We were only a short distance from the creek and I took a step forward, thinking of throwing it in, when I stopped and tucked it under my arm. Dad needed to know there were trappers in the forest and my pack would be keeping watch.
“What are we going to do with it?” Nikki asked, gesturing to it.
“We’re not leaving it here, that’s for sure,” I answered. “Whoever left it here will be back for it. Traps like these are hard to come by. They’re also illegal.”
I took her hand with my free one.
“What were they hoping to trap?”
“I don’t know, but if I had to guess, probably bear. I’m going to give it to Dad so he can look into it. He hasn’t mentioned anything about trappers, but at least now he’ll know to keep an eye out. I’ll be getting the guys to keep an eye specifically on this section of forest, too.”
I looked up, the sky was darkening above us. “Nikki, I’m sorry. I’m going to be getting you into trouble with your mom. It’s going to be dark soon.”
“She knows I was at the Res. As long as she doesn’t call over there to check on us and they tell her I left a good while ago, we should be fine,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound too hopeful. And, with the evening she had had at the Res, I couldn’t blame her.
“If I can find a place to leave this trap, I’ll come back and get it later. I can shift and get you home a lot quicker,” I said, pushing the trap under a bush, shoving leaves over it to hide it from sight.
An instant later, we were running through the forest, the trees moving easily out of our path. I realized that she was holding onto me tighter than usual, but I’d chalked the reason up to being because I was running with her so much faster than normal.
When her house came into view, she slid off me in a heap to the ground.
Uh-oh. I’m sorry, Nikki. I didn’t mean to make you sick. I padded over to her and bumped my head into her shoulder in apology.
“S’okay,” she managed weakly, getting to her feet.
Are you sure? You look a little green. Even in the dying light, her complexion was most definitely…green.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, leaving me at the edge of the woods without saying goodbye.
As I always did, I waited until she made it onto the porch before I left, retracing my steps to make it back to retrieve the trap.
It took a bit longer to make it back to the Res, but the secret of the trap quickly came undone without my having to say a word to my dad or sending my pack out to search.
Darren spotted me as I came out of the woods.
“Hey Adam,” he greeted me, then his eyes went wide when he spotted the trap in my hand. It wasn’t surprise, I noted, but recognition.
“Hey,” I answered, “Nikki and I found this out by the creek. You wouldn’t happen to have any idea who it belongs to, would you, Darren?”
His eyes dropped to the ground and he shoved his hands into his back pockets. “It’s mine,” he admitted quietly.
I fought to keep my voice calm and neutral. “Okay…why?” I asked. “You know these are illegal, man. This isn’t the way our people hunt. This…” I shook the trap so the chain would jingle, making my point. “This is wrong.”
“I know.” He was leaning forward now, his hair hanging down, hiding his eyes. “I’m sorry, Adam. I read about them in a history book and then I found a guy at the flea market who had one and was selling it as an antique. I was curious. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen…honestly!”
He looked up long enough to look me in the eye, hoping to win my trust back again.
“It’s just…it’s just that all of you guys have been busy searching for lost hikers and everything and Dad hasn’t ever taught me to hunt and I…I just wanted something to do.”
“You caught a Sasquatch with it,” I interrupted, wanting to make sure he knew the severity of the matter.
That struck a chord with him and his eyes went wide. Though my people knew of Sasquatches, to my knowledge, only the Keepers had ever seen them.
“Oh no. A Sasquatch?” Darren said weakly, the full impact of what he’d done, hitting him.
“Yeah, you didn’t kill it, only injured it. If you’d been the one to have found it, Darren, things could have gone really, really bad. Fast.” I thought of the baby’s father who would have had no problem at all defending his young.
“I promise I won’t ever use a trap like that again,” he promised. “Ever. You have my word.”
Tears glittered in his eyes in the light of the street lamp and I knew he was serious.
I nodded. “All right. Good.” I smiled. “Want to go with me and get rid of this thing?”
He nodded, wordless.
“You know, there should be another full moon coming up soon,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder as we walked down the road. There were a lot of things I couldn’t fix, but there would be something I would do for him. “Darren, the second you get your wolf, I’m going to teach you how to hunt. I promise you that.”
He looked up and smiled. “That would be awesome.”
I hadn’t expected the subject of hunting to come up so quickly, but the next day at school, it did.
“You know, I wish you guys wouldn’t think so loudly,” Nikki grumbled as she slid in beside me with her tray, giving Erik a particularly cold look. “I know you’re worried about that Biology exam, but you’re projecting it so hard that I can’t concentrate. Mr. Webb doesn’t think I’m paying attention and I’m not. I’m too worried about you passing your classes to worry about my own.”
“Sorry, Nikki. I can’t help it. They want me to cut up that pig heart,” Erik grumbled, his face taking on a gray pallor that matched the color of his wolf’s fur. “I know it’s dead already, but butchering the poor thing for no reason other than satisfying someone’s morbid curiosity just seems wrong to me.” He shrugged and began eating.
“I don’t know, Erik. But you’re going to have to deal with it somehow. And I’m not trying to sound unsympathetic or anything—but how can you eat right after you come out of Biology class? Especially if you’ve been messing with pig guts.”
“Pig hearts,” he clarified through a mouthful of hot dog. “And it’s not that I want to eat, it’s because I have to. And yes, I realize that it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I’m sensitive.”
And with that, he left it alone and continued eating.
Ed rolled his eyes. “What he’s trying to explain, Nikki, is that we use massive amounts of energy any time we shift into wolf and energy requires fuel. We patrol at night as a pack and it uses a lot of energy. It helps if we hunt in wolf form, but often we can’t, so we have to eat two or three times more than a regular person would soon after we shift back.” He squirted more ketchup onto his fries.
“Hunt,” Nikki whispered, hoarsely. “In wolf form.”
“Mostly deer,” Erik volunteered after swallowing another bite. “Sometimes elk, since they are migrating up this way.”
Let me show you, I offered silently, bringing up a memory of a recent hunt. Nikki’s face took on a faraway look as my thoughts became hers. I focused on her eyes as I remembered the night my brothers and I ran under a moonlit sky…
A musky scent crept up my nostrils, awakening the animal inside me. I could hear the deer grazing on the grass a few yards away. It didn’t even know we were even there. The wolf in me wanted to startle it—to make it run—eager for the chase. I knew the others felt the same as I, but they would only follow me. We are Pack and I am U-la-gu. I gave in to the wolf and lunged, startling the deer.
I saw the doe’s eyes widen in fear for a split second, then it turned and bounded through the trees. Adrenaline rushed through me. There was nothing human in me now. I only wanted to hunt. To kill.
It was over in a matter of seconds. It always was. After all, when you are the greatest predator in the world, nothing can hide. I could hear her heart beating, fear emanating off her in a wave. I lunged over a fallen log and took her
down. I sat down on my haunches, my muzzle clamped on her throat. I felt the last pulse of life as it filled my mouth with the tang of coppery blood.
The pack ate until we were all satisfied. Then the wolves left us, going back down into their shadowy depths, leaving us only in their form, with more strength than we’d had—our appetites sated.
The memory ended and Nikki’s eyes focused on me.
“Like Ed said, it helps to hunt in wolf form. It eases the animal inside of us,” I whispered. “No gift comes without a curse.”
Chapter 12
“It’s about time,” Erik said, when I told him my plan. “I’ve only been telling you to ask her out for how long exactly?”
When I didn’t bother answering him, he sighed. “Better late than never, I suppose. It’s a good thing you told me because I know some great places you can take her. If she’s like Penny, she’ll love a good surprise…”
He stopped, his brow furrowing, as if he had just thought of something.
I knew Erik knew of good date spots. His mouth constantly had him in trouble, so there were “make-up” dates aplenty. Movies, restaurants, you name it. The problem was—unlike Penny, Nikki wasn’t going to be surprised by anything I planned.
Erik had come to the same conclusion. “Yeah, this is going to be a bit different. You’re not going to surprise her. She probably has already Seen you coming here and telling me. As soon as you head over there, she’s going to know you’re coming.”
All of a sudden, his face lit up and he hopped up from his spot on the steps. “Come on. I know how to fix it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He grinned. “Dude, you need my mom. If anybody can tell you how to keep something from a Seer, it will be her.”
“It’s pretty much the same thing that I told Nikki when she came trying to block you out,” Jenna smiled. “You’ve got to put up a wall.”
“A wall,” I repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“Imagine your thoughts out in an open space. They’re where Nikki can see them,” she explained. “The trick is for you to focus on imagining a wall around you. Something that will keep everything out.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated. Instead of a wall, I imagined myself in a bubble where I could see out, but nothing could get in. A moment or two passed, then I opened my eyes. “Did it work?”
“I couldn’t say. My sight isn’t strong enough to see the thoughts of the Keepers now,” Jenna said.
“So that’s it? That’s all there is to it? I just have to concentrate on building a wall around me and if it’s strong enough, she won’t see in?”
Jenna nodded. “That’s it.” Her dark eyes sparkled mischievously. “The only thing I’ve got left to tell you—is good luck.”
Good luck, I thought. I’m going to need it.
As soon as I left Erik’s house, I spotted Hannah. She’d avoided me ever since the day I’d asked Nikki to eat lunch with us. But now she stood in the middle of the road, waiting on me.
“Hannah,” I said with a short nod.
“Hello, Adam.” She met my gaze straight on. Something was up. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.” We walked down the road toward my house as we’d done hundreds of times growing up. Before I became a Keeper, all of us hung out together in our own pack of sorts, and for some reason I was reminded of that now.
“It’s about Darren,” she said after a long moment of silence. “Your dad came over to ask who he’d bought the bear trap from.”
I winced. I’d given the trap to my dad and told him about Darren. I hadn’t thought he’d go and question him. If his cousin was here telling me about that visit, it was going to be bad.
“Reuben was there,” Hannah continued. A small dent between her brows deepened, proof she was worried and that I had every reason to be too. “He waited until the sheriff got his answers and left. Then…it didn’t go well.” She looked up, a mixture of sadness and fury raging behind her eyes. “He beat him, gave him a black eye and a busted lip. Darren swears that he fell down some steps, but I know that didn’t happen.”
I hadn’t realized that my mist was floating around us until Hannah took an extra step to the side, getting away and giving me room.
“If Darren had his wolf, Reuben wouldn’t dare touch him,” I said, my teeth gritted. My own wolf was shoving to the surface, insisting that it was his responsibility as alpha to show the other wolf his place.
“I didn’t come to tell you so you would go after Reuben,” Hannah said, watching the mist as it centered, closing in around my body. “I wanted to tell you so you’d know what’s going on. There’s another full moon next week.” She lifted an eyebrow, the gesture enough to imply she was suggesting that I wait until Reuben’s magic was passed on to his son.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said, taking a deep breath, hoping to still the wolf inside of me who wasn’t in the notion of making any sort of agreement. “I’ll wait until the next moon, but until then, you have to keep a close eye on Darren. Make excuses to visit his mom, invite them over for dinner—whatever you’ve got to do. You’re a relative, so they’ll accept you better than if I go over there. If anything else happens or if you even suspect something else has happened, you have to tell me and I’ll take care of it, all right?”
“Deal. And don’t tell your dad,” she added. “I don’t think that’d go over so well, either.”
“I won’t.” There wouldn’t be any use, I thought. If Darren wouldn’t even tell Hannah the truth, there was no way he’d tell the sheriff. But come the next moon, something will be done, one way or the other.
We walked in silence until we made it to my driveway.
“Thanks again for telling me, Hannah,” I said, turning to her.
She nodded, then her eyes narrowed just a bit. “There’s one other thing I need to tell you, Adam.”
Great. Here we go.
“I want to apologize for being jealous of Nikki.”
At that, I had no words, so I just stood there. The good thing about that bit of shock was, while my wolf was more than ready to take on Reuben, he had no idea of what to do with Hannah. I felt him slink back into the darkness, tail between his legs, hoping I wouldn’t call upon him for help on this particular matter.
“It’s just that I’ve always believed I would be Seer for the Keepers and since there wasn’t anyone else in the tribe our age, I kinda always thought it would be you and me.” She was nervous, twirling a long strand of silky hair around her palm, as if she was trying to search for something to keep her hands busy. “But I watched Nikki at the meeting and she truly is the Seer, whether or not the elders have agreed. And I’ve watched you with her and I know that there is something between the two of you that we never had. So what I’m trying to say is…can we still be friends?”
She put out her hand, her fingers trembling in the open air.
I took it and squeezed it lightly. “I’ve known you since we were babies, Hannah. I’ve always considered you a friend and I always will. You don’t have to worry about that.”
She smiled and I turned loose of her hand.
“Good,” she said, letting out a breath. “And now that’s taken care of, I’m going to go and check on Darren again.”
“Let me know if anything changes,” I said, returning her wave as she turned and walked back down the road. Once she was gone, I turned my attention inward, silently berating my wolf for acting so cowardly.
You’d better get braver, I told him. Because there is another girl we still have to go see this evening—before we both lose our nerve.
I’d at least done some planning ahead of time. One of the first things my grandfather taught me was that you should always act like a gentleman. So this, to me, was going and asking Mrs. Harmon if it was all right to ask her daughter out on a date. Hoping to catch Nikki unaware, I’d waited for an evening that I knew she’d be busy with cheerleading practice before I stopped by and saw her mom. Wi
th luck, she’d be concentrating on jumps, or splits, or cheers, or something, and wouldn’t be tuned into what I was doing.
Mrs. Harmon had been surprised when I showed up, knocking on the front door. When I asked her my question, her eyes went even wider, then a grin painted her face that made Nikki’s nervous one look small in comparison.
She’d given me permission and had even wanted particulars as to when I was going to ask and where we were going to go. This, she explained, was so she could plan a surprise of her own.
So when I knocked on the door this time and Mrs. Harmon opened it, she wasn’t at all surprised, but she did look happy. She took a look at what I was wearing and nodded approvingly. “When she says yes, tell her to go up and look in the left side of my closet. There’s a surprise for her in there,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone. Then she turned and yelled up the stairs. “Nikki!”
My wall. Gotta put my wall up, I reminded myself, imagining myself standing in a bubble.
“I’m coming!”
I clasped my hands behind my back and waited as Nikki came down the steps, concentrating on my bubble for all I was worth. She stopped in front of me, her eyes narrowed, and frowned at me. As she leaned in closer, I concentrated even harder and her frown deepened.
“I’m going to pick Emily up. It looks like you two need to talk,” Mrs. Harmon announced, squeezing past us and out the door.
Nikki glanced over as it shut, then turned her attention back to me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. Never had I seen such frowning on her face before.
“Yes, but I can’t hear you at all.”
Score! I did it!
“Not a single sound,” she continued. “Am I broke? Did I somehow return my gift? No, wait, I know it’s still there because I just saw those big cats. So why can’t I hear you? I’ve always been able to do it before.” She stopped and took a breath.
The Keeper Saga: Wynter's War, Charmed, and The One (The Boxed Set Book 2) Page 33