by Dean Murray
We were back to the interstate. For a second I debated which onramp to take and then I shrugged and got on the eastbound one. We were obviously in the Midwest, so it only made sense to keep going in the direction Ash had chosen for us previously. I merged into traffic and returned to eavesdropping on his call.
"…I'll be fine. I just wanted to let you know about him so you can alert the packs. No, I don't have any ideas, I just know that this guy needs taken out before he sets up shop somewhere. I don't know. Give Shawn a call. He's about the only person who has a hope of managing his dad and if there's any pack that has a chance of taking this guy down without piling up a lot of bodies it's the Chicago group. Right. Guy's been driving a dark BMW that's sporting a number of bullet holes. Goes by the name of Anton. OK, thanks."
Ash slowly unrolled his window, threw his phone outside the car and then rolled the window back up.
"Ash, what just happened? How did he survive all those bullets earlier and how did he rip a hole in the motel wall like that?"
"I'm sorry, Kristin. There's no time. I need you to listen to me. Are you listening?"
Now that I wasn't focused on where I was going or on trying to listen to his phone conversation I was starting to shake, but I nodded, which seemed to satisfy him. He'd reached into the jockey box and pulled out a bunch of gauze and medical tape while waiting for me to respond.
"You did a good job just now. I need you to keep driving east on I80 until you get to I29. Go south on I29 until you get to Kansas City. There's a used car lot there, Casey's Car Center. He's expecting us. We need to change vehicles so that Anton loses our scent trail. I don't care how bad it seems like I am once we get there; you need to wake me up before you get out of the car."
He'd wrapped the gauze around his stomach while talking. I turned my head to get a better look at what he was doing and nearly lost the breakfast I hadn't actually had.
"Promise me! No matter how bad it seems like I am, you can't stop, you can't get the police involved, you can't go to a hospital."
My nod was jerky, but it seemed to satisfy him and he closed his eyes.
Chapter 3
We started running low on gas a bit before we crossed into Kansas. Ash's demand that we not stop until we made it to the car lot kept playing through my mind, but I was pretty sure his classic muscle car wasn't going to make it there without a refill.
I pulled off at the next exit and started praying that I'd be able to fill up without anyone realizing I had a stabbing victim in the passenger seat. I pulled his jacket closed and then fished his wallet out of his front pocket. He started trying to get up, but I pushed him back down, alternately relieved and concerned that he was too weak now to stop me.
I filled up the car in record time, pulled out of the gas station and didn't stop looking back until we were on the interstate again.
Somewhere between the border and Platte City, Ash started running a temperature. By the time we pulled into Kansas City he was delirious and mostly incoherent. I caught snatches here and there as the sun started to set.
"…can't ever go back…sorry I failed…won't be forced to bow to their demands…"
I checked his bandages as we entered the city limits. Things weren't looking good. Both wrappings had soaked almost all of the way through, and I had no idea how much blood he'd lost before he'd got the bandage in place.
The second gas station that I asked at was able to give me directions to the car lot. An hour later I managed to successfully navigate my way there. Ash had mostly trailed off by then, and it took a lot to get him awake.
"Ash! We're here, you need to wake up."
"Kansas City?"
"Yes, you told me not to get out of the car. Now that we're here what am I supposed to be doing?"
He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position, but the attempt washed the color out of his face almost instantly. I could only imagine how much pain he was in.
"Look around. There should be a semi full of cars and then a line of vehicles next to it."
"OK, I can see it."
"Pull up next to the cars, as close as you can get. Don't open the door, just unroll the window."
As soon as I cut the engine a slender figure more or less just appeared at my window.
"You the pair we're waiting for?"
The speaker looked to be late thirties, and judging by the piercings and tattoos had probably spent his formative years in and out of prison.
"Yes, we're the pair."
"Here's the packet I was paid to deliver. You can have your pick of this lot here, and once you've vacated your vehicle I'll load it up and be on my way to Chicago, no stopping, just like instructed."
I awkwardly accepted the thick envelope, thought about opening it, but then decided against doing so. We probably would have sat there for an hour, neither him nor I moving if Ash hadn't spoken up.
"Kristin, we need to climb from this car to the next, don't set foot on the ground if you can avoid it."
Ash waved the trucker closer while I was still trying to process what he'd just asked me to do.
"You've got your instructions?"
"Yes, I'll wait until you've driven away, then I'll load up your car, pour vinegar on the ground between each of these rigs and drive off. Your man let slip that the rest of the vehicles will be gone within the next six hours, singly or in pairs. Either on car carriers or driven to separate lots where the sales guys will be told to give people offers they can't pass up. You'll want to watch that—people with loose lips like that cause more problems than they are worth."
Ash nodded. "He's temporary. Thanks for the heads-up though. You recognize that there is an element of risk to this?"
"Sure. Nothing that pays this well is safe and legal."
Ash nodded again, waved the trucker away and then motioned for me to get started. I would have said it wasn't possible. I almost expected the trucker to help, but he watched impassively while I climbed over Ash and then half pulled, half assisted Ash in climbing into the next vehicle.
I wanted to stop at the first car, but Ash weakly insisted that we keep going, so I helped him through a pickup truck, another sedan and into a SUV before it was obvious that there wasn't any way he was going to make it any further.
By that point I was exhausted, but to humor him I crawled through each of the other vehicles in the line and then back to the SUV. Ash had passed out again, so I started the vehicle up and carefully pulled it forward. The trucker was waiting and motioned for me to roll the window down.
"Look, sweetheart. I don't know how you got hooked up with this guy, but you don't look like the type to be running around with someone like him."
I felt stupid. Four or five hours of sleep curled in a ball in Ash's car wasn't enough to compensate for all of the adrenaline that had been spiking through my system off and on since Anton had walked into the TacoHut.
Apparently my blank stare cued the trucker into the fact that I didn't know what he was getting at.
"Kristin, was it? Only two kinds of people have the kind of money it takes to arrange something like this on what looks to be short notice. On the one hand you've got the respectable ultra-wealthy who have nothing better to do with their money than arrange weird ways to pick up a new car and get the old car home. The other group is full of people who are just as rich but who operate on the other side of the law. Organized crime, drug dealers, very exclusive hit men. You're smart enough to figure out which group shows up to pick up their car covered in blood."
I must have tensed up; he stepped back and put his hands in the air.
"What you do is your business. I'm not going to be telling any tales. Just wanted to make sure you know what it is you're getting into."
I shook my head. "I have no idea what I'm getting into, but he saved my life and someone even worse is after both of us."
The trucker pulled a cigarette out and lit it. "Better make sure you figure out what's going on sooner rather than later. My experience is
that when you start dealing with devils, there's not much difference between the ones on your side and the ones on the other side. Sooner or later you get burned."
Chapter 4
I drove until the tank was down to less than a quarter full and then pulled into a gas station. I debated for several seconds and then finally tore open the envelope. The contents read like something out of a spy movie.
Cash, lots of cash actually, maybe thirty thousand dollars. Another gun, two passports, one for me, one for him. Ammunition, a knife, driver's licenses, and two cheap-looking pre-paid cellphones.
I shook my head in astonishment. The trucker hadn't been kidding. This wasn't the kind of thing a normal person could arrange at all, let alone on less than forty-eight hours' notice. I stripped a couple of hundred-dollar bills off of the stack, slid everything but my set of fake IDs back into the envelope and went inside to pay for the gas.
We made it back on the road without incident and I lasted for another three hours before I got so tired that I had to pull over. When I finally woke up the sun was rising again and Ash was awake and staring at me.
"You'll live, I take it?"
He nodded. "Looks like it. How long were you asleep for?"
"I'm not sure, maybe seven hours."
My stomach chose that moment to growl and Ash nodded again.
"No reason not to go find food then. If he hasn't found us yet, then our odds are pretty good. You didn't happen to drive through a rain storm, did you?"
The mention of food got me moving. It had been too many hours with nothing but convenience-store snacks to subsist on. I let my chair click back into an upright position.
"I think we're in Alabama, if you're curious."
Ash froze for a moment. In someone else it wouldn't have been noticeable but he normally moved so smoothly that even a slight hitch was practically screaming that I'd knocked him for a loop.
"Very well. Still not a good reason to forgo a meal, but we should choose a smaller establishment."
"Why? Are the cops looking for us?"
Ash nodded as he reached for the envelope that I'd left on the pedestal between our two seats.
"Among other reasons."
I grabbed the envelope before he could put his hand on it. It was a stupid thing to do for multiple reasons, and I'd look back later and realize that he probably could have still beat me to it if he'd wanted to, but I was finally pissed.
"Not so fast. I've put up with all kinds of crap. I fled the scene of a frickin' knife fight because you've saved my life twice. Oh yeah, and I shot somebody who I'm now pretty sure just shrugged it off and then went off and devoured a couple of small children or whatever it is Anton does for kicks when he's not trying to kill me. All of that and all I know is that some random trucker you hired thinks you're in the mafia and that sooner or later you're going to kill me."
Ash had a bemused look on his face, but he shrugged and then leaned back in his chair.
"Technically I didn't hire him. Somebody else did that, I just hired the somebody else."
The response was so off the wall that I couldn't help but stare.
"You still hired him indirectly…"
"Yes, but I can't vouch for his character. Actually I can't vouch for the character of the 'somebody else' either."
He was smiling, and I found myself returning the smile.
Ash held up a hand before I could say anything else.
"I'm not trying to keep you in the dark, Kristin, not any more at least. I want you to think about what you're asking though. Once I tell you what's going on you can't forget that information. You won't be able to just go back to your old life."
The switch from humor to seriousness was abrupt enough to underscore just how important he felt like the question was. I thought about it for a second and then nodded.
"Like I said. I've just spent the last day and a half running for my life, and for most of that time I was convinced you were some kind of psycho kidnapper. People don't just forget that either. Heck, some people go through years of therapy to deal with that kind of stuff. I already can't just go back to my old life."
Ash sighed. "You saw that Anton shrugged off bullets when they should have killed him right? How do you explain that?"
That one floored me. I'd been expecting him to confess to being involved in something illicit. I didn't expect him to return to one thing I couldn't explain with anything that was remotely rational.
"Actually, I can't explain that. Why don't you just tell me?"
"Some things are hard to believe unless you've already arrived at them yourself."
Now I was starting to get frustrated, but he opened his mouth again before I could respond.
"How long do you think it normally takes to recover from two serious stab wounds?"
It was like he'd run a current through me. Science and math were my subjects. I'd never even had an anatomy class, but I really should have realized that Ash was recovering too fast.
Actually he shouldn't even be alive, let alone moving around on his own. People got stitches and antibiotics after being stabbed and then still spent days in the hospital after something like that.
"You should be dead."
"Probably. At the very least I should still be out of commission."
"So how are you and Anton both doing things that aren't humanly possible?"
He'd gone unnaturally motionless. It was like we were both waiting for the other to move.
"Think very carefully about what you just said, Kristin."
"You're both doing things that…"
What was the principle? When you've ruled out all of the simple explanations, then whatever is left, no matter how complicated and unlikely, has to be the answer. I felt a shiver run through me as some primal urge demanded that I run or fight. The silence stretched out for more than a minute, but despite Ash being able to see the answer in my eyes he waited for me to say it.
"So you're not human. What does that leave? What are you?"
"A shape shifter. Popular culture would probably call me a werewolf but that's not quite right. There really are werewolves and I'm not one of those."
"So what, you got bitten?"
I'd seen Ash serious, I'd most recently seen Ash funny, almost playful, but I'd never seen him bitter before. His laugh actually made me hurt inside.
"No, actually, that would be easier to stomach sometimes. It would be nice to have a single event to blame. No, my 'condition' is genetic."
"You mean there is a whole what…subspecies…out there that nobody knows about? Is it a recent thing or have you guys been around for a long time?"
The real smile was back.
"You know, most people would completely miss out on the evolutionary considerations. Maybe one in a thousand would think about things the way that you just did. Of that one in a thousand, most of the rest of them would have at least refrained from calling me a subspecies. You really are a geek, aren't you, Kristin?"
I felt myself blush. I worked hard to try and avoid the appearance of being a nerd. It was one thing to be smart, it was another thing to be so socially awkward that people could pick you out in a crowd for it. Ivy League schools accepted geeky geeks, but I figured I had a better chance if I could be super-smart but still articulate.
"How did you know? Were you stalking me before the night Anton tried to kidnap us?"
Ash held up his hands in mock surrender.
"When you fell asleep that first night you talked in your sleep. Only a real egghead would recite the periodic table in their sleep."
I blushed again. Somehow his humor helped. I would have thought it would infuriate me, but somehow it took the edge off of a revelation that should have made me run screaming for the hills.
"Stop deflecting. How many of you are there?"
Ash shrugged. "Nobody really knows. It's not like we have a phonebook or anything. My best guess would be more than a couple thousand, less than ten thousand."
I'd known t
he number would be low, but I hadn't anticipated a number that low. Ash continued while I was still trying to remember how many individuals you needed to keep a species going without the risk of severe genetic drift morphing them into something drastically different than what they'd started out as.
"I'll leave it to you to figure out whether or not we constitute a subspecies, but there are actually two groups. Wolves, like me, and cats…which is what Anton is."
Somehow I'd forgotten about Anton in all of the excitement.
"You mean like a housecat?"
"No, more like an abnormally big jaguar."
"Based on what I overheard earlier, it doesn't sound like the wolves and the cats get along very well?"
"They don't. Our two species have been at war for thousands of years."
"So I just got caught in the middle of your private war?"
"I'd never met Anton before the other night. I suspected he was one of the southerners when he got out of his car and started muttering though."
"Southerners?"
Ash nodded. "The wolves control most of North America, essentially everything from the U.S. border on up. The cats control everything from Mexico on down."
"So if Anton wasn't after you from before, then why is he chasing us still? It makes no sense."
Ash frowned and then shrugged again.
"It's hard to say for sure, but you have to remember that Anton is probably at least two hundred years old, and he's been the meanest thing around, at least in his neck of the woods, for at least the last couple of decades. He's probably got an ego bigger than anything you'd believe. I suspect this is all just to prove to himself that he's still king, as it were."
"That's a lot of work to go to."
Ash nodded and then gestured around us, taking in the world with his hand.
"A guy like Anton isn't really sane, at least not in the way you and I are. He's created a world view where he's the center of everything. Given that he's really not some kind of demigod, he's probably had to make some rationalizations for his world view to stick inside of his own mind. When one of those rationalizations bumps up against something that puts it on shaky ground then those kinds of people will go to extraordinary lengths to try and remove the thing that is putting their world view in doubt."