Secrets and Shadows (6 page)
But Max had just one interest.
Girls.
And the girls returned his interest. Eagerly (at least when he didn’t wear his special y devised necklace
—which, regardless of how often Cat reminded me they were creatures of science, the necklace stil seemed like it required a better,
more magical
, explanation).
Nuts
. I was nervous. I was mental y babbling.
Nearly eighteen years old, Max was one of the most wanted seniors at Junction High, but to me, he was too much of a good thing—a little overpowering in a lot of smal ways.
He rol ed with laughter. “You’re both so messed up,” he choked out, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Just do it and get it over with!”
“What?” I exclaimed, heat flooding my face.
Do it?
Okay, maybe Max was
a lot
overpowering in some ways.
“Watching you two frustrate each other cracks me up,” he snorted, putting the car into gear. “
Don’t
do it and I’m guaranteed lots of laughs! How crazy is it: a werewolf revving high and the human who wants him watches him date her friend!” The driver’s seat trembled beneath his quaking laugh.
Pietr’s face was suddenly beside Max’s ear, his lips drawn back, teeth lengthening as he grated out,
“Drrrive.”
Crossing my arms, I scowled into the mirror at Max.
Normal, normal, normal!
Why couldn’t I have that? But as the car pul ed away I realized as angry as I was at Max, as frustrated with Pietr, stil there was no place I’d rather be than with the Rusakovas.
Dammit.
* * *
me?
”
Max snickered, more hyena than wolf. “Are you asking Cat or Pietr?”
Cat smacked the back of Max’s seat. “Idiot!”
My eyes narrowed, and I doubled the intensity of the glare I shot Max. “Cat.”
She turned in the seat to face me. “You’l stay with the car while we scout. I do not want us to leave and come back to find it gone. There are no good places to hide it. Stay in the front passenger’s seat, and if anyone asks questions, say—”
“The car stopped working and my stupid companion, who
drove
, ditched me to go find some help. We forgot our cel s.”
Cat smiled at me proudly. “
Horashow
.”
“
Spahseebuh
,” I thanked her in kind.
* * *
It had been a friendly little neighborhood then. Now, in the soft light the occasional working streetlight cast, I noticed the sidewalks I’d once walked in what Mom cal ed “my Sunday best” had become cracked and uneven.
“There is an old church we ran past recently. A scent we recognize,” Cat explained.
“Is it a brick and whitewashed church?”
Max’s eyes sparked. “
Da,
Jessie. You know it?”
“I attended it. Years ago.”
“Many probably say the same. It is abandoned,” Cat said.
“Can you guys even—” I couldn’t complete the thought.
Cat giggled. “Creatures of science, Jessie. A church is no problem. Holy water—no problem.
Crucifixes? No problem.”
“Crucifixes freak you out,” Max corrected, staring her down.
“I simply feel it is strange to display an instrument of torture on your wal .” She shrugged. “We could not get the floor plans through public records,” Cat said, hesitating. “Too many questions.”
“Too little time,” Pietr added.
“It’s easy.” I chewed my lower lip, recal ing details. “The main doors are probably lit. But there’s the door on the right side—up a smal slope—that leads into the nave, and one around back that opens into the acolyte’s waiting room. There’s a downstairs with a kitchen and a big room they turned into Sunday school classrooms with funky folding doors. It’l be quick to see the place.”
They nodded. Cat looked at Pietr smugly. “See, it was good to bring Jessie.”
I knew Pietr hadn’t thought I was needed, but it suddenly sounded like he hadn’t real y wanted me along at al . “Wait. There’s also a basement. In the classroom area there’s a big wooden door in the floor.
There’s a smal staircase, but it was bad even then. The church ladies complained when they put the season’s chowchow down there before the fair.”
“Chowchow? Like the dog?” Cat quirked an eyebrow.
“No, chowchow like beans, cauliflower, and vinegar…”
“Strange people,” Max muttered.
“Seriously?” I strained against my seat belt.
He nodded.
I poked his shoulder. “Borscht-eating werewolf cal ing chowchow-eating humans
strange?
”
He grinned, his teeth lengthening and sharpening. “Point taken.” He tapped one growing canine tooth with a finger and chuckled as his voice lowered into the wolf’s deep rasp.
Some moments I believed Max could’ve easily been Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf. But she probably would have liked it.
“We’l return in ten minutes,” Cat assured me, tossing me the keys. “We want to find her, not free her.”
“Not yet,” Pietr qualified, eyes glowing.
Out of the car they wolfed quickly, slinking along the shadows and hugging the hedges that marked the property boundaries of suburbia.
I hopped into the front passenger’s seat and turned the car on to note the time on the dashboard clock.
Ten minutes. Reclining in the seat, I promised myself I’d only worry after fifteen. I pul ed out my worry stone, rubbing my thumb across its glossy variegated surface. Like Pietr’s eyes it was beautiful and blue.
Like what shimmered
behind
his eyes—complicated.
When fifteen minutes passed and there was no sign of the Rusakovas, I decided I would not panic.
Yet.
By seventeen minutes I’d pul ed apart the car’s interior looking for a weapon: a pocketknife, a pair of scissors, anything. It quickly became obvious that werewolves didn’t bother with standard weapons. Teeth and claws were more than sufficient.
By twenty minutes I’d found a hefty Maglite flashlight wedged under the driver’s seat. It would have to do.
Slipping the car key off the ring, I tucked it in my pocket opposite my worry stone and hid the other keys under the seat.
I was headed to the church twenty-two minutes after the Rusakovas had disappeared into the night.
And I was definitely worried.
I sneaked around the side of the church, wishing for a werewolf’s hearing. Tal , stained-glass windows stretched above me, partial y boarded up. A faint gleam of light warned me something was wrong. I doubted the Rusakovas needed artificial light to perform their search.
Someone else was there. Correction: had been waiting there.
People talked inside while something pounded against … pounded against a wal ? A door? The cel ar door.
Again. And again.
My heart slammed into my ribs, keeping time with the crashing inside. Pressing my back to the wal I tried to think. There were two distinct human voices. Maybe more.
I didn’t have training to deal with even one.
What options
did
I have? I thought back to when I’d attended Sunday school and church here. What else had the little old ladies complained about?
One particularly wet summer water got in and destroyed the chowchow labels right before the fair.
Where…? I crept back down the little slope, looking for the path the water had taken.
“Ah!” I crouched beside a smal —
small
—window nearly flush with the ground. Inside, the wolves growled and snapped, hurling themselves up the flimsy staircase and against the door.
With a hesitant finger I tapped the glass fixed in the crumbling brick foundation.
Things inside grew eerily stil . Then the pounding against the door resumed and the window squeaked open. Cat’s face was ghostly against the darkness. “Jessie!
Horashow
. It was a trrrap.” She snarled out the last word, teeth in her normal y inviting smile spiking to razor sharpness.
I didn’t mention it was Pietr’s job to state the obvious.
“They had—” Words failed her for a moment, and she shook herself, teeth dul ing, eyes shifting from midnight blue to crimson as she struggled for focus—“a pelt that made us think we were on the right track.
”
“A
pelt?
”
“Our father’s.”
My stomach churned and I thought about the men inside. “How many of them are there?”
“Two.”
“Distract them. Keep them near the door while I sneak in.”
“Get Alexi,” she suggested.
“There’s no time for that. They won’t keep you here. They’l want you headed to wherever before dawn.”
“What wil you do?”
“Try not to make matters worse. I’l come in up top.”
“We wil keep their attention,” she promised.
A hush fel as the window shut and I circled around to the exterior acolyte’s door.
I tested it, the old decorative knob squealing in my grasp. Slow and easy. I waited for the distraction, remembering the room. The door was often unlocked, until one time the acolyte discovered a deacon slumped against the wal , al the tiny cups of wine drained.
Mom had said it was no surprise, considering how many people showed up only for Communion and holidays instead of every Sunday. They weren’t truly attending church, she claimed, just “paying their fire insurance.” So to show our commitment we had perfect attendance. If we were going to be Saved, we would put in our time. She lived the saying “Nothing’s worth having if you haven’t worked for it.” That applied to heavenly salvation, too.
A crash from the cel ar that made the sanctuary shimmy jerked me back from my memories. I yanked the door open, the smel of mildew strong as I dashed through the smal room and down the carpeted aisle lined by carved and uncomfortable pews.
In the nave I went onto the bal s of my feet and stole to the head of the winding staircase. One hand on the smooth wooden banister, I peered down, looking for trouble and hoping trouble wasn’t already looking for me.
Squatting, I kept below the visual barrier the banister drew in midair and I slid one leg down the stairs at a time, like a fencer practicing lunges on uneven turf. Gradual y I made the distance, pushing my back against the wal as the staircase angled around to the main floor.
Curses spewed from the classroom area. The random quaking of the cel ar door, so fierce it threatened to shake the church’s foundations, surely rattled the nerves of the werewolves’ captors.
I peeked around the corner.
“They’re stronger than we were told,” the tal est of two men griped.
I shuddered, recognizing his voice from when it had crackled across the radio the night they chased Cat from my farm.
“Damn straight. There. Get that table over here, too. So she says to me—get this—she says—”
Darting to the double doors separating the hal from the classes, I slid behind the one that remained closed. I glanced around the door, watching the men as the cel ar door and floor around it convulsed beneath the brutal werewolf attack.
“Can you believe it?” the smal er one asked. “She wouldn’t tel me what she wants for her birthday, but man did she pout when she got something she
didn’t
want!”
They’d moved as much furniture as they could to cover the huge door. And they continued to add to the heap. Filing cabinets, tables, chairs, a desk, an old television … al piled up to keep the Rusakovas down.
“They should be here soon,” the smal er man decided, looking past my hiding spot and toward the church’s front doors. “Unless Martinez is driving. He’s as bad as a chick.”
I pul ed farther back, breathing heavily, my spine flat against the wal . My fingers wrapped tighter around the Maglite, its weight comforting. The best and only weapon I had.
the Maglite, its weight comforting. The best and only weapon I had.
“They should rol up anytime,” the tal er man agreed.
The short one started in my direction, saying over his shoulder, “Stack something else up there, too
—anything you can find. I’l make sure they aren’t waiting outside like morons.”
The tal one returned to moving the stack of furnishings around and fighting to keep his feet whenever the old wood floor buckled beneath him.
I brought the Maglite up over my head, watching the space between the door and the jamb as the short man approached. I held my breath until my lungs burned and he appeared on my side of the door. With al the speed I could muster I cracked the flashlight down on his head.
He looked at me, surprised, before he crumpled to his knees, fal ing flat on his face.
Unconscious. And unnoticed thanks to the rattling floor.
“Sorry.” Hooking my hands under his arms I tried to drag him out of his partner’s potential line of sight.
He was like a sack of stone: way too heavy to move.
Crap, crap,
crap!
Instead, I rounded the door and headed for his partner as he examined a weary-looking upright piano. I almost lost my footing as the floor heaved again. The man turned toward me, shock lighting his face. I swung at his head, but he ducked, grazing my face with a punch. As I swung again he swept my feet from under me with a move of his own.
Landing hard on my back, the breath rushed out of me. The Maglite clattered away.
“Little bitch,” he snapped, going for his gun. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
Beneath the floorboards al hel broke loose. A savage howl shook the place. Every hair on my arms stood in recognition.