Trial by Fire
Page 31
About a hundred yards into the woods, Caroline stopped. In a slow, deliberate movement, she bent down and unsheathed a dagger strapped to her side. She turned and the weapon left her hand before I even realized she was preparing to throw it. It whizzed past Devon’s left ear, slicing through the air and making it sing, a deadly sound that stopped only when the blade cut down a bird, mid-flight, pinning it to a tree half a football field away.
“I don’t miss. You can either take my word for it, or you can start running.”
Devon grinned—and then he ran. Caroline didn’t bother tracking his movements. She didn’t move to pull out a weapon. Instead, she turned to me.
“It’s your call,” she told me. “Do I aim for him?”
No. Absolutely not. Never.
“Aim for his hair,” I told her. “He’s been going for a little more volume lately, and if you’re as good as you say you are, you should be able to give him a trim.”
Caroline nodded. She reached into her jacket and pulled out an arrow, tipped with silver, and a small crossbow, sized to fit perfectly under her jacket without being seen. The sheer number of weapons she had managed to conceal within seemingly ordinary clothes defied the laws of physics.
Devon was still visible in the distance—well outside the range in which I could have hit him, but not so far gone that she didn’t stand a chance.
“Move,” she whispered. “Run.”
Hearing her words, despite the distance, he turned at a ninety-degree angle and began running in a line perpendicular to the one on which Lake, Caroline, and I stood. His pace and motions were erratic and unpredictable.
He was fast.
Caroline didn’t lose a moment. She didn’t pause to get a feel for the wind. She didn’t narrow her eyes. She just lifted her arm and turned her head to face me, and without even looking at Devon, she fired.
This was a mistake.
I knew that when I saw the look in Caroline’s eyes: certain and satisfied and a little bit sad, like there had never been any question in her mind that she would hit him, and like she wished, on a gut-deep level, that there was.
“You got him.” Lake tried very hard to keep the admiration out of her voice. “Right where it hurts—in the hair gel.”
Dev? I didn’t have the benefit of Lake’s eyesight, and I needed to know for myself that he was okay, that Caroline hadn’t missed her target by a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction.
I’m fine, Bryn. Not quite as pretty as I was a few seconds ago, but fine.
All things considered, he was taking it well, but for some reason, Caroline wasn’t.
I assessed her reaction. “Are you upset that you hit him, or upset that it was only his hair?”
Caroline’s eyes flashed. “I don’t get upset,” she said. “I don’t lose control.”
“That the difference between you and a werewolf?” I asked.
Caroline took a step forward, closing the space between us. “I’m nothing like you.” Even though her tone never changed, the way she spaced her words did, each one issued with the weight of an entire sentence. “Any of you.”
I caught her gaze and held it. “You hunt. Werewolves hunt. There’s a part of you that likes it. You’re a predator. You may not go furry on the full moon, but you’re not any more human than they are.”
“Maybe not.” That wasn’t the response I’d expected. “But if there weren’t people like you, the world wouldn’t need people like me. If I’m a monster, you made me that way.”
“Is this the collective ‘you’ we’re talking about here?” I asked, pushing her that much further, that much harder.
Caroline’s right hand lashed out, but unlike the woman who’d hit Ali the day before, she didn’t strike me. She brought her fingertips to the edge of the glove on her opposite hand, and she tugged.
There was a part of me that expected an explosion of power the second her skin hit the crisp winter air, but there was nothing: no sound, no smell, no foreboding sense of things to come.
And then I saw the scars. They were puckered and white, and they drew my eyes to the skin around them. The skin that was there.
The skin that wasn’t.
“Werewolf attack,” she said. “When I was seven.”
I shook my head. “Unless you’re hiding a lot more scars somewhere, you’re mistaken.”
Werewolves didn’t attack to maim. Under the Senate’s rule, they didn’t attack at all, and when a wolf went Rabid, he didn’t care about anything but the hunt. He certainly didn’t let a seven-year-old girl walk away after taking a single chunk out of her arm.
“I shot him, right between the eyes.”
“Were you shooting silver?” Lake asked quietly.
“No.” Caroline issued the word like it was a challenge. “But it was enough to slow him down. Enough for me to get away.” She pressed her lips together into a thin white line. “Not enough for my father to get away, too.”
Bullet or not, there wasn’t a werewolf on the planet who would let his prey get away with nothing more than a sizable love nip. When werewolves attacked, they attacked to kill—and the only people who didn’t die as a result were the kind who could survive things that normal people couldn’t.
Caroline wasn’t Resilient—I would have known in a heartbeat if she was, the way I’d known from the moment I’d seen Chase that we were the same, the way the Rabid—who’d been Resilient himself—had known exactly which kids could survive being Changed.
We just knew—and Caroline didn’t engender even a spark of that recognition.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lake asked me.
I glanced away from Caroline, just for a second. “I’m thinking she got away because he let her.”
One second, I was standing and talking, and the next, I was on the ground, and Caroline’s foot was wedged under my chin, holding me down, pushing my head back.
There was a slight chance she was better at hand-to-hand than I’d given her credit for.
With Caroline’s foot bearing down on my trachea, I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t panic. I didn’t fight her, and I managed to keep Devon and Lake from responding to the action.
“Nobody lets me do anything,” Caroline said, her eyes slits in an otherwise cherubic face. “I do what has to be done, and if that means shooting silver, to make sure that what I put down stays down, then that’s what it means.”
My lungs rebelled inside my chest, and I knew that the second things started going hazy, the familiar blood-red haze of my survival instinct wouldn’t be far behind. In a matter of seconds, Caroline would be the one on the floor, and I would have lost the only advantage that mattered right now: she was talking.
“Werewolves are animals. God made me a hunter. You do the math.” Having had her say, Caroline lifted her foot off my trachea, and I fought down the urge to put her in the dirt, to show her my mettle.
“Do we look like animals to you?” Devon asked, coming up behind me. With a sizable chunk of his hair now missing, he looked more like a disgruntled eighties pop star than an animal of any kind. “Whoever attacked you deserved the bullet, and if you’d been shooting silver, he would have deserved that, too, but unless the wolf in question was a pup at the time, it wasn’t Lucas. It wasn’t Lake. It wasn’t me.”
“Did they tell you that our pack is mostly kids?” Lake asked, looking Caroline straight in the eye. “Our age or younger. Some of them aren’t much older than you were when you got those.” Lake gestured to the scars on Caroline’s arm. “You attack us, and you’re no better than whatever took a bite out of you.”
“You’re not human.” Caroline’s voice went cold. If I hadn’t been watching for it, I might not have noticed the way her pupils surged, covering her irises like ink spreading slowly across a page. “I won’t feel bad for you—or for them.”
My eyes on hers, I climbed to my feet, wondering if she knew her feelings weren’t entirely her own. “I’m human,” I said softly.
“I don’t miss. You can either take my word for it, or you can start running.”
Devon grinned—and then he ran. Caroline didn’t bother tracking his movements. She didn’t move to pull out a weapon. Instead, she turned to me.
“It’s your call,” she told me. “Do I aim for him?”
No. Absolutely not. Never.
“Aim for his hair,” I told her. “He’s been going for a little more volume lately, and if you’re as good as you say you are, you should be able to give him a trim.”
Caroline nodded. She reached into her jacket and pulled out an arrow, tipped with silver, and a small crossbow, sized to fit perfectly under her jacket without being seen. The sheer number of weapons she had managed to conceal within seemingly ordinary clothes defied the laws of physics.
Devon was still visible in the distance—well outside the range in which I could have hit him, but not so far gone that she didn’t stand a chance.
“Move,” she whispered. “Run.”
Hearing her words, despite the distance, he turned at a ninety-degree angle and began running in a line perpendicular to the one on which Lake, Caroline, and I stood. His pace and motions were erratic and unpredictable.
He was fast.
Caroline didn’t lose a moment. She didn’t pause to get a feel for the wind. She didn’t narrow her eyes. She just lifted her arm and turned her head to face me, and without even looking at Devon, she fired.
This was a mistake.
I knew that when I saw the look in Caroline’s eyes: certain and satisfied and a little bit sad, like there had never been any question in her mind that she would hit him, and like she wished, on a gut-deep level, that there was.
“You got him.” Lake tried very hard to keep the admiration out of her voice. “Right where it hurts—in the hair gel.”
Dev? I didn’t have the benefit of Lake’s eyesight, and I needed to know for myself that he was okay, that Caroline hadn’t missed her target by a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction.
I’m fine, Bryn. Not quite as pretty as I was a few seconds ago, but fine.
All things considered, he was taking it well, but for some reason, Caroline wasn’t.
I assessed her reaction. “Are you upset that you hit him, or upset that it was only his hair?”
Caroline’s eyes flashed. “I don’t get upset,” she said. “I don’t lose control.”
“That the difference between you and a werewolf?” I asked.
Caroline took a step forward, closing the space between us. “I’m nothing like you.” Even though her tone never changed, the way she spaced her words did, each one issued with the weight of an entire sentence. “Any of you.”
I caught her gaze and held it. “You hunt. Werewolves hunt. There’s a part of you that likes it. You’re a predator. You may not go furry on the full moon, but you’re not any more human than they are.”
“Maybe not.” That wasn’t the response I’d expected. “But if there weren’t people like you, the world wouldn’t need people like me. If I’m a monster, you made me that way.”
“Is this the collective ‘you’ we’re talking about here?” I asked, pushing her that much further, that much harder.
Caroline’s right hand lashed out, but unlike the woman who’d hit Ali the day before, she didn’t strike me. She brought her fingertips to the edge of the glove on her opposite hand, and she tugged.
There was a part of me that expected an explosion of power the second her skin hit the crisp winter air, but there was nothing: no sound, no smell, no foreboding sense of things to come.
And then I saw the scars. They were puckered and white, and they drew my eyes to the skin around them. The skin that was there.
The skin that wasn’t.
“Werewolf attack,” she said. “When I was seven.”
I shook my head. “Unless you’re hiding a lot more scars somewhere, you’re mistaken.”
Werewolves didn’t attack to maim. Under the Senate’s rule, they didn’t attack at all, and when a wolf went Rabid, he didn’t care about anything but the hunt. He certainly didn’t let a seven-year-old girl walk away after taking a single chunk out of her arm.
“I shot him, right between the eyes.”
“Were you shooting silver?” Lake asked quietly.
“No.” Caroline issued the word like it was a challenge. “But it was enough to slow him down. Enough for me to get away.” She pressed her lips together into a thin white line. “Not enough for my father to get away, too.”
Bullet or not, there wasn’t a werewolf on the planet who would let his prey get away with nothing more than a sizable love nip. When werewolves attacked, they attacked to kill—and the only people who didn’t die as a result were the kind who could survive things that normal people couldn’t.
Caroline wasn’t Resilient—I would have known in a heartbeat if she was, the way I’d known from the moment I’d seen Chase that we were the same, the way the Rabid—who’d been Resilient himself—had known exactly which kids could survive being Changed.
We just knew—and Caroline didn’t engender even a spark of that recognition.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lake asked me.
I glanced away from Caroline, just for a second. “I’m thinking she got away because he let her.”
One second, I was standing and talking, and the next, I was on the ground, and Caroline’s foot was wedged under my chin, holding me down, pushing my head back.
There was a slight chance she was better at hand-to-hand than I’d given her credit for.
With Caroline’s foot bearing down on my trachea, I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t panic. I didn’t fight her, and I managed to keep Devon and Lake from responding to the action.
“Nobody lets me do anything,” Caroline said, her eyes slits in an otherwise cherubic face. “I do what has to be done, and if that means shooting silver, to make sure that what I put down stays down, then that’s what it means.”
My lungs rebelled inside my chest, and I knew that the second things started going hazy, the familiar blood-red haze of my survival instinct wouldn’t be far behind. In a matter of seconds, Caroline would be the one on the floor, and I would have lost the only advantage that mattered right now: she was talking.
“Werewolves are animals. God made me a hunter. You do the math.” Having had her say, Caroline lifted her foot off my trachea, and I fought down the urge to put her in the dirt, to show her my mettle.
“Do we look like animals to you?” Devon asked, coming up behind me. With a sizable chunk of his hair now missing, he looked more like a disgruntled eighties pop star than an animal of any kind. “Whoever attacked you deserved the bullet, and if you’d been shooting silver, he would have deserved that, too, but unless the wolf in question was a pup at the time, it wasn’t Lucas. It wasn’t Lake. It wasn’t me.”
“Did they tell you that our pack is mostly kids?” Lake asked, looking Caroline straight in the eye. “Our age or younger. Some of them aren’t much older than you were when you got those.” Lake gestured to the scars on Caroline’s arm. “You attack us, and you’re no better than whatever took a bite out of you.”
“You’re not human.” Caroline’s voice went cold. If I hadn’t been watching for it, I might not have noticed the way her pupils surged, covering her irises like ink spreading slowly across a page. “I won’t feel bad for you—or for them.”
My eyes on hers, I climbed to my feet, wondering if she knew her feelings weren’t entirely her own. “I’m human,” I said softly.
