by SM Reine
“What I have is… well, it’s kind of like a cold. But it’s a terrible cold my body can’t fight. My immune system’s shot. When I rode Butch out to check on a heifer, it got hard to breathe, and I passed out. No big worry there. But it’s caused by a more serious problem.” Gwyn’s thumb rubbed across the back of Rylie’s hand. “I’m going to be in the hospital for a couple days.”
“I’ll take care of the herd,” Rylie said. “I’ll move them to the barn myself. I can—”
“You can make them run away, that’s what you can do. You’re terrible with the cattle. Call Abel. He’ll know what needs done.”
“Is that why you’ve had him around so much? Have you been planning to get hospitalized?”
“Nobody plans to be sick, babe."
Gwyn sagged against the pillow, like all that talking had exhausted her. It probably had.
Rylie glared at the toe of her boots, stung by the thought that her aunt’s preparations for a worst case scenario involved getting Abel to help—Abel, of all people—instead of her niece.
“I’ll call him,” she said without looking up.
“You’ll have to call your mom, too. Jessica needs to know.”
Her gaze shot to Gwyn’s face. “What?”
“Like it or not, she’s still your mother,” she said. She couldn’t seem to work up the strength to look stern, though she tried.
“But—”
“Seth can come in, you know. Don’t make the boy wait outside.”
Rylie hadn’t realized he was still in the hall. The door was half-open, and she could see the corner of a leather jacket on the other side. He must have been listening to their conversation. He stepped in and grabbed Rylie’s hand.
“Ms. Gresham,” he said, a little too formally. He cracked a smile. It wasn’t his usual bright grin. “You’ve looked better.”
“There’s no point trying to impress me now. Make sure Rylie takes care of herself. You got me? And have fun at the Winter Ball. I’ll be disappointed if I spent all that money on a beautiful dress and find out you two moped around all night.”
“I can’t go to the dance now,” Rylie said.
Gwyn’s hand tightened. “You can and you will. Now go away. You’re worrying yourself sick, and that’ll make me sicker. I want to see what’s happening on General Hospital. I haven’t watched it in years.” And then she acted like Rylie and Seth no longer existed.
Rylie couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet as she drifted into the hallway. The sights and smells and sounds of the hospital were distant and meaningless.
She didn’t realize she was chewing on her thumb again until Seth grabbed her.
“I’ll call Abel. Don’t eat your hand while I’m gone,” he said, pulling out his cell phone and heading outside.
Rylie watched the ripped skin around her nail heal in a daze.
The blood was gone as soon as she wiped it on her jeans, but it planted the seed of an idea that stuck. AIDS was a disease that meant Gwyn couldn’t heal. Rylie healed better and faster than any human—she could fix any injury that wasn’t inflicted by silver.
What would happen if she turned Gwyn into a werewolf?
Thirteen
Suspicion
Seth stepped out of Rylie’s bedroom and shut the door silently behind him. He didn’t have to be quiet. She had been asleep the instant he lay her in bed and brushed a kiss on her cheek. She hadn’t even gotten out of her sweater.
He sat on the stoop outside. Icicles dripped onto puddles of frost around the porch, and the chair crunched with ice when he sank into it. The cold seeped into his jeans.
Leaning his elbows on his knees, he stared out at the fields, and the dark shape of his brother at work.
Seeing Gwyn in the hospital disturbed him, but not half as much as the news report. He kept rereading the coroner’s reports he had copied and thinking of what Rylie said about the murders—that maybe they had trusted their killer.
Abel was herding the cattle into the barn. He used the ATV to do it instead of a horse.
Seth couldn’t remember the last time he saw his brother on horseback.
“It can’t be,” he murmured.
His brother was a lot of things. Brutal, occasionally cruel, intense. But was he a murderer?
Seth saw Rylie’s favorite horse wandering outside the fence and went down to catch him. Butch was still saddled. He caught the horse’s bridle and guided him to the stables, keeping Abel in the corner of his eye. He rode around the perimeter of the herd, bellowing occasionally to keep them in line.
It was warm inside the stables, and it smelled like hay and manure. Seth removed Butch’s tack, hung the saddle on a post, and brushed him down.
“How is she?”
His hand paused mid-brush. Seth glanced over his shoulder to see Abel dismounting the ATV outside the door. The other horses nickered softly.
“She’s going to be in the hospital a couple days,” Seth said. When Butch huffed and shifted, he resumed brushing. “Sounds like a pretty bad cold.”
Abel came inside, shoved the door shut, and pulled off his scarf. Had his scars healed around the edges? He didn’t look as mangled as before. “What about Rylie?”
“What about her?”
“You know... how’s she taking it?”
Seth set down the brush. Butch ambled into his stall without being prompted, sticking his nose into the trough.
“Why do you care?” he asked, folding his arms.
Abel gave a short laugh. “What—can’t I be worried?”
“You don’t even like Rylie,” Seth said.
It took his brother a heartbeat too long to reply. “Yeah. Right.” He grabbed a shovel. “Stalls need to be mucked. Let’s get it done.”
They worked together in silence, filling a wheelbarrow with horse manure. It would be composted later and used to fertilize the orchard when spring came around, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to handle.
Even though it was freezing outside, shoveling brought Seth to a hard sweat in minutes. He stripped his jacket and threw it on the saddle. Abel followed suit. “Is there something you want to tell me?” Seth asked, keeping his focus on the soiled hay. It was hard not to sound accusing.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
Abel leaned on the handle of his shovel. “Did Rylie say something to you?”
Seth shook his head, feeling unsettled. What would Rylie have said to him? And when had his brother started worrying about her instead of wishing she was dead?
“I wonder sometimes…” he began, carefully choosing his words. He swallowed hard and started over. “I haven’t heard from Mom since she left. I think she’s busy on a hunt—I can’t think of any other reason she’d be away so long. You know? She’s not the type to let us go without a fight.”
“You drove her off, bro,” Abel said. “You picked a girl over your responsibility as a hunter. You ever consider she’s pissed at you?”
Yeah, he had. More than once. “I think she’ll be back.”
Abel scraped the last of the manure out of the stall. He moved one arm stiffly. It still didn’t have a full range of motion since Rylie attacked him as a werewolf. “Yeah. Probably.”
“She’s unstoppable,” Seth said. “There’s nothing she likes better than hunting, maybe including us. That’s something you got from her.” He leaned the shovel against the wall and wiped his hands on his jeans. “So I wonder… why did you stay?”
“You seriously asking me that?”
The horses shifted in their stalls. Seth nodded. “All this sitting around must be driving you crazy. I mean, we come from a family of hunters—killers. You had to know going with Mom would be more interesting than being here.”
Abel folded his arms. They were so thick with muscle that they couldn’t lay flat on his chest. “Maybe I like having a job.”
“Hunting is your job.”
“No. Hunting is your job, Mr. Destiny. My
job is to stick around until you’re eighteen so you don’t go into foster care.”
Seth gritted his teeth. “It’s not my destiny. I hate it when you say that.”
“What are you saying, man? You want to get rid of me?”
“I’m just wondering what’s going on in your ugly head,” Seth said, giving a thin smile. “This stuff, this ranch thing… this isn’t normal for you.”
Abel studied him. “If you’re trying to say something, you better say it.”
Are you killing people because you’re restless?
Seth shook his head.
“You know what? Forget it.” He turned around to grab his jacket and gloves.
He heard the motion before he saw it.
Seth ducked, and Abel’s fist smashed into the post above his head. It cracked the wood.
Spinning, he swept out a leg and hooked it behind Abel’s ankle. He jerked. Abel stumbled, reaching out both hands for the nearest thing he could find—Seth’s shirt.
They toppled together.
Abel used their momentum to roll on top, rearing back to swing a right-hook into Seth’s jaw.
The room exploded with black stars. His skull rang.
When he swung again, Seth caught his wrist in a crushing grip, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He could barely make out Abel’s white-toothed grin through the haze.
He snapped forward and head-butted Abel in the nose. His brother bellowed.
Seth shoved him back against the wall, punching him in the gut hard. He aimed for the floating ribs. Abel twisted and made him miss—just barely.
Scurrying to his feet, he tried to back off and get out of his brother’s range. But Abel lowered his shoulder and plowed into him like a linebacker, smashing them both into the wall. The entire barn shuddered.
The back of Seth’s head bounced on the wall.
Suddenly, he was on the floor looking at the ceiling.
“Ugh,” he groaned, grabbing his head. Pain radiated down his spine and shoulders.
Abel offered him a hand. “Dude,” he said, still grinning but no longer on the attack, “you blacked out. What a wimp.”
“Did you get the license plate on the train that hit me?”
“Don’t be such a baby. Get up.”
Seth gripped Abel’s wrist and let him haul him into a sitting position. He flopped against the wall. “What was that? Are you trying to kill me?”
Abel guffawed as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Blood shone on his knuckles. “Nah. You’re a punk. You deserved it, that’s all.” He looped his arm around his brother’s neck and pulled him in for a noogie, but Seth shoved him off. His head hurt way too much for that.
“Yeah, and you’re an inbred moron. I better not have any bruises tomorrow. Rylie’s going to be mad if I show up for the Winter Ball looking like ground beef.”
“If I’m inbred, you know what that says about you,” Abel said. “Explains your stupid face, doesn’t it?”
Seth couldn’t help it. He laughed. But the image of Isaiah Branson crept into his mind, like inky tendrils of fear, and his laughter died.
“Winter Ball, huh?” Abel mused that with a sour look. “Sounds pretty gay.”
“You’re pretty gay,” Seth muttered. Not his best comeback, but his head still felt like a shattered bell.
“Nice. Real nice.”
They sat together on the floor, backs against the wall, and listened to the wind rising outside. Cold seeped through a crack in the window. After a few minutes, Seth didn’t feel quite so terrible, and his eyes could actually focus again. He squinted at his brother.
The first time Abel had been bitten by a werewolf had thrown them into a hellish three-month nightmare. The battle against the curse was the hardest they fought in their life until Seth met Rylie.
As much as they fought, they were more than brothers. They were best friends.
Or at least, they used to be.
“You can tell me whatever. You know that, right?” Seth asked. Abel’s smile faded. He nodded.
Seth’s first attempt to stand failed, so Abel helped him up. He started grinning again. “Your eye looks awesome,” he said. “That’s going to be a nice shiner.”
“You jerk,” Seth said, giving him a small shove.
“You’re welcome.”
Abel didn’t put his coat on again before mounting the ATV to take it to the shed. Seth followed him more slowly on foot.
His brother couldn’t have killed anyone. He was scary sometimes, but he wasn’t crazy—and there was compassion in there somewhere deep down. Really deep down.
It had to be someone else killing. Seth was sure of it.
Mostly.
Christmas Eve arrived, and so did the day of the Winter Ball. Rylie woke up as exhausted that morning as she had every other morning for weeks and found she didn’t have the energy to get out of bed.
Her dress—that gorgeous dress—hung over her door where she could see it. But she couldn’t move. Her thoughts overwhelmed her.
Gwyn was still in the hospital and might not come back.
She could only learn to control the change if she left Seth.
There were hunters outside her home with guns—right now—searching for things to shoot at, and they wouldn’t care if they spotted coyotes or wolves.
And she was going to change into a monster again that very night, whether she liked it or not.
It was all too much. Hugging her pillow to her chest and hiking the sheets to her shoulders, Rylie burrowed into her bed and wished it would turn into a big stone sarcophagus to entomb her away from life.
She heard engine sounds through her shut window and detected a faint smell that meant Abel was nearby. He would take care of the ranch. At least that was one less thing to worry about. It was strange to feel grateful for his presence.
But she smelled Seth too, and didn’t want to face him. She originally planned to dress up and surprise him, but she couldn’t imagine getting in the shower anymore, much less doing her hair and makeup.
Someone knocked on her door. She didn’t move.
“Are you awake?”
Seth didn’t raise his voice, like he was trying not to wake her up. She stayed silent so he would think she was sleeping.
Even though she didn’t move, the door opened and he slipped in. He sat on the edge of her bed. “I can’t do this,” Rylie mumbled. “Any of it.”
Seth kicked off his shoes. She lifted the covers and he climbed underneath them, spooning his body around hers. His arm was warm and secure and safe around her stomach.
“Yeah. It sucks.”
They stayed there all morning.
Eventually, Rylie got too hungry to stay in bed. Seth left to get his tuxedo, and she took a plate of barely-cooked bacon into her room for breakfast. She stared at her dress as she chewed on it.
How was she supposed to put that giant thing on without Gwyn’s help?
She washed her hands off before wrestling it over her head, twisting her arms around to zip it halfway up her back. Rylie studied herself in the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door, heavy with helplessness.
It was a full-length ball gown with layers of blue silk. Against her winter-pale skin and white blonde hair, she looked like an ice fairy. The high waist made her legs impossibly long. It sparkled with tiny beads. Even without her makeup done, she looked amazing.
She closed the wardrobe so she wouldn’t have to see herself anymore.
Rylie did her hair in a loose bun and added sparkly clips to match her flowing skirt. Even though she kept her makeup simple, by the time she finished, she heard Seth come in the front door. She stepped out of the bathroom to find him waiting in the living room.
Seth’s mouth dropped open, and all the hours she spent wrestling with herself over the dress and the dance were instantly worth it. He looked amazing in a tuxedo. It made him look taller, broader, and all around manlier. The ice blue tie with his black shirt and jacket matched Rylie’s dress
perfectly.
And he only had eyes for her.
How long had she been holding her breath? She felt lightheaded.
Somehow she drifted toward him, closing the gap between their bodies, but she didn’t remember taking a single step. “You’re beautiful,” Seth said.
She bit her bottom lip. That was basically her thoughts about him, too, except punctuated by “hot” and “oh my God” and incoherent babbling noises.
“You’re late,” she teased, trying to bring her brain back to Earth before she lost herself in Seth’s crooked smile. Rylie stretched up to kiss him, but he pulled back and cleared his throat. “What…?”
“Cute. Really cute.”
Abel stood in the doorway, dirty and sweat-soaked despite the snow outside. She dropped back on her heels and rolled her eyes. “Great, just who I wanted to see.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Nice dress.”
“What are you doing tonight while we’re out?” Seth asked, stepping forward to shield Rylie from him.
“I have plans,” Abel said airily. “Don’t worry about me. Have fun, children.” He was only nineteen. She fought not to roll her eyes again. She didn’t want them to fall out of her head.
She wrapped herself in a fake fur shrug and held hands with Seth as they walked out to the truck. He waited until they both climbed in to pull a box out of his jacket.
Rylie gasped. There was a gorgeous white flower in full bloom inside, glittering with dew.
“I got this for you,” he said. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to go to this, no matter what Gwyneth said. We can stay home if you want. Your night’s going to be hard enough after the moon rises.”
She took a deep breath. “I want to go. I do.” She couldn’t muster very much conviction.
Rylie held out her arm. He put the corsage on her wrist, fingers lingering on her skin. “We’ll do this together,” Seth said. “You don’t have to be alone.”
For the first time that day, she smiled.
“Thank you.”
Fourteen
The Winter Ball
Seth and Rylie arrived at the dance late and had to park all the way on the top floor of the parking garage (which only had two levels). He put on a watch before getting out of the truck. “It’s after six now,” he said. “The moon shouldn’t hit until eleven, but we’ll need to leave by nine to get home in time. Tell me when you feel the wolf.”