Raised by Wolves

Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

JANGLING KEYS STARTLE me from a dream of fangs. Fur.

Family.

I’m up and yelling at the cop before I’m even all the way awake. “This is cruel and unusual punishment! The TV’s on all night! My bed smells like piss. I can’t even see the damn sky!”

“Good morning to you, too,” the chief says.

Holo groggily lifts his head. “Breakfast?”

I swear, all that kid thinks about is food. He’d stay in here forever if it meant daily hamburgers.

“Not quite yet.”

Holo growls. But it’s a quiet little rumble because he’s still half-asleep.

The chief says, “Today we gotta hunt for it.”

Does this cop think he’s going to shoot some poor deer with his government handgun? Has he gone crazy?

Then the door to our jail cell swings wide open as the chief walks away down the hall.

Yes, he’s definitely gone crazy.

And I’m so surprised that I’m frozen. All that time I spent thinking about how to escape, and the chief just opens the damn door! Is he letting us go?

And are we really going hunting?

“Do we get to go home?” Holo yells.

There’s no answer.

“What now, Kai?” Holo asks softly.

I know we could run. We could sprint through town and vanish into the trees, and that small-town cop would never find us again. But we came here for a reason. And I’m not ready to give up on it yet.

Even though everything’s been awful since we came out of the woods.

Except the grocery store. That was pretty fun.

“We follow him,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

I can read a wild animal a lot easier than I can read a police chief. But I say, “Yes, I’m sure.”

Outside the station, the sun’s shining and the birds are going crazy. In the two days we were in jail, spring has taken over. I hate that I missed it.

Holo sniffs the air and sighs. “Finally I can breathe,” he says.

The chief’s waiting by his cruiser. He opens the back door. “Hop on in.”

I narrow my eyes at him. They’re watering from the brightness. “Where are you going?” I ask.

“We’re going on a hunt for breakfast,” he says.

“You can’t hunt in a car ,” Holo points out.

The chief holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. “All right, you got me there,” he says. “I said a hunt, but I really meant a drive.”

“Why would you say a hunt if you didn’t mean it?” my brother asks.

Poor, innocent Holo. He doesn’t understand that people hardly ever mean what they say. Me, I must’ve been born knowing it somehow.

Wolves can maim and kill and steal. But they can’t ever deceive you, because they don’t know how.

“The chief was making a joke,” I say to Holo. “Not that it was funny,” I add.

I give my brother a little shove. “Go on, get in.” When he hesitates, I sigh and go in first, sliding across the hard plastic back seat. I pat the spot next to me, and Holo gives a whimper and climbs in.

It takes less than a minute for the chief to drive us through the town of Kokanee Creek, because it’s only five blocks long. Then we’re on the highway and the car picks up speed.

I grip the door. I hate seeing the world rush by so fast. Holo’s turning green around the edges. Seems he doesn’t like it much, either. Just when I think Holo’s going to barf up whatever’s left of last night’s dinner, the chief pulls into the parking lot of a squat brick building.

“Wendy!” Holo says. “Wendy, Wendy, Wendy.”

The chief grins at him in the rearview mirror. “Considering this might’ve been the first word you ever said in my presence, young man, I thought you might enjoy getting breakfast here at Wendy’s.”

“There’s food inside?” Holo asks.

This seems like a dumb question, but in fairness my brother’s never seen a restaurant before.

“You bet,” says the chief.

“Is it any good?” I ask. I’m not as easily excited as Holo is.

“Not really. But it’s hot, and you’ll have it in your hands about thirty seconds after you order it.”

“Wendy, Wendy, Wendy,” says Holo in a singsong.

The chief’s expression turns worried, like, Is he okay in the head?

I won’t pretend I haven’t wondered that myself once in a while.

I knock against the car door with my elbow. “Are you going to let us out?” There aren’t any handles in the back. We’re still caged animals.

“Patience,” the chief says. He drives around to the back of the restaurant and comes to a stop in front of a big sign covered in pictures of food. HOT ’N JUICY CHEESEBURGERS ,” it reads, and MAKE IT A COMBO!

Whatever that means.

“Welcome to Wendy’s,” the sign says. “May I take your order?”

Holo jumps back. I start laughing at him; I can’t help it, even though the voice scared me, too.

“What do you two want?” the chief asks us.

“Does the magic sign have any suggestions?” Holo asks.

The chief looks at him quizzically, then pokes his head out the window. “We’ll have a couple of sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, a hot honey chicken biscuit, and two breakfast Baconators. Two orange juices and one large coffee, black.”

After the sign reads his order back to him, he drives forward again and stops in front of a small window. It slides open, and a pretty girl hands him a couple of white paper bags.

“Have a nice day,” she says. When she spots us, her eyes widen, like she’s surprised to see two kids stuffed in the back of a police car.

I bare my teeth at her. Yeah, that’s right—we’re dangerous.

The chief passes the bags through the partition. My mouth’s already watering. I unwrap whatever little breakfast sandwich my hand touches first and take a giant bite.

“Whaddya think?” the chief asks, looking all pleased with himself.

“You were right,” I tell him. “It’s hot and it’s fast. And it’s not that good.”

“Disagree,” Holo says, his mouth full of biscuit. “ Absolutely disagree.”