Savage (16 page)

Something is here
, she thought, riveted to the spot, trembling slightly.
Gun, I have the gun
.

She threw down the paper and reached for the gun. But she didn’t see it. It had been right there, at her knee. Wildly, she felt the ground. It wasn’t anywhere. It was gone.

She sprang to her feet and ran for all she was worth. Over brambles, under branches. Fleeing.

But she was running the wrong way.

It was coming straight for her, from the underbrush. She could hear it crashing through.

“No!” she screamed. “No, please!”

11

A DEER BURST
out of the trees, took one look at Katelyn, swerved, and darted away. Katelyn collapsed on the ground, panting; she looked over her shoulder as she scrabbled into the brush, waiting for a monstrous black shape to fill the sky. Then one by one by one, flocks of birds erupted from the tops of the pine trees, cawing as they wheeled and soared into the gray sky until at last they were nothing but black dots. A squirrel flashed past her and leaped onto a branch, cracking the frost that sheathed the wood. As she heaved and gasped for air, the earth itself seemed to expand, contract, as if it were breathing.

Wrapping her hands around the nearest tree trunk, she pulled herself up to a standing position and inched her way around it, using it as a shield. Her phone seemed to be glued to her hand; she could hear Cordelia shouting her name over and over. Katelyn tried to drop the phone’s volume to its lowest setting but accidentally disconnected Cordelia instead. Just as well; she had to focus. She tried to inhale a steadying breath, and peered cautiously around the trunk. There was nothing there, no monster. The back of her neck was damp, as if something had breathed on it, but she was covered in sweat. She remembered the night she had been attacked, when the werewolf that had bitten her had melted into the darkness in a bizarre and unnatural way — not running, simply vanishing. At the time, she had thought she’d imagined it because of her trauma.

Now she knew better.

Her legs were barely holding her up as she clung to the tree. She looked through the middle distance, careful not to drop her gaze toward the campfire as she squinted at the mouth of the Madre Vena cave. The horrible memory of Mr. Henderson’s savaged corpse sent fresh bile gushing and she snaked up a hand to cover her mouth. A wind bowed the branches of her sanctuary and she glanced upward. Then she remembered how she’d used her gymnastics skills before and experimentally grabbed a branch above her, wanting to climb to a higher vantage point.

On the other hand, she would be easier to spot.

She decided to chance it. She leaped and caught onto a branch with ease. It felt good to be in control of her body, and it helped her manage her jitters. Soon she had climbed up more than halfway and she stopped. Below, her own footprints had gouged the snow, and fresh powder was beginning to fill them. There were no other prints, no evidence of anything having approached the campfire. She wondered how long Mr. Henderson had been there.

The sun had sunk lower, and streaks of orange bled into the slate-colored horizon. The mine proper was in an outcropping of rock that rose like a stairway up against a mountain. If she could travel from tree to tree, she could climb down the side of the mountain and enter the cave from the right side, instead of head on. If something lurked inside, then she might have a shot at concealing herself in the shadows and—

She groaned softly as the sunlight glinted on a small object lying in the snow a few feet in her direction from the campfire. She should be glad that she’d located her gun, but now she had to retrieve it. That either meant climbing down and going back the way she had come, or continuing with her plan to creep down the mountain. She could still do that, then break cover and grab the weapon. Whatever she decided to do, she had to do it fast: the daylight was fading much more quickly than she had anticipated. She didn’t want to be out here in the dark. Wanted to go into the mine at night even less.

If her wolf senses kicked in, she’d have a much better advantage. Steely-eyed, her jaw set, she moved to another tree and held on for a moment as the wet snow slid off her new perch and splatted on the ground. She was giving herself away. Frustrated, she hopped down and charged forward to grab the gun. She swiped it up and before she could tell herself to stop, she dashed to the side of the cave and flattened herself to the right side of the entrance. The metal was icy in her hand. She breathed in and out very shallowly to keep herself from panting too hard. What did it matter how noisy she was if the Hellhound was inside? It would smell her.

She inched toward the cave opening and darted quickly inside. It was dark; she clicked on the faceplate of her phone and cupped it, exposing just enough light to figure out a route forward. Now she was a moving target.

She sniffed the air for the smell of silver and caught instead the horrible odor of Mr. Henderson’s corpse.

The cave floor canted downward and she angled her steps like a skier to keep herself from sliding. Then the light played over something white and branch-like on the ground, and she realized it was a bone. Animal or human, she couldn’t tell. She swallowed hard and her left foot came down on something hard. She lost her balance and windmilled her arms; and as she did so, the light from her phone washed one of the walls. Two spindly stalactites hung in front of what appeared to be a cave painting of wide black brush strokes crisscrossing the rock. She took a few steps back so she could take in the entire, enormous picture. The formations had been incorporated as fangs in a grotesque, misshapen face with dragon-like eyes and a snout like a pig. It didn’t look exactly like the Hellhound, but it glared from the rock with such hatred that even though she knew it was just a painting, she shivered. Maybe the Hellhound changed shape. Maybe there were different kinds of Hellhounds. But she knew in her gut that the thing on the wall was killing people. Had killed Mr. Henderson.

Had almost killed her.

The image was smudged in black except for the eyes, which were a lighter color. On closer inspection she realized they were reddish-brown handprints. She took a deep breath and inhaled. Dried blood?

Yes.

And . . . finally . . . she smelled silver.

The metallic tang made her teeth feel jangly. She uttered a strange feral sound deep in her throat. She went on alert, bracing herself for the torture of transformation, afraid of how vulnerable she would be while she was changing. She took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm down.

Find the silver now, before it happens
, she told herself.
Find it now and get out of here.

She raised her chin and sniffed. Her jaw was aching. She looked down at her hands; they were still just her hands. Following the scent trail, she took a few steps deeper into the cave, gripping her phone hard. Her shoes crunched on gravel as she shuffled as quietly as she could. Her heart was beating so loudly that surely it could be heard. Then everything began to glow. Her vision was shifting. The cavern became luminescent, a fairyland of stalactites and stalagmites. She saw more paintings on the walls, of other hideous monsters. There were rows of strange angular Scandinavian runes from the Old Country. Cordelia had shown her some before. The Fenners were Norse. Their patron werewolf god was Fenris, son of Loki, nephew of the great god Odin — and his prophesied assassin during the Viking version of Armageddon.

Each rock she dislodged as she crept forward sounded like an avalanche. Silver stunk up the air, so thick it felt as if someone had stuffed silver bullets up her nose. It was sickening.

The odor urged her to turn left and she entered a low, narrow tunnel. The walls were coated with drawings of human skulls, with images of wolf skulls superimposed over them. Some of them were crossed over with more blood — human. She could detect the unmistakable scent and, to her horror, her mouth watered.

She gripped the gun and kept going. Something was hanging at the end of the tunnel. It looked like an overgrown mass of Spanish moss—

God!

It was a human skeleton dangling from a noose.

Her hands covered her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. Swaying left, right, she staggered backwards, tripped over something — a human skull — and fell hard onto her butt.

She covered her head with both her hands as if she were protecting herself from an attack, grabbed the gun, and began to awkwardly crawl back through the tunnel. She realized she was slinking away like a coward. It was instinctual. Her wolf self knew this was a bad place, this cave of silver.

As she forced herself to stand firm, deep bone-chilling pain seized in her knees and ankles. Her hands were still normal. Her face was human.

She turned around reluctantly and looked at the hanging figure at the end of the tunnel. There was something tied around its neck — what appeared to be a sign. Nothing in her wanted to walk toward it. But it hung in the path to the silver. She had no choice.

A shock of colorless hair was stuck to its head and a few tatters of clothing draped loosely over its shoulders. The sign, which looked like a piece of wood, was twisted and smelled of blood; she would have to reach out and touch it to read it.

No
, she protested, then reached out, grabbed the wood, and flipped it around.

DeAndrew
, the sign read. The legend of the Madre Vena said that Jubal DeAndrew had forced a man named Xavier Cazador — a Spaniard who had rediscovered the lost silver mine in 1868 — to reveal the mine’s location. Cazador was supposed to have painted the picture of the heart-shaped boulder and the waterfall that Katelyn had in her car. And then both he and DeAndrew had gone missing.

She didn’t smell the musk of werewolf on the body. A human had done this, then. The silver smell pulled at her; she hurried toward it, around a corner and then another, realizing that she should have done something to mark her way, keeping track of all the twists and turns. Everything around her was bathed with the filter of her enhanced vision—

—and then the glow became an explosion of light so bright that she covered her eyes. She grunted, forced her hands down, and blinked as a hole in the ceiling of the cave emitted the last rays of the sun, and her werewolf vision revealed the treasure of the Madre Vena mine.

To the right against the wall rose stacks of gray bars — tarnished silver, she guessed; and beside those, a parade of mining carts brimming with what smelled like silver ore. Stacked against the carts were dozens of wooden boxes, many of them rotted, and hard metal objects had slid from the holes to the ground, most covered with cobwebs. She ran to one, wiped the sweat off her forehead and kicked at the cobwebs, then fished out what she already knew was a gun.

She set both it and her other gun down on a box. The odor of silver rose like incense and she wrapped her hands around the lid, preparing to yank; but the desiccated wood crumbled to sawdust in her fists.

Inside the box lay silver bullets. At least a hundred. She grabbed a handful and let them slip through her fingers. Then she wiped her hand on her jeans and cracked open the gun. She jammed a bullet into the chamber. It went in reluctantly because of the dirt and grime, but it was clearly the correct caliber. She tried to load the second gun, but the bullets were the wrong size.

She pushed open another box. There were more guns. More bullets. Wicked silver knives with serrated edges. Swords. Bayonets.

Weapons no werewolf but she could withstand — or use. Just holding the gun with the silver bullets inside it had hurt Justin’s hand.

“I did it,” she whispered to herself.

She held onto the gun and examined the swords and bayonets. They had to be old — no one used things like this in combat anymore. She wanted to know who had brought all this here, but she knew why.

To kill werewolves.

She skirted the ore carts to reach a cluster of square boxes and opened the topmost one. What she saw stopped her dead.

It was an animal trap made of silver — the same kind of spring-loaded trap she had fallen into out in the forest. That was how she and Justin had learned that she was immune. Justin had hidden it, and never told anyone about it.

If he sees this, he’ll completely lose his mind
, she thought. She couldn’t help one triumphant little cackle. She’d done it. She’d found the mine.

“Me,” she whispered, nearly pinching herself. She stared down at the wicked-looking device, with its serrated teeth and heavy coiled spring. So many questions. But for now, she had to take what she could carry and get out of there. In her moment of victory, she had almost — but not quite — forgotten the danger she was in.

She scanned for a box in semi-decent condition, opened it, and found another trap inside. She placed her new gun inside, then added another. One aspect of her werewolf nature — her strength — never left her. She would be able to carry her treasure with ease. She added a box of bullets and wrapped her arms around the container. She turned to go —

And heard something moving.

It was coming up fast behind her. Sucking in a breath, she dropped the box, whirled around and aimed her gun.

Her vision almost completely shut down; but something black and scarlet was filling the entrance into the cavern.

Katelyn’s heart fluttered in her throat like a moth; she made a strange jerking sound as the thing howled and lurched toward her. Its stench was so foul her eyes watered and she gagged; all she saw were rows and rows of fangs and glowing red eyes; it was slathering and drooling, and each time it howled, every bone and muscle in her body cramped. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She pulled it again.

It was jammed.

I’m going to die
. She was too calm. She had to be in shock.

Guns and silver bullets littered the ground. The Hellhound had caught her red-handed with stolen treasure.

“I-I . . .” she stammered. She wanted to tell it that she would never come back. But as she tried to form the words, her thoughts evaporated into sheer terror. Facing the Hellhound in this cave, with no one else around, no way to call for help.