#1 I Still Hate Being A Werewolf.
Scott put his arm around Emmaline's shoulder as the glass doors of the mall slid open in front of them. He had to slow her down from their headlong rush to a more leisurely pace, even though the effort of reigning her in made Scott wince. He could feel her shaking like a rabbit under the claws of the hound. The teenager stunk of fear and her heart beat like a drum solo.
"Find your anchor," Scott whispered in her ear. He would have asked her to recite her mantra, but her pack hadn't had anything like that.
"I can't."
"Then breathe with me." He pressed her close, took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Under her arm, her lungs struggled to match his.
It took a few seconds for her to sync up with his rhythm; it took all of her concentration and in doing so, she left her fear behind. Scott could employ this technique without thinking about it, both on himself and on others. One breath following another, each exhale blowing away the terror clutching at your throat.
Another breath. Another fight. Another day.
Emmaline's panic subsided slowly, almost too slowly as they were standing in the middle of a crowd. Her eyes, which had burned gold in the parking lot, had faded to their normal color, a brilliant green. Her nails were human nails, though the transformation had stripped the pink polish off. Scott smiled to reassure her, despite the pain in his stomach, and finally took a moment to look around him. The food court in the Roseburg Heritage Mall contained a symphony of colorful signs and delicious smells, complete with an Orange Julius, a Cinnabon, a Subway, and a tantalizing shop called the All-American Ice Cream Store.
Scott noticed that a suburbanite mother looked at him in alarm. For a second, he thought that maybe she had noticed the blood or perhaps some telltale sign of lycanthropy, but then he remembered he was an early-twenties Latino with his arm around a white girl who could be in middle school. They didn't need that kind of complication, so he took his arm from around Emmaline's shoulders. "What do you want to eat?"
The girl looked up at him in confusion, her eyes widening comically. "Eat? You want to eat?" "I want to blend in," Scott reassured her. "Being in a well-lit public place is among the safest
places we can be right now, but it will be a lot safer if we look like we belong here." "But you've been shot!"
Glancing down at his side, Scott pulled his jacket down to the better cover the bloodstains on his shirt. He could feel the bullet nestled in his intestines slowly working its way out as his healing coped with the damage. He'd been shot this badly before, so he wasn't worried about it. On the other hand, the wolfsbane with which the bullet had been laced was quickly becoming the real menace. The blood staining his shirt had begun darkening towards black.
"Yeah." He swallowed. "Do you trust me?"
For a second, Emmaline hesitated. It was an understandable; they had only met less than twelve hours ago, and they had been on the run ever since. She nodded suddenly, as if she had made her decision right at that moment.
"Here's a twenty. Go get something to eat and bring me the same thing."
While the teenager headed toward the Hoagie Shack, Scott chose a central table where he could sit in such a way that his abdomen would be hidden from the rest of the shoppers. No one had noticed his state yet, even though there were dozens of people in the food court. It had been worth the risk coming here; their pursuers wouldn't want to start something in public. He pulled out a phone and shot off a quick text, before making sure his jacket obscured his stomach as well as it could. For a moment, he pondered whether it might be better for Emmaline if someone called the cops on him, but he couldn't be sure about that. The local police could have been compromised.
He watched his charge from afar as he waited. It was a moment of peace that passed all too quickly. It might have only been three minutes before Scott caught the scent of the last person he wanted to meet today. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to her scent; he wondered what it might have been like without the constant presence of gunpowder and poison.
"Monroe."
He studied her with all his senses, including checking her posture the way Mr. Argent had taught him. She was only carrying a concealed pistol, but a single wolfsbane bullet might be enough to kill him in his present state. His gamble had paid off. She didn't attack immediately. Instead, she sat down on the next table over, far enough away for them to be able to talk, but not close enough that Scott could lunge at her.
"McCall. It was a good idea, coming here."
"Thanks. I wasn't sure."
"You don't think I'd start a gunfight in the middle of a crowded mall, do you?"
Scott shrugged, barely managing to suppress a wince when he did so. "I've seen you do worse."
"I guess you have." Monroe had the grace to look a little bit ashamed. "But things are different now. There's no Anuk-Ite here to push me to extremes."
"No Gerard either."
"Gerard was my mentor, but he didn't influence me as much as it might comfort you to think. I had made my decision long before I met him; he simply taught me how to hunt more effectively."
"Sure. Whatever. So what's your play here?" Scott had his own idea how things would go, but he kept talking in order to keep Monroe's attention on him and not on Emmaline.
"It's a simple two-fold strategy. I prepared the bullet that I think is still in your gut myself, so it's only a matter of time before it's the end for you as long as I keep you here and far away from any help. I'm also hoping to scare the other one into making a run for it."
Scott's eyes slid to Emmaline, who hadn't yet noticed Monroe's arrival. She was waiting for their food, like any other teenage girl in line at a mall might have done. Being in a public place, she was probably suppressing her enhanced hearing. Born wolves did it by reflex; it was one of the first things that bitten wolves had to be taught. Scott tried to think about how to signal her safely. If the girl turned around and was surprised by Monroe's presence, she might indeed bolt.
"You know she's only fourteen." "I can't really be sure about that."
Scott snarled, softly, his upper lip lifting off his teeth for a brief moment. "You want me to believe that you came after her family—"
"Her pack."
"There's no difference." He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Gerard was your mentor, so you
did your homework. Know thy enemy. So you know she's a child."
"Again, I can't be sure about that. After all, how old is Noshiko Yukimura? Last time I saw her,
she looked like she was creeping toward fifty."
The insinuation that Monroe had gone after Noshiko made Scott claw the underside of the table. At the scraping sound, the hunter's eyes dropped to the vinyl top. Recognizing that her shot had struck true, she smiled at him.
"That's bullshit."
"It's caution. I can't be too careful, after all. We both know hospital records can be faked. What do you think I'd find if I spent time looking through the records of Beacon Hills Memorial for November of 2011"
He could barely bring himself to keep the conversation going. He didn't want to talk to her; he was so tired of her. He didn't want to entertain her anger, or defend himself from her accusations, but he had to. He had to stall to protect Emmaline. "All right, I get it, we're all monsters to you."
"No!" Monroe laughed out loud, bitterly. "That's what you have never understood. While some of you certainly fall under the definition of that word, I'm not a fanatic."
"You're not?"
"Fanatics are incapable of seeing any value in the opposing side, and it's perfectly clear to me that you simply want to survive. It's only you, Scott, that keep trying to make this personal. It's never been about what I endured specifically; it's about the fact that what I endured could even happen in the first place. It's about power, and the harm the power you possess causes simply by its very existence. As long as you and the things like you live in the same world as we do, free to hurt others with impunity and free to pursue your petty feuds at whim, there will be people like me who become collateral damage. You want this to stop? Remove your side's ability to fight your wars without any consequence. Go public."
"You know we can't do that."
"I do know why you think can't. If you did, then you and yours would be the ones in constant danger, instead of me and mine. So, in the end it comes down to choosing one side or the other. I know which side I've chosen. You've chosen yours."
"I ..." Scott couldn't stop himself; the poison was probably getting to him. The metal in table groaned as he bent it. "You think I chose this?"
He had shouted it so loudly that half of the mall looked in their direction. Emmaline turned with the food, and fear filled her eyes at the sight of Monroe. Scott raised his hand and gestured her to come back to the table, hoping that she would do so. After a few tense moments, Emmaline came
and sat down next to him, putting a meatball sandwich down in front of him. No one said anything until the mall had gone back to business and usual.
"Did I strike a nerve, Scott?"
Scott's voice had returned to a reasonable volume. "You know, Tamora, you like to go on and on about how pathetic it is that people had to die so I could play lacrosse. You've said that to me, what, half-a-dozen times? It's worse than you think. Even as those people supposedly perished so I could remain on first line, I never enjoyed it. Not a single game. I was too busy. Sophomore year, I had to deal with my twisted alpha trying to make me murder my girlfriend's family and my co- captain turning into a giant killer lizard. My junior year, I had to deal with assassins pursuing the twenty-five million-dollar bounty on my head. My senior year, I only had to deal with the goddamn Wild Hunt nearly erasing Beacon Hills down to every single man, woman, and child."
Monroe's face wavered at that last point. While she must have suspected something supernatural had happened, she hadn't known the truth about the Wild Hunt. Few in Beacon Hills did.
"I'm twenty-one, and most people my age are getting ready to finish undergraduate school. For the last five years, I haven't gone longer than six months without sustaining an injury that would leave a human being dead or crippled. I felt my heart stop three times while I was still legally a minor. The first woman I loved died in my arms; the second one I loved is still trapped in what I think might be another dimension. You're a guidance counselor, so you've got to know what teenagers want, don't you? You're a trained hunter, so you probably know my entire life story by now. So tell me, please, how is it fucking possible that you think I chose this? I hate ..."
Scott bit his tongue so hard he drew blood. Emmaline was sitting right next to him. She was a born wolf, and she wasn't responsible for anything that had happened to him. Her family had been scattered by Monroe's assault; they could all be dead. He couldn't be sure enough to tell her one way of the other. She didn't deserve to hear him say what he had been about to say.
On the other hand, Monroe didn't need him to finish. She hadn't gotten to where she was by being indifferent; her ability to understand others is what made her dangerous. "Well, you won't have to worry about it for much longer."
"You think so?"
"I do. It doesn't matter how you feel. I'm not letting you get away this time."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Monroe. Actually, no I'm not, but I was taught by my mother to be polite. You see, I've been poisoned enough that I know exactly how long I have left by the way my body is reacting. I want you to imagine, for just a second, what it means to possess that skill. Anyway, my father will be here long before I'm out of time, with his badge, and his gun, and his fellow agents, and the antidote."
Monroe's mouth thinned out as she tried to work out if he was bluffing.
"Go on, Tamora. I've known about the people you have watching my dad. Call them." Instead, she texted them; they didn't reply immediately.
"Since you aren't going to get what you want today, let's talk."
She locked eyes with him.
"I don't want to do this for the rest of my life, Tamora. I want to go to school. I want to have a
career. So what has to happen for me to get what I want that doesn't imperil the lives of people like Emmaline?"
"I told you—"
"You already claimed you're not a fanatic, so there has to be room for compromise. You know damn well why we can't go public."
She wagged her finger at him. "I said I wasn't a fanatic because I can see your side, but there is no middle ground we can reach. I can no more compromise with you than you could have compromised with La Bête de Gévaudan."
Scott heard the conviction in her voice; he saw the determined set of her jaw. In a way, she was more dangerous than Gerard. Deaton's voice echoed from Scott's memory: "It can be pretty extraordinary what the force of your own will can accomplish." Monroe believed.
He trembled for a moment. "So what do you expect me to do?" "I expect you to die."
The tenseness of the moment was ruined by her phone beeping. She read the message and then sneered wordlessly at him. But she also got up without another word and left.
"What do we do now?" Emmaline asked.
"My dad won't be here for a few minutes." He gave her the best smile he could; it was all he could do. "Pass the salt."