Текст книги "Animorphs - 09 - The Secret"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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1 Animorphs Volume 09 The secret K.A. Applegate *Converted to EBook by Dace K 2 Chapter One

My name is Cassie.

I can't tell you my last name. I wish I could. It's kind of a nice last name.

And I can't tell you where I live or the true names of my friends. Why? Because the enemy never stops looking for us.

The enemy. The Yeerks. They're everywhere.

The Yeerks: a parasitic species from a far-distant planet. All they are is little gray slugs, really. I've seen them in their natural state. They look like big snails without the shell. You could squash one under your foot and it would be helpless to stop you.

But the Yeerks don't live out their lives as slugs. Like I said, they are parasites. See, they enter the head of another species, flatten themselves out, and wrap themselves around the brain. And then they take control.

That's what we call a Controller. A human who isn't exactly human anymore. Or a member of any species that is controlled by the Yeerk in its head.

Maybe you think what I've just told you sounds crazy. I guess if I were you, I'd think it was pretty insane. But sometimes even the craziest things happen to be true.

The Yeerks are here. Everywhere. If you think you don't know someone who is a Controller, you're probably wrong.

The school bus driver, the police officer in the patrol car, the minister in the pulpit, the newsman on TV, the rock star in the music video, the person who smiles at you when you ride by on your bike – any one of them might be a Controller.

Your teacher, your friend, your sister, your mother and father. Any of them. All of them. And you'll never know. Until it's too late.

Until it is too late for planet Earth.

We fight them. But we're just a handful of kids – Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Ax, and me.

We have some special powers, but we know we can't win this alone. We fight in the hope that someday – someday soon – the Andalites will return and help us.

It was an Andalite prince named Elfangor who gave us our powers. He was dying. He was desperate. He wanted to do something to help doomed humanity.

He gave us the power to morph. To absorb the DNA of any animal we could touch. To become that animal.

So we fight the Yeerks and all their Controllers. The human-Controllers who may once have been our friends and relations. The evil, cannibalistic Taxxon-Controllers, those huge centipedes with their open, gnashing mouths and foul smell. And the deadly, dangerous, but formerly good creatures called Hork-Bajir – the enslaved foot soldiers of the Yeerk empire.

3 And we fight Visser Three. Leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only Andalite-Controller in existence. The only Yeerk who, like us, has the power to morph.

The murderer of Elfangor. A killer. A destroyer. The creature who would make slaves of all humans and destroy our planet.

Unless someone stops him. Unless we stop him.

Five ordinary kids and a young Andalite we call Ax, against all the might of the Yeerk empire.

We call ourselves Animorphs.

We're only supposed to use our power for fighting the Yeerks. But there are times when it comes in handy for other things.

My best friend Rachel and I were at school, in the dark and gloomy science lab. The final bell had rung and kids were tearing out of there at top speed, running for the buses or their parents' cars.

You know how it is – when the school day is over you just want out of there. But I had been messing up in school lately. See, I have kind of a busy life. My dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in our barn. I help out there, taking care of injured or sick animals. Plus the whole Animorph thing takes up a lot of time.

Anyway, I had to do a makeup project for science class. I built a maze for a rat I'd named Courtney. I mean, I figured an animal project would be easy for me. I've been more animals than a lot of kids have seen.

Courtney was supposed to find her way through the cardboard maze to the end, where I had placed some tasty seeds and nuts. Then I would make notes on her progress. How hard could that be?

Rachel stared at me. She tapped her foot impatiently. She looked down at her watch. Then she looked up at the clock on the wall.

"You know, school's been out for ten minutes, and here I am, still at school. This can't be right. It's unnatural."

"Why can't she figure out the maze?" I wondered out loud. "What's the problem?"

"A stupid rat? Er, I mean, maybe you have a not very smart rat. That could be the subject of your paper – "My Dumb Rat.""

"What is the problem with you?" I demanded, ignoring Rachel and talking directly to the rat.

I took Courtney from her cage and stuck her in the high-walled maze. "Smell the nuts. Smell the nuts and then find your way through the maze."

Courtney looked up at me and twitched her nose.

4 "That's not an answer," I said. "I need this grade. I am not going to try and explain a D to my parents just because you can't get it together."

"A D!" Rachel echoed. "You're looking at a D? No way."

"Rachel, why do you think I'm here? Because I'm trying to go from an A to an A plus? Yes. I am looking at a D. And I can't bring my parents a D. That would mean weeks of them going, 'Where did we go wrong? We must be failing as parents. We have to spend more time with Cassie, helping her every night with her homework.'"

Rachel shuddered at the absolute horror of that scenario.

"Hey," Rachel said. "Morph the rat. Maybe you can see what his ... her... its problem is."

"I could do that," I said slowly. "But see, if Jake found out... You know the rule-. No morphing except when necessary."

Rachel shrugged. "It's necessary that I get out of here. It's necessary that you don't get a bad grade.

Look at that – two necessities at once!"

I probably shouldn't have let her talk me into it. Except, actually, I'd already been considering it. That's the great thing about Rachel – she's always willing to help talk you into doing something you probably shouldn't do.

"You have to do it, too," I said.

"Why? Why do I have to morph a rat?"

"Remember the time you wanted to scare that guy with the elephants? Wasn't I there for you then? Besides, we can't leave till I try to figure this out."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Ooookay. That made absolutely no sense, but I'll do it anyway. Let's just get it over with."

Acquiring an animal's DNA isn't very complicated. All you do is touch it, and focus your mind on the animal. The animal gets kind of sleepy, kind of dopey. In a minute it's all over, and a new DNA pattern is swimming around inside you.

"I have the feeling this is a stupid idea," Rachel said.

I was piling up books to make steps so we could climb into the maze once we morphed.

"Well, it was your idea, Rachel."

"Oh, yeah. My idea. Like I'm the one who cares how the rat handles a maze. Let's get this over with before someone decides to check in on us," she said. Already, she was beginning to change.

I focused my thoughts, forming a mental picture of the rat. And then ... I felt the change 5 begin.

I was shrinking. Shrinking very fast. For a human, I'm not very big. In fact, I'm kind of short.

But I was a lot bigger than a rat, so it was a pretty big change in size.

My T-shirt and my jeans were suddenly very loose.

I looked at Rachel. Huge long whiskers were growing out of her still-human mouth.

The side of the cabinets beside me grew higher and higher. They had originally been maybe three feet high. Soon they seemed as tall as a three-story building. The grain in the wood looked like huge swirling patterns, like strange paintings the size of murals.

The one-foot squares of tan and green linoleum seemed to double and triple and quadruple in size, until each was as big as a parking space. As I shrank, my clothes folded and billowed down over me like a collapsed circus tent.

My skin turned a sort of pinkish-gray, then suddenly sprouted white fur. My legs were shriveling. My arms were shriveling. My face bulged like a zit about to pop. My nose poked way out, farther and farther. My face became pointed.

And then, the rat's senses replaced my own.

On came the ears, like someone had thrown a switch. On came the nose.

And on came the rat's instincts, bubbling up in my human mind and carrying their messages of fear and hunger and more fear.

"Yikes!" Rachel commented. "Nervous little things, aren't they?" 6 Chapter TWO

The rat's eyes weren't any better than my own. In fact, they weren't quite as good. Like lots of animals I've been, the eyes were better at seeing movement than at seeing colors and shapes.

Nothing was moving, so my vision was kind of, I don't know . . . kind of dull.

I could see Rachel well enough, though. We were made from the same rat's DNA, so were basically the same rat. I could see her long, naked pink tail. That tail is the reason people hate rats, but think squirrels are cute.

That, plus the fact that rats have been known to nibble on humans from time to time.

The rat's hearing was excellent, but it was its sense of smell that was really amazing. I twitched my little rat nose and the whole world sent me messages.

I smelled the chemicals in the cabinets. I smelled the lingering aromas of hundreds of different kids who had passed through the room that day. I even smelled the seeds and nuts in the maze, up on the table.

I felt the rat's brain beginning to surge more strongly up beneath my own. The rat instincts were coming out. Fear. Not the sharp sudden fear a human might feel. It was the eternal fear of a small animal in a world of great big predators.

And the hunger. The hunger of a tiny animal who will spend its entire life, every single minute of its life, searching for its next meal.

But there was also the intelligence.

When you morph an animal, its instincts come through. You don't get its memories, usually, but you do get its instincts. Its basic abilities are there.

This rat was very nervous. It was afraid of being out in the open. It wanted to be next to the wall so that enemies would have a harder time attacking it. I decided that wasn't a bad instinct.

"Maybe we should get somewhere safer?" I asked Rachel in thought-speak.

"Oh, yes, definitely," she agreed.

The little rat legs powered up and we took off. Not fast, really, but it seemed fast because I was so low to the ground. My nose was just a quarter of an inch above the linoleum. As I waddle-walked along I saw huge walls looming over me – the sides of the lab tables. And I saw sparse forests of trees – actually the legs of chairs.

I scooted along the corner of the wall with Rachel right behind me.

"That is not an attractive tail," Rachel said. "I mean, I'm a rat and I still think it looks bad." Then I saw the table where my maze was set up. The real Courtney was up there. I checked out the area.

7 "I think we can climb up my backpack onto the chair. Then onto my sweater, then jump to the tabletop. "

"I'm following you," Rachel said. "Lead the way, Rat-girl." The rat body was amazingly good at climbing and scampering up to the tabletop. You wouldn't think that squat body and those stubby little legs would be good for climbing, but I really do believe that rat could have gone just about anywhere it wanted to go.

I saw the pile of books I'd left as a sort of stairway up the outer wall of the maze. And now that I was rat-sized, that wall really was a wall. It looked about nine feet high.

"You go do the maze," Rachel said. "I'll wait out here." I scampered quickly up over the books. The pictures on the front of my science book looked like huge mosaics made of colored tiles.

I reached the top and gazed down into the maze. I knew I could jump down in there, down into those long hallways, but at that moment I was afraid. It was odd, but the idea of running into the real Courtney made me nervous. I've always felt a little funny about using animals' bodies. It makes me feel a little guilty somehow.

But I had a job to do. I had to figure out why Courtney couldn't find the nuts. She should be able to smell them . . .

"Hey. Wait a minute. I can't smell them, either. Not at all. "

"Can't smell what?" Rachel asked.

"The nuts. I can't smell them."

"Do I care?"

"It's the whole point," I said.

I looked around, puzzled. Then I noticed the breeze. I aimed my rat eyes upward. There, a million miles up, as far away as the moon, was a ceiling fan.

If I'd had lips, I would have smiled.

"Hey. It's the fan. It's blowing the scent of the nuts away. "

"Great. Now can we get out of here?"

I was feeling pretty satisfied with my insight when two things happened at once. First, Courtney – the real Courtney – came zooming around the corner of the maze.

The second thing was that I heard a loud crash, a roar of loud laughter, and the rushing approach of footsteps.

8 Courtney froze and stared at me. I stared at her. Then I looked back at Rachel. Rachel was frozen, same as me.

"HEY, LOOK! RATS!" an impossibly loud voice shouted. A boy, I was sure of that. I didn't recognize the specific voice, but I recognized the tone. He was looking for trouble.

"GROSS!" another voice shouted. "SOMEONE SHOULD EXTERMINATE 'EM. I HATE RATS!"

Two of them. Two guys playing around. Two jerks looking for something to break or destroy.

Two very, very big creatures compared to us tiny rats.

Sudden shadows! Vibrations. Huge movements!

WHAM!

The table shook like it was hit by a massive earthquake!

WHAM! THUD!

A shadow, moving fast, descending on me. I jumped!

THUD!

The tabletop jumped from the impact of the boy's hand slamming down near me.

I felt the maze being lifted. It tilted wildly up on its side. I could see the entire maze, now a wall instead of a floor.

Courtney fell out of the maze onto the table. Now there were three of us, trapped on the tabletop.

"HERE! A BROOM!"

"Bail!" Rachel yelled.

"Run!" I cried.

THWACK!

Something the size of a pine tree slapped the surface of the table. It was a broom handle. The handle swept across the table, coming right at us, a wooden log half my own height.

I jumped. Rats don't look like jumpers, but when they have to, they can.

Up! Over the broom handle, Rachel right beside me. I saw Courtney haul in the other direction.

Run! Run! Run! Rachel and I moved out at top rat speed.

9 The edge of the table!

It was like standing on the edge of a four-story building. It looked like a very, very long way down.

Then, a shadow! A disturbance in the airflow! No time to look! No time to think!

"Aaaaahhhh!"

"Aaaaahhhh!"

We leaped from the edge of the table just as the broom handle slammed down in the very spot where we'd been standing.

The fall seemed to take forever. It was like skydiving. The linoleum tiles looked like some strange farmlands far beneath me.

I hit the floor hard. My legs didn't catch the impact. They were too short. My big furry belly took the blow. But it knocked the wind out of me.

As my mind cleared, I realized the guys were no longer after me and Rachel. They had Courtney in a corner. They were jabbing at her with the broom handle.

"Oh, man," I said.

"If we survive, Jake is going to kill me for this. "

"I'm tired of running," Rachel said. "Let's kick some butt " That, of course, is classic Rachel. We were each about a foot long, counting our tail. So naturally, she thought we should attack some guys the size of Godzilla.

But you know what? I was tired of running, too. And I couldn't let poor Courtney get killed.

She was more than just a science project. Now she was sort of a sister rat.

I aimed right for the leg of the nearest guy. It was the size of a redwood, except that this redwood was blue. Baggy blue denim.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked Rachel.

"I'm with you," she said.

We motored our tiny rat feet and shot forward. Faster, faster, as fast as we could go. Which, happily, turned out to be fairly fast.

Up the pants leg! I saw a flash of skin above the socks. I went for it. My tiny clawed feet grabbed onto that white gym sock and went straight up.

10 It was like going into a tunnel. The rough denim of the jeans scraped along my head and back. The pink flesh curved away beneath me. I dug my claws, front and back, into the skin and hairs of that huge leg, and shot wildly up the back of his leg.

"AAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Suddenly, the boy was no longer interested in Courtney.

"AAAAAAHHHHHH! IT'S ON ME! IT'S ON ME! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF MEEEEE!"

"NOOOO! OH! OH! OH!" the other boy screamed, as Rachel attacked.

"Yaaahhhh!" I cried, as the leg was thrown wildly back and forth. I slammed against the denim wall. I was slammed back against the curved pink skin. I scrambled wildly to hold on as the boy screamed and ran and shook his leg like a lunatic.

"AAAAAHHH! AAAAAAHHH! AAAAAHHHH!"

Out of the science lab we tore. Out into the hallway, with the two guys screaming the whole way.

I turned myself around, with great difficulty, and aimed downward. Out I shot. Out of the pants leg to freedom.

The last I saw of the two guys, they were still running in sheer panic.

I never did see Courtney again. I guess she found a place to live in the school walls.

At least I'd figured out why she wouldn't go through the maze.

Rachel and I found a safe place to demorph. Then we went to her house and gave her little sister a home perm. Business as usual.

11 Chapter Three

That evening, everyone came over. We usually hook up at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Also known as my barn.

I guess we all get together once or twice a week. More often when there's a "mission" of some kind. I was surprised when Jake called to say we should get together because it had only been a couple of days since the last meeting. And as far as I knew, nothing serious had been planned.

I hoped this was only a meeting and nothing else. I had like zero spare time. School. Life.

That stuff takes time, you know?

I was cleaning the cages when the others started to arrive. It was a raccoon cage, to be specific. This raccoon had been hit a glancing blow by a car on the highway. A lot of the highway patrol guys know to call us if they see an injured animal by the road.

The raccoon would be okay, thanks to my dad. But in the meantime, it had to be fed and watered and medicated and its cage had to be kept clean. And all of that was my job.

I was wearing dirty overalls and big tall rubber boots. My arms were deep inside rubber gloves when Rachel showed up.

"Hey, Cassie."

"Hi, Rachel." I was bent over, concentrating on wiping out the raccoon's cage. I could tell the raccoon was seriously considering leaping on my face and chewing my nose.

"Sup Cassie. You get that outfit at Banana Republic? Or is that the new Express line?"

Rachel and I are best friends, but we are very different people. If you just saw Rachel walking by you'd probably think typical airhead mall-crawler. If you took a closer look you'd start to think, No, she's actually very beautiful, not typical at all.

And if you took a third look, she'd probably come over, get in your face, and say, "What are you staring at? Hello? You have some kind of a problem?"

Rachel is tall and blond and beautiful and fearless. She's Xena: Warrior Princess – only without the leather.

We must be the most mismatched best friends in history. Rachel could walk through the mosh pit at Lollapalooza on a rainy day and come out the other side looking like one of those models in Glamour.

I, on the other hand, will show up for my own wedding someday dressed in jeans and boots and socks that don't match.

I stood back from the raccoon cage. I smiled and gave a little twirl so Rachel could admire the outfit. "You like it? It's part of the Ralph Lauren Animal Poop collection."

12 "Someday I am going to knock you over the head, stuff you in a big bag, drag you to the mall, and force you to buy a dress. You can keep the big rubber boots, if you insist, but we're getting you a dress."

"You're kidding, right?" I asked Rachel. You can never be totally sure with Rachel.

She just smiled with her ten thousand bright white teeth.

I heard the sound of bikes being leaned up against the outside of the barn. Then I heard male voices.

"Batman could beat Spiderman? You expect me to take that seriously? Are you insane? I thought I knew you, Jake, but you're obviously an idiot. No offense. Spiderman would annihilate Batman."

Marco. Marco, sounding as serious as Marco is capable of sounding.

"Two words.– body armor. Spiderman's webs would not stick to Batman's body armor.

Homer, stay out here, boy. You can't go in."

That would be Jake. And Homer, his dog. Homer is not allowed in the barn. Being a dog, Homer believes small animals are meant to be chased.

Jake and Marco came through the small side door of the barn. Jake was in the lead, as usual.

If we Animorphs have a leader, it's Jake. He's strong, inside and out. And really good-looking. Also inside and out. I mean, he's just an amazingly cool guy.

Jake has had to grow up a lot in a very short time. It's weird to be a kid, and yet act like some kind of a general or something. We all decide the big stuff together. But when we're in a fight, it's Jake who has to make the little decisions a lot of times. The little decisions that could leave one of his friends dead.

It made me smile to realize that Jake could still enjoy absurd arguments with Marco. I sort of worry about the pressure on Jake.

Jake and I are kind of... you know. We like each other. As in like.

Marco was just behind Jake. He's smaller than Jake, with longer, darker hair, laughing, dark eyes, and an attitude.

Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow glittery and dangerous.

"Cassie," Marco said, "you look beautiful, as always. Your use of manure as a fashion statement is so tasteful." Then he gazed at Rachel and winced. "Yikes! Every time I see you, you're taller. Stop it. Stop growing."

13 Rachel patted Marco on his head. "Don't worry. I don't look down on you for being short, Marco. I look down on you just for being you."

Marco grabbed his chest in pain. "Aargh! And Xena puts another spear in me."

"Hi, Jake," I said, ignoring the usual Marco-versus-Rachel stuff.

"Hi, Cassie," he said. He gave me one of his rare, slow smiles. "Hey, I heard this weird story.

These two guys at school claim they were attacked by a pair of lab rats."

"Really? I didn't hear about that," I said, trying not to make the fakey, shrill sound I always make when I'm lying.

Jake raised one eyebrow and I quickly went back to cleaning out the cage.

"What are we here for?" Rachel asked bluntly.

Jake shrugged. "Tobias told me to get everyone together. He and Ax have something."

Right on cue, we heard a flutter of wings. A hawk shot in through the open hayloft above. It turned sharply, killed its speed, swept its talons forward, and landed neatly on a rafter.

It was a red-tailed hawk. Mostly brown on its back, a lighter, mottled brown and tan beneath.

The bird took its name from its tail feathers, which were the color of rust.

The hawk glared down at us with unbelievably intense brown and gold eyes.

"Hi," the hawk said, a silent voice that we heard only in our heads.

"Hi, Tobias," I answered.

Tobias is the fifth human member of our group. Although he's not entirely human anymore.

See, if you stay more than two hours in a morph, you stay forever.

In his mind and heart, Tobias is still a human being – mostly. But he has the body of a hawk.

He lives as a hawk.

"Hi, Tobias," Rachel said. "I thought maybe you'd stop by last night."

Tobias sometimes hangs out with Rachel. He flies into her upstairs room and watches TV, or reads. Things he can't do in the wild. Human things.

"Um, well, I was going to," he said in thought-speak. "But there was this thing with Ax . . .

"

Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He's the sixth person in our group. He's even less human than Tobias. Ax is an Andalite.

"Speaking of which, is Ax coming?" Jake asked.

"No. He's still out keeping an eye on things. Or four eyes, actually. " 14 "What things?" Marco asked, beginning to sound impatient.

Tobias swooped down to be closer. He landed on the top edge of a stall door. He checked out the many cages. At the moment we had, in addition to the raccoon, a fox, two wolves, a handful of various bats, a really cool porcupine, a pair of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a bear, several doves, a goose, a swan cygnet, a whole group of assorted gulls, a beautiful red-winged blackbird, and a barn owl.

"What happened to the golden eagle?" Tobias asked.

"He's all better so we released him," I admitted. See, golden eagles occasionally kill and eat hawks. "We released him way back in the hills, though. Nowhere near your territory, Tobias.

"

Tobias didn't look too happy. But then, Tobias has a hawk's face, so he never looks anything but fierce. Once he was a very sweet, slightly dopey kid. Jake and he met when Jake stopped some bullies from sticking Tobias's head in the toilet.

"Anyway. I have something to report. It looks like someone is getting ready to start logging in the forest. "

"No way!" I cried.

The others were less upset.

"So what?" Marco asked.

"So habitat will be destroyed! So animals will be made homeless! So old-growth trees will be chopped down to make plywood!" I cried. "That's so what."

Marco frowned. "And I care about this . . . why?"

I started to answer, but Tobias cut me off.

"You don't care, Marco. But you might care about who is doing the logging. "

"I'm guessing a logging company," Marco suggested.

"Yeah. You're right," Tobias said. "Only this logging company has built a command center deep in the forest. A log building, actually, like you'd expect. Except for one little thing. "

"What one little thing?" Jake asked.

"The building is protected by a force field. A force field that seems to stop anything that gets near. I tried to fly closer, and it was like hitting a wall. Also, there are armed guards walking the perimeter around the building, and patrolling up and down the access road. "

"Oh," Jake said.

15 "Guards armed with automatic rifles. "

"Yeerks?" Rachel wondered. "But why would the Yeerks want to be logging in the forest?"

I knew the answer to that question. The Yeerks" plan was all too obvious. "They want to destroy habitat," I said.

"What? Now the Yeerks are out to destroy the deer and the owls?" Marco said with a dismissive laugh.

"No," I said. "It's not owl habitat they want to destroy. They're after a different species."

"Yeah," Tobias agreed. "They're going to wipe out the habitat of the very, very endangered Animorph. "

16 Chapter Four

"The Yeerks are right there in our forest. Fine," Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm for anything dangerous. "Let's go take a look."

"If this is a Yeerk operation, we have to be careful," Marco said. "They're expecting us."

"Expecting us?" Tobias said.

Marco nodded. "Look, the Yeerks believe we're a band of Andalites, right? They think only Andalites can morph. They've figured out that the forest is the only place a group of Andalites could be hiding. Let's face it – if we were Andalites, we wouldn't exactly be able to rent an apartment."

"So we'd be in the forest. Just like Ax is right now." Jake nodded. "They want to use the logging operation as a way to go Andalite-hunting."

"Right. Which means they think we're out in the forest. So they have to be prepared for an attack. They are going to be totally ready for any strange group of animals that show up."

I agreed with Marco. But there was another question that was bothering me. "How did they ever get permission to cut trees in a national forest?"

Marco rolled his eyes, like I was being an idiot. "Who cares? The fact is, they did."

"If we're going to take a look at this place, we can't show up there in a big group," Jake said.

"We split up, go in two groups. In different morphs. We see what we see, but we do nothing.

Agreed?"

Everyone nodded.

"So. If it's okay with everyone, I'll go in with Rachel. I'll morph the peregrine falcon. Rachel, you can morph your bald eagle. Tobias will show us the way. That's a lot of excellent eyes to look things over. Cassie, you go in with Marco. Get a different perspective."

"Why can't I go with Rachel?" I asked. It's not that I don't like Marco. He just grinds my nerves sometimes.

"Because you and Rachel just egg each other on," Jake said.

He knew about the rat thing. He definitely knew. Still, it kind of bothered me. "Oh, you mean like you and Marco egg each other on?"

Jake nodded and gave me a wink. "You could say that. Yep. Exactly."

Ten minutes later, Marco and I were walking across the far fields of my farm, wading through tall grass toward the edge of the forest.

The forest is huge. It reaches all the way back up into the mountains. Thousands, maybe millions of square miles of pines and oaks and a scattering of birch trees sweep down from the mountains all the way to the edges of town. Our farm is right on the edge. Lots of farms are. And some new housing developments and so on.

17 It was a clear evening, so the mountains showed up pink and lavender in the setting sun.

There was a cool breeze, loaded with the smell of wildflowers. Two of our horses were grazing off across the field by the fence. It was a safe area, so we let the horses run free at night in nice weather.

Of course, now that wolves were being reintroduced into the forest, we might have to change that. A wolf pack can bring down even a healthy, strong horse. I know. I've been a wolf.

And I was getting ready to be one again.

We reached the edge of the forest. It began very suddenly. One step was on grass, the next step was on pine needles and fallen leaves. It was darker under the trees. And as we walked into the forest it grew darker still. I craned my neck back. Looking up, I could still see blue sky overhead. But the sun was going down, and night was growing near. Creatures of the day were winding down their activities, and creatures of the night were opening their eyes.

"Might as well morph now," Marco said.

"Yes. We'll move faster in wolf morph," I agreed.