Driven (5 page)

I
was driving, so I'd only looked over at Ben for a second, but it had
been enough to confirm my suspicion that his IV bag was nearly empty.
It was actually not terrible timing, we were only a few miles away
from an exit, and the car was down below half a tank, so I figured I
should just kill two birds with one stone.

Driving
fast is practically part of the job description for your average
shape shifter. Even in human form I had the kind of reaction time
that any professional racer would kill for. Despite Ash's statement
that it was a dangerous hole in my skillset, I'd never put in the
time required to develop the kind of driving reflexes that he and
Alec had. Even without their vaunted skills, I could usually do
twenty or thirty over the speed limit without putting myself or
anyone else on the road in any danger.

With
the radar detector blinking its reassurance at me that there weren't
any cops in the area, there wasn't any reason for me not to push the
Mercedes up to triple digits, but I'd stopped driving so fast
sometime the day before. I didn't have an ultimate destination in
mind, so it didn't matter whether I did a hundred and twenty or if I
did thirty. Either way I was still headed nowhere.

I
pulled off at a Chevron and reached into the backpack on the floor
behind Ben for another IV bag. I was starting to run low. It was too
late to text Alec and ask him to have someone arrange for me to get
some more, but I made a mental note to do so first thing in the
morning.

Actually,
I wasn't even sure if what I had in the bag was a controlled
substance of some kind or another. Some things you had to be an
honest-to-goodness doctor to get, while other things could be
purchased from a medical supply company by anyone. For as long as I
could remember, first Donovan and then Alec had made such
considerations less than nothing. If we needed something, regardless
of the legalities involved, we had it.

It
was incredible what money and influence could do for you, but in the
end it could only do so much. It could help protect the ones you
cared about, but some forces couldn't be bought off with
hundred-dollar bills, and once someone was gone there wasn't any
power wielded by Alec or anyone else that could bring them back.

I
managed to get the new bag hung without disturbing Ben. One of the
nurses Alec had brought in to give Dominic and me some time off
hadn't been able to tell the difference. To her a person in a coma
was for all intents and purposes dead to the world. Maybe that was
how it worked for other people, but not for Ben. I could tell when he
was comfortable and when he wasn't.

Sometimes
it was nothing more than the barest shadow of a crease on his
forehead, sometimes it was a subtle change in his breathing, other
times it was a weak almost-movement of an arm or leg. It was hard to
catch sometimes, but it was possible for anyone who cared enough to
learn.

Needless
to say that particular nurse hadn't lasted long.

Satisfied
that the new bag was properly secured to the handle above Ben's head,
I wadded the old bag up so I could throw it away while I was waiting
for the tank to fill. I didn't even get my car door open before my
phone rang.

It
wasn't a number I recognized, but that didn't mean much these days.
Even with Alec's hackers running interference for us there were times
when you had to ditch a sim card and replace it with a burner card so
that you could throw someone off of your trail.

"Who
is this?"

I
tried to keep the exhaustion and borderline hostility out of my
voice. I hadn't slept since the attack down in New Mexico. It was
dangerous and I was going to have to stop and rest soon, but I hadn't
been able to shake the feeling that I had a target painted on my
back.

Apparently
I did a worse job disguising my state than I thought because the
voice that responded to me sounded like its owner was only a
heartbeat away from breaking into hysterical laughter.

"You
really should have taken a nap earlier, Jasmin."

"Rachel!
Where have you been and why haven't you called before now to tell me
what's going on?"

"I've
been going where I was needed, Jasmin. I thought you, of all people,
would understand that."

"Ben
needs you. Hell, I need you."

"Yes,
I'm afraid you're right about that, but you're not ready yet."

I
fought down a wave of anger, but it was hard. My beast spent more
time in the driver's seat than I would have admitted to any of my
friends. It was like I was thirteen again all over and trying to
adjust to having an alien presence inside of my head, a violent
presence that I wasn't completely sure I could control.

Things
had been bad enough after Chicago, when Alec had killed Agony. There
wasn't any reason that my beast should have gotten more difficult to
control at that particular point, but she had. I'd struggled with my
temper almost as soon as we flew back home, but it had gotten twenty
times worse since I'd manifested my hybrid form. I liked Rachel, most
of the time at least, and once upon a time my beast had taken a
pretty laid-back view of her too. Right now my beast was pissed. She
didn't like anyone telling her what she was or wasn't ready to deal
with, but it was even worse coming from someone my beast viewed as
being weaker than us.

I
knew that there was more to being strong than just who could hit the
hardest, but my beast didn't think like that. I told myself for the
thousandth time that I controlled us, not her. If I hadn't learned
anything else from my dad, I'd learned that you had to maintain
control.

He'd
been the perfect example of what happened when you let the beast run
unchecked. Donovan said that my father hadn't ever really recovered
from what happened when Agony tore through the pack the first time.

The
way that Donovan said it always made me feel like he was trying to
cut my dad slack, like he was trying to make excuses for him. The
truth was I knew there wasn't any kind of justification for what my
dad had become.

He'd
lost a lot when the pack was shattered. My mother, his wife, had been
killed by some anonymous Coun'hij enforcer that night. He'd lost
nearly everything he cared about when she bled out on the rocks, but
so had everyone else. Some people had lost even more. James' mom had
lost a spouse, Andrew had lost his wife and been crippled to the
point where he was confined to a wheelchair. Neither of them had
turned into a child-abusing monster.

I
knew I had my own set of problems, but I wasn't my father and I
forced my beast back into the darkest corner of my mind where she
would have a harder time influencing my thoughts and feelings. From
the outside all I did was take a couple of deep breaths, but that
didn't do justice to the sheer amount of effort involved. It was like
dragging an elephant through a field with nothing more than my
fingernails and sheer willpower to see the job done.

There
wasn't any way that Rachel could have known what I was doing. Once I
spoke she'd be able to hear the difference in my voice, but she
didn't wait for that before speaking herself.

"Good,
Jasmin. You're going to need more of that control if you're going to
be able to save Ben."

"I
thought you said I needed my rage."

"I
did, and you do, but you're past that now. Your rage helped you get
where you are today, but now it's just going to get in the way unless
you manage to control it."

"Fine,
I'll work on my temper. Now
please
just tell me where I can find this Geoffrey guy."

"I
have an address for you, Jasmin, but you're not going to like what
happens next."

"Yeah,
I know. You've said that already. Just give me the address. If
Geoffrey can save Ben then it doesn't matter what happens to me."

Relief
made my limbs weak as Rachel finally complied and rattled off an
address. It was some tiny city in Nebraska that I'd never heard of
before, which meant that my instinct to come here had paid off. I
wasn't very far from the help that Ben needed.

"Thanks,
Rach. I'll fill the car back up and then I'll head straight there."

"No!
Don't wait to fill up the car. Go now, put the address into the GPS
on your phone and drive as fast as you can."

"That's
stupid, Rach. I'm below half a tank already. Five minutes isn't going
to make a difference."

"That's
where you're wrong. Five minutes will make all of the difference in
the world. Do it my way or you're going to be sorry. You're going to
need more help from me than just this address before all is said and
done."

"What
does that mean?"

"Geoffrey
isn't just sitting there waiting to talk to you, he's a captive and
you're going to need my guidance to get him out."

"How
do you know all of this, Rach?"

"It's
hard to explain, I just know it. Now go. Seconds matter right now."

**

I
took off like a bat out of hell. I wasn't just driving aimlessly like
I had been before. I had a destination and I positively shattered the
speed limit. It was especially dangerous to drive this fast in the
dark. Any set of headlights, no matter how good, couldn't let you see
as far ahead as you could during the day. At slower speeds that was
less of an issue because it took you longer to cover the ground that
you could see. At a hundred and twenty it was a very real problem. I
had my brights on, and even in this form my vision was quite a bit
better than a human's, but it was still taking a risk.

I
told myself that Rachel would have known if I was headed towards an
accident, and I just poured on more speed. I'd thought that I had my
anger under control, but as the miles rolled away underneath my tires
I felt it growing again. Rachel had no right to be toying with me. It
was ridiculous to expect me to go into everything blind like this.

By
the time an hour had passed, my rage had grown to the point where it
was all I could do to stop from ripping the steering wheel free from
the dashboard. I wasn't actually sure that I was strong enough to do
that now, but it had already creaked alarmingly a couple of times
over the last few minutes, so I was doing my absolute best to stop
from stressing it even more.

The
computer on the dash started warning me that the tank was nearly
empty when we were still more than forty miles away from the address
Rachel had given me. The computer was predicting that my tank would
be bone dry within the next twenty miles. I couldn't change the laws
of physics, there was no way for me to make it there without stopping
for gas, but the anger bubbling just beneath the surface had a lot to
do with my choice to stop when I did.

I
pulled off at a tiny gas station in the middle of nowhere and did a
double take when I realized that there wasn't a credit card reader at
the pump. I'd switched over to prepaid credit cards, the closest
thing there was to the equivalent of a burner phone, when it became
important to remain anonymous, but it looked like I was going to have
to dip into the store of cash Alec had given me when I'd left.

I
pushed the button that put me in touch with the attendant in the tiny
store a few dozen feet away, and then waited for a couple of seconds.

"Yeah,
what can I do for you?"

"I
need some gas."

"How
much? We've got a cash-first policy for anything over forty bucks."

"Forty
should be fine."

I
was pretty sure that it would take more than that to fill the car up
completely, but I didn't want to make two trips into the store, one
to pay and another to pick up any change. The clerk made a
noncommittal kind of grunt, but a few seconds later the pump lit up
and asked me to select a fuel grade.

While
I was waiting for the tank to fill up I looked at Ben through the
window. He looked cold, and I made a mental note to try and remember
to turn the thermostat up. Ever since I'd gained my hybrid form I'd
been running hotter than normal, but Ben didn't have the same kind of
metaphysical space heater.

The
pump shut off promptly at forty dollars' worth of gas. I racked the
nozzle and then started towards the store at a quick jog, locking the
doors to the Mercedes with my key fob.

The
clerk had a TV on. It looked like one of those extreme reality shows,
but it must have been pretty enthralling because he barely looked up
as I handed him two twenties. As I turned and walked out of the store
I realized that three guys had appeared at the edge of the area lit
by the large overhead lights that surrounded the pumps.

Most
girls would have been nervous at the sight of three rough-looking
guys this late at night, but I wasn't most girls. Even in this form I
was more than able to defend myself from guys much stronger and
dangerous than these guys looked to be. My biggest worry was that
they'd slow me down and put me even further behind Rachel's schedule.
At least that was all I was worried about until I saw the way that
the lights were flickering.

Flickering
lights weren't a sign of trouble in and of themselves, but the lights
inside of the store hadn't flickered at the same time as the outside
lights. There was only one thing that could cause those kinds of
selective power problems. Werewolves.

If
there'd been any doubt left in my mind of what I was up against, it
would have vanished when I saw the expression on the closest guy's
face. There was a kind of savage craziness to it that I'd heard
described more than once by others who'd run into werewolves before
the animals had shifted out of their human forms.

My
options were so few as to practically be non-existent. They were
between me and the car, which meant that I couldn't get to Ben
without going through them. I couldn't fight them. One werewolf would
outclass me all by itself, three would mow me down so quickly I
wouldn't even know what hit me.