Derik's Bane (10 page)

“It’s just that this is an extremely insane idea,” she was explaining, like he’d gone retarded.

He grabbed the door handle again and tried to smell her hair without her catching on. Roses and cotton—yum! And how cute did she look in the convertible with those red curls flying all over the place? Her nose was sunburned now, and he even liked the shade of pink.

She turned to give him a suspicious look, and he held his breath in mid-sniff. Then, to distract her, he said, “Show me another place that has all the cars lined up, with their keys in the ignition.” He spread his arms to indicate the Enterprise Car Rental lot. “Huh? Show me. That’s all I ask.”

“Show
me
another place that has
less
paperwork on any one of these cars. You don’t think they do a head count or whatever—a grille count—before the last guy goes home for the day? They’ll know it’s gone in a cold minute.”

“So we find another car rental place,” he said, “and steal from there.”

“Help you folks?”

They both spun, Derik swearing under his breath. Sure, the guy had snuck up on him from upwind, and sure, Sara was sort of distracting—she kind of jammed his radar, so to speak—but that was no excuse. No fucking excuse!

“We were just looking,” Sara explained, after clearing her throat and trying a smile.

The fella who’d hailed them looked more nervous than they did—and more angry than Derik felt. His gray suit was rumpled, and his tie was flying over his shoulder in the breeze. His brown hair was wisping about, and his watery blue eyes were alternately starey and darting. Derik started to grab Sara’s shoulder to pull her behind him when he got a whiff of burning silk—the smell of desperation.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered.

“You folks need a car? I’ll tell you what. You can have that truck right over there.” He pointed to a shiny, brand-new, red pickup truck, complete with supercab and about fourteen antennas.

They looked at the truck, glowing at them almost like a mirage, or the Holy Grail—Derik expected to hear a choir of angels humming—then looked at the sales guy.

“I’ve had it with this place,” he muttered. “Promote
Jim Danielson
over me? The guy comes in an hour late every day and leaves an hour early. And don’t get me started on his lunch breaks. They’re more like miniature leaves of absence. The guy’s fucking the manager’s daughter so
he
gets the promotion?
Him
?”

“We, uh, don’t want you to get in any trouble,” Sara said.

“And we don’t want you to get any closer,” Derik warned.

“No, look, it’s okay, see?” The frustrated Enterprise employee grinned, which looked fairly ghastly. “You guys know how to drive a standard transmission, right?”

“Driving a stick is so
not
the big problem in this scenario,” Derik said.

“Shhh!” Sara’s elbow jabbed him in the side. “Let him finish.”

“It’s no problem. I’ll just fix it in the computer. Nobody will even know about it. Go on, take it. You can help me stick it to my boss.” He stared off at the horizon for a moment, looking haunted. “I just—not today. I put up with it, and I put up with it, but for some reason, today I just—I can’t do it. Not one more day. So go on.”

 

 

 

“STOP LOOKING SO DAMNED SMUG,” DERIK TOLD

Sara later, as they were leaving California behind.

“Can’t help it,” she replied.

“So, what are the chances of that happening?”

“About one in a zillion.”

“That’s what I thought. Nice truck, though.”

“
Great
truck.”

“You’re looking smug again.”

“Sorry.”

“OKAYYY . . . WE’VE GOT SLEEPING BAGS, A COOLER, water, backpacks, flashlights, toilet paper, Purell, a first aid kit, dehydrated snacks, a couple of sharp knives, eating utensils, plates, cups, a grill, a frying pan, and a pot. Let’s see, what am I forgetting?”

“The fact that I’m a werewolf,” Derik muttered, so as not to be overheard.

“Oh, yeah. That. I didn’t forget it, I’m just totally discounting it.”

“Nice!”

“Quit it, now, you’re making me lose track.” She squinted at her list, pretending Derik wasn’t heaving with indignation less than six inches away. Like Wal-Mart wasn’t distracting enough . . . the camping section was bigger than Yosemite.

“Okay, so, we can hit the grocery story for hot dogs, bacon, bread, and—”

“Sara, we don’t need all this junk.” He fingered the sleeping bag and practically sniffed in disgust. “First off, we have a limited amount of money, so I’ll tell you what you don’t have to waste the bucks on.”

“Oh, would you? That would be swell.” She rolled her eyes.

“I can see in the dark, so don’t bother with the flashlights. I sure as shit don’t need the Band-Aids in the first aid kit. And I’d rather eat my own shit than touch one of those dehydrated beef stews.”

“You’re so gross,” she told him. “And you’re forgetting about me. I can neither see in the dark, nor bring my bleating prey down by the neck at a dead run. And I like to be warm at night.”

“Why don’t you leave that to me?” he leered.

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

He deflated. “Aw, c’mon, Sara, it’s my job to look out for you. You don’t need all this junk.”

“Mmmm.” She crossed a few more items off the list. “Look, I appreciate that you’ve aborted the whole ‘Kill Sara’ plan, I really do. But if I’m going to travel across the country with a homicidal stranger—that’s right, I said homicidal, don’t puff up like a cobra and glare—then I’m going to take care of myself. Just like I’ve been doing all along. If you don’t mind.”
And even if you do, Studboy.

“That was a good speech,” he said admiringly.

“Oh, shut up. And grab that bug spray, will you?”

“Ech! You’re not going to actually spray that
on
you, are you?”

“No, I’m going to use it to sweeten my coffee. Just grab it,” she said, already exhausted. Long day. Long fucking day, and that was a fact.

 

 

 

“YOU NEED SALT CRYSTALS AND FRESH GROUND pepper? And vanilla sticks?” Derik cried. “I thought we were roughing it!”

“We are, but there are some things I refuse to give up. I think I’ve been a pretty good sport up ’til now, don’t you? I mean, you turned my whole life upside down, but I’m playing along. Look, think of it as bringing a little taste of home along with us on the road.”

“I’m thinking of it as a big goddamned waste of money and space, how about that?”

“A person of limited imagination,” she admitted, “and poor cooking skills might think of it like that.”

He sniffed the jar that held the vanilla pods and tossed it into her cart. “FYI, sunshine, I am a great damned cook, and these things are a total waste on a camping trip. Not to mention, they’re from Mexico, not Madagascar, so on top of everything else, you’re getting screwed.”

“Say that after you’ve tried my campfire cocoa.”

“Sure I will. How much money do we have left, anyway?”

“Enough to get free range eggs,” she said, plucking them out of the dairy section. “Be a good boy and scamper off to get some Asiago cheese, will you?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

“You’re just mad because we skipped the Milk Bones aisle.”

“Sara, for the love of God . . . if you don’t stop with the dog jokes, and I mean, stop with them right now . . .” He followed her, practically wringing his hands, and she hid a smile. It was good to have the upper hand, however momentarily.

Camping across country with a werewolf . . . now
that
was going to be an adventure.

PART TWO

Sorceress and Werewolf

“SO YOU WANT TO STOP?”

“I don’t mind stopping.”

“I didn’t ask if you’d
mind
. I asked—”

“Since I’m sitting right next to you,” he said, trying not to snap, “I was sorta able to follow the conversation. Look, I can go all night. Drive,” he added when she went red. “I can drive all night. If you want to, curl up in the back, go to sleep.”

“Well, we bought all this camping equipment.”

“You.
You
bought it all.”

“Right. And it’s”—she looked at her wrist—“eight-thirty. We could stop, maybe sleep for a few hours.”

“And make some burgers?”

“What?” she cried. “We just dropped twenty bucks at McDonalds!”

“Oh, Big Macs,” he scoffed. “They’re more like an appetizer than an actual meal.”

“Actually,” she said frostily, “if memory serves, someone insisted we stop so he could get the toy in the Happy Meal.”

“It’s for my friend’s kid,” he tried not to whine. “Anyway, it’s not my fault. That stuff doesn’t fill you up. Half an hour later—”

“It’s been twenty minutes.”

“—and you’re hungry again.”

She smacked herself in the forehead, which looked painful, and left a red mark. He resisted the urge to kiss it. “Okay, okay. So, we’ll stop, eat, and sleep. For a little while. We’re out of California, anyway. I mean, we’re making good time.”

“Okay,” he said, because really, he didn’t know what else
to
say. She was getting nervous, which was making
him
nervous. Which he couldn’t stand. It’s like she hadn’t really thought about the fact that they’d be sleeping right next to each other in the back of a truck until just a couple of minutes ago. Which was extremely weird, because Sara was many things, and stupid wasn’t one of them. Shit, it was the first thing that went through
his
mind when they were deciding which nylon bags to buy. “So, we’ll stop.”

She pointed. “There’s a campground.”

“Yeah, I see it.”

 

 

 

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY HAD THEIR ONE-NIGHT camping permit and had selected a teeny campsite that was roughly, given what he’d just paid, ten bucks a square foot.

He decided to kiss her again, break the ice. Well, that, and he wanted to kiss her again. But really, it was, like, a necessity. If she got any edgier, and thus bitchier, he just might try to kill her again, and another brain aneurysm he did
not
need.

So, they’d kiss, and maybe it’d lead to something and maybe not, but she seemed to expect
something
, and he was certainly more than willing to oblige.

Except.

Except, she hopped down from the truck, groped in one of the bags, and was now coating herself head to foot with noxious chemicals. He coughed and gagged and waved the air in front of his face, to no avail. The cloud was suffocating him!

“Enough, enough!”

“Do you
see
all the mosquitoes?” she cried. “We’ll get eaten alive.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Are you serious?” She walked over to him, and he backed up, terrified—she was a walking biohazard—but she grabbed his arm, forestalling his retreat. He was coughing so hard he missed her question.

“What?”

“It’s true! You don’t have a mark on you.”

“Bugs don’t like werewolves.”

“Lucky bastard,” she muttered.

“Listen, Sara . . .” She was still holding on to him, which he kind of liked. He bent in. “You know, we’re going to be spending a lot of . . . um . . . you know,
time
together . . . and . . . and . . . shit.”

“What?” She was looking up into his eyes, and oh, she was just so pretty it was a damn crime, that’s what it was, and . . .

Shit.

His lungs exploded. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like.

“You’ve got to lay off the bug spray,” he gasped after about ten minutes of spasms.

“Well, what do you know about that,” she said, and smiled for the first time in half an hour. “It’s werewolf repellent.”

He laughed in spite of himself. “Deep Woods Off: For those really pesky werewolves.”

An hour later, he wasn’t laughing. They’d eaten, doused their fire, said their good nights, crawled into their sleeping bags. Well, she did. He couldn’t see how she could cocoon herself in a heavy bag when it was eighty degrees outside—humans were
weird
, or maybe it was just females of any species—but whatever. And now he was lying beside her in the back of the truck, slowly going insane.

He’d dated humans before, so it wasn’t like he’d never had this problem before. The communication thing. Because he had. But somehow, back then, with other women, it hadn’t bothered him so much.

It bothered him now.

If Sara were a werewolf, she’d smell his intent and he’d smell hers, and they’d do it, or she’d say right out: Not interested, pal, take a hike, and they wouldn’t do it. Period. The end. But Sara couldn’t smell a thing, comparably speaking, and what was worse, she was pretending like she didn’t know he was so horny he was ready to have sex with his rolled up sleeping bag. So it was this big—this big
thing
that they weren’t talking about. What was that saying? It was the elephant in the room. A big, green, horny elephant.

He tried to think: What would Michael do? Jeannie had driven the poor guy nuts in the beginning . . . still did, sometimes. And a lot of the early problems were because she had trouble settling into the Pack. And Michael, as alpha, expected her to fall in line. And Jeannie, as a human who carried firearms, thought he should drop dead. So Michael had a lot of experience with the communication thing. He’d been forced to learn, poor bastard. What would
he
do?

He’d talk to Sara, that’s what he’d do.

“Sara,” Derik whispered.

Nothing.

“Listen, Sara—” I really really like you, and you smell great, and I think your powers are really cool, if kind of terrifying, and oddly enough this makes you more appealing than any female I’ve ever known, and I definitely think we should fuck—oh, shit, I mean make love, you know, whatever—and then we can cuddle and I can get SOME FUCKING SLEEP.