Freeks

by Amanda Hocking

  “Boh je dobrý a diabol nie je až taký zlý k tým, ktorých má rád,” Luka said, his words suddenly carrying a thick Slovak accent, so it sounded like Boe he dough-bree, ah diablo knee he talk-sleek teom pret-eek ktoe mah-rot.

  “Did you just say a spell?” Hutch asked, narrowing his eyes at him. “Did you just put a spell on us?”

  “No, it was something that my gramma used to say sometimes,” Luka explained. “It means ‘God is good, and the devil is not so bad to those he likes.’”

  Mom stood, wiping her hands on her dress. Then she stretched her arms wide, pulling herself to the other side, and let out a deep breath. When she let her arms fall to her sides, she turned to face us.

  “I think I’ve done all I can do,” she said. “Now we must wait.” Then she rested her eyes on me, gray and serious. “Mara, will you come with me for a moment?”

  I followed my mom into our trailer, where one of her old Blue Öyster Cult records played softly. All the lights were on, as were all the lights in all the trailers. We wanted the campsite as bright as possible so we could see what was coming.

  Once we were in the privacy of our home, Mom took my hands in hers. She bent down a little, so she was level with me. The lines around her eyes seemed more harsh than normal, and I wondered dourly how all this work she was doing was affecting her.

  “Mara, qamari, I don’t want to worry you, but I want you to know the truth,” Mom said.

  “That’s a very scary way to start a conversation, Mom.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Mara, be serious. I need you to hear me now.”

  I swallowed hard, gulping back the fear I felt rising inside me, and I nodded. “Okay.”

  “Last night, Gideon gave me a pill to help me sleep, and it’s the first time I’ve had dreams since we got here,” Mom explained. “Basima had been trying to visit me, and my sleep was so deep, she was finally able to last night.”

  “She came to you in a dream?”

  Mom nodded. “Yes. She told me that I can’t shelter you any longer. That I must teach you to harness your power, or the monsters of this world will destroy you.”

  “How can I harness my power?” I shook my head. “I hardly have any, and I just talk to the dead. How will that help?”

  “Oh, qamari.” Mom smiled at me. “There are far more dead on this earth than there are alive. What do you think is more powerful?”

  “How do I use it tonight, to fight this thing?” I asked.

  “First, you must trust yourself.” She put one hand on my stomach, pressing hard against the soft flesh beneath the fabric of my shirt. “Your intuition is potent, and you must listen to it.”

  “Okay,” I said uncertainly.

  “And then, you should use this.” Mom stepped away from me and went over to pick up something hidden on the bench beside the dinette.

  Carefully, she held up the antique crossbow I’d seen in the steamer trunk, along with a small, narrow satchel. She handed the bow to me, and it felt heavier than I expected, much heavier than the crossbow I’d used before with Seth.

  The wood was rich blackwood with a purplish hue, with designs of winged monsters carved into it in intricate detail. The stock curved down, like the grip of a pistol, and my fingers brushed up against the trigger.

  As soon as they did, I felt a jolt of cold surge through me. Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart skip a beat.

  “This was your great-grandma Elissar’s,” Mom explained, running her fingers along the string. “She made it herself in 1922 to fight off the demons that were attacking her village. Her home, her family, her first husband, they were all slaughtered, but she survived, thanks to this, and she fled to America.”

  “And you think it still works?” I asked.

  My mom nodded solemnly. “For you, it will work.”

  “How many bolts do we have?” I asked, looking down at the satchel in her hand. A few of them poked out of the bag, their silver pointed tips as unmistakable as the arrow for the crossbow.

  “We only have six left, so you must use them wisely. You’ve trained with a crossbow before, so I know that you can handle this.”

  I held the crossbow up, looking through the sight—a small hole in a metal circle sitting atop the barrel. I’d fired a crossbow before, many times, and I’d been quite good, because screwing up meant that Luka could lose an eye that might not grow back.

  Yet I couldn’t help but feel like all this confidence in me might be misplaced. I didn’t feel powerful or capable or even really understand what was being asked of me.

  “Mara, I see the worry on your face.” Mom gently took the crossbow from me and set it on the table, along with the bolts. “You can do these things, because you must.”

  She put her hands on my face, both in a gesture of comfort and to force me to look her in the eyes. “Something very bad is coming for us, and you must be strong to survive. You are strong, qamari, and you will not waver.”

  I swallowed hard, and the record began to skip, stuck on the line don’t fear the reaper. My stomach turned sour, twisting bitterly inside me.

  “What?” Mom asked, her eyes narrowing. “What do you feel?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t … I don’t know.”

  “You sense it,” she insisted, and I could feel the acidic churning of my stomach growing. She dropped her hands from my face and looked to the window. “It’s here, isn’t it?”

  No sooner had she said that then I heard Gideon let out a battle cry.

  47. demonology

  I grabbed the satchel and dropped the strap across my chest, and then I picked up the crossbow. I didn’t rush out—not yet because I didn’t know what I’d be running into—so I stopped at the door to the Winnebago and looked out at the campsite.

  Hutch stood on the steps of his own camper, brandishing a sword, while Luka attempted to pull him back inside. I couldn’t see Gideon, not at first, but then Roxie lit up the sky with a fireball, burning white hot inside her hands.

  For a split second, I saw it—the creature that had been stalking the camp. The fire seemed to warp around it, reminding me of a documentary I’d once seen about black holes. The light was pulled into it, and it was the bending that gave it its shape. The absence of light, like a shadow come alive—blurred edges and formless, but not.

  It was like it had a cloak of nothingness camouflaging it. I knew that it had substance. I had the seen the talons of its feet. I knew it was more than a shadow—it was something real that could be killed.

  “I’ll kill you, you bloody bastard!” Gideon roared, and he fired the cursed Luger at the demon shadow, but then it was on the move.

  There was a blur of black in the darkness, and the trees of the swamp rustled and moved. Gideon ran after it, into the swamp, and I knew that if he went alone, we’d never see him again.

  I threw open the camper door and ran out after him. My mom was screaming my name, and I suspected that she was giving chase, but I didn’t slow. If I waited any longer, any signs of the creature—and Gideon—might be gone.

  Into the forest I plunged, chasing after shadows in the dark. The moon was hidden behind clouds, giving me nothing to guide my path. The only thing I had was the twisting pain in my stomach—the pain seemed to intensify the closer I got, so I followed the hurt and ignored the branches scraping at my legs and arms, as if grabbing at me.

  “Enough!” Gideon shouted, and his voice echoed through the trees, so I couldn’t tell if he was a few feet to my left or twenty feet to my right, or maybe somewhere else entirely. “Leave us be! I will not let you hurt my people, not anymore!”

  The gun went off three times, loud blasts shattering the night, and I put my hands over my ears. When I removed them, there was nothing. Even the wind through the trees had fallen silent.

  Mara! a voice shouted, coming from within my head and all around me. I turned to look for the source of the sound, and then I saw her.

  Blossom. Her frizzy brown hair appear
ed nearly translucent, but I could still make out the spattering of freckles underneath her eyes.

  You need to get out of here. Blossom’s voice was in my head, but her mouth wasn’t moving. She only stared at me with wide dark eyes. If you want to live, you need to run. NOW.

  So I did. I burst forward, pushing back through the trees in the direction I thought was the camp, but I had no sense of anything. Being in a strange forest in the middle of the night was disorienting, but I had to keep running as fast as I could.

  Behind me, the branches and trees crunched and snapped as the creature tore through them. I didn’t scream—there was no one who could come to help me, and I didn’t want my mom or Roxie rushing in after me and getting themselves killed. The only thing I could do was run faster.

  Then the ground gave way beneath me. The tall grass and thick forest made it hard for me to see where I was going, and it was already too late when I felt my foot squelching down into the dense mud of the surrounding swamp.

  I fell forward roughly and lost my grip on the crossbow. It slid out of my grasp, somewhere in the underbrush, and I didn’t have time to search for it. I had to climb to higher ground, but the mud was swallowing my legs.

  The creature was close enough that I could smell the sulfur on its breath. I could hear the beast behind me—it made a strange high-pitched guttural sound, like a demonic squeal of delight.

  Grabbing a broken branch, I turned around to face the creature as it tore through the trees toward me. I brandished the branch like a weapon. If I was going down, I was going down swinging.

  48. death

  I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, standing right in front of me. Its breath felt hot on my skin, and it would only be a few seconds before it tore into me.

  But then the branches beside me started cracking. There was something else in the woods, charging toward us. Was there more than one demon?

  A loud snarl erupted from the trees beside me, and I saw a flash of silver before it collided into the demon. The demonic shadow tried to engulf it, so the new creature almost disappeared, but it fought back hard, crashing into the swamp.

  I had no idea what was going on, but I knew I had to escape while I had the chance. Grabbing the roots of a tree, I hoisted myself up out of the muck. The clouds had parted enough to allow the moon to shine through, and I saw the light glinting off the metal on my crossbow.

  As the fight roared on behind me, I scrambled to grab my crossbow. Behind me, I heard heavy footsteps and ragged panting. I whirled around, pointing the bow at whatever was chasing after me.

  Instead of the darkness of the demon, it was a massive silver wolf, and it would’ve easily dwarfed a bear. Its fangs, exposed under the curl of its lip, could easily snap me in two. I took aim with my crossbow, right for its chest, but the wolf’s expression softened and there was something in its eyes—dark golden brown and strangely familiar—that made me hesitate to pull the trigger.

  Then the wolf lowered its head before turning and bounding away into the trees.

  I lay on my back in the dirt for a second, catching my breath and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But I didn’t have much time for that; I had to get out of there before anything else tried to kill me.

  I’d just gotten to my feet when a guy burst through the bushes. But it wasn’t just any guy—it was Gabe, shirtless and barefoot. The only clothing he wore was a pair of jeans that looked like they’d gone through a shredder. His hair was mussed, his eyes were wild, and he was out of breath as he walked over to me.

  “We have to go,” Gabe commanded.

  “Where did you come from, Gabe?” I asked in a trembling voice, but I already knew the answer and stepped back from him. “You were that wolf, weren’t you?”

  “We can talk about it later, but we have to get out of here now before that thing comes back.”

  “Mara!” That was my mom, screaming just outside the edge of the forest.

  “Mara!” Gideon’s voice followed right after hers, his accent lilting with panic.

  The trees rustled behind us, and there was no more time to think or talk. Gabe grabbed my hand and pulled me along. His legs were longer and faster, and he nimbly leapt over a fallen tree before picking me up and lifting me over it.

  We broke through the forest at the edge of camp and ran straight into Gideon, pointing his Luger right at Gabe.

  “Don’t shoot, it’s Mara!” Mom yelled, and she practically pushed Gabe out of the way to wrap her arms around me. “Thank the heavens you’re alive. I couldn’t lose you, qamari. I love you more than the stars in the sky.”

  She let go of me long enough to grab my shoulders and give me one rough shake. “I gave you the crossbow and told you to harness your powers to protect yourself, not to kill yourself, Mara!”

  “You shouldn’t have followed me,” Gideon said once my mom finished scolding me. He put his leathery hand on my shoulder. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if you got hurt because of me.”

  “Did you protect her?” Mom asked, eyeing Gabe’s shirtless torso. He had a few scratches on his chest, but they seemed superficial, so they were probably from branches clawing at him.

  “I tried,” he told her, but his eyes were on me, searching.

  Everything happened so fast, and I couldn’t think or catch my breath, and I just wanted a moment where the world didn’t feel like it was falling away from me. I looked away from him, just for a moment, just to think, and I spotted Roxie. She was standing next to Luka’s trailer, sobbing loudly, and Hutch had his arm around her.

  That’s when I noticed the tears in my mom’s eyes, and the blood on Gideon’s clothes. Dark, like the color of flaking rust, mixed with mud and leaves and a few strands of frizzy brown hair.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Then I saw her. Luka was a few feet away from the campsite, crouched over her. Even from this distance, she looked like a rag doll that had been torn apart.

  “Gideon found Blossom,” Mom said gently, and rubbed my back. “She’s dead.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I should’ve known it sooner. Blossom had been talking to me since she’d been gone—I’d heard her voice in my head quoting “The Spider and the Fly.” And as I looked over at her body, my stomach twisting, I realized that she’d been the one who turned my stomach sour. She’d been trying to warn me of danger.

  “I saw her in the forest,” I said softly. “She told me to run.”

  Mom’s breath caught in her throat as she stifled a sob. “She’s watching out for you.”

  Behind me, I could hear Gideon asking Gabe where he’d come from and what he was doing out here. I wiped the tears from my eyes, knowing that I would cry plenty for Blossom soon, but right now, I had to find out what the hell was going on with Gabe.

  “I need to talk to Gabe.” I gave him a hard look. “Alone.”

  “We should all go back inside,” Gideon said, but I’d already turned and started walking toward my trailer. Behind me I heard Roxie crying, asking what they were going to do with Blossom, and Gideon promised that he’d keep her safe and they would decide what to do in the morning.

  In the Winnebago, my mom’s album was still playing, but I couldn’t handle the sound so I flicked it off. I set my crossbow on the counter beside me, in case I needed it, and I poured myself a glass of water. I took a long drink with my back to Gabe, but I could feel his eyes on me, the way I always felt his eyes when they were on me.

  I took a deep breath and turned back to face him. He stood before me, looking more scared than I’d ever seen him before.

  “What are you?” I asked finally.

  49. confession

  “Well, um…” He lowered his eyes and cleared his throat. “People would call me a werewolf.”

  My heart dropped from my chest, and I closed my eyes, letting his words sink in. Since I’d grown up around people with all kinds of different supernatural abilities, I wasn’t as shocked as perhaps the a
verage person would’ve been.

  I also knew that I was still keeping my secret from him—that I was a necromancer, and that most of my friends had extrasensory powers of their own—and I was probably keeping it for the same reason he had. The shame and lack of understanding that came from telling a “normal” person.

  But considering my friends and family were being attacked by a creature that we didn’t understand, his confession carried a more terrifying weight with it.

  “It’s not like the movies, though,” Gabe rushed to explain. “When I change into a wolf, I don’t just turn into an animal. I’m still in control of myself. I can even control when I change. It’s harder when there’s a full moon, but I’m still in control.”

  “A full moon?” I opened my eyes. “There was a full moon the beginning of this week.”

  “I know, like I said, I’m still in control,” Gabe insisted, and took a step toward me. “I’m always in control of myself.”

  “How does it work, then?” I asked. “If the moon doesn’t make you change, why do you change?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s just something I do from time to time. Like, my body craves it, and if I don’t run off some built-up wolf energy every now and then, it does get harder to handle. But I do it. I usually just run through the trees for a while, and then I come home.”

  “How long have you been a werewolf?” I asked.

  “Technically, all my life,” he explained. “But I didn’t start actually changing until I was twelve.”

  “You were born a werewolf?” I cocked my head. “Does that mean your family are too?”

  “You remember when I told you about the Brawley legacy?” Gabe asked with a crooked smile. “It’s not just the house and the money. We’re werewolves. My mom, my sister, my uncle Beau, my grandpa, we’re all wolves.”

  I tilted my head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, hell, there’s a whole pack of you.”

  “It’s not like that.” Gabe reached out, trying to touch my arm. “We’re not bad.”