Hail did a double take, then laughed with surprise.
“Fine,” he said. “When we get home, I promise, I will get you a blue ribbon on one condition.”
“Isn’t not kicking kittens enough?” Logan asked plaintively.
“The condition,” Hail continued, ignoring him, “is that you stay inside the Regis Thyme walls and take full advantage of every healthy thing we have there until that baby is born.”
Logan sighed heavily and slumped in his seat. “Yay, prenatal prison,” he said.
“No,” Hail said firmly. “It isn’t prison. It’s home. Most people stay in one neighborhood for most of their lives; it won’t kill you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I could choke on an organic pickle while I’m downward dogging.”
Hail snorted a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Easily avoided,” he said wryly. “I think you’ll like it there. I really do. We have a lot of therapists and counselors, you can find one that you click with. They can help you.”
“I don’t need therapy,” Logan snapped. “I need a drink. And a burger. And open road.”
Hail handed him a water bottle, and Logan tipped his head back and groaned.
“This is going to be a long nine months,” he sighed.
“Oh,” Hail winced.
“What?”
“Most shifters actually gestate for a year. Sorry.”
“A year,” Logan said blankly. “Really, a year.”
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever.”
They rode in silence for a while. Hail reached for the stereo to find something to listen to, but Logan grabbed his hand.
“That stuff you said?”
“Which stuff?”
“The part about craving me and junk.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh…yeah, that.”
“Um….”
“Me too. I mean. Ugh, whatever, turn the radio on.”
“No, no, tell me what you were going to say. Please?”
Logan chewed his lip for a while, staring out the window. Finally, he sighed and looked down at his hands in his lap.
“When you’re around, I want to do better. I want to be better. I want…God this sounds dumb as hell…I want to make you proud.”
A lump formed in Hail’s throat, and he reached for Logan’s hand. Their fingers intertwined, and he squeezed firmly.
“It doesn’t sound dumb,” he said, croaking around the emotion. “It sounds pretty damn hopeful.”
“Hope is a bitch,” Logan said. He swallowed several times, then continued. “I don’t think I can.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s in you, I’ve seen it. Barely under the surface. You care about people.”
“No,” Logan said adamantly. “People suck. I hate people.”
“Mariella?”
“Mariella isn’t people, she’s Mariella.”
“Me?”
“You’re you.”
“Robert?”
“Robert can suck on a bottle rocket. I’ll light it for him.”
“Yeah, that’s actually fair.”
“Did you just advocate violence?”
“Vaguely. Robert’s a turncoat traitor son of a bitch and he hurt Mariella. I wouldn’t want to watch the bottle rocket execution, or be a part of it in any way, that’s actually really cruel and I would not approve, but I wouldn’t be too terribly upset if he tripped and fell in a hole.”
“Wuss.”
“Psycho.”
“Yes?”
Hail laughed, and Logan grinned. There was still a chasm between them of unshared experiences and terrible tragedies, but for a moment it seemed like those didn’t have to matter. They were building something together. He didn’t know quite what it was yet, but he knew he didn’t want it to end. The rest stop was coming up on his left. He slowed to a crawl and then stopped in the middle of the street, checking for traffic.
“Well,” he sighed. “That sucks.”
Logan whistled. The whole area had been cordoned off with police tape. The rest stop was burnt to the ground, as was everything for a mile around. The fire hadn’t been able to cross the asphalt, but it had come very close. The front two tires of the truck and a wide strip of the parking lot had melted. Now that it had cooled, the tires were fused to the ground. The windshield was black with oily soot and had cracked in numerous places. The bed of the truck and everything in it appeared to be undamaged, but there was no way they would be able to drive the truck anywhere.
“Calling Mariella,” Hail said.
“Oh hell no. If you tell her we can’t bring her family back…”
“Nope, just buying us a couple more hours. Hey! Yeah, everything’s fine. Ran into a little trouble with the truck, though. It’ll take us a few hours longer. Everything okay there? Fantastic. Right. No, he’s fine. Not even mad. Excellent, okay, we’ll see you soon.”
“She thinks we’re stopping for sex,” Logan said, his mouth twitching in amusement.
“She does not,” Hail argued. “Does she? Should we? That’s not a bad idea…”
“What’s the plan?” Logan interrupted.
“Right! The plan. We passed through some largish small towns just north of here. Climb in the back and see how much cash they gave us.”
Logan pulled the square bag out of the little hidden cubby behind the seats and unzipped it. A receipt on top of the pile told him what he wanted to know, and his eyes grew wide.
“Fifty,” he said.
“Fifty dollars? Seriously?”
“No-o-o,” Logan said, stretching out the syllable. “Fifty grand.”
“Oh. Oh, wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Great, climb on up, we’re going to go buy a car.”
“If we got a truck, we could salvage the high tech camper deal.”
“Good point.”
“If we got a van, though, everybody could sit in real seats.”
“But we would go home without our expensive and potentially revealing equipment.”
“True.”
In the end, they decided on a truck.
This was, apparently, a mistake. After they had retrieved the camper from the ruined truck and made it back to Rock Canyon, they mutually decided to let the truck be a surprise for Mariella. This was their second mistake.
“What. The hell. Is that?” she demanded, her eyes narrow with rage. “Where is my truck?!”
“Well, see, what happened was…” Logan began.
“Zip it! Hail. What is this navy blue beast, and where the hell is my truck?!”
“There was a fire,” Hail said quickly. “A brush fire out at the rest stop. When we got there the truck was basically destroyed. We saved the camper, though, see? And we went through the cab too but there wasn’t anything recognizable and I really was going to tell you but I figured you had your hands full and we had the spending cash anyway and there was a lot of it so we went and bought another truck and I would have sent you a picture of it first, but I thought it would be…”
“Oh my god!” she shouted, holding her fingers to her temples. “Enough. Holy crap. It’s fine, what’s done is done. My brothers are hauling the cargo up now. You guys will drive it back to base.”
“Cargo?”
Two burly men crested the top of the canyon just then, supporting poles on their shoulders. Two more men followed, supporting the poles on the other end. In between, a sling carried something heavy. Mariella directed the men to slide their burden into the back of the truck. It made terrible sloshing, squishing sounds, which Logan didn’t want to think about too much. A woman stepped over the side of the canyon then, accompanied by a teenage boy. She bore a striking resemblance to Mariella. She was older, of course, and her thick, curly hair had gone grey; but her brown eyes sparkled fiercely, and she wore the expression of an alpha.
> “Logan, you remember my mother,” Mariella said, indicating the woman. “Hail, this is my mom, Esperanza Delario.”
“Good to meet you,” Hail said, extending a hand. Esperanza touched it briefly, with something like disdain. Hail pulled his hand back quickly, feeling awkward.
“My family rides with me in the van,” Mariella said. “You and Hail take the truck and half the guns. No bombs, you can’t be trusted. Get snacks and drinks because we won’t be stopping. It’s, what time is it, nine thirty? Yeah. I want to be in a hot shower before noon tomorrow.”
They did as they were told, but Logan wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t appreciate her saying that he couldn’t be trusted with the bombs (no matter how true that might be), and he was disappointed about her reaction to the truck. He was, however, pleased that he would be the one to drive it. The crew cab was roomy, it handled like a dream, and the bold chrome stripe across the exceptionally masculine blue paint was just threatening enough to satisfy his tastes.
Once the supplies were split evenly between the two vehicles, they drove off into the night. Logan pushed the button on his pendant.
“Scumbag One to Red Leader. Scumbag One to Red Leader. Come in Red Leader.”
“Quit being cute,” Mariella replied. Logan grinned.
“Red Leader, aahh…we were just wondering about our trajectory, aahh…please advise.”
Mariella paused long enough that Logan thought she’d ended the call.
“Scumbag One,” she said finally, the eye roll clear in her voice. “Taking the 25 to base camp, over.”
“Copy that, Red Leader. Oh, and Red Leader?”
“Yes, Scumbag One?”
“Catch us if you can.”
“No, damn it Logan don’t…!”
Logan ended the call with a snicker and floored the accelerator. They passed her across two double yellows on a two-lane highway, and she glared at them fiercely in the dwindling twilight. There was a gleam in her eye that made Logan laugh. He blew past her and swerved back into his lane, then shot a glance at Hail.
“What’s the matter, never raced before?” Logan grinned.
“Not on a two-lane highway in a top-heavy truck with a lunatic at the wheel,” Hail replied through gritted teeth. He had braced himself with every limb against the built-in roll cage.
“Relax,” Logan laughed. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
As if on cue, a dirt bike leapt across the road. The driver wasn’t wearing a helmet, and Logan saw his face clearly for a brief second in the headlights. Robert. He hit the dirt on the other side then rode back to the van. He pulled a gun and started to fire. Logan barely caught it in his side mirror, and he watched Mariella swerve to hit him. His pendant buzzed.
“You answer it,” he told Hail. He didn’t slow down much, just enough to satiate the gods of physics, before making a U-turn in the middle of the highway.
“We saw him,” Hail answered the pendant.
“Go fetch!” she shouted.
“Yes boss!”
Robert had been knocked clear off his bike and was on his feet running into the desert. Logan squealed to a stop and Hail jumped out, morphing as he ran after Robert. Logan grabbed weapons and locked the truck, then went after them. Robert had never been their primary fighter, but he had street experience. Hail would need…
To his surprise, Hail didn’t need any help. By the time Logan had him in his sights, Hail was strolling back toward him with Robert over his shoulder.
“How…?”
“Elephant tranquilizers,” Hail grinned. “Knocked him out cold. Help me get him in.”
“Great idea,” Logan said wryly. “Put the psycho traitor right behind the driver. You must be dying to see my head get ripped off.”
“Of course,” Hail said, rolling his eyes. “Beheaded lovers are my one true fetish. There’s chain in the back of the truck, and I’ll have a dart on him all the way home.”
Logan thought about it for a moment then nodded. He couldn’t see a glaring fault in the plan, so he helped Hail bundle Robert into the back seat, lay him flat and wrapped him in chains which threaded through and around the bench. Satisfied that it would hold at least long enough to give them fair warning, they returned to their seats. Hail pressed his pendant.
“We got him,” he said.
“Who was it?”
“Robert.”
“Of course it was. That son of a bitch. Swear to god, when we get home…”
“He’ll regret ever meeting you,” Logan interjected with an evil grin. “No worries, boss lady, he’s all yours.”
“Damn straight. Now catch up, I’m not about to wait for your asses. I need a damn shower.”
“You got it.”
It didn’t take them long to catch up. Mariella was a much more cautious driver with her family in the van than she had been without them, and was only doing ten over the limit when they caught up to her. Once there, Logan was able to relax. Just one long drive left of this adventure, then he would…he tensed up again, realizing. Once they were back at Regis Thyme, he would be stuck. Trapped like an animal. He began nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“What’s up?” Hail asked.
“The sky. Birds. Mariella’s blood pressure.”
“Hilarious. Could any of them tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Probably not,” Logan said thoughtfully. “Unless I hired a skywriter. Or you were a magical princess who could talk to birds, and the birds were telepathic and understood English. Mariella might have some luck, but since we’re talking about her blood pressure specifically, I’m gonna say no.”
Hail shot him an irritated look, and Logan blew out a frustrated breath.
“Look, I’m going to do it, alright?”
“Do what?”
“Come on man, don’t be dumb right now.”
“So sorry I’m not a mind reader,” Hail said wryly. “I know it’s hard for you, but please. For a second. Just talk to me like a person. Say all the words, don’t leave me to fill in the gaps because frankly, I’ve only known you for a week and you aren’t exactly an open book. I literally, honestly have no idea what’s on your mind right now, but I’m interested, and would appreciate it immensely if you would just stop testing me for two seconds and have a damn conversation.”
Logan ground his teeth. He didn’t want to admit that Hail was right. He wanted to be angry with him for not knowing. The problem was that there were entirely too many possibilities. He couldn’t rationally expect Hail to know which of the numerous challenges was bothering him at that moment. Logic won over anger, and Logan took a deep breath.
“I’ll do what you want me to do,” he said. “I’ll go live in freaking Regis Thyme for a year. Take myself completely out of the equation. But I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like about it?” Hail asked neutrally.
“Really? Okay, first of all, there’s this team. José checked out, Robert fucked us over, and now I’m benched. You really think that you and Mariella can navigate this on your own? No, man, you’ll get ambushed or some shit, you’ll both die, and who’s going to be there to save you if I’m sitting on my ass being a living incubator? Second,” he continued before Hail could speak, “I don’t sit still. I don’t stay put. I’ve been in perpetual motion my whole life, I’ve never spent an entire year living anywhere. Not as a kid, not as an adult, definitely not as a shifter. Okay, I cannot stand stagnation, and that’s all this is going to be. One long cesspool of a year of stagnation, sitting around being useless.”
Hail’s face flushed and his eyes glittered. The expression halted Logan before he could make it to his third point, and he snapped his mouth shut.
“First of all,” Hail said in an even tone that sounded forced, “Mariella is a damn skilled leader. I wouldn’t be surprised if she recruited four new volunteers the day we get home. Second, you won’t be stagnating and you won’t be useless. Yeah, you’re gonna have to sit there and
work through your issues, but that isn’t stagnation. It’s the exact opposite, it’s growth. Add to that the life you’re growing in your belly, and you have a whole year’s worth of hard work to do. And three? My city isn’t a damn cesspool. It’s a vibrant, real community, and you’d know that if you hadn’t decided that we were all pod people the second you stepped foot outside the hospital.”
Tension crackled in the air between them for a moment.
“To be fair,” Logan said finally, the edge gone from his voice. “You were all wearing the same clothes.”
“In different colors,” Hail argued.
“So not pod people. Federation drones.”
Hail coughed a little laugh, then shook his head. Logan wanted to keep talking about it, but he felt as if he’d stumbled onto dangerous ground and he had no idea how to navigate it. He fumbled around for something to say, and opened his mouth the same second that Hail did.
“Sorry,” Hail said. “Go ahead.”
“No, you go.”
“Really, it’s okay, go ahead,” Hail insisted.
“I forgot what I was going to say already. It wasn’t important.”
“Alright. I was just going to say that I understand. I’ve been itching to get out of there for years. Imagining going back to stay, to be in there every second of every day for the rest of my life, it’s suffocating. So I do completely understand where you’re coming from. I actually expected you to freak out about it sooner.”
“It’s real now,” Logan said. “Now that we’re heading back. This is the last drive I’m going to take for an entire year.”
Hail slid his hand over Logan’s shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be around. Between bickering and screwing and having big, emotional, revealing blowouts, I won’t give you a chance to get bored.”
Logan laughed. “Not exactly the most romantic thing in the world. Is that what you want?”
Hail shrugged and grinned. “I like the friction,” he said. “Makes me feel alive. But if we happened to grow old and comfortable together, I think I’d be happy with that too. All I want is to know you, and be known by you.”
Anxiety and hope fluttered together in Logan’s chest like battling butterflies, and he cleared his throat. It was uncomfortable, but the same kind of uncomfortable as ripping off a scab or lancing an infected wound. There was comfort in the pain and life in the discomfort, and he wanted to see it through to the finish, though he worried that once the pain was gone, he’d be left empty.
Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series Page 15