Page 22 of Taken By Raider Kings
“It’s not just you.”Something else is going on here.I knew we were being followed, even though I tried to write it off as just nerves and grief.“I think we’ve stepped into something.”
“With that little bleeder?Who the hell would want her?Other than us,” Julia hastily amended, catching Zach’s gaze in the rearview mirror.“Shush.”Her hair swung forward as she bent over Brenn, suddenly very interested in attending her twin.
Flashing lights boiled behind them.Zach checked the side mirrors and moved over; nobody spoke until the cop car had cruised by, its siren tearing a hole in the night.Not looking for us, thank God.Eric would have left a fake license-plate number with the clerk at the front desk, would have paid with cash and shown an ID bearing no relation to his real name.
Just another part of life on the run.
“What are we going to do?”Eric finally asked.
Do?That’s right.It’s my job to figure out what to do.That’s why I never wanted to be alpha; even if I’m strong, I’m not smart enough for this.“We go back.I leave you lot in a safe place with the van, I go find our shaman and bring her home.”
“But if there’supir…” Eric glanced across the hunched, carpeted center console, gauging how far to push.It was what a second should do; it was what Zach had done for years with Kyle.
He wished with a sudden vengeance he was doing it again, and someone else was where the buck stopped in dealing with this clusterfuck.
“Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out.First step is finding our shaman again.Won’t be that hard.”I’ll bet you anything she went home.And lucky me, peeking at her purse.I have an address to start with.“And while I do, all of you will stay with the van and behave.Especially you, Julia.”
Her head jerked up.“You think I wanted to get someone killed?You’re going to blame me forthis,too?”
Zach winced inwardly.Outwardly he checked the gas gauge and hit the blinker, working his way toward the freeway.Either he stood by what he said and blamed Julia for losing the shaman, or he stepped up like an alpha and took the responsibility he’d been avoiding for a good thirty years.
What a choice.It’d be so damn easy to blame his sister, blameanyone.But a real leader didn’t do that, just stepped up and took responsibility.
“Theupiraren’t your fault, Julia.”He kept his eyes on the road, his hands loose on the wheel.
“But Kylewas.”Her voice broke, the vulnerability she tried so hard to hide peeking through.“That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”
“Kyle was alpha.”The words were bitter, full of acrid grief.“He knew the risks, Julia.”And he let you run wild, didn’t bother to teach you control.Not sure he could have, you might have unzipped his guts and saved a goddamn rabid bloodsucker the trouble.You wouldn’t have meant to, but still.He was too weak.“I need you to stay calm, tend to Brenn, and help Eric while I’m bringing our shaman back, and I need you to not have one of your tantrums while I do it.Clear?”
Unmollified, she bent over her twin.“You’re blaming me.”Quietly, and her whole posture expressed submissiveness, but she was right on the edge.It was usually how her fits started.He could smell the anger on her, combat rage replacing itself with a low-level growl of irritation, eventually working up to a whipsawing screech of fury.
“If you keep going, Julia, I’m going to pull this car over and put you in the restraints.”He said it quietly, but Zach’s scent-wash boiled with his own leashed rage.“You are not going to be the queen of this little drama.For once, it doesn’t belong to you.”
Amazingly, she subsided.
Eric slumped in the passenger’s seat, making himself smaller, and Zach was suddenly aware of the musky deep crimson leaking out through his pores.A freeway sign loomed to the right, the big green beacon of salvation.
“Don’t worry,” he told them, told Kyle’s ghost, told the smell of his own failure.“I’ll get our shaman back and we’ll head south.It’ll be nice and warm.We’ll be a Family again, we’ll be part of our Tribe and go to meets.Have a nice house out in the country and run whenever the moon’s full—or whenever we feel like it.”
“That’d be nice.”Surprisingly, it was Brenn who answered, muffled by the damp hotel towel clamped to his face.“Can we get a place with stairs?I always wanted to slide down a stair rail.”
“That’s up to the shaman.I don’t think she’d object.”If we get her back.If I can make her understand.The onramp unreeled under them, Zach laid on the gas, and the trouble swirling through the van receded just a little bit.
Just that little bit was enough.At least for the moment.
eleven
Morning arrived pale and fuzzy;the alarm clock sent up one shrill shriek after another.Sophie pried one eye open and was faced with a choice: an extra fifteen minutes in bed or a long, very hot shower to take the curse off the song of stiff pain her body had become.
She ended up hitting the snooze button, then decided a shower would be better and dragged herself off her mattress anyway.It was a chore struggling to something approaching vertical status; she stood swaying for a few moments.The more she thought about it, just unplugging the goddamn clock and climbing back under the covers seemed like a better idea than anything else.
But she had to make rent.If she didn’t, her problems would be far bigger than werewolves.
A bitter little laugh bounced off her blank bedroom walls.At least she hadn’t lost her fucking sense of proportion.
Don’t think of Unpleasant Things, Sophie.The next item on the agenda is taking a shower.Just do it.After all, shedidknow what the bigger problem would be.Homelessness, or getting thrown out of her degree program, or the police pounding on her door demanding to know what happened to Lucy.
So Sophie bent, groaning like an old woman, to flicked her alarm clock off, then shuffled in to take a shower.It was all shecoulddo.After that was dry toast for breakfast, and the usual hurry to catch the bus for the office.
