On Fire (17 page)

I will never fall in love,
Scott vowed.
Ever.

Beacon Hills Preserve

The Present

A
s Scott cuddled Allison against the chill, he sighed. He didn’t want to move on, but each minute that they spent making out, they weren’t looking for her keys.

“Allison, we should look some more,” he said, and she kissed him again.

“I know. This is just . . . so nice.”

They both got to their feet. They were only about two-thirds of the way along the original path they had first taken, walking beside a steep incline that shot down into the darkness. There was still hope that they could find her keys.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find them,” he said, and he squeezed her hand. She smiled gamely at him.

Then her phone rang. Her brows shot up and she reached into the pocket of her heavy coat. But as she pulled her hand back out, she stumbled backward and let go of the phone.

“Whoops,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” he said, but she was already pivoting around to retrieve it.

Her momentum carried her forward, and, to Scott’s shock, she began sliding down the incline. Her feet shot out from beneath her as she accelerated.

“Allison!” he cried, reaching out to stop her.

He grabbed her hand, but her weight yanked him off balance and he crashed to the ground. Then the incline angled down more sharply, practically perpendicular, and they began falling nearly headlong into darkness.

Scott tried to latch on to branches as they plummeted, fighting to hold onto Allison, but her fingers slid out of his grasp and he heard her cry out. Rocks pelted his face and body, and his shoulder slammed hard against a boulder. He tried to catch hold of it but no luck.

“Allison!” he yelled.

There was no answer as the rocks rolled around him and he kept sliding down.

He felt himself begin to wolf and realized that if he let himself do it, he could at least see where she was falling.

No, stop
, he ordered himself.

“Allison!” he called again.

Nothing.

If she saw him turn, so much would go wrong. But he had to chance it. He tried to limit it to eyesight only, and scarlet infrared bathed the tumbling world around him. He still didn’t see Allison anywhere.

Let her be okay, let her be okay,
he pleaded as he fell. He kept trying to grab onto something, anything. The skin on his hands was being sliced; everything stung.

Then he landed hard on spongy earth and lay panting. Fear whooshed up and around him like waves. He made himself hide the wolf away and sprawled on the ground, hurting everywhere.

“Scott?” Allison said hoarsely. “Scott!”

“I’m here,” he said, reaching out his arms, trying to find her without his enhanced vision. Their hands met, and he pulled Allison into his very-human embrace.

“Are you okay?” she asked. She covered his face with quick kisses. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. What about you?” He had werewolf healing powers. She didn’t. He touched her face. There was a scratch on her cheek, and leaves in her hair, but she looked relatively unscathed.

“I’m okay.” He picked some of the leaves out of her hair. “I got some scrapes on my legs but it’s nothing major.”

“I’m glad,” he said, and kissed her. “Hey, Allison,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m falling for you. Head over heels.”

She snickered. “Nice one,” she said. Then she picked a leaf off his arm, like they were two animals grooming each other. “Do you think we’re being punished for sneaking out when we’re grounded?”

“No. I think we’ll be punished if we’re caught,” he replied, grinning at her.

“Then let’s make a pact that we won’t be caught,” she said. She sat up very straight and held up her right hand. “I, Allison Argent, do solemnly swear
not
to get busted by my parents.”

“And I, Scott McCall, solemnly swear that, too.” He threaded his fingers through hers. She smiled at him.

And then she made her “uh-oh” face.

“I think I lost my phone.” She groaned. “My keys
and
my phone.”

“Maybe it fell down with us,” he suggested. “Unless it can defy gravity.”

“Or it got stuck on something,” she said uneasily. “I swear, Scott, are we in a Roadrunner cartoon?”

“Only if an anvil falls on our heads. Yikes, duck!” he cried, throwing his hands over his head.

She smiled gamely and gave him a teasing swat on his arm, but he could feel her dismay. Grinning, he looked downward and let his eyesight shift. This felt like a math problem, not his strong suit, but he was willing to give it a shot: if he were falling a hundred miles an hour down a twenty-thousand-foot drop, at a velocity of whatever, and he were a phone, where would he land?

Right there!

Her phone was a small red rectangle about ten feet away from them, lodged among dozens, if not hundreds, of tall, spindly bushes with white flowers and clumps of red berries.

It was too dark for him to have reasonably spotted it in normal life, so he kept pretending to inspect the ground. Allison was right beside him, glancing up and around.

“We can use my phone to call it,” Scott suggested, pulling out his phone. His charge was at 9 percent. “Let’s make this count. My battery is super low.”

She nodded and held her breath while he pressed in her number. Her phone trilled in the bushes. Her ringtone for him was Kids of 88. Nice.

“Yes!” she cried, hugging him. They both darted toward the bushes. Scott lunged for the phone, reaching out . . . and found he couldn’t seem to move his hand forward.

“What?” he said. “Allison?”

She darted past him and stared at the wall of greenery. “I don’t see it,” she said. “Call again, please.”

He was staring straight at it. It was about three layers of branches in. But as he put his hand forward, it was as if he touched some kind of invisible barrier.

What the heck?

“There,” he said, pointing. “See it?”

“Yes!” she cried. She pushed herself into the mass of leaves and branches and snagged her phone. “Yes, yes, yes!”

She whirled around and fought her way back through. Dancing a little, she hugged him. He soaked it up and hugged her back.

Then she pulled away so she could look at him. “Why couldn’t you get it?” she asked him. “Are you hurt?”

Now what do I say?
he thought, studying the bushes. Were they some kind of wolfsbane? He tried again to move into them. It was exactly as if a force field prevented him.

She was waiting for his answer. Maybe he could pretend to be scared or have some kind of weird phobia.

About touching bushes?

“Um, yeah,” he said. He faked a limp forward, and then he sank to the ground. “Something’s wrong with my leg. I didn’t notice at first because . . . because of the adrenaline. But it’s hurting a lot.” He hated lying to her.

“Oh, no,” she said, falling down beside him. “Do you think you broke something?”

“No.” He didn’t want to upset her. “Just, um, a sprain. I’m sure it’ll be better soon. If I just rest a minute.”

“Okay.” She sat down beside him. “Wow, I totally didn’t notice that hill.” She laid her head on her knees and grinned weakly over at him. “But I was a little distracted.”

“Me, too. Are you okay?” he asked worriedly. She seemed okay.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “But I’m worried about you. If you can’t walk, how are we going to get out of here?”

“You can carry me,” he suggested.

“Right.”

“Sure. Over your shoulder. You could totally do it.”

“Well, I’d need a machete to cut down all those bushes first,” she said, laughing. “But once you’re feeling up to it—
if
you’re feeling up to it—we might be able to work our way through them.”

“Sure,” he said, realizing he was going to have to make sure he didn’t feel up to it. Unless he could figure why he couldn’t do it now. There was so much about being a werewolf that he didn’t know. Okay, he hardly knew anything. If Derek were here . . .

Derek
, he thought.
I can text him and ask him.
But Derek didn’t have a cell phone.
Argh, Derek. You complicate my life on so many levels.

“All this to find Jackson,” Allison muttered. “He’d better be awfully grateful.”

“Yeah,” he said noncommittally. He wondered if going through all this for the sake of a guy who didn’t like him marked him as an idiot, or a wuss, or worse.

“This was so nice of you,” she went on. “Think what
would have happened if Lydia and I had come out here, and my aunt had called her house. If she hadn’t been there to answer the landline . . .” She mimicked slicing her throat.

He cocked his head. “What would have happened?”

She moved her shoulders, and her features darkened. “I don’t actually know. I’ve always been pretty close to my folks, you know? Because we move so much. This is the first time I’ve really had friends . . . or a boyfriend.” She wrinkled her nose at him as if testing out the word.

“We’re very friendly here in Beacon Hills,” he told her, grinning back at her.
Loving
hearing the word
boyfriend
on her lips, referring to him. Then he bent over and kissed her, and she slid her arms around his neck.

“So I see. But anyway, to answer your question, this is a new subject for my family and me. Me being in trouble. And . . . us not being as close,” she added faintly. She frowned and got a faraway look on her face. “Things are . . . different.”

Don’t I know it.
He was used to keeping things from his mom, though. He didn’t like to worry her, and it felt weird going to her with questions about . . . well, anything. He and Stiles had kind of raised each other.

“Lydia and Jackson are probably making up,” she murmured.

“Making out,” he said, and lowered his head toward her.

“Wait. How’s your ankle?” she asked him.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t kiss with my ankle.” He tried to remember if he’d actually said that it was his ankle that was bothering him. He didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sure it’ll get better in a few minutes,” he said. “It’s
just in shock.” He made a look of mock concern. “I hope it doesn’t sue me.”

Her smile didn’t reach past her eyes. She was worried about him. That was so
cool
.

“Maybe I could look at it,” she said. She moved her shoulder. “I don’t know first aid, but you do. You made a splint for that dog I hit. You could tell me what to do.” She gestured to the bushes. “We have plenty of wood to make a splint.”

His mind was racing. He wondered what would happen if he had her make a splint from one of the bushes. Maybe it would work like when Derek had burned the Northern Blue Monkshood and then pushed it into the bullet hole in his arm. Used the poison to cure the poison. But were the bushes
poison
?

He looked over his shoulder at the hill they’d just fallen down.
Hill
was definitely the wrong term. It was a freakin’ cliff, rising nearly straight up. Grateful Allison hadn’t gotten severely injured, he doubted they’d be able to get back up it without rock-climbing equipment.

“Let’s make sure your phone works,” he said, partly to distract her. “Why don’t you check in with Lydia?”

As she nodded and initiated the call, he shifted his vision and scanned the area around them. To his consternation, he realized that the bushes were growing in a semicircle around the cliff, with no breaks. There were only two ways to get out—up the cliff, or through the bushes.

“Call failed,” she reported. “But we might get better reception somewhere else.” She looked at the bushes. “That stuff is so thick,” she murmured. Then she looked back at him. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Worse,” he said, lying. He needed some time to figure out what to do. They were scared, but Allison wasn’t hurt. They weren’t in imminent danger of getting found out, and except for the intense fear factor, being here with her was pretty sweet.

He handed her his phone. “We don’t have a lot of chances to call on my cell,” he reminded her. “We have to make them count. I’ve got the reception but you’ve got the power. Maybe we should try texting somebody. I’ll try Stiles.”

“Okay.” She nodded. She leaned over his shoulder and he realized that he wouldn’t be able to tell Stiles everything. He’d have to try to speak in code. So he wrote:
We r stuck here, bottom of cliff
. Then he took a picture of the bushes and attached it to his text. As an afterthought he snapped a picture of the cliff and sent that as well.
Then
he realized he had Where’s My Phone on his phone, too, and of course Stiles knew his user name and password:
Allison
and
Allison
. If his battery didn’t die, and Stiles got the texts, he’d realize where they were, and see that they were in trouble.