She charged almost blindly in her panic, barely noticing the trees she ducked behind or the bushes she tried to use as cover. There was more noise behind her: yelling, more shots, the sound of someone or several someones crashing into the brush. Becca kept running.
Chapter 25
~
Finally, the noises behind her faded away. The minute she could, she collapsed behind some rocks that provided some cover and panted, her lungs burning like they were going to jump out of her chest. The fact that she’d made it this far made her grateful that she’d gone on all those evening runs with Erin.
Erin. And the Pack. Had she left them behind in terrible danger? Or did the Nesters have other enemies? Even she felt like shooting at them right now, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if someone else did too. But if the Pack had been planning to come back at midnight, maybe it was the hunters coming back with reinforcements.
Since she couldn’t do anything about it on her own, she needed to get back to Wolf’s Point or get to a phone and try get in touch with Erin and the rest of the Pack. When she could breathe again, she raised her head cautiously to look around and sniff the air. All of her senses seemed to be coming back to life, though still weaker than she thought they’d been before the injection. For instance, she could smell a car or truck on the highway and that couldn’t be that close, could it? She kept testing the air, checking for water now as much as for pursuers.
Wherever she was, it was well outside Wolf’s Point. Her panicked run had taken her up into the foothills and a little beyond. Once she poked her nose around the rocks, she realized that she could see what appeared to be a ranch in the valley as well as a glimpse of road. The scent of pine came to her on the breeze, mingled with the smell of sheep dung and she wrinkled her nose.
On the other hand, where there were sheep, there were people. People who could direct her to a phone and help. But how did she know it was safe to leave her hiding spot? What if the Nesters were just being really quiet and waiting for her? Maybe she should just hide here until full dark.
She shook her head after a moment; hiding wasn’t going to help. One way or the other, she had to get back to town and let them know what was going on. She squinted up at the setting sun, trying to gauge the best direction to move in. Then she slipped out from behind the rocks, slithering on her belly as she looked around for motion, for color or anything else that would tell her whether or not she was safe.
A hawk swooped down on to the rocks above her, making her flinch. But that was it. Of course, most of the Nesters wore brown camouflage and would probably blend in with the rocks, but she decided not to think too hard about that possibility. Instead, she pulled herself up into a crouch and ran, crablike, over to a nearby boulder. One thing was certain: if she got home in one piece, she was going to need a chiropractor.
Thinking about her cozy little house made her remember Ed. And Pamela. If they’d pulled anything with the house while she was gone, she’d…she’d…deal with them when she got back. Her lip curled slowly over a dry incisor.
That helped remind her that she needed to find water soon. Very soon, from the headache that was beginning to pound in her temples. Her stomach growled along with it, reminding her to check her hands and face. At least her fingers looked normal now. It was a relief to know that she wouldn’t scare anyone she came across to death. It also made the notion of hunting a rabbit and ripping into it with her fangs less appealing. She remembered the idea crossing her mind when she was running and it sent a hungry shiver up her spine.
Two more boulders and she was on her way down the mountain, moving westward. The sun had nearly set so she hoped that her wolf sight was coming back. If not, she might have to wait the night out here and hope for the best come morning. It wasn’t a very appealing idea.
At least she was more surefooted now than she had usually thought of herself as being. She stepped lightly and quickly around the loose rocks and tiny shrubs until she got to the first stand of trees. Then she stopped to taste the air again. The road was more or less ahead of her, the sheep somewhere off to her right. It was hard to tell from smell alone which was the better bet for getting help and she hesitated before picking the road. With any luck, the Nesters were still too preoccupied to patrol around by van.
But she’d have to be on her guard. She kept walking, and after a few moments, was rewarded by the smell of water ahead. Crossing her fingers against giardia, she stumbled across a tiny little stream and knelt, scooping the water into her hands and gulping it down as quickly as she could. It was wonderful, cold and refreshing. She lay next to it for a couple of minutes and took a few more drinks. Then she got to her feet and kept walking.
The road was closer than she’d thought and she stumbled a little when her feet unexpectedly met the pavement. A quick glance up and down didn’t show any glow of distant or even not so distant headlights. Just her luck, there also weren’t any road signs visible from where she was standing, so she still had no idea of where she was.
After looking around in frustration for a few minutes, she picked the direction that she thought led away from the Nester camp and toward town and started walking along the side of the road. She tried to hug the tree line but it was hard with the ditches and roadside weeds. After ten minutes, she gave up and went out to the edge of the pavement. It was full dark now, so with any luck she’d have plenty of warning if a car was coming.
It felt like she’d been walking for hours on her achingly tired legs. The road didn’t seem to be going anywhere and she had to stop and rest a few times. What if she was headed in the totally wrong direction? It was hard to smell much of anything besides asphalt. Her thoughts kept up a constant whirl of frantic motion that didn’t help her headache much. Her body felt odd, too, stretched and strange, quite apart from the aches and pains.
But at least there was a not quite full moon tonight. It made her insides flutter to see it glowing over the trees, calling to her wolf self. She smiled at it like she would at seeing an old friend in an unexpected location. With moonrise, her luck seemed to be improving: up ahead, she could make out a sign, though it was still too dark to read from this distance.
Without thinking, she broke into a lope and sped over to it, only to feel a crushing sense of disappointment. Wolf’s Point was still another fifteen miles away. But at least she was on the right road. That was something, though it didn’t bring much comfort.
She forgot to check the road behind her when she started walking again. The headlights were bright as a sudden sunrise when they came and she leapt off the road into the ditch like a wild thing. Then she lay flat and still in the shallow puddle of water that filled it. Maybe the driver hadn’t seen her or at least wouldn’t get out to check.
Her heart leapt up into her ears while she listened for the approaching vehicle. Every breath she drew in seemed to choke her. With her luck, she was probably having a heart attack. She tried to center herself but the sound of the car above slowing down made that a fruitless effort.
Wheels scraped on some loose gravel on the road. Whoever they were, they were stopping. Becca bit back a curse. She had no way to defend herself if it was the Nesters. They could just shoot her, dump her in the back of whatever they were driving and take off if they wanted to. The notion took her from scared to angry in less than a minute. In fact, she felt really angry. Angry enough to change. She dug her fingers into the mud beneath her to try and control it.
A car or truck door opened in the darkness above her. First there was silence. Then loud whispers. “Did you see someone? It might have been—”
“I’m not sure I saw anything. Try and call her again.”
“Becca? Are you out there?”
Becca was panting in the ditch now, trying not to change. She knew that voice, didn’t she? She tried to make herself listen harder, tried to pick up any familiar scents. But the last couple of days were catching up with her. She was exhausted and with that, losing control, losing her human self.
The few shreds that were staying awake tried hard to stay alert. At first, there was just the scent of swamp water, vehicle exhaust and pavement. Then, slowly, there was a whiff of something that just might be wolf. Her kind of wolves.
The whimper that tore itself out of her throat wafted up into the air over her head, followed by a soft howl that was too big for her body to contain. The ditch spun around slowly and she felt everything start to go black at the same time that someone, then more someones splashed down into the ditch around her.
“Becca! Hey, open your eyes and look at me. C’mon, hon,” A familiar voice emerged from a body which smelled very familiar. Whoever it was picked her up.
“Get her to stop it. How the hell is she doing that?” The other voice sounded familiar too.
“Give her a minute, will you? We don’t know what they did to her. Becca, honey, are you still with us?”
That made her force her eyes open, blinking groggily in the moonlight. Erin and Molly were looking down at her and someone else was leaning over the side of the ditch. She wasn’t sure who the other person was, but it didn’t matter right now. She was back among friends.
Then Erin was pulling her up onto her shoulder and dragging her up to where Molly and the other person could pull her out. Becca blinked at the surprised looking guy on the road and realized that he was holding a fur-covered hand. It took a minute more to realize that it was attached to her arm. She staggered forward, pulling free of his grasp and collapsed against the side of the truck.
Molly and Erin came up out of the ditch, and Molly reached into her pocket and pulled out an energy bar. Wordlessly, she took the wrapper off and handed it over. Becca blinked at it, then at her hand. She tried to remember what her fingers looked like over the sudden fierce, animal growls coming from her stomach. She snatched the bar from Molly’s fingers and devoured it.
“Becca, are you ready to rejoin the human world? At least for the time being?” Erin was standing in front of her now, and the wolf wasn’t looking out of her eyes. Molly also looked human and as near as Becca’s addled senses could tell, the guy was human. She also recognized him as the library assistant from the meeting at Shelly’s.
Wouldn’t want to be the odd one out at the party, she thought, trying to piece the words together from the fuzz in her brain. She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands into fists, wincing as her claws met her palms and tried to force herself back to human.
Deep, shuddering breaths later, she looked up. They were all still staring at her. Finally, Erin said, “It’s okay. Let’s get you to safety and see what a night’s sleep does. You drive, Carlos.” She nodded to the guy and tossed him the keys from her pocket.
Then she reached out for Becca’s arm in what looked like slow motion. “Lean on me. I’ll help you get into the truck.” Becca didn’t so much lean as slump. A distant, weary portion of her brain wondered what her feet looked like, but she couldn’t bring herself to look down. Instead she fell into the truck’s back seat, then scrambled over to make room for Erin.
Erin slid in carefully. “Can you talk?”
Becca stared at her in amazement. Of course, she could talk. Why wouldn’t she be able to talk? She reached up. Her furry hand met the fur of her elongated jawline, then followed it out to a wolf-human hybrid nose. Oh. She tried to form a “Yes.” It came out as a guttural hiss, swiftly followed by a whimper.
“Oh, hon, it’s okay.” Erin enveloped her in a careful, slow-moving hug. “They used that ‘cure’ of theirs on you, didn’t they?”
Becca nodded, trying to convey her misery with gestures. It was obvious that she wasn’t communicating much beside her mood. Molly leaned back and patted her knee while Erin rubbed her shoulders. Becca sat still and tried to think soothing nonwolfy thoughts. Her body still felt weird, though a bit more menopausal human weird, rather than wolf/human hybrid weird.
But the fur didn’t recede much. And they were getting closer to Wolf’s Point. Erin realized the problem before Becca had to try and signal her fears. “Hey Carlos, I don’t think we should head through town with Becca looking like this. Our luck, someone’s bound to notice and this’ll be hard to explain away. Let me call Pete and tell him that we found her.” Her phone beeped as Carlos pulled over.
Molly seemed to be dozing in her seat now and Becca envied her that. If she could only relax enough to sleep, she might go back to normal, whatever that was. Erin was talking to Pete on her phone, so she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, not really listening. It would all be okay. Now they just had to find Shelly.
Thinking about Shelly made her remember the vials. It was possible they’d used the other missing bottle on someone besides Shelly. Maybe there were more ex-wolves with them than she’d seen so far. Unless they were giving one of the ex-wolves multiple doses like they’d tried to do with her?
Erin clicked off the phone. “Pete says to bring her there. You up for a bit more driving?”
Carlos glanced back. “Sure. She doing any better?”
Erin gave Becca a long look, as if she was searching for improvements. Becca wasn’t too sure she saw any but guessed that she would say something optimistic anyway. “Yep, I think she’s starting to shake it off. But since we don’t know how long it will take, we better get her somewhere safe and quiet to finish recovering.”
Becca tried to smile at her, then thought the better of it. She reached out and very carefully squeezed Erin’s hand instead. It seemed to her as if Erin was reluctant to let go after she squeezed back, but there was no way Becca was leaving her hanging on to some mutant fur-covered mitt and she tugged free. At least she had somewhere to go tonight. It didn’t feel like a good time to be alone.
She let her thoughts drift a little and as Carlos headed up to Pete and Shelly’s place, she fell asleep.
Chapter 26
~
She didn’t recognize where she was when she woke up. The sensation was becoming irritatingly familiar. Light was pouring through thin curtains covered with some kind of cartoon characters. Becca squinted at them for a moment, then rolled over to look at the rest of the room.
There were posters from some band she’d never heard of, stuffed animals and a CD collection that seemed much bigger than hers. She let out a quiet sigh of relief. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the Nesters’ trailer so that was a good start.
Her thoughts were still a jumbled mess but she was remembering now that they’d been headed up to Pete and Shelly’s place. This must be one of the kids’ rooms, probably Kira’s. A wave of guilt swept through her. She’d shown up at some crazy hour and wakened the whole household and then had to be carried inside, since she didn’t remember walking. And then Kira had to give up her room to accommodate her on top of all that.
Clearly, the sensible thing to do was to get up, clean up and go apologize. She looked instinctively at her hands, holding them up to the window to make sure they were normal again. Her nails looked long and scraggly and there was more hair on the backs of her fingers than she remembered, but otherwise they seemed close enough to human to pass. The stuff must be working its way out of her system.
She still went to the mirror on the far side of the room to examine her face before she opened the door. What she saw there sure wasn’t the same woman from a couple of months ago. For one thing, she had a jaw that was a bit longer and fuzzier than it should be. But at least it wasn’t a muzzle. She also had huge circles under her eyes and a few new wrinkles.
On the other hand, though, she looked more confident and her gaze was more direct. She stood a little straighter and her complexion seemed to be clearing up. Maybe there were some good points to everything she’d been going through.
She noticed that there were some clean clothes folded up on the chair behind her. Whoever had put her to bed had taken the muddy things she’d been wearing but left her in her underwear. Even without wolf senses, she was smelling pretty ripe so she wondered who got stuck with undressing her. But there w
as time enough to worry about that later. Shower and clean clothes before apologies, she thought as she wrinkled her nose.
At least she was steadier on her feet than she had been when she woke up at the trailer. The floor still seemed a little uneven as she picked up the clothes and made her way to the door, but nothing that might not really be there. Of course, finding Erin on the other side when she opened it was kind of startling. “Oh! Hi!” Becca could feel herself blushing though she wasn’t really sure why.
Erin smiled down at her, her expression suggesting relief as much as anything else Becca could read into it. “You’re doing better, I see. I realized I forgot to leave a towel and basic toiletries with the clothes.” She handed Becca a small armload of things that included a new toothbrush, still in its package. “We’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”
Becca watched her walk away in bemusement. She really did think of just about everything. It made for interesting thoughts while Becca showered. She had to admit, it was getting easier to get used to Erin being in her life. It took her a moment to realize that she was running her fingers over her lips and remembering their kiss. She jerked her hand away and went back to vigorous scrubbing.
The hot water had almost run out by the time she turned it off, the water trickling its way down to a mellow warmth from the steaming heat she’d started with. It was time to get out and face the music. Or at least the other wolves and Shelly’s family, which amounted to the same thing. Whatever she decided to do about her feelings for Erin, they could wait for a little bit longer.
Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) Page 20