Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (101 page)

Glancing back at Griffin, I thought of the room I’d built for my fears. I readied myself. Then I ducked through the brush.

The cave I’d seen in Maddy’s dream was smaller than I thought it would be, and darker. My head scraped the ceiling as I stepped over the threshold; Lake and Chase had to duck. Behind us, Jed and Caroline lingered near the mouth of the cave, either to cover our backs or because they knew that what was about to happen was private.

Griffin wasn’t lying. Not about Maddy. She’s here
.

Knowing Maddy was close, knowing what she had gone through—already, it cut me to the bone. Beside me, Chase’s mind was flooded with scents: damp stone, fresh dirt, sweat, and something sour.

Outside, the storm was raging. Inside, it was quiet.

Too quiet.

An unreadable expression on his too-pale face, Griffin pushed past me and made his way farther back into the darkness. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a small form huddled against the wall of the cave. She was lying on one side, her arms curved protectively around her middle. Her clothes were worn, her face dirty, and the slant of light from the entrance caught her eyes just so, giving her the look of a person caught in the throes of fever.

But she was Maddy, unmistakably
Maddy
, and a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding whooshed out of my chest when I felt that spark of recognition deep inside me. Even after listening to the story Griffin had spun, I hadn’t been certain what we would find here.

Who we would find here.

But she still looked like our Maddy. She still felt like Maddy. She wasn’t the killer, and she was alive. That was more than I’d hoped for, more than I had a right to ask for, when I’d believed she was capable of the things we’d seen.

The other ghost
. Griffin’s words lingered in my mind. He’d brought us here, to her, but what was the likelihood that there were two ghosts following Maddy around?

Then again, what had the likelihood been that there was even one?

“Bryn?” Maddy didn’t sound sure of herself, like she thought I might have been a dream—which was probably a fair assumption, all things considered.

“Maddy.” Everything in me wanted to go to her, to kneel beside her, but I couldn’t bring my feet to move—not until I knew that she wanted me there, wanted me close. “Mads.”

“You came,” Maddy whispered. For a moment, all I could think was that the first time I’d seen Chase, locked in a cage in Callum’s basement and half out of his mind with the Change, he’d said the same thing.

“Of course I came.”

Maddy closed her eyes, and as Chase inhaled beside me, he caught a scent, too faint for my human nose to pick up.

Tears.

She hadn’t shed them yet, and I didn’t know whether I should go to her or just go. But we’d come here for a reason, and Callum’s warning was still fresh in my mind.

“The other alphas will be looking for you,” I told Maddy, matching her whisper with one of my own. “Soon.”

I wanted to be saying something else—that we loved her, that we missed her, that if I could have taken her pain and made it mine, I would have, in a heartbeat.

“The Senate doesn’t know about the baby, Maddy, but if they find out, you won’t be safe here.” I paused, and my eyes traveled to her stomach, round against her rail-thin frame. “Neither one of you will be.”

This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion with Maddy going, but I didn’t know how to say anything else. Hesitantly, I crouched where I was, my knees pulled tight to my chest. I forced my own guard down, so she would know that I wasn’t trying to scare her or threaten her or imply that she’d made a mistake. Instead, I let my face show my feelings, let my own tears come.

“I was scared, Maddy, so scared that something had happened to you, and that we wouldn’t get here in time.”

She looked at Griffin and nodded, and he shot me a warning look and then backed up to stand next to Lake, leaving nothing but a few feet of space separating Maddy and me.

“I left to get better,” the girl who’d been one of us said simply. “And everything got worse.”

I ached for the bond missing between us, for the ability to take on her thoughts as my own, to feel them with and for her and protect her from those who would see her harmed.

But every instinct I had was screaming at me that I wasn’t Maddy’s alpha anymore.

I wasn’t even sure we were friends.

“I knew,” she said, her hand rubbing small circles over her bulging stomach and leaving no question what she was referring to. “When I left, I knew, Bryn, and I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought I could do it—just go away and get better and stop missing Lucas, who I thought he was, what I thought we had.”

She eased toward me. Or maybe I eased toward her. I couldn’t be sure.

“I didn’t know how much it would hurt.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the pregnancy, or leaving the rest of us behind.

“I didn’t know that having someone inside of you could make you a hundred times more lonely on the surface. But I was doing it. I was.” She nodded, as if to convince herself of that fact, even as the tears she’d been holding back spilled over and carved tracks into the grime on her face. “We were doing fine, but then there was a full moon. It wasn’t the first one, but the baby …”

“He Shifted, too,” I said.

Maddy met my eyes. “She,” the pregnant girl corrected softly. “She Shifted, too.”

It wasn’t uncommon for werewolf pups to Shift in the womb—that was part of the reason so few human women
survived giving birth to werewolf kids. Combined with Maddy’s own body morphing and breaking, the effect must have been excruciating, so much so that I could almost overlook the other thing she’d just said.

Behind me, Lake could not. “She?”

“It’s a girl,” Maddy said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do, and that full moon, when she was Shifting, and I was Shifting, I thought—”

She’d thought she was having a miscarriage. Because female pups only made it to full term if there were twins.

“But nothing bad happened, Bryn. I was fine, and she was fine, but my body—it was like being split in two, cut up from the inside out. It was like dying, and then, suddenly, I wasn’t alone.”

Her eyes landed on Griffin’s, and he smiled, a tragic smile that looked out of place with the freckles on his face.

“You brought Griffin back?” Lake’s voice was very small. Through the bond, I could feel the slight tightening of her throat, the aching knowledge that, for years, she hadn’t been able to do what Maddy had that night. “There was a full moon, and you Shifted, and you just brought him back? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

Maddy looked down at her hands—away from Lake and her question. Griffin picked up where Maddy left off, speaking the words she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“It wasn’t like that, Lake. One second, I was there, watching, invisible, and the next, I could feel Maddy’s Shift, feel
the baby Shifting, feel the moon pulling me closer, turning me inside out. Maddy was screaming, Lake, and it hurt me. I started to Shift, too, and then it was like a nuclear reactor went off inside my body.”

His eyes shone just describing it, even now.

“Being dead is like being under anesthetic.” Griffin struggled to put the feeling into words. “Your emotions are there—the important ones, but everything else is numb. Nothing is the way it used to be. Nothing is right, but that night—” His eyes went back to Maddy. “I could
feel
. I was
there
.”

For one second, maybe two, Maddy smiled. Then she looked down at her hands, and I knew that whatever she said next wouldn’t be good. “The corpses started showing up a week later.”

There was a full moon. Griffin came back. And a week later, things started to die. Maddy had to realize how that sounded—but it was clear from the way she looked at him that she did not.

“Corpses?” Jed prompted, his voice so gentle, it surprised me.

“They were animals,” Maddy said. “At first.”

I thought back to the blood in the cabin in Alpine Creek. “Something killed them?” I asked, forcing my gaze to stay on Maddy and not dart over to Griffin.

Maddy continued on as if I hadn’t said a word. “I woke up that morning, and Griffin was gone. He just disappeared, and the moment he left, I felt it.” Maddy shivered. I was close
enough to her now that I could have reached out and wrapped my arm around her—but I didn’t.

“I didn’t see anything, not at first, but I heard the door open. Then I heard bones snapping and skin stretching, and even though I couldn’t smell anything, I knew someone was Shifting. At first, I thought it was Griffin, so I walked out into the hallway.” Maddy stopped blinking, her eyes far away and glassy, as if she could see it happening, all over again. “The front door was open, and there was a dog standing on the porch. You could tell it was someone’s pet, because it was wearing a little red collar.”

I could see where this was going—well enough that she didn’t need to relive it by putting the experience into words, but when I opened my mouth to tell her that, her voice grew louder, more decisive.

“I didn’t know what the dog was doing there, and I thought that maybe I’d imagined the sound of Shifting. But then I saw the tag on the dog’s collar moving, and I realized he was shaking.” Maddy swallowed, but forced herself to continue. “The dog was a mutt, maybe a year old, and he was shaking so hard that I knew whatever I’d heard, whatever I was feeling, he could feel it, too.”

Now
I
could see it: Maddy and the mutt and a villain neither one of them could see.

“The puppy saw me. It came right up to me. It nuzzled my hand. And then something cut it in two.”

Blood on the floor and walls of the cabin
. I couldn’t see through Maddy’s eyes, but I didn’t need to. I’d smelled the cabin, I’d seen the blood.

“It just kept going and going, claws digging into it, teeth ripping out chunks, and I just
stood
there.”

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Griffin murmured. “You couldn’t even see it.”

Maddy continued on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “And then it stopped, and I thought whatever had killed the dog might come for me, but it didn’t. Griffin came back.” Maddy blinked, and I could see her coming back into the present. “We buried the dog—what was left of it—out back.”

It was an odd thing for a werewolf to do, to bury an animal that should have smelled like prey, but the horror of what had been done to the little dog in the red collar had left a mark on Maddy that was visible on her face even now.

This wasn’t just hunting.

This was torture.

And she’d been helpless to stop it. There was nothing a person like us hated more.

The rest of the story made its way out of her mouth in halting, staccato bits. She’d showered, scrubbing her hands raw, using an entire bottle of shampoo, but never feeling clean. Griffin had come back, and whenever he was near, things weren’t so bad, but the second he disappeared …

It happened again. And again. And again. Sometimes it was
strays. Sometimes it was someone’s pet, but always, it was brutal. She and Griffin left Alpine Creek, but wherever they went, whatever Maddy did, the monster followed. It always knew where to find her, and Griffin was the only thing that kept it away.

“What happened during that full moon, Maddy?” Jed spoke before I had a chance to, and I wondered if he knew something on the subject of ghosts that the rest of us didn’t. “The night you saw Griffin for the first time—I need you to tell me exactly what you did to bring him back.”

I saw the logic in the question—if we could figure out how Maddy had brought Griffin back, we might be able to figure out the likelihood that she’d brought something else back, too.

Let it be something else
, I thought.
Not someone she cares about. Not someone Lake cares about, too. Just this once, let it be something else. Let it be easy
.

For a long time, Maddy didn’t answer Jed’s question. When she did speak, the words came out in a whisper. “We don’t think it’s anything I did,” she said, each word hard-won. “We don’t think it’s
me
at all.”

She looked down, but not at her hands this time—at her stomach.

It hadn’t just been Maddy Shifting that night. According to what they’d told us, the baby had, too.

The baby Maddy said was a girl.

The baby who—based on everything we knew about werewolf biology—shouldn’t have lived past that night.

“You think She did this somehow?” Lake said the word
she
like it was capitalized, like it was a name.

Maddy didn’t answer.

“You have a knack, Maddy,” I said, trying to get her to look at me. “You’re Resilient, but maybe the baby is something else. Maybe her knack isn’t just surviving.”

“It’s not her fault.” Maddy’s eyes flashed. “If having her means this monster following us—I won’t let you touch her. I won’t let anyone touch her.”

“Maddy.” I held my hand out, palm up, and then slowly placed it on her stomach. I didn’t say a word, but as Maddy put her hand over mine, I hoped that every assurance I couldn’t put into words would flow between us, with the exchange of body heat.

Even when I’d thought she was the killer, I’d been determined to keep the other alphas away from Maddy. I wasn’t about to let anyone—or anything—hurt her baby now.

Not even if the baby was somehow responsible for raising the dead.

“What happened last week?” Chase turned the conversation back to the event that had brought us here in the first place. If anyone else had asked, Maddy might have winced, but this was Chase, and for whatever reason, she seemed to trust him.

“We stayed away from people.” In Maddy’s mouth, the word
we
took on new meaning—whatever else she’d thought
or done, she was a mother now, would never just be
I
again. “I swear, we stayed away from people, but we were outside for months, and then there was this house, and it was empty. The people who lived there had moved, but they hadn’t sold it yet, and we thought—I was hungry, and I was tired, and I just wanted to sleep for one night, just one night, Bryn.”