Plunk.
Matthew followed the bend of the hallway, his heavy boots knocking against the hardwood. Everything was different when this place was empty. Even when no one was around, it felt like the halls were filled with ghosts.
Plunk.
That sound woke him from the guest bed he’d slept in. What’d it matter when the sun was just over the horizon, anyway? He’d get a head start on the gardenin’ bullshit and whatever else Lisa needed.
Plunk.
Gardening. That was where his talent went to use. Gardening. He was the sheriff’s kid; he could load a pistol with his eyes shut. But why bother with guns when ya got dirt and cow shit.
Plunk.
He followed that sound through Lisa’s hummingbird door, to the garden, just grazed by the waking sun. There Tisper stood, her bow in her hands, her shorts rolled on one thigh and not the other, her hair tied back in a sloppy bun. Had she even slept?
“You should take a break,” Matt said.
“Not yet,” she replied, firing once more with a plunk.
“You’re gonna wear yourself out.”
She cut the distance to her target, picking the bludgeoned rose from the tip of her training arrow. Then finally, Tisper looked to him and smiled. “I keep missing every sixth one.”
Dammit that smile. Matt shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re doin’ great.”
“Where’s Sadie?” Tisper asked, sticking a new rose into the center of the board; dozens of the broken flowers laid wasted at her feet, crushed underfoot as she stepped back to cock the arrow into place.
“Still playin’ Blair Witch with Alex.” Matt admired her form. She had to of been practicing since the crack of dawn. He’d watched her from the window earlier that night and something was different now. She stood with so much confidence. “Really, Tis. You’re getting good at this.”
“I’m shooting a wall, Matt. I’m not really sure you can be bad at this.”
Matthew bit his tongue, watching her calloused fingers slide into position. “Maybe you should take a break. Just for a minute. Let’s go inside, have some coffee.”
She lifted the bow to her eye-level like the gesture had become organic. An extension of herself. He thought it strange that the crossbow didn’t have a scope, but he supposed it didn’t need one.
Tisper tilted it upward at the last second and pulled the trigger. The arrow sailed, split right through the rose on the canvas, and as she lowered the bow again, she heaved a bothersome sigh.
“It’s not good enough. I can’t hit a moving object like this.”
“Oh, come on.” Matt slung an arm around her shoulders and Tisper set her crossbow on the ground, for once stumbling willingly into his side. “You’ll keep practicing, you’ll get better.”
“We don’t have time,” Tisper said. She pointed to the sky—to the eerie orange moon above; round, but still sliced with the crescent of a waning shadow. “I looked it up. That’s a waxing gibbous. In means the full moon is on its way and once it comes, we’re screwed, Matt. Jay turns. He turns into that—that thing we saw on paper. What do we do after that? How do we save him then? How do we even know he’s still alive?”
“He’s alive,” a voice came from the door and Matt turned, dropped his arm from around Tisper’s chilly shoulders. Quentin was bounding down the steps in joggers and not much else but a layer of sheening sweat. He’d either been workin’ out or sitting in a sauna.
“The people who have him want him alive,” Quentin said. “At least until the Bad Moon. Five days. That’s enough time.”
“Enough time for what?” Matthew asked. He examined Quentin’s form for a subtle half a second and felt an awful pang of jealousy in his stomach. “Enough time for you to put a shirt on?”
“One more day for preparation. One day for my sentinels to group.” He looked to Tisper. “One day for you to train your aim. Then we leave.”
“Leave to where?” Matt asked. He looked from Tisper to Quentin and back again, like there were answers floating somewhere in the air between them. “Where would you start looking?”
Just then, a light washed over the garden, seeping through the slits in the fencing. So bright that Matthew had to shield his eyes with his forearm. Quentin brushed by and made for the front gate, and the two tailed just behind.
Parked on the other side and rudely imposing on the polished lawn was a black truck, the brights of its headlights glaring. The door popped open and out jumped a skinny man with rough-cut hair and slender eyes. He rounded the side, reached into the bed of the truck and lifted a duffle bag into his arms. As Quentin neared, the man gave him an easy toss and Quentin caught the bag in his arms.
“That was all I could get.”
“And the medicine for Felix?” Quentin asked.
“Couldn’t find any. Bring me in his place.”
“No,” Quentin said softly. “You’re coming, but not in his place. I need your nose, not your teeth.”
“What you need is an army.”
“An army for what? Ziya uses people like private commodities. She had few wolves actually with her, Bailey. We can’t hurt people.”
“People are going to hurt either way, Bronx.”
“Okay, hold on a minute.” Tisper shoved herself between them and met the stranger nearly at eye-level. “Who’s Ziya?”
Bailey looked to Quentin in a silent, questioning submission. Quentin stared back evenly, his strong jaw clenched. He inclined his head as if to say, it’s fine. Tell her.
“The bitch we think has your friend,” the Bailey guy said. “Her name is Ziya. Queen of all territories in the Eastern United States.”
“Queen,” Tisper spilled the word out in a lungful.
“Oh, a bitch is she?” Quentin added. “Weren’t you a fan of the East about—” he feigned a look at his watch, “—a minute ago?”
“No, I wasn’t. I think we’re wasting our time saving this kid just so he can turn again in a week and tear us in half. But I’m not an idiot. Everyone knows Ziya’s a bitch with a bitch agenda.”
Tisper stepped out from between them, crossed her arms from the cold and the worrisome chills that migrated up her flesh. “And she has Jaylin?”
“According to Felix. She also has hundreds of innocent humans, signing away their souls to her willing for sixty-grand a year. If you haven’t heard—” his eyes flickered to Quentin, spite glowing behind them, and something else Matt couldn’t quite pick up on “—we aren’t to harm the humans.”
Quentin inhaled, deep and slow, stuck to Bailey’s eyes for a long, contemplative moment. Then he turned his shoulders away and started back towards the house. “Go home. Pack your supplies and come back tomorrow.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bailey said, and Quentin halted. Bailey turned back to his truck, cracked open the back door, and inside was a man no younger than forty, no older than fifty—a thick, muscular trunk for a neck and salt-and-pepper hair buzzed flat on his scalp.
He wore no shirt, but bandages on his shoulders and around his abdomen, and he winced as Bailey helped him from the back seat and onto the soft earth.
Quentin was facing them again, a loss for words. And yet thousands of them written all over his face. “Leo,” he whispered.
“I tried to call.” Fatigue set into the lines beneath his weary eyes and Leo’s square jaw tensed as he looked to grass at his feet. “We’ve been on the run for days. She took the entire northern states under her control.”
“How?” Quentin strode closer. “How did she take all of them?”
“She brought humans, only about ten wolves. All the rest just…humans.” Leo’s gruff voice cracked with a wounded sound and he wiped a hand across his bruised cheekbone. “Told us we had no option but to let ’em through. Then she took down those of us still standing in’er way. Took down my boys. Took down me. No casualties but we’re mangled. They used bullets—ones like you gave me a good while back. With the bane inside.”
“Were they bullets?” Quentin asked. “Or were they darts?”
Leo looked him in the eye, fearful recognition in his scrutinizing eyes. “Darts,” he said. “Guess they were darts. Bullets and we’d all be dead.”
“She’s not trying to kill us,” Bailey cut in. “We’re not the enemy to Ziya.”
“She’s trying to kill Jaylin,” Tisper whispered, much too quietly—like it was the only sound she could make. She surged towards Quentin and Matt caught her around the waist before she could reach him. “You said he’s alive!”
Quentin didn’t flinch. “Ziya’s goal isn’t to go around murdering lichund. She’s not that stupid and lichund come one in a million, she wouldn’t waste her resources that way. She’d study them, find their Achilles heel.”
Tisper wriggled out of Matthew’s arms, shoved a hand into his front pocket and Matt jumped as she fished out his carton of cigarettes. She didn’t smoke often, Tisper. Only when that tall wall of hers fell to shambles. But somehow, she always knew which of his pockets they were in.
“I don’t know what I expected. I forgot, he’s just a possession to you. Just a thing to study,” she spat, patting the box to her hand until a stick slid out into her palm.
Quentin looked as if he wanted to say something. His jaw went tight and his eyes downcast to the distance. Matt knew that look. That yearning to object and the inability to battle with anything more than himself. Matt knew because he’d been there. A part of Quentin wanted to scream out and another part was suppressing every cry.
Scream, Matt wanted to tell him. If you don’t say anything at all, you’re going to regret it. Like I do.
But Quentin was sealed—vaulted shut, anger in the telling clench of his jaw.
Matthew lit the end for her and took the empty space as Tisper fell back to sip on her cigarette, calm her violent urges. “If they’re one in a million, why was Olivia one of ’em? The hell are the chances of that? Jay and Olivia both?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Quentin was starting to lose his composure again, breath shaking on exhale. It was always strange to see that. Wrong, even. Like a king with stage fright. “I don’t know. Their numbers are rising, that’s why Ziya wants them gone. But to have two turn in a single territory within a year of each other—and to have those very lichund know one another on a personal basis. I can’t explain why. There’s still a lot we haven’t learned about them. Maybe—maybe it’s infectious.”
“Jackson Maddison,” Leo said. “Sixteen-year-old kid in Wyoming. He can turn you with the nick of his teeth. Sure as hell not a lich’ though.”
“I know a biter too,” Bailey said. “A rogue leader. Never heard of her turning a lich, either.”
Matt wasn’t sure what Bailey meant by rogue, but biter struck a chord. “You can really turn someone with a bite? Like vampires.” Matt remembered Quentin explaining this once before, but he didn’t know then that it could pertain to Jaylin. Could Jay turn someone too?
“There are a few biters in our pack,” Quentin said, “but the lichund was always thought to be the result of the infection, not an entirely new one.”
“Would explain why the hell they’re popping up so suddenly,” Bailey said. “Hadn’t seen one in two years and now we’ve got two loose somewhere in the Puget Sound area. Heard about one taken down in New York.”
“Kids ain’t loose,” Leo said grimly. “She’s got ’em. Said that she wanted the boy—the one who hadn’t turned yet. Said she wanted to study the process in real time. That the girl was experienced, changed too quickly. A virgin she called it. She wanted a virgin.”
“And then what?” Tisper demanded, “And then they kill him?”
Matt could see her calloused fingers shaking. He reached for them and she pulled away, crossed her arms over her chest and took one hard puff from the cigarette. “No. No, I’m not waiting. We need to go find him.”
Quentin crossed over his broad, bare chest. His eyes swept to the side and he thought. He thought for a long time, dark eyes roaming over the distant horizon. Then he said, “What do you say Bailey? Think you can track him?”
Bailey tossed his head back and scoffed.
“What?” Quentin shifted the duffel bag on his shoulder and gave him a slight smile. “Can’t track a lich”
There was a pause, then Bailey ran a hand through his uneven hair and sighed deeply. His eyes lingered on Quentin for a curious moment before he tore them away.
“Can I track a lich,” Bailey scoffed. “You know they wreak.”
“Perhaps,” a voice called from the front door. Lisa stood, hugging the frame and peaking out into the night. “We should bring this party inside?”
The lot of them turned to look at her, Leo the first to take motion as he limped away, vigor suddenly renewed. “Hey beautiful. Think that’s a brilliant idea. Could use a cold beer.”
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