Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(56)
Chapter 22
THE TEMPERATURE SHARPENS and the wind picks up and the sun cuts a shorter arc across the sky. Patrick has not answered the phone, though Malerie has called him more than a dozen times in the past few days. Three voice mails, the first cheery babble, the second a long sigh, the third asking him what the hell was going on. “Patrick? Seriously. You better call back.” Here her voice grew cruel. “Or maybe it’s time Max finds out about us.”
He doesn’t know what he’ll do after the long weekend, the Sabbath on Monday, when she seeks him out at school—tell her the truth? That he had fun? More than fun—the swell of her breasts, the vacuum of her mouth, the thrill of sneaking around—but he’s just not feeling it anymore? Screwing around with her is no way to repay the kindness Max has shown him?
He is sitting upright in bed, a pillow braced behind his back, with the laptop warming his thighs. Outside, the sky is a dying purple. The lamp in his room is dim and at odds with the bright glow the screen makes. His eyes ache. He feels mildly nauseous, mixed up inside.
He browses the news sites. First the nationals, hunting for updates about the Lupine Republic. He knows there will be casualties, and there are, but every one of them brings him a sick kind of relief, because he knows some must die—that there is a quota to fill—and one man dying means his father goes on living. He reads an editorial titled “Extremist Groups Do Not Define Lycans,” all about how a small percentage of radicals are defining the larger population of peaceable lycans in the U.S. and in the Republic. He reads about a raid in Florida, a terrorist cell that had been building a fertilizer bomb. He reads about the lycan no-fly, now more than three months old and facing legal opposition from the ACLU. He reads about how the security threat level has dropped from red to orange but airports and train stations will maintain increased security and random passenger checks.
Then Patrick hits up the local papers, the Oregonian, the Old Mountain Tribune, to read up on the governor, whom everyone seems to have a loudmouthed opinion on. Here is an article about Chase Williams advocating nuclear energy and endorsing a power plant along the Columbia, and here is an editorial that claims the governor’s plans will only tighten the collar on the uranium-rich Lupine Republic.
He spots a headline that reads “Blood Bath at Blood Bath.” Yesterday, a naked woman—identified as Alice Slade—was discovered along the shoulder of the Santiam Pass, naked and hypothermic and babbling about wolves in the woods. After hospitalization and questioning, it was discovered that an alleged lycan attack took place at the remote Blood Bath Hot Springs north of Sisters. She is believed to be the wife of local insurance agent Craig Slade, whose corpse was found at the springs, along with eleven others, some of them mangled beyond recognition.
He clicks on an ad for a new phone plan. He clicks on an ad for Victoria’s Secret. Click, click, click. He opens ESPN and checks the scores on the Saturday football games. He tries to instant-message a few pals from back home—to catch up; he’s been neglectful—but everyone is away from their computers. He watches a video for the Marines in which a young soldier slays a dragon with a sword. He downloads a few college applications—UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine—to fill out later, the deadlines a few months away.
Then he stares out the window, watching the stars brighten in the sky. The wind rises and makes the glass shudder. Snow is expected tonight, the first winter storm. When he turns back to his computer, he opens Google and plugs in Blood Bath Hot Springs and finds it on the map and sees it is no more than an hour’s drive from here. He thinks of the girl, Claire. In truth he has thought of little else lately. She is always flitting at the edge of his mind like a moth with a sinister pattern on its wings.
She finally told him her name in the woods. He didn’t initially respond, not knowing what to say. Nice to meet you? Though they had already met, and the circumstances then and now were hardly nice.
“And you’re Patrick,” she said, still not looking at him, tromping ahead. “Don’t worry, Patrick. I’m not going to kill you. Though I think my aunt might have if we didn’t get away from her.”
When he drove out there, he had planned their conversation, readying every smooth response. But now everything had changed. She was not who he thought she was. And when he reached for that store of memories now, his hand passed through it, all the words evaporated. She was a lycan. And not just a lycan but unmedicated. An illegal, a resister. Max calls them a plague. The governor calls them the biggest threat to this country, a threat he is working brutally to remedy. Even as Patrick was aware of this, he could not catalogue his feelings, nor could he reconcile the political rhetoric with the sight of the pretty girl walking before and then slowing next to him.
“Thank you again,” she said. “Maybe that’s why you’re back. Because I didn’t thank you.”
“That’s not why I’m back.”
“Well, thank you.” She leaned suddenly toward him and he stiffened and threw up his hands, thinking she would bite him—her mouth open, only inches from his face—and he noticed then the blackness of his fingertips, stained from the spray paint that soaked through his gloves the other night. He dropped his hands and said, “Sorry.”
She did not seem offended, studying him another moment before she said, “Ever kissed a lycan before?” She seemed as surprised by the question as he.