Wolf on the Road (9 page)

“Shit,” Erik said out loud, as he blew out a long puff of air. “Shit.”

“I’ll say,” Petunia said with a smile that stretched across her entire face. She always showed her teeth when she smiled, but this time she made sure to really give Erik an eyeful. “I got you by the balls, don’t I, Danniken?”

Erik kept rubbing his forehead. “Where the hell am I supposed to get a million dollars? If I emptied out the town treasury, that wouldn’t even cover it. Er, at least, I don’t
think
it would.”

Petunia leaned against the wall, propped one foot up against it, and inspected her fingernails. “That ain’t my problem.”

Erik looked at her with hell in his eyes. This is what she was counting on. “Don’t bother getting violent, Danniken,” she said. “I didn’t come alone. I’m not that stupid. I’m not stupid at all, what am I talking about?
You
must be the stupid one, because you were just about to try and grab me, weren’t you?”

On cue, Jimmy and two of the other bikers, walked their motorcycles silently around the corner from Erik’s house, and waved. They looked incredibly stupid, sort of waddle-walking their bikes down the street, but the menace was still there. Erik squinted into the morning sun and figured he could take two of them, and
maybe
all three, but Petunia was a wildcard. She’d almost taken down a big-ass alpha bear in the past, with those crazy dentures of hers. Plus, she was spry and quick. That’s not something Erik wanted to deal with. Not right now, anyway.

“Is that Jimmy Dutch?” he asked. “You know that guy’s about as dumb as a shit brick-house.”

“As a what?” Petunia asked. “I think you mean brick shithouse.”

“No, no, no, a shit brick-house,” Erik said. “I heard it somewhere. It means, uh...”

“Shut up!” Petunia squalled. “I’m tired of this stupid witty repartee. I’m sick of talking to you! I’m sick of not having my
money and my car
!” She was starting to get really cranked up. As she started sweating, she also breathed harder and harder. Erik could see the throbbing of her pulse in her neck.

“You gotta calm down,” he said. “You’re gonna have a coronary if you don’t.”

“Shut
up
!”

“No, seriously, I shouldn’t be able to see your heartbeat like that. You gotta get your blood pressure checked. Want me to call Jenga for you? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind checking your blood pressure and,” he mumbled, “get you back on the meds.”

Jimmy and his fellow goons had managed to walk themselves all the way to the front of Erik’s house in that silly waddling way. “Why didn’t you just ride them?” Erik asked. “How’s your dad, Jimmy?”

“Oh he’s okay,” Jimmy said. “Gettin’ on in years, you know, but he’s still kickin’. Had a little problem with hemorrhoids a month or so back and got cranky as anything. He’s all right though. Turns out, he just needed some ointment and then he was fine. Anyway, he’s wanting to have a cookout and—”

“Shut
up
!” Petunia screeched. “We’re getting out of here before you two start kissing.”

She mounted up behind him, and when he waved to Erik, Petunia whapped him on the back of the head three times. “Go!” she yelped.

He kicked the throttle, and she squawked again, latching onto his jacket tightly when she almost pitched over and fell off the bike. The unlikely foursome left Erik standing on his front doorstep, scratching his head, and wondering exactly what the hell he was going to do. “Million dollars,” he said. “I feel like this isn’t a very good plan. Then again, my dumbass brother made it so that the plan doesn’t
have
to be any good.”

Erik fished his phone out of his pocket and swiped a few times. It rang only once. “Hello?”

“Hey Jamie,” Erik said. Jamie was a bat-shifter with a generally sarcastic attitude, that much was true. However, she also had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything to do with the city, and in fact, might’ve been the most competent person in the entirety of Jamesburg, excepting Izzy. “Listen, I’ve got a little problem.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “What’s up, I’m busy entertaining this guy you have a meeting with in an hour. He won’t stop trying to look down my dress, but he’s nice enough.”

Erik heard someone protest loudly in the background. Jamie laughed softly. “Anyway,” she said, “what’s up?”

“Well,” Erik started, and then trailed off. “You know, I think I better tell you in person. I’m having a hard time processing it.”

“That bad, huh?” she asked. Suddenly, Jamie wasn’t being as jokey and sarcastic as she normally is. “Is everything okay?”

“No, not really. My brother’s in trouble,” Erik said. He was about to pick his teeth out of nervous habit, but thought better of it, at least until he was off the phone. Instead, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and sighed. “But I think that,” he swallowed, hard. “I think we are, too.”

––––––––

“A
lmost got it.”

Jake grunted heavily and twisted his arm. The steel cuff bit deeply into his flesh. Tendrils of pain shot up his forearm. Blood pooled on the back of the shackle and then ran down his hand into the concrete where it soaked quickly into the ground.

The metal had stopped groaning when he twisted his arm, and had started to thickly screech as it grew thinner with each passing second. Then again, the skin on his wrist was getting thin too, and he wasn’t interested in ripping the rest of it off. He looked across the way to where Mali was still sleeping. For a moment he just watched her face, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest and shoulders with each breath she took. After a couple seconds, he didn’t feel the shooting pain in his wrist anymore; he didn’t feel the agony of metal cutting through him. The only thing he felt was a swelling sense of care.

Her eyes fluttered and she woke with a start.

“How did I fall asleep?” she asked no one in particular. It was the sort of thing a person says when they wake up in a strange bed and don’t quite remember they checked into a hotel the night before. It was a probing sort of question, trying to feel out a reality they don’t recall changing.

“Exhaustion, probably,” Jake said in a soft, gentle voice that was still brimming with steel. “You’re gonna need the rest.” He paused for a few moments as he concentrated on trying to get his nerves hardened enough to give another try to snapping the chain. “You’re cute when you sleep.”

She smiled in the way a person only smiles when someone does something completely unexpected that makes them happier than they can explain. “You’re cute when you’re staring at me while you try and rip your own arm off,” Mali said a couple seconds later.

“You were awake?” Jake asked, as he curled the left end of his mouth into a smile. “For how long?”

“Not long,” she answered. “After a while, I really did pass out. I guess this whole transformation thing is sort of hard on the body. I feel better though. Well, as much better as a girl can when she’s still in a cage in some psychopath’s basement. Which, come to think of it, makes me sound crazier than I actually am.”

Jake winced, closed his eyes, and ground the chain again. When he couldn’t take the pain, he waited, gritted his teeth and twisted four more times. The chain was getting markedly thin in the place where he rubbed the links. “You’re not crazy,” he said. “This whole thing
is
though. But we’re getting out, and we’re getting to my brother. Everything will be fine. One more twist,” he grunted in pain and twisted his hands.

A decided
clink
was followed seconds later with Jake’s huge sigh of relief. “Damn that hurts,” he said, squeezing his torn up wrist to try and stanch the bleeding. “I gotta think,” he whispered to himself. “Gotta come up with a plan.”

“How’s this for a plan? Break that other chain, we turn into wolves, and then blow the hell out of here. Sound good?”

Jake shook his head side to side, trying to forget the pain. He wanted to stop thinking, wanted to, like he’d told Mali, just feel. “Okay,” he said a few moments later. “Concentrate, Jake. Concentrate.”

The hair on his back and his neck lengthened, and his teeth grew into yellow daggers. But then, he let out a gasp. “Mali! Don’t shift!” he cried out. “I can’t... I can’t do it. My entire body burns like I’ve been shot up with muriatic acid. Something... they must’ve...”

He writhed on the floor, scratching himself horribly against the concrete. “It burns! I can’t... I can’t stop it, I can’t—”

“Sucks, don’t it, beefcake?” Tiny footsteps preceded the tiny voice, but with Jake’s thrashing and screeching, it was hard to make out what Petunia was saying, or where she came from. “If you haven’t figured it out yet it’s the drugs I shot you up with.” She tapped her foot against the floor and strolled over to Mali’s enclosure. “You two figure out a way to escape yet?”

She tracked over to where Jake was still groaning in agony. “Oh! That’s cute, you broke the chain, huh? I guess you were thinking you’d get out of it, turn into a big, bad werewolf and heal up? Sucks don’t it, beefcake?” she asked again. “Torn up wrist, torn up pride. Guess you won’t be saving your girlfriend, will you?”

“Shut up,” Jake growled. “You know you can’t keep us in here forever. You know my brother’s not going to put up with ransom bullshit. You
know
that.”

Petunia clapped her hands together, and craned up on her tiptoes. “He certainly didn’t,” she said. “Wait, no, that’s a double negative. Hold on, let me figure out what I’m trying to say. Okay. Got it. I think. I told him. I talked to him, and when I left he was sweating bullets.
Bullets
! He’s getting me the money and he’s getting me a car, because he had a good point about the helicopter thing.” She scratched her neck for a moment, thoughtfully. “I don’t know if he should’ve told me that. Seems like if he didn’t, I would really have gotten screwed. Oh well!”

The psychotic bunny hopped briefly from one foot to the other. “Anyway, just wanted to keep you up to date on exactly how dead you are. Toodles!” She turned on her heel and pranced up the stairs before slamming shut the door to the basement.

“Did she just say toodles?” Jake asked. His voice still strained, he was starting to get his wits about him again.

Mali was shaking her head when he looked up at her. She had her arms around herself, huddled in a ball against the wall where she was still propped up. “Can’t shift,” she said, almost whimpering. “Can’t do anything. Can’t get out. Can’t escape.” She repeated that mantra for a few moments and then shivered from head to toe. “Jake?” she asked like she needed his help to keep sane. “Jake, talk to me. I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me this is somehow going to be okay even if you don’t believe it.”

Jake growled again, the anger seething and dripping from his lips. “She’ll never get away with this. I don’t care what happens, you’re not going to be hurt. I’ll rip that little head right off her shoulders before I let that happen.” He grunted with effort and twisted his shackled arm, looping the chain around itself. “I don’t care if I have to rip my own arm off, we’re getting out of here.”

“Why’d you save me?” Mali asked as Jake began grinding away on the chain. “I mean, there’s nothing special about me. You just happened across me while you were chasing those bikers around trying to figure out what they were doing, right?”

“I,” Jake began, but faltered. He looked down at the chain and winced as he twisted his wrist. “I guess I saw you, and I knew there
was
something special about you. I guess I didn’t want you to just die like that for no good reason. I guess...” Once again, he trailed off and pretended to concentrate on the chains.

Mali shifted herself into a cross-legged sitting position and leaned forward on her elbows. The stretch in her back felt nice, but the popping a second later was divine. She’d somehow been holding both hips full of stress and strain for the past three days. “You guess what? Actually, my turn,” she said.

Jake paused with his chain activities and looked up at her, staring straight into her eyes from across the way. Not even the sickly buzzing florescent could distract either of them from just drinking in the other. For a moment, Mali let herself get lost in just watching those dark eyes as they watched her. She blinked back tears, and sniffed to try and keep herself together in the face of something so horrible that she was having a tough time believing it was real.

“Right, so anyway,” she sniff-laughed and smiled. “I, uh... I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if we’ll get out of here or if we’ll die in here, but you know what?”

Jake just stared at her.

“The last three days have definitely been the most interesting of my life. I got to meet an awesome guy who apparently turns into a wolf. I got turned into a
werewolf
. Do you understand how awesome that is?”

He chuckled softly.

“Until like a month ago, I had no idea you things existed. I thought that stuff was just for movies and books, but here we are. And now I’m
one of you
? How could anything be more incredible than that?”

“When you put it that way,” Jake said and smiled, trailing off again for a second. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound half bad. I’m sorry I interrupted your life. I’m sorry I did something stupid. I knew I shouldn’t have turned you. Like, I understood that in the back of my mind—intellectually—that I was doing something very stupid. But emotionally?” He shook his head, laughing again. “Different story.”

“So just come out and say it,” Mali said. She stood up and slowly made her way to the front of her cage. They were close enough that she thought maybe if she really stretched, she could touch Jake’s fingertips. The thought of being able to do that, just to feel his fingers and know Jake was there with her, was enough to calm Mali down. She shuffled over, and stuck her arm through the bars. “Can you reach me?” she asked. “I have the feeling that whatever you’re going to say will be better if I can feel you. And, uh, I’m just about to panic in here so it’d be nice.”

As though the thought of touching her infused him with some kind of super-lupine strength, Jake flexed his arm and had to focus all his energy on not accidentally shifting. Going wolf hadn’t worked so well last time, but he knew he
had
to get out of that chain. With every ounce of power in his considerable shoulders, back and legs, he pushed.