by Kat Kinney
Past a field packed with cars, a massive sea of corn stretched endlessly out towards a dark smudge of trees off in the distance. With two dozen checkpoints, hidden clues to decode, and four miles of pathways, Blood Moon’s nationally recognized corn maze took half the day to explore. And until the emergence of real vampires onto the worldwide scene spoiled all the fun, the maze had also opened up once a year at midnight for Bite of the Living Dead, a horror extravaganza complete with volunteers from the high school band chasing you through the maze dressed as zombies. Totally my scene.
Ethan and I waded through the crowds, past the pumpkin carving table, around a fenced-in area with bleating sheep, goats giving a destruction of four-year-olds some serious side-eye, and what had to be the world’s most patient llama, towards the food trucks, which had gone all out for the occasion with the fall-themed food. Blair’s was dishing up wedges of pumpkin pie speared with sugar cookie bats. An ice cream truck listed Cranberry Coffin, Chocolate Grave Digger (complete with Oreos and worms), Vampire Bite (strawberry with miniature marshmallow fangs), and maple pecan.
Dallas jerked his chin as we passed The Iron Spoke’s truck where the werewolf and hippogriff sandwiches smelled suspiciously like brisket and turkey.
“Brody rides his ass about that every year.”
“Because of—?”
“That, and the idea of eating Harry Potter’s friends causes meltdowns.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
We reached the edge of the stage. Setting down my gear, I twined an arm around Ethan’s neck. His thumbs hooked into my beltloops, tugging my hips flush with his.
“Sumatra can get Violet a double hippogriff and a gravedigger malt if they have it. Extra Oreos.”
His cheek twitched. “Does he need to pick out all the gummi worms, or is Her Furry Majesty eating those now?”
I bit his ear, tucking my nose into his collar to inhale the scent of soap and espresso off his skin. “Shut up and bring me my chocolate.”
The stage was a simple wooden platform that got thrown together and torn down every year. Free-standing sound and lights. The small rise allowed line of sight all the way out to the highway, a crowd of what had to be over a thousand people waiting for hayrides, choosing fat orange pumpkins, and eating corndogs and kettle corn out on picnic blankets on the nice fall day. I stepped up to the mic with my acoustic, palms suddenly sweaty. How long had it been since I’d stood in front of a crowd without my bandmates?
Tightness formed in my throat. I caught Ethan’s eye from over by the food trucks. Raising his thumb to his lips, he kissed my daisy. A fluttering sensation filled my chest.
“Hey, y’all—” I started.
Into a dead mic. Frowning, I toggled the power switch. Checked the connection. No joy. Murmurs broke out. There was a flash of movement—Ethan pushing back through the crowd. But I was already following the cord back to the speakers, looking for the faulty connection, the extension someone forgot to plug in.
Which was how I found them—the two severed ends of the mic cord sliced cleanly through as if they’d been cut with a knife.
* * *
While Psychedelic Sugar Chicken went on in my place, the five of us formed a huddle off away from the crowd.
“Round the horn,” Brody announced. “And then I’m calling this. Ethan.”
“We pull out.” He couldn’t seem to stay in one place, eyes scanning the highway, the parking lot, the rippling field of corn. “They’re here, even if we can’t see them. No way to know what else they’ve screwed with, if they’ve rigged the stage to collapse, planted a bomb—”
I rubbed my temples. “Our people have been in place since dawn. There’s been no sign of any other shifters. Or vamps, for that matter.”
“Which tells us they know what they’re doing,” he shot back. “I don’t know how they’re planning on grabbing you, and I don’t want to wait around to find out.”
“We’ve been over this. It’s our best chance to end it. Yes, there’s some risk. We knew that going in.”
“This is your life. No way,” he spat.
“And what if the answer has been right under our noses this whole time?” I stared at each of them in turn. “There were non-human scents on that cord.”
Brody cut a glance out at the crowd. “West?”
“Getting a lead off that cord is going to be like trying to fingerprint the front door of a Walmart on Black Friday. We just had game day. That means a pep rally, band practice, and then the game itself. Who loaded up to come over here? And how many kids helped this morning with set-up? All of those scents, layered on top of each other—”
“And I’m just talking about other werewolves.”
West huffed out a breath. Because we both knew only three shifters had touched that cord this morning. Him. Me.
And Lacey Blair.
Ethan cracked his wrist, which in the last minute had started to shake. Brody gave him a hard look.
“August.”
“We’re in a dead spot out here. If something goes wrong, we won’t be able to communicate. We have to assume whoever’s behind this knows that, which means they’re probably going to force us to spread out, pick us off one at a time and hope we don’t notice what they’re doing until it’s too late.”
Brody cursed under his breath. Ethan began to pace.
And as I searched all of their faces, each of them willing to put their lives at risk in order to protect me, I realized Lacey had been right, much as I hated to admit it. This had never been their fight. I may not have come back to Blood Moon intending to place them in danger, but danger had followed me all the same. And I’d overstayed my welcome.
“I leave town,” I said. “And hope whoever’s after me follows.”
And before any of them could protest, I turned on my heel. Ethan cursed. I kept walking. A second later, a hand caught my wrist, whipping me around.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Passersby turned to stare. I offered a thin-lipped smile.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Releasing a growl, Ethan all but dragged me behind the stage. “Is this about earlier? You’re pissed at me and that’s it?”
Shaking him loose, I folded my arms. “I can’t keep putting other people in danger.”
“So you’re just gonna cut and run?”
I didn’t look at him. “We both knew going in this had an expiration date. You want us to be together, but only to a point. I want it to be real.”
Onstage, the band finished its set. Over the roar of the audience and an emergency siren caterwauling in the distance, my pulse hammered in my ears. Ethan pushed up his glasses, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“I’ve never lied to you, Daisy. I don’t know if I’m capable of being with anyone that way. Not long-term.”
“Maybe not. Or maybe that’s what you tell yourself to keep from getting hurt. You’re so sure you’re broken. Damaged. Poison. And you’re wrong. I love you. Do you get that?”
He swallowed, unable to look at me.
“But I can’t keep being the one to put myself out there,” I continued. “Not if you won’t meet me halfway. Not if this isn’t going anywhere.”
His throat bobbed. I watched his fists clench and unclench. But no words formed.
I told myself when I came back to town, I would have to find a way to quit Ethan Caldwell. That loving him would destroy both of us. I hadn’t wanted to be right.
“Ethan,” I whispered, just as footsteps crunched in the dry grass behind us.
“Trouble in paradise?”
I whirled, heart kicking in my chest. “What are you doing here?”
12
Ethan
SMARMY-DUDE COVERED ONE NOSTRIL, tipped his head back and inhaled so hard I was pretty sure tornado sirens went off in the next county. Because way to keep things friendly for the kids.
“Hannah.” He sniffed, looking Hayden up
and down like I wasn’t standing right there.
But dick-punching some coked-up loser in front of an apple cider stand while a bunch of four-year-olds looked on was low, even for me.
Hayden folded her arms. “What are you doing here?”
“Would you believe I came for the funnel cake?”
She shot him a withering look. “You?”
Mr. Personality pulled out his phone, probably to check in with his dealer. “Saw the post on social media. My father and I thought someone from the agency needed to show up for this… event.” He glanced down at his $300 Italian loafers, which, awesome choice for a muddy field full of sheep, dude, and waved a hand. “You’re my group, so…”
“Touching,” Hayden said sarcastically, and then to me, “Jake’s our booking agent.”
“Nice,” I muttered under my breath, which earned me a glare.
“Guess it’s not looking good,” Cokehead announced to his screen, like he had a killer game of Candy Crush going on down there. “So when do you go on?”
“They, uh,” Hayden swiped a strand of hair off her cheek, “had to shuffle a few groups around.”
“Right.” His gaze flicked to me. “This your roadie?”
Because this day just kept getting better and better. My lip curled. Hayden refused to look at me. Which was pretty much my cue.
“Gotta go.”
And this time, when I ducked back into the crowd, no one bothered to follow.
Clouds rolled in throughout the afternoon. By the time Hayden went onstage a little before six, the wind was starting to swirl up dust and bits of hay, making my nose tickle from the scent of manure.
“Hey, y’all,” she said into the mic.
A cheer erupted, plastic cups of beer and half-melted cherry snow cones competing with hundreds of cell phones in a small-town Texas salute. I’d bet no one else heard the slight rasp in her voice. She looked so impossibly small up there, miles away, a sea of bodies between us. But she’d pulled off one hell of a performance earlier. And now I had to trust her to see it through to the end.
“I wanted to open with a new song. As you know, two of my best friends were abducted Wednesday night and efforts to find them are ongoing. All proceeds from today’s performance will be donated to the search effort. To be honest, it feels scarier than any of you know being up here on stage without them. All I want is for them to be brought home, safe.”
Pausing, she ducked her head, swiping a finger beneath her eyes. The crowd fell silent, faces soft, sympathetic. Most people out here had watched Hayden grow up, had followed the Daisies as they started to gain traction, Blood Moon’s home-grown sensation. Now Hayden stood before them in ripped skinny jeans, a Killers tee and her cropped canvas jacket, long hair spilling over one shoulder in a dark wave, in a way as much Blood Moon’s as she was mine.
Bodies pressed in all around me, smelling of sweat, carnival food and sunshine. My fingernails dug into my palms. I should have been up there with her. Plan or not, we were taking too much of a risk. But no way could I get up to that stage now.
Hayden bit her lip, blinking up at the stormy Texas sky as she started to strum her acoustic. “This is for anyone who’s ever fought for that second chance. For all the dreamers out there who don’t give up, no matter what life throws your way.”
Her opening chords filled the field, dark, minor progressions marked with sharp, edgy strumming. The wind gusted, sending her hair swirling over one shoulder in advance of the storm, the backdrop of the approaching thunderheads making a killer video for all the people recording on their phones. And then Hays leaned into the mic, the mood unexpectedly softening.
I never hoped for second chances. Thought love always needed proof.
Movie nights and chocolate fights as rain whispered on the roof.
You could hide forever.
Our hearts have both been burned.
Love is not surrender.
Love is earned.
“Hays,” I whispered, heart thrumming wildly.
Her eyes fluttered closed, fingers shifting fluidly through the chords, as if across the hundreds of bodies separating us, she’d somehow heard me.
Love is fairy kisses in the mornings when it’s dark.
Midnight texts and barbeque and dancing in the park.
I’ll wait for you forever.
My heart was always yours.
Love is not surrender.
Love is earned.
The crowd went wild as she drove into the chorus, swaying, whooping, trying to sing along even though this was the first time any of us had ever heard this. Breath sawing in my chest, I gently, oh so gently traced the scar at my wrist. Act to draw her stalker out into the open or not, I’d had a sick feeling in my stomach ever since our fake breakup. How many times had Hayden told me she loved me? And every time, I’d hesitated to say it back, convinced if we took that permanent, irrevocable step, everything broken about me would wind up destroying her. Now she was up there, singing right to me in front of thousands of people, putting herself out there. Utterly unafraid.
My phone buzzed, a signal finally getting through. I glanced down, seeing a text from Hays. I clicked on the image. The pale length of her arm stretched across the neck of her guitar, the cobalt-blue daisy tattoo wending its way up her wrist. At the tips of its petals, she’d written in black pen:
Y-O-U-R-S
She must have done it just before walking out on stage. I stared down at the screen, trying to think of what to text back as lightning flashed off in the distance. My gaze flicked towards the approaching wall of clouds, which was how I came to notice the woman with the dark bob standing with her phone raised, recording the performance.
Meera.
I cursed under my breath. Hayden’s aunts and sister weren’t supposed to fly back until sometime tomorrow. Pulling out my phone, I tried to text my brothers. No signal. Adrenaline slamming in my veins, I reached out through the pack bonds. Brody was on heightened alert, Dallas pacing out by the parking lot. Up near the stage, assigned to guard Hayden, West was getting antsy. August was working the perimeter, Cal somewhere out in the corn maze, lying low. And every last one of them was in agreement on one thing. There were too many humans. It was too damn windy. If someone did move in, it would be impossible to get a scent trace until they were right on top of us.
Hayden finished singing to thunderous applause. By then I was muscling through the crowd. Arms and elbows jostled me from all sides, beer sloshing down the front of my shirt. Cursing, I stumbled.
When I looked up, he was directly in front of me, fifty feet away, twitching like a pale, wasted skeleton. My breathing picked up. At a distance, vamps could pretty much pass as your typical meth addict, particularly when they needed to feed. If he was a prickhead, the fact that he was out before sunset made him especially dangerous. He would had to have recently fed from a shifter, giving him near-limitless regenerative abilities coupled with the vamp strength to flip a car into a crowd, then ghost out before anyone was the wiser.
Which meant I had to be careful how I played this.
Me: Company. With dentures.
“Thank you.” Hayden tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, frowning, searching the spot where I’d been standing moments before.
Pushing through the crowd, I sent her the image of her aunt, phone raised against the ominous sky. The man, forty feet away now, gaze tracking her. Through the mic, I heard her sharp intake of breath, her eyes searching for me in the sea of faces, lips silently forming my name.
“Hayden,” I said urgently, a sick feeling twisting in my gut. And sure enough, just as the first faint raindrops flicked the back of my neck, a howl sounded from somewhere out in the corn.
Half the crowd, the people I would have actually bet on in a zombie apocalypse grabbed their coolers and picnic blankets and beelined it for their cars. Everyone else pulled out their phones and started recording. Because apparently #WerewolfAteMyFace must have been trending on Twitter. With the sto
rm coming in, it was nearly dark, but there would be no getting around three million video retweets of a feral pack of werewolves exploding out of a cornfield.
“That sounded totally real, man.”
“Think they’re bringing back zombie week?”
“Move. This is an emergency,” I snapped, shoving some douchey YouTube influencer wannabe out of the way.
But when I looked up, Meth Head was gone.
“God—” Snarling, I plowed my way through to where he’d been standing seconds before. Had he flashed out? Disappeared in the crowd? Was I just amped up, seeing things where no threat existed?
Brody’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“Folks, afraid we’ve got some severe weather headed this way. Need everyone to calmly make their way to their vehicles and follow law enforcement instructions as we work to evacuate the area.”
Another howl cut in before my brother could finish. This time, the laughter had a high, reedy edge to it, no one quite sure whether this was an epic Halloween prank or Blood Moon was about to have its second supernatural sighting in three years. Unfortunately, the announcement didn’t have the desired effect, the survivalist crowd figuring out pretty quickly the farm only had one exit out to the highway, while the paranormal chasers tried to make a break for the edge of the police line, now sure something was up. Elbowing my way through the fray, I changed course. Piper stood beside Meera, texting frantically.
“Ellie?” I shouted over the crush of people fighting to get by, which only caused Meera to insert herself between me and her wife, glaring up at me like did I really just go there, and by the way, did I remember she lectured at the university down in Austin by day and taught krav maga by night?