Starling (35 page)

He turned and walked away from her. Again.

A few minutes—and a lot of deep breaths—later, Mason stalked into the gym and over to the Gosforth team bench. She nodded to her teammates and then sat and tried to empty her mind of all the things Calum Aristarchos had said to her.

Tried … and failed.

She made it through the first two of her three five-touch pool bouts—but only just barely. She was sweating profusely behind her mask, and her whip-thin saber felt heavy as a lead pipe in her hand. All of the tension Fennrys had worked so hard with her to release out of her body came thundering back. She was stiff and jerky in her movements. Her parries were desperate and her attacks tentative. And the lights blinking on, registering touches on the scoring box, went less and less to her. Mason fought on with desperation, but her balance was all off and her aim was wonky. But what was worse … she was hesitating.

Just like Cal said
—

With a shocking suddenness, Angie Delnorte lunged, knocking Mason’s blade aside, and whipped her own around, tagging Mason’s left shoulder with a stinging slash. The green light flashed, signaling a fifth point for Angie, another bout lost for Mason, and—just like that—Mason Starling was eliminated in the first round of competition. Something that had never happened to her before.

“Are you okay?” Fennrys asked again. She hadn’t answered him the first two times. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Mase?”

“Oh, yeah! I’m freaking peachy!” Mason stuffed her mask into her gear bag and stripped off her overglove and the leather gauntlet beneath with sharp, angry movements. Back in the gymnasium, they could hear the sounds of cheering for the fencers who were still competing. Mason had fled the gym at the first opportunity. Fennrys had watched her go from where he’d stood hidden by the end of the bleachers and had followed in her wake.

“C’mon,” Fennrys tried to soothe her. “It wasn’t—”

“What?” She rounded on him. “Wasn’t that
bad
? I just made a complete ass out of myself in front of most of the school
and
blew any chance I ever would have had at making the Nationals team. You know. That’s
only
the thing I’ve been working toward for pretty much my whole life.”

“Mason—”

“The only thing that was
mine
. The only thing I cared about.”

“The only thing?”

“Don’t.” Mason turned a blazing glare on him. “Do
not
even go anywhere
near
there, Fennrys.” She pulled the elastic band savagely from her ponytail and shook her head, her midnight hair falling in a tumble all around her face. “I’ve wanted this since I was a kid. And then everything happened and I started to think it just wasn’t important, you know? But after last night, after everything Rafe said about living our lives, I realized it was. I realized that dreams are important, and when he said what he said, I thought it was all going to be okay. I thought I could just go ahead and be normal. With this. With
you
 …”

“There will be other competitions, Mase.”

“No. Not for me there won’t be.” She threw her fencing jacket into her bag and tugged on a hoodie with the Gosforth crest. “Cal was right—I never should have gotten involved with you in the first place. Everything that’s happened over the last few weeks has been one giant crazy-making distraction, and I am now out of the running and off the team and a giant laughingstock. Life as I know it is pretty much over for me. So if you don’t mind, I’m just going to go somewhere and be sad and pissed off until the rest of the world comes crashing to an end to keep me company. Wake me up when it really
is
Ragnarok.”

That said, she stalked off down the hallway and pushed through the double doors out into the back parking lot without a backward glance. Fennrys stood there, feeling as though someone had punched him in the chest with a hammer. He had no idea what had just happened, but there was no reason Mason should have been acting the way she was. Even after what had happened in the park the night before, she’d been ready for that competition. She’d been perfect. It didn’t make any sense, unless …

“Cal was right,” she’d said.

Which meant Cal, who’d apparently been actively ignoring Mason since the night in the Gosforth gym, was suddenly talking to her again. Fennrys wondered just exactly what he’d had to say. He’d seen him lurking around near the gym stage before the match had started, but at the time he hadn’t thought much about it. The kid’s face was still something of a mess, and Fennrys figured that he was just doing a Phantom of the Opera thing. But now he suspected that Cal had been there to confront Mason. And if he’d done it right before her bout, then
that
could have been what threw her so badly. Fennrys turned on his heel and headed off to find Calum Aristarchos to have a few choice words with him.

“Starling!” Heather called out from somewhere behind her.

Mason kept walking.

“Mason … wait!”

The other girl’s footsteps were pounding across the pavement. Mason had never known Heather to run for anything, and so she stopped and turned, waiting in the shadows between two campus buildings for the other girl to catch up with her. It was cold, and a chill wind blew bits of trash in swirling eddies around them.

“Hey,” she said dully as Heather jogged to a halt in front of her and stood there panting heavily, her cheeks flushed from exertion. “Where’s the fire?”

“I don’t know,” Heather gasped, bending over. She braced her hands on her knees and shook her head, her long honey-blond hair curtaining her face. “I don’t think it’s started just yet. But listen, I just had a very long talk with a crazy girl named Gwendolyn Littlefield, and you are in a massive heap of trouble, Starling. Or at least you will be …”

Mason stared, unblinking, at her, waiting until Heather could catch her breath and tell her just what exactly
that
was supposed to mean. The moment never came. Suddenly there was a rustling sound from just over Mason’s shoulder, and a large canvas bag descended over her head. She heard Heather cry out, but the sound was truncated by another noise—a dull thud—and Heather went silent. Mason was too panicked to scream as the canvas bag encased her completely. The material was thick and stiff; it blocked out all light and made it hard to breathe. It stank of stale rubber and sweat. From the smell alone, Mason knew that it must have been one of the carry bags for the basketballs that were stored in the CU gymnasium—not that knowing where the bag had come from helped in any way. It wasn’t enough to give her any kind of clue as to what was happening to her. But then something else did: Mason heard muffled voices and strained to make out what they were saying. She felt the blood in her veins go ice-cold when she realized who was speaking.

“What d’you wanna do with the spare?” The voice, nasal and unpleasant, was unmistakable and belonged to the captain of the CU football team, Taggert Overlea. “She’s out cold.”

“I don’t care what you do with her,” Mason’s brother Rory answered. The cold cruelty in Rory’s voice made Mason want to weep.

“Maybe I should bring her along....” Tag sounded unsure.

“Fine. Just keep her up front with you,” Rory said as Mason felt herself being unceremoniously dumped into what felt like a small, confined space. “And keep her out of my way. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Oh, god!
Mason thought frantically as she felt a scream crawling up her throat with agonizing slowness.
No. Not this. Anything but this …
She heard and felt the slam of a lid and knew with devastating certainty that Rory had thrown her in the trunk of his Aston Martin. He knew all about her raging claustrophobia, and yet he had done this. To her. To his baby sister. Mason had been right all those years ago when she’d told Roth that she suspected Rory hated her. She’d been right. And now he was going to punish her by driving her mad for something she’d done wrong. She didn’t even know what that was.

The scream that had been building inside her became a howl of agonizing terror. And no one, she knew, would hear it over the thunder of the Aston’s engine as the car roared off into the night, with Mason stuffed in the trunk … for reasons she couldn’t even begin to fathom.

“I
don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” Calum said through clenched teeth as Fennrys slammed him back against the gymnasium wall for the second time. He was suspended several inches off the floor, and the blond, muscular young man who held him up by his jacket front didn’t even look like it was a strain to keep him there.

The Fennrys Wolf glared flatly at him. “I’m pretty sure you do.”

“Hey, Cal,” came a voice from over Fennrys’s shoulder. The voice was low and deep. Casual and yet capable of menace, if need be. “This guy bothering you?”

“No, Roth, we’re old friends,” Calum grunted, glancing over to see Mason’s older brother. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like he’s pretty pissed at you. But whatever you say, man. I don’t want to come between … old friends.” Roth shrugged, and the two guys in bike leathers standing behind him both tried unsuccessfully not to smirk. “Don’t let me interrupt. I just wanted to ask you if you know where my sister is.”

Suddenly Cal found himself once again standing on solid ground as Fennrys abruptly let go of him and turned to face Roth Starling. The two young men stood staring at each other like a pair of alpha wolves coming face-to-face in the forest.

“Can I help you?” Roth asked politely.

“You’re Rothgar.”

“You have me at a disadvantage.”

“I was led to believe that doesn’t happen very often.”

“It doesn’t. Who, might I ask, was kind enough to tell you that?”

“Your sister.”

Cal watched Roth’s eyes flick over Fennrys from head to toe, assessing. “You know Mason?” Roth asked, even more politely.

He asked it so politely that every instinct in Cal’s body was screaming for him to dive for cover before things got truly ugly.

“I’m a friend of hers,” Fennrys answered.

“You don’t go to Gosforth.”

“No.”

Roth smiled coldly. “Mason doesn’t have friends who don’t go to Gos.”

“Maybe just ones she hasn’t told you about.”

“So you’re the one,” Roth murmured. “Him. The Wolf.”

A moment passed. Stillness. Then movement …

Cal hadn’t looked away—hadn’t even blinked—but he still had no idea where the weapons had suddenly appeared from. The blade in Roth’s hand looked like a bowie knife, huge with a wicked curved point and a serrated edge, like a row of shark’s teeth. The one in the Fennrys Wolf’s hand looked like a dagger out of a medieval epic, with a broad, sharply pointed blade that Cal could tell, just by the way the light glinted off the edge, was honed to a razor sharpness.

“Jeezus,” he muttered to himself, a cold sweat suddenly beading his forehead. “Calm the hell down, you guys. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

“Accidents do happen,” Roth said quietly. “You might want to tell your old friend to put away his toy before misfortune strikes, Cal.”

Fennrys said nothing, but the grin that spread across his face in that moment was easily the most unnerving facial expression Cal had ever seen on another human being. It even seemed to give Roth pause. And Roth’s two buddies—who hadn’t moved a muscle since the knives came out—exchanged flicking glances.

The claw marks on the side of his face tingled as all the blood rushed from Calum’s face, and he took a single step forward, holding up a hand at each of the other men. “Stow it, both of you,” he said, in his best channeling-Toby-Fortier manner. He turned to Roth. “Look, I saw Mason right before the competition. And … we argued. I was trying to find her just now to apologize—again. But I don’t think she’s here. I looked everywhere.”

“She can’t have gone far,” Fennrys said. “I was talking to her only a few minutes ago.”

Roth lowered his knife and reached into his back pocket, pulling out a cell phone. He punched in a number and waited. As the rain began to fall, they heard the chorus of the
Wizard of Oz
movie theme song playing faintly, coming from the alleyway leading to the parking lot. Roth broke into a run and reached the place where Mason’s cell phone lay on the ground just as the song stopped playing. The touch screen was spiderwebbed with cracks.

They could all hear her voice coming from the phone in his hand saying, “Hey, it’s Mason. Leave a message and I’ll catch you on the flip side.”

And a violent crack of lightning overhead was followed almost immediately by a peal of thunder that shook the air as the rain began to fall in earnest. Roth swore venomously under his breath and bent down to pick up the phone. When he stood, he turned and looked back in the direction from where they’d just come. Fennrys glanced back, too. It was as if both of them had sensed the presence of the man Cal knew as Rafe, before he’d even appeared, stepping out of the shadows and walking swiftly toward them. He was breathing quickly and looked as if he’d been running. And for a brief instant, Cal thought it looked as though the edges of his form were …
blurred
slightly.