Hemlock (20 page)

“It’s al right,” said Jason. “It’s just the two Trackers Derby assigned to protect the school. You’re lucky they started today.”

assigned to protect the school. You’re lucky they started today.”

He lifted my arm and gently turned it so he could examine the cut.

He pressed his lips into a hard line.

Three Trackers, trailed by Alexis and wheeling some sort of folded metal contraption, burst into the gym.

“Where is it?” asked a burly man in worn flannel who looked like he wrestled grizzly bears in his spare time.

“In there,” said Jason, jerking his thumb toward the equipment closet.

Alexis glared at me suspiciously, but folowed the three men.

Jason waited until they were out of earshot and then gripped my shoulders. “Did Heather scratch you?”

I felt disorientated and dizzy. My head throbbed and my heart wouldn’t stop racing.

Jason tightened his grip. “Did she scratch you?” His eyes were bright and manic.

I started to say no, but what came out was “If she did, it’d be stupid to tel you.”

Jason’s fingers dug into my skin. “Mac, I swear to God, I am not joking. You have to tel me if she scratched you.”

I pushed him away. “No, al right?” I hissed. “I cut myself on the edge of a shelf in the closet.” Jason stared at me, like he wasn’t sure if I was teling the truth. “Go check the shelves if you want.

One of them should have a smear of my blood on it.”

I tried to stand and swayed on my feet.

If Jason hadn’t caught me, I’d have been kissing the waxed gym floor.

I closed my eyes for a moment, concentrating on breathing in I closed my eyes for a moment, concentrating on breathing in and out.

Heather had tried to kil me.

At the sound of footsteps, I opened my eyes.

Branson Derby strode toward us, the expression on his face hardening as he zeroed in on the way Jason’s arm was around me.

He raised one eyebrow, almost as though to ask if I remembered our conversation in the hospital.

Like it would be possible for me to forget. I bit my lip as I gently pushed Jason’s arm away and put some space between us.

The expression on Derby’s face didn’t soften. “Miss Dobson. I knew there was an attack on campus, but I had no idea you were involved.”

Something in his tone made me think that if he had known, he might have held the Trackers back and let Heather kil me. At least then there’d be no chance of me teling Jason what realy happened last Friday night.

Derby’s gaze locked on my arm, and I tugged the sleeve of my shirt down.

“She cut herself on a piece of metal,” explained Jason, before Derby could ask. “It’s not a scratch.”

“And you think she’d tel you the truth?”

Jason flushed and met Derby’s eyes. “I believe her.”

Derby stared at him until Jason dropped his gaze. “Sir.” He cleared his throat. “I believe her, sir.”

The look Derby turned on me was about as friendly as the look a constrictor gives its prey before squeezing the life out of it. “Did you know the werewolf?”

you know the werewolf?”

I nodded. “We have a class together.”

“Its name is Heather Yoshida,” supplied Jason.

It
, not
her
.

Five Trackers—the two Kyle and I had seen in the hal and the three who had showed up after Jason—trooped out of the equipment closet, maneuvering a wheeled metal cage between them. The cage couldn’t have been any larger than four cubic feet, and a brown wolf lay unmoving inside.

Alexis had found the basebal bat and was trailing behind the cage, periodicaly poking the wolf through the bars.

I knew it was Heather, but she looked so much like Kyle that it was entirely too easy to imagine that it was him in the back of the cage—that he was the one Alexis was taunting.

“What’s going to happen to her?” I asked.

“She’l be processed and sent to a rehabilitation camp,” said Derby. “Where she belongs. Where they al belong.”

“Where she won’t be able to hurt anyone,” added Jason.

Derby shot him an approving glance and then focused back on me. “Why did it attack you?”

Jason stared at me, waiting for me to answer. He had seen Kyle and me kiss. Werewolf or no werewolf, it didn’t take a genius to figure out why two girls would have a catfight at school. It was practicaly a cliché. And it was a cliché that would put Kyle on Derby’s radar.

Jason opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, I colapsed.

colapsed.

This time, his reflexes weren’t fast enough to catch me. I hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud, and my mouth filed with the copper taste of blood. I had bitten my cheek.

“Mac?”

Jason bent over me, trying to help me sit up. I did my best to look dizzy and sick—it didn’t require much acting.

He glanced at Derby. “She was under a pile of gym equipment when we found her. I think she hit her head. I’d better get her to the school nurse.”

Derby nodded once, curtly, and strode off.

Jason helped me to my feet and tugged my arm over his shoulder. He wrapped his own arm around my waist. Stooping slightly to compensate for the difference in our heights, he led me out of the gym.

I tripped over my own two feet, and Jason tightened his hold around my waist.

We crossed the empty cafeteria, the smel of overcooked food making me slightly nauseous. No matter what the time of day, there were usualy a few students in the caff, but it was completely deserted. Even the lunch ladies seemed to be gone. “Where is everyone?”

“The school’s on lockdown. Standard procedure for a werewolf on campus.”

I stopped walking. “Since when does Kennedy have procedures for werewolves?”

“Since last week. Derby realized the school wasn’t doing enough to protect us. That’s why Mike and Doug—the two guys enough to protect us. That’s why Mike and Doug—the two guys who neutralized Heather—were put on campus. It’s part of a pilot program he’s working on with schools and coleges.”

Great. Trackers on every campus. A smal voice in the back of my head pointed out that I might be dead right now if they hadn’t been here. I pushed it aside.

Jason let go of me and stepped away. Under the bright cafeteria lights, I finaly got a good look at the tattoo on his neck. He had the black dagger but not the ful tattoo, not the red
T
.

Trackers were marked in two stages. The black dagger indicated their pledge to join and the oath of alegiance they swore.

The red
T
came later, after some sort of initiation. Jason wasn’t fuly part of them—not yet—but I stil wasn’t sure if I could trust him.

The taste of blood lingered in my mouth.

He crossed his arms. “Are you going to tel me why you faked fainting? I’ve seen
SNL
sketches with better acting.” He searched my face for an answer. “Did Kyle know Heather was infected? Is that it? Were you trying to protect him?”

He was so close. Way too close.

He watched me, warily. “What are you hiding?”

My father always said the trick to lying convincingly was to blend in a certain amount of truth. If you found the right mixture, you could scam almost anyone.

“I saw Heather on Sunday.”
Truth
. “She wanted to talk to me about Kyle.”
Sort of true—if ripping my throat out counted as
talking
. “She lost her temper and started to shift. I didn’t know what to do, so I kept quiet.”
Truth
. “Kyle doesn’t know.”
Lie
.

what to do, so I kept quiet.”
Truth
. “Kyle doesn’t know.”
Lie
.

Jason ran a hand over his face. “You can’t protect them, Mac.

They’re not people. If we hadn’t gotten there in time . . .”

He looked like he was torn between hugging me and shaking me. “I was running faster than I’ve run in my whole life and I could hear you on the other end of the phone and I
knew
. I knew I wasn’t going to get there in time.” He swalowed, roughly, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I thought I was going to have to listen to you die.”

He looked the way he had before everything had gotten so messed up. Strong. Dependable. The hero of a story rather than the punch line of a joke.

For a moment, he was the Jason I kept waiting to come back.

But then he turned his head and the fluorescent light hit the tattoo on his neck, and the ilusion was shattered.

“What would you have done if she had scratched me?” My voice was barely a whisper, but it seemed to echo in the empty room. “If I had said yes when you asked?”

Jason shook his head. “Don’t ask me that.”

He was slipping so far away, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I felt like something inside me was breaking. “You would have turned me over to them, wouldn’t you? You would have let those people drag me off in a cage.”

His green eyes flashed. “
Those people
just saved your life. If they let Heather out, how long do you think it would be before she attacked you again? Or someone else? They’re animals, Mac.

That’s what they do. That’s what they did to Amy.”

That’s what they do. That’s what they did to Amy.”

I thought of the police report and the lies and omissions that had gone on for months. “And whose fault was it that Amy was out there that night?”

“Don’t make this about her.” There was a warning note in his voice, sharp, like jagged metal.

I suddenly felt sad and tired and alone. “How could this ever be about anything else?”

Jason’s hand twitched toward his jacket, to the flask or bottle that was probably tucked inside. “If you would just come to a few more meetings, if you would give the Trackers a chance, you’d see that they’re not the bogeymen you think they are. Maybe, if you weren’t so busy lying to protect werewolves, you’d learn something.”

Anger surged through me. “You’re going to talk to me about lying? Seriously? You’re the one who didn’t tel me the truth about what happened the night Amy died. Don’t compare lies, because mine aren’t even in the same league.”

“Mac . . .”

He reached for my arm and I stepped back. Black spots hovered at the edge of my vision. “You let me find out what happened from the police report. From a piece of paper.”

“You don’t understand—”

“You’re right. I don’t. Why didn’t you just tel me?”

Jason glared, his eyes glinting in the overhead lights. In an eerie echo of Kyle’s words, he said, “Because I didn’t want to lose everything.”

Without another word, he turned and strode back toward the Without another word, he turned and strode back toward the gym. Back to the Trackers.

Jason hadn’t been exaggerating about the school being on lockdown. The lights were off in al the classrooms and each door was locked. It was the same thing they told us to do if there were ever gunshots on campus.

Turn off the lights. Huddle near the back. Pray that whoever was prowling the hals would walk past your door without stopping.

I sat on the floor a few feet from Kyle’s class and waited. The blood from the scratch on my arm dried as I counted the seconds and minutes until the announcement that it was safe to start exiting the classrooms.

I expected the principal to give the al clear. Instead, Branson Derby’s smooth, southern voice filed the school and sent shivers down my spine as he told the students of Kennedy that a werewolf had been trapped in the gym and that classes had been canceled for the remainder of the day.

I climbed to my feet as students flooded the hal.

Kyle pushed his way past them, cel phone in hand. He walked right by me, then froze and whirled, the relief on his face so acute that it made my chest ache. “Thank God you’re okay,” he breathed.

He reached for me, but I shook my head and walked into the now empty classroom.

After he was inside, I shut the door and turned.

Kyle stared at my arm. He inhaled, and I realized he could smel Kyle stared at my arm. He inhaled, and I realized he could smel the blood. I tried to tel myself that it wasn’t a big deal, but my stomach twisted and I wondered what my blood smeled like to him.

He raised his eyes to mine. “Was it Heather?” He swalowed and it took him two tries to get a second question out. “Did she scratch you?”

I bit my lip. “Yeah. It was Heather. And she didn’t scratch me.”

He reached for me, but I stepped back and crossed my arms. I told myself that I was just spooked, that I wouldn’t let anyone hug me right now. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Heather and Kyle looked almost identical when they shifted.

Hurt flashed across Kyle’s face. It was there for barely an instant before he buried it, but it was impossible to miss.

I closed my eyes, just for a second, and saw Heather crouched above me, teeth bared, ready to spring. My heart raced and I took a deep breath to try and slow the beats as I opened my eyes.

Kyle shoved his hands into his pockets. “How did you get away?”

“The Trackers showed up. And Jason.”

“How did they know?” he asked, his tone suspicious.

I felt a brief surge of guilt, but then wondered why I felt as though I had done something wrong. As much as I hated the Trackers, Jason had been right: they were the reason I wasn’t dead. I raised my chin. “I caled Jason. Heather had me cornered in a closet and she was breaking through the door.”

“I would have—”

“Done what? If I had caled you, you would have charged out of class and someone would have found out you were infected.” It was true, though I hadn’t been thinking that clearly when I caled Jason. I hadn’t thought at al; I had just dialed.

“So you caled the Trackers.” Kyle’s voice lashed out like a whip.

I wasn’t going to feel guilty. I refused to feel guilty. “I caled
Jason
. And if I hadn’t, I’d probably be dead.”

Kyle flinched. “I didn’t think she’d go after you. I told her to leave you alone.”

He had
told
her? “Before she shifted, Heather said you were making her leave Hemlock. Is that true? Were you forcing her out of town?”

Kyle’s expression twisted, becoming something cold and bitter.

He suddenly reminded me of Jason—Jason when he was teetering on the edge and looking for a fight. “I told her that if she didn’t leave, I’d report her to the LSRB. Is that what you wanted to hear?” He clenched his hands into fists so tight that the muscles in his forearms looked as though they had been carved in stone. “I didn’t trust her not to go after you, so I threatened to completely destroy her life.”