Sisters Red (15 page)

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around my cheeks, then heave the hatchet around. It sinks into the blond wolf's neck with a cracking sound. It's severed his spine. The wolf falls to the ground, tremors for a moment, and dissolves into shadows that hurry away in the moonlight.

I turn to Rosie and Silas to see there's only one wolf left--the largest. Silas and Rosie are both fighting it, Rosie with only one knife left and Silas with the blade of an ax. The handle has somehow been broken off and thrown aside. Silas swings for the wolf, but it sidesteps out of the way. The animal paces and begins to circle them as they back up to each other, ready for a second pass.

I grab Rosie's second knife from the ground. One shot. I try not to gasp for breath despite the fact that I'm dizzy. Every movement feels as if it's ripping my chest apart. I don't have Rosie's aim, but the wolf is going to wear us down if someone doesn't get a hit. Rosie meets my eye briefly, and I see her grab on to Silas's wrist, ready to yank him out of the way should the knife near them instead of my target.

The blade spins through the air just as the wolf moves--instead of hitting his head, it slices through his ear. It's enough, though. The Fenris turns, dark eyes wide, and Silas leaps toward it. He sinks the ax blade into the wolf's head before the beast can react, and the motion throws Silas to the ground as the wolf twists in pain, jaws open and claws flecked with my blood. Its legs buckle beneath him and finally it explodes into shadows.

Silas exhales and drops his head to the ground while

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Rosie races toward me, yanking her cloak off. She presses it to my chest, trying to stop the bleeding, then urges me to sit. I breathe deeply as Rosie pulls my hair away from my face, freeing it from sweat and blood.

"We need to get home," Rosie says under her breath.

"We aren't going back to Ellison until--" I choke, trying to calm my temper--every time it flares, the pain increases.

"Not Ellison," Rosie cuts me off gently. "The apartment." I hear Silas's footsteps but can't quite focus enough to look up at him. Rosie stands and the two of them help me up. I take a dizzy step forward, but the movement makes the skin on my chest feel as if it's tearing in two; I sink back to the grass. I grit my teeth, prepared to stand again despite the pain, but instead Silas's hand squeezes my shoulder.

"Let me carry you," he says lowly.

"I can make it," I mumble, pride eating away at me.

"I know you can, Lett," he says.

I mean to argue, mean to sigh, but instead I turn to him and close my eye. Silas is strong--he pulls me from the ground as if it's nothing, and Rosie takes my hand.

It doesn't take long to get back to the apartment. Silas turns away while Rosie pulls my shirt off and flushes my wounds with soapy water. The scars that were already on my chest seem to have done some good--they prevented the wolf's claws from cutting tremendously deep. Still no scars over my heart--the skin there remains smooth and perfect. Rosie bandages the four thick cuts, then wraps gauze around my body to hold them together.

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"They were strong," I say, trying to pretend that speaking doesn't hurt. I lie back on the couch. Silas is sitting in one of the wooden chairs while Rosie kneels beside my waist.

"Stronger than normal," Silas adds. "Three of us, only four of them, and..." He shakes his head. "You think they were just a particularly powerful group?"

"No. Even that young one was strong. I hit all of them once. I thought they were down, but then..." I sigh. "They were talking about the Potential. I think that's it--that's how they're getting stronger, how they're staying so focused. They weren't going to attack you, Rosie. They were going to walk away, go hunt for the Potential instead of girls. Apparently they've lost this specific Potential before, and they're... motivated."

"So you're saying... we stop?" Rosie asks, shock in her voice.

I shake my head. "We've always played the part of bait before--it's just not going to work this time. We need better bait. We need the Potential if we want to lure them in."

"Scarlett," Rosie begins slowly in a voice that's meant to comfort, "I get that, but... we're only three..."

"You think we aren't up for it?" I snap at her harshly. My chest throbs in pain. "Sorry, Rosie." She nods, unhurt. She's borne the brunt of my anger before, learned to let the meaningless bits of it roll off her back. "If we can find him, we can bring them to us. We can be prepared for the new strength, and we can do more damage to the packs as a whole. But only for another twenty-eight days. And then they go back

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to hunting, killing like normal. Yes, the murder blitz ends, but so does our chance to really bring them in without using ourselves as bait."

I don't need to say it. They know it and I know it. Without the Potential, I'm useless in this city. Sure, I can hunt a rogue Fenris or small pack that wanders out toward Ellison, but here, where the real danger is? I am nothing. And I
need
this--I need
him,
whoever he is, to make a difference, to
be
the change I want to cause in the world. I can feel the pleading in my face, in the hoarseness of my throat, afraid I'll have to beg them to help me.

But I won't. Of course I won't. Rosie reaches up and takes my hand, squeezing it gently. We have the same heart. Where I go, she goes, and where she goes, I go. Silas looks at her and nods as well.

"Of course, Lett. We're in this together, all three of us. What can I do to help?" he says.

I sigh in relief and happiness and fear, every emotion mixed into one bursting inside me. "For starters, you can help me figure out how to find the Potential."

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CHAPTER TEN

Rosie

My sister thrives on goals. The martial arts belt
system was perfect for her. She set her sights on the yellow belt, the green, brown, black. When she'd learned all she could there, she trained the same way: run two miles, then three, four. And now, with the Fenris, she seems happy that she has a goal she can act on: find the Potential.

"We should start with the city. I mean, it's a decent jumping-off point, since there are more people in Atlanta than in the country. And the packs seem to be congregating here--the bigger, older ones, anyway... I imagine it won't be long before the smaller packs show up too. And if nothing else, we've got more access to information here," Silas says as we return to the apartment after a quick run to the convenience store.

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"Right." Scarlett nods. "Let's start here. So how do we find him?"

It's silent for a moment.

"Okay, we can figure this out." Silas interrupts the quiet and drops down beside me on the couch. "They track him by some sort of calling or scent or something, but there still has to be something unique about this guy that
we
can find."

"We know it's a man, for starters. And we know it's a specific man, that he's got some specific trait."

"And we know he's not a child," I add. "I mean, it's not like a Potential was just born. They aren't turned till they're at least what, early teens? That's the youngest Fenris I've ever heard of, right?" I ask, and Scarlett nods.

"Great. So what is the trait that makes him a Potential during a random moon phase?" Silas asks optimistically, as though he thinks one of us will blurt out the answer.

More silence. Each of us starts a sentence, causing the other two to look on hopefully, but then we grimace and stay silent. We've got nothing. The moon phase--our deadline--ends at eleven forty-one at night in twenty-eight days.

Over the next day, my sister plunges into a flurry of research, writing notes and jotting down ideas that she leaves throughout the apartment. She can never verbalize them terribly well to Silas or me, leaving us mostly to ourselves.

Which is both good and bad.

He and I return to the diner, and then we venture to Goodwill together. He helps me hang the tropical print curtains that I found at the store, where I also managed to find

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an entirely too-lilac area rug and a decent clock radio as well. Scarlett immediately programmed it to the news radio stations. I keep waiting for the fluttering feelings for Silas to stop, but they merely subside a little; I still feel them whenever he brushes against me for too long or brings his face close to mine.

I've never kept a secret from my sister, and now I have two: the community center pamphlet that I keep flipping through, and the strange buzzing feeling that I get when Silas is around. I try to pretend that both are nothing she'd want to hear about anyway, but some deeper part of me reels in excitement and fear at them. The Tuesday after our failed I'm-the-dessert hunt is no exception--community center classes are supposed to start today, and the anticipation wakes me up long before my sister. Or maybe it's the tinny church bells crying out at six in the morning.

I slide out of our bed and tiptoe to the doorway in slippers--I'm afraid to walk around this place barefoot. The bedroom is lavender colored, and streaks of orange sunlight are crawling their way up the horizon. My eyes run across Silas's form huddled in blankets and sleeping soundly. I smile despite myself and slink toward the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator for some eggs.

The noise stirs Silas, who sits up suddenly, hair flying wildly around his eyes. Screwtape hisses at him from under the coffee table.

"Good morning to you," Silas grumbles. He lifts his eyes to mine and smiles as he rubs the back of his head. I grin

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back and toss the eggs around with a fork before pouring them into a frying pan.

While Silas disappears into the bathroom, Scarlett rises as well, padding out of our bedroom in a T-shirt and pajama pants. I know before she speaks that she has a plan. That bright-eyed look is back, despite the circles under her eyes and the still-fresh chest wound. She hides pain well.

"What is it, then?" I ask her before she speaks. She grins at me and lifts herself onto one of the bar stools that Silas salvaged, shivering as another draft sweeps through the apartment.

"We go back. Figure out who they were before they were Fenris. Figure out why the ones who already are Fenris were capable of becoming Fenris."

"Not before I've had eggs," Silas calls out, emerging from the bathroom slightly more shaved. He never truly gets rid of the stubble, though. I'm not certain he tries to. "Do you need help with breakfast, Rosie?" he asks.

"Almost done, actually," I reply.

"Next time, then," Silas says in the soft voice he usually uses with me only when Scarlett isn't around. I didn't even realize there was a special voice until now, but it makes me look at Scarlett nervously. She doesn't seem to have picked up on it. "So. The master plan, sergeant chief?" he continues, sliding onto a bar stool beside Scarlett.

Scarlett glares, but her excitement takes over. "Okay. So the one that Rosie almost had a few days ago said he was

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fourteen, and I don't think he was lying. I mean, I'm sure his Fenris age is older than that, but it looks like he probably really was changed at fourteen. And he said he's from Simonton. There can't possibly be that many fourteen-year-olds who have disappeared or died in Simonton. The place is hardly bigger than Ellison. It'd be in the papers, even if it was decades ago."

"What if he was lying?" Silas asks.

Scarlett shrugs. "He could have been. But he didn't really have any reason to, and... besides, it's not like we have anything else to go on."

"Okay... so where are these papers?" I ask, sliding the eggs onto a single plate and tossing three forks down. There's not a lot of point in washing three plates when there's plenty of room to divide one into three sections, in my opinion.

"On microfilm, at the library," Scarlett replies.

The microfilm room is freezing, as though book lovers don't heat this space out of loyalty to real pages. We've been here for hours, so long that my mind is starting to spin with newspaper articles even when the machine isn't in fast-forward mode. Today was supposed to be the first day of my community center classes, but I've pretty much abandoned the idea in order to run through ancient pages of the
Simonton Banner-Herald.

I sigh, scanning through an obituaries page.

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Joseph Woodlief

April 8, 1973-June 23, 1987

Joseph Woodlief, son of Ruth and Eckener Woodlief, passed away the evening of June 23 in his home. Joseph was an active church member and scholar recently accepted to the prestigious St. Martin's Boys' School. He excelled in rowing and was an avid lover of classical music.

Joseph is survived by his parents, Ruth and Eckener; three aunts; seven uncles; maternal grandparents; eight siblings, Stewart, Katherine, Farley, Bradley, David, Todd, Benjamin, and his younger sister, Abbygale. Services will be private; the family will be accepting social calls of mourning the evening of June 30 beginning at seven o'clock.

"Is this something? He was fourteen," I say through a yawn, pointing at my screen. The picture is blanched and hard to make out, and it looks as if it was taken when the boy was much younger, no more than five or six.

Scarlett kicks the wall to roll her chair toward me. She studies the obituary carefully, reading each word.

"It could be him. Face is similar, I think," Silas murmurs from over my shoulder, his breath on my neck dizzying.

"That 'services will be private' part is somewhat