Unleashed

by Nancy Holder

  She whirled around with a triumphant smile, but Cordelia was staring down at the open book, her lips parted, her face pale. Before Katelyn could get a peek at what had upset her, Cordelia closed the book and looped her red hair behind her ears.

  “Are you okay?” Katelyn asked.

  “Fine,” Cordelia snapped, her tone suddenly almost nasty.

  Katelyn was startled. She lifted the coffee cups defensively. “Am I too chirpy?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cordelia said, immediately backpedaling. “It’s just … we’re living on top of each other at my house. I’m getting kind of bummed thinking about going back.”

  “I understand. I don’t like being here, either,” Katelyn replied. They shared a grumpy smile, but she wasn’t entirely sure that was all that was bothering Cordelia. She gestured to the book. “Did you see the monster part?”

  “No,” Cordelia murmured, stifling another yawn. “Sorry.” She dragged herself to her feet. “I’ll look at it later. As much as I don’t want to, I should head home.”

  “Are you sure?” Katelyn asked.

  Cordelia glanced at her watch and nodded. Her face was almost gray. And Katelyn wasn’t positive, but she thought Cordelia’s hands were shaking. “My dad … I think he has something planned for today.” She ran her hands along her arms, as if she were cold.

  “Is everything okay?” Katelyn pressed, still unsure about her friend.

  “Oh, Kat, I’m so sorry,” Cordelia said, reaching over and giving her a quick hug. “This was great. You’re a perfect hostess and I had fun. I just really should get going.”

  Katelyn believed her, but she was still sad to see her go. As soon as she heard the crunch of Cordelia’s truck wheels on the drive, she sat down at the table and opened the book again. There was a pen-and-ink illustration of an enormous, fierce animal half flying through the air at an old-time prospector. The Hellhound was not so much wolf-like as monster-like, a blur of black fur and glowing eyes. Its teeth were as long as its claws, and steaming saliva poured from its gaping maw as it closed in on the man.

  “Haley,” she murmured, then shook her head. Nothing like this had attacked her. It was just a legend.

  The rest of the book was pretty dry, and as she read on, it got harder and harder to concentrate. Her mind kept drifting to Justin. She’d never been kissed like that. She’d hardly been kissed at all—just a few experiments at parties with boys who had barely touched her lips. She just couldn’t believe that he was taken.

  If she ever saw him again, she’d punch him out, she thought angrily.

  Except she couldn’t believe he hadn’t meant those kisses. They’d been so passionate. Was it possible Cordelia had it wrong? Maybe he’d broken up with Lucy.

  Or maybe he’s just an ass and he’s not the guy for you.

  She decided to call Kimi to discuss it, but her call went straight to voice mail.

  “I know it’s way early there, but I’ve got something important,” she said, hiding the disappointment in her voice.

  She hung up and waited for a callback, but the phone remained stubbornly silent.

  “Hellhound,” she said aloud. Could that be the same thing the priests had been afraid of? Maybe it had been an extra-large wolf, or some kind of mutant or something. It would be long dead by now. Maybe it had descendants. Maybe every once in a while, one of those descendants started attacking people.

  She went back to reading the book, but the rest was pretty boring—discussions of failed attempts to find the mine, with names, dates, and equipment lists. She started to doze off. The rest of her schoolwork still didn’t sound fun, so Katelyn lounged around in her pajamas until her grandfather got home around noon. When she heard his truck pulling up to the cabin, she ran upstairs, threw on some clothes, and was back in the living room before he’d made it to the front door.

  “Hi, Katie.” She nodded at him. “Everything go okay?” he asked.

  “Great,” she said brightly. When he wasn’t looking, she darted a glance at the rifle on the wall to make sure it had been replaced correctly.

  “Good. Give me a hand?”

  She followed him outside. The sun was out, but it was still chilly. He pulled back the tarp from the bed of the truck. She was astonished to see rows and rows of canned food—pears, peaches, vegetarian-style baked beans, corn, tomatoes, pickled beets. Tuna. Beef stew. And other things: antifreeze and cartons of ammunition.

  “Um, isn’t Bentonville the world headquarters of Walmart?” Bentonville was where the airport was located. “Did you have to go all the way to Little Rock to get this stuff?” she asked him as she picked up a half-gallon container of antifreeze and held it against her chest. Her shoulder was still sore.

  He led the way toward his detached garage. “I had other things to do in Little Rock. Saw a lawyer, for one.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, but as he was walking ahead of her, he didn’t see.

  “Your mama didn’t leave you any money,” he said bluntly. “But you’ll get some social security and the city’s sending you something because of your dad. I’m the guardian of your estate until you turn eighteen. For now, I’ll give you cash every month, pay your phone, buy your clothes.”

  She hadn’t even thought of any of that. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “And I updated my will,” he added. That startled her. She stumbled, found her footing, and hurried to catch up to him. He was a fast walker.

  “Are you sick?” she asked him.

  “No. Just careful,” he replied.

  He held the door to the garage open. It was dark inside. He flicked on a light switch. The small space was tidy, with tools and ropes hanging from pegboards, and a long tool bench holding tackle boxes and a row of screwdrivers and pliers. There was a canoe in the center of the room and a metal folding chair beside it.

  “I hit a shoal during the summer,” he said, gesturing to the canoe. “Scraped up the bottom. I’ll be moving it so we can put the truck in here during the winter,” he said. “The larder’s over here.”

  He led her past the canoe, opened a door, and pulled on a chain. They entered a storage room. Wooden shelves held a few bottles of pasta sauce and some glass jars labeled J.D.’S PICKLES.

  He looked at the way she was holding the antifreeze. “Is your shoulder bothering you too much to help me unload the truck?”

  “No,” she said; then she realized that back home, she would have said yes, because of her gymnastics and ballet. Here it almost didn’t matter if she got injured.

  I can’t think that way, she told herself, fretting. This is all temporary.

  “We’ll get snowed in. You can count on it,” he told her.

  “Yay,” she said weakly. The idea of being trapped was a nightmare.

  Once they were finished, he marched her into the forest for more rifle training. With the night’s scare explained away, she was again reluctant to touch the weapon.

  They practiced for more than half an hour, but it seemed to her that she was getting worse instead of better. She was tired and frustrated.

  “How do you feel?” he asked after a particularly errant shot.

  “Not good,” she admitted. “My shoulder is still sore.”

  He nodded and took the rifle from her. “Let’s end for the day.” He turned and she fell into step beside him, relieved to be done.

  “How do you think it went?” she asked tentatively, just to fill the silence.

  He sighed. “I think it was a terrible waste of ammunition.”

  Her heart fell. She trudged back to the house beside him, staring at her feet. As much as she hated the rifle, she didn’t want to disappoint Ed, and the realization surprised her. When had she started to care about pleasing him?

  That night, she dreamed about Justin. Red fog boiled around him as he rode his motorcycle; and surrounding that, blackest night. He was speeding toward her, but she was standing on the other side of an enormous chasm. As he reached the edge of the cliff, he gunned the engine a
nd the motorcycle soared into the air, arcing like a comet, clouds of exhaust shooting out the back. She held out her arms, willing him to make it.

  He flew, climbing higher and higher—but then something happened. He began to fall. And the red wasn’t fog; it was smoke and flames, and he was diving into them.

  “No!” she cried, bolting upright in bed.

  Panting, she smoothed back her hair. It was just a dream, she assured herself.

  Lying on her side, she curled into a ball. Her heart was racing. She considered getting up to call Kimi, but it was the middle of the night.

  And Kimi still hadn’t called her back from the morning.

  She reached over and found her bear. Feeling foolish, she pulled it close and rested her chin on it. She wanted to go home. She wanted to go now.

  On Monday afternoon, she was back in the forest next to her grandfather, who handed her the rifle. Just touching it made her stomach flip.

  “Hold it steady,” he urged her. “Pull the trigger.”

  Katelyn exhaled and let the rifle droop.

  “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I’m just not getting it.”

  He clicked his teeth and tipped the barrel of the rifle back up toward the sky. “You’ve got a birthday coming up.”

  She was a little surprised he remembered.

  She nodded. “November sixth.”

  “What do you usually do to celebrate?”

  “Oh, different things.” For her sixteenth birthday, she and her mother had gone to a performance of the New York City Ballet when it was on tour in L.A. The Cirque performance of Alegría had been their last outing.

  “Well, you mentioned something about that circus you like.”

  She bit her lip. She wanted to say more, but she didn’t want to push her luck and risk his going on again about setting her sights on a career in the real world.

  He reached into the pocket of his denim jacket and pulled out two tickets. “The Cirque du Soleil?” he said. “They’re putting on a couple of shows in Little Rock. I saw the ads. I’ll take you for your birthday. If you can learn to hit that target.”

  “What?” she asked, not sure she’d heard right. She reached out and touched the tickets. Her past and her future were colliding in her present, making her head spin.

  “We can go?”

  “If you can get a bull’s-eye.”

  He stood aside. She steadied the gun and held her breath. Then she fired a shot. The shell casing made a chinging sound as it hit the ground.

  They both looked. She was nowhere near the bull’s-eye, but for the first time ever, she’d made it onto the paper.

  “Ed,” she said breathlessly. “Look.”

  “I am. And it makes me want to howl like a banshee,” he replied.

  Then she raised the rifle and pulled the trigger again.

  8

  The next morning Katelyn was in a great mood. She’d hit the target three more times, but her real target was the Cirque tickets. It meant so much that Ed had bought them. All was not lost after all. She’d been right when she’d told Kimi she was more likely to get her way if she was nice. As her grandfather hadn’t shown in the kitchen yet, she made the coffee and smiled when she heard Trick’s Mustang roll up outside.

  She made sure she had all her school stuff, then poured him a cup of coffee and laid a piece of toast on top. Juggling everything, she opened the door. He’d already gotten out of the car and was heading up the steps leading to the porch. She went out into the chilly morning air and waited for him.

  When he reached her, he didn’t say a word. The dark brows, which furrowed above his deep green eyes, were nearly matched by the black circles underneath them. His mouth was pressed into a thin line, and there was a pallor to his usually warm bronze skin that made him look like a different person—someone related to Trick, but not Trick. There was something nearer about him, even though his seriousness made her step back.

  She glanced down at the left sleeve of his dark gray hoodie. A black armband of duct tape was wound around his bicep.

  “Trick?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  He gave a strange kind of gasp and took a step toward her, then stopped, as if holding himself in check. Then he took the coffee and toast with one hand and closed his other hand over hers. His fingers were cold.

  “Trick? You’re scaring me.”

  He shook his head and walked her to the car. She slid in, and he walked around to the driver’s side. Music started immediately. She recognized “Pavane for a Dead Princess” by Ravel. The music caught her off guard. Her mother had danced to this, dressed as a sixteenth-century Spanish princess. Katelyn had seen a video of her performance.

  He was playing it loudly, driving slow, as if he wanted to drag out the time it would take to get to school.

  “What happened?” she shouted over the music, but he couldn’t hear her. She wanted to reach over and turn off the music but, at the same time, wanted just as badly for him to delay whatever bad news he had for her.

  Just before they entered the tree tunnel, he put the car in idle, turned, and put his arms around her. He was shaking and he pressed her head into his chest. Katelyn felt the muscles against her cheek. His heart was pounding as the music swelled around them.

  “Trick?” She choked on her own fear, but he let go and began to drive again.

  When they finally arrived at school, Katelyn realized immediately that whatever was wrong wasn’t affecting just Trick. She saw students clustered in small knots talking quietly. A blond girl was sitting in her car, sobbing with her head against the steering wheel, one foot on the ground outside and one inside. Katelyn’s stomach tightened as she recognized the all-too-familiar signs of grief.

  Trick turned off the car.

  “Tell me now,” she ordered him.

  He exhaled, eyes fixed straight ahead through the windshield, not at her. “Becky Jensen wasn’t at school yesterday. Turns out she went missing a couple of days ago. Her body was discovered early this morning.” The muscle in his jaw worked as he shifted, locking his gaze on hers, fighting for calm. “Just like Haley.”

  Horror surged through her. Had Becky Jensen screamed? In the woods? On Friday night? And could Katelyn have done something to save her?

  Her stomach twisted and she struggled not to be sick. She glanced up at Trick, who looked the same way she felt.

  “Did you know her?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “I told you. Everybody knows everybody out here. She was probably in a couple of your classes.”

  “Oh, God,” Katelyn said, suddenly suspended in a strange sort of languor. Part of her still felt the intense horror, the shock, but another part detached, as if she were hearing of it from a great distance in time and space.

  “Trick, that story I told you…,” she began.

  “Not now,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.

  Trick climbed out of the car and she caught up to him as he started to cross the lot. It was chilly, but as she passed the girl crying in her car, she began to sweat. She remembered the shock and pain she’d felt when she had heard her dad had been shot. Unlike with her mom, she hadn’t been there to see it happen. Somehow that had made it even harder to believe.

  I touched my mom’s face just before she died. She died. My mom died.

  Two girls are dead. Death followed me.

  She walked into the building and everywhere she turned there were stunned, tear-streaked faces. Trick was right. In a town as small as this one, everyone did know everyone.

  And her grandfather was right.

  Going out into the woods at night could get you killed.

  She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  That first scream …

  Cordelia was in history, looking pale. Mr. Henderson attempted to review his grading system for their projects, but no one was listening. Throughout class Katelyn tried to get Cordelia’s attention, but the other girl refused to look up, and when the bel
l rang, she bolted from the room.

  Katelyn hurried to follow her and finally caught up to her in the hallway just before they reached the gym. She grabbed Cordelia’s arm and spun her half around.

  Cordelia looked up at her, eyes brimming with tears. Her mascara had run all over. “Oh, Kat!” she wailed. “First Haley and now Becky. We used to be so close.”

  Katelyn felt helpless; she didn’t know what to say, but she reached out and hugged Cordelia. The other girl clung to her, sobbing as if her heart were breaking.

  “Maybe you should go home,” Katelyn said.

  “I don’t want to. There’s no one there and then I’d have to think too much.”

  “Think?” Katelyn echoed. About what we did and didn’t do?

  “Please come with me,” Cordelia begged. “I’ll get you home before dark.” She smeared her makeup even more. Then she looked hard at Katelyn. “What?”

  Katelyn licked her lips. “Friday.” Cordelia just stared at her blankly, which frustrated Katelyn, because she didn’t want to have to say any more. “The scream.”

  Cordelia caught her breath. “Oh. Oh, no, Kat. She wasn’t anywhere near the cabin. We for sure didn’t hear her. Oh, I’m sorry you were worried about that.”

  Katelyn’s intense, high-inducing relief that Becky’s blood was not on their hands, combined with the way Cordelia kept smearing her makeup, made her reflexively smile.

  “What? Do I look awful?” Cordelia asked, suddenly self-conscious.

  “A little like the Joker.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t funny, but the relief was so great she couldn’t help herself.

  Cordelia burst out with a choked, crazy laugh. She glanced down at her hands, and her eyes widened at the streaks of mascara, eye shadow, and blush covering her fingers. “I did not just laugh,” she said.

  “It’s just nerves,” Katelyn said grimly, painfully familiar with the cycle of crazy emotions. “Laughing, crying, and in between … numb.”

  “Please come home with me,” Cordelia pleaded again. “I need someone of my own there.”