Unleashed (33 page)

“My sisters used to tell me stories about the … about
it
when I was little, to scare me,” Cordelia said in a low, strained voice. “They tortured me with them. And it worked. I had horrible night terrors. There was one year that I hardly ever slept.”

Katelyn just listened. Cordelia looked as if she might throw up. “When Haley was killed, I went to my dad and I asked him if he thought maybe that’s what attacked her. Justin overheard. And they both laughed at me.” She took a deep breath. “But I wasn’t fooled, Kat. They were afraid, too. Then, after Becky died, I heard my dad patrolling around outside our house, night after night. But he denied it.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Katelyn asked, disbelief passing and terror taking an even firmer grip on her. This could not be happening. But it
was
.

“If it was … 
that
, I don’t know. Change into one of his kind? Her kind?”

“What kind is that?” Katelyn asked.

Cordelia looked terrified. “A monster.”

“What kind of monster?”
Worse than you?

“No one really knows what it looks like. There’s just stories, like the boogeyman, or the Candyman. Some folks say it can pass for one of us, but then it changes, and it’s hideous. Deformed.”

Like the monster at Beau’s grandmother’s window? The one that gave her a stroke?

Katelyn was going to lose it. She was on the verge of full-blown hysteria.

“But if it
was
one of us … you’re going to change into a werewolf on the next full moon.” Cordelia took a deep breath. “Or maybe nothing will happen. Maybe a husky bit you. Or a mutant wolf. Maybe that’s why it attacked you. And that would explain the blue eyes.”

“When is the next full moon?” Katelyn rasped.

“A week after Halloween,” Cordelia said with hesitation.

Her birthday week. And then life as she knew it might end.

Cordelia took her hand again, more gently this time. “I’ll help you, Kat. I’ll stay with you—watch over you.”

Katelyn’s stomach contracted. This couldn’t be happening. It was like some horrible joke.

“And your father …,” Katelyn said.

“On the full moon, we all meet for a ritual, then go on a hunt. But I could make an excuse—say I don’t feel good—and take you somewhere private. Watch you. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s been too sick to go.”

Katelyn closed her eyes. “But you’re saying we need to hide it from your father?”

Cordelia hesitated, then nodded. “He’s so unpredictable, and it’s getting worse. Last night he woke me up to ask me questions about the Constitution. Then he called my sisters and tested them. It was about three a.m.” She wiped tears from her eyes.

“Oh, Cordelia.” Katelyn stared at her. “But you said you never kill people. So he wouldn’t kill me. Right?”

“If you’re … one of us, all bets are off,” Cordelia said, looking down. She stood and picked up the framed picture of her father. “He’s got to pick a new alpha soon, or someone will challenge him.” She let out a long, shaky breath.

“Challenge him?”

“Fight him. To the death, if necessary.”

“Are you people
crazy
?” Katelyn swayed, and Cordelia ran back to the bed, supporting her, slipping an arm around her.

“I’m sorry that it’s so scary. It’s all I’ve ever known. Except for my dad losing his mind. That’s why all the contests. He’s trying to pick one of us to be the new alpha.”

“You … you and your sisters?” Katelyn asked, astounded. “But you’re only sixteen.”

Cordelia didn’t speak for some time. Then she said, “I’m seventeen. I’m his favorite, but I’m the youngest and I’m not mated. Some days he thinks that’s great, because he can pick someone out for me, but other days, he tells me I’ll be so distracted that I won’t be a good leader.”

She looked bereft. “And … some days he forgets who I am.” She sighed. “Since you were bitten without his permission—
if
it was one of us—he’ll be furious.”

“Great,” Katelyn said weakly. “Is that why you told me to go back to L.A.?”

Cordelia nodded. “I panicked. But you’d be all alone out there. That would be bad for you. And for L.A. A werewolf on the loose, alone …” She shook her head.

“Then come with me,” Katelyn begged.

“I can’t just pick up and leave,” Cordelia said. “I need permission. My father has already put all of us on notice that we have to stay close. Not just because of the succession. There’s been friction with other packs. It’s so important for us to look strong. If they found out that someone attacked a human on our territory and we didn’t know who it was, we’d look like huge fools.”

“They?”

“Dom’s pack. Our rivals.” She flushed and shook her head. “You don’t need to worry about all that right now. But it’s why I can’t leave.”

“The guys you liked …” She caught her breath. “Your possibilities. They’re werewolves, too?”

“Except for Bobby.” Cordelia touched Katelyn’s hair. “I asked to bring him in, but my dad said no. He wasn’t good enough.”

For some reason, Mike’s face appeared in her mind. She had a terrible thought.

“Are any of the other kids at school …?”

“Not the high school,” Cordelia said. “But there are a couple in middle school, and in elementary school, and that’s a problem.” She sighed. “Our pack has gotten too big. Back in the old days, only the alpha pair would mate. That kept our population down. Then better birth control came along, and the alpha changed the rules, because we figured everyone would be careful. But people haven’t been careful enough. We’ve got over thirty pack mates, and that’s about twenty too many.”

As Cordelia’s words rushed over her, Katelyn stood slowly. She walked to her dresser and looked at herself in the mirror.

She hesitated. “Once we found out about the Hellhound, you didn’t want to research the silver mine.”

“I never wanted to do the silver mine,” Cordelia said quietly. “Silver is toxic to us. It can kill us. So … say two packs weren’t getting along, and the alpha’s kid started looking for it for a school project.” In the mirror, the reflection of Cordelia’s features twisted, and Katelyn didn’t know how to read it. “My dad ordered me to keep working on it with you. That’s why I was all back and forth.”

Katelyn gripped the top of the dresser, sensing there was more.

“And then when you found out that the Hell …” Cordelia’s voice faltered. “
Hellhound
,” she said firmly. “That it lives in the Madre Vena, I begged him to let me stop working on it. He just laughed. Like he always has.”

“He’s your father,” Katelyn said. “He wouldn’t make you do anything risky.”

“Maybe … before,” Cordelia murmured. “But now, with his mind going …” She raised a shaking hand to her forehead. “The Hellhound goes after bad werewolves,” Cordelia said.

“Bad?” Katelyn echoed uneasily.

“Those of us who don’t follow the rules. Or”—she swallowed hard—“anyone who betrays our secret.” She looked at Katelyn with wide, stricken eyes. “Like me.”

Katelyn thought a moment. “Have you ever told anyone else?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But when Jesse and Justin showed up, I was so scared that Jesse would tell, I stopped having friends over.”

“But you can’t control him.”

“Exactly.” Cordelia took a ragged breath and looped her hair over her ears. “Nobody can. In my grandparents’ day, he wouldn’t have survived. They would have … He wouldn’t be here.”

Katelyn stared at her. “Do you mean they would have killed him?” she whispered.

Cordelia glanced anxiously at the closed bedroom door. “They would have left him in the forest when he was a newborn,” she said.

Katelyn pursed her lips together; the idea of leaving Jesse in the woods to die was horrifying.

“But we don’t do things like that anymore,” Cordelia assured her. “Too many people. Someone might see.”

“Plus it’s
wrong
,” Katelyn pointed out.

“Kat, you have to understand. We’re
not human.
”

Katelyn didn’t know what to say. What to think.

“Maybe the Hellhound has come because we’ve lost our path,” Cordelia said. “Justin says we’re trying too hard to be like people. That we should go back to the older ways.”

“Justin?” After everything, the idea of Justin wanting to be less human only made it feel worse.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to talk about it. So … we don’t need to talk about it now, right? Until we know.” She gazed hard at Katelyn.

Until we know
.

“But it seems obvious that one of you—that a werewolf—bit me,” Katelyn insisted. “And that’s something we do need to talk about.”

“No. I just can’t accept that,” Cordelia insisted. “Tell me about it again. Start from the beginning.”

Katelyn shut her eyes as the memories washed over her, chilling her to the bone. “It jumped on me and dragged me. It bit me.” She couldn’t stop holding her breath. “It had blue eyes. It was huge.” She mimicked raising a tire iron. “I hit it and then it just kind of dissolved into the shadows. It was almost like it became the shadows.”

Cordelia caught her breath. “Like how?”

Katelyn ran her hands through her hair. She didn’t like remembering. But she needed to help herself, find out everything about what was happening to her. “I don’t know how else to describe it. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I thought I might be hallucinating.”

“Hellhound,” Cordelia whispered.

“Or … I was just really scared,” Katelyn protested.

Cordelia shook her head and looked down.

The silence stretched between them as Katelyn struggled to process everything. When the wolf had attacked her, she had thought she’d be killed, like the other girls. She’d been so relieved when she escaped. Maybe they’d been the lucky ones.

“What about Becky and Haley?” Katelyn murmured.

Cordelia hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know about them, and I don’t know about you. But you can’t talk about this. Not with anybody. Your grandfather, Trick. No one.” Her voice was stern and Katelyn knew she meant it.

“Okay,” she whispered. She took a deep breath. “But how am I going to get through this?”

Cordelia exhaled. “It’s going to be okay, Kat.”

“You don’t know that,” Katelyn said angrily. “Forty years ago, a bunch of people were attacked. People are being attacked
now
. And I’m one of them. You can’t tell me that I’m going to be okay. You don’t even know what bit me!”

“Girls, dinner!” Her grandfather’s voice made her start.

“I need help,” Katelyn went on, ignoring his call.

“I said I’d help you,” Cordelia snapped, looking up at her. Then her face crumpled. “And I’m really sorry, Kat, but I’m all the help you’ve got.”

Dinner was spent in painful silence. After Cordelia left, Katelyn scoured all the books she had, looking for more information about the Hellhound, the silver mine, and the wolves of Wolf Springs. She had practically memorized the story about Xavier Cazador. But there was nothing new.

Later that night, Katelyn lay in bed and raised her hand to the skylight, a rectangle of black raindrops. Exhausted, she let her arm drop back down. But she didn’t sleep. She stared into the dark and couldn’t seem to stop herself from shaking.

She got up and took another hot shower. Her heart was pounding as if it were too big for her chest. And then, as she climbed into fresh fleece pajama bottoms and a tank top, she realized that what she was hearing was not her heart, but the pounding of drums. Howls wailed, blasting through the layers of black on black on black, weaving through the treetops. Jack Bronson’s disciples.

She listened for a while, then went downstairs. A fire was burning in the fireplace, but the front room was empty. She flicked on the light switch and the howls rose, then poured down one on the other like a cascade of sound. The drums pulsed like blood through veins.

And something inside her urged her to go outside to join them.

No
, she told herself firmly.

Leaving the light on, she turned to go back upstairs. Her gaze was drawn once again to the painting of the deer and the tree. And the boulder. The heart-shaped boulder, in the foreground.

She remembered where else she’d seen it: in the piece of parchment on top of the stack of clippings Sam had given her.

“Katie?” her grandfather called from the top of the stairs.

“I can’t sleep with all that drumming,” she said.

He was silent a moment. Then he asked, “What drumming?”

14

I
t was hard to get through the days—and the nights—pretending that nothing was wrong. That Katelyn wasn’t keeping track of every single hour. She had figured out there were 408 hours in seventeen days. She spent many of those precious hours searching for more information about werewolves and Hellhounds and what had happened forty years earlier in Wolf Springs. She told Cordelia to ask her sisters to tell her the Hellhound stories again, and to go through her house for anything else that might reveal what was going to happen to Katelyn on the full moon. Cordelia insisted that there was nothing new. But Cordelia was so afraid of the Hellhound that Katelyn had trouble believing her, and she realized her trust in the only person who knew her secret was getting shaky.