I couldn’t remember.
“Are you naked?” His eyes fell shut again, and he made a little hitching sound like a snore.
Oh, for Christ’s sake. But I fell asleep before I could work up the energy to be pissed off.
CHAPTER 13
I woke up with a pounding headache, stiff and sore all over, with a back made of torn-up iron bars and something wrong with my left arm because Graves’s heavy goddamn head was lying on it. I sat bolt-upright and flinched as still, cold air met bare skin. I was sweating—he was warm. Sweat cooled rapidly on my back and shoulders. My mouth tasted like day-old coffee mixed with ash.
Graves was on his back. He didn’t protest when I scrambled painfully out of the bed, because he was utterly, deeply asleep, his hair lank over his face, his nose lifting proudly. The very, very slight suggestion of epicanthic folds made his closed eyes exotic, the fan of his charcoal lashes even and regular against his cheekbones. The bandage was crusted with blood and something yellow, traceries of blue-black spreading along the vein map up his neck and down his arm, onto his chest.
Doesn’t look good, does it?
I looked around for clothes. I still smelled traces of the burning thing from yesterday all over me, but I needed to get something on my shivering skin. I was also hungry as hell.
First things first, though. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, scooped the gun off the table, and went into Dad’s room. I came back with nylon rope—good for rappelling, tying down a load in a pickup, and, not so incidentally, for tying up a kid who might turn into a werwulf.
Werwulfen, especially new ones, have a real problem with silver. That part of pop culture is real enough. The chain around his neck wasn’t rubbing red blisters into his skin, which was a good sign. Neither was the skull earring, pressed against his cheekbone by the way his head was turned slightly to the side. A pulse beat strong and steady in his throat. He was skinny but had a lot of good muscle—and if he started to change on me, he would have the kind of hysterical strength that could throw me across the room without thinking twice about it. Or even noticing.
He’d be too busy looking for his first chunk of raw meat.
What am I going to tie him to? The mattress? Jesus, a fine time to wish I had a four-poster.
Fortunately, Dad taught me a lot about knots. A trucker’s hitch will cinch someone down—it just gets tighter the more you struggle—and if he couldn’t get enough leverage, he couldn’t come after me. First I trussed his wrists and elbows, then his knees and ankles; then I ran four more lines between the mattress and the box spring. That was a trick. Each one I secured with a trucker’s hitch.
If he had to go to the bathroom, he was out of luck. I could always get a new mattress. I couldn’t buy a new trachea.
With that done, I washed up. No hot shower for me—I couldn’t afford the time. But clean clothes and a scrubbed-clean face does wonders for any girl’s mood—even if that face is dead white, hectic flares of color on the cheeks, and with pupils wide enough to look half-wild. The zit on my temple had vanished, and no more seemed to be rising.
Go figure. My hair was a total loss, though. Humidity and cold made me look like the Bride of Frankenstein, except without the cool white zigzags.
That made me think of the streak-headed werwulf, and I shivered. I found a dry pair of sneakers because my boots were still sopping wet, and was ready to start solving problems.
Downstairs, snow had spilled in through the screen door on the little porch, and it was bastard cold. I looked longingly at the box of Cheerios on the counter—my stomach growled just thinking about it—but went to hunt in the garage for plywood instead. My scrounger’s luck was good, and in less than ten minutes I had the snow cleared away and plywood bracing the screen door; I nailed more plywood up outside over the hole in the actual back door. I swept up broken glass, listening to the wind moan outside. My fingers were numb and my breath made little clouds in front of my face. I began to regret ever waking up.
I rigged some blankets on a line over the back door to insulate it, taping it down with duct tape, every girl’s best friend. Then, finally, I turned up the heat and shivered through my first bowl of cereal. The milk burned, it was so cold. The entire house smelled like fresh air plus a faint, rapidly fading taint of zombie. I was so hungry I didn’t even mind.
As soon as I finished the cereal, I put a fresh clip in the gun and checked on Graves. He was still out cold, breathing through his nose and mouth the way little kids do. The house began to warm up, and I sat on the stairs for a long time, hugging myself and staring down the hall at the boxes and the bullet holes blown in the wall.
What are you going to do, Dru?
The hollow place inside me didn’t answer. I knew I should get up and eat something else, but I just kept staring at bullet holes. Nothing sounded good now that I had a lump of cold cereal in me.
I held the gun loosely in my right hand. If Graves started to change . . .
Well, technically you’ve already killed one person, sweetheart. Dad’s voice, cool and calm, like every time I was being an idiot. One more shouldn’t be that hard. Just wait until he changes and put him down. You should have done it at the mall.
Still, it was oddly comforting knowing there was someone in the house who wasn’t going anywhere. Kind of pathetic, but I’ve spent so many nights alone waiting for Dad to come back it was nice to hear the silent sound that means someone else is breathing in the same space. So what if he’d turn into a big hairy beast and try to kill me? The first time a werwulf changed it was unstoppable until it got blood.
That’s what the books said. I didn’t have any reason to doubt them. Or Dad, who said the same thing.
This is rapidly getting out of hand. Dad’s phrase, delivered with a straight face and usually a gun in either hand. What are you going to do next, Dru?
I needed a plan. The trouble was, I didn’t have one.
“I suppose I should get the living room cleaned up,” I said to the quiet. “Wait for him to wake up. Then we’ll see.”
The hollow place inside me wasn’t satisfied by that. Dad was dead. He wasn’t coming back. I was alone in the world, and I’d gotten some kid who had tried to help me bitten by a werwulf. There were other things I had to think about, but I was damned if I could remember them. I felt very small and very alone, sitting there on the stairs.
Racking up the score here, kiddo. I shivered, hugging my knees. The snow was really coming down, wind moaning against the corners of the house. It was 8 a.m. and dark out there, except for the directionless glow between the whirling quarter-size flakes from reflected city light. Gonna need a new back door. Unless you’re blowing town.
I couldn’t blow town. Graves would need someone to explain to him what was going on. And someone had killed Dad.
That was what I’d been trying not to think. I mean, I’d killed Dad. But it hadn’t really been Dad. You can’t make a zombie when someone’s still alive.
You just can’t.
Someone turned him into a zombie. You don’t wake up one morning as one of the reanimated. Someone killed him and turned him into a zombie. He wasn’t in good shape, either. There was a lot of trauma to those tissues—they rot quicker when they’re injured before they die.
I felt like I was in one of those snow globes—you know, where you shake them and the entire inside fills with whirling white. Everything inside still and motionless, surrounded by floating bits of ice. I was trying not to think what I had to think next, and succeeding only in filling my head with static.
I don’t know how long I would have sat there if I hadn’t heard a sharp, surprised half-yell from overhead.
Graves was awake. I hauled myself up and trudged up the stairs, the gun cold and heavy in my hand.
I didn’t want to do what I thought I was going to do.
Tough luck, chickie babe. You have to.
He stopped struggling against the ropes as soon as he saw me. The blankets had rucked up
away from his toes. The room was warmer, and sweat plastered his long, dead-black hair to his face.
We stared at each other for a few moments. Then he lifted his chapped fingers—lying on his side, it was about all he could do. His voice was husky, and he said the absolute last thing I’d expect a kid who’d gotten bit by a werwulf and tied to a bed to say.
“Kinky.” He arched one half of his unibrow, his eyes burning green around the holes of his pupils. He didn’t look ready to sprout hair or fangs.
We were coming up on twelve hours since he’d been bit.
“I never figured you for the bondage type,” he continued. “How the hell am I going to piss?”
Smart kid.
The gun was loaded with one in the chamber. I clicked the safety off, praying that the next five minutes would go well. I advanced nervously into the room, giving myself plenty of time. The knots looked like they were holding just fine.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions.” I managed to keep my tone even. “If you give the right answers, I’ll cut the ropes off and we’ll go from there.”
He licked his lips. His eyes flicked between the gun and my face, and he went very still.
Something told me he knew I wasn’t bluffing.
That was great. Because I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t kill him on my bed. I couldn’t shoot someone like that. Sure, I’d shot the werwulf. It had been just like a video game, just like Dad trained me.
But . . . I knew this guy. I couldn’t shoot him. He was human.
He was the closest thing to a friend I had now.
I stood beside my own bed, near our scattered sodden clothes from yesterday. I leveled the gun. “First question. Where did you get your necklace?”
He swallowed. He’d gone ghost-pale. His pulse throbbed frantically in his throat. “Hot Topic, in the mall. You’re not going to shoot me, Dru.”
I wish I was half as sure as you sound. I was nerving myself up for something, that was for goddamn sure. “Do you know what it means?”
“Hell, I just got it because it was on sale. People leave me alone if they think I’m crazy and into that cult shit.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. “Christ, you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
It’s either that or have you tear out my throat. Twelve hours is the limit for werwulf changes. If you haven’t changed by now, there’s only a couple of reasons why. I leaned down a little, bracing the gun in both hands, and put the barrel to his temple. Kept my fingers carefully locked outside the trigger guard, because accidents can happen. “Do you believe in ghosts, Graves?”
He swallowed again. His throat worked. “Shit, I don’t know. Don’t shoot me. Please.” His voice cracked.
If he knew about the Real World, he would have answered differently. Was he lying?
I didn’t want to think so. He hadn’t acted like he knew jackshit about it. So that narrowed down the reasons why he wasn’t getting all hairy.
I swallowed. My throat was as dry as the stuff you drop into water to get fog for parties. Frozen carbon dioxide. It burns like hell and you can use it in swamps to make gator spirits angry. “Answer this question very carefully, kid. Are you a virgin?”
The silence was so long I thought I was going to have to ask him again.
“What the hell?” He sounded honestly perplexed.
“Yes or no? Are you a virgin?” I lost control halfway through. My voice spiraled up into a scream.
He flinched, and I ached to hit him. I wanted to hit something, that’s for sure. I wanted to do something instead of just stand there and threaten him.
“Sonofabitch answer me!” My voice bounced off the walls, made the whole room whirl around me. My blood pounded in my ears. Adrenaline poured through my blood, copper winding me tighter and tighter.
“Yes!” he screamed back. “Yes, I’m a fucking virgin, don’t shoot me goddammit fucking please!”
I froze. My fingers were cramping outside the trigger guard.
His chest heaved. Tears slicked his cheeks and his eyes were squeezed shut. He strained against the ropes without moving, and my entire body had gone cold.
Almost twelve hours, and he was a virgin.
It might be okay after all.
I didn’t recognize the hoarse rasp coming from my throat as mine. “All right.” I eased the safety back on with a click, after I pointed the gun away. Far, far away from both him and me. “All right. Fine. All right.”
Graves made hoarse little sobbing sounds. I backed off, retreating from the bed.
Jesus. What had I done? I should have asked him that first off instead of putting a gun to his head. I felt sick.
I stumbled for the bathroom and threw up every inch of cereal I’d eaten. Then I cried too, shaking over the cold porcelain. I had to blow my nose three times. When that was done, raw-eyed and sore, I went slowly back down the dark hall into Dad’s room. I found a spare holster and put the gun in it, and I got out a bowie knife. The knots would be cinched down too tight to loosen now.
Graves was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, his lips moving soundlessly. I’d just scared the shit out of him.
So what? Better to scare him than get your throat ripped out. The first time a wulf changes, it’s unstoppable.
I told Dad’s voice to take a hike for once, and began sawing through the ropes. “You were bitten by a werwulf. I had to be sure,” I said as I avoided cutting his forearm. My hands were shaking just a little. “Just stay still. We’ll have you out of these in a jiffy.”
He didn’t say anything.
I managed to get the ropes around his ankles and knees cut through, then the ones at his elbows and wrists. He just lay there, limp, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry.” I sounded five years old. The words were empty. It was the kind of thing you say to someone when you’ve broken a toy or something, not when you’ve just held a gun to their head and shouted at them. “I had to be sure. If you’re a virgin, it’s okay; you won’t change like a regular wulf. The imprint won’t take, because you’re a closed door. At least, that’s what Dad told me. He was almost always right. I—”
“Shut up,” he whispered. His eyes squeezed shut. Tears made his lashes into a damp mat. “Leave me alone.”
I backed away on my knees, holding the knife. “I’m sorry. Really. I just—”
“I said, leave me alone. Shut up.” His voice broke.
I wiped at my cheek with my fingers. There wasn’t anything else to say. So I just made it to my feet with each piece of my body creaking and left him alone.
CHAPTER 14
I sat on the stairs again, listening to the heater run and the silent un-noise of snow outside. I heard Graves moving around—the toilet flushing, water running, shuffling feet and creaks I hadn’t had a chance to learn in this new place yet. Each house has its own set of sounds, and each person sounds different.
He didn’t sound like Dad. But still, just hearing someone breathing and walking around was better than nothing. Way better than nothing.
My eyes were hot and grainy. I stared at the gun in my hands. Nine-millimeter, dead black, and heavy, its nose sleek and sharp. It was a good gun.
What are you going to do, Dru? Go back to high school and be prom queen? What the hell. Why not?
The answer was right around the corner—I just couldn’t think of it. There was something I was missing, something I was trying not to think. It had to do with that door, and the concrete corridor, and the dream hanging heavy in my head, like a lead bowling ball.
Someone turned Dad into a zombie. While he was out hunting. So someone knew about what he was doing, right?
But who could know? What had he been after? He hadn’t said anything to me.
The questions revolved inside my head. Then the thing I’d been forgetting since waking up slid into place with a click like racking a bullet into the chamber.
Contacts. Dad had contacts. I should call someone.
Relief so intense
it was ridiculous poured through my entire body at the thought. Someone adult, older than me, better-armed and more experienced, who could come out and . . .
. . . do what? Set up housekeeping? Adopt me? Take me on as an apprentice? Make everything okay?
Yeah. Sure. None of the other hunters Dad had let me hang around with were in the least parental. But they were older, right? And they’d be interested in something that killed him. They were his friends. Combat buddies. Comrades in arms.
Right?
I closed my eyes. Leaned against the wall, dangling the gun in my right hand.
The stairs squeaked. Graves shuffled down each one like it hurt. There was a dragging sound.
I didn’t open my eyes.
When he sat down beside me I was only mildly surprised. We sat like that for a few minutes, until my eyelids flew up and the world came rushing back into my head again.
He had Mom’s sunrise quilt from my bed wrapped around his shoulders, and his face was set. He’d pushed his hair behind his ears. He was barefoot. The house was warm enough now.
The messy lacerations of wulfbite were closing, angry pink instead of bleeding crimson or the crusted yellow. The blue-black mapping of his veins had vanished. Their bites heal really, eerily fast. Nobody knows why.
The ticking silence of the heater filled up the space between us. We both fit on the step, he was so birdlike thin.
I’d told him I was sorry. Did he have any idea how sorry I was?
He sat there for a while, fidgeting in that way of his. Then he spoke, quietly. Almost gently, as if I was crying. “Why’d you do that?”
I had to. “You might have changed.”
“Changed.” He said it so flatly I almost might not have known it was a question.
“Into a werwulf. Like that thing back at the mall that bit you.”
“A vherr-what?”
“A werwulf.” I considered spelling it for him, decided not to. “As in howl at the moon, silver bullet, Lon Chaney type of thing. Only it’s not really like that. They’re responsible for some disappearances, but mostly they eat a lot of raw meat and play head games with each other. Humans aren’t enough fun. Plus they’ve got a running feud with the suckers.”