Omega's Run (12 page)

“Sounds about what the situation was.”

“Why? What could he possibly hope to learn?”

“Like I said, why we live for so long, maybe? Why we heal so fast or how we’re so strong? Maybe how it is that we change?”

“But we already know that. Wolf-kind come from ancient Druids in Ireland, before St. Patrick subjugated the Pagan people and converted them to Christianity.”

That
got my attention and I started so hard that I dropped the remains of my burger, the food slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers to drop to the deck with a wet plop.

“What did you just say?” I demanded sharply and her deep green eyes locked onto mine, staring at me as if she were just seeing me for the first time.

“Wolf-kind come from the ancient Druids. The first shifters were able to do so because of a connection to a wolf guardian spirit. The story goes that after St. Patrick converted the druids the ones that had already connected to the wolf went mad, started changing with the moon, and ever since, they’ve spread their madness and the hunters have been attempting to wipe them out because of it.” She eyed me curiously. “Didn’t you know that?”

I shook my head, eyes wide and feeling as if I’d just been hit over the head with a two by four. “No one I’ve ever known has any idea as to our origins. Wolf-kind have spent so long just trying to survive that a lot of our history’s been lost.” I spoke as if in a trance. Numb with the enormity of the information that had just been dropped on me.

The hunters
knew
, they knew where we’d started,
how
we’d started. How the first wolf-kind were born, or created. They knew far more about us than anyone had ever imagined, and the very notion of it at once thrilled me and filled me with dread. If they knew so much that had been lost to us, what else did they know?

Chapter 12

Ava

I’d blindsided him. Good to know I still had the ability, but it hadn’t been my intention this time. He sat silent, staring off into space for a long, long while. His dark eyes narrowed and calculating. I had a hard time believing that the mutts didn’t know where they’d originated, but no matter how good an actor he might be, no one was
that
good. You couldn’t fake a reaction like that.

“Hey, Dingo.” I nudged his hip with my foot, his eyes narrowed further and snapped to me.

“Fuck you,” he growled and I smiled and knew it wasn’t exactly nice.

“That’s what you get for calling me ‘Babycakes’ all the time. ‘Dingo…’ I rather like that little nickname for you. With that appetite of yours I wouldn’t put it past you, you know… the whole eating babie–” he snarled, his arm snapping out, one of his massive hands going around one of my ankles. He gave it a surprisingly gentle squeeze and we locked eyes.

“I have been trying pretty fucking hard to keep it civil,
Babycakes,
” he looked at me, soul deep and I swallowed hard. We were perched on that razor’s edge of violence and it could honestly go either way. If it went sideways I was pretty sure I was going to lose the leg. If I managed to get my gun out and on him, and actually
survive
the encounter, I probably would die from blood loss before I could get back to shore.

Me and my fucking mouth. I had always been the cool, calm and collected one. I was behaving more like my twin and less like myself every day. I closed my mouth and nodded slowly.

“Fair enough,” I conceded and honestly, with the way he was looking at me, I indeed felt duly chastised. I held his gaze and refused to back down, to be the one to look away first and with a slight, almost knowing smirk, he conceded. His hand slipped from my leg, but it did so in a lingering caress, and I fought to suppress a shudder.

“I was thinking,” I said, as much to change the subject from the intense interaction as anything.

“Yeah? About what?” He settled back against the side of the boat and shifted uncomfortably.

“We can’t cross this lake, not in this thing. It’s something like two hundred miles give or take to go north and cross to make landfall anywhere near where we’d need to be. There isn’t enough fuel to go even straight across at over a hundred miles. This thing was still in winter storage.”

“You got a point coming up anytime soon?” he grated and I guess I couldn’t blame him for being in a mood. I tried my best to squash down the image of him strapped to that table of Helen…

Good Christ, what had I been a part of?

“Yeah, we’re a mile, maybe two off shore. Is that enough to throw the scent?”

“Should be,” he said eyeing me suspiciously.

“Good. I’m going to take us as far as I can, we’ll make landfall where we can, steal another car or buy one or whatever and then we’ll have to catch a legit way around or across.”

He grunted noncommittally and we lapsed into silence. He finished the cold food while I piloted us carefully through the darkened waters, glad he’d been unconscious while I’d struggled to get the hang of this and get us out here.

When he’d finished making his way through the rest of the cold, fast food, he leaned his head back against the railing. I took the time to study his face while he had his eyes closed. He was handsome, strong featured, though his growth of beard really didn’t do much for him. He looked scruffy and unkempt and disconcertingly feral. Deep, dark circles resided under his eyes and they almost appeared sunken despite the fact the rest of him appeared fit.

He had washboard abs and honestly looked like Michelangelo had carved him from flesh and bone. His definition was phenomenal and I had to bet he worked very hard at keeping it that way. He had gym rat written all over him, however, as pretty as he was for me to look at, it was proving to be somewhat of a distraction so…

Thwack!

“What’s this?” he asked, glaring at the thick plastic of the bag between his knees.

“Clothes. I managed to stop and get you some while you were napping.”

He grunted a scoffing laugh and pulled the items from the bag. Nothing fancy, a pair of loose jeans and a zip up hoodie. I finished ‘em off with a pair of white jogging shoes. He’d look like a regular Joe walking down the street if we needed him to. Well, as long as he zipped up.

“Nice,” he said almost appreciatively and I felt the need to nip that right in the bud. Wouldn’t want my hard assed reputation to suffer.

“I read your dossier, remember?” I mused idly.

He grunted noncommittally and put his arms through the sleeves of the hooded sweatshirt, zipping it halfway up. His arms were so damned huge that the sleeves stretched ridiculously to accommodate them, but nothing tore at least. He breathed out a sigh of almost relief, his breath pluming the air and worked on unfolding and opening up the jeans, tearing tags and peeling stickers in a big damn hurry.

“You cold?” I asked, and he froze in place looking up at me sharply, a glint of something undefinable in those dark eyes of his.

“Yeah…” he drawled and unstuck, resuming his efforts to change into the denim from the ruined, too-small scrub pants. I averted my gaze and studiously steered us up the coastline, trying to keep the winking lights of the shoreline off to my left without losing them.

“I don’t get cold,” he stated after he’d gotten into the pants. He pulled on one shoe, then grimaced and looked like he was going to hurl when he tried to bend his bad leg to get the other.

“Hold up, tough guy. Let me help you.”

“I don’t want your help,” he growled.

“Yeah, well you need it, so suck it up, Buttercup.” I got up from my seat and knelt down next to him. He could glare at me all he fucking liked.

I knelt down and unlaced the shoe and eased it on for him before lacing it up and tying it securely for him.

“Good?” I queried.

“Good,” he affirmed.

I resumed steering the stolen yacht, watching the fuel gauge and sighing after about another hour when it was at a point I figured we’d better head to shore. I glanced down at Remus who was huddled against the side pretty miserably. He looked miserable, and I was betting he was still feeling sick. I felt a slight tickle of remorse. It wouldn’t do to feel bad for him but…

“How long until we get wherever you got us going, Ba–” he cut himself off, “Ava?”

I nodded, acknowledging his attempt to maintain a truce. He
was
trying harder than I was and that kind of sucked. I hated to be outdone.

“Depends on what kind of vehicle we can score. We’re going to need a four by four of some kind, if we get lucky and score one at the get go, it’ll save us some time, not having to switch vehicles and all.”

He nodded, but the expression on his face was sour, “You good Wolfie?” I asked, momentarily forgetting myself as something very like concern thrilled through my veins. Alarm bells were going off in the back of my mind at his appearance.

“No,” he stated simply, “Feel like I’m going to puke.” I laughed without being able to help myself.

“Sea sick? The werewolf is sea sick?” I asked incredulously.

“No, I don’t think my body is over…” he stopped, scrambled to his knees and retched over the side. Fuck. From everything we’d learned about their unique physiology, this was bad fuckin’ news.

“You better get us to wherever we’re going, Babycakes. If I’m going to die, I think I’d rather like it to be peaceful at this point. I’m tired.”

He sounded a mixture of terrified and resigned and I couldn’t help but feel a little scared for him myself. I nodded and realized he couldn’t see it with how he was draped over the side, facing away from me.

“Sure, yeah,” I said quietly and increased the throttle on the boat to get us ashore. Dragging him had been a bitch, he was twice my size and heavy as fuck and I didn’t think there would be a dolly that I could roll him onto this time to make the going easier.

“You just gotta stay awake and help me as much as you can with mobility, you got it?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

I lucked out and there was a dock, a private one, but a dock none the less. We were making landfall in a residential neighborhood.

“I need a cane, or a staff or something,” he declared when I cut the engine and got down onto the dock. I nodded and looked around, moving up the dock and into the back yard of the house we were at. It wasn’t perfect but there was a broom with a thick handle up under the back porch of the upper middle-class house we were behind.

I dug it out carefully from the pile of random crap it was lumped into and whisper quiet, brought it down to the dock. Remy had managed to get himself over the side and was standing, weight mostly on his good leg, the one I’d fucked up dangling almost uselessly.

I handed him the broom and he eyed it. Nodding, he raised it and with a little more extra effort doing what should have been effortless for him, snapped the broom head off the handle. He pressed the broken end into the dock and bore weight on it a couple times, nodding.

“Let’s move, get you around front. I’ll get us something in the neighborhood and pick you up at the street.” I whispered. He nodded and leaned hard on the stick, putting his good arm around my shoulders for support wordlessly. I worried that he was going to die on me before I got my answers as we made our way slowly and carefully up the lawn and down the side of the house.

The front of the neighborhood was nice too. I left him leaning heavily, panting and sweating, but shivering against a decorative outcropping of rock at the end of the driveway.

The neighborhood had that empty feel, the one that overtook everything in the middle of the night when the vast majority of the world was sleeping and you felt like you were the only creature stirring. I found a decent car in the form of a newer Land Rover, a few houses down.

Fuck, I would set off the alarm, and it was chancy, but…

I opened the small flap at the top of the collar of my jacket. James had worked several little Easter eggs into the coat aside from just the body armor and had shown me them all. Some of them hadn’t made any sense to me, like the slim Jim he’d worked into the body of the coat beside the front zipper, but I was thankful for it now, just like I was thankful he’d taught me how to use the damn thing proficiently.

It wasn’t exactly standard crusader training. The order had been around for ages and in that time, and with the American Red Cross as a front, we weren’t exactly hurting for money and by default, vehicles. I slipped the thin steel from the coat and slid it expertly down into the crevice between window glass and the sheet metal of the white door.

I got it on the first try and lights flashing, horn blaring and alarm squealing I popped the handle, opened the door and simultaneously reached for my knife and up under the steering column for the wires I needed. A flick of the knife, a few severed wires later and the alarm was silenced. I stood up and looked around, heart in my throat and almost waited for lights to come on.

I didn’t wait though, my training taking over, you didn’t sit around and wait to be killed, or in this case caught; you moved your fucking ass. I retrieved the slim Jim, tossed it into the car and followed it up inside. A twist of wire, a couple of sparks and she started right up. I backed out of the drive and pulled up. Remus pushed heavily off the rocks and groped for the door, he hauled himself into the Land Rover and leaned heavily back into the seat.

“Used to have something like this… mine was black though,” he muttered and I looked over at him. He was fading, fast and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I’d gotten all the silver out, what more needed to be done?

“You hungry?” I asked.

“No.”

“Thirsty?”

“Yeah.”

“You gotta stay awake for me,” I said but when I took my eyes off the road and looked, he was already out.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!

Okay. I needed to get us someplace else, someplace off the grid and there was only one place I knew of, the apartment in Ashland wasn’t a viable option at this point. It was too far. My brother’s cabin, however… Shit. The thing was tiny, but completely off the grid. I glanced at Remus and sighed.

There was no choice. I needed to get him to the cabin and figure some shit out, I needed to know what he knew. For myself, for James, and to make my next move. I think I’d known the cabin was where I was going to end up. Hence my insistence on stealing a four by four or all-terrain vehicle. The directions to my brother’s place most definitely included ‘turn off the paved road’ and required the extra vehicular muscle.