Red (20 page)

Stopping it?
What the hell was she
talking about?

“
Because I saw
her.”

“
What?”

“
I saw her as a
wolf.”

Elodie sank down onto the couch. Clearly
this was news to her.

“
It was months before you
were born, and I didn’t know it was her. Not until years later when
we got the letter. But she had this birthmark on her back. A sort
of crescent moon shape. The wolf I saw had a patch of fur exactly
the same shape, the same location. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
And I couldn’t risk ignoring her orders on the chance that it
wasn’t. And why would she go to all that trouble, all that effort
to make arrangements for the lawyer to find us thirteen
years
later?”

“
Why didn’t you tell
me?”

“
It was so much for you to
cope with. For both of us to cope with. And a part of me did want
to believe she was out of her mind. But there was always the
possibility . . . So I did absolutely everything possible to stop
it. Everything she recommended. And I prepared you as best as I
could to survive under any circumstances.”

Okay, that explained all the Survival Family
Robinson training.

“
Meanwhile, I’ve been
preparing myself for how to die.”

Mr. Rose’s face went white again, but Elodie
pressed relentlessly on. I had the sense that this explosion was a
long time coming.

“
Do you think this has been
easy for me, Dad? To live this life where I’m half a person, a
shadow in school, in town. Completely isolated, blowing off every
single person who shows even the slightest interest in me? To live
with the knowledge that, at the very least, I have several
centuries’ worth of crazy in my family tree and at worst, I’m going
to turn into some kind of psychotic monster? To live with the
responsibility that I might have to
put myself down
like a
dog before I can hurt someone else?”

My legs actually gave out. I sank to my
belly on the concrete outside the window and wrestled with visions
of the knife. Jesus, God, the knife I knocked out of her hand the
day we met. It had been a goddamned dress rehearsal.

~*~

Elodie

“
You’ve been . . . ” Dad
couldn’t even finish the sentence. He collapsed into the chair.
Even now he was doing everything in his power not to look at
me.

“
You can say all you want
about helping me survive, Dad, but you won’t let me live. So yes, I
lied to you about my job. I lied to you about a lot of things.
We’ve both been lying. To each other. To ourselves. This year has
been borrowed time. I should be dead already.”

It was strangely liberating to say all of
this out loud.

“
Oh God, Ellie,” he
moaned.

“
I should have turned last
year. We both know that.” I stood again, squaring my shoulders. I
was going to be honest about all this for the first time in my
life. No more deception. “I think a hunter knows it,
too.”

What little color had returned to my
father’s face drained out again. “What?”

I sighed, struggling to organize my
thoughts. I needed to
move.
It felt like all the muscles
beneath my skin were electrified, twitching at once, begging for
action.
Not now. This is so not the time
. I rolled my
shoulders, trying to release some of the tension. “Someone’s been
following me for weeks. Since I found Rich. That entire scene was
freakish, and totally pointless from a kidnapper or serial killer’s
standpoint. Rich was left as bait. I think it’s someone waiting for
me to slip up and show what I am.”

Dad sat bolt upright at that. Now he
was
actually looking at me. “Wait, you’ve known someone was
following you, suspected it was a hunter, and yet you take
everything we’ve done the last four years to keep you safe and
throw it away
for some
boy
? Getting involved. Making
yourself a target?”

I bristled, feeling the aggression I was
starting to associate with being wolfish. Sawyer wasn’t just some
random guy I’d gone out and picked up for kicks. Given the look on
Dad’s face, I guessed my eyes had changed again. “Were you ‘just
some boy’ to Mom?” I demanded. I didn’t bother to suppress the
growl in my voice. “I have done every goddamned thing right. I’ve
followed your Rules. I’ve cut myself off from every part of a
normal life for
four years
. And you know what, Dad? It’s
happening anyway. I started changing before I ever laid eyes on
Sawyer.”

Sucker punch,
I thought, as he sank
back. If he’d been older and less fit, I might’ve been worried
about a heart attack.

“
How long?” Dad
whispered.

“
Just before my birthday.”
I shoved both hands through my hair and gave in to my body’s need
to move, pacing a tight path in front of the sofa. “I think the
history had it all wrong. The entire cock and bull story was just
some twisted morality tale passed down from one ignorant fool to
the next, and I am apparently
the only
member of the entire
female line of the family going back three hundred years to have
the self restraint to figure that out. I don’t think this has a
fucking thing to do with a curse. It’s genetics. I am a werewolf
because Mom was a werewolf. She was because her mother was, and her
mother before that, all the way back to Brynne. I’m turning, Dad.
And I sure as hell haven’t slept with Sawyer or anyone else to
cause it.”

He was silent, still processing this total
alteration in the “facts” we’d been living by since the letter.

“
You’re deluding yourself.
Because you want this boy.”

“
Please. I am not being
ruled by my hormones.” I thought fleetingly of that desperate kiss,
then squashed it. So not germane to the current argument. “I’ve
been thinking about this for years. Magic is nothing but science
that people didn’t understand. They used to think that thunder was
caused by a god. It makes sense that they would see werewolves as a
curse, not as the introduction of new genetic material.”

“
It doesn’t change
anything.”

“
No,” I agreed. “It
doesn’t. There’s still a hunter. I suspect there have always been
hunters. I don’t think they disappeared all those generations back.
I think they got smarter about not getting caught.”

That thought had clearly never occurred to
him. “We have to go. The essentials can be packed in a couple of
hours. We’ll leave the rest,” said Dad, pushing up out of the
chair. “I’ve got a contact—”

“
No.
We
don’t have
to go anywhere.
I
do.”

“
No.” Dad’s voice was
ragged as he lurched toward me.

“
I won’t put you in danger
by staying here. I won’t put Sawyer in danger either. What you saw
was goodbye. My mind was already made up.”

“
What exactly is your plan,
Elodie?” he challenged. “Run? Hope the hunter follows? Where? For
how long?”

“
I will draw him away from
here. From you. I’ve been ready for this for a while.” I gave a
bitter smile. “You did teach me to always be prepared. You know
exactly how long I’m capable of surviving in the mountains. You
trained me, after all.”

“
And then what? Play some
game of cat and mouse with this guy and hope he doesn’t
win?”

“
I don’t know,” I admitted.
“The important thing is getting him away from here. What happens
after that is between him and me. But I have no child. So one way
or the other, this entire nightmare ends with me.”

Naturally the fight didn’t end with that
dramatic pronouncement.

“
Over my dead
body.”

“
That’s exactly what I’m
trying to avoid.”

“
This is ridiculous. It’s a
foolish plan. You have no way of knowing that the hunter will
follow you, no way of knowing he’ll disappear if you do. You don’t
even know if you’re
right
.”

“
You didn’t know if it was
right when you dragged me here and made me give up my life, but you
were willing to take the chance. So am I.”

“
And what exactly am I
supposed to say about you to people who ask? You can’t just
disappear with no consequences. People will come
looking.”

“
Not if you tell them I’ve
gone to see family. Grandparents or something. People don’t really
know us here. If you tell them I’ve gone to stay with my
grandfather for the rest of the summer, no one will question you.
They don’t know grandpa died two years ago.”

He looked infuriated that I had a practical
response to that.

“
What if you’re wrong? Are
you just going to stay in the mountains for weeks, waiting? At what
point do you decide it’s safe to come home?”

I felt my face spasm. “We both know it won’t
be safe for me to come home. Whether the hunter finds me or not,
I’m on the verge of shifting. It won’t be safe for me to be around
you or anyone else once I do. Better for me to be in the wild where
I’m less likely to hurt someone.”

This was not, in fact, my plan. I had no
delusions that I would be able to live in the wild, even in
uninhabited areas, as some happy little lone wolf. None of my
ancestors had survived long enough to confirm whether their
humanity, their ability to reason, would stay intact for long after
the shift. I was prepared to end it before it got to that
point.

I hoped.

He stared at me in apparent anguish. This
was more emotion than I’d seen him display in years. “Do you
honestly think I’m just going to let you walk away? You’re
my
child.
”

“
I may be yours, but I
haven’t been a child for years. This is the responsible decision.
You wanting me to do otherwise is selfish.”

“
Selfish?”
he choked
out.

“
You’d rather make me stay
and risk unleashing me on the world. Yeah, I say that’s
selfish.”

We went on that way for a while longer. I
didn’t manage to wear him down, which is unsurprising. No parent is
going to be willing to let their kid deliberately walk out to face
death. Or worse.

I was losing patience and the light, so when
he got in my face again to reiterate his point, I twisted my hand
in his shirt, lifted him off his feet, and thumped him against the
wall.

Increased strength. Check.

“
You aren’t going to stop
me,” I snarled.

Using what I was to press the advantage
against him left a sick taste in my mouth.

The look of stunned betrayal on his face
seared me to the bone. As if even after everything he’d seen, he
hadn’t truly believed that I was turning.

I let him slide down to the floor. “I won’t
have your blood on my hands.”

This time when I turned to go, to pack, he
didn’t come after me.

Even the long day of summer had worn away by
the time I stepped out the back door. The sky was dark, pinpricks
of light studding the sky. Not ideal conditions, but I could find
my way even in this. As I crossed the yard, I half expected Dad to
tranq me in a last desperate move to stop me. But I made it into
the woods unscathed.

A small part of me wept at that.

The temptation to take the direct route to
the cave was strong. It was only about four miles as the crow flew.
I was tired. Bone deep exhausted, both from the work I’d done that
day and from the fight. But laying a direct path to my hideaway
would be foolish. Dad might try to come after me. He might alert
Search and Rescue to find and bring me back. And I didn’t know if
the hunter had actual tracking skills, but it made sense to try to
confuse him too. Since the last search, I’d taken some time to
learn something about muddying scent trails. That should confuse
things well enough to give me at least a couple of days to figure
out a more solid plan.

Miles to go before I sleep
, I
thought.

I didn’t look back at the house. What was
the point? Goodbyes? Regrets? I’d had enough of both. It wouldn’t
change anything. I was well and truly alone now.

~*~

Elodie

My pack officially weighed eight hundred
pounds. That’s what it felt like at least. I leaned back against a
boulder, letting it take the weight from my shoulders for a bit as
I rested, taking a swig from my water bottle. I’d lost track of how
far I’d hiked and how long. I’d been moving for hours, laying
trails, crossing them, erasing them. I’d taken to the river three
times, hiking in bare feet. Note to self: newly acquired werewolf
powers did not include impenetrable soles of human feet.

Part of me kept moving in an effort to
escape the bruise that had been spreading through my chest since
this afternoon. That attempt was an epic fail. Physical pain didn’t
distract from emotional pain. Not when the emotional was so much
bigger.

The moon had passed its apex and was on its
descent for the night, and that meant it was time to go to ground.
I considered just pulling out my sleeping bag and setting up a
minimal camp right where I was. But it was too exposed for my
taste, and I really wasn’t in the mood to string my supplies up to
prevent bears from messing with them. It was only a couple more
miles to the cave from here. Once I made it in, I’d set up my camp
and sleep all day tomorrow if I wanted. It might take that long to
recover from the day I’d had. And let’s face it. I hadn’t had a
decent night’s sleep since the change started.