After that, things happened very fast, and at the same time with a dreamy slowness. Mary-Lynnette felt
her arms grabbed from behind. Something was pulling her hands together-somethingstrong. Then she felt
the bite of cord on her wrists, and she realized what was happening.
Tied up-I'm going to be helpless-I've got todosomething fast....
She fought, trying to wrench herself away, trying to kick. But it was already too late. Her hands were
secure behind her back-and some part of her mind noted distantly that no wonder people on cop shows
yell when they're handcuffed. Ithurt. Her shoulders gave a shriek of agony as she was dragged backward
up against a tree.
"Stop fighting," a voice snarled. A thick, distorted voice she didn't recognize. She tried to see
who it was, but the tree was in the way. "If you relax itwon't hurt."
. Mary-Lynnette kept fighting, but it didn't make any difference. She could feel the deeply furrowedbark
of the tree against her hands and back-and now she couldn't move.
Oh, God, oh, God-1 can't get away. Iwas alreadyweak from what Ash and I did-and now I can't move
at all.
Then stop panicking andthink, her inner voice said fiercely. Use your brain instead of getting hysterical.
Mary-Lynnette stopped struggling. She stood panting and tried to get control of her terror.
"I told you. It only hurts when you fight. A lot of things are like that," the voice said.
Mary-Lynnette twisted her head and saw who it was.
Her heart gave a sick lurch. She shouldn't havebeen surprised, but she was-surprised and infi nitely
disappointed.
"Oh, Jeremy," she whispered.
Except that it was a different Jeremy than the one she knew. His face was the same, his hair, his
clothes-but there was something weird about him, something powerful and scary and ...unknowable. His
eyes were as inhuman and flat as a shark's.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said in that distorted stranger's voice. "I only tied you up because I
didn't want you to interfere."
Mary-Lynnette's mind was registering different things in different layers. One part said, MyGod, he's
trying to be friendly, and another part said, Tointerferewith what? and a third part just kept saying Ash.
She looked at Ash. He was lyingverystill, andMary-Lynnette's wonderful new eyes that could seecolors
in moonlight saw that his blond hair was slowly soaking with blood. On the ground beside himwas a club
made of yew - made of the hard yellow sapwood. No wonder he was unconscious.
But if he's bleeding he's not dead-oh, God, please,he can'tbe dead-Rowan said that only staking and
burning kill vampires....
"I have to take dare of him," Jeremy said. "And then I'll let you go, I promise. Once I explain
everything, you'll understand."
Mary-Lynnette looked up from Ash to the strangerwith Jeremy's face. With a shock, she realized what
he meant by "take care of." Three words that were just part of life to a hunterto a werewolf.
So now I know about werewolves. They're killers and I was right all along. I was right and Rowan was
wrong.
"It'll only take a minute," Jeremy said-and hislips drew back.
Mary-Lynnette's heart seemed to slam violently inside her chest. Because his lips went farther up than
any human's lips could. She could see his gums, whitish-pink. And she could see why his voice didn't
sound like Jeremy's-it was his teeth.
White teeth in the moonlight. The teeth from herdream. Vampire teeth were nothing compared to this.
The incisors at the front were made for cutting fleshfrom prey, the canines were two inches long, the teeth
behind them looked designed for slicing and shearing.
Mary-Lynnette suddenly remembered-somethingVic Kimble's father had said three years ago. He'd
said that a wolf could snap off the tail of a full-grown cow clean as pruning shears. He'd been
complaining that somebody had let a wolf-dog crossbreed looseand it was going after his cattle....
Except that of course it wasn't a crossbreed, Mary-Lynnette thought. It was Jeremy. I saw him everyday
at school-and then he must have gone hometo look like this. Tohunt.
Just now, as he stood over Ash with his teeth all exposed and his chest heaving, Jeremy looked
completely, quietly insane.
"But why?" Mary-Lynnette burst out."Whydo youwant to hurt him?"
Jeremy looked up-and she got another shock. His eyes were different. Before she'd seen them flash
white in the darkness. Now they had no whites at all. They were brown with large liquid pupils. Theeyes
of an animal.
So it doesn't need to be a full moon, she thought. He can change anytime.
"Don't you know?" he said. "Doesn't anybody understand?This ismy territory."
Oh.Oh ...
So it was as simple as that. After all their brainstorming and arguing and detective work. In the end it
was something as basic as an animal protectingits range.
"For a hunting range, it is small," Rowan had said.
"They were taking my game," Jeremy said. "My deer, my squirrels. They didn't have any right to
dothat. I tried to make them leave-but they wouldn't.They stayed and they kept killing...."
He stopped talking-but a new sound came fromhim. It started out almost below the range of MaryLynnette's hearing-but the deep rumbling of itstruck some primal chord of terror in her. It was asuncanny
and inhuman as the danger-hum of an at tacking swarm of bees.
Growling. He was growling. And it wasreal.The snarling growl a dog makes that tells you to turn and
run. The sound it makes before it springs at yourthroat....
"Jeremy!" Mary-Lynnette screamed. She threwherself forward, ignoring the white blaze of pain in
her shoulders. But the cord held. She was jerked back. And Jeremy fell on Ash, lunging down, head
darting forward like a striking snake, like a biting dog, like every animal that kills with its teeth.
Mary-Lynnette heard someone screaming "No!"and only later realized that it was her. She was fight ing
with the cord, and she could feel stinging and wetness at her wrists. But she couldn't get free andshe
couldn't stop seeing what was happening in frontof her. And all the time that eerie, vicious growling that
reverberated in Mary-Lynnette's own head and chest.
That was when things went cold and dear. Some part of Mary-Lynnette that was stronger than the panic
took over. It stepped back and looked at the entire scene by the roadside: the car, which was still
burning, sending clouds of choking white smokewhenever the wind blew the right way; the limpfigure of
Ash on the pine needles; the blur of snarling motion that was Jeremy.
"Jeremy!" she said, and her throat hurt, but hervoice was calm-and commanding. "Jeremy-before
you do that-don't you want me tounderstand? You said that was what you wanted. Jeremy,help me
understand."
For a long second she thought in dismay that it wasn't going to work. That he couldn't even hear her. But
then his head lifted. She saw his face; she saw the blood on his chin.
Don't scream, don't scream, Mary-Lynnette toldherself frantically. Don't show any shock. You have to
keep him talking, keep him away from Ash.
Behind her back her hands were working automatically, as if trying to get out of ropes was something
they'd always known how to do. The slick wetness actually helped. She could feel the cords slide a little.
"Please help me understand," she said again, breathless, but trying to hold Jeremy's eyes. "I'm
your friend-you know that. We go back a long way."
Jeremy's whitish gums were streaked with red. He still had human features, but there was nothing at all
human about that face.
Now, though-slowly-his lips came down tocover his gums. He looked more like a person andless like an
animal. And when he spoke, his voicewas distorted, but she could recognize it as Jere my's voice.
"We do go back," he said. "I've watched you sincewe were kids-and I've seen you watching
me."
Mary-Lynnette nodded.She couldn'tgetany words out.
"I always figured that someday, when we wereolder-maybe we'd be together. I thought maybe I
could make you understand. About me. About everything. I thought you were the one person who might
not be afraid...."
"I'm not," Mary-Lynnette said, and hoped hervoice wasn't shaking too badly. She was saying it to
a figure in a blood-spattered shirt crouching over a torn body like a beast still ready to attack.
MaryLynnette didn't dare look at Ash to see how badly hewas hurt. She kept her eyes locked on
Jeremy's. "And I think I can understand. You killed Mrs. Burdock, didn't you? Because she was on your
territory."
"Nother; " Jeremy said, and his voice was sharpwith impatience. "She was just an old lady-she
didn't hunt. I didn't mind having her in my range. Ieven did things for her, like fixing her fence andporch
for free.... And that's when she told methey were coming. Those girls."
Just the way she told me, Mary-Lynnette thought, with dazed revelation. And he was there fixing the
fence-of course. The way he does odd jobs for everybody.
"I told her it wouldn't work." Mary-Lynnette couldhear it again-the beginnings of a snarling growl.
Jeremy was tense and trembling, and she could feel her self start to tremble, too. "Three more hunters in
thislittle place ... I told her, but she wouldn't listen. She couldn't see. So then I lost my temper."
Don't look at Ash, don't call attention to him,
Mary-Lynnette thought desperately. Jeremy's lips were drawing back again as if he needed something to
attack. At the same time the distant part of hermind said, So that's why he used a picket=Ash was right;it
was an impulse of the moment.
"Well, anybody can lose their temper," she said, and even though her voice cracked and there
were tears in her eyes, Jeremy seemed to calm a little.
"Afterward, I thought maybe it was for the best," he said, sounding tired. "I thought when the girls
found her, they'd know they had to leave. I waited for them to do it. I'm good at waiting."
He was staring past her, into the woods. Heart pounding, Mary-Lynnette grabbed the opportunity todart
a look at Ash.
Oh, God, he's not moving at all. And there's so muchblood....I've never seen so much blood....
She twisted her wrists back and forth, trying to find some give in the cords.
"I watched, but they didn't go away," Jeremy said.Mary-Lynnette's eyes jerked back to him.
"Instead youcame. I heard Mark talking to Jade in the garden. She said she'd decided she was going to
like it here. And then ... I got mad. I made a noise and they heard me."
His face was changing. The flesh was actually moving in front of Mary-Lynnette's eyes. His cheekbones
were broadening, his nose and mouth jutting. Hairwas creeping between his eyebrows, turning them into
a straight bar. She couldsee individual coarse hairs sprouting, dark against pale skin.
I'm going to be sick....
"What's wrong, Mary-Lynnette?" He got up and she saw that his body was changing, too. It was
stilla human body, but it was too thin-stretched out.As if it were just long bones and sinews.
"Nothing's wrong," Mary-Lynnette got out in a whisper. She twisted violently at her cords-and felt
one hand slide.
That's it. Now keep him distracted, keep him moving away from Ash....
"Go on," she said breathlessly. "What happenedthen?"
"I knew I had to send them a message. I cameback the next night for the goat-but you were there
again. You ran away from me into the shed." Hemoved closer again and the moonlight caught his
eyes-and reflected. The pupils shone greenish-orange. Mary-Lynnette could only stare.
That shadow in the clearing-those eyes I saw. Nota coyote.Him.He was following us everywhere.
The very thought made her skin creep. But there was another thought that was worsethe picture of him
killing the goat. Doing it carefully, methodically-as a message.
That was why he didn't eat the heart and liver,Mary-Lynnette realized. He didn't kill it for foodit wasn't a
normal werewolf killing. And he's not a normal werewolf.
He wasn't at all like what Rowan had described-a noble animal that hunted to eat. Instead he was ... a
mad dog.
Of all people,Ash had it right. Him and his jokes about rabies ...
"You're so beautiful, you know," Jeremy said suddenly. "I've always thought that. I love your
hair."
He was right in her face. She could see the individual pores in his skin with coarse hairs growing out of
them. And she couldsmellhim-the feral smell ofa zoo.