The Change: Episode one, page 16
Before I could answer, the Convict looked back to Candice. “She’ll break you the first time out.”
He had already sensed that we weren’t fully bonded yet, and my hand moved of its own accord. I threw the six inch spike from my belt as hard as I could.
Baker spun at the last second, taking the blade to his shoulder instead of his neck, and he slid to the ground with a spray of blood.
“Uugg!”
Good!
C
Crack! Crack!
Angelica was already out of sight as the bullets flew from the moldy landscape around us, slamming into anything in their path, including Baker.
Snapping out of my impressed surprise, I grabbed Daniel and shoved him into the corner behind me as I opened fire. My parents darted out of sight to come out behind our attackers, as we always did when ambushed.
“Aim low.”
Baker, not dead, met my eye and there was a second of understanding. It wasn’t his people out there.
“Can I shoot him now?” Daniel demanded, drawing his gun.
I fired at the shadows moving closer. “Later.”
Together, we began sweeping in the pattern my Father had started teaching him and drove the dark forms back. The sound of the Mopar had me grinning.
Angelica slid to a stop, and I spun Daniel her way. “Get him out of here!”
She dragged him onto the ride, and I fired another spray as they vanished. Now, I could let me loose.
“Low!”
Baker’s tone was urgent, and I caught the rest of his meaning this time. As I pulled the pins, the second half of the trap sprung.
They came from the sewers, Network Hounds, and I rolled the pineapples in three directions as I moved toward him. He wasn’t supposed to come out of this alive, I remembered. Apparently, the network had meant that.
Ping! Thud! “Ugg!”
The slugs drove into us and the ground, and I stayed over him as much as I could, waiting.
Kablamm!
Boomm!
The third blast didn’t come, a dud, but the first two had cleared us a path. I tossed my wounded prisoner over my shoulder and got out of sight before the smoke could clear. We darted through the debris cloud, my blades out and hungry as he clung to my waist.
“Get them!”
I didn’t know the voice, but Baker tensed.
“Rankin.” he growled in rage.
I didn’t waste my breath asking questions, but I remembered the Snake Tracker’s words. We’d been betrayed.
I wasn’t used to carrying so much weight and the blood dripped from us both as I picked up speed. I jumped over piles of junk that were unrecognizable, traction boots catching me on even feet. I darted across the deserted roadway, and we vanished into the deep shadows of a nearby alley. There were no sounds of pursuit, but with these hunters, there wouldn’t be. The Network dogs were lethal once they caught the scent.
I quickly slid into the foot-deep muck in the center of the cracked line and kept moving. They would know we had come this way by the swirling water, but it would cover our scent later. We had to hole-up somewhere for the night. Angelica would take Daniel to my parents and come back. Where would she look?
“Go faster!” Baker growled quietly.
I stepped up my pace, mind flying. We couldn’t wait. There was only one choice – a very fast exit from this city.
“Hang on.”
Above, there were few signs of the night, only more debris piled haphazardly, and I tensed for it, pulling on my Changeling strength. I lunged for the beam, caught my footing as we swung. It groaned but held, and I grunted, pulling. Men were so heavy!
We made it onto the beam, layers of precariously dangling debris now right above our heads, and I sucked in a fresh lung of air. “You okay for a hard ride?”
I felt his grip tighten in response, and then I was running along the soft wood, dripping muck and blood into the cesspool below.
The beam ended suddenly and I jumped, landed crouched on the edge of the crumbling wall as I searched for the escape.
Bullets spun through the air, and I got moving again, eyes looking for the right tunnel.
“Coming in low!”
I didn’t look, only pushed myself harder. I flew across a gap, landed lightly and sprang away.
“There they are!”
“There’s the watershed.”
“Cut ‘em off!”
But it was too late. I dove into the churning mass a second later and heard no more.
It had to be a nightmare for Baker, taking it all upside down. His grip was like iron around my hips as we were jerked under. Lungs full, I gripped his arm and yanked him upward. He resisted at first, confused, but my force went with the water, and I wrapped his big arm around my neck as he came upright.
Half a minute later, my lungs were getting tight, and Baker’s grip was nearly frantic as he struggled to hold out. I groped for the button on my belt, got it on the second try.
The raft inflated quickly, pulling us up, and we broke the surface together, gasping for air. I clung to the fragile boat, attached by my belt rope, and secured Baker’s heavy weight the same way. Where the raft went, so would we.
Unable to see or hear any signs of pursuit, I sucked in more air and gathered my strength. It took a lot of effort to get both of us onto the floater without tipping it over. With our weight, it moved faster in the muck, and we stayed still for the first minutes, glad to be alive as the walled city fell behind us. The watershed was unusually clear of debris, and we moved steadily west, still bleeding.
I sat up and leaned forward. “Let me see how bad it is.”
I snatched my hand back as his knife glinted in the moonlight. “You first.”
I shrugged at his wary tone, confident I could take it from him if I needed to. “Feels like one in the arm, no two. That’s a double-tap. One in the thigh. Your turn.”
He wasn’t sure he should let me touch him even though I’d saved his life. I could see it in the way his usually bright eyes were so dark. What Baker did when he was away from me, I still didn’t know. He had never volunteered the information, and I had never asked. I also hadn’t seen him since before the Games and hadn’t told him about it before I left. He’d found out like everyone else – by the Network’s official announcement of the contestants.
“Relax,” I muttered, shoving his hand aside. “If I wanted you dead, you would be.”
With a few quick movements, I had cloth strips around his wounds that I could reach, and I moved away from his temptingly bloody scent in relief. I settled back carefully, sharp ears still straining to hear anything.
“He’s changing you, already.”
I shrugged. “More the Games than him.”
And then Baker became what I least expected… an ally.
“It’s awful. No one should ever have to do that for a mate, and no man should ever be treated that way. It has to stop.”
I didn’t answer, but he knew I agreed. After what Daniel had been through, how could I not?
We spent the rest of the ride in silence, staring at the darkness and each other. It was impossible not to compare Baker to my new mate. Baker was thick from head to toe, but in the lean, dangerous way that had drawn me to him before I’d known what to do with a boy like that. His sideburns came all the way down his face to meet in a light goatee of black shadows and mysterious allure. He liked my tattoo, but only had one of his own during the time we’d been together. On his neck, was the green ink I’d put there myself.
Now he was sporting a new one on his upper arm that made those muscles stand out. Tanned and rarely shaven, Baker’s good looks screamed at me from that unforgiving chin and those deep-set, impossible-to-read silver eyes. He’d told me one of his clients was a doctor, and she had done it for him in place of money when he’d begged. He’d had them when we met, and thinking of it now, I looked over at him.
How long had he thought of me as a friend before he saw me as a future purchaser of his services? Had he ever doubted it? We had used each other for our own reasons, but against my will, a bond had grown. It wasn’t the type I had with my new mate. Baker was too independent for that, but it was still enough to make me mourn a little for the life we might have had together if we had met in a different world, without Daniel’s ghost between us.
Chapter Sixteen
Frogtown, Alabama
1
We drifted for hours before the land finally began looking familiar.
I carefully began pushing us toward the steep side. “I have a den near here. Can you climb?”
Baker shook his head. “Your mate hit a muscle.”
Again, I couldn’t have been more pleased. “Seems like maybe he’ll do.”
Baker grunted as I slid him onto my back. “Maybe so.”
I was careful not to tip us over as we left the raft. It was an ugly, graceless climb where I scrambled for a hold while Baker’s big hands did the same. We were both glad to be lying across the top of the wall a few minutes later.
We looked down on row after row of barbed wire dividers, seeing occasional shadows moving with the darkness.
“You ready?”
He nodded weakly against my shoulder, and I understood he was about done, but my Changeling body was already healing. None of my wounds were life-threatening. His, I wasn’t so sure about.
With Baker on my back, I moved slowly through the tangles, the only way into my Den. I’d chosen to go there because only one other person on the planet knew where it was. That was about to change.
“Down!”
His hiss had me on my stomach in the debris field, where rats, and who knew what else, survived under us. Lights swept the barbed wire, searching, and we stayed motionless, letting the centuries of rubble be our cover. It helped that we were also coated in muck.
“Send in the dogs!”
“It was just an animal.”
“Send ‘em in!”
I tensed, eyeing the shadows of the alley we needed to reach.
“They’ll come straight for us.”
I nodded, working on it.
“You should leave me… Ugg!”
I took off, stopping his words, and we listened hard for the pad of feet.
“Aaahh!”
We dropped again and were relieved and saddened to see another shadow break away. He ran with a noticeable limp, and the dogs got him quickly.
The fire hounds were menacing with their big red eyes that mirrored my fury. Humans weren’t the only living things to be infected with Rage-Walkers disease. The dogs had also suffered from the change, as had the rest of Nature. The contamination had destroyed the males of all the species humans depended on, had befriended. A cat was a very rare sight in New America, but the toads were abundant due to their ability to shift genders. If only people had the same skill.
The Hounds certainly didn’t, and it did to them what it did to us. They grew larger, angrier, and desperate for a mate. Their eyes flamed, and their breath became volatile. Some of them could even snort out flames, and I hated them even as I understood what made them so bloodthirsty. There wasn’t any target the Hounds wouldn’t take down, including the gigantic snakes in the south.
“Cute pets. We gonna be food too?”
Baker’s voice was low and I grinned, got us moving again. Was there any way I could combine my two lovers? I had forgotten a little, how alive Baker could make me feel. We slid into the alley without being noticed, and I kept him on my back as I climbed the stacks of wooden skids, glad I was almost there. Even for a Changeling, this was a bit much to sustain.
I stumbled, regaining my balance as we hit the top. Almost an entire warehouse of pallets had been in this alley, and it had been a simple matter of rearranging things once I’d found the room.
The wood gave easily under my fingers, sliding over, and then we were dropping inside and the hatch was closing behind us. I slung him from my back to the room’s only chair, and he dropped into it with a grunt that became a moan.
Baker slid to his knees, in agony, I thought, and kissed the ground.
“Land!”
I hid my grin, knowing he could see every detail of my expression with those shined eyes. I moved unerringly to the table and lit the lantern to break the sparks. I took stock quickly. There wouldn’t be much to work. It had been a long time since I’d been here. It was really a storeroom in a very old warehouse that included a bomb shelter. The warehouse had collapsed decades ago, but the rock room behind it had stood, buried, until I’d found it. Now it was stocked with a cot, a chair and table, and a number of other basics for when I needed space. It was the first time Baker had been here, and it would be the last.
Minutes later, I had him standing, gripping the chair as I knelt behind him to dig out the slugs. He stayed silent the entire time. He was so different from the males I knew, so tempting. It was no wonder I had given him first honors, but things had changed. I still felt something for him, we had a bond that wouldn’t be easily broken, but all I wanted was Daniel.
“You gonna turn me in or what?”
I recognized the pain distraction, I was no one’s gentle anything with a knife, and shrugged. “I’ll vote we go after the others.”
I felt him tense as my blade went deeper, and I flipped the metal out with a brutal jerk that sent blood streaming down his leg.
I got him settled on the cot a bit later, an indifferent nurse to keep him alive, and the sparks flew every time our eyes met. This would be our last night alone together, ever, and Baker knew it. His wounds weren’t as serious as I’d feared. He had taken a number of hits, but only the leg wound and Daniel’s shot were serious. After rest and food, he would be able to travel.
“You should take the bounty and settle down with him.”
I ignored that, and the convict tried again.
“You could join us.”
That snapped my head up. “Us?”
Baker twisted to watch as I flipped a slug from my arm and quickly wrapped it.
“The rebels.”
I paused. That was why the Network had sent the Hounds when we’d radioed our sighting. He was high priority now. “That’s why they crossed us. They really want you dead.”
Baker’s eyes lightened at my quick calculations. “They knew you’d find me, but they also knew I’d be alive when you turned me in. They don’t want that.”
I didn’t look at him, only let my hands go back to work on my wounds. What was it with me and this convict?
“Your showing up right then was bad timing. Their Trackers had been onto me for a week.”
My mouth gaped open. I couldn’t help it. “Then why come out?”
“I knew you would be the one they sent…” Baker’s silver eyes flashed dangerously. “And I wanted to see the new man.”
He didn’t say “The one who replaced me.” but I felt it just the same. Despite our casual arrangement, the feelings had happened for both of us.
I grunted, not looking forward to Baker knowing the truth, but willing enough to give it now. Before, when it was only a cool dream in the darkness, I had been afraid to share my plan. Only those closest to me had known why I’d signed up for the Games.
“I knew Daniel before he was sold to the Network.”
“But they put males into a ten-year training program before they’re ever mates. You would have been…”
“Eight.”
It was the same year we’d met, and the convict understood right then what I’d done.
“So that was why! To learn from me so you could go to him. I was nothing to you!”
Unable to take his pain, I shoved myself over him, voice a harsh whisper. “You were my saving grace, my only light in the darkness. So much more than nothing!”
Baker kissed me then, and I allowed it, but the violent flare that had always come had been replaced with a vague flicker.
He shoved me back abruptly, understanding we were through. “You smell like shit!”
I laughed. That was the Baker I knew. I met his pain-rimmed silver eyes. “Will you try not to kill him?”
Baker grinned, almost a mirror of mine from the Games. “Does he know about us?”
“No.”
“You’ll tell him?”
“Of course.”
Baker blew out a sigh, pulled his goggles over his eyes so I couldn’t read them. “Better make the same deal with him, I think. He’s got a fuse like yours.”
Now, I grinned. I was fiercely proud of Daniel, and later, when there was time, I would reward him for it.
“I meant it, my offer. Not just anyone can get you in.”
That told me Baker was more than just a member of the rebels - he was important to them. I nodded, no longer smiling. “I’ll pass it along.”
The convict snorted. “You make the choices for the Pruetts.”
“Not this one.”
My cold tone said I was seriously considering it, and Baker studied me with heat that even those thick goggles couldn’t hide. He wanted me. One last time to say goodbye… and I was tempted. It would give me an outlet for all the tension I had built up being gentle, and increase my control. …but it would hurt Daniel.
I moved onto the pallet I had made up and tried to sleep. I wasn’t used to being confused or hesitant. I liked to react to attain my goal, and knowing I wasn’t free to do as I wanted was displeasing. Women had multiple lovers, it was accepted, but it was still wrong by my standards, and I accepted that my control would hold a bit longer. From across the room, I felt Baker’s pain, but didn’t go to him. We were over.
2
The temperature dropped over the next hours - fast. The wind howled through the cracks in our nook, pushing frigid air into a damp room and over two wet bodies. I didn’t have any other clothes stored here, and I ended up revising my choice not to share a bed with him.
We huddled in the cot, enjoying our body heat and a silent goodbye. Baker understood without being told, when all I did was let him wrap me up tightly. We rested, drowsing, but sleep didn’t come for either of us until the dim rays of sun said the new day had come. Night was a lethal time in New Network Land.
