War? I swallowed, throat suddenly dry at the enormity of the word. “It’s just one camp. Not even a regular-sized one.” Thornhill had a few hundred wolves. The larger rehabilitation camps had close to eight or ten thousand.
“One camp is enough to give people hope. No one has ever stood up to the LSRB before. Not like this.” Hank’s gaze carried so much weight that I felt somehow smaller under it. “Even if we fail, wolves in other camps will hear about what we tried to do and they’ll fight back—first in small ways that won’t seem to matter, and then in larger ones that will add up. Soon, other packs will start resisting instead of hiding.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I shook my head. “If no one ever fights back then nothing will change.”
“Do you remember what happened to Leah?”
My breath caught, and I knew Hank could read the memory on my face.
Of course I did.
Leah had lived down the hall from us in Detroit. She’d been kind and smart and had tried to look out for me. She had also been a werewolf—though I hadn’t known it at the time. After people found out she was infected, a group of Trackers had dragged her into the street and beaten her to death.
Instead of trying to stop them, our neighbors had cheered and watched.
“What happened to her will happen in every city, every day. If we take down a camp, the backlash against wolves will be worse than it was when the epidemic broke.” Hank watched me, gauging my reaction.
Fear settled in my stomach like lead, and the urge to throw up rose in my throat. Suddenly, everything seemed too big, and I felt exactly like what my father probably saw: a naïve seventeen-year-old who was way out of her depth.
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Why, then? Why didn’t you say anything before? If you’re so sure that’ll be the result, why do it?” He had wanted to get Eve and me out. We were out. What else did he have to gain?
Hank shrugged and finally took a swallow of beer. “I told you this morning: what she’s doing is too dangerous to go unchecked.”
I bit my lip. I knew I shouldn’t push, I knew I should just be grateful he had changed his mind, but for some reason I needed to understand. “But it doesn’t affect you. Not directly.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed and I knew he was starting to lose patience. He had always hated questions. “If what they did to your friend is considered a success, then it will affect me. And every other wolf in the country. Sooner or later, the LSRB will come after us. This way, we’re taking the fight to them instead of just waiting.”
“There’s no reason to think the LSRB knows what Sinclair’s doing,” I reminded him. “She’s been falsifying the admission records.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “Or maybe they’re just covering their tracks in case it ever comes out. Either way, after tonight, things are about to get a whole lot darker for any wolf and anyone suspected of having werewolf sympathies.”
He shook his head and stood.
“You need to go home. You need to pick up your life, and forget about the wolves and Thornhill.”
“I can’t do that.” I took a deep breath. “Serena and Kyle are my friends. I won’t just turn my back on them. I’m coming with you tonight.”
Hank’s response was instant. “Absolutely not.”
“You need regs in case anyone uses an HFD against your wolves. You know you do. You can shoot out the big ones on the poles, but you won’t know who has a handheld one until it’s too late.”
“I’ve got the Tracker.”
“And if something happens to him? If he gets shot or hurt or someone on your team decides trusting him is too big a risk?” Hank scowled and I knew I had him. “I know my way around the camp, I’ve been in the sanatorium, and HFDs don’t affect me. You need me. Whether you like it or not.”
I turned and pulled open the door.
“You don’t have a future with that boy. You know that. Sooner or later, every wolf turns their back on their old life. If he’s the reason you’re insisting on throwing yourself into harm’s way—”
“Maybe you turned your back on your life,” I said, “but Kyle’s not you. And he’s not the only reason I’m going. Even if he was, you don’t have the right to give me advice.”
Before Hank could say anything else, I stepped out of the trailer and strode away.
23
I FOUND JASON STRETCHED OUT ON A BROKEN PORCH swing that someone had dragged under a cluster of trees. He stared up at the branches, too lost in thought to notice me. A low fire burned in a circle of stones a few feet away, casting him in an orange glow.
He cut his hair. My step faltered as the thought brought me up short.
Jason’s blond locks—practically worshipped by every girl back home—had been trimmed to Thornhill regulation length.
On Kyle, the cut worked. It made him seem older and harder in a way that could make a girl’s knees go weak. On Jason, the look had the opposite effect. He appeared younger. Less like a soldier and more like a refugee. Without thick waves to draw your eye away, his face gave up the illusion of perfection. His nose was just a little too big and his mouth was just a little too full. He was still handsome—no haircut could change that—but it was the kind of handsome that snuck up on you.
A twig snapped underfoot as I took a small step forward.
“Hey,” Jason said, sitting up.
“Hey,” I mumbled, oddly embarrassed to have been caught watching.
“I was going to wait for you back at the community center,” he said, “but Eve offered to cut my hair. I figured it might make me less recognizable.” He ran a hand over his head. “How bad is it?”
“Not that bad.” I walked over to the swing and flopped down next to him. Not until I was sitting did I realize just how tired I was. Suddenly, my entire body felt heavy, like my limbs were encased in concrete, and it was all I could do not to close my eyes.
We both fell quiet, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Around us, members of Hank’s pack moved through the trailer park—some preparing for the assault on Thornhill, others hanging out in small groups around campfires or looking for quiet places to catch a few hours of sleep. Twenty wolves had planned the breakout, but close to a hundred would be involved.
“I’m going with you,” I said after a while. “Tonight.”
He nodded as he reached down for a half-full bottle of beer that had been left next to the swing. It was the same brand Hank had been drinking.
Jason took a swig and then offered me the bottle. I shook my head and he finished it.
“You’re not going to try and talk me out of it?” I asked.
“Would there be any point?” He tossed the bottle lightly onto the grass.
“No,” I said—or tried to say. As soon as I opened my mouth, the word turned into a yawn.
“You’re exhausted.” Jason reached out and ran his knuckles—still raw from punching the glass divider in the Town Car—against my cheek. The gesture was strangely gentle and entirely unexpected.
A blush started in the center of my body and quickly worked its way up to my face as I remembered the kiss in the back of the car. I tried not to think too long or too hard about the taste of his lips or the way his body had covered mine.
“Jason . . .” I swallowed. “About what happened this morning. After the crash.”
He shook his head. “Just leave it.”
“But . . .”
He dropped his hand and gave me a small, forced grin. “If we survive the night, then you can tell me it was a mistake, deal?”
The words were similar to something I had said to Kyle back in the sanatorium, and the memory made things twist inside my chest. “Okay.”
“We’ve got a few hours,” said Jason, trying to cover the awkwardness of the moment. “You should try and get some sleep.”
It was tempting—so tempting—but I was too scared to let my guard down. “Hank really didn’t want me going. I don’t want to give him a chance to leave m
e behind.”
“I’ll stay up and wake you when things start to happen. I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep when they had me locked in the infirmary.”
Still, I hesitated.
“You can’t run on willpower and snark indefinitely.” Jason shifted farther down the bench, making a little more room. “I promise I’ll wake you up.”
“Even after you went to all that trouble to get me out of the camp?”
“Even after.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I slid down and curled up on the end of the swing. If I just closed my eyes for a while, maybe it would take the edge off the horrible feeling of heaviness.
After a few minutes, Jason gently tugged my legs onto his lap. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
I opened my eyes. A lump rose in my throat and I had to swallow past it before I could speak. “I thought you wanted to help Kyle and Serena. And Dex is only in the sanatorium because we got him involved.”
“I do—it’s just . . .” Jason drummed his fingers on my shin as he tried to find the right words. “There’s a difference between breaking out three wolves we know and a few hundred we don’t. What if some of them hurt people after they get out?”
“Pick three hundred regs at random and not all of them are going to be gems,” I said.
“It’s not exactly random if they’re in prison.”
“You can’t compare a camp and a prison.” I shivered and huddled in my sweatshirt. “Most of the people in Thornhill aren’t there because they committed some sort of crime—unless you count not reporting their infection. They were caught in raids. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Like Kyle and Serena,” he said grudgingly as he moved his hand away from my leg.
“Exactly.”
Silence stretched between us and this time it was uncomfortable. The fire was almost out, but neither of us got up to do anything about it.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you so worried about the regs at Thornhill? You were right—if the wolves don’t try to limit causalities, the LSRB and the Trackers will use it against them—but that wasn’t the only reason you said what you did, was it? You said something else back at the camp, once. Something about how working at Thornhill didn’t necessarily make people bad.”
He let out a deep breath. “Some of them are bad—I’d like to kill the ones who hurt Serena—but I think a lot of them have never stopped to wonder whether or not the system they’re part of is wrong.”
“They remind you of yourself,” I said slowly. The tattoo on his neck was just visible in the dying firelight.
Jason nodded.
Neither of us spoke for a long while. Eventually, my eyes started to flutter closed again.
“Jason?” His name came out a near-unintelligible mumble as I fumbled weakly for his hand.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
I tried to say “for choosing us,” but the tide carried me away.
A layer of decaying leaves covered the water in the fountain.
“Gross,” muttered Amy, wrinkling her nose as she stepped up onto the ledge encircling the basin. Her gray high-tops slapped the concrete as she walked around the water.
It was dark—the sky completely devoid of moon and stars—and the only light came from the windows of the sanatorium. “This isn’t right.” I knew this fountain: it was the one from Riverside Square. It should be back in Hemlock, not in the middle of Thornhill.
Amy completed the circle and hopped down. Her shirt—one of Jason’s Italian dress shirts—flapped in the breeze.
“You’re always so stuck on landmarks and geography. Places are more than just GPS coordinates. Sometimes, they overlap.”
She sat on the edge of the fountain. “Like you. You take pieces of Hemlock with you wherever you go, so parts of it exist even inside a place as bad as this.”
“Very deep,” I said.
“I have a lot of free time on my hands. It leads to moments of self-reflection and philosophy. And memory.” She leaned back and stared up at the empty sky. “I finally remembered the story. The one my grandpa told us.”
“Okay. . . .”
“Once upon a time—”
“That’s for fairy tales, not ghost stories,” I pointed out as I sat next to her.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Once there was a woman who owned a doll shop. She was obsessed with making a doll so lifelike that people would forget it was just fabric and porcelain.”
“Seems like a lame obsession.”
“Shut it.”
“Sorry. It’s a brilliant obsession. Please continue.”
Amy mock-glared. “One day, a small girl was run over by a horse and carriage just outside the shop. The doll maker ran out to help, but the girl was dead by the time she reached her. As the woman watched, a puff of air the color of sunset passed through the girl’s lips—the child’s soul carried on her last breath.
“The doll maker began visiting hospitals and gutters, catching the last breaths of dying children in glass bottles and then sewing those bottles into dolls.”
“Let me guess,” I said, “the dolls looked more lifelike.” Now that Amy was telling it, I did sort of remember listening to the story while toasting marshmallows in her grandfather’s fireplace.
She nodded. “But no one would buy them because when they looked into the glass eyes, they swore they heard the echo of screams.” She stretched. “Trapped in a bottle and sewn inside a doll for all eternity? Who wouldn’t be screaming?”
I shivered.
“You do know why I’m really here, don’t you?”
I shook my head. I didn’t. Not anymore.
Amy looked at me sadly, then glanced over her shoulder at the fountain. Something churned the leaves and gave off a sharp, metallic scent. With horror, I realized the liquid in the basin was blood.
I scrambled to my feet, but Amy stayed sitting as though nothing were wrong.
She dipped her finger in the fountain and it came back coated in red. “Things are about to get so interesting.”
24
A THIRTY-FOOT-TALL ELECTRIC FENCE WAS INTIMIDATING no matter which side you were on. After all, a fence couldn’t distinguish between someone trying to break in and someone trying to break out, and it wouldn’t discriminate between reg and wolf. It was an equal-opportunity killer; everyone who had gathered in the narrow space between it and the concrete wall that would eventually encircle the camp was at risk.
It was a risk I was all too willing to take.
I stared at the handful of lights that were visible in the distance. It was impossible to know whether they came from the dorms or the sanatorium, but the sight was a hook in my chest. Anything could have happened to Kyle and Serena after Jason and I had left the camp. Anything could be happening to them right now.
I crossed my arms and shivered.
The gesture didn’t slip past Hank, though he mistook the cause. “It’s not too late to go back to the park. One of the wolves can take you.”
I was struck, again, by how little my father knew me. I was afraid—of course I was afraid—but that wasn’t going to stop me. “I already told you: I’m staying. Besides, you can’t afford to be a man down.”
The recon team consisted of ten werewolves—including him and Eve. There wasn’t a single one to spare.
For a second, I was certain Hank was going to argue, but he let it drop and walked away.
A hand skimmed my temple and I jumped.
“Your hair was coming loose,” said Jason as he tucked a lock underneath my cap.
He was wearing an outfit identical to mine in every way but size. Everyone was dressed in the same all-black ensemble: black cap, black long-sleeved shirt, black jeans, and black boots. We looked like a gang of cat burglars. Or mimes.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, trying to ignore the blush that rose to my face. I
had promised Jason we wouldn’t talk about the kiss, but I could still feel it between us. I knew I didn’t have anything to feel guilty about—we had both been positive we were going to die—but this close to the sanatorium, this close to Kyle, it seemed like a betrayal.
“Outer patrol!” hissed a female voice. “Hit the dirt!”
Along with the wolves, Jason and I dropped to the ground and crouched behind the wall. A moment later, I heard the low roar of an engine. A spotlight swept the fence to the left and right of our hiding place. I held my breath, but the guards didn’t bother getting out to check behind the concrete barrier.
The sound of the engine faded, and people slowly got to their feet.
“All right,” snapped Hank. “They’re running extra patrols. We’ve got thirty minutes at the most. Let’s get this done.”
Construction crews working on the wall had erected scaffolding on the outward-facing side. Hank leaped onto the first platform and began climbing. He scaled the rigging easily, his movements infused with a wolflike grace he hadn’t possessed a few years ago. Two of his men followed in his wake.
Eve wandered over to Jason and me. Lines creased her brow as she stared up at the top of the wall. “This is insane.”
“It was your idea,” I pointed out, trying to ignore the way my stomach churned.
“It didn’t seem so crazy when we were just talking about it.”
“A jump over a razor wire–topped electric fence from forty feet in the air without a safety net below,” said Jason, “what could possibly go wrong?”
In unison, Eve and I told him to shut up.
One of the wolves handed Hank a backpack—black like our outfits. He hurled it over the fence. It cleared the top wires easily and landed with a soft thud several feet inside the camp. I tried to tell myself it was a good sign as Hank hurled a second bag over, but there was a world of difference between a pack and a man.
“At least the wall is higher than the fence,” said Eve. “Ten feet, easily. That’s a huge advantage.”
I didn’t see how ten feet was a huge anything—especially not when there was almost twice that much space between the wall and the fence—but I didn’t say so. Pointing out the obvious wouldn’t be good for anybody’s nerves.
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