Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles #2) (29 page)

“What’s the matter, Sokolov? I told you if you kept driving that way, sooner or later there’d be an accident.”

The hair on the back of her neck lifted. A few spaces away, Trick was standing open-mouthed, staring at his car. All the windows had been shattered, and there were dents in the body.

And on the sidewalk, doubled over with glee: Mike.

The one who had hurt Trick over and over.

The one who made so many lives miserable.

Before she realized what she was going to do, she found herself standing in front of him, practically nose to nose. From the way he blinked in surprise, she realized she must have moved fast, faster than she should have.

No matter. All she cared about was stopping him from hurting anyone again.

He saw her. Gave her a sexy smile. “What do you want, sweet—”

She balled up her fist and rammed it against his pig nose. She heard a satisfying crunch sound even as pain radiated up her arm. As he reeled, blood spurted from his nostrils and she could smell it, sharp and clear and it called to the wolf deep inside.

She growled and lunged closer. She felt hands grabbing at her, dragging her back, and she turned and snapped, barely missing biting Trick’s hand as he jerked it away from her. She saw the surprise in his eyes and it penetrated the growing fog in her brain.

Don’t bite him.

“You bitch!” Mike shouted, holding his nose. “I am gonna kill you!”

She had almost bitten Trick
. Stunned, Katelyn stopped struggling and let him pull her away, beginning to shake as the adrenaline dissipated as suddenly as it had come. She could hear Mike screaming and swearing behind her, but he wasn’t her problem anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Trick. “So, so sorry.”

He shook his head. “Look, it’s fine. Just come here with me.”

She came out of her daze as he was leading her into a small park. The place was deserted. It was cold enough that she could see her breath. Framed by glowering clouds, Trick was watching her closely. Then he led her over to one of the swings and sat her down on it.

“Easy there, slugger,” he said.

She wrapped her hands around the icy chains and tried to force herself to just breathe in, deep and easy. After a moment Trick wrapped his hands around hers. They were warm and strong.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I’m right here,” he said.

She leaned her head against his chest, breathing him in. After a minute he circled behind her and gave the swing a little push. She lifted her feet off the ground and he gave her another push.

“Dang,” he said after a minute. “I’d hate to see what would happen to him if he trashed your car.”

She smiled wanly. He pushed her again. Without thinking, she pumped her legs.

“How high do you want to go?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“I want to fly.”

And he pushed so hard she nearly fell off the swing, but she kept her balance and swung her legs back. He kept pushing and she kept swinging, shifting her weight back and forth, building up speed and momentum. She flew toward the sky and then fell back to earth over and over.

The rush of wind was exhilarating and she felt like her old self. She
could
fly. She could escape all the violence and stupidity of Wolf Springs. And she could do it with Trick.

At the height of the arc she let go, launching herself into the air. For a moment she hung, weightless, and it was everything she had ever dreamed it could be. Then she began to fall. She could hear Trick yelling, but she would show him what it was really like to fly. She did a back flip and prepared to land on her feet as the ground came rushing up to meet her. She could do it. She was agile as a cat and strong as a werewolf.

And then she saw Trick beneath her, arms outstretched. She twisted at the last moment so she would land in his arms, parallel to the ground. He caught her and dropped to one knee. She looked up at him and there were too many emotions colliding in his dilated eyes.

“How was that?” she asked, breathless.

“You shouldn’t scare me like that.”

She tilted her head sideways and gave him a little grin. “Why not?”

He didn’t smile back. “Because I’m crazy about you,” he said simply.

The words hung between them in the cold air, shimmering, sparkling.

“I’m crazy about you, too.” Her heart was soaring and breaking at the same time. There was a terrible kind of agony admitting it out loud, but there was also the most wonderful sense of release, as if the words had been bottled up for so long that they had just exploded out of her.

“I know things have been crazy. That I’ve been . . . there’s something wrong with me,” he said, dropping his voice down to a whisper.

“There’s something wrong with me, too,” she whispered back.

They contemplated each other warily, hopefully, as if each one was daring the other to go first. To confess. To reveal.

“You’re seventeen. Life can’t be this tangled up for you,” he said.

“Can’t it?” she asked him, letting him see all her misery and pain. “Look at me.”

He hung his head.

He thinks it’s because of him and all his drama.

She kissed him. He responded, and she could feel all his yearning. She twisted in his arms so that she could wrap herself around him. He was on his knees, still holding her.

He loved her. She knew he did. Knew that he would do anything for her. She wanted him, wanted to be with him, couldn’t imagine her life without him.

And I don’t have to. One little nip, that’s all it would take, and then we could be together.

She put her teeth on his bottom lip.

I could do it right now.

She froze. She quickly let go and pulled away.

“What is it?” he asked.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and sobbed. He held her, rubbing her back. He was Trick.

“Trick, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Anything.” He kissed the crown of her hair.

“I need you to know.” She took a deep breath. She knew what she wanted him to know, but what exactly did she need him to know? “I need you to know that I want to be with you.”

“Works for me,” he said, giving her a squeeze.

She lifted her head and forced herself to stare him in the eyes. “But there’s stuff about me, terrible stuff, that you don’t know. I just
can’t
be with you. I can’t risk hurting you anymore.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t smile. “Katelyn, if you care for me I’m willing to risk anything, do anything. Just let me help.”

“I can’t.”

She twisted so she could get her feet on the ground and she stood up, feeling light-headed. He was still kneeling, looking stricken. “Trick,” she said, her voice strangled. “If I were free . . . but I’m not. And you’re better off without me.”

She hurried away before he could stop her. She had only made it a few steps before the tears started gushing down her cheeks. Any delusions she had harbored that someday she and Trick could somehow be together were gone. In the span of an hour she’d almost bitten him twice, once in anger and once in passion. If she tried to be with him, it was only a matter of time before an accident happened.

And she loved him too much to curse him as she’d been cursed.

“Darlin’,” he called after her.

“Please, I need to be alone,” she cried, without looking at him.

“No way.”

“Please,” she said again, and as she walked away, he let her.

She wandered around for nearly half an hour before finding her way back to the school parking lot. Trick’s vandalized car was still there, but there was no sign of him. She figured he was hovering nearby, giving her space, and she climbed into her Subaru and left as quickly as she could. She tried to force herself to calm down, but even after she had put the town behind her and driven well into the forest she couldn’t.

Her cell phone trilled and she snatched it up. The number was unknown.

“Hello?” she asked carefully.

On the other end of the line all she heard was very gentle breathing.

“I’m alone,” Katelyn said, clearing her throat and hoping that that hadn’t been the worst thing in the world to admit.

“Kat?”

It was Cordelia, but her voice was strangled, barely recognizable.

“What’s wrong?” Katelyn asked, all senses on high alert.

“It was never supposed to happen like this,” Cordelia said with a sob.

She’s crying
. She felt a terrible chill. Cordelia had been so cautious about communicating at all.

Something’s very, very wrong.

“What is it? What’s happened? What can I do?”

“It’s Dom.”

“Has something happened to him? Has he hurt you?” she asked, her mind racing to different extremes.

“My time’s up,” Cordelia whispered. “I have to do it.”

“Do
what?
” Katelyn shouted into the phone. “Cor, tell me.”

“Please. I am — I was — your pack sister.”

“Cor—”

“I have to
marry
him. If I don’t, I have to leave. And I have nowhere else to go.”

“No, that’s crazy. Don’t. Wait. I’ll think of something.”

“Then do it
now
,” Cordelia said.

And then the phone went dead.

Katelyn tried calling back but the call went straight to voice mail, the automated robotic female voice informing her that the mailbox hadn’t been set up, so she couldn’t even leave a message.

She became aware of a rumbling sound that seemed to grow louder. Was it thunder? She frantically tried calling again. Straight to voice mail once more. Before she could hang up something slammed into the side of her car, sending it careening out of control, and Katelyn stomped on the brakes, sending herself weaving as something flashed by her on the narrow road. It was a truck.

Her Subaru slowed and rolled against a tree, which groaned under the impact.
They hit me
, she thought, shocked.

Ahead of her the truck had also pulled over, and the driver was getting out. Katelyn started to reach for her insurance card in the glove compartment when her hand froze.

Mike was sauntering toward her, a huge triangular shaped apparatus on his nose, a leer on his arrogant face, and a tire iron clutched in his hand.

17

Katelyn stepped out of her car in a rage. “What the hell?” she screamed at Mike.

“Payback’s a bitch,
bitch
,” he said, snarling.

“What, you want to break my nose?” she demanded. “You really think you need a tire iron for that?”

His smile broadened and there was something so terrible about it, so leering, that an awful suspicion crept into her mind.

“I was thinking of taking it out on you a different way,” he said, eyes moving down her body.

His look and tone confirmed her suspicions. And while the Katelyn she used to be screamed at her to get in her car and run over him, the new Katelyn began to growl.

Mike cocked his head to the side. “What the hell—”

She leaped at him, kicking the tire iron out of his hand before he could even move. She hit him in the eye so hard it snapped his head back. She growled again, an angry, throaty sound that started to turn into a howl. She kicked him in the stomach, doubling him over, and slammed her fist into his chin with everything she had in her. His eyes rolled back but she kept him upright, hitting him again and again in the stomach.

He was wheezing when she finally let him fall to the ground. Blood was pouring out of his nose and mouth. Both his eyes were already turning black and his breathing was uneven. She stood over him, waiting for him to get back up.

A few seconds later, his eyes flickered open and he stared up at her. He looked like something out of a horror movie, and she couldn’t stifle her satisfaction.

Panting, she leaned over him. “This ends now, do you hear me?”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“You leave Trick and me alone and I’ll leave you alone. Understood?”

He nodded again. Sheepish, scared.

She left him there, got into her Subaru, and roared away.

When she pulled up in front of the cabin she flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. There was blood on them. Mike’s blood. She’d have to make a break for the bathroom to try and clean it off before her grandfather could see it.

She left her backpack in the back and headed inside. As soon as she had opened the door she ran to the stairs. “Hi!” she called out when she was halfway up them.

“Katie, you okay?” her grandfather called.

“Fine,” she yelled back just before she closed the bathroom door behind her.

A couple of minutes later she emerged, having gotten all the blood off. Her hands had stopped aching, which was an added bonus. She went back downstairs. From the living room her grandfather looked at her expectantly.

“Sorry, bathroom,” she said with a grimace.

He nodded as she went back outside to grab her backpack. Somewhere in the distance she heard a wolf howl and it took all her willpower not to join in.

Katelyn.

Katelyn woke with a start, a dream fading too quickly from her memory to hold onto. The nearly full moon poured light down through her skylight, bathing her room in silver. Every nerve sizzled. Branches tapped impatiently against the glass above.

Wearily, she picked up
In the Shadow of the Wolf
. There hadn’t been any more information on the mine or the Hellhound and she was beginning to think there wasn’t any more to find. She had finished Cordelia’s diary, a litany of disappointments and excuses for the erratic behavior of her father. She and Cordelia had one thing in common: they hated Regan and Arial.

She put the book away and took out the paper with the picture of the heart-shaped boulder again. And she wondered for the thousandth time if the real painting had been hanging on their wall all that time.

She spent the next morning pretending to study and surfing the net for aerial photos of Wolf Springs — there were none — but mostly just freaking out. Full moonrise would occur in less than ten hours.