Wolf on the Road Read online

  Jake stiffened. “I mean, just when I have hay fever. Otherwise I use contacts.”

  Mali shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have the natural gift of perfect eyesight,” he said.

  Mali snickered softly. “I just... I can’t believe all this, but okay fine. The prospect of a werewolf puppy is too much for me to overlook. Lets—”

  As she was about to swing her leg over the back seat on Jake’s bike and resign herself to her fate of being a furry, if somewhat reticently so, member of a world she never knew existed, a roar of engines in the distance caught both her, and Jake’s, attention.

  “It’s them,” he said haltingly.

  Mali shook her head. “Can’t be. Last time they were around, I couldn’t hear the engines. This time, I—”

  Jake stared at her for a second. “Fascinating,” he said in a long, drawn-out breath. “So maybe there’s something about them only we can hear? You can hear them now, though, right? You just said you could. I’m an idiot. Look, I’m sorry that I seem like I’m interested in this in a scientific way, but—”

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We should probably run.”

  The roar of the engines was so close now that both of them felt it in their bones, not just their ears. Jake grabbed both of Mali’s shoulders and held her still for just a second. “I know I have no right to ask you to trust me.”

  “You don’t,” she said, “but I also don’t have any choice. At least not unless I want to end up as some weird magic biker’s old lady.”

  Jake laughed. “More like bi—”

  Mali stuck a finger in front of his face. “Be polite,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  5

  “You know what the boss lady said!” One of the bikers shouted, loudly enough that Mali clearly understood, even though they were still hundreds of yards in the distance. “Take ‘em both! We got this fucker in the bag!”

  She had the thought to ask Jake about all this, and she once again remembered his talking about being in trouble, something that had so quickly slipped through her mind before, but now was in the front and center with everything else going on. Jake took her hand though, and when she felt the heat of his palm against hers, momentarily she forgot about her questions and her doubts.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “Hold tight. I might be going fast,” he said as she hopped up behind him and hugged the bike with her knees and his torso with her arms. Mali clung fast to his shirt, digging her nails into the fabric and getting handfuls even though they weren’t moving yet. “All right,” Jake whispered as he stood, and kicked at the started. “All right, Danniken, calm down. Keep your brain calm. Just keep calm.”

  “Is this like one of those personal affirmation things?” Mali asked with a grin.

  “I can’t explain this,” Jake said, “and not because I’m trying to be secretive.”

  The engine throbbed heavily, the muffler barely muffling the bike’s engine. Mali’s entire body shook with the raw, three hundred horse power strength between her legs. She smiled again, this time because she had the strange idea this was going to be one hell of an adventure—and that’s a thought that never would have appeared to the old Mali. So, something was changing past her eyes and ears. She scratched the back of her neck and was a little surprised, though not terribly, to find extra hair, fine though it was.

  When he cranked his wrist, the throttle fired heavily and loudly, giving Mali a shot of excitement. Every time she did the same thing with her own bike, she got a jolt of life, but on this thing—on this monstrous, massive road hog—it was completely different. It was like she had no real control over her own life, but she had just enough to not feel helpless. “You don’t have to explain anything,” she whispered in Jake’s ear. She spoke so quietly there was no way a normal human could have heard her over the engine’s wild, feral roar.

  He popped his neck to the left, and then to the right. “It’s hard to explain,” he said, as though he was himself trying to figure out what he was talking about, and how exactly to put words to emotions he hardly understood. He was clenching his jaws, which Mali had already learned was a bad sign, but he also seemed loose and relaxed. Jake shook his head again. “I think... I’ve never really felt like I needed to protect anyone except myself before. And now, here we are.”

  “You don’t need to protect me,” Mali said.

  Suddenly, an acute, and very nasty pain shot up her arm. She cried out as her fist clenched itself tightly. The tendons in her hand and her arm ached deeply and sharply. It was all she could to do hold on as her other hand joined the fun. “What’s happening?” she cried out. “My hands, they’re... holy shit this hurts!”

  She lifted her legs up off the stirrups and used those to hold on to Jake’s trim, muscled waist as her hands flared and throbbed. When she finally took control of her fingers again, every movement, no matter how small, sent shivers of agony through her fingers, all the way up to her shoulders and down her back.

  “Claws,” Jake said after a moment’s thought.

  “Huh?”

  “Claws,” he repeated. “You’re growin’ em. I like the way it feels with your legs around me,” he said with a low, throaty growl in his voice. “This better not be the last time.”

  Before Mali could reply, he gassed the throttle again, and at the same moment that the bikers ripped into the clearing, Jake let go of the brake. His back tire spun viciously, throwing tiny stones, leaves and dirt behind him in a great rainbow of earthen junk. He gunned it again, spraying off another cascade of stinging, biting rocks and tiny bits of dirt, and then let his tire catch hold.

  Mali let out a squeal of laughter and grabbed on tight. Jake, then, yelped and shifted himself in the seat. “Watch those claws,” he said, laughing. “You’re about to cut my guts out!”

  “Sorry!” she yelled, looking back behind them at the encroaching beasts. “Who the hell are these guys? They don’t quit, do they?”

  “I’ve got a couple theories,” Jake said with his head turned slightly to the side. “None of which make a lot of sense. Hold on!”

  Jake yanked the bike hard to the left. Mali grabbed ahold as tightly as she possibly could, and as they skidded, something flew inches above her head and struck the nearest tree, ripping out a hunk of bark. The wood exploded in a cloud of splinters, and peppered Mali’s face, tearing at her skin and drawing tiny drops of blood. “Hold on!” Jake shouted again.

  “You keep saying that,” Mali said, running out of breath from the excitement.

  “We can’t get away. We gotta do something stupid.”

  “Something else, you mean?” Mali cackled with laughter. Electric surges coursed through her veins, lighting every nerve on fire and sending her into a deliciously dangerous ecstasy. When Jake heaved the big bike around in a half circle and revved the engine toward the small gaggle of bearded, vest-wearing bikers, she realized what “something stupid” meant. “We’re going... at them?” she asked.

  Jake jerked the handlebars up, and let out a loud, almost deafening roar. “You wanted to learn how to be a wolf?” he asked. “Here’s your first lesson.”

  Mali’s eyes were the size of Golden Corral dinner plates, and just about as jumbled up and confused. “How?”

  “Don’t think,” Jake said, “just feel. Now!”

  He jumped off the bike and without giving it a second thought, Mali followed him. The motorcycle careened into the rider in front, bashing him and the two men behind him into the air like bowling pins. One of them let out a screech, but the others were silent. Fire launched into the sky in a great column. For a hair of a second, Mali watched the conflagration, wondering what the hell just happened.

  Jake threw his head back and roared as his shirt split down the middle, his muscled back now covered with wiry, steel-gray fur and twice as wide as it had been when he was human. Mali’s eyes darted around, unable to focus on a single target fo
r more than a fraction of a second. The riders in the second line, which had been about fifty yards behind the outriders, were raging toward them, but Jake took a second to pick one of the fallen ones up, shake him, then toss him aside. His body hit a tree like a sleeping bag full of Spam.

  “How?” Mali asked again, her voice growing to a desperate pitch. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

  “Just let go,” Jake said. His voice was gruff and raspy. “Don’t think,” he repeated, “feel!”

  Mali shook her head and clenched her fists. She closed her eyes tight, squeezing them together to try and concentrate, though on what she didn’t know. Four riders were bearing down on them, only seconds away. Jake dove at one, yanking him off his motorcycle, but before he could do anything else, the other three jumped on Jake, taking him to the ground in what looked like a tornado of fangs, claws and fur.

  He clocked one of them in the jaw, and drug his claws across the next one’s chest. “Mali!” he shouted, “little help here!”

  But it was too late. One of the two remaining riders grabbed one of Jake’s arms and twisted him into a full nelson as the other drove a fist straight into his stomach. A yelp of pain hit Mali’s ears, and the next thing she knew, her vision flooded with a crimson tinge.

  “No!” she screamed, “no!”

  Momentarily caught off guard by her violent protest, the shaggy, gnarly looking wolf holding Jake helpless turned his head toward her. She felt things she couldn’t explain: her teeth elongating, her fingers curling into claws, her toes tearing at the soles of her shoes and stretching until they audibly tore through the canvas on her feet.

  Her vision swam. Ripples that seemed to careen through reality at once confusing and exciting Mali as her brain tried to make sense of everything happening. Her senses erupted, and a zen-like calm settled in. She looked around, and the world seemed to move in slow motion, though she was going at hyper speed.

  The biker punched Jake again in the stomach, but that was the last one.

  Mali dove forward, wildly clawing at the nasty creature’s face, chest and arms. She dug in, then gave him a nasty bite square in the neck. He threw his head around, screeching and whining, trying to detach her, but having absolutely no luck at all.

  Jake went to one knee, clutched his stomach, and hoisted himself back to his feet. By the time he was back up, Mali’d made an absolute mess out of one of the bikers, and had the other one clutched by the throat, pinned against a tree trunk. She had a tooth-baring on her lupine face and a streak of blood on her forearm, which then was covered in coppery fur that matched her hair. She and Jake caught each other’s gaze and watched one another for a brief moment.

  “What now?” Mali growled in a voice that surprised her when it came out of her mouth. She touched her throat, which was covered in coarse fur, and felt not fingers, but claws when she did.

  Jake pointed into the distance. “More coming,” he said. “I’m hurt, you’re two days old. We should probably get—”

  A net fell on Jake, and two hard, heavy balls thumped against Mali’s legs in one second, and in the next, she fell flat on her face. The taste of dust and leaves filled her mouth and nose.

  “Oh lookie here!” a cheerful voice, thick and sloshy and syrupy, hit her ears. She managed to flop over on her back and look in Jake’s direction right when the unheard, unseen newcomer planted a boot in Jake’s gut. He groaned, but didn’t cry out. After the boot to the stomach came a kick to the head, and after that, Jake didn’t cry out because he was cold unconscious.

  “No!” Mali cried out. “Who the hell are you? What do you want with us?”

  The big, leather-clad wolfman was fully human, but she knew what lay underneath his vest and his skin. She sensed the beast inside him, only this one gave her a shiver as though his distastefulness physically repulsed her.

  “Ain’t what I want,” the man said, “I get paid to do this. I’m here for you and your little boyfriend. Gonna take you two ta’ my boss and get a big pile of cash. I’ll prolly spend it on new chrome. Or maybe I’ll buy a bunch’a hamburgers and whiskey. I dunno. That’s the great thing about life, ain’t it? Never know quite what’s gonna happen next.”

  Mali shook herself and then felt a sharp, awful pain in her lower back. She twisted around to find another of the riders holding a syringe. “Special sauce,” he said with a dumb grin. “That should be enough, but ain’t gonna kill ya.”

  As Mali’s vision started wobbling and a cacophony of bizarre aromas—almonds, grape jelly, grass—filled her nose, Jake stirred. She watched as he thrashed for a second, then went still when he realized he was only making the net cinch down tighter. “Who... how did you...?” he managed, before running out of air.

  “I’m Jimmy,” the big, dopey looking biker nearest Jake said. “And you’re a damn fool. Come on over here and give the criminal a dose,” he said to the man behind Mali, who did as he was told.

  “What are you talking about?” Jake asked.

  “This mean anything?” Jimmy held up something that glinted in his fingertips and turned it around several times.

  “A tooth,” Mali heard Jake say, though her consciousness was fading fast. “But who...?”

  “Don’t matter,” Jimmy said with a smug grin plastered all over his stretched, puckered face. “What matters is you done changed somebody without permission, and now you’re gonna pay. Or more like, your brother’s gonna pay.” The man scratched his left sideburn. “Or somebody is, hell, I don’t care as long as I get my reward.”

  Mali tried to call out to Jake, but the words came out in a slurred tangle of garbage. She stretched out a hand, as though she could somehow reach him where he lay twenty feet away.

  The biker laughed, kicked Jake in the head again, and then whistled.

  That whistle—a shrill, excessively loud sound—echoed in Mali’s head.

  And then the world went black.

  6

  Mali’s dreams were as black as the light behind her eyes. For what felt like days, she would wake up, shake feverishly, and then try desperately to cling to consciousness, but it always slipped through her fingers. Like dune sand slipping through her toes with each step as she climbed, awakening was a treadmill without an end.

  She heard Jake’s voice, but it was distant and echoing. With every passing moment, her brain seemed to swell, seemed to squeeze harder and harder against the inside of her skull until the ache was too much to bear. And then, like all the times before, she’d black out again and feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing... she’d just exist in a black cloud.

  Mali felt herself shake, and for a moment thought it was Jake again, that maybe she’d just fallen asleep and he was there to wake her, to help her back to reality. It never happened though.

  Her hands felt like they’d been pulled across an ocean of sandpaper. Her mouth was dry, her teeth ached from somewhere deep inside. Every nerve and fiber in her body felt like hell was trying to erupt through her skin. Every few minutes she’d get a wave of nauseating heat followed by wracking cold that shook her through and through.

  “He’s a lot bigger than I thought,” Mali heard. The voice was high pitched, almost squeaky, and came in quick, almost breathless bursts. “I’m not sure that cage is gonna hold him. Her though? Oh god,” the squeaking turned to giggles, “I’m so excited. Aren’t you excited Jimmy?”

  Mali blinked a handful of times, and finally squeezed her eyes shut. She lifted her hand with a great deal of difficulty, and pinched the bridge of her nose. The aching was still there, buried in the back of her brain, right where her skull joined her spine, but it wasn’t unbearable for the moment.

  “Yes ma’am,” the slow-speaking biker said. Mali recognized his voice, but not the other one. She couldn’t imagine one of those burly, brutish men having a voice like that, so this must be whoever was ordering them around.

  Jake groaned loudly, which Mali heard perfectly clear. She couldn’t see though, no matter how many times she blinked o
r rubbed her eyes or shook her sore head. “Where am I?” she heard him shout, before she heard a rattling of chains and the dull thud of what she assumed was Jake trying to rip the cuffs out of the wall he was chained against. “Let me out! Where’s Mali? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll rip every single one of your spines out through your stomachs!”

  A shuffling sound came from a few feet away from where Mali lay on the ground. She curled her fingers against the floor of what she guessed was a cell. It was concrete, but it was smooth, almost like this wasn’t always supposed to be a containment area. The floor was cold and smooth, and felt good against Mali’s face as she lay there, writhing on the ground and trying to get her bearings. Then, there was the issue of still not being able to see that caused her a little concern. She managed to get her arms underneath herself, and push up slightly, but before she could get to her feet, her strength failed and she collapsed again as Jake shouted another loud protest.

  And the shuffling went past once more, this time combined with a good deal of humming and hawing, and some sort of clicking sound that must’ve been teeth clattering together in a nervous tic. “Where are you?” the squeaky voice asked. “You’re in the clutches of your worst nightmare.”

  “All right, Rambo, thanks for the one liner. Now, where the hell am I?”

  “Outside Jamesburg,” the voice, that Mali realized had to be female, said. “Long way outside of Jamesburg. You’ll never get there unless I let you go, you know?” The squeaky voice giggled. “I rhymed.”

  “You must be some kind of idiot,” Jake said. “Wait, did you just say you rhymed something? And have you been clacking your teeth?”

  “Why?” she asked. “What the hell business is it of yours what I do with my teeth? As a matter of fact, what business is it of yours what I do at all? You are my prisoner and I know what you did! You did something very bad, didn’t you?”

  Jake sighed heavily. “I’m guessing you’re not going to shut up. Also, I have one of those teeth of yours in my pocket. Unless you found it.”