Thornhill (Hemlock) (24 page)

“I know,” said Kyle, voice soft but firm. Sinclair looked like she might pass out. “Dex, let me have her. You’re hurting her.”

“Corry’s dead because of her.”

“Hurting her won’t bring Corry back.” Kyle took a second step toward him, then a third. “If you hurt her—if you kill her—all anyone will remember about today is that a wolf killed a warden. What happened to Corry—what’s been happening to the wolves in the detention block—won’t matter because her death will be all anyone will see. We’re not bombs or weapons or things that need to be fixed, Dex.” Kyle’s gaze flicked to me, his eyes so deep and dark that they threatened to pull me under the surface. “But if you hurt her now, no one outside will see that.”

Emotions warred over Dex’s face, and for a moment I wasn’t sure which would win. Then, shaking with the effort it took, he released his hold on Sinclair and pushed her to Kyle. Shoulders hunched and head down, he stepped off the stage and joined the rest of the wolves.

The nearest wolves edged slightly away from him, and my chest ached. Dex had been proven right—something had happened to Corry, wolves had been killed at Thornhill—but it didn’t seem to matter.

“Are you okay?”

I glanced at Kyle. He was staring at me over the warden’s shoulder. “I think I’m the one who should be asking you that,” I said.

“I’ll be fine.”

He shifted his weight and I caught a glimpse of the bloodstains on his shirt. How could he be strong enough to stand there and touch the woman responsible?

I stared at Sinclair and a wave of hatred swelled in my chest at the thought of all the pain she had caused. She didn’t deserve to come out of this unscathed. I wasn’t even sure she deserved to come out of this alive. In the end, it didn’t matter what her original intention had been, what she had done at Thornhill had been pure evil. It . . .

Before I could finish the thought, the doors at the back of the auditorium swung open with a bang.

Hank strode into the building and across the room. An excited murmur swept the crowd as the Eumon teens recognized him. Every single wolf—whether they knew who he was or not—got out of his way.

A knot that I hadn’t been aware of unclenched in my chest. I was oddly . . . relieved to see him. Not just because we needed him to get out of here—though that was part of it—but because I was glad he was all right.

Though he did look decidedly worse for wear. His face was streaked with what looked like ash and his clothes were bloodstained. As he got closer, I noticed several tears in his shirt that looked suspiciously like bullet holes.

He jumped lithely onto the stage and gave me a quick once-over. “You all right?”

I nodded.

Hank hesitated, like he wanted to say or do something else, but then he turned to face the wolves. “Listen up because I won’t repeat this: We proceed to the gates en masse. The warden goes last. No one lays a finger on a guard or any reg in camp and no one stops for any reason. No matter what you see, you keep going. Is that clear?”

No one spoke and no one moved.

“Is that clear?” Hank’s voice tore through the hall like a thunderbolt.

“Yes!” said the wolves in unison. A few even added “sir” at the end.

“Once you’re through the gates, you’ll be told where to go and what to do. If something happens and you get separated, just head for the gates.”

As soon as he finished speaking, I drew him to the side. “Serena?”

“She’s all right. We got them out of the detention block in time.”

“In time for what?” I asked, but my father had already turned to confer with Kyle.

Sinclair stared at Hank as though he were a code she could crack. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll bring down on yourself and your pack if you go through with this?”

Hank let out a low, dangerous laugh. “Your concern is touching given that you tried to frame me and mine for murder.”

Sinclair’s hair swished against Kyle’s cheek as she shook her head. “After today, there won’t be anywhere in the country where you’ll be safe. You have to know that. Whatever you think you’re accomplishing here, it’s not worth it.”

Hank took a step toward her. For a moment, he did nothing but stare as a blush darkened the warden’s pale cheeks. “That girl you tried to have killed, the one standing a few feet to your left? She’s my daughter. You say anything else before we get to the gate and, deal or not, I’ll let those kids down there tear you apart.”

He stepped off the stage and headed to the door as the wolves in the auditorium fell into a clumsy swarm behind him. “Remember: no stopping, no engaging the regs.”

Kyle steered Sinclair to the dais stairs and I followed. “What about the program coordinators and the guards inside?” I asked. My gaze locked on the woman with the glasses. Without entirely realizing it, I curled my hand into a fist.

“We stay here.” The guard with the tattoos was back. “A small group will meet you at the gate and take custody of the warden.”

Sinclair twisted in Kyle’s arms. “None of you have the authority to agree to this.” Her ice-cold gaze locked on the guard. “When the LSRB finds out—”

Kyle pushed her forward. “You heard what he said: not a word until the gate. Besides, I think the last thing you want is for the LSRB to find out what’s been happening here.”

Sinclair looked like she was about to argue, but then thought better of it. It was a good call. Hank didn’t make threats unless he was prepared to follow through.

Outside, it was still night, though the spotlights on the building made it as bright as day. The air smelled of smoke and chemicals—probably from the explosion at the gate.

The ring of guards had pulled back. Most had retreated to a nearby strip of grass. Several had been injured and the infirmary doctor moved among them, trying to help them as best he could.

The injured had gotten off lucky.

Bodies littered the ground like broken toy soldiers. Some were Thornhill guards or staff, but most seemed to be wolves who had stormed the camp as part of the second stage of the breakout.

I tried not to stare too long or too hard at the bodies as I followed Kyle and the warden down a paved path, but I couldn’t stop checking for familiar faces.

I had wanted the breakout. Had pushed for it. No matter what happened, I was partly responsible. I paused and looked down into the sightless eyes of a woman with graying hair and a plump face that was slack in death. She looked like someone’s grandmother. With a pang, I wondered whether or not there was a family waiting for her to come home.

“Casualties were inevitable. We all knew that.” I started at the familiar sound of Jason’s voice.

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“No,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“Serena?”

“Hank said she was near the gate with Eve.”

I let out a deep, relieved breath. It was almost over.

We fell into silence as we walked through the camp. Ahead, the olive and gray uniforms of the Thornhill wolves were a churning mass. I should have felt ecstatic—after all, we had actually done it, we had liberated an entire camp—but all I felt was a bone-deep longing to go home.

I was so lost in thoughts of Hemlock and Tess and how the hell I was going to tell Trey what had happened to Serena, that I didn’t realize Kyle and Sinclair had stopped until I almost collided with them on the edge of the courtyard.

The smell of smoke had been growing steadily stronger and here it became so thick that it coated the back of my throat.

I stared, stunned, as I realized why Kyle had stopped.

The sanatorium was on fire.

Flames stretched out of every window, bathing the courtyard in an orange glow. The roof was completely engulfed. As we watched, part of it caved in, sending a shower of sparks into the night.

I took several steps forward and then tore my gaze away to look at the warden.

A small, satisfied smile tugged at the corner of Sinclair’s mouth, but her eyes were those of a woman on the verge of weeping.

Hank made his way back to us.

“What happened?” I asked. “You were supposed to bomb the entrance, not the sanatorium.”

I glanced toward the gate to confirm that it was gone and caught sight of a small, dark figure near the admission building. Serena.

Thank God
.

She stood in the shadows, but her white tunic and pants made her easy to spot. She seemed completely oblivious to the three hundred wolves streaming out of the camp or the fact that she could join them and walk out of Thornhill. She just stood and watched the sanatorium—watched Willowgrove—burn.

I thought I saw her smile, but I knew it was my imagination: I was too far away to actually see her expression.

“—blew the detention block while we were getting the wolves out.” Hank was speaking. Reluctantly, I tore my gaze from Serena. “They were trying to keep us from getting our hands on any of the files or records.” His eyes locked on Sinclair and the look in them sent chills down my spine.

The full implication of his words hit. “So any proof of what they were doing? Any notes on how to reverse it . . . ?”

“Gone,” said Hank. “The wolves are the only proof we have. We at least managed to get them out.”

“So we don’t let her go.” Jason nodded to Sinclair. “We take her with us and keep her until we get the information we need.” He glanced toward the admission building and I knew he had seen Serena. “We hold her until she tells us how to reverse what she did.”

“Do that and you’re signing your own death warrants,” said Sinclair, apparently deciding she’d rather risk Hank’s wrath than stay quiet. “Besides, I can’t tell you how to reverse it.”

“You’re lying,” said Jason.

When Sinclair didn’t immediately reply, Kyle tightened his grip on her arm, digging his fingers in until most people would have cried out.

Sinclair didn’t protest or flinch. She didn’t take the words back or beg. Her blue eyes met mine and in them I saw a shadow of regret. The same shadow I had seen in her eyes when she told me about her sister.

“She’s not lying,” I said softly.

Before anyone could respond, six guards approached. The last of the Thornhill wolves had made it through the gate—even Serena seemed to have slipped out—and the guards must have wondered why we had stopped on the edge of the courtyard.

Two of the men had their hands on the butts of their guns. A third man was familiar: Tanner. The light from the fire made his red hair look like it had been set aflame. He didn’t show any sign that he knew Hank as he stepped forward. “We held up our end of the deal. You’re the only wolves remaining in the camp.”

Kyle glanced at Hank. My father nodded, and he let go of the warden. He stepped back and flexed his hands, then wiped them on his pants as though trying to brush away the memory of her skin.

The warden seemed to become smaller as the guards surrounded her protectively. The look on her face was worn and defeated, and she suddenly appeared decades older. It was almost as though she was only just now really accepting that she had lost.

Kyle and Jason waited until the guards began ushering her away and then they started toward the gate. I hesitated, watching the smoke and flames lick the sky as the sanatorium burned. I wanted to believe it was all over—I wanted to go home and put all of this behind us—but it was hard to turn away.

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. The touch was familiar, but not in the easy, comfortable way Jason’s or Kyle’s would have been. “You all right, kid?”

I nodded—I might even have said yes—just as a guard shouted.

Everything took on a slow, dreamlike quality as I looked toward the guards. Sinclair had broken away and held a gun—Tanner’s, given the expression on his face—in her hand. She aimed it at my chest, and it was as though all trace of the woman I’d seen when I first came to Thornhill had burned along with the sanatorium. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve worked for this? Do you have any idea what you destroyed? I tried to help you—I tried to help all of them—and you took everything.”

The gun was pointed at me but her gaze slid to Hank. Suddenly, I knew I wasn’t the one in danger. Everything Sinclair had done had been motivated by the loss of her sister. She wanted to hurt me, and she would do it by taking away the thing she assumed would destroy me most to lose: my family.

Without thinking, I threw myself at my father, trying to knock him out of the way as Sinclair swung the gun and pulled the trigger.

Something slammed through my body, setting it on fire. I fell back—fell so slowly it was like moving through liquid—and just before I hit the ground, I saw a dark shape tackle Sinclair: Serena.

My last thought was that at least she and Kyle would be all right, that Hank and Jason would make sure they both got out. Then the world exploded in a burst of white.

“W
E REALLY HAVE TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS
.”
AMY
picked up a stone and skipped it over the dark water. We were on the shore—she was standing, I was sitting—but it wasn’t the lake near Hemlock. Even though a wall of fog—thick and impenetrable—rose twenty feet out and obscured my view, I had a feeling the water went on forever. There were no waves, and only Amy’s stone disturbed the still surface.

She was wearing a familiar white dress—the dress she’d wanted to wear to prom. I glanced down. I was wearing jogging shorts and a T-shirt. Both were too big and both looked suspiciously like they had come from Kyle’s closet. I should have been cold, but I wasn’t.

“Am I dead?”

Amy looked at me sadly. “Maybe,” she admitted. She crossed her arms. “Seriously, I’m beginning to worry you have a death wish. When I wrote ‘BFF’ in your yearbook, I didn’t mean it as a suicide pact.”

“Shut up,” I muttered as I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. Secretly, though, I was glad to see her. I didn’t want to be alone.

“Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to be dead.” I felt guilty saying it—she hadn’t wanted what had happened to her—but the words slipped out.

“I know.” Pebbles rolled under her feet as she crouched next to me and put a hand over mine. Hers was cold to the touch, but for once I didn’t mind. “I don’t want you to be dead, either,” she said.

After a moment, she lifted her hand and sat next to me. She stretched out her legs. She was wearing black tights, but they were ripped in a dozen places, and her pale skin showed through the holes.

“What happens now?”

She pulled at one of the runs in her tights, stretching it out until her whole knee was exposed. “Now, we wait.”

“For what?”

“Some sort of resolution.” Amy nodded toward the fog. “Everything you left behind is on the other side. That moment when the bullet tore through you? It’s still playing out. The universe rolled the dice but they haven’t come to rest.”

“What happens when they do?”

She shrugged and stared out over the water. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m still waiting for my moment to play out.”

“But you’ve been dead for months.” The words were like jagged pieces of metal: they sliced my throat on the way out and left the taste of copper in my mouth.

“There’s more than one reason people get stuck.”

I picked up a handful of gray stones and let them fall through my fingers. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you really you, or is this just another dream?”

She smiled her Cheshire cat grin. “Does it matter?”

I opened my mouth to tell her that of course it did, but pain exploded across my chest. Sharp and immediate and ripping me to shreds. Amy and the shore burned away in a flash that was as bright as an atomic bomb, and I fell into nothingness.

It felt as though someone had taken a hot poker and thrust it into my shoulder. I could barely breathe. Barely think. Barely move.

Somehow, I managed to open my eyes. Everything was blurry—like I was underwater—but I could make out an oval of dark skin and a familiar brown gaze.

“Serena?” My voice was the rustle of leaves over pavement.

There was shouting around us—so much shouting—but I couldn’t make out any of the words.

Another person—another voice—leaned over me on the other side. “It’s all right, Mac.” Jason. The words were raw, like he was having a hard time speaking. “Hank went to get a car and Kyle’s getting the doctor from the infirmary. You’re going to be okay.”

Hank was alive, then.
Good
.

There was sudden pressure on the space below my shoulder. The world went dark at the center and too bright at the edges and everything was on fire. I screamed.

“No, Serena!” Jason’s voice rose over my own and the pressure fell away.

Darkness threatened to pull me back under and I fought against it even though some distant part of my brain pointed out that the pain would stop if I passed out.

“I was trying to keep it inside,” Serena whispered. Her voice was halting, like a child’s. She fumbled for my hand and cradled it gently. “You have to cover the red so they can’t see it. It makes them so excited.”

The red?
The hand that held mine was sticky and I struggled to turn it over. Serena’s palm was covered with blood.

My eyes sought out Jason.

“She was trying to help.” He brushed the hair back from my face, the touch so light it was lost to the pain. “She went crazy when Sinclair shot you. You should have seen what she did to her.”

At the mention of the warden, Serena flinched.

It was getting so hard to keep my eyes open. Almost impossible.

Not yet
, I thought.

“Bloodlust . . . ?” The word came out a rasp as I fought to hold on.

Jason shook his head. “No. Whatever they did to her, it’s not bloodlust.”

Time twisted and turned. Minutes stretched out and snapped back.

Eve came. Serena left.

Kyle took Jason’s place at my side.

A man in a white coat gave me something for the pain.

I began to drift.

Strong arms lifted me. The movement should have hurt, but everything was numb and far away.

“Dad?” The unfamiliar word slipped out as Hank carried me through the gates.

“I’m here, Mackenzie. It’s all right.” He eased me into the back of a waiting car.

I opened my mouth to ask him not to leave me, but the drugs made it hard to string the words together and the car door slammed shut before I could get them out.