Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (8 page)

The man from the porch—Donovan—ignored him. He walked toward me and I met him halfway, hoping to keep him from seeing Serena for as long as possible.

He glanced at the piece of metal in my hand and a flash of amusement lit his cold eyes. “Did no one ever tell you that sometimes it’s better to give up gracefully?”

“What can I say? I believe in playing hard to get.” My voice shook, betraying the fear underneath the sass.

“Leave her alone! I’m here.”

I cringed as I heard Serena stand, but I didn’t glance back. Instead, the second Donovan’s gaze flicked to her, I swung my makeshift bat as hard as I could.

The metal hit his face with a sickening crack, the impact so strong that it reverberated up my arms.

Cursing, Donovan lurched to the side as blood gushed from his nose.

One man went to his aid while the other three advanced on Serena and me. Two of them drew Tasers while the last pulled a gun.

I backed up until my hip collided with the Chevy. Serena rounded the hood of the car and stepped in front of me.

I knew what she was thinking: if the Tasers were
calibrated to take down a wolf—like the ones the guards had carried at Thornhill—the voltage would stop my heart.

The nearest man pointed his Taser at Serena’s chest as the sound of the engine drew closer.

There was something off about the noise. It was the wrong pitch and volume—more like a motorcycle than a car.

“Look out!” The shout came from the man at Donovan’s side a split second before the wall of cars came crashing down.

M
ETAL AND DUST. THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS METAL AND
dust. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t see and the ringing in my ears drowned out every other sound.

Serena pulled me to the side and I felt a rush of air followed by a thud that shook the ground.

When the dust cleared, a green station wagon was sitting in the spot where I had been standing.

Eyes burning, I followed Serena over the hood of the car. A half-dozen vehicles had fallen into the lane, blocking it like a clog in a drain and scattering the men who had been closing in on us. As the ringing in my ears receded, low moans bled through. Not all of the men had gotten out of the way in time, but I couldn’t tell how many had been trapped or who might be lying in wait. Just as I squeezed through the gap between a battered pickup and an old Camaro, a hand locked around my ankle.

Donovan had been pinned between the truck and the car. I couldn’t see his legs, but his face was a mask of blood and dirt.

“Let go!” I yelled, kicking out as hard as I could. My foot connected with his face, but he just tightened his grip. With his other hand, he pulled a gun from the wreckage.

A low growl sounded from my left. I fought to twist free as a brown wolf launched itself over the nearest car.

Kyle.

His jaws fastened on Donovan’s arm, snapping down like a bear trap.

The grip around my ankle fell away as the gun went flying.

“Come on!” Serena was suddenly there, pulling me through the rest of the wreckage and to an open spot where two lanes met.

I turned back to look for Kyle as the drone of an engine—the same drone I had heard earlier—filled the air.

A motorcycle swerved into the intersection, sending up a spray of slush as it came to a stop. A black wolf followed close behind.

Jason and Trey.

Trey raced past us and launched himself at the rubble, taking down a man who was struggling to his feet.

The man’s screams bounced off the metal.

Jason was already off the bike. In a heartbeat, he was in front of me, blocking the fight from view. “Are you all right?” His eyes raked over my body, checking for cuts and broken bones, before turning to Serena. His mouth twisted. “Your brother was supposed to send a single car over—instead, the whole damn wall came down.”

Werewolf superstrength to the rescue.

Jason shoved his helmet into my hands and pulled me to the bike. “Do you remember how to ride?”

“Not well.”

“Not well will have to be good enough.” He ran a hand through his hair and shot a nervous glance back at the wreckage. “Get out of town. You and Serena both. Get to the interstate and keep driving.”

“I’m not leaving you and Kyle,” I said just as Serena said, “I’m not leaving my brother.”

Jason swore under his breath. He shot a desperate glance at Serena before focusing on me. “
Please
, Mac. Just for once, listen to me.”

Trey was suddenly there. Still in wolf form, he head butted Serena, trying to push her toward the bike. Something dark and wet clung to the fur around his muzzle, and I tried not to think about the screams I had heard moments before.

“I’m not leaving,” I insisted.

Jason let out a frustrated, strangled sound and hauled out his cell. His fingers moved over the screen, typing something into a GPS app. He handed the phone to Serena and then gripped my shoulders. “Go to that address and wait for us. If we don’t meet you by sunset, then get as far away from Hemlock as you can.”

“Jason . . .”

His grip on my shoulders tightened. “How many men are there?”

I swallowed. “Five.”

“Trey and Kyle can take them.”

I tried to glance back, tried to catch a glimpse of Kyle, but Jason caught my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him. “Please, Mac. You have to get Serena out of here. She’s the one they’re after.”

I could hear the faint sounds of sirens in the distance.

My gaze slid to Serena. I couldn’t let those men get their hands on her, and she couldn’t be here when the police showed up and found the man she had killed. I was the reason she had been at Thornhill. Without me, this wouldn’t be happening to her now.

I nodded—even though doing so left me feeling as though I had been torn in two.

Jason stepped back. “Head to the end of this lane, then take a right followed by two lefts. That’ll get you out of the junkyard. The GPS will take care of everything after that.” He hesitated, like he wanted to say something else, but with one last glance at Serena and me, he ran toward the sound of growls and screams.

Eyes stinging, I threw my leg over the bike. I tried to pass the helmet to Serena, but she shook her head as she climbed on behind me. “You’re human. I’m not.”

She slipped her arms around my waist as I pulled the helmet on.
You’re doing this for Serena
, I told myself. A storm raged inside me as my body operated on autopilot and the engine roared to life.
You’re not running away; you’re protecting Serena. You have to protect her. You have to keep her safe.

We shot forward and dipped dangerously to the side as I underestimated the power of the bike.

Somehow, I managed to keep us upright.

Serena’s arms tightened around me as the junkyard dissolved into a sickening blur. I repeated Jason’s directions under my breath like a prayer. “A right. Two lefts. A right. Two lefts.”

The entrance loomed ahead. The gate was open, but a dark car had been parked across it. At the sound of our approach, a man ran out of the small hut that served as the junkyard office.

“Hold on!” I yelled, aiming the bike at the narrow gap between the car’s rear bumper and the gate. The man threw himself out of the way, narrowly avoiding being crushed as we flew past.

The bike bounced as we hit the street and I struggled to maintain control as I hung a sharp right. The sirens were closer now, and when I glanced in my mirror, I caught a glimpse of red and blue lights.

Every muscle in my body screamed at me to turn around, to try and help Kyle and Jason and Trey, but I kept driving, urging the bike to recklessly high speeds until we were out of the Meadows and on the four-lane stretch of road that led to the industrial park.

The cold air rushing past chilled my skin, and everything inside of me felt numb.

I turned off the main drag as soon as I could, taking a series of twists and turns and finally pulling behind an empty furniture warehouse.

I lowered my feet to the ground and killed the engine. Even with the motorcycle supporting most of my weight, I
could feel the tremble in my legs as my knees went weak.
How could I have left them?

Serena slid off the bike. I looked at her, and for a second, flashed back to the way we had found her in the detention block.

You’re not real.
That’s what she had said. Huddled in on herself and so lost that she couldn’t tell reality from dreams.
You keep coming, but none of you are ever real.
I remembered the blood on her wrists and the horrible, vacant look in her eyes.

She had spent days and hours thinking we would never come for her.

I couldn’t let anyone hurt her again. Not the men who had shown up at the house or the LSRB or the police.

I hadn’t abandoned the others; I had saved Serena. It was the truth, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

Serena folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly. “What do we do now?”

I raised the visor on the helmet. The world seemed too bright as I struggled to find my voice. “You’re going to call your dad and tell him it’s not safe to come home. Then I’m going to call Tess.” I wished I knew what I was going to tell her. After everything I had put her through when I disappeared to Colorado, I was going to have to leave again—at least for a few days. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have much choice: there was no way I was going home tonight.

Serena was staring at me expectantly. “And then?”

“Then we head to the address Jason gave us and wait.”

Serena pulled out Jason’s phone. Her shoulders rose
and fell as she hauled in a deep breath. “What if they don’t show up?”

I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t even let myself think of that possibility.

“We just left them.” A tremble ran underneath Serena’s voice as she echoed my own thoughts. “How could we have just left them?”

I squeezed my eyes shut because looking into her face—seeing a mirror of my own guilt—was too hard. “Call your dad.”

After a long moment, I heard Serena walk away.

I opened my eyes and ran my hand over Amy’s bracelet.

The universe had an extremely hit-or-miss track record when it came to coming through for me, but I would promise anything—do anything—if it meant Jason, Kyle, and Trey were safe.

“Please,” I whispered, “just let them be okay.”

The GPS app on Jason’s phone led us on a twisting route through Hemlock’s historic district before winding past Fern Ridge Cemetery and into River Estates—a half-finished housing development that had fallen prey to the town’s real-estate crash.

Some of the homes were completed but half were little more than wooden frames or small stakes marking off foundations. As far as I knew, not a single house had sold.

Nothing hit property values like a string of gruesome werewolf murders.

The place felt like a ghost town—a feeling not helped by
its proximity to the cemetery.

“Take the next right,” said Serena, relaying the directions from the phone.

I pulled onto a tree-lined gravel lane and drove up to the only building in the subdivision that wasn’t new: an old church on an overgrown plot of land. Ivy had staked a claim on its brick walls and its heavy wooden doors had been chained shut. There was a small manse next to the church, but its bricks were fire-scorched and one wall had caved in.

I rolled to a stop next to a For Sale sign covered in graffiti. “Are you sure this is it?”

“One Douglas Lane.” Serena shivered as she slid off the bike. “One of Trey’s friends told me about this place. He takes girls out here and tells them it’s haunted.”

It looked like a perfect place for ghosts. Someone had hammered a No Trespassing sign into the trunk of an ancient elm tree, but empty bottles glinted in the grass and cigarette butts dotted the gravel like tiny white bones.

A small chill crept up my spine. “Why’s it just sitting here?”

“The congregation moved to a newer, bigger church on the other side of town,” said Serena. “I guess there wasn’t much point in keeping this one.”

Out with the old, in with the new.

I glanced back at the For Sale sign. The words MS Commercial Realty were barely visible under a smear of blue paint. MS Commercial was one of the companies Jason’s father owned—which explained how Jason had known about this place.

“It reminds me of the sanatorium.” Serena’s voice sounded small and lost as she stared at the church.

“It’s just the bricks and the ivy,” I said, trying to suppress my own memories as I climbed off the bike. “C’mon. Help me get this thing out of sight.” The church wasn’t visible from the street, but leaving the motorcycle in the open still felt like pressing our luck.

We wheeled the bike around the back of the church and stashed it behind a pile of broken office furniture.

There was an old tarp tangled in a nearby bush. Serena helped me pull it free and then went to examine the back door of the church as I flung the plastic over the motorcycle.

I glanced up at the rattle of chains.

“I hate this,” she muttered, tugging on the huge padlock that secured the door and then turning and walking back to me. “A month ago, I could have torn that door off its hinges. Now I’m just—”

“A typical girl who’s flunking History?”

“I was going to go with ‘useless.’” Her skin was flushed. The air was cool, but she slipped off her sweater and tied it around her waist as she dropped her gaze to the ground at her feet. Softly, so softly that I almost missed the words, she said, “Do you think I killed that man? Back at the junkyard?” She looked up, and her eyes were dark and haunted.

“No,” I lied. “Absolutely not. He was still breathing.” I didn’t think there was any way the man in the junkyard was alive, but Serena didn’t need to know that.

Sinclair had seen infection as a bomb waiting to go off, as something she could diffuse, but the fear and memory
of the camp—not lupine syndrome—was what had pushed Serena over the edge in the junkyard.

It hadn’t been Serena’s fault—not really. Besides, it had been self-defense. Better she believe a lie than spend the rest of her life feeling guilty and looking over her shoulder. No one else had seen her kill the man, and since her hand had been clawed, there would be no fingerprints. Whoever those men in the Meadows had been, I had a feeling they weren’t the ones who had called the police and I doubted they’d stick around to answer questions.