Omega's Run (11 page)

“As long as there aren’t any storms we should be good.” I leaned over and looked through the window up at the clear sky. “I don’t see any storm clouds, do you?”

“That’s not the point, why the hell would we want to choose to go across the lake. It’s dangerous, not to mention
huge
.”

“Exactly why,” I said and shifted in my seat, grimacing again as I moved my leg. “Goddammit, my leg is driving me nuts,” I grumbled. She didn’t have anything to say about that and just waited for me to continue.

“Look, crossing the lake isn’t going to be a picnic. It
is
a big-ass lake, and yeah there probably will be ice on the water at this time of year. The hunters following us might agree with you that it’s too dangerous to cross after us. And if they drive all the way around, or even if they catch a plane, by the time they get to the other side they won’t have any idea where we came ashore. They’ll waste time trying to find us and we’ll have a better chance of getting away.”

She fell silent, considering my argument for a minute.

“Actually, that’s not a horrible idea,” she admitted, finally. “Do you have a plan in place for what we’re going to do once we get to the other side of the lake?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I hadn’t actually gotten that far,” I admitted. “My main goal right now is just to shake them off our tail,” I gave her a pointed look that communicated she’d best keep it shut when it came to the unintended pun as I continued. “We’ll figure out where we’re going after that.”

She considered that silently for a moment before she nodded once, sharply, and let out an explosive sigh. “There’s an apartment,” she said. “In Ashland, up in Northern Wisconsin. It belongs to me and it’s completely under the radar so we’ll go there after we hit the other side of the lake.”

I shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.” I was honestly getting too tired and felt too worn out to care much one way or the other.

She glanced at me and then hit the turn signal to pull us off the freeway.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“You need some clothes and we need some food. Can’t have you running around in some scrub pants that don’t even fit.

I grunted. “Not gonna be doing much running around at all.”

“Boo-hoo,” she mocked. “Suck it up, Butter Cup.”

I couldn’t help the annoyed growl that slipped out of me. The wolf and I
did not
like being mocked. Not in the slightest. And considering
she
was the one that’d shot me in the first place, neither one of us felt particularly charitable on that front. She pulled into a parking lot of some large department store or other, I couldn’t be bothered to see which one, and pulled smoothly into a space. “Look, stay here, I’ll run and grab you some clothes and then we’ll grab something to eat.”

Without another word she opened her door and jumped out. I grunted and leaned back in my seat, my eyes slipping closed almost of their own accord. She was right. Clothes would be good. But honestly? I didn’t feel particularly hungry. And
that
scared the shit out of me.

***

I jerked awake to find the sun was setting and we were driving again. Ava had a fast food cup in one hand and was just finishing off what smelled like a cherry coke. She set her cup in the Jeep’s cup holder next to a second, full cup, and glanced at me.

“Morning Sunshine,” she muttered and I grunted a barely coherent response. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snapped. You’ve been out for hours, I wasn’t sure what to do so I just kept driving.”

“Not feeling so hot,” I muttered. That wasn’t entirely true. I felt pretty damned hot, feverish in fact. My body was alternatively burning up and wracked with chills that set me to shivering uncontrollably.

“There’s food if you want. I ordered a metric-fuck-ton of the stuff. Hope you like cold burgers and fries.” The smell hit me then and I wretched, body convulsing as my stomach heaved attempting to expel the nothing in it. I had no idea when it was that I last actually ate or drank anything. I reached blindly and rolled the window down and stuck my head outside to rid myself of the smell of the food. Honestly I was tempted to just throw the bags out, but she was right, food was needed and it wouldn’t do to waste it.

“What the fuck?” she yelped. “Remus, what’s wrong?” Her voice was tight. Not with fear, not for herself at least. I could almost think that she was worried about me.

“Worried about me?” I said in a languid kind of drawl. I felt drunk, delirious almost. Something was severely wrong. Wolf-kind don’t get fevers. We don’t get sick, but this all seemed familiar. I couldn’t quite place it but I was sure I had seen my symptoms in someone else before. If I could just concentrate...

“Not really. I need you alive. You’ve got information I want.”

“Information on Mathias and his deal with my father, Declan Rees?”

“Among other things.”

“Tit for tat,” I muttered, letting my eyes close again as the cold air from the open window caressed my overheated skin. “Quid pro quo. I tell you something you tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Why is the Red Cross a front for the Hunters?”

“Not all Hunters,” she said. “Just our... chapter... I guess you could say.”

“Alright, then why is the American Red Cross a front for your Chapter?”

“Because our chapter can trace its origins back to the Knights Templar.”

I blinked, completely unsure how to take that information. “I’m confused,” I admitted finally. “What does you guys being Templars way back when have to do with anything?”

She glanced over at me again, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. It was really kind of sexy, and distracting. I gave myself a firm mental shake to snap out of it.

“What’s the universally recognized symbol for the Red Cross?” she asked and I frowned, feeling like my brain was trying to work through a layer of cotton batting.

“A red cross?” I ventured.

“A Red Cross on a white background. That was the emblem of the Knights Templar, genius. The American Red Cross was founded entirely as a front for our branch of the crusade. With it, we were able to create an organization capable of going all over the world without too much scrutiny and we could actually do some good and help humans in need while we’re at it. It’s a win-win situation.”

That made some crazy kind of sense, so I nodded. Nothing more was said for a time until the sun slipped completely beneath the horizon. Ava left the freeway and a short time later left the main roads and rolled into a parking lot near an access point to the edge of the lake.

“Come on,” she said after she parked the car and turned it off. “We need to find a boat. There’s a dock about a half a mile up the beach, we should be able to steal something from there.”

“Why not just drive the rest of the way there?” I complained and bit back a moan of pain as I shifted to get out. My leg told me in no uncertain terms how little it enjoyed the treatment.

“They’ll waste some time searching around here for us and we’ll stick to the asphalt as long as possible to avoid leaving tracks leading them right to the dock.”

“They’re not going to be lookin’ fer tracks,” I mumbled as a wave of dizziness swept over me and I swayed for a moment on my feet. One hand shot out and I grabbed ahold of the Jeep to keep from falling over. “They’re gonna smell us and we’ll just be losing time walkin’ there.”

“We’ll see,” she muttered tersely and came over to tuck herself under my arm, bearing some of my weight on my right side. “Don’t get any fucking ideas, Werewolf,” she growled but there was no heat in it. “It’s not that I like you or anything I’m just trying to save both our asses.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything as we made our way to the dock she was talking about. It didn’t take us too long, but definitely longer than it should have. Something was really wrong and I wasn’t positive what.

The next bit is still a jumbled mess of images and impressions in my mind. The smell of water and fish, motion, the clunking of heavy footsteps on wood and then I was falling, unconscious before my body struck the ground.

***

“You know,” I muttered hoarsely. “For a guy that has never had any health issues I seem to be in a lot of pain and dealing with more illness since I met you than I ever have in my life. It’s been a fucking long one, too.”

Ava chuckled somewhere off to my right and I finally opened my eyes to see the blackened night sky above me, clouds rolling in and out in waves to obscure the half moon and the stars blazing away more brightly than it’s possible to see them in any city. The ground shifted beneath me and I could hear a sloshing sound. That’s what clued me in that we were on a boat.

“Where are we? And what exactly happened?”

“We’re on a boat. Not a particularly large one, a 40 foot yacht I was able to steal. Still, it’ll get us where we’re going if we’re lucky.” To my right and above me Ava sat in a chair. The chair was anchored to the deck and she had turned slightly so she could look down at me lying on my back on the hard wood with one of her slim hands still holding onto the wheel. In her other she held up a small glass jar with a metal cap screwed on tight and tossed it down to me.

The jar, which probably held baby food in its previous incarnation, landed on my chest and bounced and I was barely able to catch it before it fell to the deck. I held it up and shook it to see a few tiny pieces of metal rattle around inside it. Minuscule specks, no larger than a sliver or a splinter.

“What the hell are these?” I asked and looked over at her.

“Shards of the silver slug I pulled out of your leg. I thought it’d come out in one piece, but obviously it didn’t; I missed some of it. That’s why you were feeling sick, they were poisoning you. Your leg was infected and seriously inflamed and you passed out just as we got onto the boat, here, so I piloted us out onto the lake and let us drift for a bit while I checked you out.” She turned back to the front as if dismissing me but continued to talk a moment later.

“I didn’t see anything obvious so I checked your wound and that’s when I figured out what had to be wrong. I’ll tell you what, it took some serious effort to get those out of you considering I didn’t exactly have proper medical equipment on hand or decent lighting, or a sterile environment. Of course, the sterile environment part doesn’t exactly mean much to you–” she side eyed me, “…guys, does it?”

“Do I want to ask what you were just going to call my people?”

“Probably not,” she admitted and shrugged. I threw the little glass jar with its offending contents high and out into the lake where it landed with a little splash. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and groaned quietly. Removing the silver had definitely helped with the fever and chills, and I was certainly feeling better, but I was weak, starved, and my leg hurt more than ever.

“You didn’t happen to bring the food from the car aboard with us, did you?” I asked and a moment later a takeout bag landed on the deck right next to me with a low thump. I pushed myself back so that I was leaning against the metal railing that encircled the deck. I put my legs out in front of me and dug a cold burger out of the bag. I didn’t care that it was cold. I was so fucking
hungry
I would have eaten a raw cow if that was all that was available.

“Tit for tat,” she said and I looked up at her, my mouth full of food, with a questioning expression on my face. Despite myself, and despite the knowledge that I really
shouldn’t
be finding myself attracted to this woman, I couldn’t help but stare at her tits, in response to the words that came out of her mouth.

“Eyes up,” she snapped and I blinked, snapping my gaze up to meet her eyes with as innocent an expression as I could muster. “I told you something about the crusaders, now you owe me some information,” she continued as if nothing had happened.

I frowned, trying to remember what she had told me. Gradually the foggy memories surfaced and I nodded, swallowing the lump of food, I wiped my mouth with the back of one hand. “What’d you want to know?” I asked before I took another bite and she turned her chair again so she could see me more easily, her head swinging back and forth to me and to watching our course across the lake.

“Mathias said that he had an agreement with Declan,” she said and I could hear a hesitation when she spoke my father’s name. Obviously she had been tempted to say something else but changed her mind at the last moment. “What was that, exactly?”

“No idea.”

“That wasn’t our deal,” she snapped, glaring angrily at me and I held up a hand in a placating gesture, waving her down.

“Look, I don’t really know. Not for sure. But I can make a reasonably educated guess.”

“Then guess,” she growled and, again, I chose not to comment how just like a wolf-kind female she sounded.

“From what I’ve learned recently, it sounded like father had an arrangement with Mathias that he would have hunters patrol the border of our territory for any other wolf-kind attempting to encroach on our land. It sounded like Declan would allow him to take any trespassers that attempted to get into Washington and in return Mathias would leave the Northwest Pack alone. In essence, the hunters were protecting my packs’ territory for us.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she argued. “Why would he make a deal with an Alpha? Mathias is well known for hating wolf-kind more than almost any hunter I’ve ever heard of.”

“Considering the experiments he was doing, it isn’t too hard to understand.” She glanced down at me again, silently urging me to continue. “Mathias is obviously trying to figure out what makes us tick. Maybe how we live so long or how we complete our change. He wants to learn
something,
and it’s difficult enough to hunt us when we’re spread out all over hell and gone. With that arrangement he had a nearly sure trap. Wolf-kind were sure to occasionally try to breach our territory. It’s a fact of life. Territory is important and Washington State has some of the best.”

“So... what? He could just pick off other wolf-kind as they try to enter the state?” she asked and I nodded.