He looked at me and smiled, showing his teeth. "Going somewhere, little cousin?"
Eleven
I eased forward, my gaze fixed on Carter's.
"Uh-uh," he said, tightening his grip on Chloe. "You do know how easy it would be to snap her neck, don't you? Just because I'm not Changing yet doesn't mean I don't have my full strength."
He was right. I hadn't had my first Change until months after I'd thrown that kid against the wall. I took a deep breath to slow my pounding heart. I tried to catch Chloe's eye to reassure her, but she seemed a lot calmer than I was, just glancing from side to side. Looking for Liz.
Where the hell was Liz? Why hadn't she spotted Carter before he grabbed Chloe?
Because she'd been focused on Theo and Nate. I should have been watching for Carter. I should have been watching for all of them.
Was Liz off finding a weapon? Probably. But I couldn't rely on her to fix this.
"Let Chloe go," I said. "I'll stay."
"Stay?" Carter laughed. "Why the hell would I want you to stay?"
I replayed his words. Even then, all I could process was the sight of him with his arm around Chloe's neck.
"You want Derek gone," Chloe said. "This is your pack. He's an interloper, even if he is family."
So she'd figured out that we were related? Of course she had. If she'd gotten even a glimpse of Theo or Nate, she wouldn't be wondering why Carter called me "cousin."
"Yeah, I want him gone." Carter met my gaze. "For good."
"You want me dead," I said.
He sputtered a laugh. "Dead? You've been hearing too many big-bad-wolf stories, cuz. I mean I want you out of here. Away from us. You don't belong. You know that. I know that. It's Theo who can't seem to figure it out."
Chloe tugged his arm down a little. "And it's Theo who's going to return any second to make sure Derek does stay. So if you want him gone, let us leave."
"Mmm, soon. It'll take them a while to search the forest. Before you go, though, I want to make sure your boyfriend doesn't have any crazy ideas about keeping in touch."
"What?" I said.
"You might not want to live with us, but I'm thinking you might decide to make contact. You know . . . a phone call on Christmas, a card on our birthdays."
"I don't know your birthdays."
Carter's gaze hardened. "You know what I mean. We're werewolves; you're a werewolf. We'd be a good resource. Someone to call when you have questions. And maybe, in a few years, you'll start thinking you want to visit. Get to know us better. After all, we are family."
"And you don't want that. You want me out of your life for good."
"I do. So this . . ." He pulled Chloe back, arm tightening. When I rocked forward, though, he released his grip. "This is a warning. You come after us, I'll come after her. Or your so-called brother and father."
"I understand."
"Do you?" He held my gaze. "Do you really?"
I bristled under that stare. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, that I'd never had any intention of making contact. But that would be a lie. I wouldn't be in any hurry to find them again, but maybe someday, when I was older and Theo couldn't just expect to scoop me up and take me, I'd want to get in touch.
Carter was right. I would have questions, about my family and about being a werewolf. While I was sure I'd never be spending Thanksgiving with them, I might want contact at some point. But from Carter's glare, I knew that wouldn't be an option. Not until I was prepared to deal with him.
"Fine," I said.
He tightened his grip on Chloe. "Are you sure? Because--"
Chloe elbowed him in the stomach, hard enough to make him gasp. He loosened his grip. She ducked out from under his arm. I lunged and slammed him back into the wall, just as a plate hit him over the head. He staggered and stared down at broken pieces of it on the floor.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
"Apparently, someone had trouble finding a proper weapon," Chloe muttered.
She was behind me now. I blocked her, tensed for action, but Carter was just rubbing his head and trying to figure out where the plate came from. If he turned around, he'd see a big shard of it hovering in the air. Liz, also poised for action, with an actual weapon now. But when he didn't move, we didn't either.
I could turn this into a fight. Teach Carter that I wasn't someone to mess with. And if I did that, Theo and Nate would hear the commotion and come running.
Was I sure I could "teach him" anyway? He was a werewolf. I couldn't trounce him the way I could a human. I might only piss him off more and make him more determined to go after Chloe if I ever initiated contact. So I'd win nothing.
"We're leaving now," I said. "I'll go away and I'll stay away."
"Good. I'll give you a five-minute head start. Then I'll tell them I saw you driving in the opposite direction."
I could thank him for that. Maybe I should. But he wasn't doing it for me. He was just eliminating a threat to his position in his pack and with his grandfather.
So I just nodded and grunted. Then I ushered Chloe out to the waiting van.
We met my dad a mile down the road. Chloe spotted our van, and jumped out as I pulled over. Dad almost drove by. But he saw her--or heard me shouting--and put it in reverse. We climbed in, left the other van by the roadside and took off . . . after Dad pulled out a few wires under the hood and disabled their ride.
"So, can we move now?" I said as he pulled away.
He looked at me through the rearview mirror. "I'm sorry, Derek. I'm really--"
"We're moving, right?"
"Yes, we're moving."
I explained everything on the way back. Dad apologized some more. I let him. It wasn't completely his fault. I did have a tendency to get a little paranoid. Plus Lauren hadn't helped. But if I let him off the hook, he might not be so quick to act the next time. So I kept my mouth shut. And when we got home, we started to pack.
"I know we've moved," Chloe said two weeks later, as we walked behind our new house. "But it doesn't really seem like it." She gestured around us. "Old farmhouse in the country, a mile from the nearest neighbor, borders on a forest . . ."
"Seem to be a lot of them for rent."
She laughed. "Luckily for us. And this one comes with an added bonus. A convenient escape route. Not a lot of those on the market, I bet."
There weren't, obviously. Dad got lucky, though I suppose that luck had come with a lot of work, finding a place we could easily get out of if the Cains returned. This one wasn't exactly advertised as coming with an escape route, but it had a passage connecting the separate garage to the house--back from the days when the "garage" had been a barn, and they'd had a dumbwaiter for lowering supplies into the cold cellar below.
The fact that my dad found this place so fast showed how stressed out he was over the Cains. I'd forgiven him for not moving when I asked, but it was still weighing heavily on his mind. He wasn't just worried about them finding us--he was worried about how I was dealing with finding them. Discovering my family, and losing them, all within a few hours.
How did I feel about that? Confused, I guess. There was no part of me that wanted to go live with the Cains. I wasn't even sure I'd ever want to make contact. I kept thinking about what Nate said about hunting humans.
But Dad said I was looking at it the wrong way. Not that I should be okay with my family killing humans, but that I had to see if from a werewolf perspective, where restricting themselves to rare hunts of criminals actually meant they had developed a system for dealing with their impulses. It wasn't the system I'd choose, but at least they weren't man-eaters. Kind of depressing to realize that was the standard for judging my own kind--did they eat people? Maybe that's what bothered me the most. In the last few months, I'd come to realize--through the Edison Group and Lauren--just how low a regard supernaturals had for werewolves. Dad could tell me it was just prejudice, but now I saw a little of where it came from, and what I'd have to deal with for the rest of my life.
"Already done enough of that." I had, too, until I'm sure she was sick of hearing about it.
"It's never enough if it's still bothering you."
It was going to bother me for a while. And no amount of talking would cure that. Just time. I wasn't telling her that, though. She'd just feel bad that she couldn't help. So I said, "Later," and tugged her over to a tree where I'd left a bag earlier.
"Got something for you," I said.
"Oh?"
"It's our three-month anniversary."
Her eyes widened in panic. "Today? I thought . . . I was counting three months from--"
"Doesn't matter." I paused. "Or I guess it does or we'll keep getting confused. Can we use today--three months back, I mean?"
She smiled. "We can . . . if you don't mind getting your gift late."
"I don't care if I get one at all. Just as long as I keep getting anniversaries."
She blushed and lifted on her tiptoes to kiss me. "You will. For as long as you want them."
Which was pretty much the best present she could give me, and I stood there, forgetting what I was doing until her gaze traveled down to the bag behind me.
"Oh, right," I said. "The gift."
I opened the bag and pulled out a small box of chocolates. "Happy anniversary."
"Oh. Thanks." She flashed me a huge smile that would have looked totally real . . . if I didn't know her better.
"Simon said that's what I should get you. That or flowers. So you like it?"
"Sure."
"Liar."
Her face went bright red as she stammered, "N-no, really. It's great. It's--"
"Completely and totally impersonal. Like something you buy in bulk for all your teachers."
"No, I like this kind. You know I do and--"
She stopped as I held out the bag.
"Your real gift," I said.
She looked in. Grinning, she pulled out a penlight, a Swiss army knife and a purse-sized can of mace.
She sputtered a laugh. "This is . . ."
"Practical?" I said.
"In my life, it is definitely practical. But I was going to say thoughtful." She smiled up at me. "The most thoughtful gift I've ever gotten."
"And the most completely unromantic? Simon almost had a heart attack when I showed him. He made me get the chocolates, as a backup."
"I'm sure he did. Which I suppose explains why I ended up with you instead." She rose on tiptoes again and put her arms around my neck. "Because buying me gifts to keep me safe? That's my idea of romantic."
I bent and kissed her, lifting her up, then lowering her to the grass behind the tree.
"Chloe!" Tori shouted from near the house. "Chloe!"
I glanced over. "Think it's urgent?"
"Only if saving Tori from boredom is a life-or-death situation. She was trying to get me to go shopping with her before we ducked out. I say we make a break for the forest." She pointed to the bag. "We have survival gear. And chocolate. We can stay out there for a while."
I grinned, scooped up the bag, and we raced off to explore our new forest. Or something like that.
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2012 by Kelley Armstrong
This Traverse Press edition published in 2012
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any from or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.
Armstrong, Kelley
Darkest Powers Bonus Pack 2
ISBN 978-0-9877031-6-3
Darkest Powers Bonus Pack 2 Page 8