Betrayals

brushing past scrubby bushes and trashwood. He took the left fork when the trail divided, and we ended up in a small clearing on the wooded west side of the Schola. Here the forest curved around and hugged the buildings, and there were about fifteen werwulfen gathered.

They all went still when they saw me. Dibs let out a squeak and hunched down. I tried not to stare at his hair. My heart was in my throat.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Shanks snarled. Even his emo-boy forehead swoop puffed up.

“She’s coming with us.” Graves didn’t look fazed in the least.

“The Bloodkin watch her.” Another boy unfolded himself from the fallen log he was perched on, rising and hopping down to the leaf-littered ground. “And she’s slow and clumsy. We’re not waiting for anyone.”

“I got her out without anyone knowing.” Graves folded his arms. “She’ll keep up.”

“Please. She’s one of them.” Shanks said it like I had some sort of disease.

Graves’ upper lip lifted a fraction. “She’s with me. You got a problem? Want a girl to kick your ass again?”

I tried to look dangerous. I probably only succeeded in looking thoughtful. Or constipated. But Dibs caught my eye and actually, go figure, winked at me. Sunlight ran through his buttery hair, and I caught a flash of an encouraging smile before he looked down at the ground.

Nobody noticed. And I couldn’t see Dibs sneaking into my room to steal anything.

Shanks’ lip lifted in a silent snarl. “If she gets caught out with us, she’s not the one they’ll punish. You like detention that much? What is wrong with you?”

“It’s time she started knowing more about this place.” Graves didn’t look perturbed at all. “If she gets caught, they’ll punish me. It was my idea anyway, and whining about detention is for candyasses. Now are we gonna do this, or are you gonna stand around flapping your lips all day?”

“I don’t like it.” This was from a rangy blond werwulf next to Dibs, one with a thick, corn-fed face and a thatch of golden hair. Straight, not curly. “She’s not gonna be able to keep up.”

“She’ll keep up.” Graves sighed and rolled his eyes. “Are we gonna run or not?”

“Let her try.” A short, compact wulf with dark stubble all over his pale cheeks spoke up. “If somethin’ happens, she’s not going to tell on us. Not a squealer, that one.”

“That’s right.” Dibs nodded vigorously, still staring at the ground. “Dru wouldn’t squeal on us. She’s nice. She’s not like them. They wouldn’t even wipe their boots on us.”

Silence. They all stood around, thinking it over. That’s the thing about werwulfen, it takes a while for them to do anything. They all have to agree before something happens. Once you think about the fact that they have those teeth and claws, it makes more sense. If they didn’t find ways to cooperate, they’d argue each other right into extinction.

Finally, a murmur went through them. I thought about trying to look trustworthy. Considering I was holding a couple of guilty secrets, I guess it was working.

Some essential tension leaked out of Graves. He gave me a sideways look, green eyes glinting. I straightened a little.

It was apparent they’d made their decision.

“Huh. Well.” Shanks shrugged. “Fine. It’s your ass, anyway. Think you can keep up, little girl?”

You know, I hate people calling me that. “I’ll do my best.” I tried not to sound sarcastic, failed miserably. Graves didn’t wince, but he was probably close.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, an electric current ran through the assembled werwulfen. I glanced at Graves as everyone started getting up, dusting off their clothes, one or two of them bouncing in place. There was a lot of nervous energy in them, crackling just under their skins.

I am so not ready for this.

Graves cast me a single look. You know how when you know someone, sometimes all it takes is a meeting of eyes, a slight lift to the eyebrow, a tightening of the lips to speak volumes? It was like that. His green eyes said, Are you sure?

My face shifted. No, I’m not, it was saying, but I’m gonna do it.

He gave me a quirk of a smile, and Shanks rolled his shoulders in their sockets, tilted his head back, and inhaled for a long time, filling his lungs. A crackling, popping sound raced around the clearing, and I caught my own breathing speeding up.

Just listen for the howl, Graves had said. It’ll tell you all you need to know. Let it pull you along. I’ll be right beside you.

They began to growl, all of them, the sound rising like steam. Graves was a tense, hurtful silence next to me.

I was really hoping this would work. Then I thought, Well, if I could handle Christophe hugging me so tight my bones creaked, if I could handle climbing up on the Schola’s roof, and if I could handle being nose to nose with Ash, I can probably handle this too.

Probably.

Shanks’ head snapped back down, fur swirling up over his cheekbones, his eyes a hurtful gleam.

Seeing them change in full daylight was something else. I lost pretty much all my air as their familiar boy- forms ran like clay underwater, some of them crouched now, knees splayed and hands touching the leafy dirt.

Then, as if on some prearranged signal, they all tossed up their chins and howled.

Hearing wulfen howl is… well, it’s horrible. The sound is glassy, hovering at the upper ranges of hearing, and it’s full of paws on snow and running with the icy wind hitting the back of your throat like stars. Underneath that glassy edge is the song of flesh ripped apart, the sweetness of hot blood, and the savagery of crunching bones with sharp white teeth.

The worst part is how it climbs into your brain, pressing itself like a hard sharpness into the soft folds, and drags open the doors socialization slams shut to keep the howling ravening thing deep inside down and tame.

The thing on four clawed legs that lives in all of us.

A civilized person flinches away from that thing. At the Schola, they called it the Other.

Werwulfen use it to violate the laws of thermodynamics and physics, to set the inner beast free. And Graves, a loup-garou, uses it in a different way, for mental dominance instead of physical change. I wondered how, and why, and wished they would actually train me instead of dumping me in kindergarten classes.

It didn’t matter. I was leaving soon anyway.

Graves’ fingers slid through mine, hot and hard. He squeezed my hand, and I flinched. My initial panicked reaction was to curl up more tightly inside my head, squeezing out the little stroking fingers and paws gently tapping at that door in my brain. But the place at the back of my throat where the hunger had blazed through was still raw-sensitive, and the wulfen’s cry rasped against it like a cat’s tongue.

The cry modulated, ending on a low lonely sound, and the wulfen moved. Graves leapt forward, and I had to go along or get my arm torn off. My feet slipped in leaves and dirt, and the fear arrived, smashing through me and laying copper against my tongue.

Graves dragged me. I had enough to do keeping my feet on the ground. The other wulfen were leaping fluid forms, and I began to get a very, very bad feeling about all this.

We crested a high wooded hill, sloping down a pile of rocks and tree roots, leafless oaks and maples standing wet and secretive, clutching at the ground so they wouldn’t slide. Graves yanked me forward, and as we went over the side his fingers loosened and slipped free of mine.

I was falling. My foot hit a rock, the sneakers slipped, and I knew I was going to end up in a heap on the bottom. My heart leapt; I gave a short, blurting scream, and the world snapped again, hard. My other foot landed squarely on the top of a boulder I hadn’t even known was there, and my body woke up, tingling all over. The aspect flooded me like the heat of alcohol on an empty stomach, the Beam and Cokes I used to drink while waiting for Dad to come home and collect me. The heat burst through me, my teeth turned crackling-sensitive, and even my hair tingled as the aspect slid through it. Mom’s locket dilated into a point of heat, as if it were melting against my chest.