Hemlock (15 page)

I blushed. Would I have freaked? Maybe. I’d always been so busy insisting that Kyle and I were just friends that I had never stopped to ask myself—realy ask myself—if I wanted more.

Sometimes, though, when I was half-asleep and too tired to self-edit, I wondered what kissing Kyle would be like.

My imagination hadn’t come close.

My imagination hadn’t come close.

“Wel,” I said, head spinning, “I’ve neither freaked nor bolted.

Your move.”

I expected him to kiss me again—wanted him to kiss me again

—but a dark, almost pained look slid across his face.

He pushed himself away from me and sat on the edge of the bed. Icy tendrils spread through my chest, kiling al the warmth that had been building. “Kyle?”

“This was a mistake,” he said, voice so low that I had to strain to hear. “I shouldn’t have . . .” He took a deep breath. “It was a mistake.” He stood and walked away from the bed.

I sat up and grabbed Kyle’s pilow. I hugged it to my chest. It took me three tries to get a single word out. “Why?”

He turned and stared at me, eyes wide and ful of disbelief.

“
Why?
” he echoed. “I’m a monster, Mac. In what scenario
wouldn’t
this be a mistake?”

I set the pilow aside and started to push myself to my feet, but he stopped me with a single, cutting word. “Don’t.”

“You’re not a monster, Kyle.”

“Do you remember that night in the aley? Do you remember what happened before you passed out?”

I shook my head and looked away from him. I didn’t want to remember. I felt a phantom grip on my arms, a ghostly throb on the back of my skul where it had hit the brick wal. “You saved me,” I whispered.

Kyle was in front of me in an instant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him sink to his knees, but I couldn’t look at him.

“After that,” he prodded. “What happened between Jimmy

“After that,” he prodded. “What happened between Jimmy letting you go and you passing out?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to remember the color of the werewolf’s fur—Kyle’s fur—and the way Jimmy had screamed. “Why are you doing this?”

Kyle touched my cheek and my eyes sprang open.

“Because you need to understand,” he said. “Whatever else I was—whoever I used to be—I’m one of the monsters.”

“Not everyone infected with LS—”

The desperation on Kyle’s face stopped the words in my throat.

“Is a monster. I know. But I nearly eviscerated a man. I wanted to kil him, Mac. I think I would have if you hadn’t started coming to.

That isn’t very human.”

He stood in a fluid, graceful movement and looked down at me.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m turning myself in. I’m going to the LSRB.”

Before I could make my throat work, before I could argue, Kyle walked out of the room. I heard his feet on the stairs, but I didn’t folow. I couldn’t stand. I felt like I was being ripped apart.

The LSRB.

The Lupine Syndrome Registration Bureau.

It was like a cross between the CIA and the CDC. It was the government organization that ran the tip lines, investigated potential infections, and oversaw the camps.

I pushed myself back on the bed until my shoulders were against the wal, and then I puled my knees to my chest. He wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be serious. If Kyle walked into the local LSRB office, they’d send him directly to a camp. He’d be cut off LSRB office, they’d send him directly to a camp. He’d be cut off from everything and everyone.

Once you walked through the camp gates, you were dead to the rest of the world.

And the camps themselves were horrible. The government did a good job of keeping the conditions secret, but everyone had heard the rumors of overcrowding and food shortages and kilings.

Anything could happen to Kyle in a place like that.

Tears slid down my face.

I had to talk him out of it. The LS tip line didn’t take cals on Sundays, so Kyle would have to wait for the local LSRB office to open in the morning before he could do anything stupid.

That gave me one night to change his mind. Panic sweled in my chest, but I pushed it down. There was no reason to panic, because I was going to fix this.

There had to be a way to fix this.

I wiped my face on my sleeve. I’d keep watch on him twenty-four/seven. I’d even find some way to lock him up if I had to. I wasn’t sure how you could restrain a teenage werewolf, but I’d find a way. Jason could help. With a sinking feeling, I remembered Derby’s threat. Maybe there was some way to tel Jason that Kyle was infected without teling him
why
Kyle wanted to turn himself in.

He would help, wouldn’t he? A decade of friendship had to outweigh a few Tracker meetings. It just had to.

The rest of the house was quiet. I wondered if I should go upstairs and check on Kyle or if he was going to come back down.

Maybe I could—

With a noise like splintering ice, the window above me exploded.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

I THREW MY ARMS UP, INSTINCTIVELY COVERING MY head as shards of glass rained down. When I was sure it was safe, I looked up. There was a ragged, gaping hole where the window above the bed had been. The night breeze tossed the curtains, and bits of glass were everywhere: in my hair, lodged in the folds of my clothes, covering the sheets.

“Mac!” I heard Kyle’s shout and the sound of feet pounding across the kitchen. Then, suddenly, there was a defending crash folowed by silence.

The Trackers.

They had managed to folow me.

They knew Kyle was infected.

They knew Kyle was infected.

I had led them here.

I had led them to Kyle.

Nicking my arms and hands on bits of glass, I scrambled off the bed and raced for the door. Halfway there, I tripped and looked back. One of the garden gnomes from the front yard was lying in the middle of the carpet, its head severed by the impact.

There was a huge thud upstairs. Heart seizing in my chest, I took the stairs two at a time and threw myself over the landing and into the kitchen.

I was prepared for a crowd of Jimmy Tylers; instead, I got 105

pounds of furious ex-girlfriend.

Kyle’s eyes—wide and panicked—flicked to mine, just for an instant, and then locked back on Heather.

“You have to calm down.” He reached toward her and she jerked back.

A low sound trickled out of her throat, more animalistic than human. The broken remains of the Harpers’ kitchen table were piled at her feet, and the French doors that led to the backyard were hanging off their hinges.

“I saw you.” Heather’s voice was usualy annoyingly musical and sweet. Now she sounded like someone who had just smoked two packs of cigarettes and chased them down with a thimble of turpentine.

Tears ran down her face and she didn’t make any effort to wipe them away. “I saw you, Kyle. Through the window.”

Every ounce of blood in my body rushed to my face as I was flooded with embarrassment and fury. “You were watching us?” I flooded with embarrassment and fury. “You were watching us?” I took a step forward, forgetting—or maybe just not caring—that Heather was infected.

She made a lunge for me, but Kyle was suddenly there, blocking her path. “You have to leave.” His voice was a low snarl.

Heather tried to force her way past him. Her eyes were the wrong shape—too large and too far apart. Her jaw jutted out the way a jaw shouldn’t, and her cheekbones were in slightly the wrong place. Her face was changing in smal, horrific ways as I watched.

I stepped backward, and my hip colided with a plant stand. A pot of ivy went crashing to the ground, scattering shards of clay and clumps of dirt across the tile floor.

Heather swiped at Kyle with a hand that was no longer human.

It was long and twisted and tipped with thick claws that sunk effortlessly into his shoulder.

Kyle let out a howl of pain as he staggered back. He clamped one hand to his ripped and bloody shirt as he fel to his knees.

Heather stared at her own hand in dismay, like she couldn’t quite believe what she had done.

I ran forward and reached for Kyle, but his spine bowed and he let out a ragged yel. “Keep away!”

I backed up until I reached the far wal and then watched, powerless, as Kyle’s body tore itself apart with the sound of hundreds of twigs snapping at once. I pressed my hands to my ears, trying to block out the sounds as bones shattered, muscles shifted, and fur replaced skin.

When it was over, the boy I had kissed was gone, replaced by a When it was over, the boy I had kissed was gone, replaced by a large, brown wolf.

Heather shook her head and stared at Kyle. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words coming out twisted because her mouth was no longer the right shape.

She reached up to wipe the tears from her face and my stomach lurched in disgust and rage as she left a trail of blood—Kyle’s blood—on her cheek.

The wolf advanced on her, teeth barred and hackles raised.

“Please, Kyle.” Her gaze darted to me and she snarled.

Kyle let out a furious bark and continued his slow advance, herding her toward the broken doors.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Heather said. “I . . . I love you.”

Kyle kept pressing forward, and she didn’t resist—not even as he forced her out into the yard.

Heather shot me one last, hate-filed glare and then turned and ran.

I stood in the ruined kitchen and stared, dazed, at the werewolf in front of me.

Kyle.

The wolf turned away from the gaping door and regarded me with its animal eyes.

Still Kyle
, I reminded myself.
It’s still Kyle
.

The air around the wolf seemed to shimmer as fur flowed back into skin. Muscles and bones straightened, the process somehow less terrifying in reverse. After a moment, Kyle was Kyle again.

Completely Kyle.

Every. Naked. Inch.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet, facing away from me.

I had seen Kyle in the pool at Jason’s plenty of times. But this wasn’t the pool. And Kyle was not wearing swim trunks. Given what we had been doing twenty minutes ago, the blood rushed to my face.

“Are you al right?” He sounded exhausted.

I swalowed. Cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

“Could you turn around?”

My face burned with enough heat to destroy a smal forest.

“Um. Sure.” I turned my back and crossed my arms. Wow. It was suddenly 120 percent easier to think.

“Give me three minutes,” he said.

I waited until I heard him cross the kitchen and head down the stairs before I turned around. I walked over to the broken kitchen table and prodded the wreckage with one foot.

I wanted to be far, far away when Kyle tried explaining the mess to his parents.

Figuring my three minutes were up, I headed down to Kyle’s room, gripping the banister because my legs felt unsteady. What would Heather have done to me if Kyle hadn’t been here?

I paused in his doorway. Kyle was standing in front of the closet. He’d put on a pair of jeans and his black Vans, but he was shirtless.

He turned and I gasped.

I crossed the room and lightly pressed my hand to Kyle’s shoulder. The skin was smooth and perfect, like Heather had never shoulder. The skin was smooth and perfect, like Heather had never touched him. I knew werewolves healed superhuman fast, but there was a difference between knowing something and seeing proof.

Kyle closed his eyes, just for a second, and let out a slow breath. “She could have scratched you. Or worse.”

I shuddered and let my hand drop. My muscles trembled with the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush. I felt like I had just downed a pot of black coffee after puling an al-nighter.

Glancing around the room, I said the first thing that entered my head. “She kiled the garden gnome.”

Kyle stared at me like I had lost my mind.

I pointed at the headless gnome. “It’s what she used to break the window. Maybe you could glue his head back on.” A high, slightly manic laugh bubbled in my chest. There were a hundred things to be worried about, and I was babbling about a tacky lawn ornament. I clamped a hand over my mouth, worried the laugh would turn into sobs if I let it escape.

My life hadn’t felt this out of control since I’d lived with Hank.

Who was I kidding? Things had never felt this out of control.

“You can’t turn yourself in.”

“Mac—”

“No.” I shook my head. “I lost Amy to a werewolf. I’m losing Jason to the Trackers. I can’t lose you, too.”

Kyle put a hand on my arm. “You’d be okay.”

He couldn’t possibly think that. Not realy. “I’d spend the rest of my life not knowing if you were al right and wondering if you were stil alive. Okay isn’t even a remote possibility.”

stil alive. Okay isn’t even a remote possibility.”

Kyle dropped his hand and stepped back. “You should head home,” he said, voice completely blank, like the last hour had never happened. “My parents wil be back soon.”

I clenched my fists. “I’m not leaving until you promise not to turn yourself in.”

“Mac . . .”

Knowing it was playing dirty but not knowing what else to do, I said, “If you turn yourself in, Derby wil assume I knew you were the one who saved me. I’l become a target. Besides, Heather might try to kil me. You know how competitive she gets. She can’t stand losing a parking space.”

Kyle stared at me, a stricken expression on his face, and I felt slightly sick at how I was manipulating his protective nature. I reached for his hand, but he moved away. I tried not to feel hurt and failed.

“I need some space. A few days to figure things out.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “Please, Mac.”

“Promise you won’t turn yourself in, and I’l give you space.”

“I promise I won’t do anything without teling you first.” The expression on Kyle’s face was hard and resolute. It didn’t leave any room for argument.

It was the best I was going to get. “Okay,” I said—even though it wasn’t realy okay at al.