Bargains and Betrayals

  “Jack had so many things going for him,” Mr. Richard Maloy, head guidance counselor for the high school, reported. “The football team has been really shaken up by these last two suicides,” Maloy admitted. “We’ve brought in additional counselors like Dr. Sarissa Jones to help handle any questions the students may have.”

  Junction Jackrabbits quarterback and team captain, Derek Jamieson refused to comment, though friends have mentioned their concern over his recent absences.

  “It’s obvious we’re all very shaken up,” Sarah Luxom, the recently returned captain of the cheerleading squad, said.

  The clipboard slapped down on top of the newspaper. “Here,” the nurse said. “New day, same concept. Now made even simpler for your safety.”

  “You make it sound like I was to blame. I was attacked.”

  She wheeled the cart over to me. “You shouldn’t waste your time reading that stuff. The news can be disturbing.”

  “Ignorance may be bliss, but I’d rather be aware than blindly blissful.”

  “Whatever. Go on, the laundry doesn’t do itself.”

  Pushing the cart along, I let its wheels chatter, fighting me a few minutes. Things One and Two paid no attention. I finally relented, turned the cart correctly, and headed down the hall.

  Laundry detail was blessedly uneventful, giving me plenty of time to add to my ever-growing list of questions.

  Jessie

  Again under guard, I headed to the common room for visitation.

  I was spotted by the strange guy a moment before I noticed my father. Hazel eyes followed me as I entered the room.

  “Dad,” I said, careful not to shout. If something like chess or laundry delivery could upset the regularly maintained balance at Pecan Place, what would an exclamation of relief do?

  Things One and Two led me to the table where Dad waited.

  He eyed them warily. “Jessie,” he said, wrapping me in his arms and choking me with a bear hug. He glared up at my hulking guards and said, “Dr. Jones said I’d be allowed the privilege of speaking to my daughter in private because Jessie has done such a good job recently.”

  I waited until my guards backed away before I raised an eyebrow at my father in question. He pulled out chairs for us and winked.

  “You’ve been good, but not that good.”

  “Yeah.” I agreed, not bold enough to mention the sedation. Or the fight. How bad would Dad feel knowing he’d sentenced me to spend time in a place I got attacked delivering clothes?

  “That boy of yours is drivin’ himself crazy with guilt.”

  I stared at my hands resting loose on the table between us. Dad reached out for them. “I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”

  “Love makes you do all sorts of stupid things, Jessie,” Dad muttered. “He says he loves you. Makes no bones about it.”

  “Dad, you saw what they did to him when he tried to keep me from coming here.” Leaning in, I whispered. “He’s showing up here, outside my window every night.”

  Dad let out a low whistle. “I don’t know what to make of him, Jessie,” he admitted. “He’s really worried about you. And…” He licked his lips and looked around the room.

  “And what?”

  His gaze settled on me again. “Nothin’. Nope,” he assured me. “I’m really worried about you.”

  “Then get me out of here.”

  He glanced away. “I wish it was that simple. I’ve spoken to Dr. Jones. But the paperwork I signed … it’s for one solid month of treatment. Here.” He looked at me, his eyes dark. “I don’t know how to get around that. Legally.”

  My fingers twitched under the warm weight of his hands. I doubted we had money for a lawyer to combat someone as savvy as Dr. Jones and I hated even bringing it up. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that wasn’t legal.”

  “Well, you’re the only one,” Dad said, pulling his hands away from mine to drum on the table with his fingers. “Pietr’s already made some interesting suggestions. And Wanda? She’s almost of the same frame of mind as that boy.”

  “Wanda and Pietr, agreeing?”

  “Yep. He’s a little weird … don’t you think?”

  I snorted. “How, Dad?”

  “Well, he’s been hanging around the house a bit. I figured it was a good idea, you know, so I could rub off on him a little. Talk to him about this issue with fightin’ he has—”

  Yeah, he gets into rumbles whenever somebody attacks his girlfriend.

  “… you know, give him some sort of strong moral influence since he’s dropped that Sarah and is crazy for you.”

  I glared at him.

  “Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t say the ‘c-word’ here.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t want some guy who’s constantly in trouble being around you. So he’s helpin’ out. A lot.”

  “And?”

  “And…” He leaned forward until our noses nearly touched. “You should see him throw hay bales. Not like any other guy who’s helped out on the farm. This boy can throw hay. And he’s fast doin’ chores,” he marveled. “And.” Dad glanced away.

  “And?” I bit the inside of my cheek, remembering the other things Pietr excelled at when we were in the barn alone.

  “And that’s not nearly the oddest thing about him, Jessie.”

  Time to steer the conversation away from the absolute weirdness of my boyfriend. “He’s really something, Dad. Has he taken Rio out for a ride?”

  “Nope. That’s weird, too,” Dad muttered. “Rio’s okay with him—shy at first, but he refuses to take her out. I offered to teach him a bit, get him up to snuff, but he said you’d teach him everything he needs to know.”

  “And he told you he loves me?”

  “In no uncertain terms. I think—”

  “Please don’t tell me we’re too young to feel that sort of way about each other.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t think it’d matter if I tried. The boy lives and breathes everything about you. He’s full of questions. All the time.” He paused, scrunching his eyes up and searching my face. “He stops by—every night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I be worried he’s … a stalker?”

  I’d only worry about Pietr stalking me if I was some small forest creature out late. “No, Dad. He’s no stalker. He just…” I heaved in a long breath. “He just…”

  “Loves you.”

  “I guess.” Resting my head in my hands, I stared at the table.

  “Jessie, if you don’t love him—”

  I dropped my head to the table.

  “You should let him know.”

  “I do love him. That’s why I wish he didn’t love me so much.”

  Dad leaned back and studied his hands a moment. “Your mother always said we’d have problems understanding teenage girls. This was easier when she handled it.”

  “Pietr could get into huge trouble sneaking around here. They’ve got dogs. He could get hurt.”

  Dad started to open his mouth and then shut it again.

  “Pietr needs to keep clear of here.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything I can say that’ll keep that boy away from you. Even if it puts him in danger.”

  “Tell him I want him to stay away. Tell him it’s…” My face heated. I wanted to tell Pietr in person, not pass my message through Dad.

  “What?”

  “Tell him—oh, crap. It’s so cheesy.”

  Dad chuckled. “Love is cheesy sometimes. Give me the message.”

  “Tell him it’s—it’s not like he’s not with me every moment of every day, because he is. He’s in my heart. I don’t have to see him.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “See? Cheesy.”

  Dad put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a gentle shake. “I’m sure he’ll understand,” he assured me in the same tone he used when he tried to bolster my spirits before a math exam. He was just as convincing about the odds of success.

  I needed to believe it. “He’ll be smart—stay
away?”

  He folded, snorting. “No guarantees. Love makes people crazy.”

  “Look around. I’ve got plenty of crazy. What I need is smart.”

  Jessie

  But Pietr seemed more capable of delivering crazy. Maybe it was like his brother Max had said: Smart didn’t come easy to a seventeen-year-old guy with a girlfriend.

  That night he tapped on my window again. Hadn’t Dad delivered my message? I raced over, ignoring the all-seeing eye of the camera. It meant nothing the way the wind howled. There would be only moments between Pietr’s appearance, the scattering of his scent, and the warning call of the dogs as they barreled after their quarry, my guards on their heels.

  Dammit.

  I tore a sheet of paper from my journal and scrawled a note, which I pressed to the glass.

  I love you, but run and DON’T come back!

  Thank goodness for werewolf night vision. I tugged the paper away.

  His mouth moved, carefully, as he enunciated each word.

  “You love me?”

  Oh, holy crap! Smart—I needed smart! I tore the paper away and scribbled.

  YES! Don’t be stupid—RUN!

  I underlined “DON’T come back!” and flattened the paper out.

  He stood there, puzzling at it. I flipped it around, wondering how soon the dogs would be on him. My writing was barely legible. Trembling I circled the key words.

  YES! and DON’T come back!

  The dogs began their keening cry. When I finally pulled the paper back down I saw Pietr’s reply—his handprint wanting mine—pushed into the fog left by his breath.

  I rested my hand against the print and leaned my forehead on the glass until all sign of his visit had faded away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Alexi

  True to her belief she could get us in to see Mother soon, Wanda arranged a meeting time for us and so we found ourselves retracing a path we were beginning to know well.

  After promising to hand over the single baby tooth the family had kept, we were allowed entry to the bunker that looked, from all outward appearances, to be a Colonial farmhouse with a rapidly failing border of aromatic herbs.

  In. Down. The numbers were the same: the same number of steps. The same number of doors, locks, and cameras, but still I counted them to better burn them into my memory, to make their existence second nature so that when we came to free Mother we would not trip over ourselves or tangle and fall in the dark, victims of our own feet and some misstep.

  The only thing that seemed to change was the code they typed into the door at the bottom of the stairs. I’d caught it, memorized it, played it back in my mind, but each time we visited, it was new. If I could determine a pattern, then I could predict the next round of numbers. But it seemed some things were truly random. Perhaps sometimes there was no pattern—no way to anticipate an opponent’s next move.

  The concept frustrated me beyond all logic.

  I understood that when we came to free her we would need a way past the interior doors, a way I could not yet provide.

  We walked through a long fluorescent-lined cement hall of a buried tractor trailer and through the cubicle-filled office area that branched into the underground science lab and the broad room where Mother was kept in a clear-walled environment that offered no privacy and made the rarely occupied office cubicles look inviting.

  Behind me—because they still insisted I go first, like some substandard bodyshield—Pietr’s breathing wavered as the final door opened.

  Our escorts continued forward, but we paused, noting a difference so subtle many would not have considered it.

  They were down a guard.

  “Mother?” Pietr asked the figure in the seamless glass cubicle.

  She turned, saw him—saw us—and let out a little cry of relief, tears shining on her face. My heart hammered in my chest and I felt my brothers bristle beside me, saw how Catherine’s spine straightened, all of us thinking the same thing at once. Something else had changed—something beyond one less guard. Something deeply disturbing.

  Mother never cried.

  We walked to the transparent door, limbs stiff with stress as we exchanged glances. Pietr and I entered first, the warning call of “Red-Red-Red” coming just as the nearly invisible door slid open.

  Max and Cat watched the guards, though Max’s wolf senses and all of Cat’s sadly muted human ones were trained on us.

  “Mother.” Pietr reached a tentative hand out to stroke her hair.

  She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest and the look he gave me spoke more than words could as he tenderly lifted and dropped a long curl of her hair back to join the rest, sweeping down to obscure her face.

  I nodded. I saw. The hair that had been so recently auburn and copper was shot full of silver. I slid my hand down her slim arm and subtly pinched for a pulse. Too fast.

  Everything was moving way too fast.

  My eyes locked with Pietr’s and he suddenly realized what I knew—what I’d read was inevitable. When the end came, it came suddenly.

  Mother may have been dying since she first started to change—to evolve into an oborot at age thirteen—but now she was sliding down the slope toward sudden death.

  And no matter how powerful in life an oborot was—no matter how fierce in their wolf form—they were helpless as any human when death came hungering to their door.

  We stayed there with her for the allotted time. I tried to absorb her every word, reminding myself this might be the last chance.… But every time I fought harder for focus, her words retreated further into a fog and I lost every thought except the one that made me angriest: We had to find a way to free her—there had to be a bargain that could be struck—and that I had no idea how to do it or what it would take.

  Max and Cat switched places with us, and standing outside mother’s unyielding environment, I glared at Pietr and wished Grandfather had somehow endowed the oboroten with telepathy so we could take advantage of one less guard and, even unarmed as we were, somehow break Mother out.

  In a very few minutes the thought became an obsession of dizzying power.

  So it was only logical, in an extremely illogical way, that when the door to the cubicle next hissed open to release Max and Cat and Mother was so near the opening—

  I took a chance.

  Grabbing Mother so suddenly, I yanked her free of the cubicle, stunned by how light she was in my grasp.

  Max and Pietr only stared at me a moment—a single heartbeat between fascination and horror—before they pulled free of their clothes and shook into their wolfskins.

  Cat tried to look threatening as we began to move to the door as a unit, the wolves snarling and snapping at the guards, lunging so they forced their guns’ muzzles up as the agents tried to gain control without harming the assets they still needed intact—my werewolf siblings.

  Mother stumbled, tucked against me, and I took her negligible weight, my back nearly at the exit when I felt a draft and realized the door had slid open before I was ready.

  Safeties clicked off three guns behind me and their snouts bit into my head. I froze, steeling myself against the possibility that this was the last thing I’d ever do.

  And probably by far the finest.

  If I could throw my body at my killers and let go of Mother at the right moment, they might all still make it out.…

  “Let go,” I urged Mother, her fingers claws in my arms.

  “Nyet,” she replied, eyes flaring with red and filling with moisture as, searching my face, she discovered my intent. “Nyet, Alexi!” With a brutal shove she threw herself back from me, past her other sons, ruffling the crests of their furs as she landed at the feet of her guards.

  And gave herself up.

  The wolves whined, Catherine crying out at her choice. Their shapes shuddering, Max and Pietr regressed to their human forms, crouched, damp with sweat and stunned to the marrow.

  “You will not die forrr me,” she roared, the
words growing guttural. “I am dead alrrready, do you not see?” Shaking out her long mane of hair she stood and tugged at the silver filling so much of it now. “My clock rrruns down too quickly.”

  Her voice a hoarse whisper, its intensity never lessened. “Hear me clearly. If they will not release me—if they intend me to die here, so be it. I will not have you sacrifice yourself for me. I will not have my family made into martyrs.” She inhaled sharply and bent over, fighting for control.

  “Heart-Rate-Is-Elevated,” the computerized monitor called.

  Mother growled her response.

  A pop sounded and her hands twitched, shifting as they rested on her slender legs just above her knees. Hair shot up from one in a dramatic display of the wolf’s growing power.

  Mother shook, pushing back the change.

  When she straightened to address us again, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Taking a deep breath she said, “I will not watch my children die as my husband did.”

  Turning her back to us, she led her guards to her cell and waited obediently for the door to open and let her in once more. A guard picked up Pietr and Max’s shed clothing and threw it at my brothers, grinning at our failure.

  Behind me, the agents withdrew their guns and stepped aside to let us out.

  “This was both unexpected and disappointing.” Wanda.

  The agents flanked us, fingers by their trigger guards.

  “You know what this means, of course,” she stated crisply, but in her eyes I read something soft, like pity. “Mother’s now under restricted access. You’ll have to earn your way back into our good graces—and into her environment. And”—she measured the weight of her words, trying to lighten the impact with her tone. But no change in volume or pitch could stop the inevitable pain of hearing—“that will take time.”

  Dazed, we were led away from the bunker’s bottom section, where Mother lived and might very well die, and up the stairs.

  Still stunned, I would not have noticed him if it were not for Pietr’s sudden lunge toward a dimly lit room.