Page 79

CHAPTER 78

WENDY SHAKES ME from sleep before the sun’s even up. Groggily I roll over. My head hurts and my mouth feels like it’s full of cotton. I’m still in the clothes that I wore to the dance. I can still taste Waylon on my lips.

“Kai, get up,” she says. “We have to go.”

“Go where?” I’m so tired that I don’t even care.

Holo yells, “Put on your shoes!”

The urgency in his voice jolts me fully awake. I clumsily do what he says, and then Wendy throws me a sweatshirt and pushes me toward the stairs. She’s not even trying to keep quiet, and the chief stumbles out into the hallway, yawning. “What’s going on?” he says, blinking.

Wendy says, “We’re going to save our family.”

“What?” the chief says.

I go, “What?” Neither of us has any idea what’s going on.

Then I hear that now-familiar roaring sound, that mechanical thunder that comes from the sky. My bones start to vibrate. The whole damn cottage starts to rattle.

Chester’s eyes widen. “What the hell?” he says. He runs to the window in time to see the FBI helicopter landing in his front yard.

“Come on,” Wendy says to me and my brother.

The three of us are already on the porch when Agent Dunham opens the door to the helicopter and yells what seems like “Let’s go!”

Not again , I think. I don’t want to throw up this early , but Wendy drags me toward the terrifying machine. I just have to trust her that she knows what she’s doing. Whatever our mission is, it’s urgent and we have to go.

My stomach’s twisting already.

“At least we’re not handcuffed this time!” Holo shouts.

Yeah, sure, that’s one bright spot.

After Dunham checks to make sure we’re strapped in, he gives a thumbs-up to the pilot. Then comes that awful, lurching moment when we lift into the sky. I feel like I left my guts behind as we rise above the meadow and swing over the dark trees. The sun’s just beginning to come up. It lights the clouds with rays of gold.

Wendy scans the sky with worried eyes.

“What are you looking for?” I yell over the sound of a motor, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s too focused on staring out the window.

The pilot heads east, toward where the trees thin and the open grasslands begin. The sky’s getting lighter by the second. I’ve never seen the world from this height—I guess I was too busy barfing last time—and it’s crazy. I can see 360 degrees around me. Everything looks totally different, but I know where we are. All of this is our territory. All of this is the wolves’ territory.

I feel dizzy and my head pounds. Keep it together, Kai.

Luckily my stomach’s empty. If I’d eaten any breakfast, it’d be in a puddle on the floor by now.

We fly low and slow, making giant circles, until Wendy points, jabbing a finger at the window. She knocks Agent Dunham on the shoulder, gesturing to him. In the air, a few hundred yards off, we can see the flashing lights of another helicopter.

“There they are,” she yells.

There who are? What the hell?

I look at Wendy in confusion. She shoves a pair of binoculars at me. Along the side of the helicopter, where there should be a door, there’s an open space. And in that open space is Reginald Hardy, holding an assault rifle.

Suddenly I understand, and I nearly convulse with horror.

He’s flying out to hunt Bim and Ben and Harriet, to kill Beast and her babies.

He’s going to murder my family.