Wolf on the Road (8 page)

“Getting us out of here,” Jake answered simply. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let that shrimpy thing keep you and me in a box. I told you I’d protect you, didn’t I?”

“I actually don’t remember if you did,” she said with a little chuckle. “Things have been happening kinda fast, you know? Life seems to be coming from all around me, and I don’t really know how to take it.” She started shaking as she admitted to the world what she’d been hiding for the past three days. “I can’t handle this. I’m sitting here in a cage and I’m shaking and terrified and barely able to keep from throwing up.”

Jake didn’t say anything. He just kept grinding the chains. Mali just had to keep going. Her guts were a pressure cooker of nerves and she could feel the valve starting to whistle louder and louder. “If someone wanted to drill a hole in my head to let the pressure out, I’d be willing to entertain that possibility.”

“You’re gonna be okay,” was the first thing Jake said. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. I didn’t go all this way and I didn’t do this to you to let you get hurt. Not a chance in hell.”

His gravelly, gruff voice sent a wave of warmth and comfort surging through Mali’s body that replaced the awful chill from moments before. She held her breath for a moment, and then let it out in a slow, rattling exhalation. “I’m sorry for freaking out,” she said softly. She pushed herself up off the ground, and was almost fully standing when her knees got wobbly again. Mali half walked, and half stumbled backward against the cinderblock wall, which she promptly slid down. The scratchy brick plucked at her shirt and then at her skin, sending a thrill of sensation up her spine.

“You didn’t freak out,” Jake said in between grunts of effort. “If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing. But instead of doing that, I’m gonna fix what I made a mess of.”

As he ground away on the chain, the scent of iron briefly met his nose. And then, a soft snoring sound came across the way. He laughed softly and called Mali’s name. When she didn’t respond, he nodded to himself, and went right back to work.

“I’m not gonna let you down, Mali,” he whispered. “I promise.”

He thought he heard a purr from her cage, or maybe it was just a sleep snort. Either way, at that exact moment, Jake Danniken made the decision that he wasn’t going to stop until she was safe. It didn’t matter what it took, it didn’t even matter if it killed him on the way.

He wasn’t stopping until that woman was safe.

Jake listened to her sleepy breathing. “Because I think I love you,” he whispered.

She didn’t hear, at least he didn’t think she did. In the back of his mind, though, he sort of hoped she had.

––––––––

“W
hat in the hell?” Erik Danniken, Jamesburg alpha, awoke at around ten in the morning that Thursday, to knocks on his door. He
hated
people knocking on his door. “Izzy? You here?”

From the other end of the house, his mate clicked on the intercom she’d installed for the baby. “No, I’ve been up since normal people wake up,” she said. “Frederick has a doctor’s appointment in a half hour so I’ll be gone for... god, probably the rest of the day. You know how Jenga is, he never manages to not chat for an hour or three.”

Jenga, the town witchdoctor, who was assisted by his two hand-crafted helpers: a giant re-animated bear named Atlas, who enjoyed nothing more than chugging lilac water and various colognes, and Sara, Atlas’s mate who was similarly sewn. Due to a lack of more traditional medical practitioners in Jamesburg, he’d gotten an honest-to-god medical degree. Turns out, he was kind of a genius, and blazed through three years of coursework in just over six months. He made a special deal with the head of the medical school to skip his residency, owing to his very peculiar sort of bedside manner.

Well, and owing to the fact that after a twelve hour shift, the chicken feet and bones in his beard
really
started to stink, and that Atlas started getting separation anxiety that threatened to destroy entire blocks of Jamesburg at a time. It was a mutual agreement based on Jenga never practicing anywhere except Jamesburg, but that wasn’t an issue. Somehow, the witchdoctor just never felt quite comfortable anywhere but home. As it happened, nowhere else but home was comfortable with him, either, so it all worked out.

“Make sure he doesn’t kick down any walls when he gets his shots,” Erik said. “It cost me like eight hundred bucks to get that stuff rebuilt, and I’d rather not have Jenga thinking I owe him anything. Even if I do.”

“He’s so good with Freddie,” Izzy said as she walked down the hallway and poked her head into the bedroom door. Frederick was strapped to her chest with a backpack device that Erik insensitively called a “papoose-to-go” in his endearingly offensive way. “And the only reason he made you pay for that was because you offered. He said not to worry about it, but you already had your wallet out.”

“Yeah well, what can I say? I’m not the kind of jackass whose kid punches a hole in the wall after he gets a shot and then I refuse to pay for it. I mean, I’m a jackass in other ways, but—”

“Open up in there, Danniken!” a screechy voice from outside the bedroom window came. It was accompanied by a series of knocks that rattled the window frame. “I know you’re in there you lazy bastard, open up!”

“That voice is familiar,” Erik said quietly as he rolled out of bed. He kissed Frederick on the head, then pulled Izzy against him, and kissed her much too hungrily for morning time. She sighed, smiled, and gave him a quick peck back.

“You’ve got three meetings at the courthouse starting at noon, and then you have Complainer’s Court tonight at six. I’ll come by after I drop Freddie off at pre-school with Lilah, all right?”

“How’s she doing?” Erik asked, as he casually pulled his jeans up. “Should probably take her a casserole or something. When’s the baby supposed to come?”

Izzy laughed. “About six months too late, whenever it decides to show up. That poor girl. She’s been a mess since the second month. I guess that’s why raccoons and bears don’t usually end up mating?”

“Oh she’ll be fine,” Erik said. “She’s a limber girl.”

He somehow said that without a shred of irony or mindfulness. Izzy arched her eyebrow at him. Slowly, he turned to face her. “What?” he asked. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Limber? Really, Erik? How would you know that?”

He flushed a deep crimson across his cheeks and neck. “I mean, er, she’s a raccoon. I mean, they’re limber, right?”

Hardly able to keep herself from laughing, Izzy meant to continue the cross examination, but the pounding on the window interrupted her thoughts. “Open up, Danniken!”

“I swear I’ve heard that voice before,” Erik said aloud, but distant. “Who do I know with a really squeaky voice, who would be pissed off enough at me to bang on my window, and would also be either dumb enough or brave enough to do it before noon?”

“Either open the door or I’ll, uh... I’ll wait until you do, damn it! I’m a busy bunny, you get the hell out here right now!”

“Did you make coffee?” Erik asked casually, completely ignoring the increasing volume of Petunia’s jeering.

Izzy grabbed her keys off the nightstand. “Yeah, it’s still in the pot. Might want to let it warm up for a few minutes, but it’s made.”

“Thanks babe,” Erik said. “What would I do without you?”

She shrugged. “Probably be less able to completely ignore whoever that is banging on the window. You should address that before you end up having to spend the weekend re-caulking.”

Erik snickered, and then laughed for a moment. “I’ll re-caulk
something
,” he said, and then grinned widely in pride. “Get it? I’ll re-caulk something, I said!”

Izzy rolled her eyes so hard they almost clacked in the back of her skull. “Right, thanks. Yeah, I got it. Now will you please deal with whoever that is before I deal with
you
?”

“I’ll deal with
you
!” Erik said. “Get it, I—”

She hushed him with a finger on his lips. “Yes,” she said, “thank you very much for the keen humor that would have been at home in a
National Lampoon
movie from the 90s. For the record, those were the ones that weren’t ever funny.”

Erik though was still in a world very centered on being very proud of his joke. He was looking at the mirror, buttoned his shirt, and was just about to start singing to himself as he lifted the brush to his hair, then paused, Fonze-style, and dropped the brush on the counter.

“I love you, Erik,” Izzy said with a laugh. “You are completely ridiculous. Anyway, I gotta run. See you at the courthouse in a... well, a while.”

They kissed again quickly, and Izzy hurried out of the house. She opened the door just as Petunia was starting to come around the corner of the green natural-wood siding house. The little bunny started hopping, trying to get her attention. Izzy waved to her. “How ya doin’, Petunia?” she asked.

Petunia was completely disarmed. She’d almost forgotten that the vast majority of the people in Jamesburg saw her as reformed.
Reformed
, whatever that meant. She almost forgot that Erik was the one who signed the probation order that let her out of the lockup. “Uh, hi,” Petunia said. “Doing okay I guess?”

“Good! Erik’s getting dressed, I’m sure he’ll be out in a second.”

As Petunia opened her mouth, trying to formulate
something
that would come out, she raised a hand, lifted one finger, and found herself completely, totally, absolutely dumbfounded. Izzy trotted to the car, stuck Frederick in his car seat and waved as she pulled out of the driveway. Petunia just watched her until the car disappeared over a hill and out of view. She scrunched up her forehead, trying to make sense of what had just happened. The uncomfortable reality was right in front of her face, though: people just didn’t see her as a threat anymore. She was a mascot, she was a symbol of the things that Jamesburg did right. She was nothing but a Muppet that no one paid attention to past patting her on the head and waving at her from across the street.

Her teeth ached. Her brain felt like it was twisting inside her head, and her guts were boiling so hotly that she could taste bile. Grinding her teeth eased the pain slightly, but there was so much heat radiating through Petunia’s body that she felt like at any point, she might actually burst into flames and rocket off into the stratosphere. She lifted her hand and touched the doorbell with her fingertip before snapping out of her trance and shaking her head to clear the cobwebs.

“Doorbell? Come on, Petunia, you’re better than that.” A grim smile spread across her face. Instead of politely hitting the doorbell, she instead balled up a fist and thumped it against the door as hard as she could and kept going until her hand felt like a giant bruise. “Danniken!” she screamed. “Open this damn—”

“Oh hey Petunia,” Erik said as he opened the door in between her heavy fist falls. “What’s shaking?” His shirt was only partially buttoned, and his hair was perfectly unkempt. The act of looking at him made Petunia absolutely seethe with anger.

“I,” she started, but was shaking so hard she was almost vibrating. She felt like a giant ball of kinetic energy just waiting to explode.

“Petunia?” Erik asked, not unpleasantly. “Sorry, I just have a bunch of meetings today, and—”

“I have your brother and the girlfriend he changed from human to werewolf! They’re in my basement and the only way you’re getting them is by giving me a million bucks and the town helicopter so I can get out of here and go somewhere that no one will look at me and pat me on the head and—”

Erik scowled. “You... what?”

“You heard me,” she said, breathing heavily. Her heart was pounding and she wanted nothing more than to bite him right in the face, or maybe boot him in the ass. She couldn’t decide exactly but she knew she wanted to do
something
. “I have your brother. And he turned a human into a shifter to keep her alive. He broke the law, Danniken, and if you don’t pay me, I’m turning both of them in to the council.”

The “council” she was referring to was the Council on Shifter Ethics and Manners, which Erik himself had signed into law a few months before. It was a legal framework meant to protect both humans and shifters during the uncomfortable process of their worlds becoming more and more intertwined. They took things like this very seriously, and both Petunia and Erik knew the penalty for unsanctioned transformations was a significant prison sentence and a fine that neither Jake, nor Erik, could ever hope to pay.

He thought for a moment, massaging his temples with his index fingers. “Where the hell am I supposed to get a million dollars? And don’t you realize that if you take the town’s helicopter that you’re going to be on all sorts of tracking maps? I mean, it’s a helicopter, you have to register the flights and follow a list of rules a mile long.”

Petunia frowned deeply and angrily. “Fine,” she finally said. “No helicopter. A city car. Something I can take and get away. That’s what I want. A million bucks and a car. And no one follows me!” she added the last stipulation almost as an afterthought. Erik sighed.

“Look,” he said. “Are you sure you’re wanting to do this? I mean, this is one of those no-going-back situations. Wait, are you off your medication?”

“Shut up!” Petunia snarled. “Yes I’m sure I want to do this, and leave my sister alone, she’s got nothing to do with this, you hear me?”

“Rita? Why on earth would I think she had anything to do with this? She’s never done anything wrong, and you... well, let’s be fair here, you did try to flood the town. That’s kind of bad. But kidnapping? What the hell are you thinking?”

Petunia narrowed her gaze. “What the hell are
you
thinking, having your brother change a girl into a werewolf without prior written consent and full faith of the council? Exactly how do you think that’s gonna go over?”

Beads of sweat had appeared on Erik’s temples, right where he was rubbing his head. This
was
bad. Jake turning someone would have been bad before there was an agreement about that sort of thing. It was so dire, in fact, that it was in the top five most serious rules in the agreement. Still, kidnapping
was
pretty bad. But one of those things is a state felony. The other could cause a national episode that threatened to undo all the hours, all the blood and sweat and tears that had gone into the agreement in the first place. And to have the
brother
of one of the people who came up with it?