Dirty Blood

  “Ready,” I announced, stepping back into my bedroom.

  “What was that noise?” Wes asked immediately. He looked more curious than suspicious, though.

  I hadn’t doubted Wes would have heard me and my reply was dismissive. “Oh, nothing, I dropped my compact in the sink,” I said, smoothly. “Eye-shadow everywhere. It’s going to take forever to clean that up.”

  He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  I thought about scribbling a note for my mom, but then decided against it. I had my cell if she tried to call, and I planned on being back before her, anyway. Her rules said that if you were too sick to go to school, you were too sick to hang out with friends. And even though I didn’t feel like Wes was exactly a friend, I didn’t think she’d see it my way. Nor was I ready to explain it to her. I closed the door and locked it behind me. Turning the key in the deadbolt made me think of something. “Hey, how’d you get in if the door was locked before …?” I trailed off as I turned.

  Wes was standing at the edge of the yard, next to what I could only assume was his car. I guess I hadn’t thought about how we’d travel. Perhaps learning what I had about mythical creatures I assumed we’d run, or fly, or something equally magical. Instead, he stood holding the passenger door of the nicest and most expensive car I’d ever seen. The memories I’d regained of last night hadn’t included this and I could only assume I’d been too out of it to notice it then.

  It was silver and sleek, and screamed speed. Beyond that, I had no idea of its make or model, but I gawked anyway. “What is that?”

  “A car,” he said, obviously amused.

  I walked toward it, still staring at the car’s sexy lines. We just didn’t have cars like this in Frederick Falls. “I know that. What kind?”

  “Aston Martin, Volante.”

  I’d heard of the first but not the second. At his gesture I climbed in and he shut the door. I took a hearty inhale of the dreamy new-car scent and reached for my seat belt as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Old enough to drive,” he replied. The engine purred to life; even the sound of it was silken, like a cat’s purr.

  “Is this your dad’s car?”

  He looked offended. “No, it’s mine.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Did you go to school around here?”

  “Homeschooled.”

  For some reason, that was all it took to raise my suspicions about myths and legends and gory B movies. “How old are you?” I repeated, my head cocked to one side.

  “Nineteen.”

  It was too much to resist. “And how long have you been nineteen?”

  He looked at me like I had a screw loose. “Since I haven’t been eighteen?”

  “So, you’ve been on this planet for nineteen years?”

  “That’s usually what an age implies.” I knew I sounded crazy but there was that one movie franchise and even though I couldn’t say it aloud … I couldn’t let it go either.

  “What’s with the twenty questions?”

  I didn’t really want to admit what I’d just been thinking, so I said, “I’ve just never seen such a nice car, especially driven by someone my age.”

  “Trust fund,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  The ride was smooth and quiet and made me feel like the tires were floating over the ground. Maybe there was magic involved after all. Or maybe this car was amazing. He turned on the heat and then pressed another small button near my seat. “This is your seat warmer. You can turn it off if it gets too hot.”

  I nodded. Seat warmer? Wow, my mom’s Taurus had two vents on my side of the car, and I thought that was luxury.

  He navigated through my neighborhood and then turned us onto Route 1, away from town. Light traffic turned into almost no traffic as we got farther out. Wes increased our speed and the other cars dropped away. As leafless trees and winter-deadened scenery rushed by faster and faster, I glanced at the speedometer and gasped.

  “Slow down!”

  He looked over at me with a wicked grin. “Scared?”

  “No, but you’re going to get a ticket if you keep it up.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “How do you know?”

  He didn’t answer, but I saw the speedometer creep down by a few degrees. I relaxed my death grip on the armrest by a few inches.

  “Where are we going?” I asked a few minutes later. We’d turned off the highway a couple miles back and had taken a series of turns onto various back roads. Sad to say, I didn’t even know where we were anymore.

  “I told you. To see a friend.”

  The back road we were following now had sections of open fields interspersed with even larger sections of woods in between. I’d long since realized this “friend” didn’t live nearby, but I was starting to wonder exactly how far out we were going. Rather than ask again—since I was pretty sure he’d said all he would about our destination—I decided to use the time to learn all I could about the new me. “You mentioned something about needing to know what side I’d be on. What does that mean?”

  “It means there’s a chance I could wind up at the wrong end of your stake. And I’d prefer to know that ahead of time, if you don’t mind.”

  My eyes widened. “You think I’d kill you?”

  His lips curved into a wry smile. “You could try. Then again, with no training it’s unlikely you’d make it that far. Something you should think about.”

  “Training? Why?”

  “Liliana wasn’t looking for you. She found you by accident. It’s just a matter of time until it happens again.”

  “So you think I should train to fight … them?” I couldn’t bring myself to put Wes into the same category as Liliana. “Who would train me?”

  “Your parents—” he began.

  I shook my head. “My mom is not an option. I don’t even want to think about what she would say if I tried telling her a story like this.”

  “Your dad, then.”

  “My dad died when I was a baby. House fire.”

  Wes didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be struggling with his next words and I tensed, waiting for him to ask me more about it, but he didn’t. “I might know someone else.”

  “Uh-huh, and how exactly does one train to kill a Werewolf?”

  “Simulated fights, a lot like the one you had last night. Running. Exercise. Staying in shape. Conditioning.” He shrugged. “Think of it as UFC training.”

  “Great. It sounds …”

  “Useful?”

  “Time consuming. I wouldn’t be able to explain something like that to people. Besides—” My phone beeped with a new text. I flipped it open. It was Angela, checking up on me. I typed a response that I was sleepy and knocked out on cold medicine, hoping it would keep her from calling, or worse, showing up at my house. The last thing I needed was for her to realize something was up. I clicked send and snapped the phone shut again.

  Through the windshield I could see we were coming up on a section of woods again and I tried to push back the unease that was growing within me. The area was remote and unfamiliar to me. I didn’t want to think about how I’d get home if I had to leave in a hurry. I shifted in my chair, trying to relieve the pressure that was turning painful from the plunger handles against my back.

  Without warning, Wes’s foot stomped down on the brake, throwing me forward against my seat belt. My head jerked up to see what had made him stop so suddenly. A massive black wolf stood in the middle of the road several yards away; even from this distance, I could see that its head would easily reach my shoulders, maybe higher. It stared back at us with yellow, unblinking eyes, and it made no attempt to move out of our way as the car finally skidded to a halt.

  “What the heck?” I shrieked, clutching at the dashboard against the momentum of the brakes.

  Wes didn’t answer. The wolf was staring straight at him. It didn’t even s
eem to notice me. Their eyes remained locked for a long moment and then, abruptly, the wolf turned and bolted into the trees. When it was gone, Wes put the car into drive again and we eased forward.

  “What was that?” I demanded. My heart thudded heavily in my chest, and I had to concentrate on taking a couple of deep breaths to calm the flow of adrenaline shooting through my veins.

  Wes glanced over at me with a look of concern. It made me wonder how much showed on my face. “Sorry if I startled you. Nothing to worry about. He was a friend.”

  I gaped at him. “That was your friend?” I asked, in disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t he move out of the way? We could’ve hit him.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. “Tara, we stopped in plenty of time.”

  “Okay, but you guys didn’t even speak. Why did he run off?”

  “I’ll be sure to ask him when we get there. Here we are,” he added, before I could respond.

  ~ 5 ~