Samhain (Matilda Kavanagh Book 2) (22 page)

His eyes were indeed bigger now, and the bones of his face were shifting under his skin. “It is time, Matilda. Don’t stand in our way.”

I shook my head, my mouth opening and closing as I tried to think of something—anything—to say, but words failed me. The madness in his eyes was mesmerizing. His passionate words, his very energy, it all worked to speed the beating of my heart. For one moment, I understood how a Beta Wolf had managed to become the leader of a pack.

“Tollis, whatever you’re planning…” I touched his chest, feeling the intense heat coming from his body. “Don’t do this. These are innocent people.”

“No, they are not.” He lifted his hand and placed it over mine, pressing it against his chest. Power snapped to my hand in my panic, the shocks slipping into his body, and he didn’t even flinch. “Anyone who helps in the oppression of their own race is not innocent.”

I twisted my head around, trying to find Ronnie and Joey, but I couldn’t see them through the constantly shifting crowd. I felt Ronnie’s name rising to my lips. I was ready to scream for her when the pressure around my hand was gone. I turned back to see that Tollis had disappeared, melding seamlessly with the crowd. I had no idea where he had gone. I screamed his name, causing a few people to turn and look at me, but not one of them was the Were I was looking for. The multicolored costumes, hundreds of faces, and the lights of the food court swirled around me. Tollis was gone.

I rushed forward, fighting my way back through the crowd to find Ronnie and Joey. When I reached the place where I’d left Joey, she was gone. My plate with my half-eaten funnel cake was facedown on the ground, ants already converging upon the sugary mess. I yelled both of their names again and again, but neither answered. I doubted they could even hear me.

My heart was trying to rip its way through my chest, and my hands shook hard enough to hurt. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. It took two tries for me to punch in my password. When I finally found Jameson’s number, I almost screamed when it went to voice mail without even ringing. I tried two more times with the same results before I moved on to Kyle’s number. Kyle’s rang, but he didn’t answer.

“Kyle, you guys have to get to Summerwick.” I pressed the phone close to my mouth, cupping my hand around it, and hoped I could be heard clearly over the cacophony. “Tollis is here, and his pack, they’re going to kill people. Kyle, please!” I hung up and stared at my phone, willing it to ring and hoping to see Jameson or Kyle’s face cross the screen.

I glanced at the sky. The moon was full and bright, and I thought I heard howling in the distance. I knew the pack would be in the mountains now, a good thirty or forty minutes away. There was no way I could get to them before Tollis started whatever horror show he was planning.

I thumbed through my contacts until I found Fletcher’s name. Vampires didn’t usually come to these gatherings because business at the Esterwyn over Halloween weekend was busy. I just prayed I could get ahold of Fletcher. He answered on the second ring.

“I need your help,” I said before he could even finish saying hello.

“What’s wrong?”

“Tollis, that rogue Were? He’s here, at the festival.”

“What?” I had to pull the phone away from my ear when he yelled.

“And he has other wolves with him.”

“Mattie, you have to get out of there.”

“I can’t. I don’t know what he’s planning, but there are people here, and I think he’s going to kill them.”

“Mattie, you’re people.” Fletcher was moving. I heard the change in the background on his end of the line.

“I know,” I said, touching my forehead as I scanned the crowd, looking for my missing friends. “He said something about a new year and a new start and that humans should be bending to his will.”

“Mattie, it’s Samhain and a full moon,” Fletcher said. I heard the sound of a car door slamming shut. “They won’t just be Weres, do you understand?”

“The Madness,” I whispered, remembering Jameson and Kyle’s conversation.

“Yes, the Moon Madness. You have to get somewhere safe.”

“No, I need to find Jameson,” I said. “Jameson could stop him.”

“Where is he?”

“In the mountains somewhere.”

“Fantastic.”

“I tried to call him, but he’s out of range already.”

“Even better.”

“Fletcher…” My voice caught in my throat when a clear howl rang through the air. It cut through the drums and the singing and the noise of the crowd. A chorus of howls answered.

“Mattie,” Fletcher yelled into the phone, startling me. “Get out of there!”

“I can’t! There are children here, and Ronnie and Joey! I can’t find them!”

“Mattie—”

“Just find Jameson, please, Fletcher.” I hung up, cutting off whatever else he might’ve said, and jammed the phone back into my pocket. I turned and ran for the Great Bonfire, remembering the Were taking the unlit torch.

It was the screaming I registered first. Once I stepped into the clearing with the Great Bonfire ready to be set aflame, I saw people running for their lives. I froze, and the bracelets around my wrists hummed with life. A woman was frantically searching for her baby. I heard it crying to my right, its wails lost among so many other voices. I dashed in its direction and found a small boy, not even two years old, hidden by a trash can. His onesie was torn, and his face paint was smeared with tears and dirt. I scooped him up and ran for the woman.

“Oh bless you!” she cried as she took her baby, leaving me with only a smear of blue paint on my shirt. “What’s happening?”

“It’s the Madness,” I said, pushing at her shoulders to get her to run. “Run, leave, get to shelter.”

Her eyes were impossibly wide, but she nodded and ran. When I turned back to the clearing, I saw what I expected to see: all of the torches were missing. They were trying to make sure the Great Bonfire wouldn’t be lit.

In the shadows, I saw figures running around the mass of wood, attacking and tackling people. I heard the snap of bones and a sucking noise that made my stomach roil. The sounds of howls and barks cut through the screaming, jarring me to the bone. One of the moon-stricken raised his head from his victim’s limp body. I slapped a hand to my mouth. He was half-man and half-monster. The bones of his face had elongated, stretching the skin. His eyes were black and glinted in the moonlight. His fingers had long and sinister claws, and blood dripped everywhere.

I ducked behind a trash can before he noticed me. My bracelets vibrated against my wrist, nearly burning me. Those weren’t werewolves; they were monsters, pure and simple. I leaned around the trash can to risk a glance and regretted it the second my eyes focused on the scene around me. There were puddles of blood and broken bodies littered around the Great Bonfire. Across the way, a familiar figure stood with his hands on his hips, grinning from ear to ear as he stared at the unlit mass of tinder.

They don’t want it lit because it would cleanse them
. I watched Tollis point at one last torch that someone had forgotten. He barked an order at a half-shifted Were, and the furry-faced man snatched the torch out of the ground and broke it over his knee before running away with the remnants.

That was just fine. I didn’t need fire and torches to light the Bonfire. I sank back behind the trash can, bracing my back against the cool metal. I stared at my hands and called the swirling power from the center of my body. Letting my anger and fear fuel it, I directed the power down my arms until my hands were alive with electric pulses.

I climbed to my feet, keeping crouched so I would be below the line of sight as I stepped out from behind my smelly shield. Just then, a grotesque figure loped forward, hands little more than claws. It crashed into a man, mounted his back, and began ripping into him. It tore at his flesh with teeth and claws, throwing back its head to howl at the sky, sending chills down my back.

The creature looked very much like a wolf with tufts of fur all over its body and an elongated snout full of sharp, dripping teeth. Its limbs were all angles and claws, but what struck me were the shredded remains of clothing clinging to it. It was like one of those old movie werewolves, before people knew they were real and what they really looked like after they shifted.

I moved forward. The beast was still tearing into the man’s carcass, totally oblivious to my approach. The man was dead, his screams long silenced, but I didn’t want to let the beast devour him and leave nothing for his family to bury or burn. Magic swirled at my fingers, and as I lifted my hand, I concentrated on the beast. Bolts of power shot forward and struck the beast in the back. He arched his back, flesh and blood flying as he threw back his head with a yowl of pain. The power coursed out of me, striking at the beast until he toppled over and lay dead on the ground. I reined in my power, pulling it back into my body with a gasp.

I stared at my hands in horror—I had never used my power to kill anyone before. I didn’t think I ever thought I could, but I couldn’t stand back and watch beasts rip people apart, even if they were out of their minds and had no control over what they were doing. My hands shook. The bolts of power at my fingers were dimmer, weaker than they had been. I had never used that much power at one time, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I could run out of juice.

“Toads,” I whispered when I lifted my gaze and my eyes locked on Tollis’s face.

He was just a few yards away and staring right at me. His eyes were an eerie yellow, glinting in the moonlight as he moved toward me. I was surprised to see that, other than his eyes, he showed no signs of shifting, despite the full moon hanging over us.

I stepped backward, holding my hands up in front of me. The tiny sparks of power snapped, but they’d lost their threatening quality. Tollis smirked. He walked faster, losing his casual lope as he came at me. My foot slipped on something soft and wet, and I lost my balance. When I hit the ground, the power in my hands shot out and extinguished.

I groaned and rolled over to get on my hands and knees. I saw the thing I’d slipped on—a severed hand with a white stump of bone jutting out of it. I felt funnel cake threatening to come up as I looked away. Tollis was much closer than he had been, and for one fleeting moment, I wondered if he’d run when I wasn’t looking. My fingers dug into the earth, and I pushed with the balls of my feet, desperate to get up and away. The dirt shifted as I struggled. I had to catch myself from falling, but soon I was upright and running.

But not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. Tollis made a noise, something close to a snarl or growl, and in the next moment, his fingers raked down my back as he reached for my sweatshirt. I screamed—I couldn’t help it. His fingers wrapped around the hood of my sweatshirt, and he pulled, stopping me in my tracks. My feet went out from under me, but Tollis’s strength kept me from hitting the ground this time.

The neck of my sweatshirt pulled against my throat. I flailed my arms and legs, trying to kick him or claw him or do anything to get him to let go so I could run. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the kinetic power inside me. I willed it forward, imaging it bursting out of me and striking Tollis in his stupid, smiling face, but nothing happened. I’d drained my power, and I had no way of knowing when it would come back.

“Might as well stop.” Tollis pushed my shoulder, spinning me around while he held me off the ground by the hood of my sweatshirt.

The neck hole tightened as the fabric twisted in his grasp. I stopped trying to claw at him and tried to pull the collar, gasping for air. I wriggled and fought, trying to drop out of the sweatshirt, but Tollis realized what I was doing and set me on my feet.

“You’re like a wet cat,” Tollis teased.

As soon as my feet hit the ground, I tried to run. His arms wrapped around my waist, pinning my arms to my side and holding me against him. I tried to stomp on his feet, kick him in the shins, grab anything soft that I could reach, but Tollis just laughed, hefted me a couple of inches off the ground, and walked.

“I do love a lively hunt,” Tollis said, though his words were a little muffled.

I craned my neck and saw that his face wasn’t quite as normal as it had been. His teeth pressed at his lips, making him look as though he was wearing a mouth guard, and his eyes were slanting toward his nose. He bent his face close to me and snuffled my hair. When he pulled away, he sighed happily. I squirmed, trying to break away, but every time I moved, he only tightened his grasp on me, making it that much harder to breathe again.

We walked past the Great Bonfire, still unlit and sitting there like an unwonted hero that didn’t know what to do to save the day. I heard branches breaking. When we rounded the side of the Bonfire, I saw two men with glinting yellow eyes methodically ripping the Bonfire apart. My stomach churned, and I had to swallow against the bile rising in my throat. I should have gotten the damn thing lit.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, trying to squirm out of his grip.

“Someplace safe. At least,
safer
.” Tollis chuckled again and lifted me higher so that I couldn’t see where we were going.

I stared at the sky and the bright full moon. I felt the curses on my tongue and wanted to rip that orb from the sky. I steeled my anger and took a breath. Wherever he was taking me, when we got there, he would have to put me down. When he did, he was getting a face full of knockout powder. Stupid, sneaking wolf.

Chapter 16

We were getting too far away from the festival grounds. Soon we’d be so far away, no one would know what had happened to me.

My mother’s voice echoed in my head, “Mattie, no matter what happens to you when you try to get away, it won’t be nearly as bad as what they’re planning on doing to you when they get wherever they’re going.” My mother had always taught me to fight—fight to the death—if someone tried to take me against my will. I’d never tried to fight a werewolf, especially not on the night of the full moon, but my mother’s voice was screaming at me to fight, telling me it was better to die a quick death than suffer the torture he might be planning for me.