Dirty Blood by Heather Hildenbrand Read Free Book Online Page B

felt it, of course.”
    “Huh.” Wes leaned back on the couch, staring at a
spot on the floorboard.
    “Why do you ask?” Jack pressed.
    Wes shook himself from his thoughts and looked back
at Jack. “Because I can’t sense her, at least not as a Hunter.”
    Jack sat back. “At all?”
    “There’s something… but it’s like nothing I’ve ever
felt.”
    “Describe it.”
    Wes paused, obviously concentrating on pinpointing
what he wanted to convey. “Well, scientifically speaking, instead
of repelling, it sort of attracts, like a magnet.”
    “Really.” Jack rubbed his beard, his eyes glinting
with fascination as he looked back and forth between us.
    At Wes’ description, my heart made a couple extra
hard thuds in my chest, but I ignored it and told myself that in no
way did he mean anything resembling a physical attraction. Still,
something about his explanation seemed to fit how I’d felt about
him that first moment I’d seen him in my room, and part of it – at
least for me - was definitely physical attraction. I noticed the
two of them had fallen back into some sort of silent eye
communication. I thought only girls could do that. “Hello. You guys
are talking about me like I’m not even here. Can somebody please
fill me in?”
    Both of them glanced at me but Jack was the one who
spoke. “Tara, how do you feel right now?”
    “Uh, fine, I guess. Confused.”
    Jack smiled. “I meant physically. Do you feel
anything … different happening to your body?”
    “Just a little cold,” I said.
    “Nothing else?”
    “Goose bumps.”
    “Tell me about that.”
    I raised my eyebrows as if to say, ‘are you sure’ and
‘this is weird’ all at once. He just nodded for me to answer. “Um.
My skin sort of tingles and itches all at the same time. Like I
have ants crawling on me or something.” I shrugged. “It happens
sometimes.”
    Jack looked back at Wes who was watching me with
narrowed eyes. Then he faced me again. “And when did that start,
exactly. When you saw Wes? In the car? At my house?”
    “When we came inside, I think.”
    Jack rubbed his beard. “Have you felt this way any
other time?”
    I thought about it. “Yes. Last night with… Liliana.”
I had to struggle to say her name out loud. Mostly, I didn’t want
to remind Jack of it until I knew for sure that he wasn’t going to
try to take a bite out of me in revenge. “And maybe other times.
Like I said, I get goose bumps a lot.” I watched him and Wes
exchange another cryptic look. “Why? What does it mean?” I glanced
at Wes again who was looking less angry and more perplexed by the
moment. Jack cleared his throat.
    “The feeling you have right now is something every
Hunter feels when a Werewolf is nearby. Sort of an alarm system
built into your body. It lets you know when we’re nearby so you
aren’t caught off guard,” Jack explained. “Werewolves have the same
thing.”
    “So, you’re saying the goose bumps are like an alarm
system for Werewolves?” It was an anomaly that I’d always dismissed
as a weird personal tic or something. Now Jack was telling me that
every time I’d ever felt chilled, there’d been a Werewolf
nearby?
    “Yep.” Jack sat back in his chair and propped his
feet on the coffee table, completely at ease. He looked like he’d
just accomplished a full day’s work, and was happy to be done now.
But I had even more questions now, than when I got here.
    I looked at Wes, the wheels slowly turning, putting
things together. “And it’s a big deal to you, because you can’t
sense me.”
    “And apparently you can’t sense me, either.” He
watched me, and I knew he was waiting for me to disagree, or at
least admit I felt the magnet thing with him, too, but I kept my
mouth shut. No way was I admitting, out loud, to this boy that I
was attracted to him, even if he did think it was scientific. When
I didn’t respond, he turned back to Jack. “Have you ever heard of
this?”
    “No, I haven’t,”