Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles #2) (7 page)

Avoiding Justin’s gaze as well, Katelyn headed for the motorcycle. But Justin gently brushed her forearm with his fingertips. It was a soft, kind gesture.

“We’ll take the truck,” he said. “You’re too tired to hang onto me for that long.”

“I, um, lost my cell phone,” she said. She didn’t want to tell him, but neither did she want him finding it and investigating it too closely.

“No, you didn’t,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket and handing it to her.

She stared at him as she wrapped her hand around it. How had he gotten hold of it? Had he found something on there that would get her in trouble, like a new message from Cordelia? As much as she wanted to check the phone, she kept her attention riveted on his face.

“How?” she asked.

“Werewolves can move very fast, Kat. You’re not used to it yet, but you’ll get there. I programmed my number in,” he added.

“Not cool,” she said. And then before he could tell her to act more respectfully, she lowered her head.

He didn’t respond, just headed for the truck, forcing her to follow. As they climbed into the vehicle, every one of Katelyn’s senses went on alert and she moved as far away from him as she could, gripping the armrest. Then Mr. Fenner appeared at Katelyn’s window, rapping lightly at it. Startled, she fumbled for the button to unroll it, but Justin hadn’t turned the key yet and the electric function didn’t work. She opened the door.

“Tell your mother to get home,” he said. “It’s going to rain.”

Katelyn was stunned. He was talking to her as though she was Cordelia. She slid a glance at Justin, who cleared his throat and started the engine.

“Sure will, Uncle Lee,” he said. “We’ll go tell her right now.”

“Good. Good.” Mr. Fenner nodded and stepped away from the truck. Katelyn shut the door and sat unmoving as Justin headed for the main road.

“He’s stressed,” Justin said. “You know Cordelia was his favorite.” He glanced at her as he turned to the left. “You haven’t heard from her, have you?”

Was he testing her? Did he already know the answer? Had Cordelia texted her again, and he’d seen it? She itched to check out her phone.

“I won’t give up on finding her,” Justin said, as if he could read her mind. “I’ll make sure she’s safe. I promise you, Kat.”

She heard the caring in his voice, the concern, and tried to say thank you, but she was too upset. She leaned her head against the window, then thought of all that had happened and pulled away, half imagining that the Hellhound would hurtle itself at the window and crash through the glass.

“He thought I was her,” she said, deliberately not answering his question. “And that Cordelia’s mother — his wife — was still alive . . . I didn’t know what to do.”

“You did fine,” he assured her. “Best thing to do is just say and do as little as possible.”

“Why?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek as if considering his words very carefully. “Uncle Lee has always been a very dangerous man. His condition — this dementia — now makes him unpredictable as well as dangerous.”

She swallowed. “All that talk of killing . . . it’s not just talk, is it?”

Justin focused his sea-blue eyes on her. He looked so serious, dead sober. “No. He really is willing to kill you, and your grandfather. The secret has to be protected, and that’s just him doing his job.”

She shivered. She had known that was the answer, and she could tell that Justin was being completely honest. “Has he ever had to kill before?” she asked.

Justin was silent for a long time. “There have been challenges,” he said softly at last.

The hair stood up on her arms. Challenges. Fights to the death. It was so awful and barbaric. So totally unbelievable.

“But, family, it’s so important to him,” she said.

“Not as important as his duty to keep the pack secure.”

And somehow she sensed that they were no longer talking about her or Cordelia. His jaw was clenched, his chin raised. She traced his sharp profile with her gaze. The tension in the truck was nearly unbearable.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“Don’t ever cross him, Kat. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”

“Too?” she whispered, barely remembering to breathe.

He hunched his shoulders. “When it was clear what was starting to happen to Uncle Lee . . . my father . . . my father went to have a talk with him.”

She felt her heart skip a beat. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying two men walked into those woods and only one walked out.”

“You don’t think . . . I thought your dad was killed in a hunting accident.”

“That’s what Lee tells everyone. I have my reasons to think differently.”

“Justin,” she breathed, “I’m so sorry. And now you have to live with him. How can you even stand to look at him?”

“He’s my alpha . . . for now.”

And those last two words hung in the air between them, and Katelyn knew in her heart that one day Justin was planning on making a challenge.

“You called me your secret weapon,” she whispered.

“No one can know about your immunity,” he said. “No one.”

I bet I’d be Mr. Fenner’s favorite if he knew I was immune to silver
, she thought, but she just nodded as the truck slipped into the dark woods; as, in the blackness, the world disappeared.

Click. Click. Click.

Nails on wood.

Nails on glass.

And leering down at her.

Eyes.

Burning eyes.

Watching from above.

What big eyes you have.

The better to see you with.

Click. Click. Click.

Nails on the floor.

Hot breath whispering on her cheek.

Sleep, beast of silver.

Katelyn’s new tires came in, and her grandfather put them on her Subaru, which meant that Trick didn’t need to drive her to school anymore. Seeing her riding with Justin had obviously pissed Trick off, but he couldn’t quite keep his distance; Katelyn told herself it didn’t matter what he thought of her, but it did.

Driving through the woods alone, though, she couldn’t help but think of running through them as something called her name. She kept the car doors locked and seriously rethought her grandfather’s offer of a gun. Would regular bullets work on a werewolf or a Hellhound, or would only silver bullets work?

She and Cordelia had researched the Hellhound when they had begun their history class report on the lost Madre Vena silver mine. According to legend, the Hellhound guarded the rich cache of ore and silver treasure deep inside the mine. Cordelia’s father had been pushing her to find the Madre Vena, and Katelyn wondered if she had done so. After all, she had lied to Katelyn about having one of the books they’d been looking for. All that time hunting for it, and Cordelia had kept it hidden in her room all along. Maybe that was why Cordelia had been so certain that the Hellhound was real. Maybe she’d seen it.

Katelyn wanted that book. She wanted to know why Cordelia had lied to her.

And if the Hellhound’s real, I want to know how to steer clear of it.

She didn’t want to be its third victim. Whispers had gone around school that Haley and Becky had died horribly. Apparently Sergeant Lewis had said he’d never seen anything like it and the morgue technician had thrown up when he’d seen Becky’s mangled body.

She thought again about just bailing. And then, as usual, her resolve crumbled when she imagined being hunted down. They might do something to her grandfather or Trick in retaliation. She didn’t know if she was being a coward, or a hero, or a realist. At night, lying on her bed, she stared at the statue of her mother in the moonlight, and wondered what it felt like to completely give up. Her mom would never have given up.

But she wasn’t sure where the line was drawn between giving up and giving in.

~

On Wednesday morning, her grandfather looked at her across the breakfast table with a strange look on his face. He took a sip of coffee and tapped the table idly with his fingertips. “You okay?” he asked.

She sat up straighter and pasted on a smile. “Yeah, fine. You?”

“Same.”

But she looked at him more closely and realized that he seemed tired, more so than she’d ever noticed before. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

He paused while he sipped his cup of coffee. “The break-in is still bothering me,” he admitted after he put the cup down.

She blinked at him in surprise. She wasn’t used to him being so straight with her. Should she have somehow known that he’d been upset? Had the weight of what had happened to her made her oblivious to other people’s concerns?

She sipped her coffee as she formulated her response, remembering her own feelings when she’d realized Justin had taken her phone.

“Were the paintings valuable?” she asked.

Mordecai took another sip of coffee, and light streaming through the curtains filigreed the gray stubble on his chin. “One of them was a landscape I painted for your grandmother. The other was just something my father picked up at an estate sale when I was a kid. No money in either of them.”

He scratched his chin and rested his hand on the table. His face changed, hardened. “The silver belonged to your grandmother, and before her, my mother. I was planning on giving it to you someday when you got married.” Pink rose in his cheeks. “Whole family heirloom thing, you know.”

She stared at him, touched. She had nothing from her parents, thanks to the earthquake and house fire caused by it, and the thought of having something like that was beautiful. White-hot anger flashed through her as she realized the thieves hadn’t just stolen from him but also from her.

“Do the police have any leads? Is there a place around here that someone would go to pawn something like that?”

“Pat already put the word out.”

She reached across the table and gripped his hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered around the sudden lump in her throat. “You know there’s places online where you can buy old silver patterns and things like that. My mom sold some of her stuff after Dad died.”

“Then I’m glad she never wanted your grandmother’s,” he said with a sad smile. “No, it’s irreplaceable. My dad was a silversmith. He made each piece by hand for my mom.”

Katelyn blinked in surprise. “My great-grandfather was a silversmith?”

“Your dad didn’t tell you that? He was a fine craftsman. The shame of it is those pieces of silverware were the only things he made that I had.”

That was when she realized just how much she and her grandfather had in common. They’d both lost everyone, everything that really mattered to them. Maybe fate had put them together for a reason. Maybe someday she could even find him something that his dad had made.

If Mr. Fenner didn’t kill both of them first.

Katelyn had hated leaving her grandfather alone in the cabin, but she finally did. She made it into her history class just as the bell was ringing. Mrs. Walker was substituting for Mr. Henderson again. A few minutes into the hour, Sergeant Lewis and Mr. Hastings strode into the room and Mrs. Walker looked up from her book as the students fell quiet and expectantly waited to find out what was up. Katelyn could feel her own chest tighten, and her skin prickled with anxiety. Had they found Mr. Henderson? Cordelia?

Mr. Hastings cleared his throat. The look on his face spoke volumes — something was terribly wrong. Katelyn's thoughts flew again to Cordelia.

“Students,” he began, “I wanted to let you know that Mr. Henderson has officially been declared a missing person.”

Gasps rose up from around the room. Katelyn tensed, in case there was more bad news. In her experience, it usually came in threes, or fours, or sixes.

“Now, if anyone knows anything, we’d appreciate you coming forward and telling us so that we can find him quickly, before anything . . .” He trailed off.

Before anything bad happens to him
, Katelyn filled in.
But he knows that something bad might have already happened to Mr. Henderson.

In the front row, a girl raised her hand.

Mr. Hastings acknowledged her. “Yes, Gretchen?”

“What about Cordelia? She hasn’t been in school all week.”

Katelyn had been wondering how long it would be before people started to question Cordelia’s absence. When Katelyn had first moved to Wolf Springs, Trick had warned her that gossip and rumors moved with G4 speed — the only G4 there was to be had in town.

“Cordelia’s family has contacted the school about her situation,” Mr. Hastings said. “It’s a private matter that we’re not at liberty to discuss.”

That caused several more ripples through the room. Katelyn wondered what story the Fenners had concocted.

Gretchen leaned sideways and whispered to another girl, “They were
close
, Mr. Henderson and Cordelia.”

Katelyn’s face went hot and she closed her eyes in dismay.
No
, she thought.
No, don’t do this
.

“Are you okay?” someone murmured as a hand rested on her shoulder.

It was Beau, who had warned her to get out of Wolf Springs because of the killings. Of course, that had been before she had become a werewolf. Now she needed to tell him that she didn’t want to investigate the killings around Wolf Springs; that she didn’t want to investigate the current deaths, or the ones Beau said his own grandmother had told him had happened half a century before. A massacre, she’d called it. A killing field.

“I’m fine,” she murmured, studying the varnished surface of her desk.

“I gotta tell you something,” he persisted. “My grandma had a stroke. She was yelling something fierce the other night, said she saw a demon in her window.”

Katelyn was stunned. A werewolf?

“She just screamed ‘Demon! Sweet Jesus protect me!’ and then she collapsed.” Beau looked wan. “She’s not doing too well.”

She saw the unspoken plea on his face. He wanted her to help him find out what it was that his grandmother had seen. She’d been so intrigued about everything his grandmother had said about Wolf Springs before — that the town was “a banked fire,” according to her, and that every forty or fifty years or so something happened, something terrible, something epically bad. That the animals went crazy, and then people died.