Derik's Bane (15 page)

“Oh my God,” Derik gasped, his hips thrusting toward her. “Oh, Christ, do
not
stop.”

She licked and pumped and licked some more, and then his hand was on the back of her neck and she had a sense of his crushing power, power held in fierce check, heard him moan, “Don’t stop . . . don’t . . . don’t . . .” Then he was pulsing into her mouth.

“Yech!” she said a minute later, while he lay gasping and limp as a noodle—all over. “What have you been eating?”

He rolled his eyes until he was looking at her. “Can’t you just let me bask in the moment, here?” he sighed.

“Go jump in the lake,” she replied. “Literally.”

SARA KEPT LOOKING AT HIM OUT OF THE CORNER of her eye, but she did it once too often, because finally Derik said, exasperated, “What?”

“Sorry.”

“I can tell you that when I Change, you’ll definitely notice. How ’bout that? So stop sneaking looks at me; it’s creeping me right the hell out.”

“Give me a break,” she said, slightly defensively. “It’s been a weird week. I can’t help being a little nervous.”

“Well, don’t be. I’d never hurt you.”

“No, just kill me.”

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t have hurt,” he said easily.

She could actually feel her eyes bulge in her head as her blood pressure zoomed. “Oh my God, you’re serious!”

He just looked at her.

“Okay, well, you can go run off in the woods now,” she said. “I’m pissed again.”

“In a few minutes.” The sky was a gorgeous blaze of pinks and reds—a truly staggering sunset. And she was too annoyed and freaked out to appreciate it. “You okay?”

“Sure. Sure I am.” She sneaked a glance at her wristwatch. It had been a long day—she’d spent it staring out the window, at the moon. Last night—heck, the night at Jon’s—seemed a thousand years ago.

“Look, you’re all set here, right? Just stay with the truck. I’ll probably stick close, anyway. Stop looking at your watch, it’s making me nuts.”

“Sorry,” she said, and like a bad dream, her gaze snuck to her watch again. “So, is it, like,
Farmer’s Almanac
sunset that you change? Or actual full dark? Because it’s a full moon right now, you know.”

“I know,” he said, and did his voice sound . . . thick? She snuck another glance at him and noted he was staring dreamily at the sky. “Sunset to sunrise. That’s when we run with Her.”

“Oookay. I’ll be cringing in my sleeping bag if you need me.” She started toward the truck, and quick as thought, he had her by the arm, gently restraining her. His nails, she noticed with a detachment that was almost like being drugged, were quite long, and curving under.

Sure, it was like being drugged. She was scared, and her brain was trying to help her deal with that fear by going into analyze overload.

Oh, for God’s sake, Sara!
This was Derik, and bad first impressions aside, he’d chew off his left hand before hurting her.

That was true, and she felt better, even if the sight of those nails—claws, really—was a bit upsetting. “What? What is it?”

“Stay with the truck,” he said again, and it
wasn’t
her imagination; he
was
speaking with difficulty.

“Okay,” she said. “You told me that already, but okay.”

Then he was kissing her, almost devouring her, his tongue was in her mouth, and he’d picked her up off her feet, his arms were tight around her back. And he seemed—bigger? Was that possible? Or maybe he just seemed more there, because he was so close to his change.

His mouth moved to her throat . . . and then he abruptly pulled back.

“Well,” she said, almost panted. “That was . . . um, interesting. Could you let go of my arm now?”

He did, and was rapidly shedding his clothes, in fact, the only time she saw him undress quicker was when they were about to have sex that first time. Was it only the day before yesterday?

“Easy,” she said as the button fly on his Levis went flying. She could hear something—was he grinding his teeth?

No; he was Changing. If she had blinked she would have missed it. He fell to his hands and knees, and his blonde hair grew out, and his fingernails were digging into the dirt of the campsite, and then an enormous wolf was looking up at her, a wolf with fur the exact color of Derik’s hair, a wolf with green eyes like lamps in the dark.

The wolf leaned forward, and she bent to it—to him—and he nuzzled her, a quick snuffly kiss, and then she heard the growl ripping out of him and turned so quickly she nearly lost her balance.

There was a smaller wolf at the edge of their camp, hesitating as if sensing the borders of their territory. This one was coal black, with the yellow-gold eyes of a calico cat. And quite small, really very small; Derik quit growling and loped over, and it was shocking how much bigger he was than the other one.

They sniffed each other, and she noticed Derik was at ease with his enormous size, and was trying to put the other one at ease, too. The other one was almost timid, backing off but not running away.

Then she realized: The other one was female. And they were . . . they were going off together! Without so much as a backward look, that fuzzy slut went and nabbed her would-be assassin/ boyfriend/fake fiancé.

“Well, shit,” she said, and kicked one of the truck’s tires.

 

 

 

DERIK BOUNDED UP TO THEIR CAMPSITE THE NEXT morning, lured by the smell of frying bacon. He was so relaxed, and in such a good mood, it took him a while to realize something was wrong.

He supposed he should have expected it. She
was
human, even if she was an extraordinary one. And he did turn into a wolf in front of her. That was probably pretty weird for her. He’d thought about going off into the woods a good half hour before the sun set to spare her the admittedly odd sight, and in the end he’d shit-canned the idea. Because this was who he was, and if she didn’t like it, tough.

But it was more than that: He wanted her to see. See all of him, and not be afraid.

“What’s wrong?” he finally asked, deciding to grab the bull by the horns.

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Are you, uh, mad about something?”

“No,” she lied.

“Oh.” Honest to God, he had no idea what to do now. She was lying, and he knew she was lying, and she probably knew he knew she was lying. So what the fuck? “So, uh, everything go okay last night?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good.” Tell her she was lying? Ignore the fact that she was lying? Tell her but at the same time forgive her for lying? Tell a lie himself? What? “Are you mad because I didn’t bring back a rabbit? I thought about it, but to be honest, skinning and cleaning one would be a pretty messy job, and I didn’t think you—”

“I really don’t care, Derik.”

“Oh.”

“So,” she grumped, poking the fire.

“So, what?” He stretched, feeling pleasantly pooped. “Is there any bacon left?”

“You know damned well there is,” she snapped. “Where’s what’s-her-fur?”

“Huh?” He sat up, puzzled. She wasn’t kidding around. Not at all. She was
pissed
. She smelled exactly like the campfire. “What? Did you wake up with a spider on you?
What is it?
”

“That hair-covered-whore you took off with last night, as if you don’t remember. That’s
what.
”

“Hair-covered . . . oh, you mean Mandy?”

“Mandy,” she sneered.

“She’s not a hair-covered-whore,” he said defensively. “She owns her own accounting firm. And she’s not here. She went home.”

She shook the spatula at him, and he dodged drops of hot grease. “Look, all I want is the truth. Just tell me the truth, okay? I promise I won’t get mad.”

“But you’re already mad,” he said, wondering if he could crawl underneath the fire. The truth was, he was sort of morbidly curious . . . what would her powers do to him if she was just mad, but not defending her life? Maybe just give him dandruff, or a sprained ankle. “Really, really mad.”

“Oh, shut up. Did you guys do it out there in the woods?”

“Do—oh. Oh!” He laughed out of relief, then dodged as she jabbed the spatula at him. “Sara, for crying out loud. Mandy’s
got
a mate. We just paired up to hunt. Remember: Way more of you guys than us. It’s really rare to just run into one of us in the woods. So we teamed up. She was on her own, because it was his turn to stay home with the cubs.”

“Hmm.” She was staring at him with narrowed eyes, but he could tell she felt better.

“I can’t believe this! You’ve been stewing about this all morning?” He was trying to stop laughing; it wasn’t likely to make her less mad.

“The most powerful sorceress in the world is jealous of an accountant?”

“M’not jealous,” she muttered. “Just wanted to know, is all.”

“Well, now you do. And thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way. Yes, we werewolves are so slutty we do it with anything on four legs.”

“I didn’t mean it quite like that,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, sure you didn’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she grumped.

“Besides, I’d never go off with another female now. I’d—” He’d shut his mouth with a snap.

“You’d what?”

“I’d get some of that bacon, like, pronto. I’m starving!”

“And the Universe,” Sara said dryly, “realigns itself.”

“Seriously,” he said after a long moment. “That was really dumb.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, but he knew she wasn’t mad anymore. Even if she hadn’t smelled like roses again, she fixed a whole ’nother pound of bacon, just for him.

THEY WERE IN ST. LOUIS, AND TO TELL THE TRUTH, Sara was getting pretty damned sick of the truck. And sick of sleeping outside. And sick of the smell of campfire, how it clung to her hair and clothes and skin.

And really, really sick of bacon. Derik, it appeared, could eat it with every meal. She could not.

But none of that mattered, none of it was important, because, as sick as she was of the whole thing, she didn’t want it to end. She wanted to stay like this with Derik—in this adventure limbo—forever.

Because the world would end, or it wouldn’t, and either way Derik would be out of her life.

Unacceptable.

That’s nice
, she told herself.
Put off saving the world so you can get boned a few more times. Very nice.

“Over halfway there,” Derik said.

“Uh-huh.”

She coughed. “Listen, is there a plan for when we get there? How do we find these guys, anyway? And then what do we do, once we find them?”

“I figured your luck would help us out with finding them. Shit, you’ll probably trip and fall on the leader and accidentally give him a fatal concussion. As for the rest of it . . . I can take care of the rest of it.”

“You have no idea what the plan is, do you?”

“Never mind,” he said primly, which made her laugh.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got some time to work on it, thank God.”

“Mmm. Listen, this Morgan Le Fay business . . . maybe if Arthur’s Idiots find out you’re a good enough gal, they’ll stop trying to kill you. I mean, we’ve only got Dr. Cummings’s word for it that they’re the bad guys.”

“That and what I saw with my own eyes at the hospital,” she pointed out.

“Oh, right. Well, like I said, maybe once they find out you’re not bad, they’ll forget about the whole thing.”

“And maybe,” she added brightly, “I’ll get caught up on my laundry this week. But probably not.”

“Seriously. Morgan’s whole deal was that she was wicked, bad, blah-blah, but you’re not like that.”

“Morgan’s whole deal, as you so annoyingly put it, is that Merlin set her up, screwed over her family,
splintered
her family, and then took off after he did all that damage.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Really?”

“Listen, without his interference, she could have been Arthur’s greatest champion. She really could have. But she’s been totally screwed over, not just by real life but by history, too. Men write the history books,” she added neutrally. “So naturally their take on it was that Morgan was this wicked terrible evil witch who destroyed Arthur because she could. But that’s not true at all. She was
set up
to destroy him. And then she did. But if things had been different . . .”

“Oh.”

“If she’d had a normal family life . . . a normal upbringing . . . who knows?”

“Huh.”

“This is the part where you say, ‘I never thought about it like that.’ ”

“Well, I never did.”

“Exactly. Men. I mean, I’m not mad about it or anything, because you can’t help thinking with your dicks all the time—”

“As long as you’re not mad.”

“Stop the truck!” she shouted suddenly, and Derik stood on the brakes. Sara was half-strangled by her seat belt, but finally fought free of it and opened her door. She reached back, grabbed the large duffel bag they were using as a communal suitcase, and said, “Come on.”

“Come on, what?”

“Trust me.”

She ran toward the . . . Amtrak station, Derik belatedly noticed. He ran after her. “A train?” he called. “You want to take a train? Why didn’t you say so when we first started seeing trains?”

“I dunno. I’m sick of that truck,” she explained, entering the busy station. “And I’ll bet you a million dollars we can find a train that goes to Boston. We can ride instead of driving.”

“One of us
has
been riding instead of driving.”

“That’s because you’re a wheel hog. You wouldn’t let me drive after that one time.”

“You can’t drive a stick.”

“I can, too!”

“So we were stalling all the time, why again? And what are we doing looking for a train?”