Wolf on the Road Read online

  “Good! Erik’s getting dressed, I’m sure he’ll be out in a second.”

  As Petunia opened her mouth, trying to formulate something that would come out, she raised a hand, lifted one finger, and found herself completely, totally, absolutely dumbfounded. Izzy trotted to the car, stuck Frederick in his car seat and waved as she pulled out of the driveway. Petunia just watched her until the car disappeared over a hill and out of view. She scrunched up her forehead, trying to make sense of what had just happened. The uncomfortable reality was right in front of her face, though: people just didn’t see her as a threat anymore. She was a mascot, she was a symbol of the things that Jamesburg did right. She was nothing but a Muppet that no one paid attention to past patting her on the head and waving at her from across the street.

  Her teeth ached. Her brain felt like it was twisting inside her head, and her guts were boiling so hotly that she could taste bile. Grinding her teeth eased the pain slightly, but there was so much heat radiating through Petunia’s body that she felt like at any point, she might actually burst into flames and rocket off into the stratosphere. She lifted her hand and touched the doorbell with her fingertip before snapping out of her trance and shaking her head to clear the cobwebs.

  “Doorbell? Come on, Petunia, you’re better than that.” A grim smile spread across her face. Instead of politely hitting the doorbell, she instead balled up a fist and thumped it against the door as hard as she could and kept going until her hand felt like a giant bruise. “Danniken!” she screamed. “Open this damn—”

  “Oh hey Petunia,” Erik said as he opened the door in between her heavy fist falls. “What’s shaking?” His shirt was only partially buttoned, and his hair was perfectly unkempt. The act of looking at him made Petunia absolutely seethe with anger.

  “I,” she started, but was shaking so hard she was almost vibrating. She felt like a giant ball of kinetic energy just waiting to explode.

  “Petunia?” Erik asked, not unpleasantly. “Sorry, I just have a bunch of meetings today, and—”

  “I have your brother and the girlfriend he changed from human to werewolf! They’re in my basement and the only way you’re getting them is by giving me a million bucks and the town helicopter so I can get out of here and go somewhere that no one will look at me and pat me on the head and—”

  Erik scowled. “You... what?”

  “You heard me,” she said, breathing heavily. Her heart was pounding and she wanted nothing more than to bite him right in the face, or maybe boot him in the ass. She couldn’t decide exactly but she knew she wanted to do something. “I have your brother. And he turned a human into a shifter to keep her alive. He broke the law, Danniken, and if you don’t pay me, I’m turning both of them in to the council.”

  The “council” she was referring to was the Council on Shifter Ethics and Manners, which Erik himself had signed into law a few months before. It was a legal framework meant to protect both humans and shifters during the uncomfortable process of their worlds becoming more and more intertwined. They took things like this very seriously, and both Petunia and Erik knew the penalty for unsanctioned transformations was a significant prison sentence and a fine that neither Jake, nor Erik, could ever hope to pay.

  He thought for a moment, massaging his temples with his index fingers. “Where the hell am I supposed to get a million dollars? And don’t you realize that if you take the town’s helicopter that you’re going to be on all sorts of tracking maps? I mean, it’s a helicopter, you have to register the flights and follow a list of rules a mile long.”

  Petunia frowned deeply and angrily. “Fine,” she finally said. “No helicopter. A city car. Something I can take and get away. That’s what I want. A million bucks and a car. And no one follows me!” she added the last stipulation almost as an afterthought. Erik sighed.

  “Look,” he said. “Are you sure you’re wanting to do this? I mean, this is one of those no-going-back situations. Wait, are you off your medication?”

  “Shut up!” Petunia snarled. “Yes I’m sure I want to do this, and leave my sister alone, she’s got nothing to do with this, you hear me?”

  “Rita? Why on earth would I think she had anything to do with this? She’s never done anything wrong, and you... well, let’s be fair here, you did try to flood the town. That’s kind of bad. But kidnapping? What the hell are you thinking?”

  Petunia narrowed her gaze. “What the hell are you thinking, having your brother change a girl into a werewolf without prior written consent and full faith of the council? Exactly how do you think that’s gonna go over?”

  Beads of sweat had appeared on Erik’s temples, right where he was rubbing his head. This was bad. Jake turning someone would have been bad before there was an agreement about that sort of thing. It was so dire, in fact, that it was in the top five most serious rules in the agreement. Still, kidnapping was pretty bad. But one of those things is a state felony. The other could cause a national episode that threatened to undo all the hours, all the blood and sweat and tears that had gone into the agreement in the first place. And to have the brother of one of the people who came up with it?

  “Shit,” Erik said out loud, as he blew out a long puff of air. “Shit.”

  “I’ll say,” Petunia said with a smile that stretched across her entire face. She always showed her teeth when she smiled, but this time she made sure to really give Erik an eyeful. “I got you by the balls, don’t I, Danniken?”

  Erik kept rubbing his forehead. “Where the hell am I supposed to get a million dollars? If I emptied out the town treasury, that wouldn’t even cover it. Er, at least, I don’t think it would.”

  Petunia leaned against the wall, propped one foot up against it, and inspected her fingernails. “That ain’t my problem.”

  Erik looked at her with hell in his eyes. This is what she was counting on. “Don’t bother getting violent, Danniken,” she said. “I didn’t come alone. I’m not that stupid. I’m not stupid at all, what am I talking about? You must be the stupid one, because you were just about to try and grab me, weren’t you?”

  On cue, Jimmy and two of the other bikers, walked their motorcycles silently around the corner from Erik’s house, and waved. They looked incredibly stupid, sort of waddle-walking their bikes down the street, but the menace was still there. Erik squinted into the morning sun and figured he could take two of them, and maybe all three, but Petunia was a wildcard. She’d almost taken down a big-ass alpha bear in the past, with those crazy dentures of hers. Plus, she was spry and quick. That’s not something Erik wanted to deal with. Not right now, anyway.

  “Is that Jimmy Dutch?” he asked. “You know that guy’s about as dumb as a shit brick-house.”

  “As a what?” Petunia asked. “I think you mean brick shithouse.”

  “No, no, no, a shit brick-house,” Erik said. “I heard it somewhere. It means, uh...”

  “Shut up!” Petunia squalled. “I’m tired of this stupid witty repartee. I’m sick of talking to you! I’m sick of not having my money and my car!” She was starting to get really cranked up. As she started sweating, she also breathed harder and harder. Erik could see the throbbing of her pulse in her neck.

  “You gotta calm down,” he said. “You’re gonna have a coronary if you don’t.”

  “Shut up!”

  “No, seriously, I shouldn’t be able to see your heartbeat like that. You gotta get your blood pressure checked. Want me to call Jenga for you? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind checking your blood pressure and,” he mumbled, “get you back on the meds.”

  Jimmy and his fellow goons had managed to walk themselves all the way to the front of Erik’s house in that silly waddling way. “Why didn’t you just ride them?” Erik asked. “How’s your dad, Jimmy?”

  “Oh he’s okay,” Jimmy said. “Gettin’ on in years, you know, but he’s still kickin’. Had a little problem with hemorrhoids a month or so back and got cranky as anything. He’s all right though. Turns out, he just needed some oi
ntment and then he was fine. Anyway, he’s wanting to have a cookout and—”

  “Shut up!” Petunia screeched. “We’re getting out of here before you two start kissing.”

  She mounted up behind him, and when he waved to Erik, Petunia whapped him on the back of the head three times. “Go!” she yelped.

  He kicked the throttle, and she squawked again, latching onto his jacket tightly when she almost pitched over and fell off the bike. The unlikely foursome left Erik standing on his front doorstep, scratching his head, and wondering exactly what the hell he was going to do. “Million dollars,” he said. “I feel like this isn’t a very good plan. Then again, my dumbass brother made it so that the plan doesn’t have to be any good.”

  Erik fished his phone out of his pocket and swiped a few times. It rang only once. “Hello?”

  “Hey Jamie,” Erik said. Jamie was a bat-shifter with a generally sarcastic attitude, that much was true. However, she also had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything to do with the city, and in fact, might’ve been the most competent person in the entirety of Jamesburg, excepting Izzy. “Listen, I’ve got a little problem.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “What’s up, I’m busy entertaining this guy you have a meeting with in an hour. He won’t stop trying to look down my dress, but he’s nice enough.”

  Erik heard someone protest loudly in the background. Jamie laughed softly. “Anyway,” she said, “what’s up?”

  “Well,” Erik started, and then trailed off. “You know, I think I better tell you in person. I’m having a hard time processing it.”

  “That bad, huh?” she asked. Suddenly, Jamie wasn’t being as jokey and sarcastic as she normally is. “Is everything okay?”

  “No, not really. My brother’s in trouble,” Erik said. He was about to pick his teeth out of nervous habit, but thought better of it, at least until he was off the phone. Instead, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and sighed. “But I think that,” he swallowed, hard. “I think we are, too.”

  8

  “Almost got it.”

  Jake grunted heavily and twisted his arm. The steel cuff bit deeply into his flesh. Tendrils of pain shot up his forearm. Blood pooled on the back of the shackle and then ran down his hand into the concrete where it soaked quickly into the ground.

  The metal had stopped groaning when he twisted his arm, and had started to thickly screech as it grew thinner with each passing second. Then again, the skin on his wrist was getting thin too, and he wasn’t interested in ripping the rest of it off. He looked across the way to where Mali was still sleeping. For a moment he just watched her face, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest and shoulders with each breath she took. After a couple seconds, he didn’t feel the shooting pain in his wrist anymore; he didn’t feel the agony of metal cutting through him. The only thing he felt was a swelling sense of care.

  Her eyes fluttered and she woke with a start.

  “How did I fall asleep?” she asked no one in particular. It was the sort of thing a person says when they wake up in a strange bed and don’t quite remember they checked into a hotel the night before. It was a probing sort of question, trying to feel out a reality they don’t recall changing.

  “Exhaustion, probably,” Jake said in a soft, gentle voice that was still brimming with steel. “You’re gonna need the rest.” He paused for a few moments as he concentrated on trying to get his nerves hardened enough to give another try to snapping the chain. “You’re cute when you sleep.”

  She smiled in the way a person only smiles when someone does something completely unexpected that makes them happier than they can explain. “You’re cute when you’re staring at me while you try and rip your own arm off,” Mali said a couple seconds later.

  “You were awake?” Jake asked, as he curled the left end of his mouth into a smile. “For how long?”

  “Not long,” she answered. “After a while, I really did pass out. I guess this whole transformation thing is sort of hard on the body. I feel better though. Well, as much better as a girl can when she’s still in a cage in some psychopath’s basement. Which, come to think of it, makes me sound crazier than I actually am.”

  Jake winced, closed his eyes, and ground the chain again. When he couldn’t take the pain, he waited, gritted his teeth and twisted four more times. The chain was getting markedly thin in the place where he rubbed the links. “You’re not crazy,” he said. “This whole thing is though. But we’re getting out, and we’re getting to my brother. Everything will be fine. One more twist,” he grunted in pain and twisted his hands.

  A decided clink was followed seconds later with Jake’s huge sigh of relief. “Damn that hurts,” he said, squeezing his torn up wrist to try and stanch the bleeding. “I gotta think,” he whispered to himself. “Gotta come up with a plan.”

  “How’s this for a plan? Break that other chain, we turn into wolves, and then blow the hell out of here. Sound good?”

  Jake shook his head side to side, trying to forget the pain. He wanted to stop thinking, wanted to, like he’d told Mali, just feel. “Okay,” he said a few moments later. “Concentrate, Jake. Concentrate.”

  The hair on his back and his neck lengthened, and his teeth grew into yellow daggers. But then, he let out a gasp. “Mali! Don’t shift!” he cried out. “I can’t... I can’t do it. My entire body burns like I’ve been shot up with muriatic acid. Something... they must’ve...”

  He writhed on the floor, scratching himself horribly against the concrete. “It burns! I can’t... I can’t stop it, I can’t—”

  “Sucks, don’t it, beefcake?” Tiny footsteps preceded the tiny voice, but with Jake’s thrashing and screeching, it was hard to make out what Petunia was saying, or where she came from. “If you haven’t figured it out yet it’s the drugs I shot you up with.” She tapped her foot against the floor and strolled over to Mali’s enclosure. “You two figure out a way to escape yet?”

  She tracked over to where Jake was still groaning in agony. “Oh! That’s cute, you broke the chain, huh? I guess you were thinking you’d get out of it, turn into a big, bad werewolf and heal up? Sucks don’t it, beefcake?” she asked again. “Torn up wrist, torn up pride. Guess you won’t be saving your girlfriend, will you?”

  “Shut up,” Jake growled. “You know you can’t keep us in here forever. You know my brother’s not going to put up with ransom bullshit. You know that.”

  Petunia clapped her hands together, and craned up on her tiptoes. “He certainly didn’t,” she said. “Wait, no, that’s a double negative. Hold on, let me figure out what I’m trying to say. Okay. Got it. I think. I told him. I talked to him, and when I left he was sweating bullets. Bullets! He’s getting me the money and he’s getting me a car, because he had a good point about the helicopter thing.” She scratched her neck for a moment, thoughtfully. “I don’t know if he should’ve told me that. Seems like if he didn’t, I would really have gotten screwed. Oh well!”

  The psychotic bunny hopped briefly from one foot to the other. “Anyway, just wanted to keep you up to date on exactly how dead you are. Toodles!” She turned on her heel and pranced up the stairs before slamming shut the door to the basement.

  “Did she just say toodles?” Jake asked. His voice still strained, he was starting to get his wits about him again.

  Mali was shaking her head when he looked up at her. She had her arms around herself, huddled in a ball against the wall where she was still propped up. “Can’t shift,” she said, almost whimpering. “Can’t do anything. Can’t get out. Can’t escape.” She repeated that mantra for a few moments and then shivered from head to toe. “Jake?” she asked like she needed his help to keep sane. “Jake, talk to me. I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me this is somehow going to be okay even if you don’t believe it.”

  Jake growled again, the anger seething and dripping from his lips. “She’ll never get away with this. I don’t care what happens, you’re not going to be hurt. I’ll rip th
at little head right off her shoulders before I let that happen.” He grunted with effort and twisted his shackled arm, looping the chain around itself. “I don’t care if I have to rip my own arm off, we’re getting out of here.”

  “Why’d you save me?” Mali asked as Jake began grinding away on the chain. “I mean, there’s nothing special about me. You just happened across me while you were chasing those bikers around trying to figure out what they were doing, right?”

  “I,” Jake began, but faltered. He looked down at the chain and winced as he twisted his wrist. “I guess I saw you, and I knew there was something special about you. I guess I didn’t want you to just die like that for no good reason. I guess...” Once again, he trailed off and pretended to concentrate on the chains.

  Mali shifted herself into a cross-legged sitting position and leaned forward on her elbows. The stretch in her back felt nice, but the popping a second later was divine. She’d somehow been holding both hips full of stress and strain for the past three days. “You guess what? Actually, my turn,” she said.

  Jake paused with his chain activities and looked up at her, staring straight into her eyes from across the way. Not even the sickly buzzing florescent could distract either of them from just drinking in the other. For a moment, Mali let herself get lost in just watching those dark eyes as they watched her. She blinked back tears, and sniffed to try and keep herself together in the face of something so horrible that she was having a tough time believing it was real.

  “Right, so anyway,” she sniff-laughed and smiled. “I, uh... I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if we’ll get out of here or if we’ll die in here, but you know what?”

  Jake just stared at her.

  “The last three days have definitely been the most interesting of my life. I got to meet an awesome guy who apparently turns into a wolf. I got turned into a werewolf. Do you understand how awesome that is?”