Still, it was oddly comforting knowing there was someone in the house who wasn’t going anywhere. Kind of pathetic, but I’ve spent so many nights alone waiting for Dad to come back it was nice to hear the silent sound that means someone else is breathing in the same space. So what if he’d turn into a big hairy beast and try to kill me? The first time a werwulf changed it was unstoppable until it got blood.
That’s what the books said. I didn’t have any reason to doubt them. Or Dad, who said the same thing.
This is rapidly getting out of hand. Dad’s phrase, delivered with a straight face and usually a gun in either hand. What are you going to do next, Dru?
I needed a plan. The trouble was, I didn’t have one.
“I suppose I should get the living room cleaned up,” I said to the quiet. “Wait for him to wake up. Then we’ll see.”
The hollow place inside me wasn’t satisfied by that. Dad was dead. He wasn’t coming back. I was alone in the world, and I’d gotten some kid who had tried to help me bitten by a werwulf. There were other things I had to think about, but I was damned if I could remember them. I felt very small and very alone, sitting there on the stairs.
Racking up the score here, kiddo. I shivered, hugging my knees. The snow was really coming down, wind moaning against the corners of the house. It was 8 a.m. and dark out there, except for the directionless glow between the whirling quarter-size flakes from reflected city light. Gonna need a new back door. Unless you’re blowing town.
I couldn’t blow town. Graves would need someone to explain to him what was going on. And someone had killed Dad.
That was what I’d been trying not to think. I mean, I’d killed Dad. But it hadn’t really been Dad. You can’t make a zombie when someone’s still alive.
You just can’t.
Someone turned him into a zombie. You don’t wake up one morning as one of the reanimated. Someone killed him and turned him into a zombie. He wasn’t in good shape, either. There was a lot of trauma to those tissues—they rot quicker when they’re injured before they die.
I felt like I was in one of those snow globes—you know, where you shake them and the entire inside fills with whirling white. Everything inside still and motionless, surrounded by floating bits of ice. I was trying not to think what I had to think next, and succeeding only in filling my head with static.
I don’t know how long I would have sat there if I hadn’t heard a sharp, surprised half-yell from overhead.
Graves was awake. I hauled myself up and trudged up the stairs, the gun cold and heavy in my hand.
I didn’t want to do what I thought I was going to do.
Tough luck, chickie babe. You have to.
He stopped struggling against the ropes as soon as he saw me. The blankets had rucked up away from his toes. The room was warmer, and sweat plastered his long, dead-black hair to his face.
We stared at each other for a few moments. Then he lifted his chapped fingers—lying on his side, it was about all he could do. His voice was husky, and he said the absolute last thing I’d expect a kid who’d gotten bit by a werwulf and tied to a bed to say.
“Kinky.” He arched one half of his unibrow, his eyes burning green around the holes of his pupils. He didn’t look ready to sprout hair or fangs.
We were coming up on twelve hours since he’d been bit.
“I never figured you for the bondage type,” he continued. “How the hell am I going to piss?”
Smart kid.
The gun was loaded with one in the chamber. I clicked the safety off, praying that the next five minutes would go well. I advanced nervously into the room, giving myself plenty of time. The knots looked like they were holding just fine.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions.” I managed to keep my tone even. “If you give the right answers, I’ll cut the ropes off and we’ll go from there.”
He licked his lips. His eyes flicked between the gun and my face, and he went very still.
Something told me he knew I wasn’t bluffing.
That was great. Because I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t kill him on my bed. I couldn’t shoot someone like that. Sure, I’d shot the werwulf. It had been just like a video game, just like Dad trained me.
But . . . I knew this guy. I couldn’t shoot him. He was human.
He was the closest thing to a friend I had now.
I stood beside my own bed, near our scattered sodden clothes from yesterday. I leveled the gun. “First question. Where did you get your necklace?”
He swallowed. He’d gone ghost-pale. His pulse throbbed frantically in his throat. “Hot Topic, in the mall. You’re not going to shoot me, Dru.”
I wish I was half as sure as you sound. I was nerving myself up for something, that was for goddamn sure. “Do you know what it means?”
“Hell, I just got it because it was on sale. People leave me alone if they think I’m crazy and into that cult shit.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. “Christ, you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
It’s either that or have you tear out my throat. Twelve hours is the limit for werwulf changes. If you haven’t changed by now, there’s only a couple of reasons why. I leaned down a little, bracing the gun in both hands, and put the barrel to his temple. Kept my fingers carefully locked outside the trigger guard, because accidents can happen. “Do you believe in ghosts, Graves?”
He swallowed again. His throat worked. “Shit, I don’t know. Don’t shoot me. Please.” His voice cracked.
If he knew about the Real World, he would have answered differently. Was he lying?
I didn’t want to think so. He hadn’t acted like he knew jackshit about it. So that narrowed down the reasons why he wasn’t getting all hairy.
I swallowed. My throat was as dry as the stuff you drop into water to get fog for parties. Frozen carbon dioxide. It burns like hell and you can use it in swamps to make gator spirits angry. “Answer this question very carefully, kid. Are you a virgin?”
The silence was so long I thought I was going to have to ask him again.
“What the hell?” He sounded honestly perplexed.
“Yes or no? Are you a virgin?” I lost control halfway through. My voice spiraled up into a scream.
He flinched, and I ached to hit him. I wanted to hit something, that’s for sure. I wanted to do something instead of just stand there and threaten him.
“Sonofabitch answer me!” My voice bounced off the walls, made the whole room whirl around me. My blood pounded in my ears. Adrenaline poured through my blood, copper winding me tighter and tighter.
“Yes!” he screamed back. “Yes, I’m a fucking virgin, don’t shoot me goddammit fucking please!”
I froze. My fingers were cramping outside the trigger guard.
His chest heaved. Tears slicked his cheeks and his eyes were squeezed shut. He strained against the ropes without moving, and my entire body had gone cold.
Almost twelve hours, and he was a virgin.
It might be okay after all.
I didn’t recognize the hoarse rasp coming from my throat as mine. “All right.” I eased the safety back on with a click, after I pointed the gun away. Far, far away from both him and me. “All right. Fine. All right.”
Graves made hoarse little sobbing sounds. I backed off, retreating from the bed.
Jesus. What had I done? I should have asked him that first off instead of putting a gun to his head. I felt sick.
I stumbled for the bathroom and threw up every inch of cereal I’d eaten. Then I cried too, shaking over the cold porcelain. I had to blow my nose three times. When that was done, raw-eyed and sore, I went slowly back down the dark hall into Dad’s room. I found a spare holster and put the gun in it, and I got out a bowie knife. The knots would be cinched down too tight to loosen now.
Graves was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, his lips moving soundlessly. I’d just scared the shit out of him.
So what? Better to scare him than get your thr
oat ripped out. The first time a wulf changes, it’s unstoppable.
I told Dad’s voice to take a hike for once, and began sawing through the ropes. “You were bitten by a werwulf. I had to be sure,” I said as I avoided cutting his forearm. My hands were shaking just a little. “Just stay still. We’ll have you out of these in a jiffy.”
He didn’t say anything.
I managed to get the ropes around his ankles and knees cut through, then the ones at his elbows and wrists. He just lay there, limp, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry.” I sounded five years old. The words were empty. It was the kind of thing you say to someone when you’ve broken a toy or something, not when you’ve just held a gun to their head and shouted at them. “I had to be sure. If you’re a virgin, it’s okay; you won’t change like a regular wulf. The imprint won’t take, because you’re a closed door. At least, that’s what Dad told me. He was almost always right. I—”
“Shut up,” he whispered. His eyes squeezed shut. Tears made his lashes into a damp mat. “Leave me alone.”
I backed away on my knees, holding the knife. “I’m sorry. Really. I just—”
“I said, leave me alone. Shut up.” His voice broke.
I wiped at my cheek with my fingers. There wasn’t anything else to say. So I just made it to my feet with each piece of my body creaking and left him alone.
CHAPTER 14
I sat on the stairs again, listening to the heater run and the silent un-noise of snow outside. I heard Graves moving around—the toilet flushing, water running, shuffling feet and creaks I hadn’t had a chance to learn in this new place yet. Each house has its own set of sounds, and each person sounds different.
He didn’t sound like Dad. But still, just hearing someone breathing and walking around was better than nothing. Way better than nothing.
My eyes were hot and grainy. I stared at the gun in my hands. Nine-millimeter, dead black, and heavy, its nose sleek and sharp. It was a good gun.
What are you going to do, Dru? Go back to high school and be prom queen? What the hell. Why not?
The answer was right around the corner—I just couldn’t think of it. There was something I was missing, something I was trying not to think. It had to do with that door, and the concrete corridor, and the dream hanging heavy in my head, like a lead bowling ball.
Someone turned Dad into a zombie. While he was out hunting. So someone knew about what he was doing, right?
But who could know? What had he been after? He hadn’t said anything to me.
The questions revolved inside my head. Then the thing I’d been forgetting since waking up slid into place with a click like racking a bullet into the chamber.
Contacts. Dad had contacts. I should call someone.
Relief so intense it was ridiculous poured through my entire body at the thought. Someone adult, older than me, better-armed and more experienced, who could come out and . . .
. . . do what? Set up housekeeping? Adopt me? Take me on as an apprentice? Make everything okay?
Yeah. Sure. None of the other hunters Dad had let me hang around with were in the least parental. But they were older, right? And they’d be interested in something that killed him. They were his friends. Combat buddies. Comrades in arms.
Right?
I closed my eyes. Leaned against the wall, dangling the gun in my right hand.
The stairs squeaked. Graves shuffled down each one like it hurt. There was a dragging sound.
I didn’t open my eyes.
When he sat down beside me I was only mildly surprised. We sat like that for a few minutes, until my eyelids flew up and the world came rushing back into my head again.
He had Mom’s sunrise quilt from my bed wrapped around his shoulders, and his face was set. He’d pushed his hair behind his ears. He was barefoot. The house was warm enough now.
The messy lacerations of wulfbite were closing, angry pink instead of bleeding crimson or the crusted yellow. The blue-black mapping of his veins had vanished. Their bites heal really, eerily fast. Nobody knows why.
The ticking silence of the heater filled up the space between us. We both fit on the step, he was so birdlike thin.
I’d told him I was sorry. Did he have any idea how sorry I was?
He sat there for a while, fidgeting in that way of his. Then he spoke, quietly. Almost gently, as if I was crying. “Why’d you do that?”
I had to. “You might have changed.”
“Changed.” He said it so flatly I almost might not have known it was a question.
“Into a werwulf. Like that thing back at the mall that bit you.”
“A vherr-what?”
“A werwulf.” I considered spelling it for him, decided not to. “As in howl at the moon, silver bullet, Lon Chaney type of thing. Only it’s not really like that. They’re responsible for some disappearances, but mostly they eat a lot of raw meat and play head games with each other. Humans aren’t enough fun. Plus they’ve got a running feud with the suckers.”
“Suckers?”
You don’t even want to know. Dad never even wanted to know. “I had to know if you’d change.”
“So you tied me up and asked if I was a virgin? Help me out here.” He shifted, wrapping the quilt more tightly around his bare shoulders. He was shirtless. Of course—his shirt was ruined and his coat was probably still wet.
I glanced down. He wore a pair of my workout pants. They hit him at mid-calf and sagged around his narrow waist. Boy had no hips at all. “It’s near twelve hours. Generally, if you don’t change by then there’s a reason, and you’re probably safe. If you’re bitten while you’re a virgin, some of the transfer of werwulf stuff doesn’t get done. It’s all theory, but virgins have a higher incidence of not changing.” I watched him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for the leaning backward that would tell me he’d stopped listening. People don’t want to hear about the Real World, and if you ever try to explain, they just quit listening real early.
He didn’t move. Just stared at me. I took a deep breath and forged ahead. “It has to do with magic, I guess. Stuff like that. See, when a werwulf bites and doesn’t finish his kill, there’s an . . . an imprint, I guess you could call it. If you’re a virgin, the imprint doesn’t get made right. It’s like you’re a closed door, and once you have sex that door is opened and some things can take hold. Infect you, almost.” I looked down at my knees, just talking to hear myself talk now. Or maybe I was afraid of what he would say once I shut up. “Congratulations. You’re mostly safe from wulfbite for the rest of your life. Like . . . like an inoculation.” It was a pretty good explanation, and about the sum total of my knowledge of werwulfen. The silent house ate the words. I couldn’t think of anything else to tell him.
“Well. That’s comforting.” He swallowed so heavily I heard it. “Look, Dru, I—”
“I’m glad you didn’t change,” I said all in a rush. “Because I don’t know what I’d have done.”
“Shot me.” The raw edge of anger smoked under the words. I closed my eyes against it, leaned against the wall. “I guess. Right?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. I shot someone else. Hopelessness turned into a rock inside my chest.
“Dru?” As if I wasn’t listening.
“Fuck off.” Don’t lecture me.
He persisted. “That was real, wasn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, but he was still trying to convince himself. “I saw a huge-ass dog burning and running after you. I saw the thing that bit me, and the bite’s closing up like I’m Wolverine or something. It was real.”
“Bingo. You get a prize.” The gun was so heavy. If I let it slip through my fingers and tumble down the stairs, what would it do? Probably go off and kill someone else. Just my luck.
He asked the question that got everyone in trouble. “What else is real?”
You don’t want to know. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Some things you just have to see for yourself. But you’re not going to see it, are you
? You’re going to head for the door and leave me to get through this myself. It’d be better for you if you did, I guess. Sour heat boiled in my throat. I pushed it down before it could make my eyes prickle.
“You could tell me and see. I mean, I was okay with everything else, wasn’t I?”
Wind mouthed the corners of the house. It wasn’t as lonely a sound as it usually was, because someone was sitting right next to me. “You got bit for it. I’m sorry.” There they were again, those two pale little useless words.
“Well, you’re an interesting chick, Miss Anderson.” When I didn’t reply, he moved, bumping his shoulder against mine. “Did you feel me up when you were tying me down?”
What? My jaw threatened to drop. “Um, no. Did you want me to?”
“Well, it would have been nice.” His shoulder bumped mine again. “Can I ask you something?”
I didn’t answer. He was going to ask me anyway. People don’t say that if they don’t want to pry something out of you.
But he surprised me. “What happened to your dad? I mean, really happened?”
“He got t-turned into a z-zombie.” I thought I was going to choke on the words, but they came out. Hoarse and broken, but they came out. “Someone did it to him.” There it was. Someone had beat Dad up bad, and then turned him into one of the reanimated.
I’d said it out loud now. Any chance of waking up and finding it all just a Really Bad, Really Lifelike Dream was now straight in the scupper, as Gran always said.
“A zombie. Okay. Whew. All right.” Graves let out a huge sigh, like he’d just finished carrying a heavy container up a steep hill. “So what are you gong to do?”
How the hell should I know? “Make some lunch, I guess.” I used the wall to push myself up to my feet. The heater clicked off. “You want something to eat?”
“I wanted to ask you something else.” His chin tilted up a bit, and he met my eyes. The skull and crossbones earring fell back, touching his hair. He’d taken off the necklace, and his muscle moved in his bare chest under the quilt. “You got anyone you can call? Like your mom or something, since your dad’s . . .” Graves had to swallow before he said the word. “Dead? He’s dead, right? That’s what zombie means.”
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