Savage (15 page)

“He has, actually,” Katelyn said.

“He actually admitted to you that he’s my brother?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“He did,” Katelyn said, masking her dismay.

It wasn’t exactly true. Family, yes, but she’d thought maybe a cousin. But his
brother
? Why hadn’t anyone told her? Why hadn’t Trick?

“Interesting,” Bronson said. “And what else has my dear old brother told you?”

“Everything important, Uncle John,” she bluffed.

He blinked, then chuckled, sure of himself again. “I very much doubt that.” Bronson looked at her. “You ever notice that everyone around here is lying about something? You ever look deep in their eyes and see that underneath everything, they’re scared as hell? Like you, right now?”

His question took her by surprise, and she couldn’t help but answer him. “Yes,” she whispered.

He raised a brow. “That’s because everyone who lives here has secrets.” He walked toward her, and she stiffened. “Of course, some are darker than others. But
everyone
hides something in Wolf Springs.” He waited a beat. Then he smiled broadly at her, as if he were savoring the moment. “Even your precious grandfather.”

What could he possibly want from her? He had made it clear that he had left the silver lying around, like a trail of breadcrumbs, hoping to lure her in. Whatever his motivation for doing that, it dawned on her that it couldn’t be good.

She fumbled in her pocket, trying to get her phone. She could call for help. She could dial 911. Except that would be a total waste of time in Wolf Springs. The two police officers they had were over an hour away.

Then she heard the signal tone that a new text message had just come in.

“Mordecai is not hiding anything,” she said quickly.

“Sure he is. From you.” He took a step toward her.

Her flight instincts were grabbing hold. She was getting jittery, panicky.

“Um, I don’t know what you’re trying to do—”

“Your grandfather murdered someone,” he said. He gazed at her levelly and took another step. “A werewolf.”

She knew that she didn’t want to hear this. She wanted to run.

“A-a
what
?” she stammered, backing away from him. She came up against the edge of the desk.

“Someone from your neck of the woods,” he said, closing the space between them in a fluid, easy motion. “An attorney. Maybe you knew him.”

Everything exploded. Everything.

He nodded at her. She hadn’t believed it until then.

My grandfather killed my father.

10

“I KNEW,” SHE
whispered, wanting to deprive him of whatever sick victory he thought he had.

He raised a finger. He smiled at her, gloating. He had won. What, she had no idea.

“Ah! You might have suspected, but you didn’t
know
. And knowing is so much clearer, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” she said. She had known. Of course she had. She just hadn’t believed.

“Did you know who begged him to do it? Your mother—”

The word galvanized her into action. Before she knew what she was doing, she grabbed the painting and pushed him, hard. He flew backwards and slammed against the floor.

She hit the lobby and ran, terror lending her speed. She yanked open the door and half ran, half fell down the stairs.

She flew through the tunnel, got to her car and drove off. “It’s not true. Mom didn’t call him,” she repeated to herself, over and over. Tears and screams ripped out of her. It wasn’t true. It didn’t happen.

She had known deep down that her grandfather had killed her father. He killed him because he was a werewolf. She had known; she was prepared.

But she hadn’t known that he’d done it because her mother had asked him to.

Her mom had never recovered after her father’s death. She had been fragile, broken, leaving Katelyn to fend for herself. No wonder. She had her husband’s blood on her hands. No wonder it had taken her weeks to touch Katelyn after the funeral, months before she could look her own daughter in the eyes.

She hadn’t even had the courage to do it herself. She’d made Mordecai murder his own son instead.

The cell phone trilled again. She yanked the car to the side of the road and opened up the text window.

Justin had finally responded.

GOT YOUR MESSAGE.

That was it. No “thank you.” No, “we’re safe, don’t worry.”

Well, Justin Fenner and his entire family could go to hell.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she called Trick.

He answered on the second ring, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Katelyn? What’s wrong?”

“Everything. Where are you?”

“I’m with your pappy. On the hunt.”

Katelyn slammed her fist into the steering wheel.

“Darlin’?” he asked, his voice filled with concern. “Do you need to talk?”

She nodded, then cleared her throat and ground out a yes.

“Go ahead.”

She took a shaky breath. “Not like this. Not on the phone.”
Not when my grandfather might hear me
.

“I’ll come back to the cabin right now. Doc can get a ride—”

Her eyes fell on the painting in her passenger seat. “Not tonight. Tomorrow.”

“But—”

“I’m okay. I’ll be okay,” she amended, because there was nothing about the way she sounded that could possibly be taken as okay.

“Still thinking I should get over there,” he said, sounding doubtful.

“No.” She took a deep breath. “And you — you have to be there for me tomorrow. You have to, or I will never, ever forgive you.” She could hear the pain, the hurt in her own voice and she didn’t bother to disguise it.

There was a pause on the other end and then she heard him whisper, “Don’t you worry.”

She hung up before he could say anything else. She picked up the painting and as she did so she couldn’t help but see Jack Bronson’s self-satisfied smirk. What on earth would drive someone to tell a seventeen-year-old girl what he had and to take such joy in the telling? Wiping her eyes, she stared hard at the landscape. Flecks of paint had been scraped away in the bottom corner and she thought she could make out what looked like a number underneath.

She blinked rapidly to clear her vision. One of the books had mentioned that the location of the mine was underneath the artist’s signature and she began to scrape at it. One number, then another; in less than a minute, she had cleared a small strip of them. She stared at them, remembering the first time she had looked at this painting — her first night in Wolf Springs, when Trick had dropped by to meet her. All that time the painting had been right under her nose.

Shaking, she plugged the coordinates into the GPS app on her phone, glancing repeatedly in the rear-view mirror for signs of her uncle. She had no clue what his motivation had been to lure her to the Inner Wolf Center. She was sure now that he had stolen the painting, or had it stolen. But he hadn’t scraped off the signature to get to the coordinates.

She kept to the road until the GPS informed her that she had to take the Subaru off-road. She realized it would be no help for her if she got stranded, but she had to carry on.

The trees grew together more densely, vines hanging down; branches swaying as the snow melted away. She had often thought of this as a Snow White forest, the trees reaching out to grab her as she passed. Now they scraped at the sides of her car and she flinched at the sound.

After a mile, she knew she had to abandon the car.

She saved the GPS route and emailed it to herself, then opened up the message because she would probably lose coverage. By opening it now, she would be able to look at it once that happened. This was so idiotic. It was like those movies where the stupid blonde got out of the car exactly when she shouldn’t.

I’ve already done that
, she thought bitterly.
And I’ve paid the price.

She climbed out and locked her door. At least no one would be hiding in it when she returned. Then she walked into the forest, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other.

She kept going. A mile, then another. She remembered that she was a werewolf and broke into a trot. It felt good to move. More than good: it felt right.

The sun was slanting toward the horizon, warm on her face, and the ground became spongy as the last traces of snow liquefied.

She checked the picture of the map on her phone, veered to her left, and froze.

The heart-shaped boulder. And behind it, a tiny trickle of a waterfall, created by the snowmelt.

Her phone trilled and she jumped, so startled she dropped it. She hadn’t realized she still had bars. She bent to scoop it up with a shaking hand. It was a text.

R U OK - C

Cordelia. Still trembling, Katelyn called the number, hoping her friend would answer. The line picked up, but there was silence.

“It’s me. Kat,” she said, in case Cordelia was hesitant to identify herself.

“I was just checking in but there’s something wrong, isn’t there?” Cordelia asked.

Katelyn almost laughed, but she knew it would come out as a wail. She didn’t even know how to go about catching Cordelia up, or even if she should. Once upon a time she had thought Cordelia had a screwed-up family, but that was nothing compared to what she had just learned about her own.

“I just found the heart-shaped boulder,” she said instead, cutting to the chase. “Just now.”

“Kat!” Cordelia cried, and Katelyn winced, hoping she was alone. The last thing she wanted was for Dom to know about this.

“I’m staring right at it. There’s a little waterfall running behind it.”

“How did you find it? What about the cave?”

“I’m looking for it,” Katelyn said as in her mind she saw the layout of the painting, and scooted backwards, then left, right, as she searched for the cave entrance.

She tried smelling the air. If the mine was as loaded with silver as legend said, maybe she’d be able to smell it from there. Silver might not affect her as it did other werewolves but the smell was still unpleasant.

She walked back and forward, then side to side, trying to line up the angles.

Then, as if by magic, there it was.

She stood frozen in mute astonishment. It couldn’t be that easy.

It hasn’t been. None of this has been easy.

“I think I found it,” Katelyn said.

“Oh, Kat, are you sure?” Cordelia said.

“Let me get a closer look.”

“Be careful. It’s full of silver. Bullets and knives. So my father said.”

Katelyn steadfastly kept her mouth shut about her immunity. “I’m not smelling anything from here. We have to know if there
is
silver.”

“And the — the thing that guards it . . .” Cordelia trailed off. “We saw
that
. We know
that’s
real.”

“We know it’s real,” Katelyn affirmed. Her chest constricted so tightly she couldn’t breathe, and her pulse sounded in her eardrums. Peering left and right, she stayed on alert for an attack. If ever there was a time when she needed to be able to transform, this was it. But she stayed Katelyn, as if the werewolf inside her knew to hide.

She picked her way carefully over the rocks toward the entrance. Movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head farther. There, about forty yards from the boulder, something fluttered in the breeze. It looked like cloth.

“Cor, I see something,” she said, dropping her voice.

“Oh, God, what?”

“I’m going to check it out.”

Katelyn took a couple of steps forward and a sickly sweet smell assaulted her. She jerked hard. The same scent had clung to her when she had awakened after her first full moon, to find a deer carcass in the clearing and blood on her face.

A cramping fear twisted in the pit of her stomach. Every instinct she possessed cried out for her to flee.

Hellhound
.

But she had faced down the Hellhound, and it hadn’t smelled like that.

Death
smelled like that.

Dizzily, she stared at the entrance to the mine and shook her head in refusal. Nothing was worth going there. Let all the Fenners and Gaudins die.

I have the gun
, she thought.

The gun that she had never fired in her life.

The stench of death wafted toward her. An instinct kicked in: she wanted, needed, to know what had been killed. It went beyond an impulse. It was a directive from deep inside her.

An animalistic drive.

I’m not really doing this, am I?

But she was. As if she had lost all mastery of herself, she walked a few more cautious steps, and she saw the remains of a campfire that had burned itself out. A sleeping bag, duffel bag, shovel, pick, and other supplies appeared to be untouched. The camper had come with a mission.

A hundred yards from the cave entrance she spotted a lump, something lying among the rocks. The death smell billowed up from it like a cloud of smoke.

Too rotten to eat
, she thought. And then when she saw it, she began screaming.

Hollow eye sockets. A chest cavity emptied of all the organs.

Mr. Henderson.

“What is it?” Cordelia was shouting over and over in her ear. “Kat? Damn it, what?”

There was a book shoved partway in one of the duffel bags. Breath hitching, Katelyn yanked it out to find a book that said
U.S. Geographic Survey Northwest Arkansas.
A page was marked with a sheaf of papers and she pulled them out.

It was a photocopy of the history report she and Cordelia had written. Next to their concluding paragraph where they claimed the story was a myth, he had written LIE and underlined it.

She crumpled the paper against her chest and began to rock. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she wept. They had given Mr. Henderson just enough information to complete his own research. They had led him there.

And a werewolf — or worse — had killed him.

“It’s Mr. Henderson,” she forced out.

“Oh, God,” Cordelia said. “Kat, you have to get out of there.”

A snuffling noise landed on Katelyn’s ear just a little too softly to hear, as if warm breath, invisible, nearly undetectable, was spraying the back of her neck.