Black Wolf (10 page)

The man kept
an even distance of about twenty feet between them, down the
street.

Okay, other
methods. Jesse's first rule: never look like you were running,
someone would usually assume you were guilty, just on principle.
Second rule: to lose someone, find people.

He found a
store, one of a half-dozen close together, ducked inside, and made
his way to the back where he couldn't be seen from the door. Height
became an advantage: he effectively disappeared behind a tall
magazine rack. Just for the sake of looking like he had a reason to
be there, he picked up a magazine at random to glance through.
Nothing he saw really registered; nervously, he replaced it on the
rack, and wandered towards the front of the store. On a hunch, he
glanced back, and his guts tied themselves into tight knots. The
same man. Just reaching the magazine rack now.

Lucky. Jesse
would've been right there waiting for him.

How in hell
was he going to get out of this mess?

Fight
him
, whispered that little voice again, more urgently. It was
no less moronic an idea now than it had been the last time he'd
dismissed it.

He passed a
driveway between two buildings, the taller of which he knew had
apartments on the upper floors, and backtracked quickly, praying. A
handy fire escape... yes! Agility was a bonus here; there was a
large garbage bin close enough. All he had to do, tricky though it
was in the poor light, was balance on the edge of the bin and reach
over to grab the ladder. It came down with a groan, and he
scrambled up and jerked it up after him. He was at the third story
of five when his pursuer reached the bin. He looked up; Jesse
looked down, frozen by sudden fear.

Watch him be
an acrobat or something.

But he didn't
even try to get up the fire escape; he turned and left in the
direction of the street.

Jesse breathed
a silent prayer of thanks to whoever was watching out for him, and
finished the climb to the roof. With any luck there'd be another
way down, yes, a fire escape on the opposite side. He climbed down
into a different space, a cramped narrow parking lot, and looked
around in case he'd been anticipated. All was quiet. He took a deep
breath to calm himself, relieved.

Someone
reached out of deeper shadows and grabbed his arm; another hand
traced a line down his spine.

Jesse wrenched
away and bolted. Being assumed guilty had just become secondary to
being caught. Anyone so persistent had to have some way of making
Jesse come with him, and he'd heard horror stories from more
experienced acquaintances about some of those ways. After a few
blocks he stopped to catch his breath, and glanced back. No
sign.

Good. Should
he circle back to where Shaine would be waiting for him, or go to
ground somewhere for a while, just in case?

"Have you ever
heard the expression, the thrill of the chase?"

Leaning
casually against a pole, almost directly in his path, the same man
gave him a smile that showed too many very white teeth.

"How the
fuck..." Jesse didn't bother to finish the thought; heart pounding,
he spun and fled back the way he'd come. A glance over his shoulder
without stopping, narrowly avoiding running into a woman coming the
other way, showed that man following at a sedate pace.

He's a Bad
Thing,
insisted the little voice inside.
Dangerous to you,
dangerous to everyone. Stop running and fight!

Against
someone who does impossible shit? Oh, just shut UP and stop
distracting me!

* * *

"Oh, damn,"
Flynn said, sending a ripple through the intense concentration on
willing fortune to work in Jesse's favour. "That's one of the
higher ones. It's playing mind-games with him right now."

Bane growled
softly, and Bryan tensed visibly. Kevin and Lori, who had too much
experience with occasional predators deciding that they were
tempting enough to be worth the risks, winced in unison.

"Try to lure
it away from him and to here?" Naomi suggested. "That would be
simpler than a gate there, and would need less of a focus and less
power. Could Jesse's nerves take that, do you think?"

"I doubt Jess
could survive that, let alone avoid further nerve damage," Cynthia
said with a sigh. "Otherwise, that would be worth a try."

"If Jess could
handle that, he probably wouldn't need help with a predator,"
Deanna agreed ruefully.

"Can you get
me a clear fix?" Kevin asked.

"I'm trying,"
Flynn said. "There's a lot of loss over this distance."

Naomi nodded.
"All right. Then let's see how much power we can gather up for you
to use, hm?" Kevin felt her dig deeper, felt a surge in the flow
coming directly from the earth below them; Lori, more used to her
coven-mate, caught and channelled it neatly into the shared
currents with scarcely a perceptible wave. Kevin gathered together
as much as he could from the collected pool, grateful that he
wasn't going to have to build a gate simply from his own
reserves.

Silence, while
seconds ticked into minutes, and the connection between Flynn and
Jesse grew narrower and more dense.

* * *

Jesse
zigzagged along the busiest routes available, figuring it would be
harder for anyone to force anything with enough other people
around. He needed to loop back around to where this started, and
see if Shaine were there yet; with any luck, he not only would have
arrived by now, but wouldn't assume Jesse wasn't coming and leave.
While people tended not to find Jesse at all intimidating, the same
couldn't be said about Shaine, and Jesse knew of nothing that had
ever thrown him off-stride.

If he could
just get there. He saw that same man again, in front of him, this
time leaning against a parking meter, watching him with that smile,
and detoured without slowing to cut through an unfortunately quiet
walkway between two old buildings. His pursuer was somehow,
impossibly, on the other side as well, blocking his exit. Jesse
doubled back, hit the main street, and made it nearly back to where
this had started before seeing him again—this time, stepping
apparently out of thin air directly in front of Jesse, so close
that Jesse stumbled to avoid running into him. He darted across the
street, ignoring the honking horns, but kept going the same
direction.

How the fuck
did he do that?

How the fuck
do I get away from someone who can do that?

Adrenaline was
only going to go so far; he was already out of breath, heart
thumping painfully hard. This enemy was simply going to wear him
down and pick him off at will when he could no longer run.

But how could
he fight back? Could Shaine help against this threat, anyway?

That annoying
little voice inside told him that no, Shaine was no better able to
fight this battle than anyone else in the city was. Except Jesse
himself.

Which should
he do? Get into the middle of a crowd and hope that would protect
him long enough to catch his breath and think of something? But if
his enemy could get close to him, extra bodies around him would be
no safety, and that annoying voice yammered that it would put more
people at risk.

An ambush,
then? Get behind the businesses into the shadows, find anything he
could use as a weapon, even if it was just a glass bottle?

It was worth a
try. Continuing to run wasn't an option.

He spotted a
driveway that he knew linked to the space behind a shoe store and a
clothing store and a small drug store, and veered down it.
Sawdust-scent, chemical-scent, metal-tang, someone had been doing
work, maybe on one of the apartments above the businesses. That
might be promising for finding something he could use. He slowed to
a stumbling walk, headed for a more-or-less neat stack of what
might be lumber or plumbing or both against one wall, near a back
door.

This time, the
hand groped his ass, and he had the eerie feeling that he was
feeling skin-on-skin with no insulation by the denim that should be
between.

He spun around
with his full weight behind his right fist, a response too
instinctive even to allow time to grab his keys to add to the
impact.

His tormentor,
with no apparent effort, no reaction at all to the force behind it,
seized hold of Jesse's right hand in his own and squeezed. Jesse
was sure he felt a joint pop, thought he cried out, but the pain
was so bad it all blurred together. He felt pressure, the pain
increasing as the other twisted his hand backwards, and his legs
buckled without conscious thought; he barely registered the
sensation of his knees striking the pavement, with the whole world
a white blur centred on his trapped hand.

* * *

"C'mon,
c'mon," Flynn muttered. "We're running out of time, here... I'm so
close but so's the predator."

"Anchor?"
Kevin prompted, knowing very well that it was useless to ask and
Flynn was already doing his best. "I'll drag him back here through
it if I have to."

"Not
necessary," Bane said, standing up and stretching. As often as they
could get away with it, wolves wore magesilks, which meant he
didn't even need to waste time taking off clothes. Bryan followed
suit only a heartbeat later, always right behind his brother and
pack leader.

Kevin stood
up, too, and felt Lori reach out to re-balance the power currents
to accommodate motion. Whether the circle would hold across long
distance was distinctly uncertain; he took what he could, while he
could, just in case he lost connection. At least the combination of
coven-bonds and Lori's presence provided a sort of insurance: she
could create a gate to get him and the wolves back here if
necessary, though using another mage's gate always felt a bit
uncomfortable.

"You're safer
here," Bane objected. "We'll have to protect you, too."

"I'm coming,"
Kevin said flatly.

"I think Kev
needs to be there," Flynn said. "He didn't pull the mage card just
to gate you two there and back."

Bane sighed,
shrugged, and his body began to blur around the edges, turning all
over the dark brown of semi-sweet chocolate. In seconds, a huge
shaggy wolf shook himself, and looked expectantly at Flynn and
Kevin.

Bryan, in
wolf-form, was a little smaller, more the colour of milk chocolate
than Bane's darker fur. Together, they were an intimidating
sight.

"Hold on,"
Flynn said distantly. "Almost got it… there! Here, take it." Kevin
knew without being told, as the sparkling stream snapped itself
tightly together into a cord that stretched off towards the south.
Kevin reached along it, and found the other end. Clear and precise,
more than enough so for him to build a gate safely and with minimal
effort. Well, as minimal as effort could be across that much
distance.

"Be careful,"
Naomi said softly.

"Always."
Kevin gestured with both hands; a bright gate swirled into being,
woven of moonlight and will. The interior cleared, leaving only the
frame and a flimsy curtain of coloured light.

"You've got
it," Flynn said.

Bane darted
through, Bryan on his heels; Kevin was right behind both, and as he
stepped through, the gate vanished.

* * *

Patrick Lucian
raised his head, all senses alert, straining to discover what it
was that had just caught his attention. He spotted the brilliant
glow of an elvenmage's power, and a strong one at that, fading in
bright ripples. And now he could sense, faintly, the presence of
another mage where a moment before there had been none.

Now that's
interesting.

He abandoned
the remains of his luxurious supper, cloaked himself in illusion
that changed his sun-tawny hair dark and his fair skin to a deep
brown, and simply walked out of the restaurant without stopping to
pay. Outside, he released the illusion, paused briefly to orient
himself, and started to walk in the direction of the shimmer of
magic, toying with speculations.

* * *

Oh my god, I'm
going to pass out, don't do that, DON'T!

As though that
would make Jesse significantly more helpless than he was right now,
with the pressure on his hand making his back arch as his body
struggled to find some kind of relief.

His tormentor
spat something that sounded like a curse, though it was unfamiliar,
and suddenly Jesse's trapped hand was free. He scrambled backwards
fast, not caring what he hit, his vision still full of red and
black starbursts.

"Damn those
wolves," the stranger snarled. He brushed past Jesse as though he
were of no further importance at all. Not in the direction of the
street, but deeper into the back spaces, where there was another
small access area and a driveway out the other side.

Sobbing for
breath, his damaged hand cradled close to his body, Jesse staggered
to his feet.

A cool arm
slid around him, made him jerk away briefly until the scent reached
him. Familiar, safety. Shaine. He looked up, blinking tears out of
his eyes. As tall as Kevin, though even slenderer. Light-skinned,
pale-blonde, uncut hair held out of blue eyes with a blue bandanna.
Somewhat Jesse's senior, though by how much he'd never let
slip.