Derik's Bane Read online

  He did, and was rapidly shedding his clothes, in fact, the only time she saw him undress quicker was when they were about to have sex that first time. Was it only the day before yesterday?

  “Easy,” she said as the button fly on his Levis went flying. She could hear something—was he grinding his teeth?

  No; he was Changing. If she had blinked she would have missed it. He fell to his hands and knees, and his blonde hair grew out, and his fingernails were digging into the dirt of the campsite, and then an enormous wolf was looking up at her, a wolf with fur the exact color of Derik’s hair, a wolf with green eyes like lamps in the dark.

  The wolf leaned forward, and she bent to it—to him—and he nuzzled her, a quick snuffly kiss, and then she heard the growl ripping out of him and turned so quickly she nearly lost her balance.

  There was a smaller wolf at the edge of their camp, hesitating as if sensing the borders of their territory. This one was coal black, with the yellow-gold eyes of a calico cat. And quite small, really very small; Derik quit growling and loped over, and it was shocking how much bigger he was than the other one.

  They sniffed each other, and she noticed Derik was at ease with his enormous size, and was trying to put the other one at ease, too. The other one was almost timid, backing off but not running away.

  Then she realized: The other one was female. And they were . . . they were going off together! Without so much as a backward look, that fuzzy slut went and nabbed her would-be assassin/ boyfriend/fake fiancé.

  “Well, shit,” she said, and kicked one of the truck’s tires.

  DERIK BOUNDED UP TO THEIR CAMPSITE THE NEXT morning, lured by the smell of frying bacon. He was so relaxed, and in such a good mood, it took him a while to realize something was wrong.

  He supposed he should have expected it. She was human, even if she was an extraordinary one. And he did turn into a wolf in front of her. That was probably pretty weird for her. He’d thought about going off into the woods a good half hour before the sun set to spare her the admittedly odd sight, and in the end he’d shit-canned the idea. Because this was who he was, and if she didn’t like it, tough.

  But it was more than that: He wanted her to see. See all of him, and not be afraid.

  “What’s wrong?” he finally asked, deciding to grab the bull by the horns.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh. Are you, uh, mad about something?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “Oh.” Honest to God, he had no idea what to do now. She was lying, and he knew she was lying, and she probably knew he knew she was lying. So what the fuck? “So, uh, everything go okay last night?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s good.” Tell her she was lying? Ignore the fact that she was lying? Tell her but at the same time forgive her for lying? Tell a lie himself? What? “Are you mad because I didn’t bring back a rabbit? I thought about it, but to be honest, skinning and cleaning one would be a pretty messy job, and I didn’t think you—”

  “I really don’t care, Derik.”

  “Oh.”

  “So,” she grumped, poking the fire.

  “So, what?” He stretched, feeling pleasantly pooped. “Is there any bacon left?”

  “You know damned well there is,” she snapped. “Where’s what’s-her-fur?”

  “Huh?” He sat up, puzzled. She wasn’t kidding around. Not at all. She was pissed. She smelled exactly like the campfire. “What? Did you wake up with a spider on you? What is it?”

  “That hair-covered-whore you took off with last night, as if you don’t remember. That’s what.”

  “Hair-covered . . . oh, you mean Mandy?”

  “Mandy,” she sneered.

  “She’s not a hair-covered-whore,” he said defensively. “She owns her own accounting firm. And she’s not here. She went home.”

  She shook the spatula at him, and he dodged drops of hot grease. “Look, all I want is the truth. Just tell me the truth, okay? I promise I won’t get mad.”

  “But you’re already mad,” he said, wondering if he could crawl underneath the fire. The truth was, he was sort of morbidly curious . . . what would her powers do to him if she was just mad, but not defending her life? Maybe just give him dandruff, or a sprained ankle. “Really, really mad.”

  “Oh, shut up. Did you guys do it out there in the woods?”

  “Do—oh. Oh!” He laughed out of relief, then dodged as she jabbed the spatula at him. “Sara, for crying out loud. Mandy’s got a mate. We just paired up to hunt. Remember: Way more of you guys than us. It’s really rare to just run into one of us in the woods. So we teamed up. She was on her own, because it was his turn to stay home with the cubs.”

  “Hmm.” She was staring at him with narrowed eyes, but he could tell she felt better.

  “I can’t believe this! You’ve been stewing about this all morning?” He was trying to stop laughing; it wasn’t likely to make her less mad.

  “The most powerful sorceress in the world is jealous of an accountant?”

  “M’not jealous,” she muttered. “Just wanted to know, is all.”

  “Well, now you do. And thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way. Yes, we werewolves are so slutty we do it with anything on four legs.”

  “I didn’t mean it quite like that,” she mumbled.

  “Yeah, sure you didn’t.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she grumped.

  “Besides, I’d never go off with another female now. I’d—” He’d shut his mouth with a snap.

  “You’d what?”

  “I’d get some of that bacon, like, pronto. I’m starving!”

  “And the Universe,” Sara said dryly, “realigns itself.”

  “Seriously,” he said after a long moment. “That was really dumb.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, but he knew she wasn’t mad anymore. Even if she hadn’t smelled like roses again, she fixed a whole ’nother pound of bacon, just for him.

  26

  THEY WERE IN ST. LOUIS, AND TO TELL THE TRUTH, Sara was getting pretty damned sick of the truck. And sick of sleeping outside. And sick of the smell of campfire, how it clung to her hair and clothes and skin.

  And really, really sick of bacon. Derik, it appeared, could eat it with every meal. She could not.

  But none of that mattered, none of it was important, because, as sick as she was of the whole thing, she didn’t want it to end. She wanted to stay like this with Derik—in this adventure limbo—forever.

  Because the world would end, or it wouldn’t, and either way Derik would be out of her life.

  Unacceptable.

  That’s nice, she told herself. Put off saving the world so you can get boned a few more times. Very nice.

  “Over halfway there,” Derik said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Right. Because werewolf lovers come along all the time. Why shouldn’t I want to hang on to some happiness?

  She coughed. “Listen, is there a plan for when we get there? How do we find these guys, anyway? And then what do we do, once we find them?”

  “I figured your luck would help us out with finding them. Shit, you’ll probably trip and fall on the leader and accidentally give him a fatal concussion. As for the rest of it . . . I can take care of the rest of it.”

  “You have no idea what the plan is, do you?”

  “Never mind,” he said primly, which made her laugh.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got some time to work on it, thank God.”

  “Mmm. Listen, this Morgan Le Fay business . . . maybe if Arthur’s Idiots find out you’re a good enough gal, they’ll stop trying to kill you. I mean, we’ve only got Dr. Cummings’s word for it that they’re the bad guys.”

  “That and what I saw with my own eyes at the hospital,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, right. Well, like I said, maybe once they find out you’re not bad, they’ll forget about the whole thing.”

  “And maybe,” she added brightly, “I’ll get caught u
p on my laundry this week. But probably not.”

  “Seriously. Morgan’s whole deal was that she was wicked, bad, blah-blah, but you’re not like that.”

  “Morgan’s whole deal, as you so annoyingly put it, is that Merlin set her up, screwed over her family, splintered her family, and then took off after he did all that damage.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Really?”

  “Listen, without his interference, she could have been Arthur’s greatest champion. She really could have. But she’s been totally screwed over, not just by real life but by history, too. Men write the history books,” she added neutrally. “So naturally their take on it was that Morgan was this wicked terrible evil witch who destroyed Arthur because she could. But that’s not true at all. She was set up to destroy him. And then she did. But if things had been different . . .”

  “Oh.”

  “If she’d had a normal family life . . . a normal upbringing . . . who knows?”

  “Huh.”

  “This is the part where you say, ‘I never thought about it like that.’ ”

  “Well, I never did.”

  “Exactly. Men. I mean, I’m not mad about it or anything, because you can’t help thinking with your dicks all the time—”

  “As long as you’re not mad.”

  “Stop the truck!” she shouted suddenly, and Derik stood on the brakes. Sara was half-strangled by her seat belt, but finally fought free of it and opened her door. She reached back, grabbed the large duffel bag they were using as a communal suitcase, and said, “Come on.”

  “Come on, what?”

  “Trust me.”

  She ran toward the . . . Amtrak station, Derik belatedly noticed. He ran after her. “A train?” he called. “You want to take a train? Why didn’t you say so when we first started seeing trains?”

  “I dunno. I’m sick of that truck,” she explained, entering the busy station. “And I’ll bet you a million dollars we can find a train that goes to Boston. We can ride instead of driving.”

  “One of us has been riding instead of driving.”

  “That’s because you’re a wheel hog. You wouldn’t let me drive after that one time.”

  “You can’t drive a stick.”

  “I can, too!”

  “So we were stalling all the time, why again? And what are we doing looking for a train?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I think it’s going to be all right.”

  “When we don’t have a ticket? What am I saying. The ticket guy won’t notice us, or will pretend like we have tickets, because his wife left him this morning, or Amtrak’s entire computer system will crash, and they’ll be too distracted to worry about two strangers on a train.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, this is like instinct?”

  “Exactly.”

  He was following her past the ticket windows. “Okay.”

  She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Really okay?”

  “Sure. I’m a huge believer in instinct. Besides”—he smiled at her—“you haven’t steered us wrong yet.”

  27

  “YOU KNOW, I COULD GET USED TO THIS,” DERIK said, climbing into the sleeping berth beside Sara, who was propped up on one elbow, looking out the window. “No ticket, no money? No problem!”

  “I was wondering if it would work,” she said, not looking around. “I’m sick of my power—my whatever-it-is—being passive, you know? I wanted to see if I could make it work.”

  “And you did.”

  “I think I did . . .”

  “And say, hon, can you see anything out there?”

  “I can’t,” she said, looking over her shoulder and smiling at him. It was ridiculous what a gorgeous smile she had. “Come here and narrate.”

  He curled up behind her and peeked over the top of her head, out the window. “Well . . . that’s a farm . . . and that’s another farm . . . oh, there’s a herd of cows, sound asleep . . . mmm . . . cows . . .”

  “Don’t start, you just ate.”

  “What, ‘just’? Half an hour ago. Oh, now look here, the land’s thinning out, probably because . . . yep, there’s a river . . . you can see those lights, right? Probably a town right on the river. Where the hell are we?”

  “Somewhere in the Midwest.”

  “Well,” he said, nuzzling the back of her neck, “that narrows it down.”

  “Off my case, hose head, I’m not a walking atlas. You know, this time tomorrow, we could be getting stomped by Arthur’s Chosen.”

  “What a cheerful thought. Thanks for the subject change.”

  “It could all be over in just another day or two,” she said, sounding weirdly neutral. “Just think.”

  “Yeah. All done. And either the world ends, or we go back to our lives.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Um . . . Sara . . . this is going to sound dumb . . . and slightly retarded . . .”

  “Thanks for letting me brace myself.”

  “. . . but I’m actually having a great time with you. I—I sort of don’t want it to end.”

  “You asshole,” she said, and he was startled to see she was crying.

  “What? Jeez, don’t do that. I freak out when you do that. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve seen you do that, and I’m definitely freaking out.”

  “Shut up,” she sobbed. “You talk too much.”

  “Sara, what’s wrong? Besides, um, everything.”

  “That about sums it up,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Everything. I don’t want it to end, either. I’d rather stay on this train forever than fight and mess up and maybe die, or maybe the world dies, or maybe you die.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he said with a total lack of conviction.

  “You’re a terrible liar. Really. The worst I’ve ever seen.”

  “What can I say, we’re not bred for it. Not like you guys. You guys are total experts,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “Homo sapiens is the most deceitful, rapacious species the planet has ever—”

  “Shut up. And have you—have you thought about—I mean, what if you’re wrong?”

  He snuggled closer to her in the berth. “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, darling girl.”

  “Maybe you should kill me tonight,” she said quietly, and he nearly fell off the bunk. “Save the world.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Don’t yell, I’m right here.”

  “You’re not evil, Sara. Not even a little bit evil. So how can you destroy the world?”

  “What if it’s not a conscious act?”

  “What if it is?”

  “Quit that,” she snapped. “We’ll get nowhere like this.”

  “Exactly. So drop it, all right? I didn’t go through all this crap to kill you now. Besides,” he pointed out, “I probably couldn’t, remember? I mean, really couldn’t. In addition to feeling just awful about it and not being able to make myself try again.”

  “Oh. That’s true,” she said, cheering up. “Your heart would probably explode if you tried.”

  “Yeah, so quit crying, okay?”

  “Shut the hell up and kiss me. Dumb ass.”

  He did, and she kissed him back, fiercely, almost desperately, and he smelled her fear and anxiety, and soothed her as best he could with his mouth and hands. And after a while, her anxiety gave way to lust, which kindled his own.

  They shed their clothes and slid against each other, whispering, nibbling, teasing, sighing, and toward the end, he closed his eyes and breathed her perfume, and they rocked together as the train rolled through the Midwest.

  “IF I TELL YOU SOMETHING,” HE SAID JUST AS SHE was drifting off, “you have to promise not to get mad.”

  “Could you sound more like a big girl? What? What is it?”

  “You have to promise not to get mad.”

  “Whenever somebody says that, it’s code for, ‘you’re gonna get mad as hell, so watch out’.”

  “Yeah, well, you have
to promise you won’t get mad.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Shit. Sara, I’ve got to tell you this. I mean, it’s been, like, haunting me.”

  “So tell me.”

  “But I don’t want you to get mad,” he whined.

  “Tough.”

  “Cripes.” He took a deep breath; the berth was so tiny she could feel his chest heave. “Okay. We didn’t have to have sex at Jon’s. Or the night before, in the woods.”

  “We didn’t have to what what at where?”

  “We didn’t have to have sex. He knew you weren’t really my fiancée.”

  “And you kept this little tidbit to yourself, because . . . ?”

  “Well, because I wanted to get laid,” he said reasonably. Then, “Owww!”

  “What? I didn’t lay a finger on you.”

  “Oww, damn it, Sara!”

  “You jerk! You creep! You ass! Oh, fuck!” When she thought of the way she threw herself at him . . . dropping the robe and pulling the quilt back like a big old slut . . . telling herself they were Doing It for a good cause . . . she was furious with embarrassment.

  And what did it say about him, that he just boned her and never told her the truth? Other than the fact that he was a lying, sneaking, opportunistic—

  “Owwwwww!”

  —bastard.

  “What are you whining about?” she snapped. “I haven’t even gotten started. You son of a bitch! You piece of shit! You—”

  “Ow, my fucking sac!” He was cradling his groin and rocking back and forth, as much as their crowded berth would allow. “Sara, will you stop it?”

  “Stop what?”

  “Calm down,” he begged. “For the sake of our unborn children.”

  “I told you, I’m not doing anything.” But was she? She was certainly angry enough to picture a groin-related disaster. Possibly more than one.

  Though his yelps of pain were doing wonders for her temper. “Quit complaining.”

  “Ow, ugh, ow! Oh, man.” He moaned piteously. “I think my testicles just imploded.”

  “Serves you right,” she snapped.

  “I’m serious, Sara. This is the worst pain I’ve ever known.”