by Zoe Chant
"I'll try—" she began, and broke off at the sound of an engine in the parking lot of the motel.
There was no mistaking the revving of a motorcycle engine. Cars just didn't sound like that.
Remy held a finger to his lips. He got off the bed and peeked out through the blinds.
Two motorcycles had pulled into the parking lot. Both riders were large men. Both wore red jackets with a black wing-shaped decal on the back. They parked in front of the manager's office and one of them dismounted, while the other stayed on his bike.
"Black Wings," Saffron whispered at his elbow. He could feel her trembling. "How did they find us?"
"They haven't found us yet," he whispered back. "They must be checking all the motels in the area. I didn't realize they'd be so thorough."
"What are we going to do?"
Remy glanced around. Like a lot of roadside motels, the building was a row of rooms in a line, ranged along the parking lot. There were two windows, one in front and one next to the bathroom on the back wall, with a window-mounted air conditioner unit in it.
"Get our stuff," he murmured, and went to the back window.
He didn't bother with finesse. There was no time. For the sake of the motel's owners, he did try not to do too much damage ripping the unit out of the window. The resulting hole looked out on a weedy, trash-strewn strip of gravel with a fence on the other side and a farm field beyond that. He could see why they hadn't bothered to preserve the view.
Saffron popped up behind him, her new backpack slung over her shoulder, dragging the heavy motorcycle saddlebags. Remy gave her a hand out the window, dropped their things after her, and climbed down himself.
A heavy fist pounded on the door of their room.
"Remy," Saffron whispered. Her eyes were huge in her white face.
"Don't panic. There are only two of them." He propped the AC unit back in the window; it wouldn't pass inspection for long, but it might throw off their pursuers for critical minutes. Then he led the way along the back of the motel, past more thrumming AC units, carrying the saddlebags while Saffron ran behind him with her backpack.
At the end of the building, Remy held up a hand palm-out, signaling her to stay back, and then peeked around the corner, past the Dumpsters where he'd left his bike. He couldn't see much of the parking lot, not enough to tell what the Black Wings were doing. "Stay here," he whispered to Saffron, and, leaving her with their stuff, he made his way to the bike, doing his best to stay out of sight. He kicked up the kickstand and wheeled the bike back to where she was waiting.
Saffron gave him a hand fastening the saddlebags. "They'll hear us the minute we start it," she whispered.
"That's why we wait 'til the last minute. Put your helmet on."
He had two options: to wheel the bike along the back of the motel, past the room that was probably being searched even now, or go through the parking lot where he was almost sure the Black Wings would have left a lookout. Even as he was trying to decide, there was a tremendous crash as the loose window AC unit was pushed out of its space and smashed to the ground behind the motel.
"Get on!"
Saffron didn't need any more urging. She scrambled onto the passenger seat. Remy swung his leg over and started the engine.
Down the row of motel rooms, a head poked out the window they'd escaped from, and he heard a shout.
Remy revved the engine and roared around the Dumpsters into the parking lot. He felt Saffron's arms settle into place around his waist. Already it felt comfortable and familiar.
He'd been right about a lookout. As he skidded into the parking lot, one of the Black Wings was scrambling onto his bike, while the other came running from the open door of the motel room.
"Gun!" Saffron shouted, her voice slightly muffled by her helmet.
The guy from the motel room was leveling a weapon at them. "Hard to hit a moving target!" Remy yelled over his shoulder to her, and wrenched the bike sharply sideways.
Instead of taking the regular parking-lot exit, they jolted over a strip of scraggly lawn into the trailer park that was between the motel and the road. Remy veered wildly around parked vehicles, lawn chairs, tipped-over kids' bikes, and strands of hung-up laundry. From one trailer's porch someone yelled, "Watch where you're going, you crazy yahoos!" Then the bike bounced across the sidewalk and screeched in a sharp turn onto the main drag through town.
The crossroads where they'd turned off into Clover was their best bet, Remy figured. They'd have four directions to choose from. Two were out: back toward Silver Hill, or back into Clover. But the Black Wings would have to split up to check out the other ways.
"Remy!" Saffron exclaimed, behind him. "Scouts!"
Damn, that's right. The Black Wings had eyes in the sky. He risked a glance skyward and caught a glimpse of a hawk wheeling overhead.
And then he looked forward and saw what he'd hoped he wouldn't see: a platoon of four bikes roaring toward them. They'd ranged themselves out so they were blocking the whole road. There was no way around them—no way to get to the crossroads.
Remy cursed and slewed the bike around in a turn so low their legs nearly scraped the pavement. Saffron leaned with him, the only sign of her alarm a slight tightening of her arms around his waist. She was a natural-born rider. Beautiful and good on a bike—the perfect combination. But of course, as his mate, she would be perfect ... for him, anyway.
He roared back into town just as the two Black Wings left behind at the motel came screeching out onto the road. But there were only two of them, and four riders behind. They did their best to blockade the road, turning their bikes sideways, but Remy bounced up onto the sidewalk and sailed around them. He caught a glimpse of their furious faces, and then he and Saffron were in the clear, speeding into downtown Clover.
"Do you know this town at all?" he called over his shoulder to Saffron. "I need to know where this road goes."
"I think it joins up with another highway further on," she called back.
Better than a dead end. And if the Black Wings wanted to set a trap for them, they'd have to beat them there.
The race was on.
He roared through downtown and then had to slow on the curves on the far side, as the road wound through farmers' fields and bands of woods. He didn't dare look back to see if the Black Wings were gaining. At this speed he couldn't take his eyes off the road.
And once we're on the highway, then what? They had to lose the Black Wings somehow. Or at least gain enough of a lead to be able to throw them off by taking a side road without being seen. Otherwise it would come down to flat-out speed, and Remy had a feeling he wasn't going to be able to outrun them, not with Saffron on the back of his bike.
At least he had a full tank of gas. This wasn't his first cross-country trip, though it was the first time he'd left without being sure if he was coming back to the ranch. He liked to take the bike out on long drives at least a couple of times a summer. And he'd gotten in the habit of gassing up every time he stopped on a long drive, since he could never be quite sure where the next gas station was.
Thank God for good habits.
Still, he didn't like his odds if it came down to a distance race. Unfortunately there was no time for planning. It was all he could do to throw the bike into each new curve without flying off the road. Trees, fields, farm fences, occasional small businesses whipped past, there and gone before he could look at them.
They roared up to the top of a small hill. The road followed the ridge crest for a little ways, and glancing down, Remy glimpsed fields falling away to their left. Beyond that lay a dark band of forest, and on the other side of that were the four lanes of the main interstate, with cars and semis crawling along it, looking like busily speeding bugs from this distance.
"Is that where this road goes?" he shouted back to Saffron. She was the closest thing he had to a local guide.
"I don't think so!" she called back. "I'm pretty sure there's no on-ramp. If we stay on this road, we'll cros
s over the freeway and meet up with one of the state highways."
"Perfect," he yelled. "Hang on."
He wrenched the bike to the left. Their front tire seemed to hang suspended for a moment, and then slammed down on the soft verge of the shoulder. Two strands of wire fencing separated the field from the road. Remy threw the bike down in a sliding stop, flung himself off and crawled through. Saffron helped him drag the bike under the wire as fast as they could. The Black Wings had roared past them, not expecting his sudden turn, but they were regrouping and coming back fast.
"They're going to follow us," Saffron pointed out. She wasted no time scrambling onto the mud-splattered bike as soon as he had it upright.
"Yeah, but on the freeway we'll have more options."
And they'd find out, too, how desperate the Black Wings were to catch up. He was hoping they weren't willing to risk as much as he and Saffron were.
With Saffron back on the bike and the Black Wings already leaving the road after them, he revved the engine and flew forward in a spray of mud and grass. They hurtled down the hill, passing startled cows who watched them with expressions of bovine surprise.
"Remy!" Saffron gasped. She didn't say what she'd seen, but he guessed it was probably the fence on the other side of the pasture, in front of them and coming up fast.
"I know!" From up here he had a good view of the fence and the woods on the far side, and he had enough time to pick his approach. Such as, for example, a big hillock in front of the fence where someone clearing the field had bulldozed up a heap of dirt and old tree stumps. In the intervening years, grass had grown over it, and he was pretty sure it would take the bike's weight.
Kinda sure.
A little bit sure.
He roared up the grassy hump without slowing down and sailed into the air. Saffron's arms tightened convulsively around his waist. They cleared the fence easily and slammed back to the ground with a painful, jarring shock.
Too bad the Black Wings would've seen how he'd done it. They could follow just as easily. He only hoped some of them would misjudge the timing and damage their bikes or break a leg.
And now they were in the woods. It was an open forest, cleared once and growing back. On the bike it became an obstacle course. Remy skidded around trees and jolted violently over the rough ground, expecting at any moment to tip over or break something on the bike. Worse, the sun was setting behind the hills, and the light was starting to get bad. It would be dark pretty soon.
"Are they still back there?" he called to Saffron. He couldn't risk looking back.
"Yes, but they've fallen behind," she shouted.
He'd been hoping the Black Wings would break off the pursuit entirely and try to intercept the fugitives on the freeway instead. It was pretty obvious where they were going, after all, and the hawk scouts could keep tabs on them from the air. On the other hand, they could outdistance the scouts very easily once they got on the freeway, and the hawks couldn't communicate on the wing with their non-shifted clanmates; they would have to fly back to the gang to report which way he and Saffron had gone. And all the while, the fugitives would be widening their lead, and having their choice of exits to take.
... yeah, okay, he could see why the Black Wings weren't giving up. Still, it was inconvenient, because there was one more obstacle coming up and he wasn't sure what to do about it. The freeway would have a fence along both sides to keep animals and pedestrians off the roadway. Somehow he was going to have to get through that before the Black Wings caught up.
With his mind focused on that instead of his surroundings, he almost wiped out on a stream bank.
Live in the moment, his bear told him. Stop thinking too much. Solve that problem when you get there.
Easy for you to say, he thought back. The biggest problem you normally worry about is where your next meal is coming from. I'm the brains of this operation.
Somehow, they'd made it most of the way through the woods without killing themselves. Through the trees he could see open space, ruddy with sunset light: the cleared strip for the freeway. The bike jolted through a stand of newly grown trees with spindly, pale trunks—and then the freeway was below them, down a long grassy bank. Semis roared past at highway speeds, their headlights gleaming through the growing dusk. The fence he'd been expecting was at the bottom of the embankment, separated from the freeway by a wide gravel shoulder.
He didn't dare stop. Instead he turned and rode the bike as fast as he dared along the top of the embankment. From up here he had a wider view of the fence, and could see if there were any gaps in it. Somewhere the road went over a culvert, maybe, or a bridge—
Actually, there was something, but he couldn't believe he was thinking about risking it. The embankment widened up ahead, and doubled: it sloped down partway, then rose again, then sloped the rest of the way to the road. It looked like the remains of an old side road from when the freeway was constructed. Brush and grass had grown over the old gravel.
He could try to jump the freeway fence like he'd jumped the pasture fence.
But this time, he was jumping into heavy interstate traffic. There were wide gaps, the sort that would be easy to merge into from an on-ramp—but coming in from the side, he had little control over their timing. They'd be lucky if they didn't flatten themselves on the front bumper of a Mack truck.
Remy took a quick glance over his shoulder, just in time to see a swarm of motorcycles coming out of the woods behind them.
No choice.
"Hang on!" he told Saffron, and turned the bike.
They raced down the embankment, gathering speed. This was a much bigger jump than the earlier one. For an instant Remy's mind flashed back to his teenage years, when he and his brother Cody used to jump their dirt bikes off ramps they built around the ranch. Cody had always preferred horses; for him, the bikes were only a phase. But Remy loved anything with two wheels, and he loved pushing them harder, higher, faster.
He'd never tried to jump anything like this before.
They were going to need a lot of speed. He gunned the engine, even as sense and sanity told him to slow down. Wind screamed past them, and gravel scattered under their tires. In front of them, traffic rushed past, headlights spearing the growing gloom.
Saffron gave a sudden yell, shouting something too muffled by the helmet to make out. He couldn't spare the time to pay attention anyway. His heart pounded in his ears.
They hit the lower embankment and left the ground.
It was like it had always been when he was a kid: the thrilling moment of weightlessness, as gravity somehow, for just an instant, loosed its grip. He'd wondered then, as he wondered now, if being a bird shifter felt like this. For that breathless instant, they flew.
The bike cleared the first two lanes of traffic in a graceful arc, sailing over the top of an onrushing semi. It looked like they were going to touch down on the wide, grassy median strip. Remy wrenched the handlebars hard, hoping to hit so they'd turn in a circle rather than shooting straight onward into the traffic barreling toward them in the other lane.
They hit; they spun; and they wiped out. The bike went over, and he wrenched his leg free, twisting as he fell, and pulled Saffron with him. They tumbled across the grass in a series of bruising impacts. Remy tried to take the bulk of the damage, or at least not land on top of her. Finally they rolled to a limp, stunned stop.
"Saffron," he gasped, sitting up. Some forty feet away, the bike lay on its side, front wheel spinning slowly in the air.
Saffron wasn't moving.
Frantic with worry, Remy pulled off her helmet. Dark hair spilled free. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing; then she blinked and focused on him. "Are we alive?" she asked shakily.
"Looks that way." He gave her a quick kiss and looked across the lanes of traffic at the embankment. Framed against the darkening sky, the Black Wings had stopped in a cluster of bikes. They seemed to be arguing.
"They were shooting at us," Saffron said. "That's what I was
trying to warn you about. Can they hit us from there?"
"Depends on what they're shooting with. We better get moving."
He got up and immediately fell again as his leg buckled. Baffled, Remy looked down at his leg, and stared at the dark stain spreading across the thigh of his jeans. It hadn't hurt. Oh wait, no, it did hurt. Or rather, he was slowly becoming aware of how much it hurt.
"What's wrong?" Saffron asked, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh my God, are you okay?"
He touched his leg and brought his hand away with dark, wet fingertips. "I think they shot me when we were jumping."
"Oh God. We have to—"
"Get out of here, is what we have to do. Shifters heal fast, but of course I don't have to tell you that."
Still, she had to help him up. He leaned on her as they limped to the bike.
"Can you ride like that?"
"Don't really have a choice, do I?"
He wrestled the bike back upright, with Saffron assisting on the other side. She swung on. Remy had a little trouble getting his leg across.
"Shouldn't we stop the bleeding or something?"
"I think it's already stopped." He hoped. "We gotta get moving. Just need to pick a direction."
Traffic streamed by on both sides. Either way was about the same as another, Remy figured. The Black Wings would certainly send members of their gang in both directions, but it was almost dark, and in the dark, one motorcyclist would look much the same as another.
Saffron squeezed his shoulder and leaned forward. "I just had an idea. You asked if I have anywhere to go. I just thought of a place. One of my dad's friends owns a hunting cabin a few hours' drive away. We could hide out there for awhile."
"Do the Black Wings know about it?"
"I don't think so. I don't think my dad would expect me to go there. I hardly even know his hunting buddy, and they only took me up to the cabin a couple of times. The last time, I was only about ten or eleven."
"Which way?"
"East," she said.
The engine coughed a little, and then ran smoothly. His leg hurt like hell, but he could balance the bike as long as he ignored the pain. Remy waited for a break in traffic, then pulled smoothly off the median and merged with the flow of vehicles—headed west.