Thornhill h-2

by Kathleen Peacock

  The guards at the back of the hall didn’t know what to do. One chained the doors shut while a few tried to make their way to the dais where Kyle and Dex had cornered Sinclair and the other four staff members.

  One guard panicked and fired into the throng as wolves began losing control and shifting.

  On the platform, Dex lunged for Sinclair. He pulled her arms behind her back with one hand as he thrust her in front of him. He put his other hand near her neck. “Stop!” he roared as the guards pressed forward. “Anyone else shoots at the wolves and you get the warden back in pieces.” The bones in his hands snapped and lengthened, adding weight to the threat.

  Looking at the barely controlled rage on Dex’s face—an expression so far removed from the boy I’d gotten to know over the past week—I had a feeling he wasn’t bluffing.

  Kyle was on the same wavelength. He shot Dex a nervous glance as he confiscated HFDs from the woman with the glasses and the two program coordinators.

  Dex’s threat worked—at least temporarily. No more shots were fired on the crowd.

  Unfortunately, the crowd was too far gone to notice.

  Around me, more wolves lost control. We had to do something to stop the mass panic. Quickly. Otherwise—threat to Sinclair or not—the guards would open fire en masse.

  A body crashed into me, hitting me so hard that I flew back and landed on the auditorium floor. I had to move or risk being trampled, but I spent a handful of seconds staring up at the latticework of pipes crisscrossing the ceiling as an idea took shape.

  I had to get to Jason.

  I pushed myself to my feet, but before I could take a single step, another hit sent me crashing back to the ground. A foot connected with my stomach as a wolf tripped over me. The wolf went sprawling, and I pulled my knees up to my chest and retched.

  Suddenly, someone’s arms were around me, lifting me and shielding me.

  “Kyle!” I threw my arms around him and buried my face against his neck, for a second not caring that we were in the middle of a stampeding mob.

  He eased back to check me for injuries. “What are you doing here?”

  “Rescuing you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How’s that working out?”

  “This part wasn’t in the plan,” I admitted. I took a deep breath. “I need to get to Jason. I have an idea.”

  To Kyle’s credit, he didn’t argue or question. “Okay. C’mon.” He grabbed my hand and fought his way to the center of the room, keeping me close and safe until we reached Jason’s side.

  “How many bullets do you have?” I asked, pressing my mouth close to Jason’s ear.

  The small, tight grin that flashed across his face was completely mirthless. “Three times as many as I intend to use,” he said, quoting one of his father’s many gun tips.

  I glanced up at the fire sprinkler above our heads. It was hard to tell from the ground, but I was reasonably sure it was the kind with a bulb inside. Break the bulb, and the sprinkler would go off—not an easy shot, but Jason’s father had been dragging him to target practice since he was a toddler. “I need you to take out some of the sprinkler heads.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “Do you really think this is the time for a wet T-shirt contest?”

  A few feet away, a girl lost control and doubled over.

  “Please, Jason!” Without waiting for a response, I turned and raced for the dais, trusting Kyle would follow.

  There was a chorus of yelps behind me as the first sprinkler went off, but I didn’t look back. I knew Jason would hit more of them and I had to get to the front of the room before the surprise wore off.

  Sinclair’s eyes widened slightly as I jogged up the three stairs to the platform.

  “Decided to come back and visit?” asked Dex. His voice was steady, but his arms were shaking and his skin was covered in sweat.

  “Something like that,” I said, hoping he wasn’t as close to losing control as he looked. I shot a quick glance at the staff members standing off to the side. None of them took their eyes off Dex. As long as he held Sinclair hostage, he held sway over them. Even, it seemed, over someone as brutal as Langley.

  “You’re making a huge mistake.” Somehow, despite the fact that she was being held hostage by a werewolf she had probably tortured, Sinclair still managed to sound authoritative. “You’re only chance is—”

  Dex flexed his hand against her throat and she immediately stopped talking.

  I turned to face the auditorium. The shock of the water seemed to have kept more wolves from shifting, but they were focused on Jason, not the front of the room. Low rumblings started as a few people recognized him from his short stint as a counselor.

  I glanced at Kyle. “I need to get their attention.”

  Kyle cracked his neck and let loose a howl that no human throat was capable of.

  Almost like a single unit, the wolves turned to the front of the room. Even the guards—who had regrouped near the doors—stared expectantly at the stage.

  I glanced at Kyle. “Neat,” I murmured. He blushed and then shrugged.

  Focusing back on the crowd, I raised my voice until I was practically shouting. “The explosion was the gates being blown. The Eumon pack is breaking us out.”

  Some people looked excited and others relieved, but a lot of the faces in the crowd looked skeptical. “We have to get to the gates,” I continued. “Once we get past them, the pack has escape routes and transportation set up.”

  Wolves shot questions at me—so many and so fast that they all blurred together—but I addressed the guards. “The blond gentleman in the olive uniform and the nice werewolf on my left are going to collect your Tasers and guns.”

  Kyle hopped off the stage. Jason raised an eyebrow as he stowed his own weapon, but then turned and headed through the crowd. The wolves parted for them as they made their way to the men at the back of the room. Most of the guards looked angry, but a few looked frightened.

  “Once you hand over your weapons, the wolves and I will be leaving the hall. We’d appreciate it if you’d let us go peacefully.” My voice was level and steady, full of confidence I didn’t feel. It was almost as though I was channeling someone else. Eve, I realized. I sounded like Eve.

  “And why would we do that?” asked a burly guard who was definitely more angry than frightened. The sleeves of his uniform had been rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms that were covered in intricate patterns of ink.

  “First: we outnumber you by, like, thirty to one. You might tase or shoot a few of us, but you won’t get all of us. Second”—and here I glanced at Sinclair—“we have the warden and we won’t let her go until we reach the gates. And third: the pack is tearing apart Thornhill as we speak. If you let us go peacefully, they won’t have a reason to come inside. Keep us in here, and they’ll eventually break down the door.”

  “Don’t listen to her.” Sinclair’s voice rang out across the hall. “You know the policy: no negotiations with inmates—even in hostage situations.”

  I raised my voice over hers as she spouted a section from the employee manual. “And if you need a more personal reason: the warden has purposefully been putting every Thornhill staff member at risk. Including each of you.”

  “She’s lying.” I could feel the force of Sinclair’s glare between my shoulder blades; it was like a dagger buried to the hilt.

  “That female wolf who was removed from the hall and the guy who’s currently holding your warden hostage? They aren’t the only ones the HFDs don’t work on. Wolves build up a tolerance. The more they’re exposed, the less they’re affected—it’s why the counselors have HFDs and you don’t. Sinclair is trying to limit how often they get hit. Sooner or later, every wolf in this camp could be immune.”

  Hundreds of wolves stared at me in shock.

  “Lies,” repeated Sinclair, but the guards weren’t listening to her.

  “Did you know?” The guard with the tattoos turned to the uniform on his right. The wolv
es in the hall had fallen so quiet that, even with the noise coming from outside, it was easy to hear the exchange. “You didn’t seem surprised when that girl stayed on her feet.”

  The other guard hesitated, then nodded. “Everyone assigned to duty in the detention block knows. We weren’t supposed to tell anyone.”

  The tattooed guard scowled at the words, then handed Kyle his gun and Jason his Taser. The rest of the guards quickly followed suit.

  The boys returned to the dais, arms full, as Sinclair glared at the guards. If anything was left of Thornhill in the morning, I had a feeling each one of them would be getting a pink slip.

  “Do we hand them out?” asked Dex as Kyle and Jason climbed onto the stage.

  “No.” I expected Jason to speak, but the answer came from Kyle. “If you give them weapons, it’ll be too big a temptation. Someone will use one. It will just give the guards outside one more reason to shoot.” He headed for the far corner of the dais and left the guns hidden in the shadows.

  Jason did the same with the Tasers.

  “This is ridiculous.” Sinclair twisted in Dex’s grip. Her voice rose sharply and it was unclear whether she was addressing the guards or the wolves. “This is completely insane. Everything this girl has told you is a lie.”

  Both groups ignored her.

  The guard with the tats strode forward. “How many wolves are out there?”

  “Enough,” I bluffed. The gunshots outside had almost stopped; I had no idea if that was a good sign or a bad one.

  “If we let you leave, will you call off the attack on the other guards?”

  I nodded. “Yes. You have my word.”

  “And the warden?”

  “We’ll let her go once we’re through the gates. Just like I said.”

  “Conditional on the guards holding their fire,” added Kyle, “and provided all of the wolves—including the ones in the detention block—are allowed to leave.”

  “You can’t!” The woman with the glasses pushed forward. One of the program coordinators pulled her back, hissing at her to keep quiet.

  The guard stared at us for a long moment, then nodded and pulled a radio from his belt. He tried to raise the guards outside, but all he got was silence.

  Hank. His team had succeeded in taking out the communications system. Please let them also have gotten to the detention block, I prayed, thinking of Serena. To the guard, I said, “We cut your radios.”

  He shrugged. “Then you’ll have to let me out. I can’t make a deal if I can’t talk to the men outside.”

  I hesitated. He had a point, but . . .

  “I’ll go with him.” Jason hopped off the stage. “One of us has to, otherwise someone from the pack will attack him before he gets two words out.”

  I knew he was right, but I hated splitting up. Still, there wasn’t much choice. “Be careful.”

  He nodded before following the guard to the doors.

  “Do you have any idea how valuable the wolves in the detention block are?” Sinclair pulled my attention away from Jason as he exited the auditorium. “Do you have the faintest clue what you’ll be jeopardizing if you take them out of here? The work you’ll destroy? The lives that could be saved? You think you’re helping them, but all you’ll do is prolong their suffering.”

  “Prolong their suffering?” Dex’s hand curled around Sinclair’s neck. He didn’t scratch her or squeeze the breath from her throat, but the muscles in his arm writhed under the surface. “What about Corry? She wasn’t suffering before she got here. Did she suffer after you took her? What about the others? They’re people, not your personal lab rats.”

  “They’re not,” said Sinclair, a note of misery in her voice that took me aback.

  “Lab rats?” I asked, confused.

  “People.” She rushed on. “As long as they can shift, they’re a threat that needs to be contained. But they can be disarmed. We’re so close.”

  It was too much for Dex. “That’s what you did to Corry? You ‘disarmed’ her?” His hand tightened around the warden’s neck and she struggled for air.

  “Dex. . . .” Kyle stepped forward. “Let me take her.”

  Dex shook his head, the simple movement almost violent. “Did you hear what she said? We’re nothing but things to be opened up and tinkered with. That’s what she did to Corry. She opened her up and crossed her wires and when she didn’t like the result she threw her away.”

  “I know,” said Kyle, voice soft but firm. Sinclair looked like she might pass out. “Dex, let me have her. You’re hurting her.”

  “Corry’s dead because of her.”

  “Hurting her won’t bring Corry back.” Kyle took a second step toward him, then a third. “If you hurt her—if you kill her—all anyone will remember about today is that a wolf killed a warden. What happened to Corry—what’s been happening to the wolves in the detention block—won’t matter because her death will be all anyone will see. We’re not bombs or weapons or things that need to be fixed, Dex.” Kyle’s gaze flicked to me, his eyes so deep and dark that they threatened to pull me under the surface. “But if you hurt her now, no one outside will see that.”

  Emotions warred over Dex’s face, and for a moment I wasn’t sure which would win. Then, shaking with the effort it took, he released his hold on Sinclair and pushed her to Kyle. Shoulders hunched and head down, he stepped off the stage and joined the rest of the wolves.

  The nearest wolves edged slightly away from him, and my chest ached. Dex had been proven right—something had happened to Corry, wolves had been killed at Thornhill—but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Are you okay?”

  I glanced at Kyle. He was staring at me over the warden’s shoulder. “I think I’m the one who should be asking you that,” I said.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He shifted his weight and I caught a glimpse of the bloodstains on his shirt. How could he be strong enough to stand there and touch the woman responsible?

  I stared at Sinclair and a wave of hatred swelled in my chest at the thought of all the pain she had caused. She didn’t deserve to come out of this unscathed. I wasn’t even sure she deserved to come out of this alive. In the end, it didn’t matter what her original intention had been, what she had done at Thornhill had been pure evil. It . . .

  Before I could finish the thought, the doors at the back of the auditorium swung open with a bang.

  Hank strode into the building and across the room. An excited murmur swept the crowd as the Eumon teens recognized him. Every single wolf—whether they knew who he was or not—got out of his way.

  A knot that I hadn’t been aware of unclenched in my chest. I was oddly . . . relieved to see him. Not just because we needed him to get out of here—though that was part of it—but because I was glad he was all right.

  Though he did look decidedly worse for wear. His face was streaked with what looked like ash and his clothes were bloodstained. As he got closer, I noticed several tears in his shirt that looked suspiciously like bullet holes.

  He jumped lithely onto the stage and gave me a quick once-over. “You all right?”

  I nodded.

  Hank hesitated, like he wanted to say or do something else, but then he turned to face the wolves. “Listen up because I won’t repeat this: We proceed to the gates en masse. The warden goes last. No one lays a finger on a guard or any reg in camp and no one stops for any reason. No matter what you see, you keep going. Is that clear?”

  No one spoke and no one moved.

  “Is that clear?” Hank’s voice tore through the hall like a thunderbolt.

  “Yes!” said the wolves in unison. A few even added “sir” at the end.

  “Once you’re through the gates, you’ll be told where to go and what to do. If something happens and you get separated, just head for the gates.”

  As soon as he finished speaking, I drew him to the side. “Serena?”

  “She’s all right. We got them out of the detention block in time.”


  “In time for what?” I asked, but my father had already turned to confer with Kyle.

  Sinclair stared at Hank as though he were a code she could crack. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll bring down on yourself and your pack if you go through with this?”

  Hank let out a low, dangerous laugh. “Your concern is touching given that you tried to frame me and mine for murder.”

  Sinclair’s hair swished against Kyle’s cheek as she shook her head. “After today, there won’t be anywhere in the country where you’ll be safe. You have to know that. Whatever you think you’re accomplishing here, it’s not worth it.”

  Hank took a step toward her. For a moment, he did nothing but stare as a blush darkened the warden’s pale cheeks. “That girl you tried to have killed, the one standing a few feet to your left? She’s my daughter. You say anything else before we get to the gate and, deal or not, I’ll let those kids down there tear you apart.”

  He stepped off the stage and headed to the door as the wolves in the auditorium fell into a clumsy swarm behind him. “Remember: no stopping, no engaging the regs.”

  Kyle steered Sinclair to the dais stairs and I followed. “What about the program coordinators and the guards inside?” I asked. My gaze locked on the woman with the glasses. Without entirely realizing it, I curled my hand into a fist.

  “We stay here.” The guard with the tattoos was back. “A small group will meet you at the gate and take custody of the warden.”

  Sinclair twisted in Kyle’s arms. “None of you have the authority to agree to this.” Her ice-cold gaze locked on the guard. “When the LSRB finds out—”

  Kyle pushed her forward. “You heard what he said: not a word until the gate. Besides, I think the last thing you want is for the LSRB to find out what’s been happening here.”

  Sinclair looked like she was about to argue, but then thought better of it. It was a good call. Hank didn’t make threats unless he was prepared to follow through.

  Outside, it was still night, though the spotlights on the building made it as bright as day. The air smelled of smoke and chemicals—probably from the explosion at the gate.

  The ring of guards had pulled back. Most had retreated to a nearby strip of grass. Several had been injured and the infirmary doctor moved among them, trying to help them as best he could.