“C’mon…” Mila hated feeling helpless. She’d had enough of that as a child. She was twenty-one now and she loved having control over her own life. She refused to acknowledge the sickening feeling bubbling in her chest. For her own sake, she couldn’t consider the fact that Bianca was already past her. She had to be still coming.
Bianca didn’t like to drive at night, so when she did, she put her music way up loud and put her windows down. Although it bugged Mila in the rare times she drove with her after sundown, it came in mighty clutch then. Another pair of headlights appeared, this time accompanied by a painfully loud rendition of Pink. Any doubt Mila have had vanished when she recognized the small town car.
That’s about when Mila realized that she hadn’t thought this one all the way through. Bianca was coming, and she’d caught her before she got to the Cheeky Sprite. Awesome. Now, the real problem: how was she going to get Bianca to stop or see her? Step out in front of a car going sixty miles an hour and hope Bianca noticed her?
The headlights got closer. Mila inhaled deeply. Bianca, for all her wonderful qualities, was not going to take this well and she stood about a seventy percent chance that Bianca would see a mud-ridden lunatic on the side of the road and swerve wildly. Once that happened, it was anyone’s game whether Mila could get out of the way in time.
Mila took a hesitant step out into the road awkwardly, leaning more on the shambles of her right heel than her left one. This was going to be okay. She controlled her breathing. Bianca had to see her soon. Her headlights were down, and Mila would not be surprised if she was too busy jamming out to suspect someone would be in the middle of the road. No, come on. That was ridiculous. Mila kept up her confidence as the car got closer. She put her hands up and started waving wildly. The car didn’t stop or even slow. Mila’s once-controlled wave turned frantic.
“Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, though she doubted Bianca would hear her. “Hey, pay attention!”
When Mila was young, she’d been in a rodeo with her family when they did a thing called “mutton busting,” which was essentially when children grabbed hold of a sheep and the sheep scattered wildly. Whoever stayed on the longest won something, maybe a belt or a plaque. Something trivial. Mila didn’t even get to see the prize that day, because she’d misjudged how strong the sheep was and she’d gotten tossed. That was fine. It was maybe a foot fall to the arena sand. What wasn’t fine was the fact that she’d gotten plowed into by another runaway sheep as she was getting up and dusting herself off. She’d been so freaked out that her parents took her home. Now that she was older, it seemed like an overreaction.
It was in that moment, with Mila attempting to get Bianca’s attention, that her brain elected to remind her of that memory. The sheep’s lowered head wasn’t all that different from the charging car, except getting hit by the car would not be fixed by a band-aid and a lollipop.
Mila tried her best to maintain faith in her friend. This wasn’t a creature. This was a living human being that had to stop. She stayed in the road as her instincts increasingly ordered her to retreat. No. Mila clenched her teeth and kept waving. That was not who she was. She was Mila, and dammit, she wasn’t going to let herself be scared of life. She’d been through so much pain and suffering. Seeing a werewolf battle was not everyday material, but now she was starting to get a hold of herself and was thinking more rationally. This situation wasn’t all out of control. The important thing was that she and Bianca were safe. She was going to stand in the road, dammit, and prove that she could do it. The car showed no signs of altering its course and Mila’s confidence dropped through the roof. This wasn’t a moment to confront a childhood fear and prove something about courage. This was the time to get the hell out of the way.
She jumped off the road as Bianca finally saw her and slammed on the brakes. Tires squealing, the car screeched past Mila. The vehicle spun like a fly hanging onto a helicopter blade for dear life. Bianca got dangerously close to losing control and going off the road, but at the last second, she managed to come to a stop fifty yards down the road from Mila.
Mila ran over to the driver-side door, which seemed like a good thing to do at the time. The only thing that stopped her cold was Bianca sticking her hand out with pepper spray ready to fire. Mila used to think that the spray was exaggerated. There was no way that it was as debilitating as people acted. Then, in one of her self-defence courses, she’d volunteered to get sprayed. The purpose of the exercise was to teach defenders not to be trigger happy, and Mila was now a believer. When she saw it, Mila got her pretty elf ears away as fast as possible.
Mila backpedalled before she got sprayed. “It’s me! It’s me!”
Bianca looked like a cornered animal: wild, unpredictable, and scared out of her mind. Mila hadn’t considered the fact that she might have seen someone on the road and not known who it was. Normally a cute bundle of softness, her expression softened when she recognized her half-elf friend, then evolved into anger before settling on concern.
“Mi! Oh my God! You’re hideous!”
Mila knew Bianca didn’t mean it, so she made her approach to the car. “Gee, thanks.”
“No, I mean you’re all beat up!”
She opened the door and brushed off some of the pine needles. “This car is new, right?”
Bianca might have answered if her mouth wasn’t busy gasping and blustering about nothing. Her shaking hand turned off the radio. Mila, not feeling motivated to keep a conversation going, said nothing and she knew Bianca well enough to see that she was working up a twenty-page collection of every question she wanted to ask her. In the meantime, Mila savoured what she assumed was going to be her last moment of silence.
Mila settled into the plush seat. She could still pick up the new car smell, something that was about to come to a swift and tragic end with her presence. Oh, well. She’d clean it. With a snicker, she closed the door. Most of the mud from when she’d tripped had caked on by this point. “Well, not anymore.”
Bianca, to her credit, did not appear to notice or care. “How are you calm?” She poked around Mila’s face, checking for something. Bianca knew nothing about science in any way. Mila could have busted her nose and Bianca would not know, but it was sweet anyway, so Mila didn’t complain.
She didn’t have a good answer for her. She was almost always composed once she had time to think. Ever since she was a kid, she’d had better luck with her head about her instead of going purely off instinct. Also, she found it much easier to remain calm when she knew she had to keep Bianca from hyperventilating. Bianca was already steadily approaching blustering emotion and the next step was Mila talking her down. “Because…” she readjusted on the seat and lightly showered dirt. “How about we get going and I’ll tell you on the way?”
In other words, hurry up and let’s get out of here before someone comes to find me. Now that she got some more time to think about it, she didn’t know that nobody saw her run off. The sooner she got out of there, the better. Even if she’d not been spotted, any cop worth their weight would see them chilling on the highway and want to know what had happened.
Bianca gave it a shot to get back on the way to the city. Instead of putting it in reverse, she turned to look back, pressed the accelerator and lunged forward. She smashed her brakes sharply right as Mila successfully fastened her seat belt, which tightened and gave her the ever-welcome sensation of sprinting into a pole without bracing for it. She let out a low groan and ignored the throbbing in her breasts. She resisted the urge to say something. It was nothing short of a miracle that Bianca was even this composed.
“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Bianca went to adjust her glasses, missed by a good inch and successfully pushed them up closer to her eyes. To her credit, she got back on the road correctly the second time, putting it in reverse and pulling off a full three-point turn before easing onto the road shakily.
Mila didn’t show any emotion during the ride. She stayed calm, rational, and even dropp
ed a curt joke once every now and again. She acted tough. She had to be for everyone. As a kid, when her mom would complain about her dad’s drinking problem, it became Mila’s job to fix it somehow. It wasn’t the only example, but it fit well with her. Faking confidence gave her real confidence. Putting up the guise that she was sexy seemed to make guys interested in her.
Pretending she wasn’t scared as shit that a werewolf Khan might be coming after her to silence a witness only did so much.
But at that point it was all she had. Breaking down wasn’t an option for her, no matter how much she wanted to turn into a snivelling mess like Bianca. She had other things to worry about, right? Yeah, like accounting. A few hours ago that was the biggest immediate worry in her life. Trying to worry about it now seemed laughable.
Bianca clutched the steering wheel and focused on the road like another childhood friend would wander in front of them in the eerie blackness. “Are you okay? What happened? Talk to me!”
Mila checked the rear-view mirror over and over without making it obvious. No headlights. If they were being trailed, it wasn’t evident. She forced herself to relax the death grip she had on the console. “So, see what happened was…”
Mila wanted to tell her human friend everything. She wanted to tell her about the werewolf fight and Liam getting crushed during it, about how she’d run with all she had and that’s why she looked like such a mess, about how scared she’d been about the idea of accidentally leading her friend into such a dangerous environment. She held her tongue. Mila knew Bianca well enough to know such information would not be healthy for her friend, and the less she knew about the situation the better. “I got bored waiting for you,” she managed, cringing at how stupid it sounded. “So, I started walking through the woods to find you.”
Mila thought there was no way that Bianca would buy that, but Bianca looked ready. “But you’re all messy!”
Mila glanced down at herself, at the remaining pine needle or two, at the mud scraping her skin and caking on her clothes, at her broken heels, and at the rest of the picture that obviously didn’t point to a casual stroll. She looked like she’d picked a fight with a swamp and lost. “I fell. Off a hill.” The words came off awkwardly. Mila sucked at lying, and more so, she hated doing it. It didn’t come naturally to her. Although she was a solid bluffer, she simply didn’t have the ability to look someone in the face and say something that wasn’t true. She’d been lied to entirely too many times.
Conveniently, as bad as Mila was at fudging the truth, Bianca was that eager to believe it. She relaxed at Mila’s clearly made-up tale, which at first made Mila happy until she started talking with an accusatory tone. “But why would you go through the woods? Why not go along the road? And don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?”
Mila scowled. Great. She’d bought it, and now she was going to pick at her about her life choices. It came from a good place, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying. “Yep. No idea what I was thinking.”
“You should be more careful! I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt!”
Mila once more held her tongue. Being half elf was cool, but it came with one aggravating downside: her ears, taller and sharper than most, moved around without her permission depending on what she was feeling like a less-obvious version of a cat. She hid them with her hair so people wouldn’t wonder what the hell was wrong with her ears, though then she felt them lower angrily. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’ll be more cautious in the future. I can’t believe you didn’t see me standing on the road.”
“I was sleepy!”
Mila surveyed her friend, who looked like she had just done cocaine, speed, and washed it down with Red Bull. She was shaking, trembling, eyes peeled open. “Bet you aren’t anymore.”
She moved and winced. When she’d fallen off Liam, she’d landed on the ground hard. It was better than breaking the fall with her face. Still… she had fallen a couple feet and landed square on her posterior, which was going to be sore. At least she wasn’t going to get a bruise. Nothing would make her feel more attractive than a giant, obvious bruise on her ass, during bikini season too. She’d need to get back in the gym to get toned up again in the ever-continuing battle to stay fit. How was she going to attract the right guy if she didn’t keep herself looking and feeling good?
How was she going to attract the right guy if she was killed by a werewolf clan trying to protect their leader?
Mila preferred to worry about the gym one.
Chapter 4
Mila made it back home before four.
In a few hours, she’d have to go to class and take an exam. She decided she wasn’t going to think about the events that had gone down yet. Maybe later. Maybe. Until then, her truck wasn’t a flaming wreck. Her identification wasn’t left at the scene of a crime. Absolutely nothing interesting had happened at work. She wasn’t a witness to anything and nobody wished her ill will. No, she was your average college girl and that was final.
Bianca didn’t want to drop her off initially and had put up a mild attempt to stay with her, but it hadn’t taken much to convince her. All that was necessary was a lackluster, “yeah, I’ll be fine,” by Mila for Bianca to return to her place. She ordered Mila to call her if she had any problems. Mila had agreed, not bringing up the fact that she didn’t have her phone. She also gave Mila rigorous and incorrect instructions for how to heal the various bumps, scratches, and her sore butt. Mila knew more than she wanted to about health care anyway from one of the many, many, many courses her dad had forced her to take as a way to get back at her mom in a constant power struggle over who got the kid.
Mila lived in the flaTs. Not the Flats. The flaTs, lower f and uppercase T for aesthetic purposes that were completely lost on Mila. It was more distracting than cool looking and, worse, a bad attempt to make a maverick community mainstream and hip. The buildings were built in the 1980s, but the owner figured he could slap on a cool name and repaint it and boom, automatic cool hangout spot. It had failed majestically. Most of the residents had complained about the changes and those that hadn’t lived out their rage passive aggressive style.
The rest of the place was more her speed: a quiet community of isolated individuals who didn’t get out much. Most of them were either strange characters or people who wanted to be forgotten. As far as she knew, Mila was the only student there and that was fine with her. The peaceful environment relaxed her. She had enough stress from work. People painted this picture of her as some bitchy hot girl there because she had to protect herself and not let strangers in. On campus, the easiest place to find her was somewhere near the river with a book in her hands or lurking like Batman in a coffee shop. That’s not what people guessed. They saw her body and her tattoos and boom, just like that, they had a full-fledged image of her in their mind. It was a relief to live at the flaTs because nobody gave a damn about her or anyone else. No half-drunk frat boy would knock on her door, and that’s how she liked it.
Mila trudged up the steps of the old building, hand running along the staircase lazily. She’d done some thinking on the ride over. Later that day, after the exam, she could work on her problems. For now, she intended to get upstairs and fall asleep as quickly as possible. If someone had found her information and decided to find her, it wasn’t something that could be done in a few hours. First, the information on her ID was outdated and she no longer lived at the spot it said, so if anyone wanted to find her they’d go there first. Her dad worked in tracking down paranormals who committed atrocities and who needed to leave earth. Even he couldn’t find someone that fast, and he had the full weight of a powerful branch behind him.
Mila got to her apartment in the squatty building. Nothing distinguished her door from any of the other ones except for the floormat that declared The Neighbours Have Better Stuff, a joke doormat to which her neighbours had put up a doormat with a different message on it: Lies. Her regular key was still back at the Cheeky Sprite somewhere, but luckily…she had a spare
hidden under a window ledge. One thing her father had always said was to never, ever leave the key in the obvious place. That’s why she had a potted plant out the front of her door: because she thought it was pretty? No. Because it had an unrelated key under it and any would-be robber would certainly find it and try to use it without thinking about looking for a second one. Though they might eventually just kick the door down, at least they would be confused and annoyed first—and that’s what mattered.
A shower seemed in order. If she didn’t look like she had just completed a Spartan obstacle course, she would have liked nothing more than to slide into bed for some sweet mental nourishment. She hadn’t gotten a lot of rest the previous night, so at this point she was running on fumes. However, if someone put a chisel up to her chest and hit it with a hammer, a complete mud replica of her body would come off.
Before she entered, she took a suspicious survey of the road a good fifty feet away. Nothing unusual. The people there didn’t get visitors often, so the cars were almost always recognizable. Nothing stood out. Something moved near an SUV and she jumped before a stray cat casually meandered away. Mila took a deep, two-second inhale before letting it out slowly. This was overthinking at its finest. Paranoid, that was all. Whoever won the Khan fight would be getting out of there as soon as possible to make sure that they weren’t caught. They wouldn’t stand around over the burning wreckage of her truck and surely others to sign autographs. One witness was all it took to get them banned from Earth, and there weren’t any security cameras on the Cheeky Sprite.
But there was one in Liam.
Mila froze with her hand quivering over the doorknob. The light on the recorder had flashed when she was shifting around in the bed. At the time when the fight had broken out, even though Mila herself hadn’t gotten a good look, she had recorded it unintentionally. Had it gotten smashed in the fight? Certainly. The odds of the delicate camera emerging unharmed were little to none when the rest of her truck had taken so much damage. Of course, any would-be robber who broke in wouldn’t leave the camera, so it was set to automatically send footage to Mila’s phone or to her laptop for a few days before it expired. Theoretically, Mila had to crack open the app, log in, and there’d be undisputable proof of what had gone down.
The Deadwolves' Prisoner Page 3