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Overview
Then she meets Tom Anderson. Tom is a wereling--a werewolf who retains his humanity even in his wolf form. He was "turned" by Kate's mother, who chose wisely. Tom and Kate can't help falling for each other. But if they give in to their feelings, Kate will become the thing she hates most. Unless they can find a cure. . . .
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101664810 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Young Readers Group |
| Publication date: | 03/17/2005 |
| Series: | The Wereling , #1 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 329 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The
Wereling
BY
STEPHEN COLE
BOOK TWO
PREY
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
The full moon shone in on Tom Anderson through the truck window. It felt like a searchlight, hunting him down. He shifted his weight on the backseat, squirming clear of the blazing light while still pretending to be asleep.
He hated hitching rides, especially at night. The moonlight put him on edge, made him feel shivery and sweaty and caged in. Feigning sleep spared him the ordeal of making conversation with the over-curious truck driver.
Not that he was exactly the focus of attention, with Kate up front in the passenger seat. There was no doubt in Tom’s mind that it was Kate who had brought the truck screeching to a halt on the highway out of Philadelphia. Tall and slim and dressed all in black, her long dark hair whipped around by the cold October gusts, she was like a secret weapon in the world of thumbing lifts.
Good thing. They needed to get to New York fast.
Opening his eyes a fraction, Tom snuck a look out of the window. Beyond the skeletons of loading platforms and stacks of empty truck containers that lined the turnpike, he saw about a billion pinpricks of light stacked in long, tall grids against the night. They were nearing the city—but maybe not fast enough, Tom decided, as the big, bearded driver stole another lingering glance at Kate.
“So, how come a sweet thing like you is hitching, anyway?”
“Well . . .” Kate shrugged. “Hitching’s cheap . . . and I guess me and Tom just enjoy the freedom.”
Freedom, Tom thought bitterly. Sure: freedom to creep and crawl through this horrible new life that had been thrust on him. Freedom to live in fear, constantly looking back over his shoulder. Waking and wondering if today was the day their pursuers would catch up with them at last.
They had to keep moving, to keep one step ahead. But since they didn’t have the cash for a bus ticket past Philly, Kate—practical as ever—had dolled herself up and they’d hit the highway. He knew she hated to hitch, loathed the way the long-distance drivers looked her over, like wolves salivating over their next meal.
Nice analogy.
Tom shifted irritably in the seat once more.
“You kids are pretty young to be on the road, ain’t you? How old are you, sugar?”
“We’re both eighteen,” Kate answered. “Taking a year off before college.”
Life on the run has made you a pretty good liar, Kate, Tom decided. Kate was actually seventeen, Tom a year younger. He’d been looking forward to his eighteenth birthday pretty much all his life. He’d always imagined it would be the day he’d walk out the front door and suddenly find himself a man, ready to make his mark in the world.
That was before he’d got tangled up with Kate and her family and found his future screwed to hell.
Found himself a werewolf.
“So . . .” There was a pause. “Is Tom your boyfriend?”
“Not really,” Kate said, turning her head away to look through the window. “No.”
Tom indulged himself in a bitter half smile. How could Kate ever begin to think of him as boyfriend material, knowing what he had become? Knowing that if they ever did get together . . .
He imagined the look on the trucker’s face if Kate told him the whole story: that her family were werewolves, creatures believed lost to legend but in reality part of an active and totally secret subculture whose population stretched clear around the world. That as a pureblood female her latent lupine nature would be woken if she mated with another ’wolf. And that Tom had been kidnapped by Kate’s family and held prisoner in their house while they turned him into future son-in-law material—turned him ’wolf too.
The plan hadn’t worked. Kate didn’t want to embrace her lupine heritage. She was determined to stay human. So she and Tom had escaped. But in doing so, they’d made many enemies in the lupine community—including Kate’s mother, Marcie Folan.
The real joke, Tom reflected, was that with all they’d been through trying to stay alive, he had never felt closer to anyone than Kate.
“So you and Sleeping Beauty in the back there, you’re just good friends, right?”
“Right,” Kate replied, a hard, tired edge creeping into her voice. “But Tom is pretty special, you know?”
Special. Uh-huh, Tom thought wryly.
He was what the lupine community termed a silverblood—someone with exceptional resistance to the ’wolf change. They’d turned him in the end, but he’d come out of the whole process a wereling. “Very rare,” Kate had informed him, quoting some ancient, secret text: “A wereling is a resister whose humanity and compassion prevail in the ’wolf.” Which seemed to mean that when the change was on him, Tom could hold on to some struggling, screaming human part of his nature that loathed what he had become.
But each time Tom changed into the lupine state, he wondered if this would be the time he would lose control and give in to the intoxicating power of being ’wolf.
They emerged from a tunnel, and the sky was suddenly neon bright under the orange-pink glare of streetlights. The truck swerved and took an exit. They were heading north, Tom noted.
“So this is Manhattan,” Kate observed. Her habitual deadpan voice made it hard to know if she was impressed or just plain bored.
“Sure is,” agreed their driver. “What a sight, huh? Day or night.”
Tom had to agree. On their left was the wide dark stretch of the Hudson River, and on the right, buildings so high the moon barely peeked over them. As they wove through a crisscross of streets and avenues, Tom felt a sense of genuine awe. It was like he was traveling through a canyon of metal and glass, dwarfed by the gargantuan size of the skyscrapers all around him.
Their driver turned a corner and gave a huge pantomime yawn. “Say, it’s almost two already. Need a place to stay tonight?”
“No thanks.”
“Hey, come on. I got a comfortable place, sweetheart. There’s even room for your friend.”
Kate’s voice hardened. “I said, no thanks.”
“How about a little gratitude, huh?” The trucker’s voice got throatier. “I’ve brought you all this way. Seems like you owe me something in return.”
Tom clenched his fists. He’d been tense before, but now he could feel his heart beat harder with anger. He was about to speak out when he caught sight of Kate in the rearview mirror, subtly shaking her head at him. “Not here,” she mouthed.
“Would you let us out now, please?” she asked the driver.
“Why break up the party?” The big guy pressed a fleshy hand down on Kate’s thigh.
“Let go of her,” Tom snarled, grabbing hold of the man’s thick arm.
“Yeah?” The trucker took a right turn and broke Tom’s grip easily as he did so. “What are you going to do about it, squirt?”
“He’ll turn you into dog meat,” Kate snapped, “unless you stop this truck and let us out right now.”
“Him?” The big man tossed an amused glance back at Tom. “Don’t you want a real man, honey?”
Tom leaned forward and growled at the driver. “You don’t want to know how real I am.”
Kate was winding down the window. “Unless you want me to scream loud enough to wake all Manhattan, you’ll pull over right now.”
The driver cursed under his breath and swung his rig to the side of the broad avenue. “Who needs this? Go on, get out of here, both of you.”
Tom grabbed their stuff and got out. Kate followed him without a backward glance at the red-faced driver. With a last impotent blare on his horn, the man dodged back into the ragged traffic pushing down the avenue.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked her as they crossed to the sidewalk.
“Of course I’m okay,” she said crossly. “You shouldn’t have interfered. I can handle jerks like him.”
“Sorry,” Tom said, a little stung.
Kate sighed. “It’s the full moon,” she reminded him, more gently. “The more stressed out you get, the more you lose control, the easier it is for the ’wolf to get a hold on you.”
Tom looked down at his boots, feeling the prickle on the back of his neck from the moonlight. He knew she was right. “So what do we do now?”
Kate had already taken her guidebook out of her backpack. “I guess we look for the nearest hostel.”
“Can we afford one?”
“Not really. But at this hour I’d sooner find somewhere safe to crash for the night.”
Tom sighed. “Too bad Blood’s not here to lend us an apartment. A little luxury would be nice right now.” They’d made one good friend during their crazy time in New Orleans—Adam Blood, a high-class realtor and head of a small network that kept tabs on the dark side of the city. They both owed him their lives. But when he’d taken a stand against Marcie Folan, Blood had gained a formidable enemy. His life had been in great danger, so he’d gone into hiding.
“I wonder where he is now?” Kate murmured.
“Living it up in the sun somewhere.” Tom forced a smile. “Lucky bastard.” Shivering a little, he pulled up the collar of his denim jacket and walked to the corner to find a street sign. “West 107th Street and Manhattan Avenue,” he called to Kate.
She nodded and unfolded the map at the back of the book.
Tom shoved both hands deep in his pockets and pushed out a deep breath. The moon had placed an itch under his skin, like ants were crawling inside him. Thank God for the tall buildings, which blocked him from its full effect. He paced up and down, avoiding the eyes of people drifting along the street. Any one of them could be a ’wolf, out looking for them. The lupine community was tight-knit despite the distance it spanned, and once the word was out against you, you weren’t safe anywhere. “Do you realize how many people there must be in Manhattan alone, never mind the boroughs?”
Kate knew what he was getting at and swiftly rolled out her stock answer: “If Jicaque’s here, we’ll find him.”
Jicaque—pronounced “Zhi-cah-key”—was the fabled medicine man with the tongue-twister name who might—might—be able to reverse Tom’s lupine condition. According to Kate’s research, Jicaque seemed to be the only chance they had. Unfortunately he was also about as easy to find as smoke in fog.
“Too bad your online contact couldn’t be a little more precise as to where Jicaque’s staying,” Tom remarked.
“He’s working on that,” Kate replied.
“Is he? Anyone could’ve sent that e-mail.” Tom smoothed a clammy hand through his short dark hair, cold sweat spiking it up. “We’ve been tricked that way before. The ’wolves could’ve hacked into his account. Or hacked into him, forced him to spill those passwords you agreed—”
“You know, Tom, you’re right,” Kate said wearily. This was an old argument. “We don’t know we can trust the guy who gave me the info; he’s just a name in a chat room. And say we do manage to find Jicaque—we don’t know that we can trust him either. But since it’s the only lead we’ve got . . .”
Tom threw up his hands. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right, I know.” His insides felt cramped and jumpy. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s got to be the lamest apology I ever heard.” Kate gave him a faint smile, then nodded toward the moon. “But I guess it is your time of the month, huh?”
Tom shot her a look. “You don’t want to make jokes like that when I’m feeling like this.” But Kate was grinning at him, and he found himself smiling back.
“We’re right by Central Park,” she said after a moment. She pointed down the block at a dark mass of trees behind a low stone wall. “We could camp out there for the night.”
“Just you, me, and fifty muggers. Nice idea.”
Kate shrugged. “We could bed down in some bushes. It’s only a few hours till dawn. Then we can get up and start the search.”
“If we haven’t frozen to death first,” grumbled Tom.
“Well, let’s hear your great idea.”
Tom swallowed hard. “I guess if we lie close together, it might not be so cold.”
Kate’s green eyes were cool and inquiring as she looked him over. “Tom Anderson, is that some kind of come-on?”
“Get over yourself!” Tom protested, and turned away so she wouldn’t see him blush.
It was weird to see the dark, hunching shadows of so many trees suddenly rise from the center of the city. The park was quiet and gloomy as they crossed its borders and headed inside.
The wind had dropped, and the landscape held itself as still as the moon. As they pressed on, Tom’s senses kicked into overdrive. He drank in the sweet scent of damp earth and dewy grass. Upwind, a loaded trash can was brimming over with bad smells.
Farther up the path they were taking, he heard a twig snap and caught a tang of sweat and desperation. Tom could almost picture the figure: some junkie, turned animal by his need for a fix, shivering in the foliage and psyching himself up to strike should someone pass by.
The moon seemed to shine brighter, and as its light needled Tom with greater strength, he felt a moment’s kinship with the junkie. The animal inside him was desperate for release, to strike out and taste blood, to bring on the change.
“Tom?” Kate was looking at him, concerned.
“Not this way,” he whispered.
They changed direction. For several minutes they pressed on quietly, searching for somewhere to bed down.
“How about here?” Kate suggested, gesturing to a small huddle of trees and bushes.
But as she started to explore, cracking and rustling through the foliage, Tom hushed her. He could hear footfalls on the wet grass, distant shouts, and ragged breaths getting closer. “People are coming,” he hissed.
Kate looked around, but it was too dark to make out anything clearly. “Should we get out of here?” she asked.
Tom peered more deeply into the gloom. Across the open parkland he could see a kid no older than himself, who seemed to be running for his life. A gang of about ten people was tearing along after him, jeering and calling. Tom could smell the fear on the boy, felt his own heart start to pound faster, matching the rhythm of the kid’s footfalls.
“Tom?” Kate tugged on his sleeve.
“They’re chasing him down. Like it’s a hunt or something.” He turned to her, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, his breath coming fast and shallow as though it were him running.
Kate shook her head. “Leave it, Tom. It’s not our fight.”
“I—I can scare them off,” he said, staggering like a drunk, his voice slurring as the change crept closer. “Just scare them, that’s all . . .”
“Tom?” Kate grabbed hold of his sweaty face with both hands, tried to make him look into her eyes. “Tom, no. Don’t do this.”
But a familiar heat was coursing through Tom’s body. No turning back now. He saw the urgency in Kate’s eyes turn to resignation. Then she moved forward to yank his jacket off. He fell to his knees, fumbling feverishly with the buttons on his cotton shirt. Too late. His torso was already swelling up, and the heavy fabric split at the seams.
He hunched forward on all fours, a sound raking out of his throat that was half choking and half laughter as he went into spasm. Tom’s bones were melting under his skin, remolding themselves into lupine shape. Coarse dark hair pushed out of every pore. He felt a tickle in his gums as his teeth sprouted like spikes and his jaw pushed out. His spine twisted and lengthened, pelvis cracking like a gunshot as it clicked into a fresh position, hind legs twitching as new and powerful muscles fixed themselves there.
Tom reached back his head and bit and snapped at the tattered remains of his jeans. They fell away like the last vestiges of his human form. The moon warmed his bare back like a tropical sun. He began to run, luxuriating in the sweet strength of his sleek lupine body. His heavy paws tore up the ground, his blood roaring in his ears. Dimly, somewhere behind him, he caught Kate’s scent, heard her running after him weighed down with their stuff.
Tom burst out from the cover of the trees just ahead of them all and roared.
Startled, the boy skidded on the wet grass and fell. He swore, his face twisted with pain as he clutched at his ankle. His shadowy pursuers also came slithering to a halt, panting for breath.
Tom leapt over the boy and bared his teeth at them.
They stared at the monster before them. But they didn’t run screaming. Didn’t even flinch. Instead their breathing grew deeper, hoarser. Their eyes began to shine with a sickly yellow light. One by one, they stretched up their arms and then bent forward onto all fours as their bodies began to change.
“Jesus,” Tom heard Kate whisper. “They’re ’wolves too.”
CHAPTER TWO
Kate felt her insides twist. When the change came over Tom, he became a powerful, lithe, deep-chested creature, far larger than a real wolf. Tom’s lupine form, with its dark, lustrous coat and muscular frame, was beautiful in its own way.
But there was no beauty or grace in the monsters that were now facing him. Wiry and rangy like the humans they had been, their fur was mottled and patchy, their teeth as yellow as their eyes, backs humped and misshapen. Two or three of them howled, a chilling sound like babies screaming. The rest, snapping their jaws, padded back and forth or in circles, as if easing themselves into their lupine movement.
Tom turned and glanced back at Kate. His eyes were still dark, still his own—the pale glow of the lupine shone there at the start of the change but soon dwindled and died. That set him apart from all other lupines Kate had ever seen, and she thanked God for this, his wereling strength. It helped her remember that Tom was still Tom, whatever form he was forced to take.
Suddenly Tom threw himself into the pack of awakening ’wolves.
“Tom, no!” Kate screamed.
The noise was dreadful. Barks and growls full of torment and anger echoed out into the starry night. But Kate saw that Tom was running rings around the creatures; he wasn’t attacking them so much as goading them, taking their attention. Distracting them, she realized, so that she might help the boy and get them both the hell out of there.
She broke cover and ran over to their quarry, who was still down on the ground, slowly edging away from the angry pack. He was pretty for a boy, but his delicate features had been spoiled by a long scar that ran down his left cheek. He was olive skinned, Spanish maybe, with shaved hair.
When he saw her coming, he scrambled up painfully and held out his fists in warning. “No te quiero hacer daño,” he said warningly, his voice heavy and scared, “so get the hell away from me, bitch.”
Kate groped around her ninth-grade Spanish for the translation, holding up her hands open palmed to reassure him. “I don’t want to hurt you either,” she said at last.
“You won’t get the chance,” he snarled. He turned and tried to run, but his injured ankle gave way under him and he crashed back down to the ground, swearing.
Kate was about to go after him when she caught sight of Tom. He’d broken clear of the pack and was trying to lead them away. Out for blood, the other lupines went bounding after him, their sinister shapes soon lost to the night.
Ten against one. They could tear Tom to ribbons.
Worried, Kate grabbed her bag and Tom’s stuff and crossed to where the kid lay cursing and struggling on the ground. “What did you do?” she demanded.
“Damn ankle. It’s sprained or something.”
“I mean, what did you do to get a pack of werewolves chasing after you?”
He sneered at her. “And why are you on my case?”
“Because my friend just risked his life trying to save you,” Kate responded fiercely. “You better be worth the rescue.”
He snorted. “Rescue? I know what kind of rescue you got in mind, wolf girl.” He mimed slitting his throat.
“I’m not one of them,” she told him. “They’re chasing after me like they are after you.”
“So why do you hang out with wolf boy?”
“Tom’s not like that scum chasing after you. Did you see his eyes?”
“I guess,” the boy conceded. “Didn’t look like howler eyes. Looked . . . normal.”
“Tom is anything but normal. That’s why the ’wolves are chasing after us too.” Kate glanced about. “Come on. We’d better hide till it’s safe.”
She helped him scramble behind some prickly bushes, then they held themselves as still as possible, straining to hear any sound of the ’wolves coming back.
“I’m Kate,” she breathed.
“Ramon,” the boy replied. “Why are the howlers chasing you?”
“You ever hear of a guy called Takapa?”
Ramon stared at her. “If you messed with Takapa, I don’t want nothing to do with you. He’s the one screwing up this place. There’s no howler bigger than him.”
“That big howler is actually just a scrawny freak with good PR,” Kate told him lightly, but she couldn’t repress a shudder. Takapa was making a name for himself among the lupine community as some kind of freedom fighter. He believed that the ’wolves should come crawling out of the shadows to hunt and kill freely in the human world—and was working on ways to make it happen.
Ramon pointed a finger over her shoulder. “Look who’s back.”
Heart lurching, Kate twisted around.
It was Tom, human again, his pale skin laced silver in the moonlight. He’d reclaimed the tatters of his jeans and was leaning heavily against a tree, soaking wet and shivering.
Kate quickly pulled out the last of his fresh clothes from his backpack. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“There’s water back there, a reservoir or something,” Tom said, gesturing behind him. “I took a swim. They lost my scent and went off the wrong way.” He gratefully pulled on a sweater. “Lucky for us they’re slow and stupid.”
Tom nodded at Ramon, and Kate made some hurried introductions.
“We should get out of here.” Tom eased his arms through the straps on his backpack. “Ramon, do you know a safe place we can stay tonight?”
Ramon shook his head. “No way, ’wolf. You’re mixed up with Takapa.”
“This ’wolf just saved your life,” Kate said. As she spoke, she could hear far-off sirens drawing closer.
Ramon winced like they were going off in his ear. He tried to stand and gasped with pain.”
“Okay,” he said, scowling. “You can hide out at my place tonight. But then you’re gone.”
“Very generous of you,” Tom observed wryly.
Together they helped Ramon up. His clothes reeked of sweat and cigarette smoke, and Kate nearly gagged. But after a few stumbling steps they managed to fall into a kind of limping gait that allowed them to move at a pretty fast pace.
“I hope the police don’t find those ’wolves—for their sake,” Kate muttered.
“They won’t.” Ramon shook his head. “The wolves ain’t as stupid as you think. They stick to the shadows so no one knows the truth.”
Tom shot him a sideways glance. “And the truth is?”
“That they’re recruiting,” Ramon said simply. “Cops don’t know they’re there. . . . The nice people of the city don’t know they’re there. . . . But in the bad neighborhoods, the places that my people live in, those bastards are getting stronger all the time.”
Ramon’s hangout was in a tenement on 110th Street. It was a hell of a walk, but somehow they made it. Tom and Kate helped Ramon up the steps.
He knocked on the pitted, battered old door in a distinctive tattoo. “You better keep quiet about being a howler,” he warned Tom.
“Sure. Believe it or not,” Tom replied, “it’s not something I like to advertise.”
A minute or so later some bolts were thrown and the door creaked open a little.
A Polaroid camera pushed its way out and Tom was blinded by its flash.
“Quit that, Polar,” Ramon complained, and shoved open the door.
Polar backed up and shrugged. He was a tall skinny kid with skin the same color as Ramon’s, but beyond that Tom couldn’t really say, since Polar kept the camera up to his face. He plucked out the developing picture and silently handed it to Kate.
She stared at it, baffled, then slipped it in her purse.
“Life looks better to Polar through his camera,” was all Ramon offered by way of explanation.
They were standing in a filthy, dusty kitchen. Damp mold had crawled up around the black-painted windows, and there seemed to be more plaster on the garbage-strewn floor than on the walls.
The look of disdain was clear on Kate’s face.
“Hey, this is just the lobby,” Ramon assured her, and pointed in the direction Polar was disappearing. “Presidential suite’s through there.”
“Ramon? You back? Tienes algún problema?” A girl’s voice, hard and clear in its urgency, carried through to them.
“No, es nada,” he called back. At once he shook off the support of Tom and Kate and stood up alone.
Tom understood why when a second later, a girl with a nose stud swept into the scuzzy room. She wore a red cropped top beneath a hooded sweatshirt, and tight black pants. Her thick black hair had been pulled back away from her high forehead. Hands on her hips, her wide, appraising eyes full of attitude, Tom imagined she took some impressing.
“This is Jasmine,” Ramon told Tom with a crooked smile. “She loves me.”
The girl held up her middle finger to him. “Bite me,” she said. Her disparaging gaze moved to Tom and then lingered on Kate. “Who you got here?”
“Kate and Tom. They’re okay. Helped me out.”
Jasmine arched one finely plucked eyebrow. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Lost my cell somewhere in the park,” Ramon replied.
“We heard on the radio something was happening in Central Park,” Jasmine went on. “Tony’s gang?”
Ramon nodded. “Turned hairy on me. No chance of us teaming up with Tony’s crew—they’re howlers, all of them.”
Kate was looking at Jasmine in disbelief. “They broadcast about the ’wolves on the radio?”
“Sure,” said Jasmine, her pretty face twisting into a sneer. “It went out on Hot 97.”
“We got a police radio out back, 28th Precinct,” Ramon explained. “We like to know what’s going down around here. Who’d they say it was, Jas—kids?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Damn howler could have its teeth in their necks, they’d blame it on kids.” Ramon took an uncertain step toward Jasmine.
“You hurt yourself?” Tom noticed a flicker of concern on Jasmine’s face.
“I broke my ankle, babe.”
“Sure, you did. Twisted it, maybe.”
“I’m hurt bad.”
“Whatever.” Jasmine folded her arms, turned, and, like Polar before her, disappeared through the door into the next room.
“See?” Ramon grinned at Tom. “She loves me.”
He limped across the ruined kitchen and, with an exchange of nervous glances, Tom and Kate followed.
The kitchen led into a large room painted blood-red, with boarded-up windows. It was lit by a collection of mismatched lamps, lined up in a row along the opposite wall. Cigarette smoke clouded the room, and the bulbs seemed to glow fiercer through the haze, like streetlights in fog.
Six or seven people were slumped on cushions or on one of the two battered leather couches ranged in front of an enormous wide-screen TV showing highlights from a Giants game. One kid, a little smaller than Tom’s kid brother, Joe, was kneeling right in front of it, close enough to count the pixels on the screen. He was shirtless, with grubby-looking bandages wrapped around his shoulder blades. Polar crept up behind the boy with his camera and snapped the back of his head.
“These are my people,” Ramon told him and Kate, almost like he was challenging the two of them to disapprove.
Various grunts, calls, and gestures issued in greeting from the slack bodies in the room as they realized Ramon was back.
But the most enthusiastic reaction came from the little figure with his nose pressed to the TV. “Ro!” he shouted, and bounded over.
“My brother, Rico,” Ramon announced proudly, knocking knuckles with the kid. “Hey, could we smoke less in here?” he called to the others. “You know how it messes with Rico’s asthma.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with me, Ro,” protested Rico fiercely.
“Sorry, man,” called a big guy whose bruised face and resigned tone suggested his life was one long losing battle. “So, how’d it go?”
“Not good, Puff,” Ramon told him. “They’re not interested in banding up. They ’wolf now.”
Puff nodded like he’d known all along and turned back to the game without another word.
Rico looked up at Kate. “The white girl’s pretty,” he observed.
“You think so?” Tom said, mock frowning.
“Know so.” Rico grinned. His cheekbones were so high and sharp you could cut your finger on them.
“Nice TV,” Tom observed.
“Cicero found it and brought it home,” said Rico, pointing to a stocky, muscular kid with shades and a ponytail, spread-eagled over a large cushion.
“He found it?”
Ramon snickered. “Sure, he did. Behind an ex–rental store on 106th.”
“How’d you hurt yourself, Rico?” Kate asked him, gesturing to his bandages.
Rico looked away, seeming suddenly afraid.
Ramon leaned in close to talk to Kate, as if trying to exclude Tom. “Howlers,” he said. “There was some fighting when the Marqueta gang got turned. One of them nearly took off Rico’s shoulder.” He swore. “Kid’s just ten and they done that to him. And the Marquetas are Puerto Ricans, for chrissake. We should be brothers.”
Rico shrugged and drifted off back to the wide screen.
“They bit him?” Tom watched Rico sit back down. “Then . . . isn’t he ’wolf?”
Ramon glared at him. “My brother ain’t a howler. He got sick for a while, but he never turned. You should have seen the ’wolf that bit him. Went off screaming, all this froth coming out his mouth . . . It was awesome.”
Rico grinned. “Guess my blood don’t taste very good.”
“He’s a resister,” Tom noted.
“You got it,” Ramon said. “He’s littler than you, but you ain’t that strong, huh, wolf boy?”
“I didn’t turn without a fight,” Tom muttered. “Now, I think maybe you should tell us what’s been happening around here.”
“I got to take care of this ankle,” Ramon said. “Come on.” He hobbled into the next room. The walls there were covered with graffiti.
Tom and Kate followed him. The view brightened for Tom as Jasmine came back into sight. She was swigging from a carton of milk, leaning against a refrigerator that was so big it half obscured the doorway next to it. To keep the exit usable, the door had been taken off and a long green curtain hung there instead.
On the worktop beside the refrigerator was a battered police car radio unit, electronic entrails spilling out of its casing. A black power cord had been lashed up to its side, snaking into a socket, and the radio squawked quietly to itself like some deranged electronic parrot.
Seeing Kate, Jasmine slunk off to the opposite corner of the room, her nose wrinkling as if she’d smelled something bad. Kate pretended not to notice, but Tom saw a faint blush of color in her cheeks.
Ramon pulled off his Nikes and rested his bare foot on the table. His ankle was puffy and dark. “Get me some ice, girl, and make it better, huh?”
Jasmine snorted. “I look like your mama?” All the same, she opened the freezer door and started rummaging around inside.
He grinned at Tom and mouthed, “She loves me.”