Golden Anidae (A Blushing Death Novel) (15 page)

“I’d love to gut you but like he said, no trail.”

An all too familiar stinging of a needle pricked my neck.
Jesus, I hate needles.

He hovered over me, watching as my eyes grew blurry. It was hard to keep the kid in focus as the drug roared through my system. His foot rose above my head. I felt distant almost outside of my body watching the kid’s foot above my head as if I wasn’t lying on the ground beneath him. All I could think was,
I should probably move out of the way.

It was too late.

His heel crashed into the side of my skull with a sickening thud and my eyes closed. Then, blissfully, there was nothing.

Chapter 14

“Dahl, wake up, damn it,” someone shouted into my ear from far, far away.

A sharp pain shot from my leg and surged up my back as I shivered in the frigid air. It was all a bad dream. I would wake up and be back in my bed, hopefully not alone. Every ache that throbbed in my body with the beat of my heart and every memory flooding my brain like a tidal wave would never have happened. Bliss.

I opened my eye and winced when I couldn’t open my left eye. It was still swollen shut. I focused on a tall man, russet hair, and a familiar handsome face staring back at me. He smiled softly in relief.

“Ah shit. Danny, I’m dead aren’t I?” I said, sucking in a ragged breath. “Is this Heaven? If it is, Heaven sucks cause I still hurt.”

“This isn’t Heaven, and you’re not dead,” he huffed. “Not yet anyway.”

I definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

“What the hell is going on and where did you come from? You’re dead!” I tried to scream but my tongue was dry and my throat felt like I’d swallowed dirt.

“That’s not important now!” he snapped.

“The hell it’s not!” I yelled back.

He stormed away from me, ripping his hand through his shaggy, russet hair. I remembered how soft that hair had been once, sliding between my fingers.

“I forgot how big a pain in the ass you can be.” He mumbled to himself in exasperation.

“Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you before now,” I whimpered, trying not to cry. I didn’t want to think about how busted and broken I was. All I wanted to think about was Danny. Why was Danny here now? He glanced back at me with what I thought was pity on his face and that broke my heart.

“I couldn’t go. I thought if I stayed, I’d make it easier on you,” he said with a smile. “Dahl, when you grieve, you really grieve,” he said with a grin lighting his hazel gray eyes. He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “We don’t have time for a trip down memory lane right now.”

“Why not?” I asked, avoiding the inevitable. I was going to die.

“Because,” he said, unfolding his arms and crouching down beside me.

I wanted to reach out and grab him, hold him to me but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Ghosts weren’t corporeal. Since I could still make out the desert through his form, I was pretty sure he was a ghost. Maybe I was just hallucinating and I was really closer to death than I thought. No, there was too much pain for me to be hallucinating.

“You’re hurt and bad. I think it’s more than your body can handle, at least on your own. And especially not with whatever shit they shot into your bloodstream. Plus,” he said as he stood and glanced around, “it’s getting cold. I can see your breath and it’s only going to get colder as the night goes on.”

“Yeah, I get the message. I’m fucked. Thanks for stopping by,” I snapped as I laid my head back on the pavement. I wanted to sit up but every time I started to, my stomach turned and my head spun. Maybe I could just close my eyes and go to sleep?

“FOCUS!” he roared above me.

That snapped my eyes open. Danny never yelled at me.

“Okay, what?” I whined. I leaned over onto my side and closed my eyes. Breathing deep, I realized I didn’t throw up and took that as a good sign. Rolling up into a sitting position, I breathed again, waiting. Still no vomit. Mark one point in the ‘win’ column for me.

“I need you to shift,” he growled.

I stared at him with my mouth gaping open. It took me a minute before I regained my voice and was able to answer.

“Danny, I’m not a werewolf.”

“Just try for me, okay,” he begged. The skin around his hazel eyes crinkled and his brow furrowed as if he seemed scared. Raising his hand to touch my face, he stopped just short when he couldn’t touch me. “I’d kill that bloodsucker if I could for letting you go,” he whispered.

“Not his fault,” I snapped. “I was going regardless,” I added with a clink of teeth as they started to chatter. The temperature had definitely taken a swing south and gooseflesh pimpled my skin as the cold seeped into me.

Danny’s eyes focused on me and all I could see in them was regret.

“Dean should’ve known better. He knew what you were and watched you leave without a fight,” he muttered.

“Didn’t matter,” I retorted. “There was nothing that either one of them could’ve done to make me stay.”

Danny met my eyes again and his lips curved up into a knowing smile.

“I know,” he said in an almost defeated voice. “Nobody was gonna stop you from doing exactly what you wanted to do.”

“Danny, I can’t shift,” I said with an apologetic tone. He had to face the truth. I wasn’t a werewolf. This was it. No one would ever find me.

“You have to try. If you can do it, you’ll heal and be warm. Dahlia, you’re probably 120 miles outside of civilization. You’ll have to walk back and it’ll be easier on four legs instead of two,” he begged.

“But—”

“Try,” he ordered.

I was going to die out there anyway. What difference did it make?

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

I stared out into the barren desert and then back at him, expecting . . . I don’t know, the answer to just fall out of the sky. “So, what do I do?”

“Concentrate,” Danny said as he closed his eyes. “Let the magic take over. You can do this. I know you can,” he said, sounding more hopeful than sure. “Plus, if you really want to do something, nothing and no one can stop you. I know it.”

I closed my eyes and thought about Danny in wolf form, about his fur, a warm russet color. I thought about Dean and his silvery elegance as he strutted around on four paws. I thought about the change and how painful it seemed for those that were weak and how beautiful it could be when it was done by the strong. I opened my one good eye and saw Danny staring back at me. “Did it work?”

“No,” he said.

“I told you I couldn’t shift. I’m going to die out here in the middle of the fucking desert.”

“Dahl,” he begged. “You’re not going to die if I can help it. What would happen to Patrick and Dean if you never went back? Are you going to give up that easily?” he asked with a twinkle of challenge in his eye. All I needed was an obstacle to prove him and anyone else wrong.

Damn, he knows me too well.

I shook my head in defiance as my limbs shivered and gooseflesh popped up on every inch of me.

“Good, now close your eyes and listen.”

I lay back on the cold ground and closed my eyes. If I was going to die, I at least wanted to be comfortable. Danny’s voice broke through my wallowing like hot chocolate through a cold body.

“Imagine running through the woods in spring time. The ground is moist with rain. The smell of new flowers and blooming leaves fills your nose. Imagine the ground beneath your feet and the scent of that little rabbit off in the distance. Imagine the sound of its feet bursting through the bushes and twigs snapping on the ground as you chase it. Feel your teeth sinking into the warm flesh of it and filling your belly with food. Relax and breathe in the scent of the woods . . . of the Pack. You remember my scent, Dean’s scent. Use that and wrap them around you.”

I breathed in deep, filling my nose with Danny and then Dean. The smell of Dean’s sweet musk on a warm spring day filled my mind and wrapped around me like a warm blanket. The voice I knew was Eithina spoke loud and clear in my mind.
Safe . . . Warm . . . HOME
.
This is who we are.

The first pang of bones moving out of place in my hip jolted me and I opened my eyes in horror. This couldn’t be happening. My entire body, bone and muscle, seized up and locked. I couldn’t have moved even if I wanted to. Pain ripped through me as my body broke and re-knit itself back together in another form, a shape that was unfamiliar to me.

My fingers shrank and changed to paws with claws that glimmered in the moonlight. The skin on my arms spouted fur as my eyes shifted from a world of colors and dimensions, into a world of grays and muted blues.

And just like that, the pain and the chill were gone.

My chest heaved with each breath as clean, cool air filled my lungs. I couldn’t seem to get enough as I huffed in and out. My tongue hung out of the side of my mouth like a weight, soaking up the tastes on the air. It felt heavier than I remembered as I tried to suck it back into my mouth. I wasn’t cold anymore. A bonus. I was, however, exhausted. Sitting my ass down on the ground, my paws framing my body, I tried to catch my breath.
HOLY SHIT! Holy fucking shit! I did it.

“Dahl, you’re the most beautiful shade of gold. You almost shimmer,” Danny whispered to me from above.

I stared up at where he should’ve been, where his voice was coming from but all I could see in this form was a faint outline of his features and the warm glow of his aura. I wanted to see him, the features of his beautiful face, the line of his bulky muscular body. I wanted the relief of knowing I would be able to shift back and see him and know he wouldn’t leave me again. I lay down on my stomach and watched the air I knew was Danny, staring up at the outline of his face. He smiled at me, that much I could tell, seeming almost proud of me.

“Nope,” Danny said in a cheerful voice. “No time to rest. You’ve got to get going.”

I growled at him as I laid my head down between my front paws in protest. I wanted to sleep so badly that I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Come on, Dahlia. They could have Enza right now.”

My ears perked up and I glared at him for a long moment before I huffed through my teeth, vibrating my jowls against my snout. I got to my feet but as I did, I snapped my newly sharpened teeth at him to let him know I wasn’t happy about it.

“Thatta girl!”

I took my first few steps as a wolf. They were awkward and wobbly as I attempted to get all four feet moving at once and in the right order. I thought it would be instinctual but my human brain and my bipedal nature kept getting in the way.

Danny laughed off to my left when I tripped a third time and my snout hit the ground, filling my nose with desert dust.

“Whatever you are, this evidently isn’t a natural state for you. Most werewolves don’t have this much trouble,” he said with a laugh.

I growled my response and he threw his hands up in the air.

“All right, I’ll leave you alone.”

I would have given anything to bite him, but couldn’t. So, I trudged on through the darkness.

I don’t know how long we walked. Once I got the hang of walking on all fours, I tried running but I was too exhausted to keep it up for any length of time. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten and there was nothing around that would sustain me, especially in the wolf form. But every time I wanted to quit, Danny was right there pushing me along.

Pre-dawn light peeked over the horizon as the darkness thinned to a muted gray. I was still too far from the city. The nearest cul-de-sac wasn’t even a speck on the horizon. At the rate I was moving, I might reach Las Vegas by midnight tomorrow if I didn’t pass out from exhaustion and hunger first. I couldn’t stop though. Danny was right; they might have Enza or Everett. I had to keep going.

The desert was quiet like the grave and the only things my ears picked up were the insects moving over the desert surface and the animals burrowing below ground. It was a weird sensation to feel the vibration of the earth through the pads of my feet.

I walked, well - trotted, along the highway in the silence and felt the rumble of a car engine through the ground long before I heard it with my ears or saw it on the horizon. I sat down by the side of the road. I was tired and needed a damned break.

Sitting off the road about ten or fifteen feet as a prim pup, I was filled with exhaustion and defeat as the realization that I was wasted of all my energy rattled around my brain. I wasn’t going to make it. Headlights rose over the horizon, approaching as I took the time to catch my breath and the familiar sound of an old engine made my ears perk up in alert.

“It’s about time that damned coyote showed up,” Danny mumbled.

I glanced over one shoulder and then the other searching for a coyote. The sound of the approaching truck sunk through my tired brain and I knew . . . RAIDEN! I leapt into the highway, hoping his headlights caught my fur and praying he wouldn’t hit me.

Squealing tires and the smell of burnt rubber filled the empty desert as he slammed on the brakes, coming to a stop a few feet from me. The truck idled for a moment or two before he put the truck in ‘park’ and got out.

He stepped from the cab, cautious, leaving the driver-side door open as he circled the front of the truck. He sniffed the air speculatively and unsure as I sat perfectly still, waiting for him to recognize me.

“Well, Ma’am,” he said with more than a hint of surprise in his voice. “Aren’t you a pretty thing?” Raiden’s voice carried a mesmerized quality as he spoke.

Damn it, he’d called me “Ma’am” again. I growled my displeasure since I couldn’t talk. He chuckled to himself. “Ms. Dahlia, you do make a pretty picture.”

He strolled by me, opening the passenger-side door. I followed, thankful to not have to walk the rest of the way into the city. I stopped just before hopping into the cab of Raiden’s truck, searching over the long line of my body for Danny. Something in my gut tightened as his outline faded just a bit.

“Go on,” Danny encouraged, waving his hand at me to hurry. “You’ll be fine now. I’ve done what I was supposed to. You don’t need me anymore.”

I understood then that I would never see him again. This
was
it . . . forever. I wanted to tell him that I missed him, how much I’d loved him, and how sorry I was about how things turned out. In this form, I couldn’t. I whined, a sad little pathetic sound that I hoped would get my message across.