Fated in Stone, page 16
She blinked and looked up at him, smiling. “Got him. Northwest. I need to look at a map. I should be able to get us a route.”
“Location or just direction?”
“So far, just direction. But now that I’m on his trail again, I’ll be able to get a more exact location the closer we get to him.” Her eyes drifted down just a little. “Yes. I’ve got him now. I’ll be able to track him.”
“I’m impressed.”
She opened her eyes and gave him a narrow, disbelieving look.
“No. I’m serious. I am impressed. That’s a very handy talent you have. And it’ll save us a lot of time. Might even save the professor’s life.”
She attempted a casual shrug, but the way her mouth turned up in a small smile and her scent filled with pleasure had him feeling ten feet tall.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I’ll study the map and find us the best route. We’ll swing around to get your gear and then we can get on the road.”
He wanted to ask her about rest, and food, and all the things a human needed. But he’d do that when they were away from the house. Her gaze kept jumping to the section of wall behind her, the part that hadn’t been fully destroyed. The stench of the fire and the dead things inside wasn’t as unpleasant as it had been last night, but still wasn’t great.
Yeah, the farther he could get her away from this house, the better they’d both feel.
In the car, she pulled out her cellphone and studied her map app. “Okay. Got the highway we need to take. They seem to be heading up toward the Canadian border, though. Dammit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You have your passport on you?” she asked with a faint scowl, her attention still on her phone. “If they cross the border, I won’t have any backup from the local authorities to bring Arron back to this country. Especially since I doubt he has a passport with him. It just complicates getting him home to his family.” She sighed. “Nothing for it, though, if they do cross into Canada.”
“I can take care of it,” he said, watching her belt in before he pulled across his own seatbelt.
“I don’t have my passport on me, either, though,” she said as she started the car. “I really don’t want to detour to get it. That’ll take up too much time.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can take care of it.”
She cast him a brief scowl. “How?”
“My Family has all kinds of connections and influence. We’ll be able to get over the border and back.”
Her gaze narrowed but she didn’t ask more until they were back on the dirt road leading away from the house.
“Suppose monsters don’t pay any attention to human borders, huh?” she said, her attention on her driving and not him. “Probably have to cross borders all the time.”
“We do. Monsters are an international issue.”
“I’m not sure if that’s reassuring or horrifying.”
“Both,” he suggested.
They drove in a direction opposite the main highway to get closer to where he’d left his gear. He directed her to park in a scenic turnoff that put him close enough to reach his stuff in a few minutes, ten at the most, moving at top speed.
Unfortunately, moving at top speed and getting back quick, with his backpack and weapon’s bag, meant not bringing Elle with him. He could carry her, of course—and the idea was very tempting—but that would slow him down. It would also make it awkward carrying the gear back and that would slow him down even more. He didn’t want to cost them that extra time. And with the sun setting, he didn’t want to risk having her in the middle of the woods when it got dark. The house might have been clear, but he was very conscious that something might still be in these woods.
But the idea of leaving her, even for fifteen minutes, felt like a wrenching in his gut, like he’d physically have to tear himself away. What if something happened in that time? What if there was still a grinluk around here, or some of the goo monsters had escaped, or just some of the monster’s thugs? What if ordinary human monsters found her?
He’d be too far away to help, too far away to hear her. The thought left him physically ill.
He turned to face her and then wasn’t sure what to say. Really, he wouldn’t be gone long. He needed to move fast. And this was a quiet, empty part of the woods. She’d be fine. He’d be quick. And he’d be by her side again soon. No reason to complicate this. It was just fifteen minutes.
“You want me to come with you?” she asked.
His shoulders slumped with his exhale. The fact that she could read his thoughts probably should have bothered him more. Might have if she wasn’t his Nam-tar. “Actually, it’s probably better if you stay here locked in the car. I can get there and back faster if I don’t have to carry you. But I don’t want to leave you here alone.” She opened her mouth and he raised a hand. “I know that’s not rational. I won’t be more than fifteen minutes. You’ll be safe. I’ve told myself all this already.”
“But given what we’ve seen in the last day, you’re worried there are other monsters out here and you’ll be too far away to help.” She nodded. “I’m worried about you for the same reason. And I don’t have the speed to reach you in minutes if you’re in trouble.”
Ben felt a weird sort of tightening and fluttering in his chest. A sensation he hadn’t felt before. Soft and fragile. And he was afraid to poke at it, investigate it, because he didn’t want it to break.
“I’ll be fine, too,” he said, but he had to clear his throat. “Do you have a weapon of some kind? Can you use the sword?”
“Yes, and no. You take the sword. I’d just hurt myself with it. But I have a weapon.” She winced, very subtly, but he still saw the gesture. “I have a gun. It’s my ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ gun. I’ll pull it out.”
“Guns aren’t much use against monsters. But if one shows up and you have to use the gun, aim for the head. Are you a decent shot?”
She snorted. “Yeah. I’m a good shot.” Again, that subtle wince.
“Okay. You hit the monster anywhere but its head, you’ll just piss it off. Aim for the head, as much as possible, that’ll at least slow it down. Do not hesitate to drive away if a monster shows up. I’ll find you. Just get somewhere safe.”
“I’ll find you,” she said, raising her brows. “It’s what I do.”
His mouth twitched with a faint smile. “We’ll find each other again, how about that? But don’t let that stop you from running away. I’m used to monsters. I know how to kill them. You don’t need to stick around just because you’re worried about me. Get safe.”
“The only way to kill a monster is to remove its head, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Got it. But I doubt it’ll be an issue.”
Hopefully not. “I will be back in fifteen minutes. No more.” He gestured at her phone. “My phone is powered down now, but I’ll turn it own when I get to my gear. Would you feel comfortable taking my number?”
“I want to make a joke about this being a pretty extreme way to get my phone number, but I’m nervous and will mess up the joke.”
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. “You can crack the joke when you’re less nervous.”
“It’ll lose its impact,” she said with a dramatic sigh. Then flashed him a small smile and swiped opened her phone. “Go.”
He rattled off his number as she entered it into her contacts. He was curious what name she gave him. Just Ben, since she didn’t know his last name yet, or some string of descriptions so she’d know which Ben he was? The thought that she’d need descriptors to know who he was left a weird pain in his gut.
When she was done, she gave him a look he couldn’t read. “Better get going. You’ll be running in the dark on the way back. Is that going to be a problem? You have a flashlight?”
“I have excellent night vision. The wolf helps with that.”
Her eyebrows bounced up. “I should have thought of that. Will you tell me more about the…the wolf?”
“Everything you want to know,” he said.
“We should probably talk about how it jumped through me, too, huh?”
He nodded, but he couldn’t quite get words out. He should ask Eric, or maybe even his mother, if he’d fucked things up doing that. Probably his mother. He didn’t want to hear crap from his brother. Eric was a great leader of the Logan Family now that he’d settled in. But he was still Ben’s older brother and sometimes forgot there were things he wasn’t in charge of. He’d probably know if this had happened before. But so would their mother, and talking to his mother would be a lot easier.
Maybe. She’d been deep in grief since their father’s murder. Three years wasn’t long enough after centuries of a lifetime together. She might not want to discuss her son’s Nam-tar while still mourning the loss of her own.
Still, he had to ask someone, find out how this worked now. He had to have something he could tell Elle.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, still hesitating to leave but knowing he had to get this done. “I’ll turn my phone on as soon as I reach my stuff, so you can text if you need me.” Texts sent better up here where cell service was patchy, so were easier than trying to make a phone call. “A simple Help will have me hear in minutes.”
She entered the text on her phone and showed it to him. “Can send with a quick tap.”
He didn’t precisely relax at her preparedness, but opening the car door did get easier. “Fifteen minutes. I’ll be back in fifteen.”
“Go. I’ll be fine. Locking the doors behind you.”
He heard the locks click as soon as he closed the door, which made him smile. The expression didn’t last, though. Leaving her still felt like a wrenching. Like he’d be leaving some of himself behind and he didn’t want those parts separated.
In a way, that was true.
He waved to her through the front windshield, mostly so he could get one last look at her. Then he scanned the trees, oriented to his location, and took off at his fastest run.
He couldn’t get back to Elle fast enough.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Elle stayed where she was long enough to see Ben blur and disappear into the trees. The speed he could move. She was never going to get used to that. She glanced down at the number in her phone, at the little message she’d typed out just to make him feel better, and brushed her thumb against the edge of her phone.
She was almost instantly edgy and uncomfortable being separated from him, and that was not a good thing. She’d known him a day and she physically hated the idea of being away from him. Felt a sort of strain that went well beyond the time they’d known each other, even if that time had been filled with A Lot. A lot of danger and stress and…monsters.
Intense. Everything had been so intense since they met. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to be separated from him. Or maybe it was just the monsters.
She sighed and leaned over the passenger’s seat to pull out the locked gun box she kept underneath. She had spent most of her youth around guns. Knew makes, models, how to take them apart and reassemble them, how to clean and properly care for them. Hell, she even knew how to reload cartridges and make her own ammunition. Her father had trained her to guns from the start. He’d claimed it was for safety reasons, teaching her all about guns. She knew now, as an adult, it had been because he wanted her prepared for the end of the world. But at the time, she’d just thought her father was giving them something they could do together.
As an adult though, knowing what she knew about her father and his associates, seeing the world around her, she wasn’t crazy about guns anymore. At least unregulated access to them. There were too many people like her father, like some of the men he’d known, some of the men she’d helped the FBI find years later. Too many angry people who didn’t appreciate the power and deadliness of the weapons—or maybe appreciated the deadliness too much, to the point of fetishizing them. She believed in regulation. Well-regulated access.
So the fact that she had a 3D printed plastic gun she could sneak through in pieces on airplanes when she needed to, and kept in a lockbox under her front car seat when she was driving, was something she wasn’t entirely proud of. Old habits and paranoias instilled by her dad. She didn’t feel safe without some form of protection. And she didn’t have the sort of job that justified the hoops for allowing travel with guns. She wasn’t unhappy about those hoops. She actually believed in them. Which was why she felt guilty for skirting them when she did. Knowing she probably wasn’t the only one was unnerving.
She shook off the guilt and always-present paranoia and assembled the plastic gun pieces without having to think about what she was doing. She’d practiced until she could do this in under a minute without looking. As she loaded the magazine and slipped it into the gun, she scanned the surroundings. Would her little plastic gun with its ammunition designed for humans have any effect at all on a monster? She really didn’t want to find out.
Since she’d driven up here from Detroit in her own car, she also had a shotgun in the trunk, under the padding where the spare tire was stored. She considered getting that out now. Her shotgun might work better against a monster, scattered shot pellets potentially causing more damage. But getting to that gun involved unlocking the car doors and stepping outside, and for some reason, that felt as scary as it had at the house.
The time on her phone said five minutes had passed. Only five minutes. Was Ben at his gear yet? Was his phone on? She swiped on her screen and stared at the Help text. She backtracked over it and typed in: text when you turn your phone on please.
The please was her attempt to soften the demand but her need to know he was okay superseded her need to be polite, so she’d nearly forgotten that last word.
Because she was feeling edgy and jumpy, she reentered the Help text, just in case, but turned her screen off so she didn’t accidentally send it. Last thing she needed to do was give Ben a heart attack for no reason.
The seconds ticked by as she held her phone in one hand, her gun in the other, and kept her gaze scanning the surrounding trees while still flicking occasional glances down at her phone. Tension tightened in her gut as she waited, every moment without seeing a message pop up from him made the anxiety climb.
When a message finally dinged, she nearly dropped her gun in her haste to check the phone. Good thing she’d left the gun’s safety on. Letting out a slow breath and shaking her head at herself, she flicked on her phone to read his full message. Although there wasn’t much to read.
Phone’s on if you need me. Be there soon.
She sent back a: thanks. Then reentered the Help message for a third time and started a kind of countdown in her head, even though she couldn’t be sure exactly how long it would take him to get back. It had taken him a good eight minutes to turn the phone on. Probably take at least that long to make the return journey. Depending on how much gear he had. That might slow him down, so could be as long as another ten or fifteen minutes.
Longer than the fifteen minutes he’d promised, but not by much. She tried to tell herself she wouldn’t need to panic until the twenty-minute mark, a deadline that allowed her to stay in the car and not head into the woods to meet him halfway. He’d hate her wandering around in the dark alone anyway. She hated the thought of wandering these woods alone, too.
She tapped her foot against the baseboard and tried to focus on the trees instead of incessantly glancing at her phone. Her grip on her gun was loose and stable, but the rest of her was jumpy as hell. Beyond the car, the woods had gotten very dark, and without the headlights, she couldn’t see far into the shadowed depths under the trees. There was a half moon up tonight, or nearly half moon, which wasn’t enough light to see by. For her at least. Having the darkness close in around her added to the anxiety clawing at her insides.
Why the hell was she so nervous? Why did she hate being away from him this much? Had to be the monsters. Everything she’d seen and learned in the last day. But this actual, physical wrenching in her gut… She’d never experienced anything like it. Never felt like a part of herself had gone wandering off and she wouldn’t be able to settle until those parts were reunited. She didn’t like the feeling. Didn’t like it at all. Made her feel needy and dependent. On a virtual stranger of all things!
Except… Well, would she call Ben a stranger now? There was a lot she still didn’t know about him. Including his last-fucking-name. But stranger seemed entirely wrong to describe how she viewed him now. He wasn’t a stranger, even if there was a lot about him she still didn’t know. He was…something else.
That something else made her stomach flutter when she looked at him. Made her tingly whenever he smiled. Got her heartbeat pounding when he was close enough she could feel the heat on his skin, or smell that delicious scent that was him, a scent she couldn’t really describe but would know in the dark without having to see him.
And that was it, the rub, the reason she couldn’t think of him as a stranger. She knew in the depths of her soul that she’d recognize him, in the dark, without seeing him, without hearing him, she’d know he was close. She’d know it was him and no one else.
A bond born of circumstance. Had to be. The side effect of living through an intense situation with someone. Only thing it could be.
She kept repeating those justifications for her feelings as she scanned the dark woods, as she tried not to stare at the time on her phone, willing him to get here soon.
When he appeared at the edge of the tree line, just appeared there as if he’d materialized out of thin air—or she’d conjured him from her will alone—she let out a long, shaky breath, gently set her gun on the console by the drive shaft, unlocked the car, and went right into his arms.
She didn’t even think about what she was doing. Just walked to him and threw her arms around him like she hadn’t seen him in months and needed that contact more than she needed her next breath.
That his arms came around her without hesitation and he wrapped his big body around her, burying his face against her neck, wasn’t lost on her. No pause or hesitance or moment of surprise. Like he’d needed the physical contact as much as she did.
