Thornhill h-2

by Kathleen Peacock

  “It’s all right,” said the doctor. “The room is just reinforced in case a wolf needs to shift.”

  The explanation didn’t make me feel any better, but Kyle pulled free of my grip and walked forward, bearing his own weight until he sank onto an examination table in the middle of the small space.

  He closed his eyes. For a horrible second I thought he had passed out, but then he shifted his weight and arranged himself more comfortably. A ripple swept through his torso as his muscles tried to tear themselves apart. Kyle clenched his fists and the movement stopped.

  I brushed a strand of hair from my face and caught sight of my bloodstained fingers. My stomach did a slow flip. You couldn’t catch LS through blood—you had to be bitten or scratched by a fully or partially transformed werewolf—but it was Kyle’s blood and the idea of it on my skin left me feeling shaken and sick.

  The doctor was speaking to me—had clearly been speaking to me for at least a minute or two. I forced myself to focus on his repeated question. What happened?

  “He spotted something up in the rafters at one of the construction sites. He climbed up to take a look, but the boards were slick and he slipped. . . .” My voice cracked.

  “Why didn’t he shift?”

  Kyle’s face twisted in pain, but he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. That had to be good, right? Eyes open had to be better than eyes closed. Focus.

  “He was scared he’d get in trouble. I would have taken him to the zone, but the infirmary was closer.”

  The doctor’s gaze fell on my hands, and a sympathetic look flashed across his face. “There’s a sink in the outer room,” he said as he turned his attention fully to Kyle.

  He asked Kyle a series of inane questions, and something inside my chest unknotted when Kyle choked out his favorite color and the name of the president.

  Legs shaking, I walked to the sink. The water ran pink and I couldn’t get all of the blood out from under my cuticles, but I could at least stand the sight of my hands.

  I headed back to the small room—the vault—and hovered in the doorway.

  The doctor was still asking questions.

  Kyle’s eyes locked on mine and he gave me a small nod.

  Telling myself that wasting this chance would mean he had hurt himself for nothing, I slipped out of the infirmary.

  The wing housing the infirmary was made up of locked doors and identical gray hallways that were all empty save for the occasional—improbably healthy-looking and utterly ginormous—potted plant. I passed three of the things before realizing they were fake.

  How long had I been gone? Five minutes? Ten? Long enough for the doctor to send someone after me, probably.

  I had to find Serena, but so far all I’d managed to do was run around like a rat in a maze.

  I rounded a corner and froze. A white-clad program coordinator and a guard were standing at the end of the passage. Their backs were to me as they spoke in hushed tones.

  Move, I ordered my legs. Move!

  I rocketed back around the corner.

  Someone had wedged one of the plastic plants into a small nook. I squeezed in behind it and crouched down. My knee hit the base, and my heart went into cardiac arrest as the plant tilted and almost fell.

  Please don’t look this way. Please don’t look this way. I mouthed the words like a prayer as footsteps approached.

  “It’s just a few more tests. You want help, don’t you? You don’t want to be sick, do you?”

  “No,” said a frail female voice, the syllable uncertain and unspecific.

  Hope leaped in my chest. The voice was so weak that it was barely audible, but it was Serena. It had to be.

  I peered around the plant as the voices reached the intersection of the two hallways. The program coordinator half turned in my direction just as I got a clear look at the girl. It wasn’t Serena. It wasn’t anyone I had seen before.

  Disappointment threatened to crush me, but was quickly shoved aside by the girl’s appearance.

  Her skin looked like tracing paper and the shadows under her eyes were so dark they could have passed for smudges of ink. Her lank brown hair grazed the collar of a shapeless white tunic. She was wearing the same sort of wrist cuff we’d all been fitted with, but her arms were so thin, I wasn’t sure how it didn’t slip off.

  She really did look sick—desperately sick.

  The guard wheeled an IV stand. The plastic bag was filled with liquid that was the same light blue as the windshield wiper fluid Tess kept in the trunk of the car. It dripped down a tube that wound around the girl’s arm and into her skin.

  I bit my lip. Werewolves weren’t supposed to get sick—except for bloodlust. And whatever was wrong with the girl, it couldn’t be that. Less than 2 percent of people with LS developed bloodlust. It left you wild and frantic, and she didn’t look like she had any strength at all. She looked like she was being drained from the inside out.

  “I think . . . if I can go back to my room . . . I’d feel . . . if I could rest . . .” She twisted the hem of her shirt between her fingers.

  The program coordinator ignored her words and started ushering her down my hallway.

  Fear constricted my lungs. I tried to make myself smaller behind my plastic plant, but there was no way they could walk by and not see me.

  Suddenly, the girl collapsed. The guard just managed to keep her from falling while the program coordinator lunged to catch the IV stand.

  “What’s wrong with her?” The guard supported the girl with his left arm, keeping his right hand—his shooting hand—near his holster.

  “Exhaustion and stress, probably.” The program coordinator kept one hand wrapped around the IV stand. With his other arm, he helped take some of the girl’s weight. “She hasn’t slept in days. We’d better take her to the infirmary, though. Just to be certain.”

  They headed straight down the hall, bypassing my corridor completely. Either I had gotten turned around, or they knew a faster way back to where I had left Kyle.

  Relief surged through my muscles as their voices faded.

  I crept out of my hiding place and approached the spot where the hallways intersected. The coast was clear.

  Nerves buzzing, I turned left. That was the direction they had come from. With any luck, it would be where I’d find Serena. The fact that I didn’t have a plan beyond “make sure she’s okay and don’t get caught” suddenly seemed more than a little problematic, but I forged ahead.

  This corridor was different from the others. It had white tile instead of gray carpet, and most of the doors had keypads next to them. After a short distance and another turn, the hall ended in a heavy steel door. I had a feeling I had just found the detention block.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I whirled. A guard stood ten feet away.

  His uniform strained over the kind of bulk that had more to do with Dunkin’ Donuts than muscle. Thick black brows pulled together as he took in my hair and clothes. He stared at me like I was a bomb on the verge of exploding. “How did you get in here?”

  I struggled to string words together, but my throat wouldn’t cooperate.

  He reached toward his holster.

  He’s going to tase me. The thought ripped through my brain as he hauled his weapon free.

  I threw all my weight forward, aiming myself at his shoulder like a cannonball. I didn’t have the strength of a werewolf, but I knew how to hit someone and leave them off balance.

  The Taser went skidding across the floor and the guard stumbled.

  I didn’t make a grab for the weapon or wait to see if he went down; I just ran.

  Within moments, I was lost. Every corridor looked the same. I pressed a hand to my side as my muscles pulled in a stitch. Somewhere behind me, I heard a stream of obscenities and thunderous footsteps. How was it possible for one person’s footsteps to be so loud?

  Because it wasn’t just one person. The realization slammed through me, urging my legs to move faster. />
  I threw myself around another corner and collided with a door. The impact sent me ricocheting and I ended up on my butt on the floor.

  I tried to push myself up, but it was too late: a figure was already stepping around the corner, Taser drawn.

  I cringed against the wall as the redheaded guard—Tanner—came into sight.

  When he saw me on the floor, he let out a deep breath. He lowered his Taser but didn’t reholster it. “Are you going to make me use this?”

  I shook my head. My heart hammered so hard that black spots filled the hallway and hovered in front of my eyes like swarms of flies.

  The other guard hurtled around the corner, Taser drawn, finger poised over the trigger.

  “She’s fine,” said Tanner, eyes locked on the Taser. “She’s not putting up a fight.”

  Was he helping me?

  “She ran,” spat the guard. “Threw herself at me and ran. And she’s covered in blood.”

  I raised a trembling hand to my forehead. The skin was tacky. Kyle’s blood, I realized. I had gotten it on my face in the infirmary. The guard’s fear suddenly made a little more sense.

  “I didn’t . . .” I swallowed and glanced at Tanner. He had taken Serena, but he was definitely the more reasonable of the two men in front of me. “My friend was hurt. I brought him to the infirmary. It’s his blood. I stepped outside and got turned around.” The words came out in a rush and I had to pause and catch my breath. “I only ran because I thought he was going to tase me.”

  “You’ll be lucky if that’s all I do.” Turning beet red, the guard reached down and grabbed my arm. He pulled me up so hard and so fast that my shoulder popped and I had to bite back a gasp.

  Keeping the Taser an inch from my face, he hauled me around corners and down hallways.

  “You really think this is something to bother her with?” asked Tanner from somewhere behind me as I was yanked across a small waiting room and up to a gray door.

  A receptionist froze in the act of hanging her coat on a hook. A purse and brown paper bag sat on the desk behind her. “She said she’s not to be disturbed.”

  “She’ll be disturbed for this.” Still holding my arm, the guard holstered his Taser, then pounded on the door. The door, like the others, had a keypad next to the lock, but it also had something the others didn’t: a small nameplate bearing fourteen letters.

  WARDEN SINCLAIR

  14

  THE WARDEN WASN’T WEARING SHOES WHEN SHE OPENED the door. It was a ridiculous thing to notice, but it was the first thing I focused on. Her office had cream carpet—thicker, more expensive carpet than I’d ever seen in an office—and her nylon-clad feet sank into the pile.

  I dragged my gaze upward. Sinclair was wearing a black suit with the blazer unbuttoned over a bloodred silk camisole. Her hair was pulled back in a twist, but strands had fallen free, especially around the white streak at her temple. She looked younger up close—maybe even as young as thirty—but fine lines had begun to appear at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth.

  Her expression said she was a million miles away, but that lasted only until she took in the scene in front of her. The lines on her face stretched and deepened as her gaze slid over me and then locked on the guard holding my arm. Something dark shifted behind her eyes: a storm cloud passing over a blue sky.

  “I told them you weren’t to be interrupted.” The receptionist’s voice, high and anxious, drifted across the waiting room. “I tried to stop them.”

  “It’s all right, Sophie,” said Sinclair. She arched an eyebrow and waited for the guard to explain.

  He seemed to deflate slightly under her sharp gaze. “Found this girl wandering the corridors. Practically threw me through a wall before running.”

  I twisted and stared. Through a wall? I had barely touched him.

  Sinclair turned her attention to me. “How did you get into the building?”

  Like the guard, I could almost feel myself grow smaller. I had the sudden, irrational urge to tell her I was sorry, to apologize for everything and anything. I forced the feeling down. “My friend was hurt. The guard at the main door told me to take him to the infirmary. I stepped out into the hall to get some air and got turned around.”

  “Claims she was lost.” The guard finally let go of my arm. “Biggest pile of—”

  “Did you check?” There was a layer of frost in Sinclair’s smooth voice that made things inside my stomach clench. “Did you call the infirmary?”

  The guard’s face flushed. “No . . . I . . . like I said, she attacked and—”

  A barely perceptible sigh escaped the warden’s lips. “Never mind. I’ll handle it. Sophie, call the front entrance and find out who was on duty.” The guard opened his mouth, but before he could say anything else, Sinclair ushered me through the door and into a windowless office that looked like it belonged to a principal and smelled like church.

  The door clicked shut.

  “Sit,” she ordered as she crossed to her desk and picked up the phone. “Doctor LeBelle?” There was a pause. “Was a wolf taken to the infirmary a short time ago?” Another pause. “I see.” Sinclair’s eyes locked on mine. “There’s a girl here. Mackenzie.”

  How did she know my name? The guards hadn’t bothered asking. Shivering, I lowered myself onto one of two heavy wooden chairs as Sinclair listened to the voice on the other end of the line.

  I scanned the walls. Framed diplomas and newspaper articles dotted seas of white to my left and right, but the space behind the desk was dominated by an enormous painting depicting a woman in a tattered Grecian dress. She knelt in the dirt, struggling to close the lid of a flaming box as shadows closed in around her.

  It was beautiful. And creepy.

  I frowned and squinted. Maybe it was my imagination, but the painting’s heavy black frame didn’t look like it was flush to the wall.

  My attention was pulled back to Sinclair as she thanked the doctor and hung up the phone. She walked around her desk and sat in a massive leather chair. “Your friend was given permission to shift. His wound healed and he was sent to his morning class.”

  I started to breathe a sigh of relief but then thought about Serena and the graveyard in the woods. If Dex was right, Thornhill was a gallows and the woman in front of me was probably signing the execution orders. I couldn’t let myself believe anything she said. “There was so much blood, though. . . .”

  Sinclair’s smile slipped, and my throat filled with dust. “Surely you know how much damage your body can heal?”

  According to my father, the best lie was always the one mixed with the most truth. “I don’t know many other werewolves,” I said, trying to keep my voice level as I forced myself to meet her cold blue eyes, “and all I’ve ever had were cuts and bruises.”

  Sinclair regarded me for a moment before seeming to accept the explanation. “I’m happy to hear that. Too much time spent among other wolves on the outside can make adjusting to a program like Thornhill’s more difficult.” I tensed as she reached into a drawer, but she only pulled out a container of aloe vera wipes. “For your face,” she said, not unkindly, as she set them on the corner of her desk next to a container of hand lotion.

  Hesitantly, I took a wipe from the package and passed it over my forehead. The white cloth came back tinged with Kyle’s blood. Feeling slightly sick, I balled it in my hand.

  “Blood bothers you?”

  “Not because I’m a werewolf,” I said quickly. “I’ve just always found it gross.” My eyes returned to the painting behind the desk.

  Sinclair glanced over her shoulder. “Pandora’s box,” she said, turning back to me. “I’ve always seen parallels between that particular myth and lupine syndrome. Some people see the disease as a gift without realizing how dangerous it is to lift the lid.”

  I swallowed. “And that’s what Thornhill is? A way to help us keep the lid on?”

  “For the wolves who commit fully to the idea of rehabilitation, yes.”


  With her dark skin and shoulder-length curls, the woman in the painting looked a little like Serena.

  It gave me courage.

  “I have another friend,” I said, taking a plunge, “she was held back during admissions, but no one will tell me where she is or what’s going on.”

  Sinclair plucked a file from atop a stack of papers. She opened the folder and glanced down. “Serena?”

  I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me. “Yes,” I managed, heart in throat.

  Sinclair glanced up. “There were a few abnormalities in her blood. We want to make sure she isn’t sick before putting her in with the general population.”

  “Sick?” I thought about the girl with the IV. Feeling like the ground was crumbling beneath me, I said, “How could she be sick? There’s no way she has bloodlust.”

  Sinclair folded her hands on the desk, and I caught sight of a silver and garnet ring on her right index finger. Amy’s mother had a ring like that, one with a garnet for Amy and a sapphire for her brother. A birthstone ring.

  “Mackenzie, LS is a new disease. We barely understand how it works. We’ve recently found a virus—similar to the canine parvovirus, which affects dogs—in some cities where large numbers of werewolves tend to congregate. We believe Serena may have contracted it.”

  She’s lying, I tried to tell myself, there’s no new disease. It’s a trick. But I remembered the way the girl had looked in the hallway. It was like something had been eating her from the inside out. I gripped the arm of my chair so hard that my thumbnail bent and snapped. When I spoke, I didn’t recognize my voice. “Are you . . . are you sure she’s sick?”

  Sinclair stood and walked around the desk. She placed a hand on my shoulder and the scent of lavender wafted up from her skin. Her touch was heavy and stiff. When I glanced up, I spotted an HFD in her other hand. Trusting, but not that trusting.

  “She may be fine. It’s too early to tell.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “We have to hold her in isolation for now.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. If there’s this other virus out there, why haven’t any of us heard about it? If there’s a disease, why don’t the other wolves talk about it when . . .” I trailed off and cursed myself. Fear for Serena had made me say too much.