Wolf on the Road (11 page)

“Shut up!” Petunia screeched. She took a deep breath, but then turned around, too furious not to get a few more words in. “Just shut up and let me concentrate! How am I supposed to fight when—”

Mali dove straight at the tiny monster. She slammed one shoulder into Petunia’s stomach, and then drove her backward into the bars. First Petunia yelped, and then she croaked and started thrashing wildly around. Her tiny claws caught Mali in the face, leaving behind four red tracks on her cheek. Mali backhanded Petunia, but somehow Petunia clamped her metal teeth on Mali’s hand, biting down until blood welled up. “Get it off me!” Mali shouted, “it’s biting me!”

Petunia recoiled, angrily sneering at Mali. The blood running off her teeth made her even more ghastly than she normally was, and the wild lisping and squalling made things worse still. “I’m not an
it
!”

She chomped down again, this time getting her teeth around Mali’s wrist and biting so hard it felt like she was about to crack the bone. Mali punched and slapped at Petunia, then lifted the bunny-shifting nightmare off the ground and tried to
shake
her off, all to no avail. “She’s like a goddamn snapping turtle! I can’t get her off!”

The more fevered and panicked Mali became, the longer the hair growing out of her neck, her shoulders and her back grew. She took a deep breath, slapped at Petunia again, and then gritted her growing teeth. There was no fighting it: she couldn’t stop herself from shifting. Mali just didn’t have the experience, didn’t have the ability, to stop herself mid-shift, and she knew as soon as she did, whatever was coursing through her veins was going to stop her dead in her tracks.

Then again, it didn’t happen with Jake immediately, he had a couple of seconds to act before he collapsed.

Mali shot a quick glance in Jake’s direction. He was still limply hanging in the clutches of a pair of bikers. The slack-jawed werewolves were watching Petunia and Mali’s fight with such rapt interest that Mali thought they looked like kids staring at a cartoon after four bowls of sugary cereal. He lifted his head though, so maybe, just maybe, he was starting to come out of the stupor. She caught his eyes and he nodded his head so slightly that Mali barely noticed, but it was there.

She threw back her head and unleashed the loudest sound she’d ever made in her life. The roar that blasted out made her flare with life, as though making that sound infused her with so much energy that it began crackling from her pores. The pain came next in horrible, brain-bending waves, but the energy was still there. For how long, she didn’t know, but it was there and she didn’t have a choice.

Petunia’s jaws were forced slightly open as Mali’s forearm inflated with muscle, and her beady little eyes shot open. “You’re crazy!” Petunia said, recoiling and trying to catch her breath. “You shoulda listened to your boyfriend!”

Mali fell to one knee as another wave of agony crunched inside her body. She felt like she was burning from the inside out, like she was cooking. She cried out and almost fell the rest of the way, but she managed to catch herself on a trembling, outstretched arm.

“Just get her, you idiots,” Petunia said, sounding slightly disappointed. “I was having fun there for a minute.”

Petunia kicked Mali’s arm out from underneath her, and Mali flopped hard onto the concrete. Dust filled her nose, and another burst of white hot heat shook her. Her mouth opened, but when she screamed, no sound came out, only a thin, paper-like rasp. She lifted her head, dramatically, one more time and looked to Jake, who had managed to extend a hand toward her, but still couldn’t stand.

“Sucks to be you,” Petunia said, poking Mali with the toe of one of her leather boots. “And sucks to be me because now I’ve gotta deal with two sacks of limp wolf meat, and nothin’ but a gang of morons to help me.” She put her foot on Mali’s back like George Washington crossing the Delaware. Or, more accurately, like Napoleon being very impressed with himself after having stepped onto a boat. “Hey, can you still talk, or are you in too much pain to manage?”

Mali managed to squeak out a pained groan, but she looked over at Jake and gave him a little wink. For a split second, he opened his eyes wide, and then went back to limply dangling, but he had the tiniest of smiles on his face.

“I guess that’s a no, then,” Petunia said, once again sounding disappointed in the way things had turned out. “I gotta admit, I kinda like you, kid. You got spunk. Or moxie. Or, you know, whatever other thing people with guts have. I always hated it when people say something about ‘got the balls to do it’ because you know what? Fuck that. I don’t have any balls, and here I am with two captive werewolves and a perfect plan. I think when I’m the president I’m going to change the saying to “I’ve got the uterus for it”. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Mali groaned again, although this time it was partially confusion at what Petunia was rambling on about. Mali let out another little moan, and then had to fight back a wave of nausea that hit when her next blast of pain shot through her. Petunia kicked her again, and then turned around with a heavy sigh. “Oh well, waste not, want not. Or whatever. Get ‘er, guys. Let’s get out of here. I’m starting to get depressed.”

As soon as Petunia started toward the door, Mali shot up off the floor like a greased pig in a vat of Vaseline. Her lupine limbs gave her more reach than she knew what to do with. At first, she was slightly clumsy, almost stumbling over her own feet, but not a second later, she’d found her footing.

The bikers were stunned for a split second, which was all the time Mali needed... and all the time she had. A wave of agony shot through her in the instant before she got to Petunia, but she forced her way through it. A half-breath later, she had Petunia by the scruff of her neck. Mali curled her claws around the bunny’s throat. “Enough,” she snarled, her lips curling back from her dagger-like teeth. “That’s... enough.”

Petunia thrashed wildly, a ball of claws and toenails and metal teeth. Mali blinked hard, fighting back another wave of hot pain, and squeezed Petunia harder. The tiny tyrant fought back as fiercely as she could, but it wasn’t any good. Mali’s rage, her terror, and her newfound strength fueled her for long enough to get the job done.

She wheeled back and let out another roar before hurling Petunia straight into the gape-mouthed bikers who immediately dropped Jake onto the floor in an attempt to catch their flying boss. With a shriek, she crashed into the one in the front, who fell into the three behind him when they tried to catch
him
.

Mali could hardly see. Her vision was vacillating between a blackout and a red haze, but she somehow fought back the pain, made her way to Jake, and heaved him to his feet. She looped one of his arms around her neck and did her best to support his massive weight. Like the roar had before, the closeness to Jake, and the heat radiating off his body warmed Mali and gave her a shot of energy. “Can you walk?” she asked, grunting under Jake’s considerable weight. “That would really help right about now.”

She looked up the stairwell in front of them and shrugged her shoulders to get Jake’s arm in a place she could more easily support him from.

He strained, and managed to support a slight amount of his heft on shaking, trembling legs. “Stairs, huh?” he asked, looking at Mali for a second and shaking his head. “Well, like you said, this is an adventure, ain’t it?”

From behind them, a screeching cry pierced the basement. “Don’t
say ain’t
!” Petunia screamed. She climbed to her feet and charged. With Jake’s arm around her, Mali had a quick choice to make. She propped him against the wall, and he grabbed the stair’s railing. Mali lifted a bare foot into Petunia’s gut, stopping her rhino charge. Another wrack of pain shot through Mali’s body and her strength, along with her lupine features, started to fade. As the strength left her, she knew she had to do something, and
quick
.

Drawing on her years of intramural football experience, where she played with the men, thank you very much, Mali lifted Petunia as high as she could, dropped her from the height, and
punted
the runty dictator straight back into the pile of confused, abused biker werewolves. “We gotta go,” Mali said, “and fast. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”

“I’m amazed you’re still standing,” Jake said. “I think I can make it. Come on.”

The two of them, arm in arm, hobbled up the steps as fast as they could, which wasn’t too terribly fast. Then, emerging into the distressingly normal-looking house, which was still underground, Jake grabbed a chair, smashed it, and crammed the chair leg through the door handle. “That should hold them for a while,” he said, with a self-assured grin.

“What the hell do we do now?” Mali asked. She was growing more and more loopy with every passing second. “I’m about to pass out.”

“We find my brother,” Jake said. “And
then
we figure out what the hell we’re gonna do.”

“Yeah,” Mali said, her eyelids drooping. “Yeah okay.”

Without another word, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed. The only reason she didn’t hit the floor was because Jake caught her. He kissed her forehead with such tenderness that it would have surprised Mali quite a bit, should she have been conscious. “We make a hell of a team, don’t we?”

––––––––

“E
very time I turn my head like this, it hurts.” Mali twisted her head to show what she meant, and sure enough, when she got to the full extent of her leftward head-turning, it felt like she had an ear full of sand. “Ow.”

Jake wandered back toward her from where he’d settled at the far end of the courthouse hallway. “Well, then... uh... don’t do that?”

“Thanks, Doctor Dick,” Mali said with a grin. Jake smiled too, but he was clearly distracted. Ever since he and Erik talked on the phone, he’d gotten increasingly nervous and jumpy. When they got to the courthouse, on Erik’s very bad and very circuitous directions, he’d gotten worse by the minute. By now, he was beside himself, but Mali hadn’t been able to get through to him.

“How long has it been since you talked to him?”

Jake scratched at his neck, thoughtfully and slowly. “Five years? Six? I can’t really remember. He called me last month, like I told you. But that wasn’t even a conversation. He just called and told me there were these biker jerk-offs stirring the pot in Jamesburg, and asked if I’d follow them around and see what they were up to.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” he asked. The momentary distraction she’d caused began to fade, and he was starting to pace again. “Why wasn’t it a conversation?”

“No, why has it been so long? I mean, if you guys had a fight or something, then why would he call in a favor?” Mali had been sitting with her legs underneath herself on a bench in the cold, marble-clad hallway. She unfolded and stretched out, letting her knees and ankles pop. She stuck out a hand, and grabbed Jake’s, which hung limply by his side. When their fingers touched, he looked up, as if in surprise.

He curled his fingers around hers, and let out a sigh. “I don’t know, honestly,” he said flatly. “We never had a fight or anything dramatic. I just kind of went on with my nomadic life. I’ve never stopped and rested. I’ve never, you know, settled down. Erik was always a little smarter than me about real life.”

Mali played with his hand for a moment, just sliding her fingers along the lines of his knuckles. “Are you okay? I mean, really okay. With all of this? From a nomad werewolf to a ball and chain around your ankle, huh?”

He looked at her for a moment, then laughed. “It’s not like that,” he said, staring straight into Mali’s eyes, “I don’t think I’ve ever trusted anyone the way I trust you. It’s a new thing, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said with a chuckle. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m still not quite sure what
I’m
doing. I’m not the sort to just take up with someone in the heat of the moment. And here I am.”

Jake sat down next to Mali, close enough that his shoulders touched hers. “I’m glad we had this chance,” he finally said. “This whole thing, I mean. The days on the road with you were the most fun I’ve had... maybe ever. It’s weird, you know? I started this job I had no idea any of this would happen, but damn it, I don’t regret any of it. Even if I end up in prison for a decade, I had... something I never thought I would.”

Mali opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say that would in any way rival the gravitas of what Jake just laid out. She curled up again, nuzzling against his side. “You know,” she said a moment later, “somehow I think it’s going to work out just fine. I think we’re going to be okay. You know why I think that?”

Jake detached his hand from Mali’s, and then slid his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tightly against himself. He turned his head, inhaled the scent of her hair and kissed her gently where her hair parted in the middle. “Because... we’re here together?”

She pushed back and turned to look at him. “I was going to say that we had each other, but I guess that’s one of those six of one, half dozen of another things, huh?”

Instead of answering, Jake kissed her so hard, so hungrily and so desperately, that he forced her head backward against the wall. She clutched his face, slid her tongue around his lips, and then between his teeth. Jake pushed back, swirling his tongue against hers, and inhaling Mali’s essence.

For a moment, for a perfect, singular instant, the two of them were one. She ran her hands through his hair and Jake slid his up her back to the nape of her neck. He sucked another desperate kiss, pulling her bottom lip between his teeth. Then, he traced the line of her jaw with soft brushes of his lips.

She gasped, pulling him closer as a wave of goosebumps covered her chest. Her nipples stiffened into sweetly aching peaks inside her bra, scratching softly against the fabric. Mali craned her neck to give Jake room to suck first behind her ear, and then on her earlobe.

“I’m about to jump on you,” she whispered, laughing softly. “You’re gonna make me take off these panties and climb Jake Mountain, aren’t you? Right in the middle of this courthouse. We’re gonna get arrested, aren’t we?”