Page 40 of Just Dare Me
Agent Davies. You hit our train, we hit yours.
Rain patters my windshield asI navigate the narrow road through Newport Prairie Mobile Home Park. On the porch of a seafoam green double-wide trailer, an old Greek lady clutches a blanket around her neck and stares out toward the woods with concern. Her wind chimes swing wildly in the wind, making a chorus of clinking noises.
I slam the brakes and lower my window. “Everything okay?”
“You tell me,” she shouts over the chimes. “Your dad was here—finally—to replace the vent in my bathroom. For two months it makes like this:rac-a-rac-a-rac-a-rac.” She twirls her finger like a fan.
I punch my fist into the horn, making her jump. “Then what? He went back home?”
“He drops everything! His tools are still on my bathroom floor. Because he hearshowlingfrom your woods, like coyotes—”
I jump on the gas pedal, rocketing down the strip of cracked pavement. Trailer homeswhooshpast as nothing but pink, yellow, and blue flashes, and then I’m splashing through puddles in the field that separates the mobile-home community from Newport Woods and my family’s wagon train.
You hit our train, we hit yours.
The sky is a patchwork of silver clouds and gray sky. The time of day is a relief. Beyona doesn’t dare take her crow form in broad daylight, and the Cleveland bloodsuckers probably wouldn’t risk coming out here. Vampires can be out in the day, but it drains their powers. They become useless pretty fast.
Here’s another relief: as I skid to a stop in the muddy lot outside the wagon train, Ben’s black Mustang is nowhere to be seen. He warned me that if I ever came back here, he would challenge me on sight. He threw down the gauntlet, committing us to a duel that can’t end until one of us is dead. And for someone as dominant as Ben, shit talk like that can’t be taken back. Not for anything.
The question now is: will others take up that gauntlet on his behalf? Maybe he’s not the only one who hates me for leaving the pack. In the very least, they’ll be annoyed.Why are you here? Why would you care if we get attacked? This is all because of you, anyway. You’re only making it worse.Fine, let them be annoyed. Let them blame me, even hate me. As long as they’re safe.
Sigh. Isn’t family just a joy?
Slowly and silently, I open my door and step out with my gun gripped in both hands. For a long moment, I don’t move—just look and listen. Two details immediately cause my heart to beat faster. First, there’s no smoke raising up from the middle of the wagon train, where the bonfire has burned perpetually since before I was born. We don’t let the fire die—maybe it gets low sometimes, when we want to use just the embers for cooking. But the firepit never goes cold.
And second, there’s no sound. No kids playing, no beer cans crushing, no banjos strumming or TVs blaring baseball games. No nothing. Just a lonely wind whistling through the dark crawl spaces beneath the trailer units.
My shoes are sinking into the mud. They make a slurping sound when I dislodge them and step away from the car. I scan the sky and rooftops above me—all clear. Keeping my steps light and my gun leading my eyes, I sneak to the back wall of my home unit, #2. When I reach the space between units, my heart begins to pound. I need to look around the corner, which will give me a straight view at the firepit, but I’m too afraid of what I’ll see. I hate this quiet. Nothing but the worst-case scenario could bring this kind of silence and stillness to the wagon train.
I remember—from what seems a lifetime ago—peeking around a hallway corner in the apartment of an East Side glutton. Dario was a sweetheart and a fence who knew too much, and so Beyona had shot him full of holes. Nothing to do with me at the time, but still, I was there, so I wondered if his death was my fault, even just a little bit.
There’s no wondering this time. I haveeverythingto do with Beyona now. Whatever happened here, it’s because of me. I poked this bear. Over and over.
I can’t look. I physically can’t. Waves of anxiety shoot from my heart up into my brain, dumping release after release of adrenaline into my system. My breath comes in hiccups when what I want to do is take long gasps. Not getting enough air. I know what this is. It’s a panic attack. I need to shift.
My nerves shatter at the sound of a window sliding open right above me. I jolt back, releasing the safety on my gun.
From the open window, Nolan’s voice says, “Don’t come in, Shayne. It’s better if we don’t see you. If Ben asks, we didn’t know you were here.”
At last, I’m able to draw in a long, controlled breath. But the flood of relief at hearing his voice—at hearing him saywe—only sends more chemicals surging out of my brain. The whiplash of emotions makes my hands tremble. My knees go wobbly. I can only get one word out. “Everybody?”
“Everybody that was home, yes. But we’re not…it’s bad, Shayne. The attack came from the woods. The wind was against us.”
“Beyona?”
“No. It was the silverback wolf. He came straight through the fire, at the kids.”
My heart stops. “The kids…”
“Straight for Randy. He could feel his dominance.”
I finally summon the courage to peek around the corner. I see the firepit, cold and empty, the burnt logs scattered outward. I picture Nash’s gray wolf, big as a grizzly bear, leaping through the flames at my chubby seven-year-old nephew.
“Ray got there first,” Nolan says. “Took the bite right in his ribs. Another to the neck.”
“Shifted?”
“No. None of us shifted. There wasn’t time.”
