Howl for Me (8 page)

“Our baby will be perfect. I hope he’ll have his daddy’s eyes.”

That was the first time I thought of the little thing growing inside me as anything other than an ‘it.’

“You’re probably not even a week old, and I’m already making decisions for you.”

I smiled, and another couple tears rolled down my cheeks.

“I promise, I won’t be too overbearing,” I said. “Okay, maybe not promise. But, I’ll try. I know your daddy is going to be proud of you, no matter what. I will, too.”

Then, from out of nowhere, I had a horrible vision of Damon never coming back. I saw him and Devin being ambushed, on the way back from Louisiana. My happy tears turned into sad, desperate ones.

It was just my imagination, just me being emotional, I knew – or hoped, anyway.

But, I couldn’t shake the visions. No matter how much I clenched my eyes shut and concentrated, all I saw was Damon’s face – hurt, bleeding, dying. I needed to stop, wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.

Trembling, I closed my eyes and wrapped my fingers around the pencil I’d scribbled the note about my story with, and sat down, steadying myself in the chair, and taking a deep breath.

“All right, Lily,” I said to myself, just to have some noise around. “All right. Get a grip. Everything’s fine. Nothing is happening. Nothing
has
happened. It’s just the green thing, the vision, whatever, getting the best of me.”

I’d been fiddling with my pencil, just doodling to ease my mind some, like some kind of moving meditation.

I remembered what Damon told me to do before – to just breathe, slowly, in and out – and filled my lungs. I trembled as I exhaled, but that was all I needed. The panic began to fade, the worry turning into excitement. Between the doodling and the drawing, I’d got myself back to level.

Slowly, I nodded to myself, collecting my nerves. I thought maybe I should call Hunter. It was getting to be around noon, and, knowing him, he was hungry. Hell, knowing
me
, I was hungry. Just thinking of food, had my stomach growling.

I reached for the phone, but just as I lifted it to command the tiny robot to dial Hunter, it started ringing.

“Oh! hey!” I said, surprised. “I was just about to call you. How’d you do that?”

“You’re the witchy one,” Hunter said, with a chuckle. “I still get little twinges, every time I go past that cabin. You sure you didn’t cross any wires in my head when you were in there?”

“It’s good to hear your voice,” I said, with surprising honesty, and with a surprising shake in my voice. “It’s been a rough morning.”

“Hey, hey. What’s going on? You okay? You and Damon have a fight, or something?”

“No,” I said. “Nothing like that. We couldn’t even be fighting, if I wanted to.”

And the truth was, I’d rather be fighting than have him gone.

“He’s out of town for a day or two. I hope it’s a day or two. Pack business,” I said, not wanting to go into details.

“Oh, no,” Hunter said, with a sigh. “Is it anything I need to know about?”

I shook my head even though he wasn’t there to see.

“I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. But, hey, that’s nothing to worry about. You’re coming for a nice vacation, and I’m dumping my worries all over you. Good news!” I changed the subject, more for my own benefit than for his. “I’ve got good news!”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Do I have a girlfriend?”

I snorted so hard that I would’ve shot coffee out of my nose.

“Well, I’m not sure if you have a
girlfriend,
exactly, but Cat did agree to go out with you.”

“Son of a bitch!” Hunter swore. “People in this town have no idea how to drive.”

“Huh? You’re here, already?” I asked, a little surprised. “I thought you weren’t gonna get here for another hour or so.”

“Left a little early. What can I say? I was excited to see my pals. And anyway, things haven’t been the same in Scagg’s Valley since you guys were here. Everyone’s gotten all nervous about going out. They’re all scared of that that warlock stuff you guys fought off. Boring as all hell.”

“Well, if you’re here already, want to get some lunch?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Hunter laughed. “Yeah, I’m the one who shoulda married this girl. Hell yeah, I want some lunch. Where am I headed?”

I gave him the address of the deli that was, basically, always on my mind. I shot off a quick message to Cat on the off chance she wasn’t doing anything. Then I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.

This was exactly what I needed – a little break from the intensity, from the excitement.

I checked the mirror, and sighed. I just had to think that stuff, again – all the calm-before-the-storm business. I couldn’t leave it alone.

But, no matter what, I had friends. And, I had Damon. That would make it all okay.

I checked the clock on the way out the door. Somehow I’d been staring at the mirror and fretting for almost ten minutes.

As I sat down and fired up the ancient Suburban my grandpa gave me as a combination getting-married and I’m-getting-a-new-truck gift, my phone buzzed with a text. A moment later, another one came through.

I didn’t bother looking at them until the first red light between the house and the deli.

Fully expecting to pick it up and see Hunter lusting after a sandwich, I was more than a little amused to find him lusting after something else, entirely.

The first was from Hunter.

“Lily,”
it read
. “You’re a golden goddess.”

I crinkled my face up, not really sure what he was talking about.

“You’re some kind of genius, Lily. I owe you BIG,”
the second one, from Cat, said.

This was getting ridiculous.

Almost on cue, it buzzed again with a picture message. I couldn’t believe it. Cat and Hunter, out front of the deli grinning like idiots made me grin. I never played mate-maker before, but I apparently had a gift for it. Second career, if the writing thing didn’t turn out.

––––––––

T
he long trip was almost over.

Damon rolled over and spat the first mouthful of Arizona desert he’d tasted since leaving almost five days ago. The ground underneath him was cracked and hard. He rubbed dust out of the corners of his eyes.

Dawn wasn’t for another hour, maybe two, and that was just fine. He and Devin only stopped because Devin wouldn’t shut the hell up about how much the zip-ties on his wrists hurt. At first, Damon hadn’t thought it would work. Plastic ties on a werewolf? How could it?

It turned out to be like rubber bands on an alligator’s mouth. Devin couldn’t get enough leverage to pull his arms apart, so there he was. Stuck.

And anyway, Damon put a pair of silver cuffs on top of those plastic zip-ties, just in case. If Devin managed to break the plastic, he’d be in for a world of hurt.

Damon rolled to the other side, spat out another mouthful of red grit, and stood. The air coming across the desert was so cool that he’d slept bundled up in both a sleeping bag
and
all his clothes. He’d been warm enough, but being so bundled up made it hard to hear anything going on. He didn’t like that one bit.

When he found Devin broken and bleeding by the side of the road, his brother told him someone was chasing him – chasing them, but he wasn’t sure who. They’d been running for the better part of two days.

He hated sleeping almost worse than anything. Out here, he felt vulnerable and helpless, especially when his only companion was the brother who hated him.

It took most of a day, and a whole lot of convincing, to get Devin to calm down enough to ride, but once he had, the going hadn’t been too tough.

But of all the trouble – being chased, having to deal with Devin – the hardest part for Damon was missing Lily. In a distant second was listening to his brother whining.

Damon stretched, then shoved his fists into the small of his back. He bent backwards, twisting in either direction, until he got a few satisfying pops.

That’s when he first realized how quiet the morning was.

One thing that never happened with Devin, was quiet.

Damon looked around to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Devin’s bike was propped up against a tree, and he could see part of his brother’s jacket, where he was leaned against it, between the wheel and the frame. But still, something was wrong.

Damon dug his fists into his eyes, and rubbed the two hours and change of sleep from them. If there was one thing he’d learned about his brother, it was that trusting him was always the worst possible idea.

But, there he was, asleep, behind his parked motorcycle.

Slowly, Damon walked to a tree and pulled some jerky out of his jacket pocket. The stuff was tough and hard, and only tasted vaguely like the advertised hot sauce. At least it kept his stomach from growling. He and Devin stopped almost right after the Arizona state line, just far enough from the road to throw anyone following them. Now, he knew, it was just a matter of time, and a matter of Damon deciding when to wake up his complaining brother, and they’d be in Fort Branch before noon.

Hopefully.

A wind kicked up, cold and harsh, and the dust it carried stung Damon’s eyes. He pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth and squinted into the distance.

The wind wasn’t letting up, though, not like it usually did. It just kept grinding away. Before he knew it, he was leaning forward, trying to keep from moving backwards. Something creaked, a brush-tree branch, probably, and then snapped behind him.

A pair of headlights – or, maybe, two motorcycles moving abreast – approached from the far off horizon. Squinting into the blowing dirt, they were just faint little halos, but he was sure he saw them.

Damon turned back toward Devin’s motorcycle, just in time to see the big metal beast start to lurch, threatening to fall and crush the somehow sleeping wolf, underneath it. Quickly, Damon made his way across the thirty or so feet that separated him and Devin’s bike.

When it started wobbling, he moved faster.

Then, just as he was next to the bike, a huge gust blew from the east – from the direction of the road – driving cold grains of sand against the skin on Damon’s neck.

With a groan that sent a thrill of nausea up Damon’s chest, the bike tottered.

The fifteen-hundred cubic centimeter motorcycle, that probably weighed a thousand pounds, tipped, and collapsed.

In a half-panicked fury, Damon grabbed the handlebar and wrenched it off the ground, grunting with effort, until he heaved the metal mass off his brother. He swore and pushed it over, in the other direction.

It took about a half a second before he noticed that the jacket sticking out from underneath the frame was empty.

And then, before he could blink again, a roar filled his ears, and a shoulder slammed straight into the small of his back.

Damon went down into the dirt, face first. His brother’s heft drove all the air out of his lungs, and he gasped, hard, trying to suck air.

“I swore I wouldn’t let you get away with what you did,
brother
,” Devin hissed, flipping Damon over on his back, and ramming a fur-covered fist into his teeth, busting his lips wide open. “You didn’t believe me! You pulled that holier-than-thou Skarachee bullshit, and you threw me out! Like you had the right.”

He pulled back his arm and swung wildly. That time, Damon turned, just as the fist that would have probably broken his nose and loosened a tooth or two, whizzed past and slammed into the ground.

Throwing his knee up into Devin’s back, Damon flipped him over and reversed their positions. He pinned his brother’s arms, and threw his head back, roaring savagely at the barely-visible moon.

Off in the distance, motors hummed. The wind still blew, and those awful, damn grains of sand still stung him, as the cold wind beat against Damon’s back. Devin swung a fist at him, but Damon just turned his shoulder and deflected the blow.

He caught his brother’s fist, as Devin recoiled. Damon squeezed so hard that the wolf underneath him whimpered a bit. The hair on the back of Damon’s neck, running down his spine, grew hard and stiff and wiry, and he felt waves of power course through him.

Damon’s muscles swelled, his fists twisted and elongated, and the next time Devin threw a wild, poorly aimed, but jaw-shattering punch, Damon answered. First, he countered with a slash across the chest, then a head-butt that broke Devin’s nose, and finally a brutal shot to the ribs.

Behind them, those motors still hummed. The wind still blew, but it didn’t matter. Damon and Devin both had waited for this – to settle whatever differences they had – for so long that letting it out was pure, delicious catharsis.

Damon landed two hard jabs before Devin finally drew up his arms and deflected one. The slick, black-furred wolf on the ground rolled left, and then right. He managed to unbalance Damon then got enough leverage to get out from under him.

Moving backwards, into the wind, Damon steadied himself. He grabbed the part of his jeans that split around his swelling thighs and ripped it off. He wasn’t going to let his brother get any advantage he could control.

For a moment, they just stood, staring at one another. Devin’s eyes shimmered in the yellow moon, and Damon’s burned green and gold. Both wanted a piece of the other, but neither man wanted to make the first move. They both knew better than to lunge, but someone had to go first.

Damon flinched his shoulder and feinted a charge.

Devin took the bait.

Completely out of control, the black wolf snarled and slashed at the air, expecting to catch his brother in the throat with his claws. Instead he caught only air. In the split second between Devin swinging wide, and his realizing what happened, Damon pounced.

He drove his fist into Devin’s jaw, twisting his brother’s lupine head around in a terrible whiplash. Then, before Devin recovered, Damon cracked his other cheek with an elbow, grabbed the back of his head and brought it down to his knee. Devin screeched as his lips broke. He turned and spat a tooth onto the ground, never taking his eyes off Damon.