Derik's Bane Page 7

  “Never you mind. My point is, I wouldn’t start pointing fingers at Arthur’s Chosen, because your own reasons for being here aren’t exactly beyond reproach.”

  “Uh-huh! I’m trying to save the world, pal. Grief from puffing human busybodies I so don’t need.”

  “Arthur’s Chosen,” Sara said, again trying to bring them back on track. “What’s their story?”

  Cummings shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Rabid followers of the King Arthur legend. You know, of course, that Arthur was betrayed by his half sister, Morgan Le Fay, and it’s ultimately why he fell in battle. Arthur’s Chosen think that if they get rid of you, Arthur will finally return.”

  “So,” Derik said, “they’re cracked in the head.”

  “Well, yes. They’re fanatics. A tough group to reason with.”

  “Just a minute,” Sara said. “Morgan’s supposed ‘evil nature’ is legend, not fact. In fact, a lot of people believe today that Morgan’s wickedness was the invention of misogynist monks.”

  Both Dr. Cummings and Derik shrugged. Sara resisted the urge to throw up her hands. Men! God forbid they look at history in a woman-friendly fashion. Morgan Le Fay was probably a perfectly nice woman for her time. Strong-willed, sure. But wicked and evil and a dark sorceress? Feh.

  “But how do they know Sara’s Morgan?”

  “The same way I did. The stars, old books, legends, prophecies. How did you know?”

  “One of my Pack members can see the future,” Derik admitted. “She said if I didn’t get my butt to Sara’s address pronto, the world was gonna blow up, or whatever.”

  “Hmm. Charming. So, what are your plans?”

  Derik looked blank. Sara said, “Plans?”

  “To eliminate the threat to your personal safety, to not destroy the world—the prophecies all agree on that, I’m sorry to say—you know. Your plans.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Great,” Dr. Cummings grumped. “I swear, Sara, you get dumber every year.”

  “Watch it,” Derik warned.

  “And you, I suspect, were never the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “Dude, I am so going to make you eat your ears.”

  Dr. Cumming sighed. “Very well. Arthur’s sect has its home base in Salem, Massachusetts. Go there. Smite your enemies. Have a hot fudge sundae. The end.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. If you knew all this was going to happen, why didn’t you warn me? Why didn’t you tell me about Arthur’s Sect ten years ago?”

  “Right. I see now that I have failed you. Because you certainly would have believed me and left at once for Salem.”

  “Might have,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t you see, Sara? I had to wait until forces started moving in on you. It’s the only way there would have been a chance of you believing me.

  The sect would never have harmed you as an infant, because all the prophecies say you don’t destroy the world until you’re fully grown.”

  “Wait, wait,” Derik protested. “So why not kill her when she was a baby? Save the world that way?”

  “Because the sect can’t use her if she’s dead, stupid mongrel. And she’s not so easy to kill, in case you forgot. Which wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “But how do they use her to destroy the world? These Arthur guys?”

  Dr. Cummings shrugged. “No one knows. Only that she is integral to the plot. Kill her as an infant, and who knows what will happen? Wait until she’s fully-grown—very fully grown, Sara, time to lay off the bagels—and risk the world being destroyed. It’s not an easy choice. Most of us decided to watch and wait. Now go away.”

  “It’s not nice to kill old guys,” Derik muttered under his breath. “It’s not nice to kill old guys. It’s not nice to—”

  “All I could do was stick close, which I have, and now I’m done, and it’s Miller time.” Dr. Cummings clapped his hands sharply, making Sara and Derik jump. “Now go! Off to Salem. Good-bye.”

  Derik and Sara looked at each other, then shrugged in unison. “I’m game if you are,” she said. “I don’t want to walk into the hospital again and worry about Arthur’s Chosen hurting bystanders.”

  “I’m going where you go.”

  “How touching,” Dr. Cummings said. “I’ve approved your vacation request as of thirty seconds ago. I suggest you don’t delay.”

  “Why?” Sara asked. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

  “No, I’m just bored now. Good-bye.”

  “What a sweetheart,” Derik muttered once they were on the other side of the door.

  “Off to Massachusetts,” Sara said, “dodging killers along the way, and with a werewolf bodyguard.”

  “Don’t forget about the hot fudge sundaes.”

  13

  “WE CAN’T GO BACK TO YOUR PLACE.”

  “Agreed. Besides, it would take about six hours of cleaning before the house was livable again. Thanks again, by the way.”

  Derik ignored her sarcasm. “And I sure can’t show up at the mansion with you.”

  “Uh-huh. Err . . . why is that, again?”

  “Because I was supposed to kill you, duh.”

  “Don’t say duh to me,” she ordered. “I get enough of that from Dr. Cummings.”

  “Yeah, cripes, what a grouch. Guy’s not afraid of anything, is he?” Derik said this in a tone of grudging admiration. “But anyway, about you—I can hardly walk through the front door and say, ‘hey, guys, here’s Morgan Le Fay, didn’t feel like killing her, what’s for lunch?’ ”

  Sara frowned. “So you’re saying you’re going to get into trouble for this?”

  Derik stretched, wiggling in the driver’s seat, then pulled into a convenience store parking lot. “Maybe. Kind of. Okay, yes.”

  “Derik, you can’t—I mean, I appreciate you giving up your sacred holy mission of premeditated murder and all, but don’t your kind banish Pack members for, like, teeny tiny reasons? Never mind huge reasons like not fulfilling your mission?”

  “We have a group mentality,” he explained. “So if you do something that hurts the group, or may possibly hurt the group, it’s bye-bye time.”

  “So you—you can’t go back?” Sara tried not to sound as horrified as she felt. She was lonely—well, alone—by circumstance. Her father had died the day she was born; her mother when she was a teenager. But Derik was deliberately giving up his family . . . for her. It was touching. And cracked. “Not ever?”

  He yawned, apparently unconcerned. “Well, I figure it’s like this: Either you destroy the world, in which case, my alpha can’t kick my ass, or you don’t, in which case, my alpha will know I was right. Kind of a win/win for me.”

  “Except for the possible death of billions.”

  “Well, yeah. There’s that.”

  “But you can never see your friends again?” Sara was having trouble letting this go. “Your family?”

  “I was going to leave anyway. It was either that, or—anyway, I had to go.”

  “Well, thanks,” she said doubtfully. “I—thanks. What are we doing here?”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Again?”

  “Hey, we don’t all weigh a hundred pounds and have the metabolism of a fat monkey.”

  “Oh, very nice!” she snapped. “Well, as long as you’re here, let me get my cash card, I’ll grab some money.”

  His hand closed over hers, which was startling, to say the least. He was very warm. His hand dwarfed hers and, in the California sunlight, the hair on the back of his knuckles was reddish blond. She was fascinated to note that his index finger was exactly as long as his middle finger. “Nope.”

  She stared into his green, green eyes. “What, nope?”

  “We’re on the way to Salem, right? Chances are, there’s gonna be some bad guys on our tail. Right?”

  “What, you’re asking me? Ten hours ago my biggest problem was finding a pair of panty hose that didn’t have a run in them.”

  “So, you can’t leave a m
oney trail,” he continued patiently. “No cash cards, no credit cards. And if you make a big bank withdrawal, my Pack’s gonna know you’re alive. They’ll assume I’m dead, and then there’s gonna be real trouble.”

  “How would they even know—never mind, don’t tell me. We can’t go across the country with no money,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m working on that one.”

  “What a relief,” she said, getting out of the car and following him up the sidewalk. “Seriously. You have no idea.”

  “Aw, stick a sock in it. You—watch it.” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the way just as a teenager came barreling through the door of the store. The kid stopped for a minute, utterly panicked, and they all heard the wail of sirens at the same time.

  Well, probably not, Sara thought. Probably

  Derik heard them about a minute earlier. Aggravating man. And what happened when the moon rose? What then? Did she really believe he was going to turn into a wolf and run around peeing on fire hydrants?

  “Shit!” the teen cried, and started to dart around them. Derik stepped in his way—

  “Don’t do that,” Sara said sharply. “He might have a gun.”

  “He does have a gun,” Derik replied, bored.

  —and the teen suddenly thrust a paper bag at Sara, who tightened her grip around it purely by reflex.

  They both watched the kid race out of the parking lot.

  Sara opened the sack, which was bulging with twenties, tens, and fives. “Oh,” she said. “Well. Um. I seem to have come into some untraceable cash for our trip.”

  Derik slapped the heel of his hand to his forehead, then shoved Sara back toward the car. “Let’s get out of here before the cops come.” He jumped into the convertible, fighting a grin. “You lucky bitch.”

  “SO, WE NEED ANOTHER CAR.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. They had left the Monterey city limits, and she had just finished counting the money. Eight hundred sixty-two dollars even. No change. “Um, why?”

  “Because my Pack rented this one for me. They can track it. We have to leave it and find something on our own.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Work your hocus-pocus and wish us up a car.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “I don’t have conscious control over it,” she explained, trying—and failing—to smooth her hair out of her face. Convertibles were sexy and cool in the movies, but in real life you couldn’t see for all the hair flying around. And she dreaded trying to pull a brush through the mess when they parked. Not that she had a brush. But still. “Heck, until you showed up, I didn’t think I could do anything special at all. Except bowl,” she added thoughtfully. “I’m great at that.”

  “Yeah, I bet those pins just happen to fall over for you all the time. Concentrate,” he ordered. “We need . . . an untraceable . . . car.”

  “Stop . . . talking . . . like that.”

  He slapped the steering wheel with his palm. “Shit. Well, I guess I could steal one . . . except we’d have to do that at least every day or so.”

  “Why aren’t we taking a plane? Isn’t it a four-or five-day drive?”

  “You want to show airport security your ID? Because I don’t think that’s, y’know, too cool. Which also lets out renting a car, and taking a train.”

  “Are there that many werewolves running around the country?”

  “No. There’s only about three hundred thousand of us, worldwide. But still. I think it’s too important to take chances. I’d hate to fuck this up through bad luck, y’ know? Not that you exactly have bad luck. But still. I’m not crazy about taking chances. Okay, I am, but not chances of this magnitude. Get it?”

  “Hardly. And you can’t ask any of your—um, your family—the Pack, or whatever you call it—for a car?”

  “Well, I could, but I’d rather not take a chance on anything getting back to Michael—my alpha,” he explained. “I’d risk spending a night or two with local Pack members, because my mission is top secret—”

  “Excellent, Mr. Bond.”

  “Anyway, most of the Pack doesn’t know what I’m up to. Just the East Coasters. So it’s no big deal to show up on someone’s doorstep and crash for the night. But to do that, and be in a situation where I’d have to borrow a car, and have you in tow . . . that might get back to the wrong set of ears.”

  “So, what?”

  “So, we need a car. We’ll drive for a while, then crash.”

  “I’ll tell you right now,” Sara declared, “no more convertibles!”

  “Aw, how come?” he whined. “How can you not like the wind in your face?”

  She pointed to her head, which, thanks to mussed curls, was almost twice as large as usual. “Forget it, Derik. For-get-it.”

  “Aw, you look cute.”

  “And you’re deranged, but we established that a couple hours earlier. No convertibles.”

  “Well, I’m not driving a zillion miles—”

  “Three thousand, five hundred,” she said dryly.

  “—locked up in a steel box, I can tell you that right now, Sare-Bear!”

  “Ew, don’t call me that. Sare-Bear? Ugh.”

  “ ’Cuz you look like a cute little bear with your hair all over the—”

  “Stop talking. What? You’re claustrophobic?”

  “No. I just don’t like being shut up in a steel box for hours and hours a day.”

  “So, you are claustrophobic.”

  “No, it’s just . . . that fake carpet . . . the upholstery . . .” He shuddered. “It reeks, man. It totally reeks.”

  “You know what we need?”

  “For you not to destroy the world?”

  “Besides that. We need a truck. A nice big truck with four-wheel drive and a supercab.”

  “What’s a supercab?”

  “It’s a truck that seats two or three people in the front seat and a couple in the backseat. There’s plenty of space to store our stuff, and if you start feeling like the upholstery is closing in on you, you can ride in the back while I drive. Your hair mussed in the breeze, your ears flopping behind you . . . it’ll be great.”

  “Can you destroy the world right now?” he asked. “Because if I gotta put up with one more dog joke . . .”

  “And if we don’t get a motel room or don’t want to stop for long, we can spread some sleeping bags out in the back and sack out there. We’d have to stop and use some of this cash to buy camping equipment, but that’d be easy enough.”

  He frowned at her. He blinked at her. At last he said, “That’s kind of brilliant.”

  “Well,” she said modestly, “I am a doctor.”

  “Okay, so. We try to steal a truck.”

  “And what are we going to do when we catch up with Arthur’s Chosen?”

  “Let’s get there first,” he said grimly, and she had no reply to that.

  14

  “THIS IS INSANE,” SHE COMMENTED.

  “It is not. Now try to look like we’re not stealing a car.”

  “But we are stealing a car.”

  “Will you cut that out? Look casual. Lean on the door.”

  “The one you’re trying to open?”

  Derik resisted the urge to strangle Sara. This was an interesting improvement over resisting the urge to kiss her. You’d think, since he’d saved her life—well, sort of, in that he hadn’t tried to kill her again—and because he was helping her hunt down Arthur’s Big Fat Losers, that she’d be a little grateful. Or at least nicer. But nooo. It was blah-blah-blah and bitch-bitch-bitch. Like she could do any better than a full-grown werewolf! Okay, well, maybe she could. But that was irrelevant. Wasn’t it?

  “It’s just that this is an extremely insane idea,” she was explaining, like he’d gone retarded.

  He grabbed the door handle again and tried to smell her hair without her catch
ing on. Roses and cotton—yum! And how cute did she look in the convertible with those red curls flying all over the place? Her nose was sunburned now, and he even liked the shade of pink.

  She turned to give him a suspicious look, and he held his breath in mid-sniff. Then, to distract her, he said, “Show me another place that has all the cars lined up, with their keys in the ignition.” He spread his arms to indicate the Enterprise Car Rental lot. “Huh? Show me. That’s all I ask.”

  “Show me another place that has less paperwork on any one of these cars. You don’t think they do a head count or whatever—a grille count—before the last guy goes home for the day? They’ll know it’s gone in a cold minute.”

  “So we find another car rental place,” he said, “and steal from there.”

  “Help you folks?”

  They both spun, Derik swearing under his breath. Sure, the guy had snuck up on him from upwind, and sure, Sara was sort of distracting—she kind of jammed his radar, so to speak—but that was no excuse. No fucking excuse!

  “We were just looking,” Sara explained, after clearing her throat and trying a smile.

  The fella who’d hailed them looked more nervous than they did—and more angry than Derik felt. His gray suit was rumpled, and his tie was flying over his shoulder in the breeze. His brown hair was wisping about, and his watery blue eyes were alternately starey and darting. Derik started to grab Sara’s shoulder to pull her behind him when he got a whiff of burning silk—the smell of desperation.

  “Uh-oh,” he muttered.

  “You folks need a car? I’ll tell you what. You can have that truck right over there.” He pointed to a shiny, brand-new, red pickup truck, complete with supercab and about fourteen antennas.

  They looked at the truck, glowing at them almost like a mirage, or the Holy Grail—Derik expected to hear a choir of angels humming—then looked at the sales guy.

  “I’ve had it with this place,” he muttered. “Promote Jim Danielson over me? The guy comes in an hour late every day and leaves an hour early. And don’t get me started on his lunch breaks. They’re more like miniature leaves of absence. The guy’s fucking the manager’s daughter so he gets the promotion? Him?”

  “We, uh, don’t want you to get in any trouble,” Sara said.