I put my hand on his chest, stopping him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No one is going to kill you. You’re not even going to be punished. If you haven’t noticed, I’m nothing like Caleb. Neither is Daniel. I understand why you couldn’t go into that fire. You were afraid. I get that now. Werewolves fear fire because it’s one of the few things that can kill them.”
Slade nodded. “It can disintegrate an Urbat completely. Not even leave any bones behind. But the others were able to get over their fears and come to your aid. I couldn’t. I was petrified. But I swear, I wasn’t always such a coward.” He licked his lips. “You know, I’d just been accepted to train as a smoke jumper—those guys who jump out of airplanes in order to put out forest fires?”
I shook my head.
“It’s what I’ve always wanted to be—ever since I was a little boy. But the Shadow Kings took that away from me when they turned me into an Urbat. They took my whole life away.” Slade ran his fingers over the colorful flames on his forearm, tracing the lines. “I ink my arms with tattoos of flames, burn myself with a lighter, like I thought I could fool myself into believing I’d overcome my fears. But when faced with it, I caved. I failed you.”
“I understand. I really do.” The wolf in my own head had almost prevented me from being able to save my father. For someone who’d wanted to be a firefighter all his life, I could understand the shame and agony Slade must feel. “No harm is going to come to you for that.”
Slade grabbed my hand in a lightning-quick movement. “Thank you,” he said, squeezing my fingers. “Thank you.”
“Um. You’re welcome.” What else are you supposed to say when someone thanks you for not killing him? It’s not exactly a situation that comes up often—at least for normal people.
Tears welled in Slade’s eyes, shining brighter than the steel bar in his eyebrow. Slade crying was the last thing I’d ever expected to see. Caleb had really done a number on these boys.
“What I don’t get is that it sounds like you had a pretty good life—training to become a firefighter and all. How did Caleb even get his claws into you?”
Slade let go of my hand, almost as if he felt ashamed to touch me. “There was this girl. Lyla. Prettiest thing I’d ever seen.” A slight smile pulled on his lips like he was remembering her face, but then his chin began to tremble. “But she was in trouble. Needed money. I’d been street racing since high school, best driver around, but the winnings still weren’t enough. After a race one night, this guy approached me. Said his crew needed a driver for a job…” He glanced at the floor.
“You mean like for a heist?”
He nodded. “Normally, I’d say no. But the money he was offering was killer. Enough to pay Lyla’s debts and bring her out to Montana with me for training. Enough to start a new life. Only thing is, when the job was over, the guy says I can’t leave. That the job was my audition, and now I belonged to him. When I refused … Well, next thing I knew, I woke up in the warehouse with this.…” He pushed up his T-shirt sleeve and showed me the ragged crescent-shaped scar on his tricep.
I knew what it was, I had one myself. “Werewolf bite.”
“And they had Lyla. Turns out the guy she owed money to was the same guy who’d recruited me. They’d used her. And then they used her again to turn me—to get me to give in to the curse they’d infected me with.”
I imagined the scene unfolding in the warehouse. Slade waking up disoriented and confused, his arm throbbing with the burning venom of a werewolf bite. Caleb threatening Lyla, forcing Slade to give in to the raging wolf in his head in order to try to stop them from hurting her.
By the dark look in Slade’s eyes, I could tell the scene was playing out in his mind, also.
“What happened to Lyla?” My voice was barely more than a whisper.