Page 45 of Soulmates
As soon as I can keep on my feet, I take off. Trajan’s right behind me,then he passes,a sleek shadow in the night.I pick up my pace and follow. He’s dropping down the side of the hill, going through sage scrub and dodging gnarled live oaks. After a few hundred feet, we pick up a path and move even faster.
We’re stopped by a yellow hazard gate held in place by a padlock on a chain. Trajan grabs the chain. I scoot underitand glare at him.
“Yeah. Don’t want to leave any—” An explosion from the direction of the safe house makes both of us jump. The chain breaks from the force of Trajan’s response. “Fuck,” he mutters, and pushes the gate open.
Then hechargesdown the trail. I keep up with him—barely—until he reaches a set of stairs. I get better traction in the dirt beside him,andit’s a race to the bottom.We should probably slow down enough to listen for pursuers. We don’t.
Finally, he slows to a stop. We’re in front of a cement structure, and even in the fading moonlight, I can see it’s covered with graffiti. “This place is pretty solid,” he says. “I’ll burrow in and hopefully you can grab a nap or something before I shut down.”
While you’re guarding both of us.He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. The slope of his shoulders and the depth of his frown show his regret. I tip my chin up, hoping he’ll read confidence instead of faked determination.
“Come on.”
I follow him into the one-story building.In the main room, windows break up the crude slogans and swastikas painted on the walls. To the leftthere’s adoor leading into alarge closet.Old wires and pipe stick out fromthe walls, butas long as no one opens the door, no sunlight will get in.
Trajan props himself in a corner. I don’t know if I should stay in the room with him or guard the door. I wander in and out a couple of times and decide I’ll be more use by keeping anyone from opening the door. I go out and, after one more look at Trajan, I close him in.
There’s an old blanket in the corner. From the smell of it, someone lived and possibly loved on it. I drag it over in front of the closet, then scoot in so it’s covering most of me.
I hope my shift back will kill the lice.
Exhaustion rolls over me in waves. Trajan will be conscious for a while, which gives me time for a nap. I can’t even shut my eyes. That explosion was likely the SUV, which means the few clothes I had with me are gone. Trajan’s maker has to be mixed up in the crazy somehow too, though for my wolf, it’s a gut sense rather than anything rational.
And blaming Trajan’s maker doesn’t explain why my cousins nabbed me, or what’s happened to Sheena.
I doze, almost despite myself. The change in light rouses me. The sun’s up, so Trajan’s out. The door to the bunker swings open, brightening the room further. A shadow falls across the floor, and then a man walks in.
Connor.
Can’t stop myself from growling, even though if I kept quiet, he might not notice me. The sound in the back of my throat starts tiny and swells.
“David?” He takes another step inside. “It’s me.” The door swings shut behind him.
I bark, one single warning sound. He freezes. “Okay, so I’m just going to”—he slides down the wall in a squat—“sit right here.”
The smell of horse andthesupernatural compete for my attention.My rear haunches lift, ready to spring. There’s no sound from Trajan’s closet, so he must really be down.
“Look, I get that you’re protecting him, but hear me out, okay?”
I don’t answer, but I don’t lunge at him either.
For a minute,he stares into his hands, like there’s a cheat sheet for him to crib from. “Okay, I’m an agent with the Elite, the Securitas.” He pauses, but I don’t respond.Because I can’t.
“Trajan doesn’t know. I had an assignment two years ago and…well, never mind. Jacques and your uncle are up to something, but I’m not sure what or why. Tonight, I just happened to be watching a bunch of Jacques’s thugs at that club. They took off, and I followed them and recognized Trajan’s car.”
He’s oozing so much sincerity, I almost need a shower, but there’s enough truth in his tone that I relax into my blanket.He’s dressed in an ordinary-enough pair of jeans and a hoodie, but cold black metal gleams from his waist and from a holster on his thigh. I’m not sure what I thought an agent of the Elite would look like, so I guess he’ll do.The Securitas is like the supernatural FBI, and the Elite is just what the name implies.
“I didn’t figure you and Tray would be dumb enough to get caught by a bomb like that, so I took a look around after the other guys left. And here I am.”
His eyes glow amber in the semi-daylight, and his hair is closer to auburn than brown, his beard a shade darker.He raises both hands and lets them flop onto his knees. “We’ll just keep each other company till Trajan wakes up, okay?”
Something scrambles through the bushes outside. My ears twitch, but neither of us moves.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’ll just sit right here and wait.”
OXO
Connor’s alertness drains me. Not that I had much in the tank to begin with, but rousing myself every time he wants to go outside to scout around or take a leak or whatever gets to be a drag. My body finally wins, and I sleep. Not very long and not very deep, just enough to be befuddled when Trajan rockets out of his closet and shoves Connor up against the wall.
