The Problem with Promises (17 page)

A small favor.

Luck hadn’t smiled on Natasha and Elizabeth. According to a mortal who’d owed the pack a favor, their escape from our territory had been slowed down by the need to buy fuel at his gas station.

Life is full of learning examples, and this was yet another. Something to remember: all good getaways require a full tank. I would bet my last Cherry Blossom that Elizabeth was ragging on Natasha for that oversight.

I knew it in my bones that we’d catch up to them soon. And then what? We’d drag them back by their fake auburn hair and force them to make things right.

Which reminded me of an important detail. “The bikers didn’t want to kill me. Not there anyhow,” I told Trowbridge. I stared ahead, thinking it through. “They wanted to take me somewhere. To meet someone.”

“Had to be Whitlock,” said Cordelia.

“And Itchy told Gerry not to shoot you,” I added. “‘Don’t lose the bonus,’ he said. ‘We have to make him look dirty.’”

“I’m done with this asshole,” said Trowbridge. “When we get back from the Fae realm, I’m going to take him on. Whitlock wants war? He’s got it.”

Two hours ago, I’d been appalled at the thought of a deliberate kill. But somewhere back in the cemetery, I’d crossed some invisible line. I knew without a doubt that there had been no “oops” to what I’d done to Itchy or Gerry. I’d wanted them dead and I’d followed that impulse to the grisly end. The three of us—my inner-wolf, Fae-me, and plain old Hedi—had not been appalled and horrified when we’d battered Gerry’s noggin with the tombstone.

The truth is ugly
 … in fact, we’d smiled.

Even now, the yen to spill some of Natasha’s blood was as fierce a craving as I’d ever experienced. What had changed inside me? Was it because I’d turned my wolf loose?
Am I turning feral?
Did letting out my inner animal make me think like one?

Was that even bad?

Not if I’m going to run with wolves.

“Are you going to keep going to Threall every time you close your eyes?” Trowbridge asked suddenly. “Is that why you didn’t sleep back at the house?”

“Maybe,” I said. My mate steered the car smoothly through a bend in the road. A long semi was hauling a silver trailer, its fumes redolent of swine.

“Poppet.” Cordelia heaved a deep sigh from the backseat. “It scares the crap out of him when you stop breathing.” She sat stiffly, her hand pressed hard to a dark blue towel held against her flank. A gun lay by her hip. Before we’d all piled into our cars, she’d stalked into the Trowbridge house and came out with ugly-dark-and-deadly. The weapon smelled of gun oil with a hint of Cordelia. But the
other
Cordelia—the stripped-down one, before the heavy foundation and powder.

The towel appeared wet. “Are you still bleeding?”

“I am fine,” she said, lifting her brows as if to dare me to contradict her. “Don’t worry about me.”

I lifted mine and turned back to face the road. Trowbridge cast me a swift glance, his face carefully neutral. “Do you have any control over going there?”

“I’m not sure.”

Up ahead, the pig hauler lumbered in the slow lane, leaving a trail of dust and swine stink. I dipped my chin into the midst of the pine, letting the soft candles of its branches brush my nose, as we overtook the long semi. The side of the trailer was a dull façade of grillwork and peepholes. The swine were pale pink shapes. The driver wore a cap, and a disbelieving expression, as we blew past him.

All the little piggies going to market.

“Is there a kill list for halflings?” I asked abruptly.

Trowbridge shot me a quick look. “What?”

“Lexi said there was a kill list.” I watched a ruddy flush creep over his cheeks. “You told me that they died early because they couldn’t survive their change. But that’s not the truth, is it? Are they given a little help to their ends?”

“Do you really want to go into this right now?” He pressed the pedal completely to the floor, and the pig hauler disappeared in our dust.

My voice grew tight. “I need to know.”

We traveled another half kilometer at rocketing speed before he sighed and lifted his foot slightly off the gas. “Listen to the whole story before you make up your mind.” He scowled at the road. “We have rules, made to protect our race.”

“From contamination?” I asked stiffly.

“Will you listen?”

I tossed my head. “Go on.”

“From the word go, a male wolf is told to avoid human girls because they are way more fertile than ours. But a very few wolves … they don’t listen and in some cases, they get a human girl pregnant.” He shot me a quelling glance. “We don’t take that lightly, okay? In my opinion any wolf that knocks up a human should be taken out and shot.”

“What happens?”

“The guy responsible is expected to inform his Alpha, who in turn must pass the information on to the council. The woman’s name is put on the watch list.”

“They kill her?” I asked, shocked.

“No,” he said. “Hedi, I don’t agree with this, okay? Any guy who gets a human girl pregnant deserves to be shot. I don’t agree—”

“Just tell me,” I said tightly.

He exhaled through his teeth. “If she safely delivers the kid, the child’s name is added to the list. Then it’s the wolf’s duty to stay out of the kid’s life but to keep watch. You always know where your kid is, and when he or she’s just about to enter into their puberty—”

“How would the wolf know the kid’s ready for puberty?”

“Their scent changes just before their instinct kicks in. They can feel their wolf inside them and the need to run. The kid will feel compelled to head north, for the woods. Doesn’t matter if they’ve never been out of the city. They’ll hitchhike if they have to.”

I tried to imagine some suburban teen thumbing her way up north. Not knowing why, just being driven by a need she didn’t understand. “Those poor kids.”

“The father must follow his kid into the forest. Two go in, one comes out.”

“That’s barbaric,” I whispered.

Trowbridge’s mouth was a flat line. “It’s a severe punishment. For a man to kill his child—”

“Yeah, I’m crying for him.” Disgust roiled inside me. “What about the kid? Doesn’t he or she have a right to life? What about the human mother? How does she feel about losing her child?”

Goddess, those poor women.

“It’s wrong all the way around. I know that.” His tone hardened. “But the kid’s going to die. There’s no stopping it. A halfling’s body doesn’t have the magic to heal. They literally split apart. Gaping wounds, torn bellies. They don’t have the magic to re-form into their wolf.” Trowbridge, now committed to telling all, kept talking, his voice a low, flat monotone. “The halflings die screaming. Slowly torn apart, their muscles—”

“How are they sure that every halfling will die?”

Regret in his eyes. “They just are.”

“Fae Stars,” I said, my voice a thin thread. “Why didn’t you just kill us at birth? Drown us like kittens?”

“You’re not a halfling. You can change into your wolf. I’ve seen enough Fae-Were crosses in Merenwyn to know that.”

It was a long way off, but the question had to be asked. I stared at him, taking in the dark eyelashes, the high cheekbones. The shadows that lived under his eyes, and in his eyes.
Tell me the truth.
“What if we have children?” I asked softly.

“We will love them.” He smiled as if he saw them in his mind’s eye. “Their mother will teach them to swim, and their father will teach them to hunt. They won’t grow up like you did—that I can promise you. If I have to reeducate every wolf in my pack, they will be accepted.”

That’s when we saw the taillights of the witches’ broom.

*   *   *

The 400 is a provincial highway, well used as it links the city of Toronto to cottage country. It has three lanes going north, three lanes going south. Between them, a steel barrier and a thin strip of asphalt reserved for breakdowns. It’s a fairly straight road, and after leaving the pig hauler in our dust, we’d hit another long straight section of highway, which afforded us great visibility, as it was well lit. The witches’ broom—an old Impala—had funky taillights. Shaped like a cat’s eye, or maybe half of a mocking smile.

Trowbridge’s smile fell away. “Got them,” he said, pressing the gas pedal to the floor. The truck rocketed forward. Ahead on the road, the Impala suddenly surged forward.

“They’ve seen us,” I said.

Natasha tore down the highway like a parole violator outrunning the law, but in the game of who’s got the bigger engine, Harry’s truck was the clear winner. The distance separating us steadily narrowed. If we didn’t draw abreast of them by the time we got to the overpass, we’d get them half a kilometer later.

Cordelia opened her window. “You better cover your ears,” she said, “in case I actually need to pull the trigger.”

I flattened a pine bough to see better. Were those rear lights in the shadows beneath the underpass? “Trowbridge, there’s a car there—no, it’s a van. Is it one of ours?”

Trowbridge swore, and his hands grew tight around the wheel, and several things happened all at once. The van’s interior lights suddenly blazed. Natasha stood on her brakes.

He shouted, “Cordie!”

A flash of rapid gunfire up ahead, coming from the side of the van—
they’re strafing the Impala
—and then the road ahead of us turned into an obstacle field. Natasha swerved and lost control. Her vehicle did a long screeching slide—I almost thought she was going to recover, but then the back end swung out and hit the road divider.

That’s when Natasha’s pride and joy, so solid, so heavy, became as weightless as a Matchbox car. It rolled over—once, twice, three times—shedding sections of metal as it did. On the last bounce it hit the steel guardrail once more. The nose slammed a kiss on the pavement; the back end tipped like the
Titanic
going for its last dive.

In that fleeting split second, I saw a dark shape fall out of a gaping door.

What is that?
A sweater? No, larger than that. Metal torn from the car? Suddenly, it hit me
. Oh crap. Not a piece of debris—that’s a person being thrown from the car!

Natasha fell in an untidy heap on the asphalt.

Meanwhile, the car that had spat her out kept going, end over end, heaving bits of metal with every strike. On the third roll it slid onto its side and still kept going, skidding down the road on what remained of its passenger door, presenting us with a long lingering view of its undercarriage as it went.

In a piece of the surreal that would never leave me, I saw the witch heave herself upright onto one elbow, to watch it go.

Then it was our turn to pass the van hidden in the shadows of the overpass. Trowbridge stomped on the gas. Anu yelped as Cordelia roughly shoved her onto the floorboards. “Get down!” she screamed before she fired.

In that enclosed space, the gun’s report was agony—eardrum-shattering pain to my sensitive ears. I screamed, Anu cried out—I think even Trowbridge yelled. It was too hard to separate, all was noise, all was a cacophony of anguish and violence.

Cordelia’s actions won us a short reprieve from return gunfire. Our truck was already three-quarters past the van before the shooter’s bullets rat-tat-tatted into the rear of our truck.

Trowbridge said, “Fuck!” just as someone—Anu or Cordelia?—let out a low, guttural grunt. A piece of debris—heaven knows what—smashed into the windshield with a sharp crack, leaving a starburst hole in the middle of it.

We slid out of control on a direct path toward Natasha.
We’re going to flatten her like a bug.
She pivoted on her hip. I caught a quick glimpse of her face, eyes wide open, small mouth shaped like a big empty O as Trowbridge jerked the wheel savagely to the right.

I steeled myself for a bump or a jolt.

But there was nothing—not even a scream that I could separate and identify—because someone cried out—maybe me—and then the back end of our vehicle was skidding, swaying wildly. A second later, our front tires left the pavement, and our truck hit the soft shoulder of the road.

“Bugger!” I heard Cordelia cry.

Movement felt slow, time fractured, as my gaze slewed over to Trowbridge. I’ll never forget the picture of him. Head lowered, mouth set in a snarl as he fought to control the skid. We were going too fast. And ahead there was soft erosion—a place where spring runoff had bit into the emergency lane. Our front tire sank into it, and then we were lost.

The right tire went down, the left tire went up. Me, Merry, and the ornamental pine were thrown violently against the door. Earth rained. Glass shivered.

And I had time to think quite clearly.

We’re rolling.

*   *   *

It’s odd to see things out of context. The spiked buds of furled daylilies as a visual surprise in a field that was suddenly turning itself up on its end, sky where it should be ground, the dark gray blur of earth … and I thought,
If we just keep rolling along on the grass, we’ll be fine.

Something slapped me on the face, really hard, before I was blinded by the billow of gray-white balloon. We did one more roll. Then finally, we stopped.

I’m alive.

And everything is upside down.

The top of the truck’s cabin was below me and dented, and so much closer than it should be. Unsettling. I shifted my gaze to the incongruous picture of Harry’s portable coffee mug sitting needle-deep in a broken bough of pine.

Then the dust rolled in.

Chapter Ten

I’m almost positive I didn’t pass out. Because I know that I didn’t go to Threall.

Though I think I took an itty-bitty, involuntary, mental time-out. I was beyond exhausted, and my senses had been assailed by too many noises and horrible sights. For a couple of minutes, I shut down. Didn’t hear anything. Didn’t see anything. Detachment—thorough and complete—was mine.

I roused to the sound of a stifled groan.

Trowbridge?

I tried to lift my right hand and discovered that it was trapped, pinned between me and the broken plastic of the door rest. The jagged edge bit into the bandage on my wrist.