Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,91

of her car, sending it careening out of control, and Katelyn stomped on the brakes, sending herself weaving as something flashed by her on the narrow road. It was a truck.

Her Subaru slowed and rolled against a tree, which groaned under the impact. They hit me, she thought, shocked.

Ahead of her the truck had also pulled over, and the driver was getting out. Katelyn started to reach for her insurance card in the glove compartment when her hand froze.

Mike was sauntering toward her, a huge triangular shaped apparatus on his nose, a leer on his arrogant face, and a tire iron clutched in his hand.

17

Katelyn stepped out of her car in a rage. “What the hell?” she screamed at Mike.

“Payback’s a bitch, bitch,” he said, snarling.

“What, you want to break my nose?” she demanded. “You really think you need a tire iron for that?”

His smile broadened and there was something so terrible about it, so leering, that an awful suspicion crept into her mind.

“I was thinking of taking it out on you a different way,” he said, eyes moving down her body.

His look and tone confirmed her suspicions. And while the Katelyn she used to be screamed at her to get in her car and run over him, the new Katelyn began to growl.

Mike cocked his head to the side. “What the hell—”

She leaped at him, kicking the tire iron out of his hand before he could even move. She hit him in the eye so hard it snapped his head back. She growled again, an angry, throaty sound that started to turn into a howl. She kicked him in the stomach, doubling him over, and slammed her fist into his chin with everything she had in her. His eyes rolled back but she kept him upright, hitting him again and again in the stomach.

He was wheezing when she finally let him fall to the ground. Blood was pouring out of his nose and mouth. Both his eyes were already turning black and his breathing was uneven. She stood over him, waiting for him to get back up.

A few seconds later, his eyes flickered open and he stared up at her. He looked like something out of a horror movie, and she couldn’t stifle her satisfaction.

Panting, she leaned over him. “This ends now, do you hear me?”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“You leave Trick and me alone and I’ll leave you alone. Understood?”

He nodded again. Sheepish, scared.

She left him there, got into her Subaru, and roared away.

When she pulled up in front of the cabin she flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. There was blood on them. Mike’s blood. She’d have to make a break for the bathroom to try and clean it off before her grandfather could see it.

She left her backpack in the back and headed inside. As soon as she had opened the door she ran to the stairs. “Hi!” she called out when she was halfway up them.

“Katie, you okay?” her grandfather called.

“Fine,” she yelled back just before she closed the bathroom door behind her.

A couple of minutes later she emerged, having gotten all the blood off. Her hands had stopped aching, which was an added bonus. She went back downstairs. From the living room her grandfather looked at her expectantly.

“Sorry, bathroom,” she said with a grimace.

He nodded as she went back outside to grab her backpack. Somewhere in the distance she heard a wolf howl and it took all her willpower not to join in.

Katelyn.

Katelyn woke with a start, a dream fading too quickly from her memory to hold onto. The nearly full moon poured light down through her skylight, bathing her room in silver. Every nerve sizzled. Branches tapped impatiently against the glass above.

Wearily, she picked up In the Shadow of the Wolf. There hadn’t been any more information on the mine or the Hellhound and she was beginning to think there wasn’t any more to find. She had finished Cordelia’s diary, a litany of disappointments and excuses for the erratic behavior of her father. She and Cordelia had one thing in common: they hated Regan and Arial.

She put the book away and took out the paper with the picture of the heart-shaped boulder again. And she wondered for the thousandth time if the real painting had been hanging on their wall all that time.

She spent the next morning pretending to study and surfing the net for aerial photos of Wolf Springs — there were none — but mostly just freaking out. Full moonrise would