First Bite (The Dark Wolf Series) (13 page)

The tawny wolf closed the gap between them, and they crested the hill together. They’d barely started down the opposite side, however, when a long, lingering howl sounded from the valley they’d just left.

The hunters had found their trail.

Neva’s wolfen form was as fast and as agile as it had been at the lake, and she seemed to keep pace with Travis without effort. He just wished she had given up the
I-don’t-wanna-be-a-wolf
crap a helluva lot sooner. They were in serious trouble. A Changeling could elude almost any other creature on the planet—but escaping from other Changelings posed a huge challenge. Although Travis surpassed most shape-shifters in strength and speed, and had the experience to employ cunning and strategy, Neva didn’t.
She was keeping up with him now, but he knew it couldn’t last. They needed an edge, a human one, and fast.

Wheels.

Travis went over his mental map, trying to figure out where the hell they were. Not only was this a different valley, he could tell by the sky that they had veered off from his original direction. Their pursuers hadn’t topped the hill yet, but it was only a matter of time before the wolves picked up Neva’s trail from the barn. He was certain now that
she
was the quarry, not him. He’d like to believe it was a rescue party coming for her, but Neva’s story made that unlikely. At first he’d thought she’d been misinformed about “werewolves,” or perhaps misconstrued something she saw. It ran against everything he’d ever been taught to think that a pack would allow harm to come to humans, never mind cause that harm. He was much more inclined to believe Neva now. There was no denying that his own wolf was openly hostile toward the strangers. Even his human side was forced to admit that something about them felt just plain
wrong
.

The mounting number of
why
s was giving him a headache. Why send
five
wolves, for Christ’s sake? Why spend so much effort on a newly turned Changeling? Why was it so damn important to chase Neva down at all? He grumbled to himself that if Neva’s sire had wanted her, she should have taken more responsibility in the first place, spent some time teaching Neva about her new life. At the very least, Meredith could have assigned somebody to see Neva through her first shift if Meredith wasn’t interested in doing it herself. It would have been far more efficient than sending out five Changelings now.

Travis chuffed out a breath in disgust. None of it added up. And he
hated
things that didn’t add up.

There were farms now, green and gold and brown fields patchworked across the valley floor with a scattering of tiny
bright squares that were houses and barns. As a wolf, Travis would normally stay as far away as possible from human habitations, silently skirting the properties like a ghost. Now he headed straight for the little farms, and for the beaten-dirt road that wound through them like a dusty river.

Shit.
A quick glance behind showed two of their pursuers topping the hill. It was going to be a race now, and he hoped like hell that Neva could keep up. Ahead, Travis scanned the farms for anything that might be useful. Hefty grain trucks, rusted pickup trucks, and egg-shaped minivans that had seen better days seemed to be the only choices, and none of them were likely to outrun a pack of motivated Changelings. Or withstand an assault by them. Then a glint of polished chrome caught his eye…

What the hell are you doing? I thought we were supposed to hide from humans!
Neva tried to look in every direction at once as she followed the big tawny wolf across an open farmyard. Luckily no one appeared to be home, and even the dogs were strangely quiet, slinking away from the Changelings that had invaded their territory.

Move back from me.

Neva dropped back barely in time before Travis resumed his human form on the run. She dodged the trail of sparks he left as he headed straight for a very shiny, very new, and very large vehicle. To her surprise, he jumped up and flung open the door.

“Get in, quick.”

She pulled up abruptly.
You gotta be kidding. A dump truck? Really?

“Never mind what it is. You wanna live, get the hell in.”

All too mindful that Meredith’s wolves were behind them, Neva leaped into the cab of the truck and paced the bench seat.
There’s no keys!

Travis slid behind the wheel and slammed the door behind him. “Push-button start.” The diesel engine suddenly thundered awake, and he threw it into gear. Gravel flew as they erupted from the farmhouse laneway in a cloud of black smoke. In the side mirror, Neva saw something else fly, too. Strange bright-pink pebbles pinged off the dirt road behind them.

“Goddammit, it’s loaded,” Travis said without even looking, and shifting gears as quickly as he dared. “We’ll never get up enough speed if I don’t get rid of whatever’s in the bed.”

Looks like bubble gum.

“What?” He glanced at his mirror and pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Christ, that’s all we need.”

Why? What is it?

“Seed. It’s frickin’ treated
seed
. Coated with fungicide, fertilizer, whatever.”

The implications were clear. It was like leaving a trail of fluorescent-pink breadcrumbs for Meredith’s enforcers to follow—assuming the truck could manage enough speed to get out of sight.
Can’t we just dump it?

“It takes time, and we don’t have any.” He frowned as he drove, and Neva wondered if that was his natural expression. It seemed to her that his brows were furrowed more often than not. Maybe his face was just naturally fierce, but she knew it was capable of displaying other emotions—when she’d come to her senses after her first Change, he’d been holding her and laughing as if she’d just done the most fantastic thing ever. And when he’d been carrying her into the elevator at the hospital, he’d been downright charming even while annoying the hell out of her. In spite of the fact that he lived in a near-constant state of being pissed off, and insisted on trying to boss her around at every turn, part of her had noticed from the beginning that Travis Williamson was a very attractive man.

And what a completely
stupid
thing to think about when five of Meredith’s mindless wolves were on their trail and—

A gigantic gray wolf leaped up at Neva’s window, and the impact caused a starburst of cracks in the glass before the creature fell away.

“Shit!” Travis yelled as he swung the wheel and the heavy truck wobbled crazily. He punched a button on the dash. “Get down on the floor and brace yourself,
now
.”

Not sure what to expect, Neva complied, tucking herself tightly beneath the dashboard and shielding her face with her tail for good measure, although she peered at Travis with one eye. He gripped the wheel tightly, and she could feel a new vibration thrumming through the steel frame of the truck all around her. Belatedly she realized he was raising the truck bed.
Are you crazy? We’re going too fast!

“No choice. Hang on!”

Neva closed her eyes. The truck groaned throughout as if protesting the speed, too, but Travis didn’t slow down in the least. She heard the loud
hiss
and scrape of the load as it began to shift and slide from the steel bed, and she tried to imagine the cascade of pink bouncing onto the road—no way was she going to climb up and look. As the vehicle swayed and shivered, Neva shivered as well and scrunched farther under the dash until the glove box popped open and made her jump.

A huge crash against her door nearly gave her heart failure, and the inside panel bulged inward.

“One of them’s fast. Hope he got a headache that time. Just stay down.”

As the hissing of the sliding load became louder, the vibrations got worse. She imagined the dump-truck engineers—
Hey, let’s design a truck that can be unloaded at fifty miles per hour.

Not.

Her heightened senses told her that the truck’s weight had shifted dramatically and the front wheels weren’t as firmly on the pavement as they had been just a few moments ago. What if they tipped over? Could werewolves survive car wrecks?

Even as the monstrous vehicle rattled and shook, the irony didn’t escape Neva. Once desperate to end her life, she was now hoping like crazy not to die. And if she did, she was
so
going to haunt Travis to the very end of his goddamn days.

A loud yelp emerged above the noise of the groaning hydraulics and sliding grain.

“Eat that, you son of a bitch,” Travis said through gritted teeth.

The loud
hiss
of the seed leaving the truck tapered off at long last and finally ended. She dared to open her eyes just in time to see Travis reach for the dashboard controls. The hydraulics protested even louder, and the tone of the vibrations changed. She could feel the center of gravity shifting, feel the truck wanting to fishtail. Travis strained to hold the wheel steady, and a moment later, there was a huge, teeth-rattling
thump
as the steel bed returned to its rightful place on the truck, followed by a deafening clang as the tailgate swung shut.

They weren’t dead. Not even trapped in a flaming pile of twisted steel.

Neva allowed herself the luxury of a real breath as anger rushed in to replace her relief. If she was in human form, she’d verbally chew Travis a new one for his insanely risky stunt. Of course, the downside was that she would be naked again, hardly a position of strength. As she climbed back into the passenger seat, she concluded that mental shouting would just have to do—until she looked at him. Travis was frowning, of course. He was also sweating. His powerful hands were clenched hard enough on the steering wheel to whiten his knuckles, and she watched
as he slowly relaxed them and slid his palms up and down the wheel. The wheel that was no longer round.

You were scared, too.

“Hell yeah,” he snarled at her. “Only a lunatic wouldn’t be scared shitless. But we had to do something fast.”

They didn’t even slow down as they ran the stop sign. The big dump truck rolled straight ahead, picking up speed. She risked a look in the mirror in time to see a minivan fishtail crazily and skid sideways into a deep pile of bright-pink seed.
Omigod, you’ve caused an accident. What if they’re hurt? What if they have kids in the car?

“Look again,” said Travis, shifting gears.

Four men leaped from the van and charged over the heaps of seed. In the blink of an eye, they were no longer running on two legs but four. A fifth wolf shook itself free of the enormous pile of grain and joined them. The pack was still following the dump truck, but now that it was empty, they weren’t fast enough. As Neva watched in the mirror, the creatures became smaller and smaller until they disappeared from sight entirely.

She breathed a sigh of relief.
They’re gone.

“Good. Because we’re nearly out of fuel.”

You stole a truck without gas in it? Are you kidding me?

“For Christ’s sake, the gauges don’t work until you start it up, you know. And I was a little preoccupied with saving our asses—which I managed to do, but don’t bother thanking me or anything.”

Neva sighed, and the sound was almost the same from wolfen lips as from human. Travis was right. Again. That grated, but not as much as it once did. How could she be irritated with him when he’d managed to outmaneuver Meredith’s wolves? Neva had been scared, and even now she was nauseous and shivering, partly because her body was dumping the excess adrenaline,
but mostly at the thought of what Meredith might have done to her—and surely would have done to Travis.
Thank you. It was a close call.

He was silent for a long moment. “You’re welcome,” he said at last, so quietly that only her Changeling senses could pick it up.

Baker was surprised that a hunting party hadn’t come after him. Surely whatever wolves had been assigned to cleanup duty had noticed they were one body short in the ashen circle. Perhaps they decided to keep it quiet—the devil knew
he
would. No one in his right mind would volunteer that kind of information to someone like Meredith. It reminded him of his dad’s old adage on the ranch when wolves began targeting the calves in the high pasture one summer—
shoot, shovel, and shut up
.