Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder
chapter 1
I outran them.
Katelyn McBride soared into the spotlight on the Mexican cloud swing. The swing was a thick rope of braided fibers connected by either end to the sky-high rigging of the circus tent. To the audience far, far below, the swing looked wispy as mist, but it was as strong as Katelyn herself. Nearly unbreakable. She was seventeen, and she was at the top of her game: a beautifully trained gymnast, limber, made of solid muscle. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a bun and her light blue eyes were edged with kohl.
I outfought them.
Music pulsed like a heartbeat as she sat on her swing and pumped her legs, rocking in and out of the spotlight —
— the moonlight —
— and she gazed down at the werewolves of Wolf Springs. They prowled in their magnificent wolf forms on the floor of the arena, which also seemed to be the forest, in a swelling river of tension. Their glowing eyes narrowed with intense purpose.
You thought you could hurt me, but you can’t even touch me, she sneered as she executed a backward roll on the swing, then shifted her weight onto her hip bones as she came back around. This was the Cirque du Soleil, the world of greasepaint and gymnasts and death-defying feats of daring. Here she was in charge. Wolf Springs was nothing but a fraud, a lie designed to frighten little children. All you had to do was stop believing in ghosts and monsters and Hellhounds, and Wolf Springs lost its hold on you.
I’m free.
But another voice seemed to whisper, Never free from me.
Applause and cheers rose, buoying her up. In the audience were her mother and father, Giselle Chevalier the ballerina and Sean McBride the assistant district attorney, their arms around each other, loving her. Proud, happy. Alive. She swung back and forth, waving. They waved back.
Then a voice whispered urgently, Run.
A sharp, icy fear washed over her; everything shifted. The cloud swing picked up momentum on its own, propelling her back and forth like a pendulum. The frantic to-and-fro rhythm was out of control, like her heartbeat, and she collapsed from her balanced pose, grabbing the two sides just in time to stop her fall.
Run.
As she looked down into the audience, huge tongues of fire shot up between the seats. They rose so high they nearly singed Katelyn’s eyelashes as she pulled herself upward, holding on for dear life. Spectators were screaming, igniting like kindling. Her cloud swing was gone. She was holding onto twin ropes of Spanish moss. Through the sudden haze of smoke, all she could see were the howling werewolves of Wolf Springs, racing around the trees, trying to find a way out.
“Jump, my darling!” Katelyn’s mother screamed. Then her mother tumbled into the center of the wolf pack and the closest werewolves leaped on her. In seconds, she was buried underneath them.
“Mom!” Katelyn shouted.
Some of the werewolves fixed their glowing blue eyes on Katelyn, snapping their blood-drenched jaws. Their eager howls were like the shrieks of demons.
Then a figure streaked with blood and ash rose from the center of the pack. Fists balled over his head, Justin Fenner roared with fury. He stood broad-shouldered in a shredded white T-shirt and ripped black jeans that molded his body. Howling like a werewolf prince, he slashed at all comers.
Wheeling out of his reach, the werewolves scattered into the smoke and began to catch fire. They screamed and tried to retreat from the inferno, racing back toward Justin. But as he lunged at them, they cowered and cringed, preferring to burn rather than to take him on.
Panting, he looked straight up at Katelyn with his deep blue eyes. He held out his arms to catch her.
Capture her.
“Kat. You are my secret weapon,” he whispered, yet she could hear his voice above all the chaos. “Jump. I’ll keep you close.”
“No!” she shouted, flailing in the rigging. “Don’t touch me!”
Then she was falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Frantic, she clawed at the smoke-choked air. She landed hard in Justin’s embrace, against his chest. She struggled to get out of his arms but he enclosed her, enfolded her. “I’ll keep you forever,” he said, gouging his nails into her arms. The pain was an icy shock.
And Katelyn McBride woke up in her bed.
~
Moonlight poured down from her skylight and illuminated the bust of her mother that Trick had made for her as a birthday present, presenting it to her earlier that day after Justin had dropped her home. Katelyn stared at her mother’s features, frozen forever and yet so lifelike. If her mom had really been there, what would she say to any of it?
What would I say to her?
Mom, I’ve become a werewolf wouldn’t have been at the top of her list.
Then again, if her mother were still alive, Katelyn would still be with her out in California, pursuing her dreams of becoming a performer, a Cirque star, instead of being trapped in a remote cabin in the Ozarks with a grandfather she barely knew. She’d never have been attacked by a werewolf, being transformed into one herself. She would never have seen Cordelia Fenner, her new best friend, driven from her home by her father Lee Fenner, the leader of the werewolf pack — its alpha — for failing to tell him that she was worried Katelyn might have been bitten.
As she stood up and touched the bust of her mother, warm skin against cold stone, she also conceded that if she had still been in California, she never would have met Trick. Wonderful, crazy, frustrating, secretive Trick—Vladimir Sokolov, to give him his full name — who cared enough about her to shape this tribute, and had talked her grandfather into buying her a computer and a microcell for her birthday so she could use her cell phone in his cabin situated miles and miles outside the town of Wolf Springs.
When Justin — Cordelia’s cousin — had dropped her home, the place had been full of chaos. There had been a break-in while she had been with the wolf pack, and the thieves had stolen her grandmother’s silver and some paintings off the wall in the stairwell. Sergeant Lewis, one of Wolf Springs’ two police officers, had been taking her grandfather’s statement.
Trick had been there, too, planning to give her the bust, and after Sergeant Lewis left, her grandfather had surprised Katelyn with the computer. What she wouldn’t have given to have had it when she first arrived in Wolf Springs weeks before.
As she stretched out her tense body, she remembered her nightmare. Before the werewolves had invaded it had been a happy dream, with her performing in Cirque du Soleil just as she had always hoped. I’m not that girl, she thought. But she was. She still was. She whirled in a circle, slowly, feeling the joy in movement that had been the constant in her life. Back home, dance and gymnastics had both filled nearly all her waking hours — and kept the nightmares at bay. Sean McBride, her father, had been shot down over four years ago in cold blood. Her mother was dead, killed in the fire that had destroyed their home, and she, Katelyn, had been forced to come to Wolf Springs to live with her grandfather, Mordecai McBride, whom she barely knew.
And then . . . the bite. A monstrous gray wolf with blue eyes, a rogue werewolf no one seemed to know.
All those things had happened to change her. But what they had not changed was what it felt like to be graceful and strong. Stretching, bending in ways that had taken years of practice and sacrifice, she held on tightly to the feeling. She was reclaiming something — what it was that made her Katelyn McBride. The core of her identity.
Now, as she moved in the room in the cabin, she felt life surging through her muscles. She slid slowly and effortlessly to the floor in the splits and arched her back until the crown of her head nearly touched the floor — something she had never been able to do before.
My human body is different, she thought, amazed. Because of the change.
She caught her lower lip. She saw herself auditioning for Cirque, imagined people gasping at the incredible things she could do. Her mind began to race with the fantasy. Werewolves only had to change on the full moon. She could still live a normal life. She could get out of Wolf Springs. Be what she was destined to be.
If it was the last thing she did, she would leave Wolf Springs. She would make her dream come true. She couldn’t let what had happened to her, any of it, stop her.
“I swear it, Mom,” she said, gazing at the bust of her mother. “I’ll live enough for both of us.”
Hot and thirsty, she headed downstairs for some water. She crept past the animal heads mounted on the wall and past the empty spaces where the stolen pictures had hung.
Outside in the darkness, the drums of the Inner Wolf Center were echoing off the mountains. A man named Jack Bronson had bought the old hot springs resort Wolf Springs had been named after, and now business executives paid small fortunes to learn how to let out their inner predators. Seen as a nuisance by a lot of the townsfolk, they mostly kept to themselves at the center. It was a good thing, too. Her one encounter with a couple of those executives in town had been less than pleasant. They’d gotten in touch with their inner jerks a little too much.
As she stepped into the kitchen, she thought she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head swiftly, but there was nothing there.
Just my imagination, she thought, crossing toward the sink. Then she turned and jumped. Justin was standing outside the window, staring in at her. His thumbs were slung in the belt loops of his jeans, his head cocked beneath the moonlight. A jacket that he didn’t need stretched across his shoulders and she remembered the dream, how he had caught her, trapped her. But now, looking out the window, she remembered riding on his motorcycle, and kissing him in the forest before she knew he had a girlfriend . . . or that he was a werewolf. He had been her first real kiss, and even now, despite everything — despite Trick — she still felt drawn to him.
He gave her a slow nod and she caught her breath, wanting, and not wanting, to go to him. They were two of a kind now, in so many ways.
She went to the back door, opened it, and stepped onto the porch, where he was already waiting. The drums matched the unsteady flutter of her heartbeat. She had to tip her head back to see into his penetrating blue eyes, but she defiantly met his gaze. He looked displeased, and she remembered that in the werewolf world she was the lowest of the low, practically an outcast. He was very high-ranking, definitely her superior, and she should show respect by lowering her gaze. She didn’t back down, but she was afraid not only of him, but also of what she had done with him. Last full moon, the time of her first-ever change, they had hunted together. Taken down a deer — even though she was a committed vegetarian. And she hadn’t remembered any of it.
He glanced upward, as if checking on her grandfather’s window; then he blew air out of his cheeks and jerked his head to the side of the cabin. She had left a pair of sneakers by the door. She stepped into them and followed him, her footfalls crunching on frosty earth.
Shoulder to shoulder, they crossed the driveway. She didn’t see a truck or his motorcycle anywhere, and she wondered how he’d gotten there. And when. Once in the woods, he turned to her.
“I didn’t tell,” she said in a rush. “I didn’t say a word.”
Without replying, he took her arm and pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, examining the place where she had fallen into a silver animal trap that morning. When she’d been injured, Justin had carried her to his truck, intent on getting help, even though he had expected her to be dead by the time he’d reached it. Silver was incredibly poisonous to werewolves: even a small prick from a silver knife could make them horribly sick. More catastrophic damage could definitely kill them.
“How come you’re still alive?” he whispered, though loudly enough for her to hear over the drumbeats.
She knew without looking that there wasn’t even a mark on her skin. Werewolves healed amazingly fast. That was one thing to be grateful for.
“Maybe the trap wasn’t made out of silver,” she said. “Maybe you just thought it was.”
“Oh, it was. Believe me. I smelled it. Felt it.” He dropped her arm and studied her face. “If you were bit by one of us, how can you be immune? We’re not immune.”
“My point exactly,” she shot back. “Maybe something else bit me.”
“Oh, we’re not back to that,” he scoffed. “Darlin’, the Hellhound is a myth.”
Her temper flared unexpectedly. “Why? Why is it a myth and you’re not?”
Katelyn had never believed in werewolves until coming to Wolf Springs. Who was to say the Hellhound wasn’t real, too? Cordelia had told her that it was the werewolf equivalent of the Bogey Man, a story they told to keep each other in line, especially the youngsters. Be good or the Hellhound will get you. But even most of the adults seemed to believe that it could come for them if they broke any of the werewolf laws — like letting humans know their secret. Cordelia had believed the monster was real. And she’d broken the laws . . . She’d even thought she’d seen the Hellhound outside her house, but her father and the rest of the family had just laughed at her.
Justin shook his head and grinned. And angry as she was, Katelyn couldn’t stop herself remembering what it had felt like to kiss those lips. And even though she cared deeply for Trick, she couldn’t help the feelings that stirred inside her when Justin Fenner stood too close. Somehow it seemed different, even more intense, now that she was a werewolf, too.
“Getting riled up, aren’t you?” he asked, smiling at her. “Biting back?”
The drumming stopped abruptly. She and Justin stood in the relative silence, though the wind made the pine branches scrape, and an owl hooted. There was a rush of wings. She was certain he could hear her heartbeat as it roared in her ears.
Justin leaned back against a trunk and crossed his arms over his chest. The moonlight slashed his face, giving it a sinister cast. “Damn it, this is such a mess,” he said quietly.
“Hey, I didn’t ask to be attacked, okay?” she flung at him defensively. “I didn’t want this to happen to me!”
“Well, see, as I figure it, that’s the only upside.” He broke off a branch, then cracked it into two, running the ends along his palm. “That it did happen to you.”
“Not seeing that,” she snapped, moving farther away from him, although her mind flashed back to the big amazing life she was planning to escape to. “Not at all.”
He dropped the pieces of wood onto the ground. “Being stronger and faster than any human ever dreamed? You will. You’d better. There’s no going back, Kat.”
“No one else is immune to silver, or so you’ve said,” she reminded him. “So maybe it’s different for me there, too. Maybe I can . . . go back.”
“Keep your voice down.” His own voice dropped an octave.
She looked quickly around. “Who else is here?” she demanded.
“The alpha’s nervous about you,” Justin said, ignoring her question. “Our kind are born werewolves. We hardly ever bring in humans changed with a bite. Uncle Lee said the last time someone was bit in without permission was in ‘the homeland.’ That’s Scandinavia. The fjords. In the seventeenth century.”
Four hundred years ago? That lent weight to Cordelia’s refusal to believe that a Fenner werewolf had bitten Katelyn.
“Was he there when that happened?” she asked.
A fleeting smile appeared on his face, but just as quickly disappeared. “Oh, man. You don’t know anything.”
“Then enlighten me,” she retorted.
He raised a brow. “Don’t you have the sense to know you shouldn’t speak to me like that? With such disrespect? You know how high-ranking I am. Do you do it because you’re scared?”
She said nothing, just tried to look as if she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t want to appear fragile or needy in front of him. Werewolves despised weakness.
“You need to learn so much.” Even in the darkness, she could feel him studying her, assessing her. “So much.”
She remained silent, and he did, too.
“We’re not immortal, Katelyn. Of course Lee — our alpha — wasn’t around four hundred years ago,” he said finally. “We heal up quick, as you’ve already noticed, but we do have a normal human lifespan. We make the most of the time we have, though. In ways you can’t begin to imagine.” He pushed away from the tree trunk and ambled toward her. “Kat.”
Her name on his tongue was like a caress. Silky, sexy. She could feel herself reacting, and she glided out of reach.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Justin said, and she thought there was just the slightest emphasis on the first word in the sentence.
She scanned their surroundings: the woods, the road, the front of the cabin. Was that someone creeping through the shadows beneath the overhang of the second story? A person, or a wolf?
“Who else is out here?” she asked again.
“You need to get used to being watched,” he said, still evading her questions. “You need to remember that Lee’s got to look out for the safety of the entire pack.”
“Then he needs to remember that someone did this to me. Without my permission, or his.”
“Listen to me,” Justin said, leaning forward. “You know about his dementia, that he’s losing touch with reality. He knows it, too, and he’s running scared. He can’t be seen as losing control. He’ll be challenged. He was going to pick Cordelia to succeed him but that’s out the window now.”
Katelyn couldn’t believe Cordelia would have become the new alpha. Cordelia was just seventeen. Cordelia’s two older sisters had bullied Cordelia mercilessly, and she spent half her time apologizing for things that weren’t even her fault. How could Lee Fenner have ever thought she would be able to lead the pack?
“I thought it was odd, too,” Justin said.
She knit her brows. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to. I read it. You’ll get better at reading body language, same as us.”
Us. She would have to be doubly, triply careful around him then. Just like with Trick. Justin could read her; Trick somehow just knew her.
“What happened to you happened on his watch,” he continued. “Something so counter to our moral code it’s never happened here in Wolf Springs, ever. You’re proof that he’s not in complete command of his pack. A source of shame. It might be easiest for him just to get rid of you.”
Threatened, she reared back, and he lunged forward and caught her by the shoulder. His head lowered toward hers and she knew he was going to kiss her.
“I’m standing between that decision and your life,” he said huskily. “You need me, Kat.”
And you need me, she thought, fighting not to let him kiss her, ever. I’m the only one immune to silver, and you’re the only one who knows it. He was planning something, and he needed her to pull it off.
His lips were brushing hers when she turned her head.
“Lucy,” she said. “Your girlfriend, remember?”
He grunted. “I’m sorry, Kat,” he muttered, and he let her go.
Katelyn took a sharp breath. Just being around Justin was like being hypnotized. It had to be something chemical, because they were both werewolves. It couldn’t be that she was that weak.
“Hormones,” he muttered.
“What?”
He huffed. “Look, I know you have to be going crazy right now. All the chemicals in your body have been shaken up, changed. The wolf side of you is fighting the human side and it’s like being a little kid again. Everything will feel more extreme for you and when you’re not with someone to remind you how to act, you’re going to have to remember that your life is riding on your behavior. It’s going to take a while to learn to handle it. Right now, the wolf in you is responding to the wolf in me but you don’t even have the impulse control of a two-year-old human.”
“Feeling like a two-year-old is not my current problem,” she snapped. Her problem was that she wanted to kiss him like there was no tomorrow.
“When your body learns to adapt to everything that’s happening to it, you’ll feel fully in control again.” He paused. “Until then . . . be damn careful around me or any other young wolf in the pack.”
“Like being alone out here with you is being damn careful,” she groused.
“Yeah, well, if we are truly alone.”
He was trying to joke, she could tell, but it just fed into her paranoia, her feeling of being watched.
“So not funny.”
He sighed. “Look. It’s not a question of whether you’re a human or an animal. You’re both. And you’re going to have to learn to live with that twenty-four/seven. There will be times when the animal part of you’ll want to act on something and it will be wrong. Same with the other way. So deal with the human issues with human responses and the animal issues with animal responses.”
“And what if the issue is both human and animal?”
His grin was evil. “Like making out?”
She nodded, completely humiliated to be discussing it with him like this. But she thought about Halloween when she’d gone from kissing Trick to kissing Justin while barely missing a beat, then hating herself for it.
“Then tread very, very carefully. You bite a human, draw even just a little blood accidentally, and they’ll change.”
Thinking of Trick, she swallowed hard. “Maybe they’ll change. We don’t know. Because I'm different.”
“You willing to take that chance?”
He reached out to push a strand of hair back from her face and even though she wanted to step closer to him she forced herself to take a step back.
“What’d you do with the animal trap I got caught in?” she asked, wanting desperately to change the topic.
“Hid it,” he said uneasily, as if he didn’t want to discuss it. “You tell no one, hear?”
“Someone already knows,” she insisted. “Knows enough to put out a trap.”
“That thing was old. It didn’t even spring. It would have taken your arm off when you fell into it if it had been working.”
“But it doesn’t matter when it was put out,” she said, sensing she should shut up but not being able to. “It matters that it was put out.”
“Kat, I’m not an idiot.” When she opened her mouth to speak again, he said, “You should go back before your grandfather misses you.” Then he added, “Lee wants you to come over tomorrow.”
Cold chills washed down her back. She never wanted to see Lee Fenner — or any of them — again. She knew that was too much to wish for, but she had hoped for some kind of reprieve before it all started—learning to fit in, groveling like a kicked dog before that madman —
“I have homework,” she said rebelliously.
He smiled grimly. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to stay alive. Make up some excuse to your grandfather. Say you have a project with Cordelia for school.”
It had only been a matter of hours, but it was still hard to believe that Cordelia was gone. Nobody outside the pack knew yet, but sooner or later someone would surely have to say something, especially when she didn’t show up for school. Wolf Springs was a small place. Once word got out it would spread like wildfire and as soon as her grandfather heard, Katelyn would no longer be able to use Cordelia as an excuse for going to the Fenner house. She felt a rush of hope. Maybe Justin figured Cordelia’s banishment was only temporary.
“You should head on over around ten in the morning or so,” he said. “We have a big Sunday dinner around noon.”
She wondered if they chose to eat different foods when they were alone — but she didn’t want to give him any more reminders that she didn’t know anything about the way werewolves lived. Instead, she gave Justin a curt nod and brushed past him. After taking a few steps, she turned and watched him melt into the darkness. Then she could feel eyes upon her. Werewolf spies?
She felt a rush of wind and an invisible hand plucked at her sweatshirt. Something exploded against the tree just behind her and she jumped and let out a yelp. She clamped her hand over her mouth, ran toward the back of the cabin and then darted inside as quickly as she could.
She leaned against the kitchen door for a moment, then crossed resolutely to the window, meaning to shut the faded gingham curtains.
Then she glanced down. There was a hole in the side of her baggy sweatshirt. She picked it up and felt the warmth radiating from the area. A perfect little circle. She stuck her finger in and then realized there was a hole in the back of the sweatshirt as well. Something had gone clean through.
She clutched her sweatshirt.
Someone shot at me.
She began to shake.
Someone just tried to kill me.