Rivals and Retribution (26 page)

He was nibbling tentatively on a beef jerky strip when the cafeteria doors were opened from the small courtyard and a puff of cold wind blew across my back, picking up my hair and waving it out ahead of me in the space between Pietr and me. I swatted it down and pulled it back behind my neck, but Pietr’s pale skin tone greened slightly and he launched himself toward the hallway and the nearest bathroom.

“I swear I deodorized,” I said, trying to make light of the strange way Pietr was acting. I grabbed my lit notebook and jotted that line down. I could use that in my novel assignment, too.

Amy smiled weakly at me.

“Max?” I said, closing my notebook, but he was already wiping his mouth and getting to his feet.

“I’ll go check on him.”

“Maybe you should just take him home,” I suggested. “He’s obviously too sick to be here. Maybe call Alexi…”

He nodded. “See you at home,” he said to Amy, leaning down to kiss her.

Stretching up in her seat she kissed a smile back onto his face and I was instantly jealous. Not of Amy kissing Max, but of the fact that any recent action like that on my part would have left Pietr puking up a lung.

Considering I was dating one of the hottest guys at Junction, the current situation was far from good for my self-esteem.

The rest of the lunch period was relatively uneventful, and I used my special all-purpose-Harnek-pass to skip out on science and head to the boiler room to check on the “specialists” as Sophie and I had taken to calling them.

There were fewer now that Wondermann’s company was no longer providing the food that had been dosed with a triggering agent, and a few of the remaining ones had lost nearly all their powers—as well as their sense of what made them special.

High school was weird that way. Most of the time you just wanted to fit in, but sometimes you were desperate to know how different you were from the rest of the crowd.

Sophia looked up when she heard me on the stairs and then made a point of looking behind me. “I didn’t bring them,” I announced, realizing she expected the pups. “You haven’t said I can yet.”

“Yet,” she said with a smile. “Still an optimist.” She closed the book she was flipping through and signaled me over. “Maybe you should. It’s all Island of Misfit Toys down here anyhow. How much more misfit can you get than a cult of teenage werewolves on the run?”

I grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

“Don’t say spirit,” she requested, and I laughed.

“Next time then.”

Marlaena

They were only a few yards ahead when I found them, Pietr and Max, hunting. They ran as smoothly as water over the snowy path, focused intently on the deer that couldn’t be far beyond my sight since it smelled so strongly of musk and fear. I saw it a heartbeat before Max went for its belly and Pietr its throat, and in the space of the next three heartbeats the deer’s heart had beat its last.

They tore into it, not even noticing me until I clicked my teeth together, and they turned, faces smeared with bright and beautiful blood, mouths dripping gore and drool. Beautiful beasts, they glared at me, their eyes as red as my own.

But before they decided whether to invite me to dinner or chase me away, a branch broke on the other side of the thicket and we knew we were not alone.

A bullet cut into my shoulder, and I yelped as I rolled to face the direction it’d come from.

Not the direction of the broken branch.

Another shot ruffled Max’s fur and he turned that way, snarling and backing up so his haunch hit mine. I whined, trying to see one of our opponents, and another gun fired, the bullet ripping through the leafless undergrowth. There was a clatter like a gun had hit the ground and someone cursed.

Someone else exclaimed something in Russian, and suddenly the woods were alive with three angry voices. We lowered ourselves to our bellies and prepared to spring, my heart pounding through me as my shoulder throbbed. I nipped at it.

Over our heads someone shouted at the others, “Drop your weapons and I will let you live.” Dmitri?

“You drop your weapon and we’ll let you live,” someone shouted back—a woman, by the pitch of her voice.

“Do it!” another man shouted.

Dmitri snarled something in Russian again and opened fire on them both.

For a few moments the air above us was alive with bullets and the fur along my back buzzed with shots that came too close.

And then there was only ragged breathing, from me and … from the bushes surrounding us.

And then it was only mine.

Cautiously we rose to our full canine heights and prowled the underbrush, our ears our first line of defense. There were no more words from the shooters, no more sounds of breathing, and when I found the first one, a young man in hunting gear, I realized there was no more life to them, either. I stalked to the other bodies, Dmitri’s and the woman’s, and I paused and tilted my head, recognizing her.

I had seen her before at the motel. I had even made a face at her while I finished my breakfast. I pressed my nose to her throat, taking in a deep breath of her scent, and I hopped back. Like bad luck, her scent had been nearby ever since Chicago.

I raced back to the young man and took a long sniff of him as well. Also familiar! The hunters who had chased us—the ones who had taken Harmony and dogged our steps all the way to Junction—lay dead around the Rusakovas’ fresh venison. Forgetting the pain in my shoulder I sat back and I howled out my joy.

Suddenly I was human and shivering, and Pietr, naked and bloodstained from the deer, his fingers trembling, dug the bullet out of my shoulder as the wound began to close. In that moment, between the stars and the snow, was the closest I’d come to perfection. I grabbed him and kissed him hard.

And he kissed me back.

Jessie

Pietr came to my bedroom window that night, spattered and smeared with blood. I pulled him inside and watched him tumble to my bedroom floor, his feet tangling and his body shaking like he had the worst case of the flu ever. “What’s wrong, Pietr?” I whispered, pulling him close.

He was cold—so cold, and that was definitely not in his nature. “Dmitri is dead. And hunters. They shot each other fighting over who got the glory of killing the three of us.”

“Are Max and Cat okay?” I asked, scrambling up to look out the window onto the lawn.

“
Da,
” he whispered. Max and … Cat are fine. But I…”

“You’re a wreck. I need to get you home.”

“
Nyet, nyet,
” he moaned. “Not home…” He rubbed at his eyes so hard I pulled his hand away. “There is something I must tell you,” he said, his voice hoarse and breaking. He sucked down a deep breath. “Since I broke through the cure, something is different.… Something is wrong with me. Something in me has broken,” he whispered. “
Puhzhalsta,
please … you must help me.”

I wrapped my arms around him, and he shuddered in my grasp. “I will, I’ll do whatever I can to make this better,” I promised.

“Say it again,” he begged. “Promise me that whatever it takes, you’ll help me make this better.” He grabbed my head, holding my face in his hands and staring at me with desperate eyes.

“Of course…”

“Promise.”

“I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to make this better.”

“Thank you, thank you, Jess,” he whispered, right before he grabbed my trash can and heaved his guts into it.

I called Max. “He’s acting really weird.”

Silence.

“Max?”

“
Da,
I know this, Jessie. I just don’t know why. What is he doing now?”

“Sleeping—well, shivering in his sleep. He feels cold. That’s not normal, is it?”

“
Nyet
. I’ll come get him.”

“Come get us both. I’ll leave a note for Annabelle Lee. She’ll cover for me.” I hoped.

He did not fight us when we loaded him into the car to take him home, and alone in his room, he finally told me what he needed me to do. “Cure me again, Jess.”

“It didn’t hold—it’s not permanent.”

“But it helped. I need that help now,” he said, his eyes roaming the room.

“Fine. I’ll cure you in the morning.”

“No,” he whispered, grabbing my arm. “You must do it now.”

Seeing him so scared, I could not deny him. So I gathered the necessary items, cut myself, and mixed the cure for Pietr.

And, for the sake of my own remaining sanity, I stepped out of his room while he went through his final change.

Again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Marlaena

Since we’d shared that kiss the night Dmitri and the hunters ended one another, Pietr Rusakova had become a fire in my brain—a simmering sensation that slipped into the space between my skull and flesh and seethed there at a slow and steady boil. But I loved Gareth, not Pietr Rusakova and his lean body with sleek muscles and slightly slanting eyes that gave him a mysterious eastern air.… My stomach dropped and my knees loosened.…

Damn it!

With a sweep of my arms I cleared the nearest table and for a moment the sizzling in my skull lessened.

But Pietr’s image assaulted me again, and I bit back a scream of frustration.

I didn’t love Pietr. He didn’t love me. This horrible chain between us—this strangely unbreakable bond—was driving me crazy.

And I knew he wasn’t doing any better.

We watched each other—absorbed every detail of the other—like addicts taking their next hit. It was embarrassing at best. But it was more than that. It was crippling.

I fell to my knees, scrambling to pick up the stray items I’d knocked down, praying that by keeping busy I’d lock my brain down. Get my emotions back under control.

But I picked up a photo and saw Jessica and Pietr. Together. My teeth lengthened and sharpened into fangs, and my body buzzed realizing I wanted to tear her apart with my teeth—shred her just to hear her scream—just to know she’d never touch Pietr again.

I jumped up, the photo falling from my fingers, and swinging around I cracked my hand into the table’s edge.

“Owww!” I cried out, thrusting my fingers into my mouth to suck on them as I paced the room, mad at myself for being so stupid.

And for a solid three minutes I thought of nothing but my pain.

My head snapped up at the sound of someone in the doorway. Gareth asked, “You okay?”

I felt woozy just looking at him, but I steadied myself. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

He nodded and got ready to go.

“Wait.”

He turned back to face me quickly. “What do you need?”

That was Gareth. Wanting to satisfy my needs. “The thing people do to try and block an idea or habit from their mind.… It’s a therapy, I think…”

“What sort of therapy?”

I shrugged noncommittally, but the idea had stuck in my head now and I was determined to see it through. “Something where they … I don’t know … pinch themselves or poke themselves or…”

“A therapy where someone hurts themselves?”

“Kind of … It makes them associate the pain with the habit they want to break.”

His eyes were impossibly kind. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t hurt yourself over this, ’laena.”

“I’m already hurting
you
over this.”

He looked away.

“Aren’t I?”

“This is difficult on everyone.”

“What is this?” I countered. “Maybe if I know…” I shook my head. “Whatever it is, it’s making me do things I don’t understand—things I don’t want to do.…”

“You don’t know what this is that’s making you act this way with him?”

“No,” I admitted, my stomach curling in on itself in fear. “Do you know?”

“I think so,” he whispered. “And I don’t think aversion therapy is going to help. I think you’ve imprinted with Pietr Rusakova.”

*   *   *

I sat down. It was crazy. Imprinting was something that only happened in novels or movies. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

I coughed out a laugh. “Yeah. Right. Imprinting. Like in
Twilight
? I swear I won’t get any more books.”

“Not just
Twilight
—there’ve been other books and graphic novels that suggest it. And the possibility … I overheard some things while Dmitri was around. It’s more than possible. I’m sorry, ’laena, but that’s the only real explanation. Unless you’ve fallen for him.”

“No. No. I do not have
any
feelings for Pietr Rusakova. Except the occasional annoyance. Okay. More than occasional.”

“Then it’s an imprint.”

I shook my head again, but it only made his image swim in my sight as his scent finally reached me.

“You look pale. I need to go, don’t I?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too, ’laena. Me too.”

I couldn’t stay there, not in that house surrounded by aspects of Pietr and coddled by Gareth’s kindness. I sneaked out the door as soon as I heard Gareth head up the stairs to the bathroom, and pulling my hood up, I did my best to disappear into Junction.

I found a small diner somewhere between the Rusakovas’ Queen Anne and the motel we’d left, and fighting a creeping nausea, I took a seat and emptied my pockets. Seven dollars.

I ordered dry toast and water and bravely nibbled and sipped. My stomach turned in rebellion, and I shoved the plate aside.

His arrival made me jump. He’d looked much better when he’d run with my pack. But now Gabriel’s hair was oily, the edges of his jacket’s sleeves were tinged with dirt, and although no one else seemed to notice, he smelled.

“You need to go,” I whispered, leaning across the table. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“You don’t look so good, ’laena,” he said. He reached for my hand, and I pulled it away just before his remaining fingers brushed mine. “Look what Pietr Rusakova has done to you just by existing.”

I swallowed hard, not wanting to know how he’d figured it out when it seemed Pietr and I were the last to know. “You’re as guilty as he is—guiltier,” I muttered. “If you hadn’t kidnapped Jessica, then Pietr wouldn’t have broken past the cure and maybe we would have never known. Maybe we could have just gone on. Left Junction. Been happy…” I lowered my head to the table’s cool surface and shuddered when a chill raced down my backbone. “Sometimes it’s best never to know something. Look what knowing’s done. Look how it’s destroying—things…” I barely stopped from saying
us,
seeing a very worried-looking Gareth open the diner’s door.