“How beautiful objectivity is,” Isabel snapped. She just looked at me for a long moment. Long enough for me to wonder what it was she was thinking. And then she said, “Seriously. Just get the last of your Greenpeace wolf-love done soon, because they won’t be around much longer, whether you like it or not.”
My voice was tight. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m sick of you telling people they’re harmless. They killed him. But you know what? It’s over now. Today.” Isabel tapped my desk. “Ta.”
I grabbed her wrist before she could go; I had a handful of fat bracelets. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Isabel stared at my hand on her wrist but didn’t pull it away. She’d wanted me to ask. “What happened to Jack is never happening again. They’re killing the wolves. Today. Now.”
She slipped out of my now-slack grip and glided through the door.
For a single moment, I sat at the desk, my cheeks burning, pulling her words apart and putting them back together again.
And then I jumped from my chair, my notes fluttering to the floor like listless birds. I left them where they fell and ran for my car.
I was breathless by the time I slid behind the wheel of my car, Isabel’s words playing over and over again in my head. I’d never thought of the wolves as vulnerable, but once I started imagining what a small-town attorney and big-time egomaniac like Tom Culpeper was capable of—fueled by pent-up anger and grief, helped along by wealth and influence—they suddenly seemed terribly fragile.
I shoved my key in the ignition, feeling the car rattle reluctantly to life as I did. My eyes were on the yellow line of school buses waiting at the curb and the knots of loud students still milling on the sidewalk, but my brain was picturing the chalkwhite lines of the birches behind my house. Was a hunting party going after the wolves? Hunting them now?
I had to get home.
My car stalled, my foot uncertain on the dodgy clutch.
“God,” I said, glancing around to see how many people had seen my car gasp to a halt. It wasn’t as if it were difficult to stall my car these days, now that the heat sensor was crapping out, but usually I could finesse the clutch and get on the road without too much humiliation. I bit my lip, pulled myself together, and managed to restart.
There were two ways to get home from the school. One was shorter but involved stoplights and stop signs—impossible today, when I was too distracted to baby my car. I didn’t have time to sit by the side of the road. The other route was slightly longer, but with only two stop signs. Plus, it ran along the edge of Boundary Wood, where the wolves lived.
As I drove, pushing my car as hard as I dared, my stomach twisted, sick with nerves. The engine gave an unhealthy shudder. I checked the dials; the engine was starting to overheat. Stupid car. If only my father had taken me to the dealership like he kept promising he would.
As the sky began to burn brilliantly red on the horizon, turning the thin clouds to streaks of blood above the trees, my heart thumped in my ears, and my skin felt tingly, electric. Everything inside me screamed that something was wrong. I didn’t know what bothered me most—the nerves that shook my hands or the urge to curl my lips and fight.
Up ahead, I spotted a line of pickup trucks parked by the side of the road. Their four-ways blinked in the failing light, sporadically illuminating the woods next to the road. A figure leaned over the truck at the back of the line, holding something I couldn’t quite make out at this distance. My stomach turned over again, and as I eased off the gas, my car gasped and stalled, leaving me coasting in an eerie quiet.
I turned the key, but between my jittery hands and the redlining heat sensor, the engine just shuddered under the hood without turning over. I wished I’d just gone to the dealership myself. I had Dad’s checkbook.
Growling under my breath, I braked and let the car drift to a stop behind the pickup trucks. I called Mom’s studio on my cell, but there was no answer—she must have been at her gallery opening already. I wasn’t really worried about getting home; it was close enough to walk. What I was worried about was those trucks. Because they meant that Isabel had been telling the truth.
As I climbed out onto the shoulder of the road, I recognized the guy standing next to the pickup ahead. It was Officer Koenig, out of uniform, drumming his fingers on the hood. When I got closer, my stomach still churning, he looked up and his fingers stilled. He was wearing a bright orange cap and held a shotgun in the crook of his arm.
“Car problems?” he asked.
I turned abruptly at the sound of a car door slamming behind me. Another truck had pulled up, and two orangecapped hunters were making their way down the side of the road. I looked past them, to where they were heading, and my breath caught in my throat. Dozens of hunters were knotted on the shoulder, all carrying rifles, visibly restless, voices muffled. Squinting into the dim trees beyond a shallow ditch, I could see more orange caps dotting the woods, infesting them.
The hunt had already begun.
I turned back to Koenig and pointed at the gun he held. “Is that for the wolves?”
Koenig looked at it as if he’d somehow forgotten it was there. “It’s—”
There was a loud crack from the woods behind him; both of us jerked at the sound. Cheers rose from the group down the road.
“What was that?” I demanded. But I knew what it was. It was a gunshot. In Boundary Wood. My voice was steady, which surprised me. “They’re hunting the wolves, aren’t they?”
“With all due respect, miss,” Koenig said, “I think you should wait in your car. I can give you a ride home, but you’ll have to wait a little bit.”
There were shouts in the woods, distant, and another popping sound, farther away. God. The wolves. My wolf. I grabbed Koenig’s arm. “You have to tell them to stop! They can’t shoot back there!”
Koenig stepped back, pulling his arm from my grip. “Miss—”
There was another distant pop, small and insignificant sounding. In my head, I saw a perfect image of a wolf rolling, rolling, a gaping hole in its side, eyes dead. I didn’t think. The words just came out. “Your phone. You have to call them and tell them to stop. I have a friend in there! She was going to take photos this afternoon. In the woods. Please, you have to call them!”
“What?” Koenig froze. “There’s someone in there? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, because I was sure. “Please. Call them!”
God bless humorless Officer Koenig, because he didn’t ask me for any more details. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he punched a quick number and held the phone to his ear. His eyebrows made a straight, hard line, and after a second, he pulled the phone away and stared at the screen. “Reception,” he muttered, and tried again. I stood by the pickup truck, my arms crossed over my chest as cold seeped into me, watching the gray dusk take over the road as the sun disappeared behind the trees. Surely they had to stop when it got dark. But something told me that just because they had a cop standing watch by the road didn’t make what they were doing legal.
Staring at his phone again, Koenig shook his head. “It’s not working. Hold on. You know, it’ll be fine—they’re being careful—I’m sure they wouldn’t shoot a person. But I’ll go and warn them. Let me lock my gun up. It will only take a second.”
As he started to put his shotgun in the pickup truck, there was another gunshot from the woods and something buckled inside me. I just couldn’t wait anymore. I jumped the ditch and scrambled up into the trees, leaving Koenig behind. I heard him calling after me, but I was already well into the woods. I had to stop them—warn my wolf—do something.
But as I ran, slipping between trees and jumping over fallen limbs, all I could think was I’m too late.
CHAPTER ELEVEN • SAM
50°F
We ran. We were silent, dark drops of water, rushing over brambles and around the trees as the men drove us before them.
The woods I knew, the woods that protected me, were punched through by their sharp odors and their shouts. I scrambled here and there amongst the other wolves, guiding and following, keeping us together. The fallen trees and underbrush felt unfamiliar beneath my feet; I kept from stumbling by flying—long, endless leaps, barely touching the ground.
It was terrifying to not know where I was.
We traded simple images amongst ourselves in our wordless, futile language: dark figures behind us, figures topped with bright warnings; motionless, cold wolves; the smell of death in our nostrils.
A crack deafened me, shook me out of balance. Beside me, I heard a whimper. I knew which wolf it was without turning my head. There was no time to stop; nothing to do even if I had.
A new smell hit my nostrils: earthy rot and stagnant water. The lake. They were driving us to the lake. I formed a clear image in my head at the same time that Paul, the pack leader, did. The slow, rippling edge of the water, thin pines growing sparsely in the poor soil, the lake stretching forever in both directions.
A pack of wolves, huddled on the shore. No escape.
We were the hunted. We slid before them, ghosts in the woods, and we fell, whether or not we fought.
The others kept running, toward the lake.
But I stopped.
CHAPTER TWELVE • GRACE
49°F
These were not the woods that I’d walked through just a few days earlier, painted all the vivid hues of autumn. These were close woods made of a thousand dark tree trunks turned black by dusk. The sixth sense I’d imagined guiding me before was gone; all the familiar paths destroyed by crashing hunters in orange caps. I was completely disoriented; I had to keep stopping to listen for shouts and faraway footsteps through the dry leaves.
My breath was burning my throat by the time I saw the first orange cap, glowing distantly out of the twilight. I shouted, but the cap didn’t even turn; the figure was too far away to hear me. And then I saw the others—orange dots scattered through the woods, all moving slowly, relentlessly, in the same direction. Making a lot of noise. Driving the wolves ahead of them.