Torn (13 page)

"And the third
lucky person is Suzanne Bergerman."

Adri's pulse had
skyrocketed over the last few names. I could hear her breathing pick
up with each new name, it almost drowned out the sound of the next
draw.

"Congratulations
goes to Amy Birch."

This set of yells was
thankfully on the other side of the school, and I wondered for the
first time if Gossil was going to defy me and just not give the last
ticket to Adri. It was too late to do anything about it, but I felt
my grip on the desk tighten to the point where the wood let out a
slight groan.

Principal Gossil
finally cleared his throat and continued. "The fifth winner is
Ms. Adriana Paige."

As the room broke out
in half-hearted cheers I realized there hadn't been any rustle of
papers before he'd read her name. Had all of the other drawings been
loud enough for humans to notice them? Would anyone notice the lack
if they had.

It was too late for
worry to accomplish anything. I watched as Adri thanked everyone,
and then turned towards me.

"Congratulations,
Adriana. Les Miserables is one of the best. I hope you enjoy it."

The undertone of anger
as she thanked me, defied understanding.

Lately Adri smelled
like she'd rolled in Brandon. The rest of the pack liked it even
less than I did. It was extremely unsettling to be sitting calmly in
a class and then suddenly smell Brandon coming towards you. Jess was
getting especially jumpy. We'd been fairly careful to set our
schedules up so that we'd have as limited contact with Brandon as
possible, and it suddenly felt like he was everywhere. Mentally
knowing it wasn't him didn't help much when stacked against more than
ten thousand years of instincts.

I was sitting in my
art class, unsuccessfully trying to recapture the simple joy of
painting when I once again had Brandon's stench assault my nose. The
curious gait just outside the classroom wasn't heavy enough for him
so I knew it was probably Adri running errands for Mrs. Campbell
again.

The bell rang a few
seconds later, but I wasn't in any hurry to put my supplies up. I
kept hoping I'd be able to abandon the currently-stalled piece I was
working on, but every time I tried to start something else I ended up
just futilely throwing colors on the canvas.

The rest of the class
trickled out as I finally gave up and quickly began cleaning up. The
normal din of several hundred students traveling towards the lunch
room nearly caused me to miss the collective gasp on the stairs just
outside the art room.

Even when I heard it I
didn't necessarily think anything of it until I felt the conflicting
surges of power that signaled a fight.

"What are you
looking at freak?"

Vincent's bellicose
tone identified exactly who'd faced off against Isaac's cool pool of
power. It was hard to believe anyone from Brandon's pack would risk
an actual fight out in the open, but Vincent was becoming
increasingly restive over their failure to absorb us. I didn't have
any idea what Brandon was doing to keep him in line, but the leash
was starting to wear thin.

I threw the rest of my
supplies into my drawer and started out the door as Vincent whispered
something only barely audible from my new position. "After we
kill you and Alec I'm going to lay claim on Jess. She's scared
enough to be all the sweeter when I break her."

He'd done his research
well, there was really only one thing guaranteed to get through
Isaac's control, and I felt Isaac's beast surge forward to within a
whisper of breaking loose.

I was within sight of
them now, surrounded by a cluster of nervous teenagers. They were
carefully circling each other, hardly noticing the uneven terrain the
steps provided.

"Vincent!"

My voice hit him at
the same time I cut loose with my own power and sent it down the
steps like a crackling wave. Vincent backpedaled from Isaac faster
than anything human could have managed, and the people ahead of me
pressed back unconsciously against the unseen pressure flowing from
me.

Vincent was attempting
to edge away from us now, but Isaac shifted just enough to cut off
his egress. For the first time in ages I saw actual fear on
Vincent's face. He'd assumed he'd be able to continue to provoke
Isaac at will without paying any kind of price, but Isaac apparently
wasn't willing to just ignore the latest threat.

We worked in tandem,
closing in on Vincent with the inevitability of time. I didn't want
a fight here in front of all these witnesses, but Isaac was within
his rights to want satisfaction from Vincent, and I wasn't about to
leave him alone with a killer like Vincent.

Vincent suddenly
grabbed Blaine Casperson and shoved him towards Isaac with enough
force that the kid nearly went over the railing. Isaac grabbed
Blaine, but Vincent was already moving. He used the distraction to
escape down the stairs and what seemed like half the student body
surged around Isaac to congratulate him.

I wasn't interested in
the kind of fawning that usually followed a fight, so I quietly
slipped past everyone and down to the cafeteria. Rachel found me as
I finished paying for my food. She stretched to get close to my ear
and whispered.

"You need to
find Jasmin right now. If you don't hurry she's going to do
something stupid."

Most alphas wouldn't
have even dreamed of taking orders from a human, sister or not,
but Rachel had earned my trust a hundred times over. I left the food
where it was and headed towards Jasmin's lit class. Her scent trail
led me outside into the parking lot just in time to see her Mercedes
go roaring out onto the main road.

I raced to my Porsche,
turned it on and hit fifty before I had to break to get onto the
road. She was headed towards Brandon's pack's territory and I knew I
had to stop her before she gave him an excuse to bring the Coun'hij
into the picture.

Jasmin had all of the
enhanced reflexes of a moon born, but she'd never spent enough
time behind the wheel to acquire an intimate knowledge of what her
vehicle was capable of, and I used that against her ruthlessly.

She blew through a
four-way stop at fifty and I followed right on her heels. She slowed
to thirty to take a ninety-degree turn and I slung the Porsche around
at fifty with all four wheels squealing as the high-performance
rubber fought a losing battle with inertia.

I had an edge in
acceleration and I caught her about the time she hit eighty. The
face that looked back at me in the rear-view mirror wasn't rational,
so I took the only route remaining and put the front end of my car
into the back corner of hers with enough force to push her off into a
fallow field.

I hit my head hard
enough to see stars, but still managed to pull myself out of the car
before Jasmin. She wasn't much behind me though, and I had to muster
every ounce of speed to tackle her before she broke away across the
field. We hit hard enough that the energy converted into a roll and
she came up spitting and hissing.

She lunged at me but I
sidestepped her and used her momentum to bring her around and down
onto her stomach. She tried to spin around, but I kept pressure up
on the arm bar I'd put on her, and after four or five minutes she
calmed down enough to talk.

"You can't stop
me. You don't know what he did. I'll sneak away and kill their
parents while you're not looking."

"You're right, I
don't know what he did, and I probably won't unless you tell me; but
I can and I will stop you."

The look in her fierce
blue eyes seemed to promise terrible things, but I reached down and
coaxed my beast close enough to the surface to raise power and then
pushed it at her like a metaphysical slap.

"Jasmin, I don't
want to have to repeat myself. If you bring their parents into this
they'll attack Donovan and Andrew. They'll come after James' mother
and mine. If that happens I'll disavow you so quick that you'll have
the Dark Hunt on your tail before the day is out."

She stopped struggling
and there was hurt in her manner for the first time since I'd pinned
her. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to Donovan or the
others. I just didn't think about their likely response."

"That's the
problem, Jas. You don't think when you get really mad; you just
react. Usually you keep it under better control than this. What's
going on?"

She shook her head as
tears started to gather at the corner of her eyes. I hadn't seen her
cry for years. Even when she'd been young, with all of the terrible
things her father had done, she'd rarely cried.

"I can't tell
you. I won't."

I finally let go of
her and stood up. "We both know I don't have the leverage to
really force you to do anything, but you're on thin ice."

She rolled to her feet
and stalked back to the Mercedes without saying anything. We pushed
both vehicles back onto the road and then she headed back towards
school. I examined the mostly cosmetic damage to the Porsche with a
sigh, and then followed her.

We'd missed Chem. I
was missing a lot of class lately. Donovan would cover for me, but
there were limits even to what he could do. Eventually I'd bump up
against the state's mandatory attendance policy. I supposed I could
always get my GED, if I somehow lived long enough to make that a
necessity.

I stopped at a
bathroom and repaired the worst of the damage to my clothing.
Luckily I was wearing dark colors, so the wear and tear from
wrestling a crazed wolf didn't show all that badly.

We had a sub again in
Physics. I almost turned and left, but I felt a hunger to be treated
like a human being. Not the protective older brother, or the
domineering alpha, just a regular person. I didn't truly know what
Adri was, but either way I could count on her to treat me at least as
poorly as she'd treat anyone else.

I probably would have
left regardless if I'd realized what kind of reception I was going to
get from the rest of the class. A number of female hearts sped up as
I weaved through desks to get to my corner in the back. I assumed my
seat with a silent prayer that the sub would keep everyone under
control.

I couldn't have been
further off base. As soon as he'd finished with the roll he released
us all to work on our 'group projects'.

The girls were the
first ones to head back to my corner. Apparently Vincent was even
more disliked than I'd realized. I was almost immediately surrounded
by normally sensible females who suddenly couldn't say enough about
how brave Isaac and I were.

I politely answered
their questions and tried to deflect their admiration, but they were
like bloodhounds on a scent, and the boys from the class quickly
joined to turn it into even more of a zoo.

I managed to sneak a
couple glances at Adri, who seemed thoroughly disgusted. She'd given
up on studying and was sketching something.

Surrounded as I was,
there was no way to stop the girls from brushing up against me, and I
was beginning to think rudeness was going to be required to break
things up before they started addicting themselves to my touch.

Luckily the sub chose
that moment to intervene. He slammed his hand down on the desk like
a gunshot. "I told you all to keep it to a dull roar. I want
everyone away from that back corner. Get back to your seats."

Adri was drawing
again. I found myself overcome by curiosity. This wasn't something
I'd known about her. Without thinking, I cleared my throat to get
her attention and ventured a smile. She tilted her head to one side
as if to tell me to hurry up and get to the point.

"Sorry, I can
tell you're not really in the mood to work on our project, especially
with all of the racket today, but I saw you limping down the stairs
just before lunch. Are you ok?"

Impatience was
replaced with disgust for no apparent reason, and she turned back to
her drawing.

"I'll be ok.
Just a little sprain."

I flipped open a book
and pretended to read while watching Adri out of the corner of my
eye. I was just able to make out the drawing as it took shape. She
wasn't exceptional, but seemed completely immersed in the experience,
and the picture actually wasn't all that bad.

An oblong pond
surrounded a tiny, crescent island. A number of trees served as the
only other detail, but my study of the piece was interrupted when I
realized that Adri's heart was once again racing to dangerous speeds.
I'd had enough experience with her attacks now to realize one was in
the offing. I opened my mouth and said the first thing that came to
mind in an attempt to distract her.

"Hey, that's
really pretty good. Is that a real place?"

She nodded wordlessly,
but the attack was even closer.

"What's it
called?"

Her response was so
quiet as to almost be inaudible. "Monster lake."

I was losing the
battle, but I wasn't sure what else to do. Another question popped
out of my mouth without conscious effort on my part.

"Was that close
to your house in Minnesota? I..."

She suddenly stopped
breathing, and I lunged towards her just in time to stop her from
hitting her head on the ground.

Her breathing resumed
as I picked her up and started looking for a way out through the
sudden thicket of bodies that was forming as everyone rushed to see
another of the actual attacks that the rumors had made famous.

Her eyes flickered
open and for a brief second her mask wasn't in place. She looked up
at me with such complete trust it felt like something reached inside
of me and rearranged pieces that hadn't moved in years.