by K. C. Blake
Chapter Six:
THE WEREWOLF POPULATION GROWS
During the next two weeks, Jack found a routine he could live with. He went to school, did his homework and tried to stay out of trouble. Silver stopped pushing him to drop out, but she still shot him warning glares now and again. He made a couple new friends. Even Billy seemed to relax, let down his guard...
...and isn’t that when the bad stuff always happens?
Another school day ended on a quiet note. Jack searched the school for Silver. He had stayed after to talk to a teacher about making up the work he’d missed while running around the country with his vampire friends. He’d expected to find Silver standing outside the door when he got done, but the hallway was empty.
Jack wandered around for ten minutes before deciding she must be waiting for him in the parking lot.
His footsteps echoed in the long hallway. Being in school without anyone else around was unsettling. But was he alone? The hairs prickled the back of his neck, signaling trouble. Curious eyes watched him. He didn’t know where they were, but he could feel them burning a hole into his skull... or maybe it was just his imagination. No one except for the English teacher had shown any interest in the new kid, and Jersey had left for the day.
Still, the nagging feeling lingered. He thought he heard metal scraping the floor as if something was being dragged. Another sound caught his attention. He jerked his head to the left and saw something tan move behind the row of lockers, out of view. Maybe someone was spying on him. Even paranoid people had enemies.
Around the opposite corner, a door banged against the wall. Loud voices struggled for dominion. The words were unintelligible. It sounded like a group of geese chattering on their way South for the winter. A piercing whistle cut through the noise.
“All right, everyone, calm down!” The female voice held authority. Jack knew it belonged to a teacher before he rounded the bend. The drama teacher Ms. Tomlin said, “I’ll call for an ambulance. Give him room to breathe.”
She sprinted down the hallway to the main office.
Students crowded around a prone figure on the floor. The boy kicked and writhed like he was being electrocuted. Students whispered concerned words to each other as they watched his face grow redder by the minute. He cried out in pain and twisted in agony. No one knew what to do for him.
The boy’s eyes bulged, threatening to pop out of his head. A cloud of visible steam burst off his face like a boiling tea kettle releasing built-up pressure. Several gasps shot into the air. One of the girls shrieked. The students simultaneously jumped away from him, terrified. As if by mutual consent they fell into a state of shocked silence.
Jack went to the boy, knelt beside him, instinctively knowing what was wrong. The kid had been infected by a werewolf, and it was too late for anyone to save him. On the next full moon he would go crazy, probably kill somebody. The only way to stop that from happening was to kill the kid.
A tall girl with short hair and freckles raced to the boy’s side with a wet towel. She’d missed the weird steam thing and didn’t know she shouldn’t go near him. She placed the towel on his forehead before Jack could stop her. It was never a good idea to get that close to a werewolf, even a newbie. Confused, the boy reacted. He swiped at her. Light glinted off metallic claws that only Jack could see.
“Hey!” The girl cradled her injured hand against her chest. “He scratched me.”
Jack stood and took three steps backwards.
Silver appeared on the scene, out of breath from running. She grabbed Jack’s arm and asked, “What happened?”
He gestured to the kid on the floor.
The boy’s face had lost some of the redness, and he wasn’t perspiring anymore.
Jack took Silver by the arm and dragged her away from the crowd. He quickly explained everything including how the girl had been scratched. He ended with, “Now she’s infected too.”
“This has never happened before.” Silver shook her head at him. “I realize we have a bit of a werewolf population problem around here, but they tend to stay in the wilderness. They rarely infect anyone. Mostly they just kill their victims.”
“What do we do about it?”
Silver bit her lower lip for a second before saying, “There’s nothing we can do at the moment.”
“Will you suck their souls out?” He hadn’t meant it to sound like an accusation.
She frowned at him and pulled him even further away from the others. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“My power only works on them when they’re in wolf form. It takes a while for a new werewolf to learn to morph. Lovely’s diary says someday I’ll be able to suck souls out any time I want, but I need to develop my power first. My parents told me I’m going to have to train for a long time.”
The drama teacher returned with Principal Hardwick in tow. They helped the young man to his feet and walked him back to the office. Hardwick scowled at Silver and Jack as if he suspected they had something to do with the boy’s problem. After the sick boy was out of sight, the group of teens broke apart. They drifted down the hall, still discussing what they’d seen.
Silver said, “I don’t know how I’ll ever be ready to take on the head werewolf when my parents won’t even let me practice. There’s always some excuse. It’s a school night or they think I should spend time with kids my own age or they’ve grounded me over something stupid.” She smiled and a mischievous glint entered her eyes. “I sneak out though.”
Jack had suspected as much. “You sneak out to fight werewolves?”
“That’s right.” She headed for the door, leaving Jack to follow. He stood there for an extended period of time, shocked at the entire situation. If he didn’t go after her, she’d probably leave him at school, so he ran outside. Once he caught up with her in the parking lot, she said, “That’s why I was in the cemetery the other night. Lucky you. If I hadn’t been there that werewolf would have shredded you.”
If she hadn’t been there, Jack wouldn’t have been attacked, but he kept his opinions to himself. There was something else he wanted to talk about. There were secrets in her eyes.
What was she keeping from him?
****
They drove in silence for almost fifteen minutes, but this time there wasn’t anything awkward about it. Jack knew Silver wanted to tell him everything that was on her mind, spill her secrets. He gazed out the passenger side window at the passing scenery, giving her time to accumulate her thoughts.
Maybe he should go first, tell her he knew about the secret she’d been keeping. Of course he only knew fragments, and if he admitted that much, she’d want to know how he’d found out about it. That was his secret.
“It wasn’t some random coincidence that brought you here,” she finally said. Her eyes stayed focused on the road. “You were meant to be here at this time. You were meant to find me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Destiny.”
Jack rolled his eyes. How many times had he heard that meaningless word tumble from Lily’s lips? He was with Cowboy on this one. Without thinking about it first, he repeated one of Cowboy’s favorite sayings. “There’s no such animal. We create our own futures.”
“We do,” Silver agreed. “For the most part. But sometimes destiny has a hand in it. You aren’t going to like what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll listen with an open mind.” She paused for a second before blurting it out as fast as she could. “Lovely wrote about you in her diary. She talked about a boy who would change from vampire to mortal. It has to be you. What are the odds someone else will reverse from a vampire to a human?”
A few questions floated through Jack’s mind, but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to let her finish. She needed to answer the most important question of all: what exactly did this ‘destiny’ entail? What was he supposed to do?
Silver spared him a quick glance.
He waited with a patient exterior even though he was
on the verge of exploding—and not because of the sunlight.
“We have to kill the head werewolf, the first werewolf.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“I’m serious, Jack.” Her eyes darted to him, probably checking to see if his hand was on the door handle yet. She added, “If we kill the head werewolf, all other werewolves will revert to their human selves again. We’ll be saving the world.”
“I don’t want to save the world. I just want to finish high school with a decent grade point average. Anyway, what’s with the ‘we’ stuff? You’re Silver. Aren’t you the one who needs to kill the werewolves? Why drag me into it?”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I can’t do it myself because I’m not old enough, and my powers aren’t fully developed yet.”
“So? I can’t suck souls out.”
“In the diary Lovely explains she added a fail-safe in case something should happen to me before I can do my job. There’s a stone with magical powers, and it’s been passed down through my family line along with the diary and the necklace. You are the only one who can use the stone.”
“Lucky me.” He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, and tried hard to control the snarl threatening to erupt from his throat. If she heard it, she would know he hadn’t completely turned human, that she was wrong about him being her hero. He remained a monster in disguise.
“All you have to do is touch the werewolf with the stone. Lovely has already done the rest.”
It didn’t sound hard. He could probably manage to do it between classes and homework, if the rock actually worked. Then he could have his life back. “Fine. Give me the magic rock, and point me in the right direction.”
There was a long pause from her side of the car.
“I can’t,” she finally said, tagging a frustrated sigh onto the end. “I don’t have the stone, and I haven’t figured out who the head werewolf is yet.”
Jack relaxed against the seat with a smile. He hoped he got points for agreeing to help. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t done the legwork. He was off the hook. Good for him.
“I can find out who it is though,” she said. “Lovely wrote about him, about the three of us in her diary. According to her, the three of us will gravitate towards each other without even realizing it. We can’t help it. It’s our destiny.”
There was that word again. “You think the head werewolf lives around here?”
She nodded.
“We can go out a few times,” he said, “kill all the werewolves we stumble across. Maybe we’ll get him by accident.”
“You don’t understand.” She hesitated before delivering more bad news. “The stone only works once. We have to be sure the guy you use it on is the head werewolf before you touch him with it. Otherwise it’s worthless, and we’ve lost the advantage.”
“Why can’t you just have patience, grow up, develop your power and kill him yourself?”
He hated feeling like a petty jerk, but he’d just gotten his life back. He was mortal, at least for the moment, and he wanted to enjoy it. No telling how much time he had. He wanted to do the things he’d missed while being a vampire. Was a little ‘me’ time too much to ask for?
“There’s going to be a war,” she said. “Someday—I assume it’s soon since you’re here—the head werewolf is going to raise an army. He’s going to start infecting people left and right. He may have already started. Once he has his army, he’s going to go to war with the vampires and wipe them out. Then he’ll either turn the entire human race into werewolves or kill them.”
“I don’t think so.” Jack patted his jacket pockets, feeling the urge for a cigarette, before remembering he’d quit. “If there was a war, the vampires would win. Werewolves are notoriously stupid.”
“Not all of them. Not this one. The older they are, the smarter they are. He’s supposed to be brilliant, a real strategist according to Lovely.”
“You don’t have the magic rock,” he reminded her. “We can’t do anything without it. So even if you manage to figure out who the head werewolf is, we can’t hurt him. What is the point of this conversation?”
“My mom keeps it in her sock drawer, but she doesn’t know that I know. We can take it whenever we want it.”
“Why does everyone want me dead?” He stared at her profile, searching for a hint because he didn’t think she was going to tell him outright. “On my first night here you were talking in your sleep. You warned me to be careful because everyone wants me dead. What is that supposed to mean? Who is everyone, and why would they want me dead now when I can’t hurt anyone?”
She wasn’t going to tell him, but she was thinking about it. Jack decided to test his new power. He concentrated on what he wanted to know and laid a hand on top of hers.
An electric current shot through him
****
Silver waited in the hallway for Jack to finish talking to his teacher.
Trina approached with six or seven books in her arms, not counting notebooks. In all the years Silver had known her, Trina had only used her locker twice. Silver suspected Trina didn’t even remember where her locker was located anymore. With a look of annoyance, the girl stopped and leaned backwards as she juggled text books, notebooks, and her purse. She struggled in vain to open her purse with one hand.
Silver stepped forward, ready to help, but it was too late. A book slid off the stack and fell to the floor. Rolling her eyes, Trina purposely let the rest of them go. The books hit the floor with a loud boom and a few slid in opposite directions. She opened her purse and retrieved a tube of lip gloss. Smiling, she applied the pink tint to her lips while speaking.
“Your boyfriend is mega-intense,” Trina announced. She compressed her lips together to equally distribute the gloss. “I cannot believe he attacked Tucker. Even without vampire powers he’s super-cool. You are one lucky girl.”
Silver wanted to deny the ‘boyfriend’ label, but she decided not to waste her breath. Trina only heard what Trina wanted to hear. Silver asked, “Can you get a ride home with someone else? I’m waiting for Jack.”
“I’ll wait with you. I don’t mind being late.”
“I kind of need to talk to him alone.”
Trina’s eyes widened. “You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”
“Part of it.”
“Which part?”
“Well, I think I’ll tell him he has to kill the head werewolf. Maybe I’ll mention the war. I don’t think I’ll tell him more than that right now because I don’t want him to run for the Canadian border.”
“Aren’t you going to tell him he’s in danger? I would think he’d want to know something like that, unless he’s a complete moron.”
Silver shook her head. “I can’t. He’s so happy being human. His eyes light up every time he talks about something normal like going to school or mowing the grass. I don’t want to be the one to sink his dreams.”
“Uh, don’t you think he’ll notice when he starts getting bursts of strength or running faster than lightning?” Trina stooped down to retrieve her books. “Anyway, how can he protect himself when he doesn’t know he’s in danger?”
“I’ll protect him.” Silver bent over to help Trina. She stacked a couple books onto the pile in Trina’s hands and added, “I can tell if a werewolf or a vampire is nearby. I’ll make sure nothing kills him.”
Trina made a face. “Sounds like a full-time job to me.”
“He has a destiny to fulfill. He can’t die before then. I think he’s safe.”
“Didn’t you tell me Lovely has been wrong before?”
****
“Hey! I asked you a question! What’s wrong with you?”
Silver’s loud voice broke through the memory and transported him back to the present so fast he almost got whiplash. One second he was inside of Silver’s head, talking to her best friend, and the next he was in the car again. Motion sickness made him nauseous. Silver tried to keep her eyes on the road, but continuously tore
her gaze from it to look at him.
“Well?”
Maybe if he confronted her with what he knew she would accidentally spill some important information. He was sure she wouldn’t hand him the truth without a fight. She seemed to have a problem with total honesty. Was it because she didn’t trust him?
“I have my powers back.”
“What?” Her eyes flew to his face. She lost control of the car. They weaved into oncoming traffic. He reached for the steering wheel, but she corrected the car before he could do anything to help. “What did you say?”
“I’m mortal again, so why do I have superhuman powers?”
Chapter Seven:
MORE BAD NEWS FOR JACK
Silver didn’t answer him for seventeen miles.
He counted.
Jack stared at her profile. Her jaw tightened, and she swallowed several times while her hands gripped the steering wheel hard. She was doing her best to ignore him. It wasn’t going to work. After ten years of living with Cowboy, putting up with his insane ideas, Jack had developed a bountiful amount of patience.
He cleared his throat.
She nearly jumped out of her skin.
“What sort of powers are you talking about?” Her tone emerged light and casual, but her stiff facial muscles gave her away. She wanted the information more than she wanted her next breath.
He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. “I growled at my cat without meaning to.”
“I don’t think growling is considered a power. People can growl too, you know.”
“It sounded inhuman.” He leaned closer, intentionally making her nervous. “If you don’t give me the whole story now, I’m going to ask your father.”
She choked. “What? What does my father have to do with anything?”