Unleashed Read online

  “What?” she asked.

  “Stay here.”

  “Why, where are you going?” she asked. Panic flooded her. What if he disappeared into the woods and didn’t come back? What if he left her?

  He didn’t look at her as he pulled the emergency brake and put the Mustang in neutral. “I’m going to drag the deer off the road. Stay in the car and don’t come out for anything. The woods aren’t safe at night. Lots of animals and crazies running around.”

  “Crazies?” she echoed. What was that supposed to mean?

  In the distance, she could hear the sound of drums beginning to beat. Was that what he meant? The wolf retreat? The executive on the plane had been a lot of things—crazy maybe, but homicidal seemed like a leap. She dug her fingernails into her palms, trying to focus on the sensation, trying to make herself calm down.

  Trick turned to look at her and there was fear in his eyes. Her heartbeat picked up. “Okay, I’ll stay in the car.”

  “Good.” He nodded as if to himself. “This will just take a minute.”

  Trick slammed the door as he got out, and she watched, on edge, as he crossed into the beams from the headlights. He grabbed two of the deer’s legs and began pulling for all he was worth. She was actually glad he’d told her to stay in the car, because there was no way she wanted to help him.

  Slowly the deer inched off the road and Katelyn turned her head, not wanting to see the lifeless eyes again. But then she was staring into the blackness that pressed up against the sides of the car, and that was worse.

  She looked back and the deer was gone. And so was Trick.

  She sat, blinking for a moment, scanning the trees for his shape. The drumming began to pick up, and her heart thumped faster. Every horror movie she’d seen started like this. She’d get killed by an ax-wielding wolfman executive, and Trick would come back and find her body right before he was chopped down, too.

  “Haley was out alone,” she whispered, desperate to hear the sound of a voice in the quiet and the dark, even if it was her own. Another thought flashed through her mind. What if whoever had slashed Trick’s tires had dumped the deer on the road to get him out of the car? So that he was alone? What if out there in the dark he was being beaten … or worse? He was being killed by the murderer first. And when that was done, she’d be next.

  Stop being an idiot. The deer wasn’t left there to stop us.

  Finally she couldn’t stand it and rolled the window down. “Trick?” she called.

  Only the sounds of the woods and the incessant drumming reached her.

  “Trick, this isn’t funny!” she shouted.

  Nothing.

  Chills shot down her spine.

  Maybe he was hurt or lost and needed help. Yet even if she could find her way back to the school or to her grandfather’s through the darkness without crashing the car on one of the hairpin turns, she’d never be able to say on what part of the road she’d left him.

  He had told her to stay in the car, but for how long? What was she supposed to do? The engine was still running and she tried to crane her neck over to see how much gas there was, suddenly worried that they would run out. The gauge showed more than half a tank left, and she sighed in relief.

  This is ridiculous!

  She took a deep breath and then opened her car door and climbed out.

  “Trick! Don’t make me come after you!”

  She scanned the area, but aside from the stand of menacing trees illuminated by Trick’s high beams, she still couldn’t see anything. The light pouring from inside the Mustang wasn’t helping, and after a moment’s hesitation, she closed the door, turned away from the wash of the headlights, and took a step forward. Cold crept into her bones and she felt as though someone were whispering to her. She couldn’t hear it, exactly; she could only sense it. Her earlier fear that the scary-looking Snow White trees would come alive returned in full force and this time she couldn’t shake it off.

  The wind moaned through the branches and they began to creak. Something reached out and plucked at her shirt and she screamed and jumped backward, slamming her elbow into the car door. Katelyn hissed sharply at the pain even as she reached for the door handle, yanked it open, and threw herself inside, slamming the door behind her. She twisted around and examined her arm by the light of the instrument panel. Her sleeve was ripped and a jagged scratch was already oozing blood onto it. A tree branch tapped at the glass next to her and she forced herself to take several deep breaths.

  The trees are not coming alive. They’re just really close to the car.

  She tried to still herself so she could listen. Those stupid drums; if they’d just shut up—

  Crash! Something landed on the hood of the car and she screamed. Two piercing blue eyes were staring at her through the windshield. There was a growl, deep and low and menacing.

  The creature shifted and its entire face came into view—silvery gray, enormous. It was a huge wolf with blood dripping from its fangs. It growled again.

  It began to scratch at the glass, trying to get at her, and she screamed louder than she’d ever screamed in her life. The creature bounded onto the roof of the car and began to paw at it hard enough to make the car shake while it growled.

  The window!

  She reached to roll up the open window before the wolf got to it, but before she could, a hand shot through it and grabbed her shirt.

  She beat at the hand, but it only tightened its grip on her. Then she heard three words whispered low and fierce: “Gun under seat.”

  She gasped—realizing it was Trick—and flailed beneath her seat until her fingers closed against cold metal. Then she heard a second growl rumbling beneath the first.

  “Trick, Trick,” she rasped, trying to warn him that there were two wolves. She couldn’t make herself speak loudly enough for him to hear. “Trick.”

  Shaking, she pulled the handgun out and shoved it through the window toward him, horrified at the very way it felt in her hand.

  Trick fired a shot into the air and her ears rang. The wolf jumped off the hood and she heard more growling. It turned to look at her, illuminated in the high beams, foam mixing with the blood around its muzzle. Then the beast leaped toward where Trick was crouched next to her door. He yelled and fired off another shot.

  The wolf let out a high-pitched yip. Then it turned and disappeared into the woods. Seconds later Trick was in the car, out of breath and looking every bit as terrified as she felt. He grabbed her head and turned her face to look into her eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  She managed to nod, still stunned from what had just happened.

  “Did it hurt you?”

  “N-no. But there was another one. There were two,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He let go of her and then looked down at her arm. He swore.

  “What is it?” she asked, panic flaring through her again.

  “You’re bleeding. I thought you said it didn’t hurt you!”

  “It didn’t. I got scratched by a branch.”

  He slumped into his seat and closed his eyes for a moment. He took a deep breath and then asked, “You got out of the car, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, wincing. She didn’t want him to yell anymore.

  “Then you got lucky.” He stared hard at her, reaching out his fingers, almost touching the back of her hand but pulling away at the last instant. “Kat, please, please, don’t ever do that again.”

  She licked her lips. “What was that thing?”

  “Wolf.”

  She could still hear the drumming in the distance. She had seen wolves at the zoo before, but none of them had been that huge or vicious-acting.

  “It looked like a monster.” Katelyn searched for the words to express what she was thinking. “I … I thought wolves didn’t attack people in real life. Maybe it thought I was stealing its dinner.”

  “I’d already moved the deer,” he pointed out. “Those idiots with their drumming and h
owling 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

  When 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 ke
ep 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?