Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (23 page)

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

My first instinct when I heard Ali’s words was to growl, but as the real world settled back into place and the protective instinct my dream had awakened slipped from me, I remembered two things. First, I wasn’t actually a werewolf and therefore didn’t have the possessive-protective gene dictating my every move, and second, I wasn’t talking to Ali at the moment. Feeling awkward in my own body, I rubbed the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and instead of growling, settled for a pointed glare.

Ali ignored me. She just unbuckled her seat belt and climbed out of the car, shutting the door on me and my mood. While I was still trying to get over the insult, she opened the back door on the driver’s side and unhooked Katie from her car seat.

“I take it we’re stopping?” I asked.

“We’re here,” Ali corrected me. “You slept like the dead and missed breakfast. I’m sure someone can rustle you up some food if you’re hungry.”

Settling Katie on one hip, Ali gestured toward the other car seat. “You mind?” she asked.

I wanted to say yes, but the look on Alex’s face—scrunched up and lopsided—kept me from being difficult on principle. I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door, and slid out of the car. I was halfway through liberating Alex when my mind caught up with my body enough to wonder where
here
was.

The air was crisp and cool for early summer and smelled like snow in my nose, even though there wasn’t a hint of white on the stretch of grass under my feet. Hoisting Alex into my arms, I turned and looked away from the car, and the way the earth stretched out before me—green and flat and untouched—threw me back.

Turning slowly, I took in the 360 view. There was a large, wooden building up ahead of us—a restaurant, or maybe an inn—and from the distance, I could see a crooked sign hanging over a small porch but couldn’t make out the words. Other, smaller buildings dotted the horizon, looking like they’d been carved from the land itself. There were scattered trees, and in the distance, I could see a denser forest and a hint of blue. Water. Possibly a lake.

And that was the exact second I realized where we were—and who lived in Montana.

Sure enough, as Ali and I moved toward the largest building, the sign came more clearly into view and a man—tall, with a scruffy beard and a deceptively unassuming air—came out onto the porch.

“The Wayfarer,” I said, reading the sign.

“Did I not mention that this was where we were coming?” Ali asked.

“No. You neglected that detail.”

“Oh, right. Because we weren’t talking.”

Sometimes, Ali could be just as much of a brat as I was—the downfall of having a guardian barely twice my age.

“Ali,” the man on the porch greeted her.

“Mitch,” she returned, her tone more or less identical to his—mild, warm, and unsurprised.

“These your little ones?” Mitch asked, his eyes going to the twins.

Ali nodded. “Kaitlin and Alexander. They’re almost four months.”

“Little girl likes her wolf,” Mitch said with a smile. “She’s growing faster than her brother.”

Ali blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes, and Katie, as if she knew exactly what the adults were talking about, arched her back, her pupils dilating.

“Oh, no, little missy,” Ali said. “You wait until Mama’s got you out of these clothes and—”

Katie’s body trembled with the pre-Change, and Mitch came to Ali’s rescue.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll take her.”

Katie went to him willingly, and for a moment, it was like she’d forgotten about changing altogether, which was a minor miracle that wouldn’t last. Since the day she was born, Katie
had never been this long in human form, and now—with the wilderness spread out before us—her urge to Shift would win out, without question or doubt. It was only a matter of time.

“Bryn,” Mitch greeted me. He didn’t look twice at my battered face. He didn’t seem surprised that we were here.

He knew.

I felt like I was back at the Crescent in front of the pack, stripping down my mental defenses, letting them in just so they could beat me later.

Screw that.

What had happened was no one’s business but mine.

“Hey, Mr. Mitchell,” I said.

“Mitch,” the man corrected gruffly, but he had to have known it was useless. Something about him always kept me from calling him by his preferred name. Maybe it was the fact that though he was a part of our pack, he visited the stronghold rarely.

Or maybe it was because he was Lake’s dad.

“Is Lake …?”

“She’s out back,” Mitch said, his voice a low, rumbling hum. “No idea what she’s doing. Pretty sure I don’t wanna know, but I suspect she wouldn’t mind some company.” Mitch paused, for a fraction of a second. “Don’t let her shoot you,” he grunted.

With Lake, chances were that was pretty good advice. Maybe she would loan me a gun. At the moment, I kind of felt like doing some shooting myself.

“Should I cut through?” I asked, gesturing to the door of the Wayfarer.

“If your mother don’t mind you taking off before you four are settled—”

“It’s fine,” Ali said. At this point, she was probably glad to be rid of me.

“Go on, then,” Mitch said, jerking his head toward the door. “Git.”

I got.

The restaurant was nearly empty. There were a couple of people sitting in a corner booth, and there was a towheaded woman in her mid-thirties or so behind the bar, wiping down the counter. When I walked in, she leaned forward on both elbows, with a look on her face that told me that she was probably the kind of bartender that people poured their hearts out to.

I wasn’t buying.

The bartender caught me staring at her, and I turned my head away, averting my eyes and slumping my shoulders. The reaction was completely reflexive, but foreign, and I found myself wondering when I’d become a good little pack girl who averted her gaze and didn’t cause trouble, and—for that matter—when I’d started submitting to humans, even as I silently wished they’d take their prying eyes and quiet sympathy elsewhere.

I had to get out of there.

The back door of the Wayfarer was only about twenty feet away from the front, but I found that despite all efforts to the contrary, I couldn’t walk toward it quickly. I’d heard so much about this place over the years. I knew which boards in the floor I could remove to find packets of gum and stashes of childhood treasures, I knew that the whiskey behind the counter was sometimes watered down because a certain someone occasionally snuck a glass and replaced it with water, and I knew that the pool table leaned slightly to the right—a fact that helped if you were the type to hustle the clientele.

By the time I made it to the back door, I felt like I’d been inside forever. The need to get out and away and to be by myself was overpowering, but the moment I stepped outside, the fresh air hit me in the face, cooling my bruises, and the muscles in my stomach loosened enough to remind me why I’d come this way in the first place. About fifty yards away, there was a wooden fence, and on top of the fence sat a girl with long legs, long hair, and a double-barreled shotgun. The legs were tanned, the hair was wheat-blonde, and the shotgun was aimed directly at my left kneecap.

Sora’s blank face. Ribs popping. Flying backward
.

I physically shook the memory from my head. Lake wasn’t Sora. Sora wasn’t the Rabid. Nobody was going to shoot me here.

“Too scared to face me up close?” I called, forcing the knot of anxiety from my chest. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, Lake.”

Lake snorted and bared her teeth in a wicked grin, and then she was off the fence, shotgun on the ground, running toward me. I started running toward her, too, but barely got three steps before she crashed into me and tackled me to the ground.

“Hey, bruised ribs here,” I said.

“Oh, you yellow-bellied crybaby,” Lake replied. “Did poor wittle Bwyn fall and go
boom
again?”

“For the last time, I didn’t fall out of that tree—you
pushed
me.”

“Snitch,” she said amiably.

“Mutt,” I replied, and then I threw myself at and into her, hugging her hard.

Besides Katie, Lake was the only female born in Callum’s territory in the past hundred years. Maybe longer, depending on how old Sora was. Lake and her dad didn’t come to our neck of the woods very often, and for whatever reason, Callum never forced their hand, so growing up, Lake and I had developed a relationship that I suspect is similar to what happens to humans who go to summer camp. When we were together, we were inseparable. From sunup to sundown, if you found one of us, you found the other. Devon was my best friend, but when Lake was in town, our duo became an easy trio: the human, the purebred, and the female Were, freaks all.

Lake, ever unaware of her own strength, squeezed too hard as she returned my hug, but despite the hug-with-a-vengeance,
my ribs didn’t so much as twinge, and I took that as an omen that maybe coming here hadn’t been a mistake on Ali’s part. Maybe I just needed time to regroup.

Come up with a plan.

After another long moment, I pushed Lake back, and even though I could never have broken her grip of my own accord, she let loose of me immediately. The two of us sat up, and I surveyed her, comparing her appearance and mine out of habit. I was wearing jeans, a sweater, and boots. Lake was barefoot and the only reason she was wearing even a tank top and boy shorts was that she’d outgrown streaking when she was about seven.

Except for that one time the summer when we were twelve, but that was completely beside the point.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked her.

Lake grinned. “Nope.”

On the heels of the coldest spring we’d had in years, Lake was sun-kissed and tanned, color in her cheeks, highlights in her hair. I couldn’t imagine her ever letting someone else beat her, no matter the cause.

As if she sensed where my thoughts were going, Lake set about distracting me. “How much you wanna bet I can put a bullet through that guy’s Coke?” She gestured back toward the Wayfarer, and I noticed that a new group of people had taken a seat in one of the booths. From this distance, I could barely make them out through the dusty window, but I didn’t doubt for a second that Lake’s view of them was much clearer.

“No deal,” I told Lake. I’d learned not to bet with her—about anything—by the time we were eight.

Except for that one time the summer when we were twelve, but again—completely beside the point.

“Besides,” I said, “Matilda’s over by the fence.” I’d never actually met Lake’s favorite shotgun, but I’d heard enough stories to make an educated guess.

“She’s fickle, is Matilda,” Lake admitted. “But boy, can the old girl get the job done.”

“What’d this guy do anyway?”

As a general rule, Lake didn’t shoot people without a reason—or some assurance that they would heal almost as soon as she shot them.

“Jerk cheated on his girlfriend,” Lake replied. “And stiffed me on my tip the last time through.”

Lake had been waiting tables at the Wayfarer since she was about twelve. Anyone who’d been to the restaurant more than once knew that you didn’t play pool with Mitch’s daughter expecting to win and you didn’t skimp on her tip. I’d never been here before, and even
I
knew that. I also knew that if you had a secret, you didn’t come to the Wayfarer in the first place. There were no secrets with Lake Mitchell. None.

“So you asked for permissions, broke the conditions, and Callum had you beaten, huh?”

My first instinct was to pull back, but before my upper lip had worked itself even halfway into a good snarl, I let it go, the
tension melting off my face. Lake was Lake. She couldn’t help asking. It probably would have sucked more if she hadn’t, but that didn’t change the fact that if and when I said a word about any of this to anyone, it would be on my terms, not theirs.

The next time Callum’s name crossed my lips, it would be because I wanted to say it, not because someone had asked.

Measuring my response, Lake plucked a strand of grass from the ground and chewed on it, deceptively insightful. “Don’t want to talk about it?” she guessed, nonchalant.

Did I want to talk about the fact that I’d disobeyed the pack? That Callum had betrayed me, over and over again; that every day, he’d let me go on believing one thing when reality was another? Did I want to talk about the fact that together, Callum and I had destroyed Ali’s marriage, torn my family apart, and brought life to a screeching halt?

“Not particularly.”

“You want to race me to the dock?” Lake asked in the same casual tone.

I thought about running with the pack—how connected I’d felt. How invincible.

“Ten-second head start?” It helped to barter with Lake.

“Five.”

I took off the moment the word was out of her mouth, ignoring the pain in my side and the way the bruises on my face and shoulders throbbed as my movements pulled skin tight across muscle.

I was
fine
.

Lake tore past me in a blur, never one to hold back on super-speed just because her opponent didn’t have it. Jaw set, teeth clenched, I pushed myself to keep up, keep her in sight, and in the edges of my mind, I felt him.

Chase
.

He and his wolf wanted to be here. They wanted to run with me, and as I pushed myself harder and harder, I pretended that Chase was there beside me, his hand looped through mine. In my dream, I’d kept watch over him. Protected him. I’d been the strong one.

I hadn’t been the one crumpled on the ground.

With the Wayfarer behind me, I ran, trying to leave everything but that memory in my dust. My feet beat into the ground again and again, punishing it and punishing my body for its human weakness.

If what I’d seen the night before was real—and every instinct I had said it was—then a Rabid was still stalking Chase’s dreams. The same Rabid that had hunted him down as human prey.
The
Rabid.

It didn’t matter if my ribs hurt. It didn’t matter if every time I blinked, I saw Sora’s fist coming toward my face. I needed a plan. I needed to be strong. So I just kept running, because come hell or high water, a girl couldn’t afford to be weak or human at a time like this.