On Fire (15 page)

“Have you ever tried these?” she asked, showing them to the guys. Damon guffawed, and Danny grinned. “Want a sample in case you decide to play the home version?”

“Pass,” Danny said, and Lydia supposed it would be some
sort of violation of the man code to use your best friend’s condoms.

“So where is he?” Damon said, looking around at Jackson’s vast collection of sports trophies, plaques, and team photos. “Maybe the CD’s around here?”

“Could be,” she said, wishing she’d thought of that excuse before she’d pawed around in his drawer. She didn’t know why Jackson hadn’t just set up a shareable playlist for Damon, but he wasn’t here to explain. So she sat at his desk and flipped on his desktop.

His wallpaper was a picture of her—one she had picked out herself, and approved of—and she typed in “captain” when prompted for the password that would unlock the secrets of Jackson to her prying eyes.

If he ever did anything like this to me, I would dump him in a heartbeat,
she thought.
That’s where we’re so different.

She also opened a couple of the desk drawers. No more cryptic envelopes presented themselves.

“He usually keeps playlists in a folder,” she lied, running the cursor over Jackson’s private affairs. She was beginning to feel like she’d pushed this maneuver about as far as she could with witnesses present. Maybe inviting them over hadn’t been her cleverest move. She was beginning to feeling guilty about Allison, too.

“Do you think we’re ready for a drawer?” Damon murmured to Danny, and she smiled to herself again.

Then Danny said, “What was that?”

She made a half turn. “What was what?”

“I heard a noise,” he said. “It sounded like it was in the garage.”

She pictured the automatic garage door opening, Jackson’s Porsche gliding in, the door closing.
Yes.

Smoothing back her hair, she said, “You wait here. I’ll let him know we have company.”

She turned off the computer and walked from the room. She crossed the distance of the enormous house to the garage, and was about to open the interior door that led to the garage when the knob turned.

“You’re in such trouble,” she said in a kittenish voice, to take the sting out of her genuine ire.

The door slammed open. Something hit her in the face and threw her to the floor. Stunned, she saw nothing but a huge black shape as she was dragged away. She tried to scream but she was so shocked all she could do was gasp.

“He said no one would be home,” a guy said in a low, gravelly voice. He sounded young, maybe early twenties. She blinked her eyes rapidly and looked up—

—into a ski mask and a pair of hazel eyes glaring down at her.

“Parents are in Europe. Bailey’s made contact with Jackson,” Ski Mask said. He sounded young, too.

“Then who’s she?” the gravelly voiced guy demanded.

Suddenly a gun was pointed in Lydia’s face. A real gun. A gun that could kill her. She could feel her eyes crossing as she stared at the barrel with the same gut-churning horror as if he were holding a rattlesnake. She didn’t know if she was still breathing. She didn’t know anything. She could barely remember how to think.

He was wearing Latex gloves. No fingerprints left behind. Nothing left behind, except, possibly, a dead girl.

“You make
one
sound,” Ski Mask warned her. “Understand?”

She tried to move her head, but she was paralyzed with fear. He touched the tip of the gun against her forehead. She went completely cold, head to toe, as if someone had just dumped her in a frozen river.

“Understand?”

All she could do was lie there.

“What the
hell
are we going to do with her?” Gravelly Voice said. He came into the room. He, too, was wearing a mask. And Latex gloves.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” Ski Mask asked her. “Tell me the truth or I’ll blow you away.”

Lydia lay petrified, still unable to speak.

•  •  •

After shedding himself of Stiles, Derek had made the shift and charged through the woods. He stayed well hidden, slinking through a copse of trees as he came within sight of some people partying at a fire ring. They were drinking and laughing, just a bunch of kids messing around, savoring the freedom of a Friday night. The pungent odors of sweat, smoke, and alcohol created a near-impenetrable layer of smells, and he scented no trace of either the Alpha or Scott.

Frustrated, he moved on, loping through the woods. He stayed low, racing along, until he smelled traces of Scott and the Alpha. His hackles rose, and he let out a growl that almost rose into a howl, but at the last instant, he suppressed it. Both sets of traces were old, and hadn’t mingled.
At different times, each of them had been there. But neither tonight. Scott might find it bitterly ironic to know that he had crossed the Alpha’s path before the Alpha had changed his life forever.

And then Derek touched down on the spot where he had found his sister’s body. In fury, he showed his teeth and threw back his head, forcing down another howl, this one of rage. He bit down on his arm to stop himself, almost welcoming the deep pain he felt.

As the wound began to heal, he moved on, searching for Scott, following another smoke trail until he came to another fire. This one was unattended. He smelled humans very clearly. There had been two. One, he didn’t recognize, but the other was that surly lacrosse player, the one he’d dug his nails into when he’d been so sick and the kid had been so insulting.

Jackson.

In his anger, Derek shifted back to human form. He’d been dying of wolfsbane poisoning when he’d lashed out at Jackson, grabbing him by the back of the neck. He hadn’t meant to dig his nails into him. But now Jackson bore Derek’s mark, and the Alpha would know him by it. It had been such a stupid thing to do.

I couldn’t help it
, he reminded himself as he walked the perimeter of the fire. He didn’t like the smell of the other man who had been there with Jackson. Jackson had been afraid of him. Derek could smell it.

There was something half burned in the fire, what looked like a photocopy of a newspaper article. Derek fished it out. It bore the smell of the stranger:

JACKSON WHITTEMORE BREAKS HIGH SCHOOL STATE RECORD FOR POINTS PER GAME.

Jackson Whittemore, captain of the Beacon Hills boys lacrosse team, continues to astonish with a 17 percent increase in his goals per games stats over last year

Most of the rest of the article was burned, which was fine with Derek, because it was boring. He was about to toss it back into the fire when he idly turned it over. There was what appeared to be an address, followed by a string of letters and numbers. It looked like some kind of code. Shrugging, he folded it up and stuck it into his jacket pocket. It might come in handy. He was keeping tabs on Jackson Whittemore.

He kicked dirt into the fire to put it out, at the same time digging around with a stick for more souvenirs from Jackson’s encounter with the young man, finding nothing. As the earth smothered the fire, he smelled more smoke.

This is getting ridiculous,
he thought. He was beginning to suspect someone was deliberately setting fires to throw him off the scent. Images from his dream tumbled through his mind, and he raced back into the darkness.

S
tiles was seriously beginning to lose it. He was scared, and cold, and worried about Scott and Allison. He’d even stumbled back to Allison’s car and then returned to where Derek dumped him, as terrified as he was about running into the Alpha. Somehow he’d hoped he would find something that would tell him where they were.

He sat on a log, tossing twigs and leaves into the fire, which really didn’t help it grow. There was an art to these things, he knew. He’d actually been a Cub Scout, but he’d been booted for being too talkative during meetings. Go figure.

He tried calling Scott a couple more times, then Allison, then Lydia. He’d had her phone in his possession when he’d deleted the picture she’d accidentally taken of the Alpha. Of course he’d also inputted her number into his own phone; how stalkerish was that?

Taking a breath, he dialed the divine Ms. Martin, and waited. He had a queasy moment imagining Jackson, with
Lydia, answering his call instead of her. Stiles nearly hung up, but he waited until it went to voice.

“Hey, just checking in on our boy,” he said, hoping that was sufficiently vague. Then he sighed and hung up, and thought about playing Angry Birds or something to pass the time.

“I couldn’t find them,” Derek said, coming up behind him, and Stiles let out a shriek.

“Can you not do that?” he said. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

Derek sat down on the log beside him. He was kind of sweaty, and he looked glummer than usual. Stiles drummed his fingers on the log, waiting for Derek to bring him up to date.

Finally, he couldn’t take the silence any longer and said, “So?”

“There are fires all over the forest,” Derek said. “I think the Alpha has been setting them so I wouldn’t be able to smell Scott.”

Stiles crossed his arms and hunched over, shivering and trying to make himself inconspicuous, in case the Alpha spotted Derek and decided to attack him. But Derek was a Beta werewolf, too, like Scott. Why wasn’t he part of the Alpha’s pack?

Maybe he is. Maybe he just hasn’t told us,
he thought.

“Or maybe it’s some kind of trap,” Derek said. “Something the Argents cooked up.”

“You mean that Allison’s in on it?” Stiles asked, sounding incredulous.

Derek slid a glance at him. “Why do you sound so surprised? You know what the Argents are. What they do.”

“But Allison’s different,” Stiles said. “She’s totally into Scott. She’d never do anything to hurt him.”

“We can’t trust human women,” Derek replied. “Believe me, I know.” He stared into the flames, and remembered.

Beacon Hills

Six Years Earlier

Derek swam.

Lap after lap, after school, he did laps to burn off the extra testosterone. On Mondays, he would begin the school week, wedged in with all the humans, watching their power plays, sometimes mixing it up with them, getting flirted with and hit on by girls he knew he should avoid. He stayed on alert all week, until by Friday, he thought he would explode from the pressure.

Added to that, Wolf Moon was coming in a month. Hales from all over the country would be arriving for the big ritual, when they honored their ancestor, the Beast of Gévaudan, the one who, it was said, created their werewolf heritage. Derek was sixteen, the age of manhood in their pack, and he would be taking his place among the adult males. His cousin Josh would be there, and Derek was anticipating his challenge for rank in the hierarchy. Josh was sixteen, too. And so Derek swam, for endurance, and lifted weights, for strength, and told himself over and over that he had just as good a chance at winning the challenge as Josh did.

Derek wanted to see his father collect on the bet he’d made with Uncle Peter. His dad was betting on Derek;
Uncle Peter favored Josh, who was his sister-in-law’s kid. Derek’s sister, Laura, had told him that the two senior Hale males were keeping statistics on Derek and Josh—height, weight, workout regimes. Derek was insulted. Of
course
he could best his cousin.

Laura thought it was all so funny. That afternoon, in the cafeteria, she had mocked his supershake, the drink he had concocted that included ginseng energy boosts he bought from a senior named Michael Foy, whose father was into Chinese medicine.

“Josh is two inches taller than you,” she’d reminded him. “You can’t take anything that will make you taller.”

“Less than one inch,” Derek corrected her. “And he moves like a lumber truck.”

Swim it off. Grow strong
, he told himself, as his hands sliced through the water.

One by one, the other swimmers finished their routines and got out. They had dates, and friends. Movies and parties to go to. Derek stayed aloof. Unlike Laura, who was popular, he didn’t have any human friends, and he didn’t want any.

Swim it off. Grow strong.

“Derek,” said Mr. Braswell, the basketball coach who also served as the after-school lifeguard. He was standing at the edge of the pool. “Remember, I’m taking some personal time while my wife’s home on maternity. My substitute starts on Monday. I’ve been looking the other way and letting you stay in the pool after hours, but you should probably play it cool. He probably won’t go for it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Derek said, frustrated. He didn’t see why he couldn’t sign a form or something saying that he was
assuming the risk of swimming without a lifeguard. Swimming got it done for him the way nothing else did. He wanted to be ready for the challenge.

He wanted Uncle Peter to lose that bet.