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After another fifteen minutes of driving I was dead certain we weren’t going anywhere near town, which made me think Deerling was going to lead us somewhere useful. For all I knew he might be going to pick up baby supplies at Walmart, and God knew he’d have to drive a long way to get there. Yet I didn’t think that was the case.
I was grateful that the farther we got from town the more traffic picked up on the highway. I let a car get between us and was careful to not draw attention to us. Still, fear circled around me like a shark in bloody water. No matter how many precautions we took I felt certain he knew we were back here.
Another ten minutes and I was wringing my hands on the wheel, ready to turn around. I could only follow so long before it got obvious, and we were damn near crossing the line. I had almost announced an ultimatum, when Deerling’s signal went on and he exited the highway onto an obscured dirt road. He made the exit so quickly I was already driving past the road when I realized what had happened. I pulled over to let the car behind me pass, and shut the engine off.
“What are you doing? Go back.” Wilder craned his neck to look over his shoulder.
“Yeah, let me drive blind down some dirt road where we have no idea what’s at the end, and we could be driving ourselves right into a trap. Sounds like a peachy-keen idea.”
He frowned, glancing back again. “So what’s your plan, since you obviously have a better one?”
I drummed my fingers on the dash and chewed my lower lip. I didn’t have a plan. To this point I’d only thought far enough ahead to keep following Deerling until he led us to something. Now we’d arrived at that potential something, and there was no easy way to stay on his tail.
“We could wait here until he comes back out?” I suggested weakly. Even as I said it, it sounded pathetic.
He gave me a look that said he wanted to say more, but he was too polite to actually spit it out. Considering the things he was willing to say, I had to imagine it must be something pretty unpleasant for him to bite his tongue.
“We can’t drive in there.” I wanted to know what Deerling was up to as badly as Wilder did, but not enough to waltz into the dark unknown, where we both might end up dead. “We are not driving in there.”
I’d barely finished speaking, and Wilder was out of the car. We were a little ways beyond the turnoff, far enough that anyone leaving would probably think our car had broken down, but close enough we could see the drive. Wilder was halfway there by the time I got out of the car and engaged the auto locks. I had to jog to catch up to him. Long-legged, speedy son of a bitch.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“You said we’re not driving in. I’m not driving.” A few yards from the t
urnoff Wilder hopped into the ditch and made his way up the opposite slope. I checked for traffic—stupid since I was already across the road—and followed him. The voice in my head that constantly made me toe the line and do the right thing was having a field day with this.
Bad idea, bad idea.
Yeah, no fucking shit, guardian angel. But if the best she could do was scold me as it was happening, a fat lot of good that did. Typically, by the time I was in trouble, it was too late to go back and reconsider.
Bitch, you’re on your own.
Like I wasn’t before.
I dodged a branch swinging back out of Wilder’s path and caught up to him inside the woods. “What the hell?”
“Genie, you can come with me, or you can wait in the car. I don’t care. But nothing is stopping me from following that prick and finding out what is dragging him all the way out here.”
He kept going like I wasn’t there. Periodically he would stop, sniff the air and alter his path slightly. It was funny. I’d been around wolves almost my whole life, but some of them tried harder than others to play human. We all used our skills to varying degrees, but Wilder seemed to slip them on as easily as a pair of gloves. It was rare to see a wolf as comfortable with his own animal as Wilder was.
I wanted very badly to know what it was like to run with him.
Running with the pack back home, or on my own in the swamps, were experiences I was familiar with. Once I’d learned to put a tether on my magic when I shifted, I was able to enjoy being a wolf and letting the wild part of myself off its leash. But I was never truly free. I needed to be aware of what I was feeling because if I lost control, the magic might go haywire. Someone could get hurt.
People could die.
That kind of threat looming over me made it hard to totally let go. Yet somehow, I suspected Wilder had no problem being as reckless and carefree as his wolf form allowed for. I wanted to know if running with him would make me feel equally alive.
We moved through the woods quiet as smoke, me contemplating the sinews of his back, wondering what his wolf looked like. There was no rhyme or reason to our lupine forms. A fair-haired guy like him could have a wolf as black as coal. Sometimes hair color was the same in both forms, but it was rare.
My own wolf, I’d been told, was salt-and-pepper gray. I’d never seen myself in that form, but La Sorcière had described it to me once. Like winter coming in the dead of night, snow blotting out the stars.
It sounded better when she said it. Tu est comme l’hiver venant du plus profond de la nuit, la neige voilant les étoiles.
The French sure did have a way with words. Everything La Sorcière had said, when she deigned to speak at all, was like liquid poetry rolling off her tongue. The simplest words were magic.
I was so lost in thought I walked directly into Wilder when he came to a sudden halt. I raised my hands up, bracing them against his lower back, and was shocked by how soft the cotton of his shirt was. Before common sense could stop me, I trailed my hands down slowly, enjoying the feel of the material and his warm skin, until I realized what I was doing and stepped away.
