The Night Has Teeth (28 page)

“Connor, snap out of it,” she instructs me. “Clean
up and go. Take her car. Tell your pack.”

Even though the words register, she might as well be
talking to someone else. Instead of obeying, I just watch as she
pockets the flash drive.

“What are you doing?”

She sets the gun down next to me. Waiting in the
jeep must have bored her, so she came out to investigate. When she
overheard the last part of my conversation with Boadicea, she must
have connected the disjointed dots without even thinking how or why
the gun was set aside. Bringing her along was a mistake. I should
have known.

“This is my job,” she finally responds. “You have
to go now, Connor.”

I can’t. I can barely move.

With a sigh of frustration she continues. “You may
be new to all this, but there are rules that we have to play
by.”

“And who determines these rules?” I ask, trying to
gain control of the situation. “Some werewolf high
court?”

She looks at me square on, all her sass and
playfulness gone. “The Hounds of God, actually. And I enforce their
rules.”

“Well, I call time-out, alright?” I tell her, the
panic in my voice now audible.

“Sorry, but there’s no such thing.”

She sounds like a little girl trying to educate an
adult on a child’s game. As though the rules she plays by are set
in stone. Everything in my life has been turned on its head, so
let’s just say I’m not up to playing by anyone else’s rules.

Closing my eyes for a second, I simply say, “I’m
done, Madison.”

She laughs meanly. “You haven’t even started,
Connor.”

Numbness washes over me. When I look over at her
again, she drops my backpack into my lap. The zipper is open. With
businesslike efficiency, she puts the gun on top then pulls a
yellow plastic tube from the pocket of her hoodie and sticks that
in the front pouch before closing the bag.

“What was that?”

“It’s like an EpiPen,” she tells me, scrubbing my
hands clean with the sleeve of her hoodie and handing me the keys I
never caught. “You’ll want to keep it handy in case you bite
someone. It’s the antivenin.”

I can only conclude my suspicion was right. The
antivenin didn’t just come into her possession. Someone delivered
it to her. My guess: Trajan and Attila. That’s why they were
hanging around her boarding house. I was just a fortunate
distraction to them.

“The Hounds of God work with Boguet,” I accuse
outright.

“Not quite,” she replies. “You know what they say:
keep your friends close...”

“Am I a friend or an enemy?”

“That’s up to you,” she answers frankly. “Now get
up.”

Although she’s sort of given me answers, they’ve
only opened up doors to more questions. With my backpack and the
keys clutched against my chest, I rise to my feet. She stands back
and gives me a wide berth for my exit. Mechanically, I move one
foot ahead of the other as though some program in my brain is
telling me what to do, and I simply execute a computer protocol.
Before I leave, I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” she
says, unable to look at me.

I let my hand drop to my side.

She lets out a noise that’s a cross between disdain
and ― I’m not sure ― sadness? “I’m sorry.”

She begins digging with her bare hands, dumping the
dirt over Boadicea’s body to temporarily cover up the evidence. For
a moment I just stare at her, mulling over a goodbye she’ll never
say and reflecting on whether we’ll ever see each other again. I
harbor a sting of betrayal as I sling the backpack over my shoulder
and head back down the cemetery path to face a werewolf pack with
the truth that’s embedded within my DNA.

23.
Uprising

I
don’t make it out the front gates. The sky is red with
sunset and a pale moon hangs above. It’s quiet, peaceful almost, as
though everything in the universe is alright. As though a world
isn’t about to end. Arden charges up the path toward me. He looks
angry. Pissed, really, but what else is new? When he reaches me,
his fist comes up and I flinch. Instead of making contact with my
face, his fingers uncurl to reveal a crumpled piece of paper. It’s
the note I left for Amara.

“What’s this?” he demands.

With a heavy sigh, I reply, “It’s a long story.”

He folds his arms across his chest. “I’m
listening.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I have to consider what
Madison’s doing right now. “We can’t talk about this here.”

Before I can take more than a step, he grabs a
handful of my borrowed T-shirt and I halt. Arguing with him is only
going to mean we’re in this cemetery for longer than necessary. All
I want is out. It’s clear that he won’t back down until I give him
the satisfaction of some kind of answer. He’s already sizing up my
outfit, the Canadian maple leaf a bright red warning flag that
something’s wrong with this picture.

“They’ve found the cure,” I blurt out.

There. No sense dragging it out. Even though I brace
myself for one, there’s no response.

“Did you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Arden?”

Ever so slowly, his amber eyes zone in on me.

“It isn’t a disease,” he informs me.

“I know,” I respond. “That’s what they’re calling
it, though.”

With purpose in every move, he tightens his hold on
my shirt, eyes still on me. “How?”

I stammer, unprepared to answer this question. “When
I was bitten, they took some blood samples. There was something in
my DNA―”

“You?”

I hear myself swallowing. My voice is quiet when I
speak. “It’s not like I asked them to.”

Arden squints, processing the information, until he
repeats, “You!”

“Arden, calm down, alright?”

At the sound of his own name, his eyes catch mine.
He looks at me blankly like he doesn’t know me. The look in his
eyes is one that I’ve seen before. In a zoo. The caged animal,
trapped. Only, I’m trapped with him. A snarl escapes his lips, a
clear reminder of the wolf in him. Feral and frightening. Arden
shifts into a wolf, shredding the jersey fabric of Josh’s T-shirt
with his claws. Even though I’m now immune to his bite, I’m
certainly not immune to death. The escape of the front gate is
behind him now, and I’m far too frightened to shift into a wolf
myself. Actually, I have no idea what it will take for me to
change, short of a full moon. All I can think of is bolting on my
two very human feet. Wolf Arden crouches in front of me. After all
the action movies I’ve watched in my life, I would hope I’d be able
to access some kind of kick-ass move to protect myself. All I can
retrieve from memory is stop, drop and roll. This feat results in
him bounding over me and skidding across the pavement to smash
against a tomb.

It only takes a second for him to shake himself off
before he charges at me again. This time, I close my hand into a
fist, and when he gets close enough I hit him in the muzzle. Among
wilderness survival tips, punching a wild animal in the face
probably isn’t on a checklist. But this isn’t exactly a Boy Scout
Merit Badge situation either. The soft cartilage of his nose
crunches under my knuckles, and he yelps. Although I’m not sure
who’s more stunned, I’m not about to sit around and find out. With
every bit of energy I have in me, I run. I bound past statues and
graves knowing that with every step I take, we head deeper into the
cemetery.

The uneven cobblestones are treacherous, and it will
only take one misstep on my part for him to gain the upper hand.
The only chance for me to survive is to either turn into a wolf or
find a place to hide where he can’t tear me to pieces. I suspect
that fear isn’t my trigger. All I can think to do is try to lock
myself in a mausoleum. Desperate times. My hands pat down doors,
looking for one that might be unlocked. It’s no use. I shoulder
into a door and force it open, retreating quickly inside and
shutting the door on the wolf at my heels. On the other side I feel
Arden slamming his body against the wood, trying to thrust open the
door. With all the force of my body, I brace myself against it. I
hear the animal clawing to get through. In all honesty, I’m
terrified out of my mind. Glancing around in the dark, I can’t see
anything. It’s just as well. I’m in a crypt, after all. I have to
wait it out or try turning into a wolf myself, which seems
unlikely. Eventually though ― and it’s a long time coming ― Arden
gives up and turns his rage on the graveyard itself.

I hear him knocking down statues, tearing and
clawing things apart, combined with the intermittent sounds of
stone shattering and the wolf snarling. Pressed up against the
door, I think about being in Arden’s position. What if I was told
that the world as I knew it was about to end? That some lunatic was
about to unleash a biochemical compound intended to annihilate an
entire species? I’d probably lose it, too. But then what? Rage only
gets you so far. At the end of the anger, what is there? As it
turns out: unbearable grief.

It becomes unreasonably quiet. I listen through the
door. For a long while there’s only silence, not even the patter of
footprints. Then I hear it. A painstakingly human groan of anguish.
Followed, more heartbreakingly, by hushed sobbing. My hand reaches
for the doorknob as I consider coming out, but I think better of
it. I swallow back my empathy. Even if it’s safe for me, I can’t
intrude on Arden’s pain. It would be beyond awkward. Maybe even
humiliating to the werewolf who has clung to the animal within,
despite the whole world changing around him. It would be too cruel.
Even though the odds are stacked oppressively against our side, I
can’t bring myself to be the one to say there’s no hope. Using only
my sense of hearing, I try to piece together a picture of what’s
happening on the other side. There are footsteps. Human footsteps.
Arden is moving around the graveyard, scanning the disaster and
collecting himself. I hear him stop on the other side of the door,
and I panic as the doorknob turns. Instinctively, I press back
until the resistance on the other side stops.

“Connor, open the door.” His words are barely
intelligible. There’s still raw anger in his voice. “I’m
sorry.”

I can’t face him. All I want to do is stay in this
dark hole and hide. But there’s no escape from the sequencing of my
DNA. The sound of a dull thud on other side resonates through the
door. It’s a forehead or shoulder pressed against the wood. I stare
at the doorknob as though trying to figure out how it works.
Finally, I turn it open. On the other side, I’m surprised to see
Arden, bleary-eyed and with his auburn hair in an unusual disarray.
All he has on are a pair of dark slacks. The way he stands at the
doorway, arms against the trim like he owns all the space around
him, gives me a strong sense of
déjà vu
.

He speaks quietly, breaking the silence with his low
voice. “We let you in because you belong with us.”

I don’t understand. “What are you talking
about?”

“La Pleine Lune,” he continues. “Your friends, the
Hounds. Every life is a pawn to them. To be played. Discarded. You
belong with us, not them.”

As I take in the wolf who’s trying to be a man, I
see him clearly for the first time. The crease in his brow from
worry, the sad eyes full of knowledge that his world is closing in
on him. He wasn’t out to do me harm all this time. He was looking
out for me in his own way, trying to show me the path to become a
werewolf. The way a father would. He must have known all along
about my DNA. They all did in some way. If only I’d stayed in New
York, none of this would have gone down. My former life complaints
seem so childish and immature in light of what I’m facing now. All
I wanted was a change. Not like this, though. Not in my wildest
imaging like this change.

“We need to find a way to stop Boguet,” I tell
him.

“I’m afraid it’s entirely too late for that,” a
familiar voice interjects.

We look down the cobblestone pathway at the same
time to see Henri Boguet standing by a tree. He’s an ominous shadow
lurking in the dark. As he steps into the pale moonlight that
streams down from above, his features become visible. There are
deep creases in his brow, and the white stubble of his beard has
grown thick with the day. He takes a firm stance at the end of the
path.

All I can say is, “You had no right to take my
blood.”

“Your kind owes it to me,” he explains flatly.
“Your blood
is
my
blood.”

It takes every ounce of self-control to push down my
anger. Gritting my teeth, I keep my voice to a low murmur. “I don’t
owe you anything. Your antivenin didn’t work.”

Arden’s eyes are on me now, surprised by the
revelation. He barely moves. I sense him considering his next step,
like an inveterate predator. Conversely, Boguet seems collected. At
first he extends a hand toward me as though he can reach straight
across the path, then he clenches it into a fist.

“You’re an unusual specimen,” he says, and there’s
a fascination in his voice that unnerves me. “I warned you about
walking into the wolves’ den, but you have to understand I couldn’t
have known what the outcome of your being bitten would be.
Theoretically, anything was possible given the mutation in your
cells. You may very well be the only one of your kind.”

“Huh?”

“One of your ancestors was a werewolf,” he offers,
which really doesn’t help my mental well-being.