separating the articles into two random piles. There wasn’t much point in reading them when he knew Rylie wasn’t a wife beater.
His mom glanced at her watch, looking surprised to realize it was getting late. “I don’t know, and I don’t have time to worry about it. There are leftover tacos in the fridge.” They had been eating fast food for every meal since they arrived in town.
Before Seth could say something else, Eleanor had refocused on the task at hand. She hadn’t wondered, even for a moment, why he was so late coming home. He wasn’t sure she even realized he was still going to school.
He stared at the red pin on the Gresham ranch.
Rylie’s aunt would notice if she was out late.
“How long do you think this will take?” Seth asked.
“Not long.” She finally gave him a smile. “Not long at all.”
He pretended to sort articles for an hour, but when Abel left to go back to the ranch, Seth left too. Eleanor didn’t ask where he was going. She always hoped he would come back with something dead when he ducked out, like a good werewolf hunter should. Or maybe she just didn’t care.
He found himself outside Rylie’s house a half hour later. Abel’s motorcycle was parked outside the barn, and the lights were on inside. He avoided his brother and went up the hill to the house instead.
Seth watched Rylie and her aunt have dinner through the window. They were sharing beef ribs drenched in barbecue sauce, and the two of them sat close together at the table, smiling when they talked and looking happier than he could ever remember being with his own family.
Anybody else might have thought they were completely normal—anyone who wasn’t a hunter. But Seth could sense Rylie the way he could smell trash rotting in a dumpster. All werewolves felt like that to him.
The way she
moved and looked at her aunt wasn’t normal, either. She didn’t look like she belonged in a house, a city, or anywhere near other humans.
A rib bone almost fell off the table, and Gwyneth made a sudden motion to catch it. Rylie jerked. It was a small gesture, but she had to shut her eyes and take deep breaths before she could go back to what she was doing.
Her prey drive had kicked in at the fast motion. Seth had seen it too many times before.
Rylie was different from other werewolves. Seth believed it. He really did. But she was still dangerous. If his family didn’t get her, then it might be some other hunter putting a bullet in her skull someday. He had done it himself before. He could imagine the way Rylie’s blood would spray all too clearly.
He waited outside until they finished dinner and Gwyneth went to bed. Rylie washed dishes in the sink by the open window.
The wind shifted. Her head lifted, and she looked right through the shadows to where he stood.
Seth tried to duck down the hill, but it was too late. Rylie stormed out the back door. “This isn’t camp anymore,” she said. “You can’t lurk outside my house.”
“Come on, Rylie, I just want to—”
He only had an instant to dodge. Rylie flung a cast-iron skillet at his head, and it smashed into the bushes behind him. “Go away!”
“I came back because I want to help you!”
She moved to throw a soapy sponge, but his words made her hand freeze in the middle of the motion. “You want to help? How?”
“My mom’s not onto you yet,” Seth said, “but she’s working on it. She’ll figure it out soon.”
“You told Abel about me, didn’t you?”
“No. Well, yeah. But he already knew.” He could tell he was losing her. Rylie started moving back toward the house—probably to find another heavy projectile. “I want to help you hide on the next moon.”
That stopped her. “Why?”
“I don’t want you to die, Rylie.”