13 to Life (32 page)

Alexi readjusted the mirror with a
snap
and slammed his foot down on the accelerator to emphasize his frustration with the squealing of tires.

But the battle was over.

We rode the rest of the way to Pietr’s house in a thick buffer of silence.

Their home seemed different, less inviting. Or maybe Alexi’s attitude was throwing me off.

Up the stairs and to Pietr’s room we went. There was a book on his bed. I picked it up. “What’s this?” I asked looking at the title. “
Bisclavret
?”

He snatched it out of my hands. I swear he blushed. “It’s a retelling of a traditional French poem. In English,” he clarified. “And in modern-novel form.” He tucked it away on one of his many bookshelves.

“French poetry?” I raised an eyebrow. “Is it
romantic
?”

He pulled it right back out and passed it to me.

I grinned at him. “You’re reading a romance.”

He glared at me and took the book back. “
Nyet,
” he snapped. “I’m reading a werewolf story. About revenge.”

“Really? Give it back,” I demanded. “Maybe I should read it.”

“When I’m done. The werewolf stuff’s getting interesting
now.” It was only another moment before he assailed me with a question.

“What do you think makes a man a monster? Be specific.”

I was caught off guard for a moment. Huh. He wanted to revisit our last very private conversation. I plunked down on the bed and pursed my lips in thought. “I don’t know.” I tried to weasel out of answering.

“Liar.”

“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “What makes a man—or woman—a monster is his or her ability to hurt people.”

“Everyone can hurt someone,” he pointed out.

“Agreed.” I paused, regrouping. “His
willingness
to hurt people—or animals—” I added quickly.

“A hunter willingly
kills
animals.”

“Good point.” I groaned. “You really need to know this right now?”

He nodded and flopped onto the bed.

I rolled the words around in my head again. “Sarah would be
much
better at this,” I said before I could stop myself.

“But I wouldn’t care as much about her reply.”

“Okay, here I go again,” I warned. “His
willingness
to gleefully hurt people and/or animals.” I looked at him, hoping for some visible seal of approval. “How was that?”

“
That
was more like I was hoping to hear,” he whispered, his eyes soft. Calmed. He looked out the window. “And just in time,” he said, rising from the bed. “Turn around, please.”

“What?”

“Turn around. I’m not dressed for our hike,” he explained.

“Wow,” I said, obeying, “and modest, too!”

He chuckled. Cloth rustled as he changed. “Okay,” he finally announced.

I turned back to face him. “
Well.
That’s very Bohemian.” He was wearing a simply constructed, loose-fitting shirt with a wide T collar over baggy pants.

“You don’t like it?” He sniffed discerningly; I knew at that moment my approval meant absolutely nothing. The outfit was important somehow.

“I like anything
you
wear,” I asserted.

“Oh,
horashow,”
he said, leading me back out his door and down the steps. “Then you’ll definitely love the lucky football jersey I wear for the Super Bowl—hasn’t been washed for years!”

“Whoa. Even I, with shirts stained with both blood and ketchup, have my limits,” I responded. He picked up his jacket and hung mine around me.

Catherine bounded into the room. She frowned. “You will need a scarf,” she informed me. “Here. Take this one of mine—and do not lose it. It’s my absolute favorite.”

“Thanks. I’ll take good care of it,” I promised.

“Good.” She grinned and then stretched up on tiptoe to kiss Pietr’s cheek.
“Za udachu,”
she whispered.

He kissed her forehead in turn, replying, “For good luck.”

I noticed she was dressed in an outfit similar to what Pietr wore. Both looked homemade. “Oh, Catherine.” I dug my heels in to pause as Pietr dragged me out the door into the first taste of evening. “Happy birthday!”

Startled, “I hope so,” was all she said before the door closed and Pietr pulled me toward the woods.

He led me onto the trail, away from the house, down the slope, out the edge of the woodlot that was their family’s frequent racetrack, and into a thicker stand of trees. The trail narrowed, branches and brambles tugged at my pants legs and snagged at my jacket.

I lost Catherine’s scarf once in a wrestling match with wild berry canes, but Pietr plucked it right out and scolded me gently with “Now, we can’t have you losing this scarf. You’ll need it tonight.”

“I actually have my own scarf, too,” I remarked, tugging a long mess of colorful fabric out of one of my coat pockets until it seemed I was performing a magician’s standard never-ending handkerchief trick.

“That’ll come in handy.” Pietr chuckled, winding the scarf loosely around my neck until nothing between my nose and shoulders showed.

I sputtered.

He laughed.

We walked up a brief incline, doubtless a deer path, before the woods opened before us, thinning and becoming less dense. Less wild.

Pietr paused at the forest’s fringe and looked out at a spot of meadow. We were on the crest of one hill, but nestled at the feet of three others.

The sky was as immense here as above my horse ring at home, but the emerging stars seemed even closer to earth, as if I could pluck one right out of the sky. The sun and stars seemed to be fighting a beautiful war, the glowing ball of fire slowly retreating as it stained the sky an impassioned pink and dared the stars to pierce its bloodied path.

Although we hadn’t walked far, it was as if we’d entered an entirely different world. A magical realm. Being with Pietr, alone beneath the materializing stars, stole my breath away.

He maneuvered so he stood before me a minute, blotting out the sky. He seemed lost in his own strange thoughts.

I broke the silence. “ ‘In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

And they did make no noise, in such a night

Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls

And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents,

Where Cressid lay that night,’ ” I whispered, remembering Lorenzo’s lines from
The Merchant of Venice
.

He grinned. “Not
Romeo and Juliet,
” he surmised. “
The Merchant of Venice
.” He seemed to search his memory before responding.

“‘In such a night did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew

And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself

And ran dismayed away.’ ” He added the next portion.

I raised my chin. “I am no Thisbe, scared of a lion,” I challenged.

“And I am not Pyramus,” he confided.

I shook my head, letting my hair catch in the rattling breeze.
“Perhaps I am Psyche,” I teased. “Ready to discover your secret identity, dear Cupid! You
did
promise to tell me how you found Annabelle Lee,” I pressed.

He nodded. “So are we Cupid and Psyche?”

“Well, we’re not Romeo and Juliet,” I insisted.

“
Nyet
. Never. We’re not so naïve. Lorenzo and Jessica?”

“I don’t know. They were greedy. Besides, can you save my soul?” I joked, not suspecting his tender and devastatingly earnest response.

“I’m afraid the best I can offer is a try at healing your broken heart. Do you trust me, Jess?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. How could he even ask me that when we’d already come so far together—he’d done ridiculous things on my behalf, saving me from a crazed dog, saving Annabelle Lee from Weird Wanda. Whatever all
that
was about. It all meant so much to me—
he
meant so much to me already—that I’d lied to my father to be here, alone with him, on this night.

His eyes were closed, his features drawn tight by a pain I couldn’t fathom.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“Hmm.” He opened his eyes, letting them glitter into my own for a breathless moment. If he had asked me then did I
love
him—I would have probably responded with equal fervor. There was something about him. . . .

“This isn’t some simple question I’m asking,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to mine to peer into my eyes as if he could divine some destiny in their depths. “I need to know if you totally trust me. Totally and
completely
.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he pressed his fingers to my lips, silencing me with his nearly searing touch.

He pulled his face back from mine, searching the darkening
horizon. His breath steamed against the cool air, scalding my cheek. “Because if you even have any doubt—
any doubt at all
—you can still make it back to the house and call your dad. The path’s simple and short.”

He glanced back down the trail toward his home, calculating. He nodded. “If you have any doubt at all—go
now,
” he urged, eyes sparkling like cut crystal.

I swallowed. I
did
trust him.
Absolutely.
But the way he was talking—the concern that etched his handsome face—I was suddenly afraid, too.

“Do you want to go?” he asked.

“No.” And I wrapped my arms around his neck, burning up wherever our bodies touched as I pulled him closer to kiss him—melting against him. In that moment, there was no Sarah, no lying, no fear, just him.

Kissing me with lips that threatened to brand my own.

He pushed me back against a tree trunk, kissing all the while, a strange desperation in his lips’ attentive touches. Then he broke free of my embrace and stared hard at me. “Do you trust me, Jess?” he implored one last time, an odd huskiness to his tone.

“Yes,” I insisted.

He shrugged out of his coat, draping it around my shoulders, and carefully unwrapping my absurdly long scarf from around my neck. He nestled Catherine’s scarf at my neck instead, and, leaning forward, his breath hot by my ear, he tossed my scarf around the tree’s trunk, twisting it first around the tree and then me. He tied it, securing it snugly around my waist. I must have looked puzzled, because he kissed the tip of my nose.

“Trust me,” he murmured. And then his tone changed and I heard an urgent warning color his voice as darkness skittered and crawled close around us. “And no matter what happens—
don’t run
.”

He turned from me, and, hand in hand, we watched the moon slide over the mountains to the east: white, full, and haloed.

In the distance I heard a wolf call, the sound clawing at the air, far richer than the crazed yipping of coyotes. It haunted the horizon, threading between the trees as it rode the brisk fall breeze and I thought briefly of Farthington. But looking at Pietr, feeling how he squeezed my hand, I couldn’t imagine being safer.

And then he let go.

I shivered.

He fell to the ground, writhing suddenly at the forest’s edge, bathed in the shifting and milky moonlight.

That was when I started screaming.

“Pietr—Pietr!” I tugged against the scarf he’d cinched to both the tree and me. It had been a simple knot he’d tied—in only a scarf, right? So why did it stump me, rooting me to the tree at my back? I struggled—desperate to go to him. He convulsed—body quaking and fevered—suffering some sort of attack—

I reached into my jacket pocket, fumbling for my phone. I flipped it open, dialed 9—

“Nyet!”
he groaned, and for an instant I saw his face. He looked fiercely at the phone in my hand. His eyes as bright as the full moon’s light and as red as in his student ID, they shone like the predator lights we used to keep hungry animals away from our birds. “
Nyet
,” he ordered, somehow making the word hiss.

I gaped at him, the phone a worthless lump of technology in my trembling hand.

His face twisted, contorting in agony, and changed—there was an audible popping like joints coming undone as his face
began
lengthening
somehow—I started screaming all over again, my phone falling to the forest’s soft floor, all but forgotten.

He jerked away from me, face hidden, and I wondered if I renewed my struggle with the scarf, how fast I could make it to the house for help.

But his words came back to me:
“And no matter what happens—don’t run.”

“Pietr . . .” The curled body on the ground no longer moved—no longer twitched or trembled. “Pietr!”

The moon seemed to spotlight him where he lay, and I watched in amazement as he twisted and shrugged out of the loose-fitting outfit. Only what revealed itself wasn’t Pietr at all, but a huge and broad-shouldered wolf.

It scented the wind, not even conscious of me at first. It reminded me of the way Pietr scanned the fair’s crowd searching for Annabelle Lee. And then it caught my scent and swung its heavy head to look at me. Its ears flattened against its skull. It snarled, lips peeling back to showcase a line of wickedly curving teeth, each at least the size of my thumbs.

I stayed perfectly still. Tried to remember to breathe.

And my mind shot back to that evening at the school and the beast that roamed the halls—wrecked the guidance office. Could it have been Pietr? But the markings, the colors . . . No. This was a different beast. Thick gray and silver fur seemed a trap for starlight, his pelt glittering as much as his eyes.

This one was even different from the one that shoved me to the ground that rainy night, leaving human footprints in the mud.

“Pietr?” I whispered, my brain misfiring at the idea the huge wolf before me could be the guy I’d been kissing just minutes—
was that all it was
?—ago.

It snorted, brows lowering over lantern-like eyes. Stiff-legged,
it walked toward me and sniffed again, sucking down the scents on me with frightening eagerness. Then its ears pricked up and it raced off—toward the heart of the forest.

I sighed, thankful it had the unexpected gift of a short attention span. I slid down the tree’s trunk, bark wrenching at the two jackets and shirt I wore, scraping my back. I winced. The scarf that chained me to the tree descended sluggishly with me. My back would be a torn-up mess in the morning.
If
I made it to morning.