Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (11 page)

He pulled back the sleeping bag and stretched out on one of the benches.

I watched him for a moment, memorizing the way the candlelight played across his face, before blowing out the flame and joining him.

He slipped an arm over my waist and I scooted back until my shoulders were flush to his chest. Between the sleeping bag and the old jacket Kyle had found in his car, I was truly warm for the first time in hours.

Kyle traced light patterns on my stomach, loops and swirls that I could somehow feel even through layers of fabric. We had never been driven to fill silence with words—not when we were with each other—but the quiet that fell over the loft was somehow thick and heavy.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

It was a stupid question. None of us were all right.

His hand stilled, but he didn’t speak for a long moment. “I was thinking about the junkyard,” he said finally, pulling away from me.

Kyle and Trey hadn’t said much about what had happened after Serena and I took off on the bike.

I rolled over so I could study his face.

Kyle was lying on his back. Moonlight drifted down through the holes in the church’s roof, providing just enough illumination for me to make out his profile and the hard line of his jaw.

“What happened?” I asked softly, hesitantly. I thought of Serena and the man she had killed. “Did you . . .”

I cut myself off before finishing the sentence, but Kyle guessed what I had been about to ask.

“I don’t know. I hope not.” His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. “Most of the men were trapped when Trey sent that wall of cars crashing down. I hurt a few of them—the guy who grabbed you, another who was trying
to call for backup—but I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t have to.”

I slipped my hand into his as I waited for the
but
.

“More men cornered us in the Meadows. Not the police. Guys like the ones who went after you and Serena. One aimed a gun at Jason. I didn’t think . . . I just . . .” Kyle’s hand flexed around mine. “I don’t think I killed him—everything was crazy but I’m sure he was still alive—but I cut him up pretty badly.”

“You were protecting Jason.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?” I let go of his hand and raised myself up on my elbow. “Kyle, you were protecting Jason. You were protecting all of us.”

“That doesn’t make what I did any less awful. Any more human.”

“And they were acting like humans? They had guns and Tasers. They drove Serena out of her home and hunted her down. That’s not very human.”

Looking at him, I felt a sharp, aching sadness. Infected or not, Kyle was the most human person I knew. The best person I knew. I wished there was some way I could make him see that.

After a long moment, I lay back down and rested my head on his chest.

Eventually he put his arm around me.

“We’re not coming back here, are we?” I asked, changing the subject. “After tonight, we’re not coming back to Hemlock.”

“Not for a while,” Kyle said. I shivered and he held me
a little tighter. “Those men aren’t just going to give up, and if they were able to find Serena, it won’t take them long to figure out who the rest of us are. Where we live. Who we know. It’s not like Serena has a ton of friends for them to sift through.”

My heart flipped and my stomach plummeted. With everything else going on, the thought that whoever had sent those men might try to track the rest of us hadn’t even occurred to me. “What if they go after Tess? Your parents?”

I went rigid in Kyle’s embrace as panic flooded me.

“They should be okay as long as we don’t try to contact them. They’ll watch our families in the hope they can lead them to us. As long as they can’t, they should be safe.” His voice was low and steady as he ran his hand over my shoulder and upper arm, trying to coax my muscles into unknotting.

I didn’t understand how he could be so calm. “You sound like you’re okay with it. Like leaving isn’t the end of the world.”

“I’m not okay with it,” he said. “But the last time I left, I thought I had lost everything. My past. My future. Everyone I cared about. This time, whatever happens, I have you.”

“You had me before,” I said softly. “You’ve always had me.”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Yeah, but this time it finally sank in.”

I was quiet for a moment. “What happens when we get to Colorado?”

Trey hadn’t been thrilled at the idea of running to the
Eumon, but we didn’t have a lot of options. We could strike out on our own—run away and try to hide—but there was no guarantee we wouldn’t be found. At least with the pack, we would have people backing us up—not that being part of a pack had helped those other wolves in Denver.

Kyle brushed a strand of hair back from my face. “What do you mean?”

“Like you said: those men aren’t just going to give up. Until we know who’s after Serena and why, how will we ever know when it’s over? What’s to say we’ll ever feel safe enough to leave the Eumon?”

“Maybe we won’t want to. There are worse things than being part of a pack.”

“For you and Serena and Trey, maybe, but what about me?” Thinking about myself at a time like this felt selfish, but I didn’t want any misunderstandings between us—not when Kyle still hadn’t decided whether or not he wanted to be a member of the Eumon. “The other wolves won’t accept me. Not really. I’ll always be Hank’s reg daughter or your reg girlfriend.”

And even if they did accept me, what would I do there? They were in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn’t be able to finish school or get a job. I would be the only person in fifty miles who wasn’t infected.

I would be with Kyle, but in a way, I would be alone.

Kyle sat up. His face was completely in shadow and his tone, when he spoke, was carefully neutral. “What do you want, Mac? Because right now we don’t have a lot of choices.”

“I know. But if we’re giving up everything, don’t you at least want to know why?” I thought of the newspaper downstairs. Again, I wanted to tell him. Again, I found myself holding back.

“Of course,” said Kyle, “but knowing won’t change the fact that we can’t stay here.”

We both lapsed into silence. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t go to the pack,” I said finally. “I’m just saying I don’t want the pack to be a permanent solution. Staying because we want to is one thing. Staying because we’re scared to leave just makes the pack a prison.”

“Werewolves carry prisons with us no matter where we go,” said Kyle. “We have to put up walls because if we don’t . . .” He sighed and lay back down without finishing the sentence. He didn’t sound angry—not exactly. Just tired and frustrated. He didn’t touch me and the few inches of space between us felt like a chasm. “We can talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “For now, let’s just try to get some sleep.”

I hesitated, but eventually nodded. “Okay.”

Still, no matter how many minutes ticked by, sleep evaded me.

“Kyle . . . ?”

“Yeah?” His voice came back heavy with sleep. After all, he had even more reason to be exhausted than I did.

“You really do have me. Always.”

I waited for his response, but he was already gone.

S
NOWFLAKES STUNG MY CHEEKS AND CLUNG TO MY
lashes. They covered frozen puddles and the remainders of makeshift memorials, turning the alley white.

The snow somehow made things more bearable. I still couldn’t bring myself to enter the gap between the buildings, but I could stand at the opening and look inside.

It was the closest I had managed to get.

“Someday, you won’t even think about it.” Amy stepped around me and into the alley. “You’ll be walking down the street, lost in thought, and you’ll pass the spot where I died without a second glance. Nothing lasts forever—not even guilt and grief.”

I was freezing, but she wore a yellow sundress and her feet were bare. Her only concession to the cold was one of her brother’s dress shirts, unbuttoned and tied over her midriff.

“Amy . . .” A lump rose in my throat and I struggled to speak around it. “Is CutterBrown tied to Thornhill? Is that why you showed me the detention block and the logo?
Because of CBP and your dad?”

Instead of answering, she crouched down and plucked a teddy bear from under the snow. She shot me a small, sad smile as she stood. “I never wanted any of this, you know. My death . . . these nighttime visits . . . any of it. I didn’t know this was what would happen.”

“You’re not real.” My voice rose at the end like a question. I had been considering the possibility that she was real just a few hours ago, but faced with her now, I didn’t want to believe it could be true. I wasn’t sure if I believed in Heaven or Hell, but I wanted to think Amy was someplace better than here. “You’re just some twisted product of my subconscious,” I insisted, trying to squash my doubts.

She raised an eyebrow. A splash of blood appeared on her cheek, but she waved it away with one hand. “Why do I have to be one or the other? Why does everything have to be black or white?”

“It just does.”

She tossed the bear back to the ground. As it hit the concrete, the alley changed. The white snow and dark shadows swirled together and pulled apart until there was another alley, one where sprays of blood covered brick walls and puddles were tinged pink. One where Amy lay sprawled on the ground, her arms and legs at angles that were all wrong, a gaping hole where her torso should be.

I stumbled back, tripping and landing flat on my back in my desperation to get away.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted answers, but I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to wake up. “Please . . .”

“Shhh. Mac . . . Shhh . . .”

My eyes flew open as cold hands touched my face. Amy was leaning over me, her hands cupping my cheeks. “It’s all right,” she whispered. Her breath smelled like cherry licorice and rotting leaves. The alley was gone and I could see the choir loft over her shoulder.

I turned my head; next to me, Kyle slept soundly and deeply.

Amy stepped back and then smoothed the skirt of her dress over her legs as she knelt on the floor beside him. She reached out and brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. He shivered and frowned, but didn’t wake.

“He sees me sometimes, you know. Ever since he became infected. Out of the corner of his eye or as a shadow behind his reflection in the mirror. Once, I think he heard me. He was leaving flowers on my grave—pink carnations from the grocery store, but I told myself it was the thought that counts—and I yelled at him as loudly as I could. He looked up and turned, but shrugged it off as the sound of the wind through the trees. Maybe that’s all I am: gusts of wind and patches of shadow.”

She blurred around the edges as I drifted closer to waking.

“Amy . . .”

“Come and see me,” she said softly, pushing herself to her feet.

“You’re not real,” I said again.

Her hair fell forward as she shook her head. “If you really
believed that, you would have worked harder at keeping me out.”

Before I could reply, she faded away.

I woke slowly and reluctantly, clinging to Amy’s words as I opened my eyes.

Dawn filtered through the stained-glass windows below. It filled the loft with patches of soft, color-tinged light and fell on Kyle’s sleeping form. I had edged away from him sometime during the night. I felt an almost overpowering desire to wake him, to have him wrap his arms around me and hold me close.

My dreams of Amy were usually so bad that I couldn’t wait to escape back into reality. This had started out that way, but the ending had been different. It had left a hollow in my chest, like the loss of her was as fresh and raw as it had been in those first few days after her death.

I remembered the weight of Kyle’s arm around my shoulders at Amy’s funeral, how his touch had been the only thing that kept me from running. It had always been like that, like his presence anchored me.

I started to reach for him but pulled back. As much as I wanted comfort, there were other things that were more important.

I slipped out from under the sleeping bag and swung my legs to the floor.

Kyle shifted in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

He had left his cell on the floor. I picked it up and scrolled
through the options until I found a memo app.

Something I have to do. Be back soon. M

Guilt brought a lump to my throat. I swallowed it down.

I knew Kyle would freak if he woke to find me gone with only a vaguer-than-vague note, but there was something I had to do. Alone.

Setting the phone on the bench, I pushed myself to my feet.

Hopefully, I’d be back before he woke. Back and with answers.

The chill in the air stole my breath and I burrowed deeper into Kyle’s jacket as I carefully made my way to the stairs and down to the first floor.

I paused outside the pastor’s office. The candles had all been extinguished, but enough light slipped through the room’s one window to let me see the rise and fall of Serena’s chest. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully.

Trey was sitting on the floor next to her. His eyes were closed and his head lolled back against the arm of the sofa.

“Where are you going?” he asked as I stepped away.

Startled, I turned back. Trey’s eyes were still closed. “Outside to use the bathroom,” I lied. “I won’t be long.”

He nodded and mumbled, “Be careful.”

“I will,” I promised, hoping he would fall back asleep without realizing I hadn’t returned.

Without another word, I made my way to the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. Kyle and Trey had broken the chains last night. It sure beat climbing in and out through the basement windows.

Outside, my breath fogged the air. I tugged the cuffs of Kyle’s jacket over my hands as I walked around the church and headed down the lane. The morning was cold, but the sky was a crisp, cloudless blue. It felt surreally peaceful, given everything that had happened yesterday.

I reached the road and turned left, heading for the entrance to the subdivision.

There was something sad about all of the empty and half-finished houses. It was like they were sleeping, waiting for people to come and wake them up. I wondered what would happen if the market never recovered. Would the houses be left standing or be razed to the ground?