by Kat Kinney
The crowd swarmed around us, elbows flying as people texted, kids tried to hang onto plastic bags of kettle corn and stoned hipsters who’d clearly equated corn maze with putting a recreational spin on the afternoon fought to be the first ones out to the parking lot.
Piper whipped her head back towards the dark cornfield off in the distance. “We were in the maze earlier and I dropped my phone—”
Meera hugged her. “Ellie was worried. It was getting dark. But now none of our texts are going through. They must have somehow passed each other—”
Another howl sounded, closer this time. Pushing past them, I called over my shoulder.
“I’ll find her. Get to Hayden.”
A single portable floodlamp swayed outside the maze entrance like the lone lighthouse in a storm, casting an eerie blue-white circle of illumination that shivered with each gust. Thunder rumbled overhead, the scent of rain in the air so heavy I could taste it.
One of Brody’s cop buddies shouted instructions over a bullhorn, telling everyone they needed to clear out. Crouched in the shadows, I sent my brother a mental image of the squad car. A few seconds later, his voice came over the radio.
“209, confirm perimeter sweep.”
The deputy shined his flashlight in a wide arc, briefly glancing down the maze’s entrance before moving away. Keeping an eye on his back, I hurried down the narrow dirt path.
The wind howled from every direction, cornstalks slapping me as I dodged left, then backhanding me from the right. I threw an arm up to shield my face, watching the wind flatten a section of maze in front of me until it was practically horizontal. Thousands of leaves rasped in surround sound, shrieking, whispering, tearing, the sensation like having my ear canals scrubbed out with sandpaper.
In short, it was the perfect place for an ambush.
Every month the pack got together for all-night hunts where we tracked small game, deer and wild boar. We also held capture-the-flag tournaments, wolf-style, shot each other up during paintball and played first-bite-you’re-out team hunting courses on the back acres out at the ranch, which included a good acre of corn. Our not-so-human sides ate that stuff up.
It was all fun and games. Until it wasn’t.
Thunder rumbled, fat raindrops spackling my shirt. I had to hurry. The moment the rain hit for real, it would wipe out any hope I had of tracking.
I took off at a run, not daring to use my phone. Fifty yards in, a skeleton and a scarecrow hung propped over haystacks, bony fingers pointing out a fork in the path. Slowing, I ground my teeth at the faint traces of roasted corn and herbal shampoo. Because of course Mini-Hays would have picked Skeletor.
The sky chose that moment to open up, Texas weather doing one of its zero to sixty numbers, the sudden downpour erasing any hope I had of tracking Ellie by scent.
Shrieks sounded from somewhere far out in the maze. Racing through twisting rows of corn, I made it twenty feet in before being forced to double back, weaving through a series of tight hairpin turns that would have had me lost if it weren’t for the hum of the highway behind me.
“Screw it,” I muttered, switching my phone to flashlight mode.
Violent gusts of wind whipped the corn from side to side as I tried to make sense of where I was headed, not wanting to miss a fork in the path Hayden’s sister might have taken. Some sort of light or clearing loomed up in the distance, but the second I started forward, a dark shadow scuttled off to my right.
I bit back a shout as lightning exploded across the sky. Time to get the hell out of there.
At the center of the clearing stood a square hay bale surrounded by multicolored pumpkins, with a wooden letterbox at its center. For the true corn maze enthusiast, you could go all out while making your way through a course so complex aerial shots of it got featured on all the blogs each year, snapping selfies with numbered markers and searching for hidden bonus pathways not visible on the map. And believe me, between River and August, I’d been dragged through this thing every damn year. Sometimes two or three times.
Rotating in a slow circle, I surveyed the clearing’s three exits. One led back to the entrance. Snapping a quick picture, I faced the other two.
“Ellie!” I shouted, needles of rain whipping against my face.
But other than the distant sound of voices from deeper in the maze, there was no answer. Except of course, another howl. Freaking great. Cursing, I yanked the wooden box from the hay bale and ripped the stake free. Through my connection with Hayden came jagged shards of anger and fear. No signal on my phone. I forced my mind to clear. West would get her out. She could be pissed at me later, after I found her sister.
Images shot through my skull as I ran, their edges dark and indistinct. Low to the ground in wolf form, Cal tailed a female shifter who was nearly to the highway. Dallas sprinted around the perimeter of the farm, almost to August, who was cutting straight through the corn, no time to turn around to see who or what was chasing him.
I spat out a curse just as something slammed into me from behind.
My phone went flying, a split-second of strobing light as it spun off into nowhere followed by total darkness. Whirling, I leaped back, only to slip in the mud and land flat on my back in the corn. Lightning flashed, revealing the silhouette of a girl holding one of the maze markers between us like a bat, her thin shoulders heaving as she struggled to draw in air.
“Stay away from me, freak,” she shouted, backing away.
I blinked, the world spinning.
“Ellie?”
She sucked in a sharp breath of recognition. For half a second, neither of us moved. Lightning illuminated the field. Something warm began to trickle down the back of my neck.
“You’re one of them,” she accused, making no move to come any closer.
I felt behind my ear and came away with a smear of blood. “Yeah. Hear all those howls? I got up at four a.m. this morning to make your sister a stack of chocolate-chip banana pancakes that would have put anyone else into a sugar coma. Those guys out there want to eat you. Pretty sure that makes you Team Haythan.”
The maze marker trembled in Ellie’s hands. “I don’t trust you.”
Just then, something crashed through the corn. Ellie whipped around.
“Sorry, but it looks like you’re gonna have to.” Grabbing her arm, I dragged her back into the dark sea of corn.
We splashed through the mud, slipping and sliding, taking the turns too fast. Lightning branched across the sky, strobing my vision in and out against the oppressive blackness of the maze, my phone gone where I’d dropped it. I tripped, skidding into Ellie. She shrieked, and I caught her hand.
“Last one to the entrance is dog food.”
She huffed. “Helpful.”
The smell of soil, wet hay and rain permeated the air. Howls echoed behind us, gaining every second. Panting, we burst into the clearing I’d previously been in. With the force of the gusts laying the corn down flat, then sending it screaming up towards the furious night sky, I could barely make out the exit on the far side, probably wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t already been here. I was about to shout to Ellie to hurry when a scream shattered the night.
We froze. It was maybe a hundred yards off. But directly in our path. Right. So not that way.
“Gonna have to off-road it,” I barked, jerking my chin towards the lights in the distance.
But Ellie was already a step ahead of me, diving headfirst into the corn. Despite what it may look like on Harry Potter, running through a six-foot high field of anything is a total clusterfuck. I punched down cornstalks as we ran, rasping leaves grabbing at my clothes, every one that sprang back a cold slap to the face. With a cry, Ellie tripped and went down. I yanked her back up.
“My glasses—”
“No time!” I shouted as a growl sounded in the black void behind us.
We had twenty seconds. Thirty, at best.
And oh yeah, Ellie heard. Lightning flashed overhead, her eyes going wide as saucers. An
d I knew then what I had to do. Hayden had already lost everyone else in the world who mattered to her. She couldn’t lose her sister, too.
“Keep going until you’re out. Don’t stop, no matter what you hear.”
“Ethan—” she started, for once using my name, like she was going to try to convince me to come with her. When we both knew we were out of time.
Go!” I roared, shoving her towards the highway.
Stumbling, Ellie ran ahead, disappearing from sight—
—just as the first wolf exploded through a gap in the corn. I snarled, my wolf ripping from my skin with the power of a star going nova. We met in midair, the collision sending us pinwheeling in a knot of fangs and fur, flattening rows of cornstalks in our wake. Instantly the huge brindle male launched up, teeth snapping for my throat. Tucking and twisting to the side, I flipped him onto his back in the mud, claws raking across the underside of his belly in a blow that sent him yelping back into the shadows.
Lightning struck off to the west, illuminating a rail-thin woman in threadbare jeans and a dirty flannel shirt with holes at both elbows. Matted blond hair hung to her shoulders, her bare feet caked with mud and oozing blood.
Fur rising, I righted myself just before she lunged, a wicked knife gleaming in the dim light. But where the brindle male was fast, she was off-balance, her movements uncoordinated, her pupils fat and twitching. Missing me by miles, she crashed onto her hands and knees in the dirt. Totally high.
They both rushed me at once, him from the side, her waiting until I was cornered to try the Buffy thing again. Yeah, not happening. I sank my teeth into her arm, wrenching until I heard bone crack. The female screamed and dropped the knife, blood gushing from the wound. And before I could blink, I was getting plowed down by two hundred pounds of pissed-off male wolf. I briefly contemplated whether they could be mates and this was their cracked-up version of date night. Just my luck.
The night sky swirled above me, the world narrowing to flattened cornstalks, mud in my eyes, and hot feral wolf breath at my throat as we rolled. We skidded to a stop, and I flipped free of his teeth, but not before he opened a vicious wound across my shoulder with his claws. Pain seared up my arm like an electrical jolt, short-circuiting my brain, my howl of agony mostly swallowed by a crash of thunder. In the back of my mind, I registered Brody’s presence, realized he was somewhere out in the night, trying to find me. The male and I faced off. One of his eyes was swollen shut, blood running into it with the rain, and my left front paw was dangerously close to lame. But hell if I wouldn’t keep fighting until I had nothing left. I wasn’t letting them get to Hayden.
The male’s lips pulled back off his teeth, his muscles coiled to spring. And then a sharp, herbal smell suffused the air, my skin exploding in pain like the one time when I was a kid and had hurled myself straight through a pane of glass. Vision swimming, I distantly registered screams. But it was too late, my legs slipping out from beneath me as if my muscles were made of jelly.
Shivering and heaving, I felt rain trickle down the back of my now-human neck. A hand wrenched me up by the hair. The night sky swirled above me as a shadowed figure flipped me over. A roar choked in my throat. No sound emerged. I fought against the concrete encasing my muscles, unable to twitch so much as a finger in protest.
“He’ll live. Bring the others.”
Hayden, I thought just as the hood was shoved over my face.
Run.
13
Hayden
STAY HERE? YEAH, THAT WAS REALLY HAPPENING. I watched as Ethan cut through the crowd, blood turning to ice in my veins. Down below the stage, West had just shot off after some guy with no explanation, shouts and what sounded like a muffled explosion trailing in his wake. Right. Like I was going to stand here like a fairy tale princess waiting to be rescued while everyone around me was in danger.
Not. Happening.
Jumping off the stage, I plowed into the crowd. It was a scene that would have made a kick-ass zombie movie, an empty field miles out in the sticks, storm clouds rolling in, a teeming mass of people fighting their way towards their cars. Just as I thought I was starting to make headway, the sky opened up. Shrieks echoed above the boom of thunder, a kaleidoscope of picnic blankets and jackets flying up to block my line of sight as I craned to find Ethan up ahead. Sheets of rain pummeled the trampled grass, weeks of wear and erosion quickly turning the field into a mud pit. I bit back a curse. Trying to elbow your way through a crowd after the sheriff just announced severe weather was on the way, and oh yeah, there may or may not have been wolves waiting in the wings to eat the stragglers?
Good luck with that.
By the time I made it to the edge of the cornfield, my clothes were stuck to my skin, my teeth chattering from the sudden drop in temperature. The entrance to the maze was blocked off by a patrol car, its red and blues flashing ominously.
Pulling out my phone, I checked for a signal and fired off a text to Ellie.
Me: Where are you? Get back to stage. Labradoodles on the lam
A string of messages came through.
West: we’ve got v for sure. male. flashed out just before I got there
Dallas: Anyone seen August?
I touched the scar at my throat, opening the invisible tether connecting me to Ethan.
Come on. Come on.
Switching my phone to flashlight mode, I faced down the thrashing wall of corn. PSA for anyone who’s never seen a cow outside of Instagram and finds themselves lost in a corn maze: You can totally walk through corn. I mean, who doesn’t want to be rescued by hot firefighters? Yum. But totes unnecessary.
Shining my phone ahead into the dark, I waded in. A minute later, I burst out onto a muddy path in the maze’s interior.
I threw an arm up to block the razor-sharp cornstalks whipping across my face, trying to make out anything in the dark. The narrow path branched out left and right. In the beam of my phone’s flashlight, thousands of raindrops streaked to the earth in a silver curtain, swirling wildly with each gust.
Total. Clusterfuck.
I waded deeper into the maze. The corn lashed out from all sides, the wind howling in my ears. Somewhere off in the distance, a tornado siren sounded, its call immediately echoed by a chorus of wolves. I shivered. The mud sucked at my shoes, making it impossible to run. Between the dark and the swirling corn, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. Couldn’t hear if anyone was coming—
And then without warning I was out, bursting through a gap in the maze. I tried my phone again. No signal.
Something screamed. I jumped, dropping my phone. Heart pounding, I fumbled in the mud, the world suddenly black. Lightning flashed.
Okay. They’re close. Turn off your phone. Broadcasting where you are is just going to draw them all down on top of you.
Pocketing my phone, I reached out again for Ethan, the connection fainter this time, flickering—
Something was wrong. I could barely feel him. He couldn’t have gotten that far away—
Unless someone had grabbed him. Unless he was hurt. Unless—
I slicked rain off my face. Think. Move. Hands shaking, I plunged deeper into the maze.
The next time I emerged, it was at the edge of a small clearing holding a wooden lookout tower. Splashing through the mud, I climbed the wet rope ladder, and turned in a slow circle. The corn raged around me in a vicious, swirling maelstrom. Far off in the distance, a line of headlights glowed like predatory eyes in the dark, hundreds of cars trapped as they waited to turn out onto the highway. Red and blue strobes flashed from police cruisers. And in between, a seemingly endless sea of black.
Except—
There. Buried deep within the maze, a light flickered on. Winked off. Faint as a summer firefly. There, then gone.
Pulse pounding in my ears, I started to pull out my phone.
My vision went black as something seized my heart in an invisible fist. I clawed at my throat, the wind howling in my ears, the cold wooden platfo
rm rushing up to meet me.
Ethan.
Screams battered the inside of my skull, my wolf clawing in a desperate panic. Unable to move. Unable to get up. A hand at my throat—
No.
No.
No.
I sucked in a sharp breath, icy knives of rain pelting my face.
Ethan.
I staggered to my feet just as another scream made my hair stand on end.
The bond exploded in an electrical storm of pain. I screamed, collapsing to my knees. The world spun, a sickening carnival ride I had no hope of getting off of. I staggered up, running blindly, the echo of Ethan’s agony pulsing dully in the back of my mind. The leaves tore at my clothes, opening fresh cuts on my hands and arms. A wolf howled. I gritted my teeth, forcing my feet to move faster. This was my fault. All my fault. Ellie wouldn’t have come here, would never have been targeted if it weren’t for me.
And Ethan. Who had sacrificed everything to try to keep me safe.
Dimly, I thought I heard shouts. I was clawing through the corn, sure I could hear sirens in the distance when without warning I came out onto another interior path. Yanking out my phone, I shined it from side to side.
I froze, certain I'd heard something. Lightning exploded in the swirling purple sky just as a figure burst through the wall of corn. I screamed. The person who crashed into me screamed.
“Hayden!”
Ellie was soaked to the bone, her clothes ripped, her glasses gone, blood trickling from a cut on her lip.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
I threw my arms around her, only to just as quickly step back.
Because she wasn’t alone. Lacey Blair was holding her by the arm, hostage style. And she had a knife.
* * *
Lightning flashed overhead, my heart thundering in my chest. How could they all have missed the predatory calculation in that too-lovely face? Lacey Blair, who supplied Blood Moon with cupcakes in every flavor from strawberry cheesecake to red velvet and boxed up coconut crème pies with a smile, now held my sister at knifepoint with the icy calmness of a serial killer.