chapter 20
That seemed to be the signal for the rest of the pack to touch her, shake her hand, kiss her cheek. Everyone wanted to see her cut and marvel at the fact that she wasn’t dead. She was soon surrounded by Fenner werewolves throwing back their heads and howling for joy. Some approached her cautiously, reverently. She heard the words “miracle,” “game changer,” and “mutation.” At Mr. Fenner’s order, Justin cleaned the cut and put a bandage over it. He smiled at her but Katelyn could tell there were mixed emotions in that smile — fear, pride, and maybe a little anger — and he kissed her cheek just like everyone else.
“Well played,” he whispered softly, giving her hand a quick squeeze.
Arial, Regan, and their husbands approached. Arial was white-faced with shock; Regan looked like she wanted to grab the sword out of her father’s hand and run Katelyn through with it.
“You freak,” she whispered in Katelyn’s ear. “Don’t think this changes anything.”
Pack politics might confuse Katelyn, but she knew her immunity changed a lot. She wasn’t the least important member of the pack anymore, a fact Mr. Fenner confirmed as he came up to Katelyn and possessively put his arm around her shoulders. The well-wishers moved away, forming an impromptu circle in anticipation of more revelations.
“I believe a challenge was made,” he said, almost jovially. “Lucy, where do you stand on that, darlin’?”
Lucy blinked and looked at Justin. He was standing closer to Katelyn than he was to her, and he stayed there. Shock flashed over Lucy’s face, then anger, then hurt. But she cleared her throat and squared her shoulders, clearly making the best of a severely altered situation.
“I’m willing to put that on hold until we take the Gaudins down.” Her voice was shaky. The wind had been taken out of her sails, and Katelyn nearly howled with relief. She would lose to Lucy in a fight. She might be immune to silver, but Lucy was still stronger and faster than her.
“Good girl,” Mr. Fenner said. He walked over to Lucy and patted her cheek. She went scarlet and clenched her fists.
“Softly, softly,” Jesse said, also patting her cheek.
“So how did you find this out?” Mr. Fenner asked.
Justin looked stricken. She let her gaze pass over his face without any expression, but she’d thought this through and there was no way she was going to implicate him.
“I was cleaning my grandma’s silver, and I cut myself.” She surreptitiously waited to see if Mr. Fenner — or anyone else — reacted. She was still trying to figure out who had broken into the cabin. No one did, not even Justin.
“You could have died,” Mr. Fenner said.
“I thought I was going to.”
“But you didn’t say anything to your grandfather?”
She shook her head. “He wasn’t home. I didn’t say a word.”
“Good. Very good. A quick thinker,” Mr. Fenner said approvingly. “You are our secret weapon.”
Oh, yay, she thought bitterly, but that was exactly how she wanted him to regard her. Indispensable.
“War council in the house, now,” he said. “Justin, Arial, Regan, Doug, and Al. And Kat.” He beamed at her. “Lucy, you take care of Jesse.”
“Yes, Uncle Lee,” Lucy muttered, looking even more downcast. Locked out of the action. Katelyn would have gladly traded places.
With that in mind, Katelyn made another decision. She said to Mr. Fenner, “I have something else to show you. Just you,” she emphasized.
When he raised a brow, she began to walk toward Justin’s truck. She heard him grunt in amusement, then trail after her. She was violating some kind of etiquette by having him follow her but she didn’t know what else to do.
“I smell silver,” he said, and she nodded.
She opened the passenger’s side door and fished the gun from underneath her seat. Taking a deep breath, she held it pointed to the ground so he would know that she wasn’t threatening him and that she knew how to handle a gun.
She said, “I found this, Mr. Fenner. It’s loaded with silver bullets.”
For a moment, she thought he was having a heart attack. His lips moved but no sound came out — he was truly speechless. Then he moved as if to shield the two of them from prying eyes, reaching out for the gun before jerking his hand away.
“Where?” he demanded.
“In the forest,” she lied. “I was out running and I smelled it.”
“Did you see anything else?” he asked excitedly.
Now would be the time to tell him about the trap. Obviously, Justin hadn’t. Mr. Fenner was not her friend. He was acting normal at the moment, but in her experience, that didn’t last. He could turn on her in a heartbeat, just as he had turned on so many others. She thought of Quentin Lloyd with a shiver.
And besides, Justin was . . . Justin. She had a split-second fantasy where they got together and led the pack. But she didn’t want to lead anything. And she didn’t want Justin. She just wanted her life back. And she wanted to bring Cordelia home.
And be with Trick.
Always.
Never.
But before she could lie to him, he said, “That’s from the mine. The Madre Vena. That’s what’s in it. It’s not just a silver mine, it’s also a stockpile where those who used it stored guns that shoot silver bullets. And more swords and knives, made out of silver.”
Mr. Fenner regarded the gun. “Show me the bullets.”
She blinked down at the gun. There was more? Is that where her grandfather had gotten the box of deadly ammo? She cracked open the weapon and let the shiny bullets fall into her hand. She wished she’d replaced them with tarnished ones; that would have added a touch of realism to her story.
“I shined them up,” she said. “At first I wasn’t sure if they were silver.”
His face changed. “I know how it happened. She dropped it. She found the mine and told the Gaudins and they’ve stolen everything. It belongs to us. The mine is on our land.”
She? Did he mean Cordelia? Was he blaming her for this whole mess?
“But who . . . who made the bullets?” she asked, her voice quavering as she thought of her grandfather inside the mine. Knowing all this time where it was. Did he know? “Did they come from the mine? Where is it?”
“That’s something only Fenner alphas should ever know,” he said. “It’s a secret.”
Did he know? Tell me. Tell me, please, she silently begged him.
Had Mr. Fenner killed Mr. Henderson after he had told him all he knew about the mine? Or because he had failed to find it? She doubted she would ever see Mr. Henderson alive again.
He pulled back his lips from his teeth and hair sprouted on his face and the backs of his hands. “We’ll hunt them down and take what’s ours. I’ll have her pelt.”
His jaw began to elongate. Katelyn’s heartbeat picked up and her joints seized with pain; her instinctive fear of him was ratcheting up her adrenaline and beginning to force the change on her, too. She fought to stay calm, not wanting him to know that she had partially transformed once without the full moon. She knew now that that hadn’t been a one-time event.
One secret at a time.
“I found it a while ago,” she said. “When I first moved here. I didn’t know what it was as I couldn’t smell silver back then. But my grandfather was teaching me how to shoot. So I cleaned it up to see if I could use it. The bullets were covered with tarnish.”
“Did you show it to him?” he asked urgently. “Has he seen it?”
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to be out in the woods. So I hid it.”
“It was wrong of you to deceive him,” Mr. Fenner said, knitting his brows. “But you saved his life.”
She knew that. And if it was true that the mine was filled with silver bullets, then finding it would give her even more status. Maybe even enough to make sure no one ever tried to harm her again . . . and to bring Cordelia home.
“Sometimes, when it seems like we’re being disobedient,” she said cautiously, “we’re really the most loyal.”
“Does Justin know about this?”
“No. I brought the gun with me in case Babette started fighting us. I didn’t tell him about it, though, and when he kept thinking he smelled silver in the truck, I pretended that I didn’t.”
“Show me exactly where you found it. Now,” he ordered her. He pointed at the driver’s seat, indicating for her to get behind the wheel. Then he jogged around to the passenger side and climbed in.
She looked from him to the pack. They were milling and watching. From his place at Lucy’s side, Jesse bounced on his heels and waved at her while Arial gaped open-mouthed as she watched her father get into the truck. Justin’s face was a neutral mask. Katelyn wanted to reassure him that their secrets were still their own. She had never told him about the gun — he would be stunned when he found out.
He had left the keys in the ignition so she started the engine and the two drove away. She could feel everyone’s eyes on them. Mr. Fenner hadn’t explained or told them what to do and obviously he expected them to wait for further orders.
Lee seemed to take up all the room in the truck. Although he was just a man, he was larger than life. Her hands on the wheel were sweaty, and Katelyn had to concentrate hard on her driving. He held out the gun and she almost screamed.
“This thing is making me itch,” he said. “Take it.”
The gun was heavy in her hand. I could shoot him, she thought. For a second or two, she gave it serious thought. Then even more serious thought. Sweat beaded on her forehead. If he was gone . . .
She couldn’t kill him in cold blood. She just couldn’t do it.
What do you think he’s going to tell you to do with this gun? she asked herself. Shoot people.
All she had been thinking of when she gave him the gun was protecting herself. But there were consequences to her actions. Dire ones. And killing Mr. Fenner would only bring on more of them.
Unless I ran. If I went to the Gaudins.
Right. The same pack Cordelia had been forced to join?
She put the gun under the driver’s seat, one of the usual places for keeping guns in Wolf Springs.
Taking a huge breath to force down her aggression, she turned off the road into the meadow where she and Justin had found the silver animal trap. She reasoned that Mr. Fenner might smell silver residue on the earth where it had lain, confirming her story that she’d found the gun there. She pulled to a stop and they got out.
They began to wade through waist-high ferns and undergrowth. “It’s been a long time,” she began, “but it was somewhere around—”
He cupped his hand over her nose and mouth and threw both himself and Katelyn to the ground. She began to panic but he whispered into her ear, “Intruders.”
He drew his hand away and she inhaled. There was something subtle in the air that grew sharper with the next breath. It was a pungent scent like sweat — the smell of other people.
Then she heard a male voice speaking in French. The Gaudins were French-speaking Cajuns. She listened intently, but she couldn’t make out a single word. Giddy hysteria threatened to bubble out of her. If only she’d known she’d grow up in a world where bilingual werewolves were her sworn enemies, she’d have asked her mother to teach her the language properly.
Mr. Fenner pressed his finger across her lips and she nodded: stay quiet.
“Where’s the gun?” he whispered.
“Truck,” she whispered back.
The French-speaking man said something else. Katelyn assumed he was on his phone. Then she remembered that she hadn’t been able to get cell reception, just as a second voice replied to the first.
Mr. Fenner raised himself on his elbows and looked back at the truck. It sat in plain sight. The voices drifted closer and she could see the frustration on his face.
Closer.
She darted her gaze in their direction. With barely perceptible gestures, Mr. Fenner tapped her arm and pointed to his own face. Keep your eyes on me, he was telling her. Watch me.
She understood a little better now what it meant to follow an alpha. He was in charge of her survival. And in the werewolf world, he was supposed to be.
He pointed at her, and then at the truck. Mimed pulling a trigger. She sucked in a breath and nodded. Oh, God, they were doing this. He held up a single finger, then a second. One, two, three.
“Go,” he whispered, then as she bolted upright and ran, he transformed nearly instantaneously. A fierce growl exploded from powerful lungs as he raced through the grass in the direction of the voices.
Birds shot from the treetops as she ran. She heard shouting, then more howls as she dashed to the truck and yanked open the door. She felt for the gun, found it, and froze. She crouched behind the door and watched through the window, her instinct for self-preservation taking over.
In the short brown grass of the meadow, Mr. Fenner’s white wolf form lunged at a black wolf and a tawny-hued one the color of Dom Gaudin’s human hair. The black wolf charged Mr. Fenner and knocked him backwards, then sprang at him as the tawny one circled behind. Mr. Fenner raised his head and opened his massive jaws. As the black wolf fell on him, he clamped his jaws around the black wolf’s shoulder. Its howl cut through the forest like the cry of a human in pain.
Then, before the tawny wolf could get to the white wolf, Katelyn’s alpha wheeled around and hurtled himself at it. The tawny wolf feinted left, then attacked Mr. Fenner’s right flank. There was a rolling ball of brown and white. Blood began to spurt. Whose, she couldn’t tell.
The gun in her hand, Katelyn ran toward the meadow. Blood was gushing from a large rip in the white wolf’s side. The black wolf pushed him over just as the tawny one positioned himself over Mr. Fenner’s thick neck. Then the black wolf fell down on top of Mr. Fenner, pinning him. Mr. Fenner flailed and fought, but Katelyn could see that the fight was going out of him. The tawny one threw back his head and howled; he was about to go in for the kill when Katelyn stopped and raised the gun.
“No,” she whispered, not wanting to do this as she aimed at the tawny one’s head, knowing she had a good chance of making the shot. Her vision telescoped. She could see the hairs on the tawny wolf’s face, the intelligence in his eyes. He was going to kill Mr. Fenner.
And what then? Would she be able to draw breath enough to reason with him then before they killed her, too?
Katelyn took a breath and held it in, as she’d been taught to do. Took aim.
Her finger found the trigger. She began to pull. She could almost hear the bullet chamber.
Then at the last minute, she raised the gun into the air. It went off, startling all three wolves. At once, the black one leaped off Mr. Fenner. The tawny one got in a parting nip, then disappeared into the trees with the black one as the report of the weapon echoed against the hills.
The white wolf became a man in rags, writhing in pain.
Katelyn ran to Mr. Fenner and stood over him, aiming her gun in the direction his attackers had fled. All she saw was shadow.
“No,” he said in a breathy voice. “Don’t waste the bullets.”
“Can you get to the truck?” she asked him, glancing down. She saw blood on his hand, and in the grass.
“Keep the silver away from me,” he said, pushing himself up on his elbow. “Give me a minute. I’ll start to heal.”
She kept watching the trees. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shot wide.”
“Best thing you could have done.” He kept his voice soft. “You could only get one. If the other one figured out what we had, he could report back to the Gaudins.”
“But you might have died.”
His smile was strained, but it was there. “It’s not about me, darlin’,” he said. “It’s about the pack.”
She was amazed. She imagined him as he must have been before he started losing his mind, and she understood a little better why Justin and Cordelia were both so distressed by his condition. They weren’t supposed to protect the alpha; if he could no longer protect them, he had to be replaced. But that didn’t mean that he had to die, did it?
“Do you want me to help you get up?” she asked him.
“No. Keep covering us.”
Us. They were in this together. She nodded and kept the gun aimed at the trees, sweeping slowly left and right in case the two werewolves tried to circle back around. When her grandfather had been teaching her to shoot, her arms would quickly tire. Holding a gun was harder work than they made it look like on TV.
Behind her, the grass rustled. Mr. Fenner was on his feet with his tattered clothes wrapped around his waist.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They got in the truck and drove back toward the Fenner house. As soon as he could get phone coverage, Mr. Fenner made a call not to Justin, but to Regan. He told her to put Arial on speakerphone — and to make sure they were alone. He told them about the attack . . . but he didn’t mention the gun.
“Set up a guard around the house. And I want some scouts in the woods. No mercy, you hear? We catch any of those bastards, we make ’em sorry they were ever born.” He hung up. “Not a word about the gun or the mine,” he said to Katelyn. “I’m positive this is the general vicinity. She probably told the Gaudins where it is. Now we just got to figure out exactly where.” He thought for a moment.
“Mr. Fenner,” Katelyn began, “she loves you. When I first met her, all she could talk about was you.” Because she was terrified of you, Katelyn thought silently, but Cordelia’s feelings about her father were very complicated. As miserable as he had made her, she still wanted to come home to him.
He shook his head. “Love’s not a factor when it comes to pack security. She knew someone had bitten you but she didn’t come to me.”
“She couldn’t believe it was a werewolf,” Katelyn said. “She thought it might just be a dog. Because I’m not from here, she thought I might not know the difference between a wolf and a husky. We were going to see what happened when I changed. Or if I changed.”
He huffed. “That was not a decision she should have made. She should have said nothing to you. Come to me.”
“But I made her tell me. I threatened her. I said that if she didn’t, I’d ask my grandfather about it. That’s the only reason she told me anything.”
“She still should have come to me,” he insisted.
“I was halfway out the door and on my way home to talk to him,” Katelyn said. “What was she going to do, kill me?”
He didn’t answer, and she nearly choked on sudden fear. “Did — did those other girls know? And that man who died? Is that what happened to them?”
“No,” he said. “We don’t attack people.”
“But you said you’d kill me,” she blurted. “And . . . Quentin—”
“We live by different rules. Our rules. But we don’t punish humans for not following them. That’s like blaming a bear for hibernating. So, she really did think a dog might have bitten you?” Katelyn heard a tremor in his voice and she was angry all over again for the whole big mess.
“A dog,” she agreed. “Or . . . she thought it might have been the Hellhound.” She heard herself lower her voice, and waited for him to make fun of her, the way all the Fenners had scoffed at Cordelia’s pathological terror of the supposedly mythical monster.
Silent for a moment, he shrugged, and he looked old and tired. “That night she thought she saw it? I almost thought so, too. Like to scare me to death, the way she started shrieking. We put guards out everywhere. Nothing.”
That doesn’t mean she didn’t see it, Katelyn thought.
“But I’ve come to a different conclusion.” She felt him looking at her and took her eyes off the road to meet his flinty gaze. “I think a Gaudin bit you. She planned it with them. Picked you out the day you got here, ran you to ground. A Gaudin bites you, you go to her, she turns you into their spy.”
“No,” Katelyn said, startled. But why couldn’t it have been a Gaudin who’d bitten her? “Wouldn’t you be able to tell? Wouldn’t I smell like a Gaudin?”
He blinked the same way Justin did when her ignorance caught him by surprise. “No. We have individual scents; we don’t have pack scents,” he said. “But we do have instincts. Loyalty to the pack, for one.” He set his jaw. “At least, most of us feel loyalty.”
“I don’t feel any loyalty to the Gaudins,” she said. But neither did she feel any loyalty to Mr. Fenner. Not a minute before, she’d considered shooting him. “I could have killed you in the meadow. I didn’t.”
That gave him pause. Then he nodded. “That doesn’t mean you’re loyal. It just means you’re not stupid.”
They reached the house. Mr. Fenner told her to bring the gun and she put it in the pocket of her jacket and followed him back into the yard. His daughters swarmed him, bringing him a robe and fussing over his wound; he was fake-crotchety with them, smiling as they fussed over him, batting their hands away and stomping into the house. Katelyn wasn’t sure where she should be in the parade. Arial and Regan had glued themselves to either side of Mr. Fenner. Doug and Al went next, and then Justin. Katelyn stepped in behind him, and the door shut behind her.
They sat at the dining room table and Mr. Fenner described what had happened. The group was thunderstruck — Justin especially — when she pulled out the gun. She put it down on the table but no one moved to examine it. In fact, Arial excused herself and hurried to the bathroom.
“Gaudins in our territory,” Justin said, when Mr. Fenner had finished.
“Don’t sound so shocked, boy,” Mr. Fenner said. “We’re in theirs.”
“One thing, Daddy,” Regan said. “If she took you near the mine, wouldn’t you be able to smell all the silver inside it?”
“Maybe there isn’t any,” Justin said quickly, and Katelyn stole a glance at him. “Maybe that’s just as much of a myth as the Hellhound.”
“Oh, Lord, not that again,” Arial said as she came back into the room. “I thought we’d heard the last of that.”
The two sisters tittered. They thought they’d heard the last because Cordelia had been banished, Katelyn translated. She had been the only one in the family who had believed in the Hellhound — the Bogey Man of the werewolf world. Misbehave and it will come and get you . . . Except, as it turned out, maybe Lee did as well.
“Perhaps the silver is buried deep,” Mr. Fenner said. “But it exists.”
That caught the attention of everyone at the table, but no one pressed Mr. Fenner to elaborate. Katelyn spun a fantasy where each new alpha learned various secrets of Wolf Springs. And that if the alpha wasn’t in his right mind, he might begin to spill them.
Heads turned toward Katelyn, as if she knew the secrets, too. She just shrugged and picked up the gun.
“Put that down!” Arial cried. “Daddy, you should get rid of that!”
“She’s the only one who can use it, and we can’t trust her,” Regan concurred.
Their husbands remained silent. Mr. Fenner sat very still. Then he glared at each of them in turn.
“Are you questioning my judgment?”
“No, of course not, Daddy,” Arial whined, practically batting her lashes at him. “It’s just, well, you know, we’re still upset about what a lying, cheating bitch—”
“Enough!” he thundered, slamming his fist on the table. “Do you take me for an idiot? I know what you’re trying to do.” He rose from his chair. “Don’t push me, girl. Ever.” Then he winced, and Katelyn saw his hand start to move toward his wound. But he slammed his fist down on the table instead. Concealing his vulnerability. Masking his weakness.
“She was the best of you,” he said brokenly. He sighed heavily and lowered his head. Katelyn thought he might be crying. But when he raised it again, his expression was hard. “This is a war council. Let’s get down to it. Twenty will go. Ten will stay behind with the kids. We’ll leave tomorrow morning, before dawn. It’s an eleven-hour drive to the Bayou des Loupes. If we leave early enough, we can prepare before moonrise.”
“We should wait until the full moon,” Justin said. “Some of us won’t be able to change.”
“I’m not waiting that long. They’re already nosing around up here. Sometimes the first change comes in the heat of battle,” Lee Fenner replied. “That’s how they used to do it back in the old country. Take the pups out, attack some Vikings.” He chuckled as if the image amused him.
“So what should we do if we still can’t change?” Katelyn asked. “Should we pack weapons?”
“That’s a good question,” Mr. Fenner replied. “Ordinary bullets don’t kill us.” He turned to Justin. “We’ll be out in the bayou, away from the humans. What do you think?”
“Swords. Decapitation works,” Arial said quickly, before Justin had a chance to respond.
Regan rolled her eyes. “You’ll get the Hellhound after us yet, sissy, if humans start finding heads floating in the water.”
Cordelia had explained to Katelyn that the Hellhound was thought to keep watch over all werewolves to ensure that they didn’t violate the code by which all werewolves lived — to shield their existence from humans, and never to attack humans. To obey pack hierarchy and maintain loyalty. Werewolves who broke these edicts could suffer the worst penalty — death, and not a pleasant one.
Justin turned to Katelyn. “Guns make noise. The most important rule is to keep all the packs safe from discovery, not just ours. That’s a universal law. Humans can never know of our existence.”
“Even when we’re slaughtering rival werewolves,” Regan said.
Heat rushed across Katelyn’s face. That rule had nearly gotten Cordelia killed. Katelyn had had no idea what she’d been asking — demanding — of Cordelia when she had forced Cordelia into telling her what was happening to her. By rights, Cordelia should have gone to her father and told him about the new girl. But Cordelia had been afraid of what Mr. Fenner would do. Because he was the alpha, yes, but also because he was suffering from dementia. Cordelia had risked her life to protect Katelyn — and now they were going to war with the pack that had taken her in.
“That’s why we’re going to the swamp,” Mr. Fenner said. “No humans around. Us against them.”
“I like the sound of that,” Arial said.
Katelyn studied her, trying to reconcile her bloodthirsty aggression with her runway fashion-model appearance. What it must be like to have spent your entire life in and around the tiny town of Wolf Springs without anyone realizing that a pack of werewolves lurked in their midst. If a werewolf was mauling the victims — and it certainly looked that way to Katelyn — then he — or she — should be put to death for two reasons: taking human life and risking discovery.
It had to be Mr. Fenner. And once that was confirmed?
Except that the wolf that attacked me wasn’t Mr. Fenner.
She stirred, realizing the others were looking at her. Al and Doug, the husbands, hadn’t said a single word.
“We haven’t fought another pack in centuries, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to fight,” Mr. Fenner said. “Justin hasn’t had time to bring you up to that level, but the Fenners have been getting ready for this war for a long time.” He spoke in the strange, almost happy tone he used on occasion. “And I wish we could wait it out until you and Jus could shift.”
“Don’t forget that I can shift, Daddy,” Regan said, preening.
“How can I forget that, little gal, when you remind me every chance you get?” he asked her, clearly amused.
When Katelyn had been bitten, she’d suspected Regan. But either Regan had been a consummate actress when demanding to know who had bitten Katelyn, or she hadn’t been Katelyn’s attacker. Katelyn decided she’d been hasty in assuming Regan was innocent.
“Kat, take the rest of the day to look for the mine. If you find more bullets and weapons, this will go a lot faster.”
He gave her a strange, almost pleading look. “You do that for me, darlin’, I might be disposed to grant you a favor.”
Cordelia. She knew that was what he meant. Her heart began to pound, and he gave her another long look.
“I will.” She got to her feet. “Starting now. See you.” She heard how rude she sounded but she didn’t back down.
Mr. Fenner chuckled and nodded at her as if impressed with her forthrightness. “Justin will go with you,” he said.
“On it.” Justin stood.
He and Katelyn headed for the front door, Katelyn wondering if this was the wisest thing to do. Lucy had agreed to stand down, but what was the point of throwing Justin and her together even more?
“Be careful of the Hellhound,” Regan called after them.
“And the Hellbitch,” Arial added, and the two sisters started laughing.