by Dean Murray
"Please come with me."
I followed Ash back to the armory and watched as he pulled a handgun out of one of the plastic cases and handed it to me.
"I almost forgot I had this."
It was heavy. Unlike some of the other guns Ash had let me hold, this one didn't have any plastic on it. Ash didn't store his guns with a bullet in the chamber, but generally they had loaded magazines. Curious what caliber the gun was, I thumbed the release and looked at the slender bullet.
"What is this?"
"The gun's a custom job, but it shoots an off-the-shelf five-seven round."
"It doesn't look big enough to stop anybody."
Ash shook his head. "It's not a big bullet, but the ones you're looking at right there will actually penetrate body armor. It wasn't easy to get ahold of that ammo, but for whatever reason I never really took to it. I guess it wasn't meant for me, but it's just the thing for you."
I stood speechless as Ash pulled a shoulder harness down from the wall and adjusted it down to something that would fit me.
"I understand what it is like to feel powerless. If you're still serious about trying to survive in my world you're going to spend a lot of time wearing a gun. This one is yours now."
It was a huge gift. I'd spent enough time with Ash to realize that he spared no expense when it came to his weapons. If he'd paid to have some kind of custom gun made up, it hadn't been a cheap project.
"Thanks. Not just for this, for everything."
His smile was almost shy, but he shrugged, handed me a box of ammunition and walked back out to the living room.
I hit the weights extra hard that evening. I pulled the shoulder harness off so I could move more easily, but I kept the gun nearby while I worked out, and it was the perfect reminder of just how much I owed Ash.
When Ash finally told me I was done my arms and legs were pure jelly. He helped me back onto my feet and then sent me back to his room to shower.
The hot water was just the thing I'd needed and I spent half an hour with the massage function on the nozzle turned up all the way to max. It didn't manage to work all of the soreness out of my muscles but it was a good start.
The sun was nearly to the horizon, so it felt silly to get all of the way dressed. Then again, I couldn't really see myself running around in my shorts and tank top with my shoulder harness on.
I settled for a compromise, pulling on a new pair of jeans and then slipping on a tank top. Ash usually spent any time I was otherwise occupied in his study, monitoring his investments or keeping track of the headlines, trying to read between the lines and figure out which were being driven by something from his world.
I headed to the study first, intending on thanking him once again for the gun, but he wasn't there. I wondered absently if he'd gone outside.
"Ash, are you around?"
It was silly. I was a big girl who didn't need a constant babysitter, but the thought of being in the house by myself gave me chills.
"In the kitchen, Kristin."
I shook my head at my nervousness, realizing that maybe that dream had done more of a number on me than I'd admitted to myself so far. I walked back out to the kitchen and felt my jaw drop as I took in a sight much more domestic than any I'd expected to see.
Ash had actually just finished baking cupcakes, and was efficiently cleaning up all of the cooking supplies.
"Wow, I mean I can take expert knife fighter and mad-dog gunman in stride but cupcakes?"
I got a shrug and a sly smile for my efforts.
"Come on, Ash. I've never seen you cook anything too complicated to put in a microwave or on the range. Honestly I wasn't even quite sure the oven worked. What's the occasion?"
"I'll tell you once they've cooled down enough to put the frosting on."
A few minutes later the icing was mixed up and I started applying it while Ash cleaned up the last of the dishes. I'd been happily dwelling on the fact that he was maybe the hottest man to ever wear an apron when I looked up and saw that he'd pulled it off and hung it up in the pantry.
He'd been wearing a long-sleeve shirt over top of his tee-shirt earlier. It had come off before he put the apron on, but now that they were both off I could really see the tee-shirt that had been underneath the entire time.
Cargos and a tee-shirt. It was the kind of thing he wore all of the time. It shouldn't have thrown me for a loop, but it was exactly what he'd been wearing in my dream. Worse, he'd just turned back toward me and he had a box of matches and a candle in his hands.
"Happy birthday, Kristin. I hope you like…"
It was impossible. I'd forgotten all about my birthday, and I hadn't told him anything about my dream other than the fact that Anton had been about to kill us both. I didn't believe in prophetic dreams or any of that psychic junk, but this was more than just a strong case of déjà vu.
"This…this was all in my dream last night. You were wearing those clothes, I was sitting here at the counter and you lit the candle. It's all exactly the same."
I could almost see the gears turning in Ash's head.
"You mean the same as the nightmare where Anton came for us?"
"Yes. I know how crazy that sounds, but everything is exactly the same. How can that be possible?"
Ash put a finger to his lips as he set the candle on the counter. I blinked and he had a gun in his hands. I would have felt sheepish reaching for my gun, but the dream combined with how serious Ash was taking things washed all of that away. I was halfway to having my gun out when it happened.
Anton crashed through the front door in a spray of glass, but Ash got two shots off before Anton was even able to take a second step. I tried to track over and get a shot of my own off, but Anton was too fast. He streaked into the hallway just as Ash fired off his third shot.
Ash was out from around the counter now, pulling me back towards the side door that led outside from the kitchen.
"Keep your gun up. If you see movement shoot, don't worry about collateral damage."
We backed up a step at a time and Ash's gun never wavered from the opening to the hall. I could feel the door at our backs, but just as Ash reached back to open it Anton sprang out of the hallway. I pulled the trigger, unsure whether or not I'd hit him, but the report of my shot was swallowed up by three quick shots from Ash. Anton jerked once, twice and then fell back into the hall.
Ash pulled the door open and carefully pushed me outside.
"What are we doing? This is our chance. He's hurt and trapped inside."
"No. He's far more dangerous in close quarters. He's faster than we are and the only reason we're still alive is because he's got too much distance to cover."
"So what do we do?"
"I want you to go to the range. If you climb the west hill at the top you'll see a path. Follow it north and you'll find a group of trees. Inside, covered in camouflage netting, is a vehicle. The unlock code is three-thirteen-thirty-five. Bring it back here, but don't stop unless you see me."
I repeated the combination back to him and then took off at a run, glad I'd slipped some shoes on after my shower. I heard two more shots before I crested the hill and found the trail.
The group of trees was right where Ash had said it would be and it looked so dense I never would have believed that there could possibly have been a motorcycle in there, let alone a full-sized car.
A growth of some kind of vine tore away more easily than I'd expected and then I was inside. The vehicle wasn't just any car, it was a full-sized black Hummer. There was just enough room inside the grove of trees to walk around to the other side of the Hummer. I noticed that the netting seemed to be attached to two of the larger trees behind the SUV.
The unlock code worked like magic, and once I was inside I found the keys in the ignition. Backwards was out of the question, and the brush in front of me looked like a lot of fake stuff woven into a lattice of slats, so I turned the Hummer on, dropped it into gear and floored it.
The Hummer tore o
ut of the grove, destroying everything in front of it, and the netting slid right off of the back just like I knew Ash had intended for it to. Less than two minutes later I was once again in sight of the cabin and I felt my heart skip a beat until I located Ash. He'd moved around slightly more in front of the house than he'd been before, but very much still under cover behind a tree that I suspected he'd left there for exactly that purpose.
It made sense considering that Anton now had access to a very large cache of weapons. Frankly I was surprised that Ash was trying to bottle him up like that rather than just making a run for it.
I veered around and stopped the Hummer just out of sight of the house, below the crest of the hill that Ash was on. He yelled at me before I even got the door all the way open.
"Kristin, in the back of the car there's a bunch of cases. Get me the longest black one!"
A couple of seconds later I was running back down the hill, case in one hand, my pistol in the other. Ash took the case without taking his eyes off of the house, and I felt my stomach drop as I looked down at his feet and saw that he'd moved a small pile of rocks to expose a mechanical device that I suspected was some kind of landmine.
"Don't worry, it's an IED, but I disarmed it first thing. I didn't like leaving this tree here without some kind of insurance policy, but once you know it's there, it's relatively easy to cut the cable that sends the detonation signal."
Ash was trying to calm me down, I could tell that even through my rising terror, but he wasn't letting the effort slow him down. Working still by feel, he used his left hand to unlock the case and fish out what I recognized as his favorite model of fully automatic rifle. His switchover from pistol to rifle was so smooth I almost didn't see it, but apparently Anton tried to use the action to do something because Ash put two rounds into the house from the rifle before his pistol had even hit the ground.
"Good work, Kristin. Next I need you to go back to the car and get out a smaller square case. There are a couple of them, but you'll know you have the right one because it will have three cylinders on it with red writing."
As I came back over the crest of the hill from getting the second case, bullets tore into the ground at my feet. I nearly stumbled, but somehow made it to Ash's tree as he returned fire with four or five rounds designed to make Anton duck back down.
I was running on nothing but terror and adrenaline now, but I managed to get the case down at Ash's feet and open without dropping it.
"Are you still with me, Kristin?"
"I think so. What do we do now?"
"I'm going to lay down cover fire and I want you to run back to the Hummer. Once you're there, listen for my signal. When I yell for you, bring it down on the left side of this tree."
"What are you going to do?"
"Can't tell you. Anton can hear us from there and this needs to be as much of a surprise as possible. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Ash pulled his left hand away from his rifle and grabbed my arm.
"Go."
I tried to run, but Ash's grip stopped me and a second later I realized why as I saw movement in the house.
Anton only got off a single shot before Ash hit him in the shoulder. I felt Ash push me in the direction of the Hummer as he placed three more shots in rapid succession into the wall just above where Anton was hiding.
I took off at a sprint, and made it to the top of the hill before Anton managed a return shot which was close enough that I felt it buzz past me before I heard it. I was on the other side of the hill before he managed a second shot, and I felt the adrenaline start to crater as I shakily climbed back into the Hummer.
Ash changed over to three-round bursts, upping the tempo of the firefight, and then I heard a crash as something broke another set of windows.
"Now, Kristin!"
The Hummer surged forward as Ash fired into the house again and then there were three separate explosions spaced about two seconds apart from each other.
As I came over the top of the hill I was finally able to see what Ash had done. The entire front of the house was ablaze, already burning so hot that I was pretty sure Anton was trapped inside.
As I came even with him, Ash threw the rifle case inside the Hummer and then jumped inside. Ash swore under his breath and then I saw it. A very large jaguar streaked away from the house its coat singed in a number of places.
"Follow him!"
I stomped on the gas, but Anton was quicker than the Hummer, he was stretching out his lead, headed straight for the thickest batch of trees in sight.
Ash slapped a new magazine into his rifle and leaned out the window, heedless of the very real possibility that he'd be bucked out of the vehicle. His first burst seemed to miss, but the second seemed to hit.
Anton missed a step, before righting himself and continuing his sprint to safety. I started to slow down so Ash could get a better shot off but he yelled at me to step on it, so I pushed the pedal the rest of the way down and prayed that we wouldn't hit something that would flip us over.
Ash continued to time his shots, a three-round burst every time the Hummer bounced up, but Anton was moving more erratically now. It meant he wasn't as fast, and he was already at his top speed. We were really gaining on him now.
Ash suddenly flipped over to full auto and cut loose with three long bursts. One of them hit Anton with at least two bullets, but Anton rolled back to his feet and then dodged behind a tree.
"Stop the truck."
When I didn't respond quickly enough Ash grabbed the wheel, turning us away from the group of trees that Anton had just disappeared into.
"Sorry, my ears are still ringing."
"It's OK, we just can't risk getting any closer. Even wounded, if we get too close then Anton will kill us both before we can react. It's time to get out of here. With any luck, we can get far enough away before he recovers that we can lose him for a little while."
Ash pointed towards a ridge and I nodded and put the Hummer back in motion, albeit at a slightly more sedate pace than when we'd been chasing Anton. Ash spent the first twenty minutes still hanging out of the window, ready to open up at the first indication that Anton hadn't chosen to hang back.
When he finally slipped back inside and put the safety on his rifle I asked the question that had been lurking in the back of my mind since Anton had burst into Ash's house.
"How did he find us?"
"Apparently Anton is even more dangerous than I thought. A few of the southerners, the oldest ones, have the ability to home in on their prey. They call it tracking, but they don't need a scent trail, they can just feel the direction and an approximate distance of their targets."
"So he can find us wherever we go?"
"I'm afraid so."
Chapter 11
We kept up a punishing pace. Once we made it onto paved roads, Ash let me stop just long enough for him to take over driving and then we were off.
Adrenaline could only keep me awake so long. I fell asleep about midnight and woke up only when the sun started to creep over the horizon.
Ash spared me a smile when he saw that I was awake, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it. That actually worried me more than anything else that had happened. If Ash was starting to run out of ideas, then we were in hotter water than we'd been in before now.
"So what do we do now, Ash?"
"I'm still working on that piece. I think I've got a plan, but before I fill you in let's talk about your dream from the other night."
"You mean the one with Anton?"
"Yeah. The one that I'm pretty sure saved our lives."
Now I was uncomfortable. I'd never believed in this kind of thing but there had been too much in common between the dream and Anton's attack for it to have just been coincidence.
"I don't really know what to tell you. It wasn't exactly the same, but I dreamed about you lighting the candle on the cupcake and then Anton came through the front door and he was too fast. He got to you before you could really
get any decent shots off."
I felt my throat close up. I wanted to stop there, but if Ash thought the dream was important then I needed to try and give him as much detail as possible.
"I…I was useless. I just kind of stood there and watched as you…died."
Ash looked down at the fuel gauge, buying time before responding, but the motion had the air of something he'd been doing a lot while I was asleep.
"That's pretty straightforward. Think back to the differences between the dream and what actually happened. What changed?"
"Well, you were ready for him when he burst into your house in real life. You already had your gun out."
Ash waited to see what else I'd say and then nodded.
"So that all changed because you warned me, because you brought up the dream. Can you think of anything else?"
"I don't think I had a gun in the dream. I think I might have been wearing shorts instead of jeans. I guess that really was because of the dream too. Because of the dream I woke up feeling vulnerable so you gave me the gun and it felt silly to wear shorts and a shoulder holster."
Ash took a deep breath. "I suspect this isn't the kind of thing you really want to hear, but I think you were going to end up in my world sooner or later. I've described some of the abilities that the more powerful hybrids develop. What I didn't mention is that sometimes normal humans develop some of the same kinds of abilities."
"What, like psychics?"
I got a shrug, but he knew that wouldn't satisfy me.
"I'm not really the one to ask, Kristin. I'm about as weak as a wolf can be and still be a shape shifter. It's hard to conceive of anyone less likely to develop a power on their own than me, and the wolves who do develop powers tend to play things pretty close to their vests. I've never even met a human who I really believed could do anything extraordinary like that. All I really know is that other wolves claim to have known humans who could see auras, find things that had been lost, or even recount the history of inanimate objects."
"Alright, I suppose it's no crazier than people changing into wolves and jaguars. Still, my dream wasn't anything like that. It wasn't really even telling the future."