Unleashed (10 page)

“I’d already moved the deer,” he pointed out. “Those idiots with their drumming and howling are upsetting the animals. It was probably scared and confused.”

She thought about Haley. Maybe that was what had happened: she’d been out alone and the drumming had frightened a wolf, maybe even the same wolf. The images that rushed through her mind made her feel ill. To die like that … it would be hideous.

“The forest isn’t safe, Kat,” he said, putting his hands back on the wheel. “There’s a lot of animals and it’s easy to get lost. Besides, you wouldn’t want to come across one of those Inner Wolf guys in the dark. They’ve got to be off their rocker to go to the program, and who knows what that Bronson guy’s telling them to do?”

Katelyn thought of the way the wolf had looked at her, its bloody mouth, the light in its brilliant blue eyes. It hadn’t looked scared to her. It had looked … angry and cruel and amused all at the same time. She could feel herself beginning to shake as what she had seen set in. The drums persisted. Somewhere a little ways off she heard a howl and it sent a new wave of chills through her body.

The tires squealed as Trick floored it. She looked down at her arm and was relieved to see that the bleeding was slowing. She closed her eyes and slumped down into her seat as the tears came.

4

W
hen Trick and Katelyn pulled up to the cabin, her grandfather was standing on the front porch, rifle in hand. The sight unnerved her and the fear in the pit of her stomach was joined by something new—anger. As soon as Trick stopped the car, she jumped out and ran up the steps past Ed into the house. She headed for the stairs but the sight of the glassy-eyed animal heads sent her running instead for the kitchen.

On the porch she heard her grandfather’s voice: “What in the Sam Hill happened?”

She didn’t hear Trick’s reply, but her grandfather swore loudly. She cringed as she splashed cold water from the sink onto her face. She tried to pretend that the rivulets of water would wash away the past few weeks, but when she had dried off her face and turned around, Mordecai was leaning in the doorway, one thumb hooked in a belt loop, the rifle still gripped in the other hand. He watched her with a fierce, steady gaze.

“You okay?” he asked, and there was concern in his eyes.

She dropped her hands to her sides. “No, I’m really not,” she said. “Did Trick tell you what happened?”

He nodded.

“That wolf … it was a monster,” she said, hating the way her voice shook.

“That’s what lives in the forest,” he said. Then he put down the rifle and crossed to her. He joined her at the sink.

“Do you know how to shoot a rifle?” he asked her.

“Of course not,” she replied without thinking, revulsion thick in her voice.

“Then it’s about time you learned.”

“A gun?” she said. Before that day, she had never touched a gun in her entire life. And she never planned to again. A gun had killed her father. They were scarier than earthquakes or fires.

“This here’s a Marlin,” he said, indicating the rifle. “Can’t be beat for hunting.”

“I-I’m not going to be hunting anything.”

He gave her a stern look. “I get that. But it’s my job to make sure you don’t become prey.”

Prey. The word conjured up terrifying images in her mind—blood, and teeth, and death. She remembered the blood on the wolf’s fangs. From the deer or something else?

“Okay,” she said finally, “but I can’t shoot anything. Not even that wolf.”

There was a beat. A dark shadow seemed to pass over his face, and his eyes hardened. “There’s more than one kind of wild animal out there.”

“Oh, my God.” Kimi’s voice was distant on the phone but Katelyn was grateful to hear it at any volume. “You have got to get out of there.”

Katelyn was in the kitchen with the handset cradled tightly between her ear and her shoulder. She and her grandfather had finished dinner, and she had offered to wash the dishes so she could talk to Kimi at the same time. He didn’t have a dishwasher, and she was up to her wrists in Palmolive. She had eaten vegetable lasagna for dinner, while he had apparently fried “the bird” for himself. All through dinner, Katelyn had done her best to avoid looking at his plate, but now she had to wash it. She was afraid she would find uncooked pieces of rotting fowl in the trash—the head, or the claws.

“It jumped right on the hood,” Katelyn said. “And it was drooling blood.”

“
What
?” Kimi asked, sounding both shocked and excited.

“Yeah, no kidding. It came after me while Trick was dragging a dead deer off the road. We were late coming home because his tires got slashed.” As she spoke, she heard how crazy it all sounded.

“
What the hell
?”

“Lucky thing Trick had a gun,” Katelyn added, enjoying the chance to goose Kimi a little and get everything off her chest at the same time.

“Mom!” Kimi shouted. “File the emancipation papers stat!”

“Don’t joke,” Katelyn said, losing her bravado.

“Joke? Who’s joking? What could he do if we got a judge to spring you? Shoot you? Like that poor deer and—and that chicken?”

“He didn’t shoot the deer,” Katelyn said, glancing down queasily at the trash can. She wasn’t so sure about the chicken.

“Come home.”

“I want to.” Waves of homesickness rolled over her as the silverware jangled in her soapy hands. Then she imagined her house the way she’d last seen it—the stucco walls charred and fallen in and sutured with yellow plastic caution tape like a massive broken heart. The interior nothing but ash and a few intact odds and ends—her boots beside the front door, an old doll head, two yellow raincoats on melted plastic clothes hangers, and the picture frames that had once held her mother’s portraits. The photos had burned.

“So why not fight him?” Kimi said.

“Because … maybe he’ll just give up and let me leave,” she said. “If I’m nice. But if I, like, sue him, and I lose … it would suck.”

“Which is why you’re there instead of here. If you
had
fought … Okay, okay,” she said, sounding as if she had turned her head away from the phone. “Mom said to back off. She says unless you’re scared he’s going to shoot you, the fact that you willingly moved to Arkansas will make it harder, because you’re with your legal guardian.”

Great
. Katelyn felt herself collapsing inside and panic began to set in. “I wish I had—”

And then she stopped speaking, because her grandfather stepped into the kitchen.

“Hey, Ed,” she said.

“Can you not talk?” Kimi asked.

“I need to make a couple calls,” her grandfather informed her. “Can you call your friend back later?”

“Sure,” she said. “Kimi, I need to call you back later, okay?”

“Can you
please
speak to him about getting hooked up?” Kimi asked. “Even on dial-up? So we could at least Skype? And I can see for myself that you haven’t morphed into Daisy Mae yet?”

“Sure,” Katelyn said.

“Tell him you need it for school.”

It was obvious Kimi hadn’t grasped how isolated the cabin was. Or that there was no way anyone would need the Internet for Wolf Springs High.

They hung up, and Katelyn looked at her grandfather with free-floating anxiety.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“Just … homesick.”

He nodded. “That’s to be expected.” No words of comfort, nothing.

“I got invited over to Cordelia’s after school tomorrow,” she said as she unplugged the drain in the sink. “To work on a history project.” She hadn’t brought it up at dinner because she’d been nervous about asking him. If he said no, there would be no escaping the fact that she was basically a prisoner, and she didn’t know how she’d deal with that along with everything else. Maybe then she
would
fight him.

He looked puzzled as he picked up the phone handset. “Cordelia …”

“Fenner.”

His eyes flickered. “The Fenners keep to themselves these days.”

“Yeah, I guess. She told me she can bring me back here before dark, though.”

He looked at her. Really looked. His forehead creased. His eyes narrowed. Something in his expression sent an uncertain skitter up her spine.

“Ed?” she asked. How weird could this be?

Another beat. Then he seemed to relax. “Sure. Call me tomorrow and give me their home phone number. And let me know before you two leave her place.”

“Okay.” Despite the victory, it bothered her how happy and relieved she was. So she wasn’t a prisoner, but she still didn’t want to make connections here, put down roots. She’d get out of the house and do her homework with Cordelia, but that was it.

Conflicted, she went to her room and sat on her bed with her textbooks spread around her in a semicircle and her little talking bear in her lap. She pressed its heart.

“
Kimi misses Katie
.”

It was raining again. She could almost smell the wet leaves through the skylight above her head. Her mind wandered to Trick pacing in the rain in the senior lot, then dragging the deer carcass off the road. He carried a
gun
in his Mustang.

He’s weird
, she thought,
but he’s hot
. She smiled wryly. And there was no denying that there was attraction. But he had a lot of backstory she didn’t know—court, enemies. Unpredictability. Cordelia didn’t like him and didn’t like Katelyn being around him.

Before she knew it, her head was drooping forward; thoughts of Trick and of all the little factoids that together composed the mighty mass of knowledge she was trying to compress into her mind drifted away from each other like stars in the Milky Way. She saw Trick’s eyes and then the eyes of the wolf. Cunning, intelligent. Sinister.

It wanted to get at me
, she thought as she scooted down and rested her cheek on the sharp edge of her plastic binder. She pushed it away, found the pillow, and nestled in. Above her, the rain tapped on the skylight. She listened as she drowsed. It had rained more in the past three days than it rained in a year in Santa Monica.

Plink … plink …

She tensed. Was that a growl?

Just the wind
, she told herself.

The wind. And the drums
.

The wind
.

And the drums
.

And her heartbeat
.

The wind
.

And the
plink … plink … plink …

The
click … click … click …

… 
of nails …
click … click …

She was asleep, and she wasn’t. She knew she was asleep. But it was coming. She could hear it panting
.

Click, click.

Coming closer
.

Click, click.

She couldn’t move. Terror enveloped her, heavy, warm
.

It had stopped beside her bed. Her eyes were closed—because she was asleep—but she knew it was looking at her with its blue …

No, not its blue

Leaf-green

Tree-brown

Silvery-moonbeam

Golden-yellow

Her eyes were closed, but its eyes were wide open
.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t whimper
.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Wake up, wake up,
she begged herself
. Save yourself.

If you go into the woods tonight, you’d better go in disguise
.

But she wasn’t in the woods. She was in her bed
.

And
It
was here … leaning over her. Saliva dripped on her cheek
.

Wake up, wake up.

Just the wind
.

And the drums
.