Wolf Hunter Read Online Free

against the wall, and the man... wolf... man reaches in and drags him out. He stares at his family’s shredded remains, at the hole where his father’s chest used to be, at his older brother Sunny’s missing cheek that their mother had kissed not fifteen minutes before. Jaylen can still feel the gentle pressure of her lips on his own cheek. He tries not to let his gaze go over to her, but he can’t resist, and her bloodied nightgown sears into his memory with the rest of the desiccation.
    “Why?” It’s the only word Jaylen can say, the only word that matters. It is the last word he will say for two years.
    The man shrugs. “Nature.”
    Jaylen steels himself to attack, but the man strikes and knocks him down. He towers over Jaylen, who lands at his father’s feet. “Now that I’m not hungry, I’d like to play.” He tilts his head toward the door. “You best run, son.”
    He grins to bare his growing canines. Jaylen, shoeless, sprints for his life.
    He awoke in a panic, clutching the motel’s scummy comforter. Denton—he’d learned the wolf’s name later—had chased him up a tree and trapped him all night.
    “ Hello, Jaylen.”
    Jaylen forced his head to turn. The girl from Curlicue’s beamed at him.
    “Remember me? Leslie?”
    “ Don’t recall wanting your name.”
    She feigned a pout. “Oh, my fault. Thought you might care about a sixteen-year-old you murdered.”
    “ That last word ought to tell you different,” Jaylen said. “Leslie,” he added, pointed. “You and your dad are monsters. Your mother too, I’d bet. I’ll find her next. End her like I did you.”
    Her smooth pink face fell. She tugged on her yellow dress. “Trevor said I looked so pretty in this. He was going to ask me to prom.” Tears rolled fat and round down her face. “What am I supposed to do now?”
    “ Save it for someone who cares.” A wave of nausea sent him flopping onto his stomach, tied legs twisting. When he settled, she was gone, but another took her place, then another. Crying, screaming, bleeding from the wounds he’d made. Jaylen closed his eyes, listened to his strangled breathing, and did his best to ignore them.
    He’s sixteen, dropped out of school, and prime suspect in his family’s murder. The case falls apart when he fails every psych test they throw at him, when he doesn’t speak. They stick him in a loony bin and he draws wolves and men and wolfmen and looks at the charts when the aides aren’t attentive and sees euphemisms for “crazy” written on his. He gets out when he’s eighteen; homeless, penniless, and hopeless until a veteran he sits beside outside a grocery store takes a shine to his art (“I seen wolves too, son.”) and puts a knife in his hand, points him at an oak tree and tells him to throw. He does, hour after hour, day after day, until he hits the same spot each time. Until he’s ready.
     
    JAYLEN PULLED OPEN the motel’s thick curtains to let the afternoon’s sunshine in. Good. He could give himself a few hours “sober,” get some work done, and take the drug again in the evening. He’d learned not to waste these buffer hours, not if he wanted to stay standing. The risk of being seen had stopped him from disposing of the bodies as thoroughly as he would have liked, but Jaylen had done the best he could given the parameters he had. (Shut them in the cellar behind a stack of boxes and wiped the place clean.) Depending on how caffeine-addicted the townsfolk were, he figured he had anywhere from an hour to a day before people noticed they were down two citizens. Hell, they could have figured it out while Jaylen was playing self-bondage games. From there, he had maybe a half day before a search heated up. A day after that and he’d come under suspicion as a stranger in town. It was an old song he’d sung a hundred times before.
    He’d need to move the bodies.
    For that, he’d need nightfall and to know the layout of the town. Where was the best place to disappear a