Wolves of Mercy Falls 03 - Forever Read online

  “Sam?” said Koenig.

  He sounded very, very awake.

  “I should have called earlier, but I was on midnights and I — it doesn’t matter.” Koenig took an audible breath. “The hunt’s been moved up.”

  “It — what?” I thought perhaps I was still asleep, but my cranes hung perfectly still.

  Koenig said, a little louder, “It’s tomorrow. Dawn. Five forty-seven A.M. The helicopter got freed up suddenly and they’ve moved it. Get up.”

  He didn’t have to tell me. I felt like I would never sleep again.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  • ISABEL •

  I wasn’t quite asleep when the phone rang.

  It was a little after midnight, and I was trying to sleep mostly out of self-defense. Tensions were running high in the Culpeper household as the date of the hunt and the threat of California moved closer, and my parents were enjoying one of the screamathons that I’d been missing so sorely for the past few weeks. It sounded like my mother was winning — at least she’d roared more salient points than my father had in the last twenty minutes — but it also sounded like they had several more rounds to go.

  So my bedroom door was shut and I had my earbuds in, making white noise with offensive lyrics. My room was a rose-and-white cocoon made less stark by the lack of sunlight. Surrounded by my stuff, it could be any day of any year since we’d moved here. I could go downstairs, down the hall, and yell at Jack for not letting my dog out while I was gone. I could call my friends back in California who still remembered me and hatch plots to return and make plans to tour college campuses close to their houses. That the room was so unchanged and that night could play such tricks on me was endearing and horrifying at the same time.

  Anyway, I almost missed it when my cell phone rang.

  Caller ID: BECK’S HOUSE.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Guess what your asshole father has done now?” Cole sounded a little out of breath.

  I didn’t feel like answering. This wasn’t exactly how I’d hoped my next phone call with Cole would begin.

  “Screwed us,” Cole said, not waiting for me to answer. “Over the hood of a foreign car. The hunt is happening at dawn. They’ve moved it.”

  As if on cue, the landline rang from its base on my bed stand. I didn’t touch it, but even from here, I could see the caller ID: LANDY, MARSHALL. That meant that my dad and I were going to have the exact same conversation, basically, at the same time, with two different people.

  The fighting downstairs had ceased. It was taking a long time for this to sink in.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Well, first I’m going to make Sam functional,” Cole said. “Grace shifted tonight and she’s in the woods, so he’s gone off the reservation.”

  Now I was awake. I pulled out the single remaining earbud I still had in and sat up. “Grace is out there? That’s not acceptable.”

  It was more than not acceptable. Grace versus Thomas Culpeper, Esquire, was not a battle that I wanted to ever see, because I knew how it would end.

  “I know, princess,” Cole said tersely. “What I would like for you to do is to go to your father and tell him to get on the phone and make this stop.”

  But I knew how that would end, too.

  “That won’t work,” I replied. “This is bigger than him now.” “I. Don’t. Care,” Cole said, slowly and patiently, like I was a child. “You find that bastard and make him stop. I know you can.”

  I could feel myself prickling at his tone. “Okay, first of all, you don’t tell me what to do. Secondly? All that will happen is I will go down there, make him completely pissed off at me for no reason, and maybe, if I’m really lucky, he’ll start to wonder why it is that I’m suddenly feeling so freaking friendly toward the wolves and maybe it will just open a can of worms that I will have to deal with for the rest of the year. And you know what he will say? It’s beyond him now. It’s time for you to do your thing.”

  “My thing? My thing only worked if Grace was here to make it work. Without Grace, I have an emotionally unbalanced wolf and a Volkswagen.”

  The house was stone quiet in comparison to the shouting before. I tried to imagine going down there and confronting my father about the hunt. It was too ludicrous to even contemplate.

  “I’m not doing it, Cole.”

  “You owe it to me to try.”

  “Owe?” I laughed, harsh and short. For a moment, my mind skittered over every encounter we’d ever had, trying to think if there was any truth to what he’d said. I couldn’t think of anything. If anything, he owed me, big time. “Why do I owe you anything?”

  Cole’s voice was completely level. “Your son of a bitch father killed Victor and threw him in front of my face.”

  I felt my face getting hotter.

  “I’m not him. I don’t owe you jack shit, Cole St. Clair. I might have considered going downstairs to talk to my dad before that, but now, screw you.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. Grown-up way to handle your problems. Find a technicality, pitch a fit, and make it someone else’s problem. You really are daddy’s little girl.”

  It stung, so I laughed at him. “You’re one to talk. The only thing that surprises me about all this is you sound remarkably sober. If it goes badly, you can always kill yourself, right?”

  He hung up.

  My pulse was racing, my skin searing, and suddenly I felt light-headed. I sat back and put hands over my mouth. My room looked exactly the same as it had before I’d picked up his call.

  I threw my phone at the wall. Halfway through its flight, I realized that my father would kill me if I destroyed it, but it smacked the wall and slid to the ground without any pieces falling off it. It looked exactly the same as before.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  • SAM •

  Cole burst into the kitchen like a nail bomb. It was nearly one A.M., and in four and a half hours, the wolves were going to begin to die.

  “No go, Ringo. Culpeper can’t call it off.” There was something chaotic in his eyes that wasn’t in his voice.

  I hadn’t thought Culpeper would, but it seemed stupid to not at least try. “Is Isabel coming?” My voice sounded normal, to my surprise, a recording of me played back when the real me had lost my voice.

  “No,” Cole said. Just like that. Barely a word. Just part of an exhalation. He pulled open the fridge with such ferocity that the condiments in the door cracked against each other. The cold air crept out of the fridge and around my ankles. “So it’s up to us. Your friend Koenig coming?”

  It would’ve been nice: someone practical and on the positive side of the law with infinitely less emotional involvement than me sounded like a wonderful thing to have. “He found out the news because he was working. His shift ends at six A.M.”

  “Perfect timing.” Cole grasped a handful of vials and syringes with one hand and dumped them on the island in front of me. They rolled and whirled in misshapen circles on the counter surface. “Here are our options.”

  My ears rang. “We have more than one?”

  “Three, precisely,” Cole said. He pointed to each in turn. “That one makes you a wolf. That one makes me a wolf. That one gives us both seizures.”

  But there weren’t really three options. There was only one. There’d only ever been one. I said, “I have to go in and get her.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Her first.” It was the most horrible thing I’d ever had to say. But anything else had to be a lie. She was the one thing I’d remembered as a wolf, when there was nothing else. She was the one thing I knew I would hold on to. Had to hold on to. I would save the others if I could, but it had to be Grace first.

  I didn’t think I’d been very persuasive, but Cole nodded. His nod made it real, and now that it was a plan, I felt sick. Not vaguely, but in a way that made my ears hum and my vision speckle in the corners. I had to become a wolf. Not in some
distant future. Now.

  “Okay, then here’s the plan, again. I’ll go to the lake,” Cole said. Now he was the general, sliding the syringe that would make him a wolf into one of the pockets of his cargo pants, pointing at some imaginary map in the air to demonstrate where we were going. “The parking area by Two Island Lake. That’s where I’m going to wait for you. You. Grace. Whoever you can bring with. Then we really need to be across that sparse area on that side of the woods well before dawn. It’d be like fish in a barrel, otherwise, with no cover. Are you ready?”

  He had to repeat it. I thought about sitting in the bathtub with my guitar, singing “Still Waking Up.” I thought about pulling Grace’s dress over her head. I thought about Cole telling me that everyone listened to me, but I didn’t always say anything. I thought about everything that made me me and how afraid I was to lose it.

  I would not lose it.

  “I’m ready.”

  There was no more time.

  Outside, I carefully stripped out of my clothing and stood there while Cole tapped the syringe until the bubbles in it rose to the top. It was surprisingly light out here; the moon was nearly a week until full, but there were low clouds and mist that took what light there was and threw it everywhere. It made the woods behind the house look eerie and infinite.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Cole said. He took my arm and turned my palm toward the sky. My scars were puckered and ugly in the moonlight.

  I was thinking: Grace’s hand in my hand, Beck shaking in the basement, burying Victor, becoming human. I was thinking, somewhere, maybe Grace is looking for me, too. I focused on the thoughts I wanted to bring with me. “I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.”

  Cole nodded. “You damn well better be. Okay, this one has to go in a vein. Hold still. Say it again. Wait, tell me where your keys are, again, before I do.”

  My heart thumped with nerves and fear and hope. “In my pocket.”

  Cole looked down.

  “I’m not wearing my pants anymore,” I said.

  Cole looked at the step. “No, you aren’t. Okay. Now hold still.”

  “Cole,” I said. “If I don’t —”

  He heard the tone of my voice. “No. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Cole traced a vein from my scars to the inside of my elbow. I closed my eyes. He slid the needle in.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  • SAM •

  For one second, one part of a second, one fraction of a breath, pain wiped all of my thoughts away from me. My veins were molten. My body was remapping itself, charting new courses, planning new bones while it crushed the others to dust. There was not a part of me that wasn’t negotiable.

  I had forgotten the agony of it. There was no mercy to this. The first time I had shifted, I’d been seven. My mother had been the first to see. I couldn’t even remember her name right now.

  My spine crackled.

  Cole threw the syringe onto the step.

  The woods were singing in the language I only knew as a wolf.

  The last time I had done this, it had been Grace’s face in front of me. The last time I had done this, it had been good-bye.

  No more. No more good-byes.

  I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  • ISABEL •

  It took me five minutes after Cole hung up on me to think that what he had said wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. It took me ten minutes to think that I should’ve called him back right away. It took me fifteen to find out he wasn’t answering the phone. Twenty to think I shouldn’t have said the bit about killing himself. Twenty-five to realize that it might end up being the last thing I ever said to him.

  Why had I said it? Maybe Rachel was right with her bitch comment. I wished I knew how to set my weapons to stun instead of eviscerate.

  It took what felt like half the night to realize that I couldn’t stand myself if I didn’t try to do something about the hunt.

  I tried Cole’s number and then Sam’s one last time — nothing — and then I headed downstairs. In my head I rehearsed what I would say to my father. First the arguments, then the pleas, and finally, the justification for my concerns that wouldn’t lead it back to Sam and Beck, because I knew that would go nowhere with my father. This was going to go nowhere anyway.

  But at least I could tell Cole that I’d tried. Then, maybe, I wouldn’t feel so sick.

  I hated it. I hated this. I hated feeling so terrible because of someone else. I pressed my hand to my right eye, but the tear there stayed safely inside.

  The house was dark. I had to flip light switches on as I went down staircases. There was no one in the kitchen. No one in the living room. Finally I found my mother in the library, reclining easily on the leather sofa, a glass of white wine in her hand. She was watching a hospital reality show. Normally the irony of such a thing would have amused me, but right now, all I could think about was the last thing I told Cole.

  “Mom,” I said. I tried to sound casual. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Hm?” Something about her hm focused me, made me feel more solid. The world was not collapsing. My mother still said hm when I asked her questions.

  “My father. The creature that mated with you to make me. Where is he?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” my mother said. “He’s gone to the helicopter.”

  “The. Helicopter.”

  My mother barely looked up from the television. There was nothing new in my tone to alarm her. “Marshall got him a seat. Said because he was such a good shot, it wouldn’t be wasted. God, I’ll be glad when this whole thing is over.”

  “Dad is riding in the helicopter that is shooting the wolves,” I said. Slowly. I felt like an idiot. Of course my father would want to ride on the front lines with an elephant gun. Of course Marshall would make that happen for him.

  “It takes off at some terrible hour,” Mom said. “So he headed out now to meet Marshall for coffee. So I get the TV.”

  I was too late. I had spent too long debating with myself and now I was too late.

  There was nothing I could do.

  Cole had said, You owe it to me to try.

  I still didn’t think I owed him anything. But, taking care not to signal my clawing distress to my mother, I slid out of the library and back through the house. I got my white jacket and my car keys and my cell phone and I pushed the back door open. Not that long ago, Cole had stood there as a wolf, his green eyes on mine. I’d told him that my brother was dead. That I wasn’t a nice person. He’d just watched me, unflinching, trapped in that body he’d chosen for himself.

  Everything had changed.

  When I left, I hit the gas pedal so hard that the wheels spun in the gravel.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  • SAM •

  I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.

  I burst into the woods at a gallop. My paws pounded the rocks; my strides ate the ground. Every nerve inside me was on fire. I was holding my thoughts like an armful of paper cranes. Tight enough to keep them. Not tight enough to crush them.

  I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.

  There were one thousand things to hear. Ten thousand things to scent. One hundred million clues to countless forms of life in these woods. But I didn’t need countless. I needed one.

  She was leaning back against me, breathing in the scent of a candy shop. Every color that I couldn’t see now was painted on the walls and labels around us.

  I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.

  The night was bright underneath a half-moon; the light reflected off a few low clouds and ragged strands of mist. I could see endlessly ahead of me. But i
t wasn’t sight that would help me. Every so often I slowed, listening. Her howl. It was for me, I was certain.

  The wolves howled; I stood at her window, looking out. We were strangers and we knew each other like a path we walked every day. Don’t sleep on the floor, she said.

  I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them.

  There were other voices now, responding to her calls. It wasn’t difficult to pick them apart. It was difficult to remember why I needed to pick them apart.

  Her eyes, brown and complicated, with a wolf’s face.

  I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.

  I faltered as my paws slid on wet clay, sending me slithering. I heard something drop into water, close by.

  A voice hissed at me in the back of my head. Something about this was dangerous. I slowed, cautious, and there it was — a massive pit, water for drowning at its base. I minced around it before listening. The woods had fallen silent. My mind tripped and stumbled, aching for — I tipped my head back and howled, a long, trembling bay that helped ease the ache inside me. A few moments later, I heard her voice, and I set off again.

  I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.

  A flock of birds exploded in front of me, startled from their roost by my progress. They burst into the air, white against the black, and something about the multitude of their forms, the identical stretch of their wings, the way they suspended above me, fluttering in the wind, stars lit behind them, reminded me of something.

  I struggled and struggled to grasp it, but it slid away from me. The loss seemed crushing, though I could not think of what I’d lost.

  I am finding Grace.

  I would not lose that. I would not lose that.

  finding Grace.