Trial by Fire (15 page)

Not anymore.

“When Chase spent the night, Archer couldn’t find me in my dreams.” I heard the words as I whispered them, felt the soft sound wrapping its way around each of their bodies. “If we’re lucky, having the three of you inside me will be enough to keep all of them out.”

And what if it’s not, Bryn? I recognized Lake’s voice in my mind, and for a split second, I saw an image of the two of us when we were eight or nine, suntanned and skinny-limbed and laughing.

I brought my hand to Lake’s and pressed my nails into the skin of her wrist, dragging them softly downward, leaving my mark.

You’re going to protect me, I told her, the way you always have, and if it doesn’t work, you’re going to protect the pack.

It wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t a question, either, because I knew them, and they knew me, and there wasn’t a single one of us who didn’t already know how this was going to end.

Lake met my eyes, her own blazing, and then left her mark on my palm. The exchange was symbolic, the kind of formality our pack had never observed, but somehow, my dominance spreading among the four of us, their inner wolves as much a presence in my mind as theirs, it seemed appropriate.

Devon.

Chase.

Two more times, my fingers laid marks into someone else’s skin. Two more times, marks were laid upon me. When we finished here, I’d go into the lion’s den to take out the lion, knowing that I wasn’t alone, that if something happened to me, my friends would take care of our pack, even if it meant hurting me.

With the wind whipping through my hair, I knelt and lifted my head to the waning moon. I breathed. They breathed. And when they Shifted, and I felt the rush of wild power, bittersweet and pure, I wondered if this time, they felt me in the same way I felt them.

If being a part of me made them just a little bit more human.

I was still alpha. I always would be, but the constant rhythm in their minds as I buried my hands in their fur wasn’t alpha. It was Bryn.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I SHOWED UP ON THE COVEN’S FRONT PORCH LOOKing every inch the runaway. My hair was a tangled mess, my clothes still smudged with forest dirt. My teeth were chattering, and I had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder.

Ali was going to kill me.

Waltzing straight into the belly of the beast wasn’t exactly a mother-approved kind of plan. In a few hours, when Ali woke up and found me gone, there would be hell to pay, and I was seriously glad that I wouldn’t be the one around to pay it. I was only about 60 percent sure that Lake and Devon would be able to keep her from charging in after me—and only the fact that my friends had open access to my mind and would know the second things went south made me rate their chances that high.

This is what Callum foresaw, I thought, willing the words to be true. I’m supposed to be here.   Ali will understand that.

My friends snorted inside my head in stereo. I wasn’t convincing anybody here—not even myself.

Feeling as if my body weren’t entirely my own, I lifted my right hand, fisted it, and knocked on the wooden door. The coven had set themselves up on the far side of town, in a falling-down farmhouse that had been abandoned for years. I lifted my fist to knock again, but the door opened before I could repeat the motion. I shivered, half from the cold and half because the wolves lurking in the corners of my brain didn’t like the looks of the woman staring me directly in the eyes.

She was older than I’d expected. Werewolves aged slowly, and most of them never looked much older than their thirties, so seeing eyes that were worn around the edges and lips that had thinned with age was an unusual experience for me, especially when the owner of those eyes and lips felt alpha in a way completely at odds with the fact that she was human.

“Bryn.” She said my name like she’d been expecting me, like everything up until this point had been her way of luring me in.

“Hello.” I didn’t give her more than I had to, and I watched her face for some clue as to what was going on inside her head. “You’re Caroline’s mother.”

She smiled, and for a moment, it was easy to picture her as one of those PTA soccer moms.

“Please,” she said. “Call me Valerie.”

The expression in her eyes never changed, but I felt it the moment she reached out to my mind, like a cube of ice sliding down the length of my spine. Her smile was gentle and warm, and just looking at her made me want to smile, too.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I concentrated on the shiver that ran through my body and the sound of wolves breathing heavily in my head.

Lake and Devon and Chase.

Valerie’s smile deepened. Her eyes glittered, and without another word, she moved aside, gesturing for me to step across the splintered threshold into the house.

She’d tried to get inside my head, to push me to trust her or fear her or whatever it was she’d had in store for my emotions, and she’d failed. She knew I wasn’t really there to join them. I knew that she knew, just like I was fully cognizant of the likelihood that she would keep trying to find a way into my head. The two of us were dancing, playing chess.

I stepped across the threshold.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to come to me,” Valerie said, her voice soft, comforting. “Bridget and Archer told me that you had an episode in town. It’s only natural that you’d have questions about what you are. What we are.”

The way she said the word might have made me feel like there really was a we, but for the unwavering certainty that I was already part of something bigger.

“I’ve done a pretty good job figuring things out for myself,” I said. “Good enough that all three of your people ended up on the ground.”

“You’re a fighter.” The edges of her lips tilted up in amusement. “No control. No forethought. Things go red around the edges, and you start cutting people down. It’s hardly surprising.”

“Because I was raised by werewolves?”

Valerie didn’t as much as blink at the word. The other members of the coven might feel blind fury whenever the species came up, but she wasn’t bothered by it.

Odd, considering that a werewolf had killed her husband.

“No, not because you were raised by werewolves, though I shudder to think of the effect that might have had on some with your natural proclivities.” Valerie reached forward and brushed a strand of my hair out of my face, a gesture so maternal—and so familiar—that I felt like I’d been slapped. “Most psychics require practice to hone their craft. The more you practice, the stronger you become.”

For a single, jarring second, I could feel her again, coming at me from all sides—pressure at my temples, the slightest hint of a suggestion: confusion, loneliness, yearning.

Yeah, right.

Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “People with your particular gift tend to be a bit more …  feral about things. Reining it in won’t make you more powerful, but it will give you choices, about when and how your ability manifests itself.”

My heart pounded in my ears, and when she stepped forward and took my chin in her hands, the only thing that kept me from going into fight-or-flight mode, from throwing her to the ground and giving in to the desire to escape, was the calming sound of other hearts, beating in other chests.

Chase’s eyes.

Lake running in a blur of white-blonde fur.

Dev.

They pulled me back from the edge. I brought one hand to my hip, laying my fingers over the scars underneath my clothes and feeling the light scratches on the surface of my hands.

“You’ve known other Resilients?” I asked calmly.

After a long, considering moment, Valerie let go of my chin. “Resilients?”

“People like me.”

“You sound surprised.” She tilted her head to the side, and her voice went from honey sweet to ice sharp in a moment. “Surely you didn’t think you were one of a kind?”

I couldn’t keep myself from snorting out loud. One of a kind? Me? Any human who’d ever survived a werewolf attack major enough to trigger the Change was, by definition, Resilient. As it happened, I had an entire pack of them back at the Wayfarer. I had no illusions whatsoever about being unique.

Of course, no one outside our pack knew that the secret to making new werewolves was to choose your victims very carefully. Shay didn’t know what separated the Changed Weres in my pack from the ones who’d been born that way, and he couldn’t tell Valerie what he didn’t know.

Advantage: us.

“As it so happens, there’s a man in our coven who shares your gift,” Valerie said.

I ingested that information, absorbed it, and kept my surprise from showing on my face. I’d met other Resilients, but by the time I’d met them, they’d already been Changed. I’d never met a human like me. I’d never even considered that there had to be others.

“His name is Jed,” Valerie continued. “He might be able to teach you a thing or two about control—that is, if you plan to stay?”

Of course I planned to stay. Just like I planned to learn everything I could about the coven, to choose my moment, and to use the tranq gun hiding in my boot to knock Valerie out long enough to put the rest of them through emotion detox.

“Will I be safe if I stay here?” I asked, knowing I might get more information out of what she didn’t say than what she did.

“I don’t make a practice of attacking my own kind, Bryn. We generally consider that type of thing to be a last resort.”

Her eyes flickered to my right, and I followed her gaze and realized that Caroline was standing there, a shape in the shadows, her arms at her sides. This time, I felt more than a chill as Valerie pushed at my emotions.

Threat.

I’d always felt it in Caroline’s presence. Valerie wanted me to feel it more. She wanted me to look at Caroline and think last resort. She wanted me to wonder who else Caroline had attacked at her mother’s request.

Even as I fought back against Valerie’s interference, I couldn’t help noticing the icy calm on Caroline’s face, the absolute readiness, the blackness that bled outward from her pupils as she stared at me, set her sights on me.

Lake and Chase and Dev. Pack.

Whatever entry Valerie had found into my subconscious, the others pushed her out, prowling the halls of my mind like creatures on the hunt.

“I’m staying,” I said.

Valerie smiled. “I was hoping you would.” She glanced toward the shadows and lifted one eyebrow. “Caroline will show you to your room.”

Caroline moved silently, each step measured, not a single hair falling out of place. She walked past me, and I saw a glint of metal as the lamplight caught the blade concealed in her left hand just so.

Lake.

Devon.

Chase.

I could do this. I would do this.

As Caroline and I began to climb up the battered staircase, Valerie’s voice drowned out the sound of creaking wood. “Sleep well, Bryn.”

I think everyone in the room—and those guarding my mind—knew that Valerie meant the words as a threat.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE SUN DIDN’T RISE UNTIL SEVEN THIRTY, SO I had hours to kill, ensconced in a faded denim comforter and all too aware that the moment I went to sleep, my Keep the Psychics Out of My Head plan would be tested to the limit. There was a part of me—a sizable one—that wanted nothing more than to keep my eyes and ears open and my back to a wall, which was probably Valerie’s intention all along. She wanted me tired, off my game, and out of it enough that I’d stop resisting her assaults on my emotions.

She wanted me scared.

I closed my eyes and allowed my breathing to slow. Sleeping in their house—if I could manage it—would be like staring another alpha straight in the eyes.

I’m not scared of you, I thought as the rest of my mind went blank. You have no power over me.

For the longest time, I didn’t dream. I just lay there, my body relaxed, my senses perfectly attuned to the world around me, and then a dam broke somewhere in my mind, and in a rush of color and sound, I was gone.

Back in the forest, dressed from head to toe in white, I waited. One by one, my friends came out from behind mounds of snow and tree trunks the color of black cherries, the pads of their paws skating lightly over the frozen ground.

Lake and Devon and Chase.

Anyone else would have gone stiff with terror the moment they saw the three of them, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. I knelt on the ground and waited, unable to shake the feeling that someone else was supposed to be here.

Someone or something was missing. It took me a moment to realize what—who—I was looking for: the wolf from my other dreams, the one I could never quite catch.

She wasn’t there.

The world around me flickered, like someone was trying to change the channel on an old-fashioned TV. Within the span of a single heartbeat, I was surrounded on all sides by muscles and fur. They kept their backs to me and their eyes forward. My lip curled, baring my useless human teeth.

Archer’s trying to get in, and he can’t, I thought, buoyed by that realization. Still, I turned—wary, ready—taking in a three-sixty view of the forest.

Silence.

Pressure built at my temples. Sweat rose on the surface of my skin. I held my position, and as my friends circled around me, their wolf eyes scanned the darkness for signs of life.

Bryn. Bryn. Bryn.

My guards held the perimeter, my name a constant hum in their animal minds.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a wolf—the wolf—howling, and the sound resonated with me, blood and bones and bittersweet longing. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, I woke up.

“Good morning.”

The words took me by surprise, but I had enough presence of mind not to go for my knife. Years of dealing with frustratingly stealthy werewolves had equipped me with an excellent poker face, and I refused to let a human—particularly this human—know that he’d gotten the drop on me.

“Anyone ever told you that watching a girl sleep is pretty much the textbook definition of creepy?”

Archer inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the point. “You were blocking me. I was curious. Shoot me.”

“That an invitation?”

Channeling Lake was second nature, and I felt a snuff of agreement in my head. Both Lake and her wolf approved of the threat, though her wolf half would have preferred if I’d delivered the threat while digging my fingernails into the fleshy part of the intruder’s throat.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Archer replied, completely unbothered. “If any teenage girl is going to put a bullet in me, it’s going to be Caroline when Valerie finds out that all I got out of your dreams last night was two smells and a sound.”

He waited for me to ask him to elaborate, but I didn’t.

“Wet dog, pine needles, and howling.” He shrugged, but his eyes went cold, and he clenched his jaw. “Werewolves.”

I snorted. “You’re scared of Caroline. You hate werewolves. Your pupils are on steroids. Shocking.” I paused, letting my words sink in. “You do realize that those emotions aren’t really yours, right? That Valerie’s messing with you?”

Archer’s pupils spread outward, blocking the color of his eyes altogether. Just like that, it was as if the words I’d spoken were completely uninteresting, like my warning that Valerie was messing with his mind was the most boring thing he’d ever heard. Ignoring me, Archer reached for his back pocket. As a matter of reflex, I went for my knife and wrapped my fingertips around its hilt, but instead of pulling out a weapon, he brandished a piece of charcoal and turned to the wall.

I watched as he began to draw, and after a moment, I let go of the knife. Based on the size of his pupils, I was going to go out on a limb and guess that Valerie had programmed him to disregard anything she didn’t want him to hear, and I forced myself to remember that the man who’d infiltrated my dreams, stalked me, hurt me, and called me a mutt-lover wasn’t the real enemy here.

Archer was just a symptom. Valerie was the disease.

I’d come here to find out what I could about Shay’s connection to the coven and to take Valerie out of commission long enough for the rest of the coven to clear their minds. I hadn’t come here to fight Archer, make him bleed.

Just a taste? Lake asked plaintively. Wouldn’t hurt to show him that messing with you is about as far from a good idea as ideas get.

Lurking in my mind, Devon wasn’t as opposed to violence as he otherwise might have been, and Chase was even more bloodthirsty than Lake—which, as a general rule, was really saying something.

If he touches you, I will kill him.

Coming from Chase, the thought wasn’t a threat as much as a statement of fact. If Archer was smart, if he had any common sense whatsoever, he wouldn’t keep his back turned on a Were.

Human, I reminded myself. You’re human.

“You’re not one of them, little Bryn.” Archer’s tone was completely conversational. “Do you wish you were?”

I didn’t reply, and he turned to face me, stepping aside so that I could see the image of a wolf staring back at me from his makeshift canvas. I recognized her instantly: larger than some, but not full grown, light fur giving way to darker markings around her face.

“I may not have gotten into your dreams this morning, kiddo, but I’ve been there before. You flashed back to a memory of the werewolf who raised you, and the marks he left on your body were suddenly larger than life. You ran with your pack, and then you dreamed about a female wolf—a wolf that forever hovers just out of reach. If I recall correctly, you’ve even dreamed that you’re hollow inside. I’m not Freud, but I’d say that has some pretty disturbing implications, wouldn’t you?”

Apparently, keeping Archer out of my head was no protection against more mundane mind games. Even though I knew he was trying to get to me, I couldn’t help staring at the image on the wall and wondering if he was right.

“Admit it, little Bryn—they’ve done a real number on you. Not a werewolf, barely human. They took you and they raised you and they used you. You’re just a kid, and you never even had a chance.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply. Blow me and screw you both seemed like strong contenders, but the peanut gallery in my head appeared to be favoring castration.

To his credit, Archer seemed to sense that it was time to retreat. “Breakfast’s downstairs in five, wolf girl.”

This time, I couldn’t help hearing the words wolf girl a little differently, but I pushed the thought out of my head and concentrated on the business at hand. If Archer was Valerie’s version of a wake-up call, it was probably safe to assume that breakfast was a thing to beware.

“Good morning.” Valerie smiled. Needle-sharp pinpricks bombarded the base of my skull—but this time, Valerie’s attempt to manipulate my emotions wasn’t my biggest problem.

Gathered around the kitchen table were the handful of psychics I’d already met and several I hadn’t. The old woman whose knack allowed her to influence animals was feeding part of her muffin to a snake. A pair of college-aged girls were engaged in some kind of staring contest, their eyes bloodshot and their irises ink black.

“Valerie, could I have a word with you? Alone?” I was tired of skirting the issue, tired of pretending that I’d come here to join the coven when both of us knew I’d come here to test my mettle against hers.

Valerie’s smile broadened, cutting through the smattering of wrinkles near the edges of her lips. Her eyes zeroed in on mine, and I felt a stab of loneliness, confusion, rage—before the sound of snapping teeth and a guttural growl pushed her back out.

Sooner or later, she’d get tired of testing me, tired of losing. I needed to make my move before that happened.

“What would you like to talk about?” Valerie asked, moving around the kitchen table to pour herself some tea.

“Shay.”

Her stride broke, just for a moment, and I knew I’d hit my target.

“Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of everyone. We don’t have secrets here, Bryn.” Her tone sounded genuine, but her eyes were steely, merciless, hard. There were six other people at the dining room table and more coming into the room the longer I stood there, and in unison, their pupils surged.

The old woman whispered something, and her snake began writhing its way slowly toward me. The girls in the staring contest suddenly turned those fathomless black eyes on me.

“Was there something you wanted to say, Bryn?” Valerie sipped her tea.

There was a lot I wanted to say to her—once I managed to get her away from her little army of marionettes.

“Go ahead, Bryn. Say it.”

There were too many eyes on me, too much power in this room. I felt trapped, and things began to go red around the edges. The instinct crept up on me, dark and sure, and for a second, it was more of a presence in my mind than Devon, Lake, or Chase.

Trapped. Trapped. Need to escape. Survi—

“Easy there.” A strange hand clapped me on the shoulder, and without thinking, I grabbed the hand and the attached arm and moved to flip the owner onto the kitchen floor. To my surprise, the hand’s owner ducked out of my grasp and took a step back, palms held up, facing me. “I come in peace.”

His delivery of that line sounded so much like Devon that I almost smiled, and that cleared my mind enough that I was able to really look at him. My opponent was much older than I’d expected: sixty-five if he was a day, and though his eyes sparkled, I could see each one of those years literally carved into his skin.

He had more scars than anyone I’d ever seen.

“I’m never quite myself before my morning walk,” he told me. “I’m sensing maybe you’re not much of a morning person, either. Care to join me?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say no, but annoyance flashed across Valerie’s face the moment the man extended the invitation, and that made me reconsider.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Maybe it’s not.” Caroline stepped out from the shadows and made her presence known. I wasn’t the only one who turned to track her progression into the room. In fact, the only two people who didn’t react that way were Valerie, whose eyes were locked on mine, and the old man, whose weathered face softened the moment Caroline appeared.

“Rule nineteen, Caro,” he said, his voice gruff. “And for that matter, twelve.”

I got the feeling that unlike the facetious “Bryn Rules” my friends like to reference, Caroline and the old man really did have a numbered list.

“Rule seven,” the girl in question countered.

The man rolled his eyes. “Fifty-three.”

That, apparently, was something Caroline couldn’t argue with, and my companion turned his attention back to Caroline’s mother. “Don’t worry, Val,” he said, brown eyes shining against white-scarred skin. “I’ll bring our little visitor back. Scout’s honor.”

With those words, he put his hand on my shoulder again and guided me to the door. This time, I didn’t resist—not because of the way he’d handled Valerie and Caroline, but because the moment he touched me, I felt a familiar sensation, like I knew him.

Like we were the same.

He’s Resilient, Chase whispered from his place in my mind. Like you. Like me.

Like us.

I tried to remember what Valerie had told me the day before, but all I could remember was the man’s name—Jed.

The two of us walked in silence, each taking the other’s measure. Once we were out of earshot of the house, Jed spoke. “Came close to flashing out in there, didn’t you?”

“Flashing out?”

He strung his thumbs through his belt loops and kept walking. “It’s what happens when people like us get backed into a corner. Smart girl like you must realize that woman was backing you into one on purpose.”

I knew other Resilients. The majority of our pack was Resilient. But this was the first time I’d met another human whose gift was being scrappy and stubborn and coming out unscathed when other people would be dead.

“I wasn’t going to lose it,” I told him.

The man grunted.

“I’m better at keeping my head than people give me credit for.”

He grunted again. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but she was pushing the others, and if you’d flashed out, they would have attacked.”