Unleashed

by Nancy Holder

  The cheese was bubbling like lava and Katelyn blew on her pizza. “Why not?”

  Cordelia picked a piece of pepperoni off her own pizza and popped it into her mouth. “I’m just not sure he likes me for me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does,” Katelyn concluded, picturing Justin in her mind. Feeling the touch of his lips on hers. Hot tingles skittered through her body and she had to wait a moment before she could make herself speak again. “And Bachelor Number Two?”

  Cordelia’s entire demeanor changed. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, as if she was proud of what she was going to say. Then a cloud passed over her face, and she exhaled long and hard. She tucked her hair behind her ears and studied the table.

  “Complicated. His name is Dominic—Dom. It’s a long-distance thing. He’s twenty-two. His dad got killed in a car accident and Dom’s, um, running the family business. He’s doing great. But our families … don’t get along.” She was using her apology voice again.

  So Dom was not approved of. Older man, plus Katelyn thought about what Paulette had said about country people holding grudges. She folded her hands and leaned on them.

  “So a Romeo and Juliet kind of long-distance thing. That’s romantic.” She tried to sound hopeful.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Cordelia examined another piece of pepperoni at close range. Ate it. “Some days I hate him and I’m sure he feels the same. But there’s something else there, too. He likes me and I know it’s real, because he has too many reasons not to.”

  “Wow, that is complicated,” Katelyn said. She had yet to have a relationship with a guy that was intense enough to generate mutual hatred. “So you’ve got one guy who might just want to jump your bones and one guy who is your grand and forbidden passion.” She tried to sound lightly mocking, not insulting, but she didn’t know Cordelia well enough to tell how the other girl was taking it.

  Cordelia cleared her throat and smoothed her hair. “My dad would freak out if he knew, so please don’t mention it.”

  “Your father?” Katelyn echoed. “Why would I?”

  Cordelia shrugged. “What I mean is don’t say anything about boys at all if you ever meet him.” She made a face. “You know the type. No one’s good enough for his little girl.”

  Katelyn grinned. Kimi’s dad was like that.

  “So who’s hotter?” Katelyn asked.

  “Dom, by miles.” She slid Katelyn a sly glance. “I’ll bet you thought all the boys around here would be missing a few teeth.” Katelyn flushed and Cordelia brightened. “Oh, my God, you are crushing on someone!”

  “I’ll give you this. The guys around here are surprisingly good-looking.” It was as confessional as Katelyn was going to get. Cordelia could think what she wanted to.

  After they had finished eating and cleaning up, they moved to the living room.

  “I didn’t think this through too well,” Katelyn admitted as she perused her grandfather’s meager movie collection.

  “That’s cool. We could play a game or something,” Cordelia said as she checked out his bookshelves.

  “Or actually work on our history project,” Katelyn suggested. “Guess what I … read,” she finished awkwardly. “Forty years ago, a bunch of people died … um, violently, and then fifty years before that, the same thing happened.”

  Cordelia wrinkled her nose. “In Wolf Springs?”

  “It was the wild animals in the forest. Like they went crazy all of a sudden,” she went on.

  “Wow.” Cordelia looked from the shelves to Katelyn. “Where’d you read that?”

  “In one of those books,” she said faintly, hating to lie. “I was thinking we could switch to that. But maybe that’s too close to what happened to Haley,” she added, thinking of the confrontation in history class.

  “Let’s stick with the mine,” Cordelia agreed. “Best to steer clear. Especially since you’re the new girl, you know?”

  “Okay.” That made sense.

  “I got a couple more books out of the town library,” Cordelia said. “They’re in my backpack. I haven’t really looked at them, but they seemed like they might have some info on the mine.”

  “Cool.” Katelyn hadn’t expected Cordelia to go on a research trip. “Can I see them?”

  “Later, okay? I never do homework on Friday night.” She gave Katelyn a look. “Let’s just blow it off for a little while longer, you know what I mean?”

  Katelyn smiled and nodded and wandered over to the paintings on the wall. An animal head broke up the sequence and she shivered at the image in her mind of the dead deer in the road. And at the thought that her own grandfather shot and killed living things and wanted her to learn how to, too.

  “Hey, check this out,” Cordelia said.

  She was holding out a book with a stern-looking but attractive older man on the cover. He had silvery-gray hair and a trim gray beard, and he was wearing a polo shirt with a wolf head on it. The title of the book was huge and in a metallic red font.

  “Unleashing Your Inner Wolf, by Jack Bronson? No way,” Katelyn said, bursting out with a laugh. “My grandfather has a copy?”

  Cordelia made a face. “I know, right? It doesn’t look like it’s ever been opened, no crack in the spine at all,” she said. “Maybe he got it as a gift from someone.”

  “But who? If they know Ed, it had to be a practical joke.”

  Cordelia flipped it over. “Listen to what it says on the back. ‘Within the heart of every man is a wolf waiting to spring forth. The wolf is there and if you let it, the wolf will give you strength, power, ambition, and fearlessness. These are gifts and one should learn to harness them by getting in touch with the wolf within.’ ”

  Katelyn thought of the executive on the plane and started laughing harder. She took the book from Cordelia and flipped through it. There were tons of passages in italics and words in big capital letters, like POWER! FEROCITY! AGGRESSION!

  “Yikers,” she said.

  “They should try getting in touch with their inner human,” Cordelia said.

  “I can hear them drumming from here,” Katelyn said. “I’m keeping this. I’m going to read it.”

  “At my house, too. The drums must echo off the mountains. They make the animals freak out.”

  Katelyn put the book down on the coffee table. “That’s what Trick said.” Too late, she realized she’d spoken his name aloud.

  Cordelia grimaced. “You know what the problem with Trick is?”

  Katelyn opened her mouth, but in the distance a wolf howled and she froze.

  A moment later a loud, shrill scream rang through the mountains.

  7

  “What’s that?” Katelyn whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Cordelia had turned white, scaring Katelyn even more. “A cat?”

  “A cat? Are you kidding?” Katelyn said.

  They both stared at the door. “They can sound human when they’re fighting. Or scared,” Cordelia said.

  “I’m calling 911.” Katelyn turned to bolt into the kitchen.

  “Kat, this is the country,” Cordelia said. “Not sure we need to.”

  “But that was a scream,” Katelyn argued.

  “Maybe,” Cordelia said. Her voice was strained. “But it would take anyone at least an hour to get here. And we only have two cops.” Cordelia looked around. “Where’s your grandpa’s—there it is.”

  Cordelia crossed the living room and hefted the rifle out of the rack on the wall. She cracked it open, examined it, and said, “Good. Loaded.” She snapped it shut.

  “Oh, my God,” Katelyn said. “Cordelia …”

  “It’s probably nothing.” Cordelia carried the rifle pointed toward the ceiling as she walked toward the door. “For all we know, it’s some drunk or one of those crazy businessmen trying to do a primal scream.”

  Katelyn stood beside her, staring at the door. “But you just said it was a cat.”

  “And I stand by cat,” Cordelia insisted. “But it could be something else
.”

  Someone in trouble. Someone like Haley, Katelyn thought. Then there were Beau’s story and her grandfather’s note: Keep the door locked.

  And the wolf. Could it be attacking someone else? Who knew what would have happened to her if Trick hadn’t shot at it?

  “Get the door for me,” Cordelia said.

  Resolutely, Katelyn turned the knob and pushed the door open. It was unbelievably dark outside. She couldn’t even make out the shapes of the trees.

  “Hello?” Cordelia yelled. “Is anyone there?”

  They stepped out on the porch. “We need a flashlight,” Cordelia said. “I’ve got a little one in my overnight bag. I’ll go get it. You take the gun.”

  Cordelia passed it to Katelyn. The weight of it startled her. She fitted it against her sore shoulder. For just an instant she wished she could actually shoot. She decided in this situation she was willing to try again if she had to.

  And if it attacked … Too late, she realized that what she should have done was give the rifle to Cordelia and go to look for the flashlight herself.

  “Okay, I found it,” Cordelia said, returning.

  A beam of light aimed past Katelyn and painted the trees. Cordelia handed her the flashlight and took the rifle.

  Chills cascaded over her. She stared hard at the trees, imagining what might lurk there. There was another scream, high-pitched and scratchy. Thin and angry.

  And familiar. It sounded just like one of the tomcats that had screeched in anger behind her house in California.

  Her whole body sagged in relief.

  “Oh, God,” Cordelia whispered. She stopped and rooted her feet to the ground. She brought the rifle up to her shoulder.

  “Wait,” Katelyn said, surprised. “That was a cat.”

  Cordelia didn’t respond. She kept the rifle planted against her shoulder, stock-still. Then she said, “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. We had a lot of feral cats around our neighborhood. Because of the beach. All the food.” She took a breath and scanned a wider area with the flashlight. A low-lying tree limb shook, sending a scattering of autumn leaves to the ground.

  “Is anyone out there? Are you okay?” Katelyn called, feeling a little braver.

  Then a shape burst from the base of the tree and raced away into the night. It moved too fast for her to focus on it, but it was the right size for a cat.

  “There! Did you see that?” Katelyn pointed.

  “No.”

  “It was a cat. Or a squirrel or something.”

  “Screeching squirrels. Cool.” Cordelia lowered the rifle and wiped her forehead.

  Somewhere far off the wolf howled again. At least, Katelyn was pretty sure it was a wolf and not a man pretending to be one.

  They stared at each other, whirled around, and darted back inside the cabin. Katelyn slammed the door, locked it, and jumped away from it. As Cordelia began to put the rifle back, Katelyn waved the flashlight in protest, shaking her head.

  “That was a wolf,” she said. “A real, live wolf. Shouldn’t we call about that?”

  Cordelia looked amused. “We’re safe, Kat. Wolves can’t come in unless you invite them.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, my God! I’m teasing.” Cordelia laughed and then stopped and took a close look at Katelyn. “You do know about real live animals, right? Not just Hollywood cartoons and purse dogs?”

  “Sure,” Katelyn said, although she wasn’t going to admit that the extent of her live-animal experience was with other people’s pets and on a few trips to the L.A. Zoo.

  Cordelia finished setting the rifle back on its rack and made a show of cleaning her hands of the whole business. Katelyn clicked off the flashlight and sat down in the middle of the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Cordelia asked, face filling with concern as she sat down, too.

  Katelyn closed her eyes. She needed to talk about it. She didn’t want to, but she needed to. “No. This huge wolf jumped on Trick’s car the first day he brought me home from school,” Katelyn said. “It tried to claw its way through the roof.”

  “Wow.” Cordelia looked surprised. “I haven’t seen a wolf in years.”

  “It was terrifying. Trick shot at it and scared it off. I could hear a second one growling, but I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s those lunatics at that seminar-thing. If I were a wolf, I’d go bite something, too.” She mimicked Katelyn’s toothy grimace and made a chomping noise.

  Katelyn hadn’t gotten to a place where she could joke about it. “There was a dead deer on the road. Trick dragged it away.”

  “So the wolf thought you were stealing its dinner. No wonder it growled at you.”

  “And there’s a wolf out there now.”

  Cordelia sighed and moved Katelyn’s hair out of her eyes. She gave her a quick hug. “This is the wilderness, Kat. You’re going to have to get used to it.”

  She’s right. Get a grip, she told herself. It was time to change the topic. “So, you really don’t want to work on our history project.”

  Cordelia shook her head. “It’s Friday night, live from Wolf Springs,” she joked.

  “Well, my grandfather has a pathetic movie selection, but why not watch one?”

  “Okay.” Cordelia grinned. “Let’s pick the worst movie, make some popcorn, and laugh at it.”

  Let it go, Katelyn told herself. She forced some brightness into her voice.

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll get the popcorn if you pick a movie.”

  “On it,” Cordelia said cheerfully. She got to her feet and offered Katelyn a hand.

  Katelyn took it. She made it into the kitchen, where she sagged against the counter and struggled to compose herself. She tried to shake the feeling that somewhere in the darkness something terrible was happening.

  In the distance, the wolf howled again.

  The next morning Katelyn woke up first and decided to let Cordelia sleep. Cordelia’s overnight bag was open, and a thick book was poking out. Curious, Katelyn eased it out a little farther.

  Lost Treasures of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Katelyn couldn’t help herself; it looked interesting, so she took the book with her, went to the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. Then she sat down and started flipping through the pages. The more she read, the more interested she got. Who wouldn’t be excited at the prospect of discovering a treasure? Then she came to the section on a mine “located in the woods outside Wolf Springs.” It was their mine, the Madre Vena.

  Score, Cordelia, she thought as she continued to read eagerly. A passage jumped right out at her:

  In one of the most unusual tales of the Madre Vena mine, it is said that the entrance is guarded by a supernatural creature called the Hellhound. Despite the name, this monster is not a dog but has been described as a huge, misshapen animal that vaguely resembles a wolf. According to an old diary written by one Xavier Cazador, it has wild, glowing eyes and elongated fangs “as sharp as knives,” and it breathes fire. Cazador was a Spaniard who lived on the grounds of the old Catholic church that is now home to Wolf Springs High School.

  “The Devil in Wolf Form chased me all night,” he wrote in 1868. “Quite by accident, I stumbled upon the Lost Mine of Madre Vena. With only a torch to guide me, I espied the silvery riches in the rocks. I beheld a fortune, a king’s ransom! I praised the Virgin, who had surely shown me this miracle.

  “Then I heard a ferocious growling, and then another, much softer, as if farther away. Still, I was terrified, and I began to run. Little did I realize until later that the farther away the monster lurked, the louder its howl. The closer it slunk, the softer its voice. When it leaped at me, it made no sound at all! Then the Hellhound came after me! It would have caught me, too, except that I fell onto the holy ground of the churchyard, where it could not go.”

  Despite continued questioning, Xavier Cazador refused to reveal the location of the mine. Locals believed he had never actually been to it, and was spinning a tall tale in return fo
r drinks at the local tavern. But notorious Arkansas outlaw Jubal DeAndrew, who lived with his family in the Wolf Springs Bog, kidnapped Cazador. One of the outlaw’s daughters later reported that DeAndrew threatened Cazador at gunpoint to reveal the site of the mine or die. The daughter could not confirm if Cazador had disclosed it, but DeAndrew set him free. Cazador died two days later, and Jubal DeAndrew was never seen again.

  “Double score,” Katelyn murmured as she turned the page. “Maybe this Hellhound is what the monks were scared of.”

  “What are you reading?” Cordelia asked from behind her.

  Katelyn jumped. She’d been so engrossed in reading she’d almost forgotten the other girl was in the house. She turned and grinned, catching Cordelia in a yawn.

  “I think I just found the monster in the forest.”

  “Sweet,” Cordelia said. She still looked half-asleep; her red hair was puffed out in a halo of fire. She walked over to the table and leaned down, resting her head on her arms, then let out a soft little groan.

  Katelyn snickered. “You have a hangover and we didn’t even drink.”

  “Not a morning person,” Cordelia muttered.

  “Coffee? Diet Coke?”

  “Coffee, if it’s not too much trouble. Otherwise just give me a D.C.” Cordelia unfolded herself and sleepily picked up the old book.

  “I’m sorry. I snatched it,” Katelyn confessed. “I saw it sticking out of your overnight bag.”

  “Jeesh. You are an eager beaver.”

  Katelyn went to the cupboard. “And guess what else. It has a monster. Is that not mucho cool?”

  “Sí,” Cordelia said, turning the pages as she stifled another yawn. “Mucho cool.”

  Katelyn got out two coffee cups, then took them to the sink and rinsed them out, to guard against rat “presents” and dust.

  “There’s also a lost map and a funny-shaped rock,” Cordelia said, reading. “Where’s the part about the monster?” She started flipping the pages back and forth.

  “Go back one more,” Katelyn told her, gazing across the kitchen at the pages. “A scary monster, a lost map, treasure.” She turned off the water and picked the cups up. “It’s Scooby-Doo perfection!”