“Sure. She went to the dance with me the next weekend. Then I came home, washed my hair until the color was out, and vowed never to do that again for a girl until I knew her well enough to be sure she was worth it.”
I laughed, then said, “Thanks.” When he arched his brows, I added, “For cheering me up.”
“I’m good at it. With Derek, I get lots of practice.” He reached into his backpack. “I have something else that might cheer you up. Or scare the crap out of you.”
He pulled out a new sketch pad and flipped through it. A few pages in, he turned it so I could see.
“Hey, that’s me,” I said.
“So it looks like you? Or does the corpse crawling toward you give it away?” He handed the sketch pad to me. “I drew it this morning when Derek was doing his computer searches. I was thinking about last night.”
In the picture, I was kneeling on my blanket, the corpse in front of me. Thankfully, he hadn’t opted to draw the part where I’d been screaming in mortal terror, but later, when I thought he’d been outside with Tori.
I had my eyes closed, hands raised. The corpse was rearing up, seeming to follow my hands like a cobra dancing before a flute. All I could remember was how terrified I’d been, but in Simon’s sketch, I didn’t look terrified—I looked calm, confident. I looked powerful.
“I know that might not be a moment you care to have immortalized,” he said.
I smiled. “No, it’s cool. Can I have it?”
“When it’s done. I need to color it when I get some pencils.” He took the pad back. “I thought it might be interesting to do a kind of graphic journal about us. What’s happening.”
“Like a comic?”
“I was avoiding that word, for fear of sounding like a total geek. But, yeah, like a comic. Just for us, of course. A project to take our minds off stuff. It’ll be way cooler on paper than it feels when we’re living it.” He took a long drink of his Diet Coke, then recapped the bottle slowly. “You could help, if you wanted. You know screenwriting and scripts for comics aren’t much different.”
“Like a movie told in stills.”
“Right. I’m not good at the writing part. I know this is a true story, so it’s not like I need to make stuff up, but I suck at knowing what parts to put in and what to leave out.”
“I could help with that.”
“Great.” He opened his pad to the page after his picture of me. There were a few rough sketches on it. “I was trying to figure out where to start….”
For the next few hours, I plotted and Simon drew. When I started yawning, he closed the sketchbook.
“Take a nap. We still have five hours to go. We’ll have lots of time to work on this after we get to Andrew’s place.”
“Will we be staying with him?”
Simon nodded. “He’s got the extra room. It’s just him—no wife or kids. He’ll take us in, no problem.” He put away the sketch pad, then slowly zipped up his backpack. “There’s another thing I’ve been thinking. I know it’s not exactly a good time, but once we get settled in, I thought maybe you and I could—”
A shadow loomed over us.
Simon didn’t bother looking up. “Yes, Derek?”
Derek leaned over the seat, one hand on the back for balance as the bus swayed. He seemed distracted, almost anxious.
“We’re coming up to Syracuse soon.”
“Okay.”
“I need something to eat. I’m starving.”
“Sure. I figured we’d jump off and grab dinner.”
“I can’t. Not here.” When Simon looked confused, Derek lowered his voice. “Syracuse?”
“I don’t think they’re going to be hanging out at the bus station.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Nah.” Simon looked up at his brother. “I’ll grab some food, okay?”
Derek hesitated. He didn’t look anxious, really. More unhappy. Because Simon was annoyed with him?
As I watched Derek lurch back to his seat, I thought about that. Simon and Derek weren’t just foster brothers—they were best friends. From the way Simon talked, though, he obviously had other friends, teammates, girlfriends…. I doubted Derek had any. For him, it was just Simon.
Was that why he wanted to get rid of me? It made sense, but it felt wrong. At Lyle House, Derek had never seemed jealous of any time Simon spent with me. Derek just went off and did his own thing. If anyone followed, it was Simon.
Maybe he wasn’t jealous. Just feeling ignored.
It bothered me enough that when we stopped in Syracuse, I offered to take the food back out to Derek while Tori and Simon stretched their legs.
I meant to suggest that Derek and I switch seats. When I got there, Derek was staring out the window.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He turned sharply, like I’d startled him, then nodded and took the food with a mumbled thanks.
I slid into the empty aisle seat. “Did you used to live here?”
He shook his head and looked out the window again. I took that as a sign he wasn’t in the mood for conversation and was about to suggest the seat switch when he said, “We lived just about every place else in the state except here. We can’t. There are…others here.”
“Others?”
He lowered his voice. “Werewolves.”
“In Syracuse?”
“Near it. A Pack.”
“Oh.”
Was that how werewolves lived? In packs, like wolves? I wanted to ask, but was afraid he’d think I was mocking him.
So I said, “And that’s a problem? If they smelled you?”
“Yeah.” He paused, then added grudgingly, “We’re territorial.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He kept looking out the window. I could see the reflection of his eyes, still and distant, lost in thoughts he obviously didn’t care to share. I started to get up.
“When I was a kid,” he said, without looking my way. “When I lived in that place where you were locked up, the others were like that. Territorial.”
I lowered myself into the seat again. “The other werewo—” An elderly woman approached in the aisle and I said instead, “Subjects?”
“Yeah.” He turned then. “They had this pack, I guess you’d call it, and they’d claim stuff, like the sandbox, as their territory, and if—”
His chin lifted, gaze moving to the front of the bus.
“Simon’s coming,” he said. “He’s looking for you. Better go.”
I was going to say that was okay, I wanted to hear more. Chances to hear something personal from Derek were fleeting, but this one had already passed.
“You go,” I said. “Sit with him the rest of the way.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Really, I—”
“Chloe?” He met my gaze. “Go.” His voice softened. “Okay?”
I nodded and left.
I fell asleep and dreamed of Derek—about what he’d said, about what the demi-demon had said about him, about the other werewolf subjects. I dreamed of Aunt Lauren at the facility, saying she wanted Derek put down like a rabid dog, and of Brady saying how Aunt Lauren had tried to get him to blame Derek for their fight.
The memories and the images swirled until I felt someone shaking my shoulder. I woke up to realize the bus had stopped. Derek was in the aisle, leaning past Simon, who was asleep.
I was about to ask what was wrong. Then I looked at Derek and I knew. His eyes glittered, and his skin glistened with sweat; his hair was plastered down with it. I could feel the heat of his hand through my shirt.
I shot up. “You’re—”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “We’re outside Albany. Truck stop. I gotta get off.”
I reached to wake Simon, but Derek stopped me. “I just wanted to tell you, in case I don’t get back on. I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you at Andrew’s.”
I grabbed my sweatshirt and jacket. “I’m coming with you.”
I was sure he’d argue, but he only nodded, face averted, murmuring. “Yeah. Okay.”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll talk to—”
I looked at Simon, but didn’t need Derek to tell me not to wake him. Better to tell the person who’d never insist on following us—Tori. So I did that, then hurried after Derek.
Twenty-eight
I CAUGHT UP WITH Derek at the edge of a wooded patch beside the truck stop.
“I need to get in as deep as I can,” he said. “Follow my path. It’s muddy.”
I could smell the rain, the damp chill of it lingering in the night air. Dead and decaying leaves slid underfoot. A dog barked somewhere. Derek paused, tracking the sound, then nodded, like it was far enough away, and continued walking.
“If I finish this,” he began. “If I seem even close to finishing, you need to take off.”
When I didn’t answer, he said. “Chloe…”
“You aren’t going to turn into some bloodthirsty monster, Derek. It’ll still be you, just as a wolf.”
“And you know that based on how much experience with werewolves?”
“Okay, but—”
“You could be right. Dad said it would be like that—still me in wolf form—but after what those guys did? Playing with our genes? I have no idea what will happen. So you’re getting out of here when the time comes or you aren’t sticking around at all.”
“Okay.”
He glanced back at me, fevered eyes glowing. “I mean it, Chloe.”
“So do I. You’re right. We don’t know what will happen, and we can’t take chances. As soon as you sprout fangs and a tail, I’ll run screaming for the truck stop.”
“You can skip the screaming part.”
“We’ll see.”
We walked until the floodlights from the parking lot barely pierced the trees. The moon was shrouded in cloud. Whether it was a full moon or a half-moon, I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. A werewolf’s Changes had nothing to do with moon cycles. When it happened, it happened, whether the timing was convenient or not.
Derek slowed, scratching his arm through his shirt. “There’s a log here, if you want to sit and wait. I’ll get a little deeper in—I’m sure it’s not the prettiest sight.”
“I’ve seen it before.”
“If it goes further, it’ll be worse.”
“I’m fine.”
When we entered a small clearing, Derek pulled off his sweatshirt. Under his T-shirt, his back muscles rippled, like snakes were trapped under his skin. Having seen this before, it didn’t bother me, but it did remind me of something.
“On second thought, maybe I can’t watch. Unless you brought a change of clothes, you really should get undressed this time.
“Right. Hold on.”
He disappeared into the brush. I turned around. A couple minutes later, the leaves crackled as he came out.
“I’m decent,” he said. “Got my shorts on. Nothing you haven’t seen.”
My cheeks flamed at the memory, which was stupid, because seeing a guy in his boxers shouldn’t be any different than seeing him in swim trunks. I’d even seen guys in their underwear, pranking at camp by running around our cabins, and I’d laughed and hooted with the other girls. But none of the guys at camp had looked like Derek.
I turned slowly, hoping it was too dark for him to see me blushing. He wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He was already on all fours, his head down, breathing in and out, like an athlete preparing for a run.
I blamed the note Simon left, the image of the Terminator still lingering in my brain, but that’s what Derek looked like, that scene where the Terminator first arrives, and he’s crouched, naked—not that Derek was totally naked or as pumped as Schwarzenegger, but he didn’t look like a sixteen-year-old kid either, with a muscular back, bulging biceps, and…
And that was enough of that. I looked away to scan the forest and took a few deep breaths of my own.
“Sit here.” Derek pointed to a clear spot beside him where he’d laid out his sweatshirt.
“Thanks.” I lowered myself onto it.
“If it gets too bad, go. I’ll understand.”
“I won’t.”
He looked at the ground again, eyes closed as he inhaled and exhaled. His back spasmed and he winced, then stretched, his breathing deeper.
“That’s a good idea. Stretch and work it out—” I stopped. “Okay, I’ll shut up now. You don’t need a coach.”
He gave a low rumble that it took me a moment to recognize as a laugh. “Go ahead. Talk.”
“If there’s anything I can do—I know there probably isn’t, but…”
“Just be here.”
“That I can manage.” I realized his skin hadn’t rippled in a while. “And we might not even have to worry about it. It seems to be passing. False start, maybe. We should give it a few more minutes, then—”
His back shot up, body jackknifing as he let out a strangled cry. He managed two panting breaths before convulsing again. His arms and legs went rigid. His back arched to an unnatural height, spine jutting. His head dropped forward. His skin rippled and his back went even higher. A long whimper bubbled from his throat.
His head flew up and, for a second, his eyes met mine, wild and rolling with pain and terror, even more than the first time because then, as scared as he’d been, he’d known this was natural, that his body would take him through it safely. Now, knowing about the mutations, he had no such guarantee.