Howling Mad: A paranormal wolf shifter romance (Badlands Book 2) (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

They rode all day and into the night. After dusk had fallen, the air was cold, and Naomi snuggled against Byron’s spine, wrapping her arms around him for warmth and security. But even as he steered the monster of a bike around hairpin bends as they travelled up into the mountains, somewhere rural and remote, she could feel the tension in his spine. He thought she’d conspired with her father to find out what he knew about multi-shifting. And what made her want to cry her heart out was that she thought he was partly right – she
had
been part of a trap. She just hadn’t known it.

And he’d still come back for her.

But he didn’t trust her. Maybe he never would again.

The moon was a pale alien world creeping up the sky when they pulled up against a fence somewhere in the middle of nowhere and Byron killed the engine. Naomi clambered stiffly off the bike. Byron swung his leg effortlessly over the machine like the long ride hadn’t bothered him at all.

“Byron…” Naomi began.

He shut her off before she could say what she needed to. “Don’t,” he said, and his tone was eerily flat, stripped of all emotion. “Just because I came back for you, it doesn’t mean I think you’re a good person. It just means I know
I
am.”

There was no way to reply to that.

They’d stopped alongside what looked like a massive open field. In the pale moonlight, Naomi could see bulky, strangely shaped shadows. The night seemed muffled after long hours filled with the sputtering roar of the motorcycle, and Naomi felt very lonely.

Then Byron gave a shrill, three-toned whistle, like a bird-call or a code. A few seconds later, the lights snapped on.

Thousands of them.

They were at the edge of a fairground, the old-fashioned rides festooned with strings of bulbs. Red-and-white striped tents were fronted by brightly painted flats showing weird and wonderful acts and attractions. The big top. The ghost train. The hoochie-coochie show. A poster tacked to the fence was peeling at the corners, and Naomi tore it off and examined it. It was written in bright, blocky mixed fonts and it advertised
The Incredible Tattooed Lady!
And
Lions and Tigers and Bears!
And
Clowns! Clowns! Clowns!

A lot of shows had gone out of business back in the 1930s when government experiments and a terrorist plot had produced a perfect storm of fuck-uppery and the poisoned water supply had left whole swathes of the population with the ability to shift into animals. Trained animals jumping through hoops kind of lost its thrill when the animals in question nipped around in human form to sell you popcorn during the intermission. But a painting of a lion and a tiger snarling at each other on a high wire suggested that
this
circus had just looked at the new world it found itself in, shrugged its shoulders and turned all the dials up to eleven. Even so, the rides were old-fashioned and the canvas of the tents well-patched.

Byron said, “Your mouth’s open,” and there was just the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. “I did tell you I grew up among carnival folk.”

She closed her mouth and said, “Will we be safe here?”

“Safer than anywhere else. The carnival has its own rules. Nobody asks where you came from unless you want to tell them, and if someone comes calling asking after one of theirs, they’ll close ranks like a steel trap. Come on – I’ll take you to meet my folks.”

Beyond the razzle-dazzle of the rides and attractions, there were mobile homes, trailers, and at least one old-fashioned gypsy caravan painted with flowers. A horse with shaggy hooves was grazing peacefully alongside it, and it snorted and tossed its head as Byron and Naomi passed.

They stopped outside a trailer at the edge of the field, with a sign over the door that said “Office”. Byron raised his hand to knock, but Naomi hissed, “Won’t they be asleep?”

He snorted. “It’s not a way of life that lends itself to early bedtimes.” Then he rapped hard on the door and swung it open.

A plump woman in late middle age enveloped Byron in an enormous hug. She fussed over him like a mother hen, tutting over his stubble and trying to smooth down the makeshift haircut Naomi had given him. She was covered from head to foot in elaborate tattoos, every inch of her skin including her face and hands decorated with vivid images in red and blue and emerald green.

She swept Naomi into a hug as well, then urged them to sit as a thin, morose-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair brought them coffee. He wrapped Naomi’s chilly fingers around the mug, his long face earnest and unsmiling.

“Naomi, this is my Auntie Mae and Uncle James. They took me in when I was thirteen and haven’t been able to get rid of me since.”

“He was a holy terror,” Mae said fondly, “but he’s improved with keeping.”

James folded himself onto the couch next to her. “You’ll want to know about the pickpocket girl, Kathy,” he said. His voice matched his face. “You did right to send her to us. She's scared of her own shadow.” He shook his head mournfully. “And it seems you two have got yourselves into quite a pickle.”

Naomi glanced around the trailer. There was the couch and a coffee table, plus a couple of easy chairs. Battered filing cabinets in one corner. On top of one stood a huge, beautiful crystal ball. On the coffee table, Tarot cards were spread in the shape of a Celtic cross. “I suppose you have ways of finding things out,” she said uneasily.

“Yes,” James agreed in an uninflected voice. “Television. It’s been all over the news. You’d better tell us everything so we can work out what to do.”

“And take your feet off the coffee table,” Mae added to Byron.

Byron gave them a brief rundown of the situation. They didn’t react with any surprise – it seemed they’d been following the story since it had first started. Finally he said, “You know, we could have used your help earlier if you realized we were in trouble.”

Mae gave him a motherly look – the kind that says you shouldn’t cheek your elders, and have you done your homework, and by the way your bedroom is a pigsty. “Who do you suppose sent the Road Wolves?” she demanded. “The Biker Fairy?”

James patted her hand soothingly. “We’ll sleep in the office tonight,” he said. “You kids can take our trailer.”

“Oh no,” Naomi protested. The thought of being in close quarters with Byron all night, feeling his pale gaze fixed on her as the clock ticked with painful slowness towards dawn…it was unbearable. “Please, I don’t want—”

“We insist,” Mae said. “We don’t sleep much anyway, at our age.”

“Indulge an old man,” James agreed. “We won’t hear of anything else.”

Naomi glanced at Byron. His gaze was fixed on his boots, his jawline tense. No help there. He obviously wasn’t going to tell them he thought she’d been involved in a plot to kill him…or at least not until the morning. Maybe it was better for the lions’ digestion if people were thrown to them in the daytime – or he just hadn’t decided yet what to do with her. It was hard to make light of it, even to herself. Tears burned behind her eyes as the wretchedness of the situation hit her all over again, but she managed a faint, polite smile.

Chapter Thirteen

The trailer was large, but outer space wouldn’t have been big enough for Naomi and Byron to spend the night comfortably together. Tension seethed and sizzled between them, and a horrible silence descended as soon as Auntie Mae and Uncle James wished them goodnight and withdrew back to the office.

Byron felt prickly and raw, and he longed to shift into wolf form and go for a run in the moonlight, letting the night breeze ruffle through his fur, but he couldn’t. However badly Naomi had betrayed him, he’d promised to keep her safe. He wouldn’t break his word.

He didn’t know how to handle it. He’d spent years keeping Naomi at arm’s length along with everyone else, fighting the intense attraction he felt to her. Some days he’d felt almost as if his crazy act wasn’t pretend at all – he’d felt halfway insane, he’d wanted her so badly. And then he’d weakened and he’d opened himself up just a chink, letting her bring a little warmth and brightness in. And she’d transformed everything and left him exposed and naked and blinking in the pitiless light. And it burned.

He’d been hurt and betrayed in the past. Before he’d found a home with Mae and James and the carnival, he’d been not much better than a starving stray. And his years at the Zoo hadn’t exactly been a picnic. Acting crazy to keep from being tortured, knowing Dr. Atkins would stop at nothing, however cruel, when it came to Dynamic Earth’s experiments.

This hurt more. Knowing that he’d given Naomi his trust and all the while she’d been wearing a listening device for her monster of a father…that was like a knife in his gut.

He didn’t mean to confront her with it. What was there to gain? Either she’d lie, and twist the knife further, or she’d tell the truth, and he’d hear from her own lips how little he meant to her. How he was nothing more than a lab animal. Barely human. Utterly disposable.

But he couldn’t help himself. The pain welled up inside him and the words spilled from his lips. He said, bitterly, “All those times back at the Zoo, when you were trying to get me to talk to you.” He didn’t look at her. He didn’t think he could. “You kept telling me that I could trust you. That anything I told you would be our secret. That you just wanted to help me.”

“And I meant it!” she cried. The pain in her voice was so raw, so convincing, that he almost believed her. “I didn’t know about the bug – Byron, you have to believe me.”

He turned on her, snarling. “Liar! It was a set-up from the very beginning. Who’d have thought a guy who’d been locked up without female company for three years would be able to resist a pretty, sweet-smelling little thing like you, right?”

He slammed his fist against the wall beside them and hung his head for a moment.

“You bitch,” he said hoarsely, then forced himself to lift his head, to look at her again. “When your daddy’s honey trap didn’t work, he had to come up with a plan B. How
convenient
that you were right there when the alarms went off. How
lucky
that a security fault left my cell door wide open. Oh, and the gatehouse guards were called away? Well the coincidences just keep on coming, don’t they?”

“Please, Byron, no…” Tears quivered in her big, dark eyes, ready to spill over. “I didn’t know, I swear.” She raised her hand to touch his cheek, but he caught her wrist when her fingers were inches from his skin.

“Don’t,” he told her. He leaned in towards her. “The only reason you’re here right now is that your daddy isn't as smart as he thinks. He's lost control of the situation. It's not just his trackers after us now – it's lowlife bounty hunter scum like that bear who grabbed you. You could have been killed.”

“Byron, you’re hurting me,” she whispered.

He released her wrist.

“I’ll make sure you’re safe. Get you back to the Zoo in one piece. But I’m not going to risk being caught. You stay with me until I’ve thought it all through.”

“I
want
to stay—” she began, but he placed his finger on her lips to silence her. They parted slightly against his skin.

“After that, I never want to see you again.”

They were still for a long moment. Her lips were warm against his fingerprint. He wanted to pull her into his arms. He
ached
to touch her.

Instead he pulled his hand away, curling the fingers into a fist by his side so he wouldn’t touch her again.

Before he could stop her, she gave a harsh sob and whirled away from him. She groped blindly at the door, yanking it open and stumbling out into the night.

Fuck.

He couldn’t leave her out there alone. He needed to know exactly where she was, not just to keep her safe, but because he couldn’t trust her.

He groaned and ran his hands down his face.

His head snapped up at the sound of a single gunshot.

Chapter Fourteen

Naomi couldn’t fathom how things had gone so spectacularly wrong. Her father believed she was involved in Byron’s escape…and now Byron thought she was part of a plan to trap him. And here she was, stuck in the middle with nobody to trust her.

It hurt so much not just because she was innocent of the accusations thrown at her from all sides, but because she’d always trusted her father, always assumed he’d keep her safe, and now she was running from vicious thugs he’d set on her tail.

And then she’d put her trust in Byron. She’d started to like and admire him – admire his quick wit and the way his ready charm shone through despite the darkness that sometimes shadowed his eyes. She’d even started to think she felt more for him than that. And now…

She felt a sudden twist of misery deep inside and she wrapped her arms around her stomach and curled over, a wretched, painful sob escaping her…and a shot whip-cracked past her head, so close that she felt a sting against the curve of her ear.

She jerked upright, her spine galvanized by shock, but even with her feline night-vision she could see nothing beyond the bright strings of circus lights.

Then Byron burst out of the trailer and yanked her away, and they were running through the carnival as another shot buzzed wasp-like past them.

“What’s happening?” Naomi gasped as they ducked behind a helter-skelter.

“Sniper,” Byron replied, his chest heaving. “Your daddy’s trackers haven’t caught us, so he’s sent out the specialists. Guys with military training, probably. Or hired killers.”

“Someone’s…someone’s trying to kill me?” No, she couldn’t believe that. Even if her father thought she’d betrayed him, and Dynamic Earth, and the rehabilitation center, he wouldn’t want her dead.

Byron grabbed her upper arms in his hands and held her gaze. His fingers were bruising. His pupils were enormous in the eerie silver-gray of his irises. “I don’t know, but he’s not trying to deliver a candygram.” His eyes looked haunted. “When I heard that shot, I thought you were
dead
, Naomi. I thought I’d come out and find you lying in a pool of your own blood and it would be all my fault because I lost my temper and I didn’t trust you.”

There was a shout from somewhere in the fairground, followed by a scuffling noise.

Byron released her but grabbed her hand in his and held on tight. “We’re going to run to the fun house. It’s big and bright – you’ll see it.”

She gazed up at him in bewilderment. “The fun house?”

“I played there when I was a kid. I know every gimmick and trick. If this guy’s found us, there’ll be others – not just your daddy’s men but freelancers too. We have to try to lose them.”

He counted to three and they launched themselves out from behind the helter-skelter and pelted out across the fairground, past a row of stalls still exuding an aroma of stale popcorn and candy apples, and a merry-go-round that suddenly lit up and began to turn, picking up speed as the horses moved up and down in a herky-jerky motion in time to the tinkling, off-key music.

Naomi saw that one of the carnies, a hugely muscled man dressed in striped pyjamas, was on the platform wrestling with a wild boar shifter – one of the bounty hunters who were after them. The creature was huge and black and bristled, one of its vicious-looking yellow tusks broken halfway down. It was trying to gouge the strongman, but he was kneeling with his arms locked around its thick neck and was twisting with all his might as the carousel carried them out of sight.

There was a high whoop of exhilaration somewhere in the night, then the crack-crack-crack of rifle shots. Just ahead of them, a snarl was punctuated by a dull thud-crack and mutated into an anguished howl. Naomi caught a brief glimpse of a slender figure wielding the mallet from the test-your-strength game. Her nostrils caught the rusty scent of fresh blood.

It looked like Byron had been right – freelance bounty hunters had flooded into the fairground and they were converging on Byron and Naomi. They weren’t going to get through without a fight, though. Many of the carnival folk had fled violent pasts. Others had fled the law. Now this was their home. Byron was their family. The bounty hunters had picked a fight with the whole fairground.

As they passed the Ferris wheel, Naomi gasped, “Oh my god.” A dark, graceful shape was clambering down from the dizzying heights of its upper curve. Moonlight gleamed on the gunmetal length of a barrel as he tumbled in a semi-controlled leap onto the roof of one of the cars, which rocked alarmingly under his sudden weight. The sniper who had shot at her. She didn’t see whether he fell – Byron pulled her onwards.

Up ahead, Naomi made out the crooked shape of the fun house. Its stories were unbalanced and off-kilter, the doors onto its balconies uneven in their frames and painted in mismatched colors. Barber poles to either side of the front door were twisted in rotating candy-cane stripes of purple and yellow.

There was a terrifying roar behind them that dashed ice water against Naomi’s spine as Byron pulled her into the twisted building. Something was chasing them.

Byron stumbled as they went through the barrel of love, the revolving tunnel throwing him off-balance despite how well he knew the fun house. But Naomi was a cat – she might not be strong, but she was clever on her feet. She spun on her toe, perfectly poised, and lashed out with her foot, catching their pursuer full in the snout. The bounty hunter, half transformed into his wolf shape, fell back snarling. Then she spun and ran fleet-footed through the rolling barrel, scanning her surroundings as she reached the other end. There was a horrifying growl from behind them, followed by a grim gargling noise. Someone or something had taken down the wolf assassin. That didn’t make her feel any better – it just meant something even scarier and more dangerous was after them now.

“Come on!” Byron pushed her in front of him and into a maze of mirrors, each of them throwing back distorted reflections.

They slowed to a halt, listening for sounds of their pursuers, straining their ears.

Pad. Pad. Pad.

The sound of footsteps. Slow, steady, measured. Naomi realized she was trembling against Byron’s big, warm body as they listened.

Pad. Pad. Pad.
Relentless and unhurried.

He urged her on through the crazy chasing reflections, and she thanked heaven for his familiarity with the maze. The silvery walls threw back reflections of them both that were stretched and twisted, and phantom movements flickered in her peripheral vision, making her start and turn as Byron hurried her through the hall of mirrors.

And then they were chasing not just through their own reflections, but alongside hundreds of images of their pursuer. A tall, dark-dressed figure moved smoothly through the mirrored halls, his scattered reflections making him seem to approach from every direction at once.

They accelerated. Byron caught Naomi around the waist and almost lifted her off her feet as they burst out into a gaily-painted circular room. Hissing air jets shot confetti and twinkling tinsel into the air. Naomi stumbled to a halt on the opposite side of the room and turned as she realized Byron had stopped and was facing down their pursuer, a low growl rumbling from his chest.

As the man dressed in black stepped forward, a broad disc in the center of the floor began to rotate, spinning the two men. Byron leaped.

The sniper’s gun went clattering and bouncing across the floor, landing at the edge of the disc, which began to pick up speed as it turned until it was whipping around. Byron was tumbled over by its momentum, but he curved his spine and rolled and kicked up and out with both feet. The blow knocked the sniper off his feet, and the lurching rotation of the disc threw him against the wall with a rib-cracking impact.

The sniper landed on the floor with a pained grunt and started to crawl towards Byron. His canines had lengthened and he moved with the deadly stalk of a big cat. Byron threw back his head in a howl of challenge. His eyes went wolf. The seams of his sleeves ripped as his muscles bunched and swelled.

A stealthy footfall behind her.

Naomi shrieked as a snarling monstrosity pulled her back into a darkened alcove.

Byron’s head whipped around at the sound.

The sniper scrambled for his gun.

Naomi struggled against the creature’s grasp, but it was too strong. Its arms were roped with wiry muscle, wrapped firmly around her waist. She beat at them with her fists and gouged at them with her nails, but it had no effect. She could feel its hot, damp breath on her neck.

Like the panicked cat she was, she squirmed and hissed, then lashed out with fingers now tipped with needle claws. The thing released her and she fell to the floor, spider-scrabbling backwards away from it. It was a wolf man – not a shifter in either form, but something in between, warped and grotesque.

She heard the crack of a shot and something silvery struck the creature in the throat…but it simply plucked it out like a bee-sting and turned it over in its fingers. It gave itself a wet-dog shake.

Then it said, “Ow.” Not what she would have expected from a horror-movie monster. She hesitated.

“Naomi! It’s okay!” Byron had the sniper in a headlock. The recently discharged gun lay just out of reach. “That’s Gus!” Byron panted. “He’s on our side! Are you going to stay still, you son of a bitch?” That last was addressed to the sniper.

“Sorry about that, Miss,” rumbled the wolf man. He looked like a special-effects project gone wrong. He extended a gentlemanly hand to help her up. It was huge and hairy, with gnarled knuckles and evil-looking claws. She gaped for a moment, then allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

“Er…sorry about…” She gestured to the deep, bloody furrows on his arms.

Gus shrugged. “I’ll heal.”

The sniper didn’t seem to be fighting anymore. Byron had allowed him to sit up, and they were sitting side by side on the big central disc, which was still dreamily rotating. They were both panting and battered.

“Gus runs the ghost train,” Byron explained breathlessly. “Scares the crap out of the kiddies. He’s a good guy. Well, he cheats at cards, but he doesn’t deserve to be shot.”

The sniper flopped onto his back. “How was I supposed to know? Literally everyone is trying to kill her. I’ve fired tranquilizer darts at half the shifters in the state tonight, trying to protect her.”

Byron picked a piece of confetti out of his hair. “Yes. Including Naomi. Funny way of trying to protect her. You’d better start talking.”