Derik's Bane Read online

  “And we don’t want you to get any closer,” Derik warned.

  “No, look, it’s okay, see?” The frustrated Enterprise employee grinned, which looked fairly ghastly. “You guys know how to drive a standard transmission, right?”

  “Driving a stick is so not the big problem in this scenario,” Derik said.

  “Shhh!” Sara’s elbow jabbed him in the side. “Let him finish.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll just fix it in the computer. Nobody will even know about it. Go on, take it. You can help me stick it to my boss.” He stared off at the horizon for a moment, looking haunted. “I just—not today. I put up with it, and I put up with it, but for some reason, today I just—I can’t do it. Not one more day. So go on.”

  “STOP LOOKING SO DAMNED SMUG,” DERIK TOLD

  Sara later, as they were leaving California behind.

  “Can’t help it,” she replied.

  “So, what are the chances of that happening?”

  “About one in a zillion.”

  “That’s what I thought. Nice truck, though.”

  “Great truck.”

  “You’re looking smug again.”

  “Sorry.”

  15

  “OKAYYY . . . WE’VE GOT SLEEPING BAGS, A COOLER, water, backpacks, flashlights, toilet paper, Purell, a first aid kit, dehydrated snacks, a couple of sharp knives, eating utensils, plates, cups, a grill, a frying pan, and a pot. Let’s see, what am I forgetting?”

  “The fact that I’m a werewolf,” Derik muttered, so as not to be overheard.

  “Oh, yeah. That. I didn’t forget it, I’m just totally discounting it.”

  “Nice!”

  “Quit it, now, you’re making me lose track.” She squinted at her list, pretending Derik wasn’t heaving with indignation less than six inches away. Like Wal-Mart wasn’t distracting enough . . . the camping section was bigger than Yosemite.

  “Okay, so, we can hit the grocery story for hot dogs, bacon, bread, and—”

  “Sara, we don’t need all this junk.” He fingered the sleeping bag and practically sniffed in disgust. “First off, we have a limited amount of money, so I’ll tell you what you don’t have to waste the bucks on.”

  “Oh, would you? That would be swell.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I can see in the dark, so don’t bother with the flashlights. I sure as shit don’t need the Band-Aids in the first aid kit. And I’d rather eat my own shit than touch one of those dehydrated beef stews.”

  “You’re so gross,” she told him. “And you’re forgetting about me. I can neither see in the dark, nor bring my bleating prey down by the neck at a dead run. And I like to be warm at night.”

  “Why don’t you leave that to me?” he leered.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  He deflated. “Aw, c’mon, Sara, it’s my job to look out for you. You don’t need all this junk.”

  “Mmmm.” She crossed a few more items off the list. “Look, I appreciate that you’ve aborted the whole ‘Kill Sara’ plan, I really do. But if I’m going to travel across the country with a homicidal stranger—that’s right, I said homicidal, don’t puff up like a cobra and glare—then I’m going to take care of myself. Just like I’ve been doing all along. If you don’t mind.” And even if you do, Studboy.

  “That was a good speech,” he said admiringly.

  “Oh, shut up. And grab that bug spray, will you?”

  “Ech! You’re not going to actually spray that on you, are you?”

  “No, I’m going to use it to sweeten my coffee. Just grab it,” she said, already exhausted. Long day. Long fucking day, and that was a fact.

  “YOU NEED SALT CRYSTALS AND FRESH GROUND pepper? And vanilla sticks?” Derik cried. “I thought we were roughing it!”

  “We are, but there are some things I refuse to give up. I think I’ve been a pretty good sport up ’til now, don’t you? I mean, you turned my whole life upside down, but I’m playing along. Look, think of it as bringing a little taste of home along with us on the road.”

  “I’m thinking of it as a big goddamned waste of money and space, how about that?”

  “A person of limited imagination,” she admitted, “and poor cooking skills might think of it like that.”

  He sniffed the jar that held the vanilla pods and tossed it into her cart. “FYI, sunshine, I am a great damned cook, and these things are a total waste on a camping trip. Not to mention, they’re from Mexico, not Madagascar, so on top of everything else, you’re getting screwed.”

  “Say that after you’ve tried my campfire cocoa.”

  “Sure I will. How much money do we have left, anyway?”

  “Enough to get free range eggs,” she said, plucking them out of the dairy section. “Be a good boy and scamper off to get some Asiago cheese, will you?”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “You’re just mad because we skipped the Milk Bones aisle.”

  “Sara, for the love of God . . . if you don’t stop with the dog jokes, and I mean, stop with them right now . . .” He followed her, practically wringing his hands, and she hid a smile. It was good to have the upper hand, however momentarily.

  Camping across country with a werewolf . . . now that was going to be an adventure.

  PART TWO

  Sorceress and Werewolf

  16

  “SO YOU WANT TO STOP?”

  “I don’t mind stopping.”

  “I didn’t ask if you’d mind. I asked—”

  “Since I’m sitting right next to you,” he said, trying not to snap, “I was sorta able to follow the conversation. Look, I can go all night. Drive,” he added when she went red. “I can drive all night. If you want to, curl up in the back, go to sleep.”

  “Well, we bought all this camping equipment.”

  “You. You bought it all.”

  “Right. And it’s”—she looked at her wrist—“eight-thirty. We could stop, maybe sleep for a few hours.”

  “And make some burgers?”

  “What?” she cried. “We just dropped twenty bucks at McDonalds!”

  “Oh, Big Macs,” he scoffed. “They’re more like an appetizer than an actual meal.”

  “Actually,” she said frostily, “if memory serves, someone insisted we stop so he could get the toy in the Happy Meal.”

  “It’s for my friend’s kid,” he tried not to whine. “Anyway, it’s not my fault. That stuff doesn’t fill you up. Half an hour later—”

  “It’s been twenty minutes.”

  “—and you’re hungry again.”

  She smacked herself in the forehead, which looked painful, and left a red mark. He resisted the urge to kiss it. “Okay, okay. So, we’ll stop, eat, and sleep. For a little while. We’re out of California, anyway. I mean, we’re making good time.”

  “Okay,” he said, because really, he didn’t know what else to say. She was getting nervous, which was making him nervous. Which he couldn’t stand. It’s like she hadn’t really thought about the fact that they’d be sleeping right next to each other in the back of a truck until just a couple of minutes ago. Which was extremely weird, because Sara was many things, and stupid wasn’t one of them. Shit, it was the first thing that went through his mind when they were deciding which nylon bags to buy. “So, we’ll stop.”

  She pointed. “There’s a campground.”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY HAD THEIR ONE-NIGHT camping permit and had selected a teeny campsite that was roughly, given what he’d just paid, ten bucks a square foot.

  He decided to kiss her again, break the ice. Well, that, and he wanted to kiss her again. But really, it was, like, a necessity. If she got any edgier, and thus bitchier, he just might try to kill her again, and another brain aneurysm he did not need.

  So, they’d kiss, and maybe it’d lead to something and maybe not, but she seemed to expect something, and he was cer
tainly more than willing to oblige.

  Except.

  Except, she hopped down from the truck, groped in one of the bags, and was now coating herself head to foot with noxious chemicals. He coughed and gagged and waved the air in front of his face, to no avail. The cloud was suffocating him!

  “Enough, enough!”

  “Do you see all the mosquitoes?” she cried. “We’ll get eaten alive.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Are you serious?” She walked over to him, and he backed up, terrified—she was a walking biohazard—but she grabbed his arm, forestalling his retreat. He was coughing so hard he missed her question.

  “What?”

  “It’s true! You don’t have a mark on you.”

  “Bugs don’t like werewolves.”

  “Lucky bastard,” she muttered.

  “Listen, Sara . . .” She was still holding on to him, which he kind of liked. He bent in. “You know, we’re going to be spending a lot of . . . um . . . you know, time together . . . and . . . and . . . shit.”

  “What?” She was looking up into his eyes, and oh, she was just so pretty it was a damn crime, that’s what it was, and . . .

  Shit.

  His lungs exploded. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like.

  “You’ve got to lay off the bug spray,” he gasped after about ten minutes of spasms.

  “Well, what do you know about that,” she said, and smiled for the first time in half an hour. “It’s werewolf repellent.”

  He laughed in spite of himself. “Deep Woods Off: For those really pesky werewolves.”

  An hour later, he wasn’t laughing. They’d eaten, doused their fire, said their good nights, crawled into their sleeping bags. Well, she did. He couldn’t see how she could cocoon herself in a heavy bag when it was eighty degrees outside—humans were weird, or maybe it was just females of any species—but whatever. And now he was lying beside her in the back of the truck, slowly going insane.

  He’d dated humans before, so it wasn’t like he’d never had this problem before. The communication thing. Because he had. But somehow, back then, with other women, it hadn’t bothered him so much.

  It bothered him now.

  If Sara were a werewolf, she’d smell his intent and he’d smell hers, and they’d do it, or she’d say right out: Not interested, pal, take a hike, and they wouldn’t do it. Period. The end. But Sara couldn’t smell a thing, comparably speaking, and what was worse, she was pretending like she didn’t know he was so horny he was ready to have sex with his rolled up sleeping bag. So it was this big—this big thing that they weren’t talking about. What was that saying? It was the elephant in the room. A big, green, horny elephant.

  He tried to think: What would Michael do? Jeannie had driven the poor guy nuts in the beginning . . . still did, sometimes. And a lot of the early problems were because she had trouble settling into the Pack. And Michael, as alpha, expected her to fall in line. And Jeannie, as a human who carried firearms, thought he should drop dead. So Michael had a lot of experience with the communication thing. He’d been forced to learn, poor bastard. What would he do?

  He’d talk to Sara, that’s what he’d do.

  “Sara,” Derik whispered.

  Nothing.

  “Listen, Sara—” I really really like you, and you smell great, and I think your powers are really cool, if kind of terrifying, and oddly enough this makes you more appealing than any female I’ve ever known, and I definitely think we should fuck—oh, shit, I mean make love, you know, whatever—and then we can cuddle and I can get SOME FUCKING SLEEP.

  “Sara?”

  A light snore for an answer.

  “Shit.”

  Saving the world was going to be harder than he thought.

  17

  “THIS WEREWOLF THING,” SARA SAID ABRUPTLY. SHE puffed a hank of hair out of her face and took a break from struggling with her sleeping bag. It was uncanny. You bought the thing in this nice little roll, and after you used it, you couldn’t get it back into that nice little roll if someone stuck a gun in your ear. Uncanny! “You know, the full moon’s in a couple of days.”

  “Seventy-eight hours. Yeah, I know.”

  “So . . . what then?”

  “Sara, we could all be dead in seventy-eight hours.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she snapped. “I’m not going to destroy the world.

  And what’s with you this morning, you big blond grump?”

  He mumbled something. It sounded like “I know you are but what am I?” but even he wouldn’t be that immature. And boy, had he woken up on the wrong side of the truck this morning!

  “I’m just curious about what would happen, is all,” she said. “What if you lose control and bite me?”

  “What if I do?” he grumped.

  “Oh, very nice! Think I want to be worried about full moons and biting people and—and getting rabid and eating undercooked food and maybe getting Mad Werewolf Disease?”

  He covered his face with his hands and squatted by the smoldering remains of their fire. “It’s sooo early . . .”

  “Seriously, Derik.”

  “I am being serious. It’s too early for this shit.” He took his hands down from his face. “Besides, it’s not the flu, Sara. You can’t catch it. I could give you a blood transfusion, and you wouldn’t catch it. We’re two different species.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that. So all the movies are wrong?”

  “Totally, totally wrong.” He scrubbed his face with his hands and yawned. “Don’t waste your time watching them, unless it’s for entertainment value. Also, we don’t carry babies off in the moonlight, and I wouldn’t eat a person on a bet. Yech.”

  “Yech?”

  He shuddered, and she took offense. “What’s wrong with eating a person? You should be so lucky! Not that I want you to.”

  “You taste terrible, that’s what. All of you. The omnivore diet . . . blurgh.” He actually gagged!

  “Well, nobody’s asking you to eat anybody.”

  “I’d make an exception,” he grumbled.

  “Very funny. Don’t even think about eating me. And if we’re two different species, how do you have children with humans? And speaking of blood transfusions, would one of those even take?”

  “Yes, and yes. It doesn’t happen all the time—cubs with a human—but it does happen. I don’t know why, I’m not a goddamned biologist.” He groaned again and got up, then loped off toward the truck. “Are we ready? Let’s go. Ready?”

  “What’s the rush? And why are you so scratchy this morning?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he replied shortly, stomping on the clutch and starting the truck with a roar. “Went for a walk. All night.”

  “Well, excuuuse me, Mr. Insomniac—wait!” She ran to throw the last sleeping bag into the back of the truck. “Nobody told me werewolves were such rotten morning people!” She lunged, and just managed to pop the door open as he accelerated.

  “Well, now you know,” he said, shifting into second as she slammed her door.

  “So, what’s the plan, Grumpy McGee? Besides a second, possibly third, breakfast by ten o’clock?”

  “Drive until we’re tired. Stop again. Eat. Sleep. Drive more. Find Arthur’s Chosen. Kick their asses. The end.”

  “A fine plan,” she said.

  “Except . . .”

  “What?”

  He yawned again, which was startling—his jaw stretched wider than she thought would be possible, and he showed a lot of teeth. “Well, I have to stay in touch with my people, or they’ll start to worry about me. Maybe send someone else out here. So I thought tonight we’d stay at a safe house.” This was a rather small lie. He didn’t have to stay in the safe house; he could check in from the road. But the thought of having Sara in a warm bed . . . having Sara . . .

  “What? I didn’t catch that.”

  “I said okay,” she repeated. “I don’t mind sleeping with a roof over my head. Don�
�t yawn anymore.”

  “Huh? Never mind. And a shower. You should shower so you get all the bug spray—”

  “Yes, fine, all right. So, we stay at a safe house.”

  “Well, the thing is, I’d have to explain you. Because if any other werewolf ever found out who you were, they’d try to kill you.”

  “A possibility to be avoided at all costs,” she agreed. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Pose as my future mate—my fiancée, I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have to tell them something,” he explained.

  “Well. Okay. I guess. I’m against being killed, you know—I’m not totally irrational. We’ll just have to hide the fact that we don’t know each other very well.”

  “Um.” He cleared his throat. “There’s one other small problem.”

  “Small, huh?” She sighed as he slowed down and took the exit for Burger King. Like he hadn’t just eaten a pound and a half of bacon! “I’ll bet. Well, bring it on. The week I’m having, I can take it.”

  “The thing is, they’ll know—my people will know—if we’re not really, um, intimate.”

  Her mind processed this, then decided, the week she’d had, she could not take it. Probably she had misunderstood. “What?”

  “Well, like I said, they’ll know if we aren’t, you know, sleeping together. So we have to if we’re going to pull this off. Sleep together, I mean.”

  She turned in her seat to glare at him. He kept his eyes steadily on the road, she noticed. Coward. “You’re telling me I have to fuck you in order to stay at the safe houses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, too damned bad,” she snapped, ignoring the surge of heat to her cheeks.

  “You’d rather have your neck broken at the safe house?” he snapped back.

  “Yes, upon careful consideration, I think that would be preferable!”

  “Oh, stop with the drama queen thing. It’s just sex, that’s all, just sex, sex, that all it is, and frankly, I’m kind of insulted that you’d rather be gutted than see me naked!”

  “They’re called standards, pal. And I can’t help it if I’m one of the few who didn’t tumble into bed within five minutes of first meeting you!”