Havoc (24 page)

Knowing that as the wolf I'd wanted nothing so bad as to rip the man apart.

Knowing I was a monster.

Dalton grabbed my hands back, gripping them hard. “I told you before, I get angry a lot. I never really told anyone but you. I always kept it down, just shoved it way deep down, because I'm not allowed to be that guy. I'm Big D. I'm the superhero.” He licked his chapped lips and took in a shaky breath. “It felt really good letting it all burst out the past few nights. But I killed that little dog. I wanted to—”

“Hey,” I said, placing a hand on his cheek. “Look at me.” He did. “You are not a killer. There is that wolf side in all of us now, and it's dangerous, and it's deadly, and that's why we've got to learn to keep it in check. You're only as much of a monster as you choose to be.”

And as I said the words, I knew they weren't just for Dalton. It was something I'd needed to tell myself for a while now.

“Emily, what if I can never control it?” Dalton whispered. “I keep trying, or telling myself to try, but each time I change, the nighttime side of me cares less and less about what I want.”

“But you did, though,” I said. “You got through to the wolf at least. You followed me when I asked.”

Shaking his head, Dalton pulled my hand away from his cheek. “I was planning to attack you when we reached the woods. I was going to bite you and kill you because of how you stopped me in front of the prey—the guards, I mean. If it wasn't for the shadowmen showing up, I would have.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I dropped my hands and rocked backward to sit on my butt.

“You hate me now,” Dalton said.

“No,” I said quickly, much too quickly. I'm sure I sounded shrill too. Way to lie, Emily. “No,” I said again, calmer this time. “I'm just scared for you. For all of us. All that's happened, it's a lot to take in.”

Running his hand through his short hair, Dalton looked back up at me. “Hey, yeah, isn't Nikki some sort of psychic? Wow, when did that happen?”

I laughed. Couldn't help myself. It was all pretty absurd. “I have no idea.”

Dalton and I both put our shoes on and gathered our things. We stepped out of the shed, and I made sure the door was shut tight.

“I'm gonna go home now,” Dalton said, staring past my house to the street. He leaned in close to me, suddenly, gathering me into a hug. I stood there, arms unsure what to do. I awkwardly patted his back, and I heard him sniff in, loudly.

And I realized: He was smelling me. Calming himself. Like I always did with Spencer.

Oh yeah, Spencer. And Tracie. I'd need to get inside, get in touch… There was so much to deal with still.

Dalton's body went slack, and when he let go of me, his eyes were glassy, his smile vacant. “Okay, now I'm going home.”

I grabbed his wrist, stopping him from going. “Dalton, tonight you need to take some sleeping pills before you change, okay? Until we find out what those files say about us, at least. Just to be safe. Okay?”

He nodded solemnly. “I will. I promise I will. I don't want to keep hurting people.”

He wandered off then, to the sidewalk and down the street in the general direction of his house. It occurred to me that if any neighbor saw some random boy leaving my backyard, it would seem sort of strange. But I figured, with how early it was on a Saturday? I could probably relax.

My keys were in my pocket, thankfully, somehow not having fallen out during the trek home. I let myself in through the back door, tiptoeing my way to the stairs and up to my room. I held my breath the entire time, certain that this would be the morning someone would catch me, that the jig would finally be up.

I made it to my room and quietly shut the door. Good thing my entire family are late sleepers.

I collapsed onto my bed, arms spread wide. I kicked off my shoes, then grabbed my comforter on either side of me and pulled it to envelop me, wrap me in a cloth cocoon.

So. Where to start, brain?
I asked myself.

I cycled through everything: The suddenly corporeal shadowmen. The human experiments in BioZenith. The strange city visible through the spinning rings. Hovering robots. Telekinetic cheerleaders who loathed me. My new pack. The super-high-tech flat-screen computers everywhere full of … files!

My hand shot to my throat, and then beneath my shirt. It was still there, the thumb drive on the lanyard. I sighed in relief.

I leaned over my bed and found my phone, charging on the bedside table. I unplugged it, then lay flat on my back once more. Holding it above my face, I flicked through the contact list to the one person I needed to see most.

Spencer.

A quick back-and-forth text convo revealed that Spencer had gotten Tracie home before he'd managed to sneak into his own bedroom safely. Like me, he was groggy and disturbed, but he agreed to come over.

Though first he'd have to take a taxi to pick up his mom's minivan where we'd left it the night before.

I set my phone aside, flush with relief. I'd been endlessly debating internally whether I should let myself go with this whole pheromone high, but honestly? I was ready for it.

While I waited for him to arrive, I stuck the thumb drive in my USB port and began clicking through the files. Most were labeled with serial numbers in no particular order that I could see. I clicked aimlessly, opening spreadsheet after document full of long, impenetrable phrases I didn't have the first clue how to parse.

Then, with a few more clicks, I stumbled into the folder labeled
HAVOC
.

Biting my lip, my finger hovered over the button atop my mouse. Something about the name, as though whatever it contained was meant to cause trouble, made me hesitate. But we'd come so far. Gone through so much to get at least this little bit of info.

I double-clicked. A bunch of documents populated the screen. One of the first read “Biological Imperatives.”

I'm not sure why, but my eye was drawn to that one. I opened it, scanned the first few useless paragraphs—and then things got interesting.

One decision was to utilize the technology to place an inherent fail-safe in each Vesper
, it read.

Utilizing natural pheromones from within the wolves used as our base, we created a certain sensory pattern that would force the Vespers to focus on nothing except locating one another, once active. It is our hope this makes our subjects more likely to bond in the necessary pack mentality for our goals. Using our base wolf subjects, our tests in adjusting the pheromones proved successful in achieving these goals.

My lips were tight as I read. I breathed in heavily through my nose, in and out, faster and faster.

One advantage of adjusting the pheromone levels is that, when the Vespers come of age and are activated, we can easily placate each subject if the need arises. It is still uncertain how the human and animal DNA will ultimately react, though the Akhakhu research we have been privy to shows that in most cases, using their particular bindings, hybrid combinations more often than not…

The screen went blurry there. I stopped reading. I didn't know what the rest of the report was saying, really, but I'd gotten the gist of it from just those two paragraphs.

The pheromones? The ones that calmed me down, set me to “find my fellows,” that made me rush with excitement at the sight of Spencer, that had let a killer draw me into a trap?

It was planned. Just like everything else, my life's course had been decided for me. Become a werewolf. Lust after a particular boy. Be placated when
they
wanted me to be. Be used for whatever
they
wanted, if they ever found us. To kill and dissect? To use for some other purpose? I didn't know. I didn't care.

I sat there, unmoving, questioning everything. Again. Like I always did lately. I mean, you have to remember my life before this. I was utterly average. Boring. I had my one friend, my nice little family, school, books, movies. No matter how much headway I made into becoming Little Miss Confident, the alpha, there always seemed to be some horrible thing lurking around the corner to send me running with my tail between my legs.

A knock at my door. I jumped. Blinking rapidly, I spun in my desk chair.

“Yeah?” I said, my voice a squeak. I coughed to clear my voice. “Yeah?” I said again.

“Hey, you have a visitor.” Dawn, her voice tired and muffled. “He said you had some sort of project.”

I spun back toward my desk. My hand flew to the mouse, moving the pointer to close the open document, then select it in the folder. I hit the delete button.

I didn't want Spencer to see this. Not right away. I'd fish it out of the trash bin and read it again later.

“Yeah,” I said one more time. “It's cool, I'm dressed. He can come in.”

My door creaked open to reveal Dawn standing there in sweat pants and a T-shirt, her hair pulled back. Naturally she still looked gorgeous. With a yawn, she waved her hand forward and Spencer appeared around the corner. He offered me a shy wave and a grin as he walked in.

“Have fun, you two,” Dawn said as she turned to head back downstairs. In a singsongy voice, she finished, “But not tooooo much fun!”

“It's just a project!” I called after her. But she was downstairs by then.

I motioned for Spencer to shut the door. He did so, then plopped onto my bed, his eyes scanning my room.

“Wow, lots of movies,” he said, patting his thighs nervously. “You're not very frilly, huh?”

I hugged myself, feeling awkward. I'd never had a boy in my room before. I hadn't exactly gussied it up for visitors. “Not really,” I said.

I shoved my desk chair back, sitting as far away from him as I could. Even with that effort, his stupidly alluring musk began to overtake my room. I jumped up and opened my window, then took in a big gulp of the fresh, chill air that gushed in.

I couldn't let myself fall back into the pattern of sniffing and pawing at Spencer. Not now. Not after what I knew for certain.

“So, hey,” Spencer said behind me. “I wanted to say… I'm sorry about last night. I mean, I got stupidly jealous and made us change. I just didn't like the idea of you and Dalton going out without me.”

I sat back down in my desk chair. “It's okay,” I said. “We got into BioZenith and found some info, at least. So it was worth it.”

Swallowing, Spencer leaned forward on his knees. “No, I mean, I was
really
jealous. I didn't really realize it until then, but, uh…” He laughed, nervous. “I really like you, Emily.”

I blinked, staring at him wide eyed. I didn't know what to say. How to break it to him that whatever we felt was all a lie.

He jumped to his feet and began to pace. “It's not just because you saved me, either,” he said. “I've just really liked hanging out with you lately. You're the chillest girl I've ever met, and you're really smart and funny, like, real funny.”

“Spencer,” I whispered.

He didn't seem to hear me. Like always, he was off in his own world. “And it's weird, because when Tracie showed up last night, she had this
smell
, you know? It wasn't like a perfume, not really, it was sort of animalistic. I'd sort of smelled it on you, but with her it was overwhelming. And I kept thinking, ‘She's my mate. Tracie is my mate.' Uh, not that I wanted to, like, have sex with her. But my brain kept saying that over and over. And I kept telling it to shut up, because I don't care about what some smell tells me.” He stopped pacing and met my eyes. “I, uh, care about you.”

Well. That was unexpected.

This was supposed to be my big moment. The end of the movie where the guy comes with the boom box to profess his love, either because it's the legit Cameron Crowe film or one of the zillions of parody scenes that came out years later. There was supposed to be fanfare. Me swooning. The two of us leaping into each other's arms, swirling in the air, kissing, credits.

But I didn't know what to say or do. Spencer avoided his “biological imperative.” I hadn't. Whatever he felt could be real. Maybe not me.

This was not what I needed. There were more important things, right? Crazy, insane things? I couldn't start getting wrapped up in emotional foibles for the first time ever. I didn't know if I was strong enough to handle this on top of everything else.

I didn't realize it, but I'd been silent for ages by that point. Spencer picked at his jeans and ducked his head. “Uh, just wanted to let you know that,” he said. “So, do with that information whatever you want.”

Forcing a smile, I met his eyes. They were too damned sad, and he had that whole puppy vibe again. I cringed, feeling all Cruella de Vil.

“Thanks,” I said softly. “I really… Thanks, Spencer. I like you too.”

He grinned at me. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he rocked back and forth on his feet. “So, yeah. I guess you asked me to come over for a reason. Can I take a look?”

“Of course,” I said, vacating the desk chair. “You're our resident computer guy, after all.”

He took my place and hunched over the keyboard, his hand on the mouse sending the corresponding pointer flying over the screen as he scanned all the files in the havoc folder.

I resisted the urge to lean over him and watch the screen. I couldn't get too close, not yet. Not until we had some breathing room to focus on whatever we'd found out at BioZenith. Instead, I collapsed back onto my bed.

A buzzing and clattering from my end table. Narrowing my eyes, I peered over at my phone. It buzzed again.

“Hey, you got a text,” Spencer said, his eyes still on the screen as he looked through various files.

“Yeah, I know.” I reached for the phone. “But you're the only one who ever texts me.”

He shrugged. “Maybe Dalton or Tracie?”

I peered at the screen. It read
REEDY
. It also read 7:36
AM
, which was not a time Megan would ever choose to be awake if she had a choice. She's not in the least a morning person.