Hunter's Trail

Her whole body went rigid. “Get away from me,” she whispered.

“Happy to,” he said nastily. He stomped back toward the main road, leaving Scarlett standing over the bodies, alone.

Chapter 32

I kept it together for a while, I really did.

I called Will, told him he needed to get there right away. I was calm as I lied and said Jesse had run off in pursuit of the nova, while Will helped me dispose of the bodies, and while I faked a phone call from Jesse saying he’d lost the guy in the woods. If Will had had his werewolf hearing and scent, I would have been screwed, but if he suspected me of lying, he didn’t say anything.

Then again, maybe he was too preoccupied by the fact that the nova had made a mate. As bad as it had already been, things were going to get worse for the pack. I asked if the nova was going to come after them the next night, but he said, no, Remus would want to build up his own pack first. Which was a nice way of saying that Remus was going to try to infect as many people as possible during the full moon. Unless we found him first.

I dropped Will back at his house, promised to call him in the morning with an update, and cried most of the way back to Molly’s house.

By the time I got there, I felt like one of those ceramic figurines my mother had collected: fragile on the outside, hollow on the inside. I had run out of tears, thoughts, and ideas. I had nothing left but pain in my leg and ashes in my hair from Artie’s furnace.

Molly’s car wasn’t in the driveway when I got home, which was okay by me. I wasn’t in the mood for quality time. I shucked my dirty jacket and left it near the door so I’d remember to get it washed. I wanted nothing more than to collapse in my bed, but I was filthy and sore and needed a shower. Sitting on my butt, I dragged myself up the stairs, letting my cane bump along the stairs next to me. Since I was on my butt anyway, I just kept going on it, scooting my way into the bathroom. I pulled off my boots, slid my knee brace off very carefully, and wriggled out of my clothes, leaving all of it in a messy heap on the bathroom floor.

I showered, shampooing my hair several times, wrapped a towel around myself, and snagged my knee brace on the way out, leaving my clothes where they were and hobbling back to my bedroom. After putting on underwear, an enormous Chicago Bulls jersey from my father, and the knee brace, I stretched out across my bed. The pain in my knee roared even louder by then, so I carefully rolled sideways to the bottle of Vicodin on my bedside table. I swallowed two dry and flopped back onto my pillow, closing my eyes as I waited for them to kick in.

Just as I started to drift, though, I heard a small crash from downstairs.

I opened my eyes. “Molly?” I called, but there was no answer from below. “Molls?”

Silence. Then a soft creak, somewhere in the house.

Panic raced to life along my body, fighting the stupefying medication and urging me to take action. I tried to focus, to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, but the pills were kicking in and that was suddenly too complicated. I realized with sickening fear that the vertigo had returned. I settled for rolling onto my stomach and sliding into a heap on the floor, on the opposite side of the bed from the door. The skin on my bare legs goose-pimpled where it touched the cool carpet. I peered over the side of the bed, staring at my open doorway. The hallway was dim, lit only by the light trickling up from the stairs to the right of my door. I could see Molly’s bedroom door and a light switch, nothing else. I squinted my eyes, focusing hard. A dark shadow passed through the light, and I ducked my head below the top of my bed. There was a long, heavy moment of silence. I shivered with fear and cold, my head clearing despite the drugs.

I was being stalked. And my Taser was still in my coat pocket, downstairs.

When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I slowly raised my head again. As soon as my eyes rose above the mattress, a wolf sprang at me from the hallway.

At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Before she made it through my door, however, the werewolf hit my radius and changed instantly into a snarling, tumbling naked woman. Momentum carried her through the doorway and a few steps into the room, where only the bed stood between me and her. Anastasia stood up and squared her shoulders, unaffected by her own nudity. Her short afro was matted to her head in places, and her black eyes were reddened and furious.

“You,” she spat at me. “You worthless cow.”

I felt silly all of a sudden, hiding behind a bed while a crazy naked lady calls me a cow. I mean, who talks like that? But then she took a step closer to me, and I saw her eyes. There was more than just fury in them now. They were mad with rage. Emphasis on the mad.

Ana wasn’t home anymore.

My own eyes widened, and I was glad she couldn’t smell my fear. “Hang on,” I said very gently, holding my hands up. “Ana, look, about Lydia . . .”

She howled with rage, a wolf reaction but a human sound. “Don’t say her name!” she screamed at me. And she lunged.

Social norms are funny. Anastasia was willing to break into my house, attack, and probably even kill me, but there’s something about someone’s unmade bed that you just instinctively avoid, because it’s not polite. So instead of the shortest route to me, over the bed, she launched herself around it. By memory and instinct I threw myself over the bed, scrambling for the hallway.

I’d forgotten about my knee. I blamed the drugs.

Pills or no pills, searing pain drove through my leg as I landed on it, and I screamed. The pain helped me focus, though, and I managed to scoot backward on my butt. Ana had recovered quickly and was on my heels, diving at me as I made it to the doorway. She expected me to turn right, toward the stairs, so I dodged left instead, and her grasping arms hit the wall with a loud crack that could have been either her finger bones or the plaster of the old house. She bellowed with rage and pain, and in the dim light I could just see her clutching at her right hand. I continued my useless backward escape, keeping my eyes on the werewolf. The stairs were behind Anastasia, and there was nothing down at this end of the hall but the bathroom and the little laundry area.