Wolf on the Road (7 page)

“I’m Jimmy,” the big, dopey looking biker nearest Jake said. “And you’re a damn fool. Come on over here and give the criminal a dose,” he said to the man behind Mali, who did as he was told.

“What are you talking about?” Jake asked.

“This mean anything?” Jimmy held up something that glinted in his fingertips and turned it around several times.

“A tooth,” Mali heard Jake say, though her consciousness was fading fast. “But who...?”

“Don’t matter,” Jimmy said with a smug grin plastered all over his stretched, puckered face. “What matters is you done changed somebody without permission, and now you’re gonna pay. Or more like, your brother’s gonna pay.” The man scratched his left sideburn. “Or somebody is, hell, I don’t care as long as I get my reward.”

Mali tried to call out to Jake, but the words came out in a slurred tangle of garbage. She stretched out a hand, as though she could somehow reach him where he lay twenty feet away.

The biker laughed, kicked Jake in the head again, and then whistled.

That whistle—a shrill, excessively loud sound—echoed in Mali’s head.

And then the world went black.

––––––––

M
ali’s dreams were as black as the light behind her eyes. For what felt like days, she would wake up, shake feverishly, and then try desperately to cling to consciousness, but it always slipped through her fingers. Like dune sand slipping through her toes with each step as she climbed, awakening was a treadmill without an end.

She heard Jake’s voice, but it was distant and echoing. With every passing moment, her brain seemed to swell, seemed to squeeze harder and harder against the inside of her skull until the ache was too much to bear. And then, like all the times before, she’d black out again and feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing... she’d just exist in a black cloud.

Mali felt herself shake, and for a moment thought it was Jake again, that maybe she’d just fallen asleep and he was there to wake her, to help her back to reality. It never happened though.

Her hands felt like they’d been pulled across an ocean of sandpaper. Her mouth was dry, her teeth ached from somewhere deep inside. Every nerve and fiber in her body felt like hell was trying to erupt through her skin. Every few minutes she’d get a wave of nauseating heat followed by wracking cold that shook her through and through.

“He’s a lot bigger than I thought,” Mali heard. The voice was high pitched, almost squeaky, and came in quick, almost breathless bursts. “I’m not sure that cage is gonna hold him. Her though? Oh god,” the squeaking turned to giggles, “I’m so excited. Aren’t you excited Jimmy?”

Mali blinked a handful of times, and finally squeezed her eyes shut. She lifted her hand with a great deal of difficulty, and pinched the bridge of her nose. The aching was still there, buried in the back of her brain, right where her skull joined her spine, but it wasn’t unbearable for the moment.

“Yes ma’am,” the slow-speaking biker said. Mali recognized his voice, but not the other one. She couldn’t imagine one of those burly, brutish men having a voice like that, so this must be whoever was ordering them around.

Jake groaned loudly, which Mali heard perfectly clear. She couldn’t see though, no matter how many times she blinked or rubbed her eyes or shook her sore head. “Where am I?” she heard him shout, before she heard a rattling of chains and the dull thud of what she assumed was Jake trying to rip the cuffs out of the wall he was chained against. “Let me out! Where’s Mali? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll rip every single one of your spines out through your stomachs!”

A shuffling sound came from a few feet away from where Mali lay on the ground. She curled her fingers against the floor of what she guessed was a cell. It was concrete, but it was smooth, almost like this wasn’t always supposed to be a containment area. The floor was cold and smooth, and felt good against Mali’s face as she lay there, writhing on the ground and trying to get her bearings. Then, there was the issue of still not being able to see that caused her a little concern. She managed to get her arms underneath herself, and push up slightly, but before she could get to her feet, her strength failed and she collapsed again as Jake shouted another loud protest.

And the shuffling went past once more, this time combined with a good deal of humming and hawing, and some sort of clicking sound that must’ve been teeth clattering together in a nervous tic. “Where are you?” the squeaky voice asked. “You’re in the clutches of your worst nightmare.”

“All right, Rambo, thanks for the one liner. Now, where the hell am I?”

“Outside Jamesburg,” the voice, that Mali realized had to be female, said. “Long way outside of Jamesburg. You’ll never get there unless I let you go, you know?” The squeaky voice giggled. “I rhymed.”

“You must be some kind of idiot,” Jake said. “Wait, did you just say you rhymed something? And have you been clacking your teeth?”

“Why?” she asked. “What the hell business is it of yours what I do with my teeth? As a matter of fact, what business is it of yours what I do at all?
You
are my prisoner and I know what you did! You did something very bad, didn’t you?”

Jake sighed heavily. “I’m guessing you’re not going to shut up. Also, I have one of those teeth of yours in my pocket. Unless you found it.”

“I’m the one that let
you
find it!” the woman screeched. “I sent it with them so you’d know who was after you! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Jake rattled his chains, testing their toughness. “I’m looking at you, and I still don’t know who you are. Why would leaving a metal tooth on the ground tell me anything at all? Seems like a real Bond villain kind of thing to do, and as everyone on earth knows, that’s about the stupidest way to get attention there is. But, while we’re here, why don’t you explain your entire evil plot to me and I’ll tell you what I think. Sound good?”

Mali managed to get her head off the floor and arch her neck just enough to see the tiny figure standing in front of the opposite cell door. “Cell” is a generous description. Really, it was more like a freestanding closet made up of metal paneling. The door was just a big, heavy-looking wooden door with a slit cut in it about waist-high, which struck Mali as very funny. Then again, when she saw the little creature standing in front of said door, it made perfect sense.

“Sure!” the little thing said. “Here’s the deal. I have you in a locked cage. I know you broke the laws about not changing a human without written consent of the alpha and the town council. And I also know that said alpha is your brother, which, by the way, I think the council will find to give him quite a conflict of interest.”

“That was a lot more direct than I—”

“I’m not finished!” the little thing squealed. She started hopping around frantically in front of Jake’s cage, as though she was too angry, or too excited, to keep still for more than about four seconds at a time.

“She’s like a greased up weasel on Adderall,” Mali said under her breath. Jake, who somehow heard, laughed out loud before he nodded in agreement.

The diminutive ball of anger stuffed her fists into her hips and stomped her feet one after another, throwing a nearly adorable temper tantrum that made her seem more silly than terrifying. It really took Mali a lot of concentration to remember they were being held captive, and no matter how bizarre their captor looked, she was clearly dangerous, and they were clearly not in a very good way.

“I said I’m not
finished
!” she said. “And since your brother, the alpha, is going to want to protect you from the law, he’ll happily pay me a shit load of money and let me steal the town helicopter to get away and start a new life somewhere else. Somewhere no one has heard of Petunia Lewis.” She started to stare off into space as though in a daydream. “Nothing will chase me, nothing will stop me, and I’ll get to sit around my new house, which will be underground by the way, because this is really nice and the power bills are almost nothing since it stays right at sixty-five all year around and... say, you have some really nice arms.”

Jake went to rub his head, but had apparently forgotten the chains binding his arms. They clattered again, Petunia laughed in a snorty, seal-like kind of way. She hopped up on one foot, then the next. One after another, she hoped from toe to toe, clapping as she did. “I’m a goddamn genius!” she cried out a few moments later. “But you do have
really
nice arms. Too bad they’re chained up, huh?”

“Want me to pose for you?” Jake asked. He shot Mali a brief gaze that she only caught because she was staring straight at him. “I mean, you seem kinda lonely. Petunia, right? That’s what you said?”

“I’m not lonely,” she snapped. “I’m tired of being haunted by what I did in the past. So what, I murdered some vegetables and almost flooded out the town. I did my time, baby, I did it all. Sort of. Actually, I didn’t, but I behaved really well so they let me out. They kept telling me I was crazy but I’m not. See? Do I seem crazy to you?”

Jake looked at her for a second, and then shot a glance at Mali. He shook his head, wisely. “Not at all,” he said. “Seems like you just know what you want, and you really like my arms.”

Petunia cackled excitedly. “See?” she asked as she slapped Jimmy right in the stomach. “He gets it! There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not crazy! I’m not! It feels like it’s been forever since someone realized that. Thank you, Jake,” she said with a grin, as she languidly lay against the door. “You’re a real gentleman, you know?”

“So I hear,” he said. “So, posing? Want to see some real muscles?”

Mali could hardly contain herself, but as she watched, she saw Petunia start to twitch. It was almost like she realized something not quite to her liking was about to happen. At the same time, she couldn’t control her desire to see said posing, and was just about to let him semi-free when Jimmy, the enormous biker werewolf, grabbed her shoulders. “He’s trickin’ you,” he said in his slow, slightly slurred drawl. “He ain’t tellin’ the truth.”

“Don’t you think I realize that?” she asked. “How stupid do you think I am? Do you think I
care
that he’s trying to trick me? He’s in a damn cage! And look at those arms, for god’s sake!”

Jimmy, for his part, just shook his head. “I don’t... I don’t know about all this.”

“Shut up!” Petunia screeched. “Just shut up! There isn’t anything you can do to stop me! We’ve got them caught, we have everything I want, what the hell’s wrong with getting a little show on top of it?” She was getting so excited that she was hopping, once again, from one foot to the other, and hardly managing to keep herself from waving her arms around. After the hopping, she started squealing again, and then chewing on her fingernails. After the fingernail snack, the diminutive Napoleon began rocking back on her heels.

“This is so good!” she squeaked, apparently about to burst at the seams. “It was so easy, too! I hardly had to do anything except lay out some money and hire some goons!”

“Wasn’t that easy,” Jimmy said with a decided down-turn in his voice. “Ma’am.”

Petunia wasn’t hearing any of it though. The little ball of energy hopped up on the door to Mali’s cage and gripped the bars with her long toes, then slid down to the ground. “And you!” she screamed, “I’ve never even
seen
a changed human. This is gonna be fun. I can do all kinds of horribly painful experiments on you. I can figure out how to turn myself into a werewolf,” she trailed off for a moment, thoughtfully pinching her chin between thumb and forefinger. “No, no I don’t think I’d like that at all. And what the hell use do I have for being furry and smelly anyway?”

Petunia was very much in a world of her own. Her head swam with possibilities, as she turned slowly around on her heels, Mali began to wonder if there wasn’t just a little bit of sadness behind the apparent insanity. She watched the tiny creature with great interest, and then shivered heavily. A nasty chill slid down Mali’s back.

No matter what sort of fascination Petunia held for her, the realization that she was sitting in a makeshift prison cell, and Jake, the only man on earth who could possibly protect her—if she needed protecting—was locked up right across from her. A foreboding sense settled into her bones. An unseen, unfelt chill blew through Mali and raised goosebumps down her arms and her belly. Jake shifted his weight and took a deep breath. “So what are we gonna do?” he asked a few moments later. “My brother will work out whatever sort of deal you want. This is crazy.”

“For now,” Petunia said, “just relax. You know, lie down or pop a squat, whatever makes you happy. As for me, I’ve got something else to do.”

She bent down and wrestled briefly with something she fished out of her pocket. When she straightened herself again, Mali noticed silver light glinting in her mouth. “She’s got a fancy grill?” Mali asked, not entirely meaning for it to be aloud.

Petunia snapped her teeth together, thrusting her head toward Mali’s bars like a pissed off snapping turtle when someone tries to pick it up from the ground.

“You missing this?” Jake asked and once again tried to move his arms, forgetting he was chained. “Er... are you missing the silver tooth in my pocket that I was going to grab and dramatically present?”

Petunia laughed in a slobbery, wet, slightly twisted way. “No babycakes,” she said, “I made extras. Like a calling card, you know? I think you need to see that I’m serious, so... come on, Jimmy, let’s go call the alpha. After I eat, I mean.”

At least half of the sounds she made came out in wet lisps. As soon as the door slammed behind the clearly disturbed bunny rabbit and her goon, a florescent light flickered on overhead. Mali looked up at it, and winced as it buzzed. The light wavered, and for the first time, Mali realized that hypersensitive senses weren’t always a good thing.

“That light’s gonna make me throw up,” she said flatly. “How do you deal with this?”

Jake didn’t reply, at least not at first. He growled a low, dangerous sound, and then managed to shift his weight enough to loop the chain on his left hand around itself. A few seconds later, Mali heard metal grinding against metal. “What are you doing?” she asked.