Page 98 of It's You
For the first time in his life, he thought to himself,Maybe you should let her go.
His feet hit the ground in a rhythmic rush, wet branches caressing his body or swiped away with his powerful claws.
You’re a monster.
Leave Carlisle.
Belong to no one.
I can’t do this.
It started to rain, a bitter, angry, sideways rain that pelted him from every angle, making it harder to see. Tombeur stopped ahead of him, raising his nose upward and inhaling. He lifted one massive, hairy arm and pointed straight ahead, and Jack nodded, downshifting.
In a moment they stood naked, in human form, in the rain. Unless they wanted a battle, they couldn’t arrive in shifted form.
Tombeur stood next to Jack and whispered, “We’re less than a mile away. It’s late, and it’s dark, and the Gathering is tomorrow. Shouldn’t be a rowdy night. They’ll be saving that for tomorrow’s celebration.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Let’s case the village. The junkies aren’t native pack members. They’ll be together somewhere. Find them, we’ll find Dubois. We’ll carry him out together, then shift once we’re a little ways away. Better we avoid the pack, if possible. They’re not the friendliest.”
Jack nodded and fell into step behind Tombeur. His human-form feet were calloused and tough, but the forest floor was rugged and rough on his bare skin.
“Do you know what the stuff is? That they’re selling?”
“It’s called Dub, short for W. Not totally sure what it is, but I’ve heard it’s some sort of synthesized wolfsbane.”
“Wolfsbane!”
Every Roux-ga-roux knew about the dangers of wolfsbane. It smelled and tasted delicious, but it was poisonous to the Roug digestive tract. In very, very tiny, stabilized doses, it acted as a depressant, diminishing impulses, causing a Roug’s heart to slow down and breathing to deepen. It was onlyoccasionallyused as a relaxant when the regenerative powers of their bodies weren’t working and medical intervention was necessary. But in anything but a minuscule, controlled dose, it was a dangerous drug that would lead to certain death.
The thing about wolfsbane, however, was that it generally caused violent, painful vomiting if consumed. Jack’s eyes looked up at Tombeur in question.
“It’s wolfsbane mixed with something that stabilizes it and keeps it down.”
Well, that answered that.
“But it’s a depressant. Why would it make Natalia rush that truck?”
“It starts off making you mellow. You forget your worries. It’s all trippy and sweet, like candy that makes you all high and relaxed. So you keep going back for more. You don’t want to run. You don’t want to mate. You just want to chill out. ThenPleine Lunecomes around, and your body wants a kill. So they have to go off it to get up the energy to hunt, and I guess the withdrawal makes them crazy. Shakes, hallucinations, fangs and claws, and no restraint. No rules. Crazy stuff.”
“Natalia went off it to hunt?”
“That’s my guess. She was acting crazy enough with that truck.”
“And then?”
Tombeur shrugged. “And then they’re all jacked up after the hunt. They want to come down, so they go right back on the Dub. And here’s the thing…If you’re on it long enough, you can’t go off. Even forPleine Lune.”
Jack stared at Tombeur, shocked, incredulous. “Are you saying they eventuallymissthe hunt?”
Tombeur nodded. “They do. And a Roug can’t miss the blood for more than a cycle. Two at the most. Can’t survive.”
It all came together in Jack’s head with blunt precision. The reason his mother couldn’t feel his father was that he’d missed the hunt. Maybe more than once. Dubois was either dead or very close to it.
The soft glow of the village lights came into focus as they rounded a bend.
“You go that way. I’ll go this way. We’ll meet at the back.”
