Vegas Run

by Rachel A Brune

  Outside the facility, I found the deepest, dirtiest snowbank, and dropped my load into it. For a moment I thought about adding some yellow snow to the mix, but Karen and Calix would figure out who did it and I didn't want to hear about it.

  I headed back inside and met the two women heading back out. Calix had a similar load, while Karen carried one of her former comrades in a fireman's carry. I threw a mock salute as I passed them.

  "I'll be right back in," Calix said as I loped by. I found it easier to move along on all four legs, even in this form.

  Ha! If there is one man-rule out there that shall not be broken, it's that one never makes multiple trips if one can help it. True, I'd already broken this rule, but those are merely details.

  There were six more bodies lying on the floor, and I'm pretty sure I strained something in my lower back, but I got everyone out before Karen and Calix had made it much past the lobby.

  I dumped my load of sleeping humans with their comrades and threw myself down on a neighboring snowbank next to my teammates, just in time for the charges Calix had set to finally go off.

  First came a whoosh, and then a thud. A section of the roof imploded, and some dust rose over the complex. Talk about an anticlimax. I'd hoped for at least some shooting flames and maybe an explosion or two.

  "What time is it?" Calix asked no one in particular. She lay back, sprawled out, sword still clutched in her left hand.

  "Almost ten." Karen, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, didn't bother looking at her wristwatch.

  The entire ordeal had lasted less than two hours. That was the amount of time it had taken for me to put an end to Gratusczak, while Calix took care of MONIKER's nascent attempts to branch out into vampire research, and Karen created as much havoc with their data as she could reach.

  "How much time do you estimate it'll take for the agency to recover from this attack?"

  Karen shrugged off Calix's question. "An hour? A week? A year?"

  Calix sat up next to Karen, snaking her arm around her waist and drawing her in close. She leaned her head against Karen's shoulder.

  I can take a hint.

  Besides, of all the things I wanted to do with this night, stick around and watch the remnants of MONIKER burn weren't very high on the list. Instead, the night wind had picked up, bringing with it all the desert smells of spring.

  High overhead, the sky shone clear. A slight neon glow kissed the horizon. The moon called and, free of the agency and its silver pollution, I could finally answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The early sun rose over the desert as I shook off the last remnants of the Change. I scrounged up some pants and a shirt–don't ask, just trust that I've been doing this for a while–and headed into the outskirts of the city.

  An older woman in a classic VW bug gave me a ride, dropping me off a few blocks from my final destination. She introduced herself as Luz and offered to continue the ride all the way to her hotel room, and I was sorely tempted. She had a wild energy, a kind of electric light to her aura that made me think we could have fun and forget about everything for a while.

  I turned her down. I had places to go and couldn't enjoy the luxury of forgetting what had just happened, not even for a little while.

  Besides, what I really needed was a shower.

  I waved and smiled as the woman blew me a kiss and peeled out, leaving actual tracks on the asphalt. Then I turned and jogged around the corner and down the street to the diner where Calix and Karen waited for me.

  We hadn't discussed meeting there, but I followed a thin, white line that stretched before me, the same link that had bound me to my pack. The same connection I'd once had, back when my family and my pack were one and the same.

  It wasn't any giant, magical beacon. It might have just been a sort of sibling love. But I had no doubt my steps were leading to the right place.

  The inside of the diner was slightly too warm for comfort, and it smelled of booze, sex, and waffles.

  Calix waved at me from a table in the back. Karen sat on the opposite side; the two of them had unobstructed lines of sight to the front, the back, and the side door.

  I made my way over and slid into the seat next to Calix.

  "Ladies."

  "Rick." Calix grinned. "You look like hot shit."

  "Your girlfriend's hitting on me," I told Karen, who rolled her eyes. The ghost of a grin played at the sides of her mouth.

  "Where'd you get the clothes?" she asked.

  "Donations," I explained.

  "I just didn't see you as much of a Stars Wars fan." She folded her arms on the table and raised an eyebrow.

  I looked down at the front of my shirt. I had, indeed, swiped someone's fanboy–or girl, Star Wars fandom is a gender-neutral thing–T-shirt. "Chewbacca's my soulmate, leave me alone."

  The waitress took that moment to arrive with cups of coffee, one for each of us. Apparently, I'd been expected.

  We each took a minute to appreciate the caffeine. Around us, the diner slowly filled with other patrons who also looked like they had slept in their clothes–or swiped them from an unattended clothesline.

  "How's your head?" I asked Karen. The wound had been mostly cleaned up, along with the shrapnel from the door, but the deep cut remained, surrounded by a growing purple bruise.

  "It's fine," she said. "Nothing that a year's vacation won't fix."

  She and Calix exchanged one of those couple glances.

  "Is that where you're headed?" We hadn't talked at all about anything, including about what happened next.

  Karen busied herself with the cream and sugar, even though she took her coffee black. Calix pretended to study the menu.

  Panic rose in me. On the one hand, I'd been freed of MONIKER and the organization's little machinations, and that meant I could head back into the wilderness and never see anyone ever again who wasn't furry and didn't run on four legs.

  On the other hand, I'd finally found the people I could trust with my life, who might possibly be the ones I could now call pack. Were they about to politely tell me to get lost?

  Instead of answering, Karen dug in the pocket of her pants and pulled something out. She placed it on the table and pushed it toward me with her fingertips.

  The object turned out to be a stone medallion, carved in the shape of a wolf's head. I touched it lightly–the stone felt cool to the touch.

  "Green jade," Karen said.

  "I was going to guess something along those lines."

  "Maria gave it to me, right before they took off."

  Calix reached out and touched it. "Feels like we used up all the juice."

  Karen shrugged. "Probably. She said it was for an emergency."

  "Getting attacked by a bunch of humans isn't an emergency." I detected a touchy note in Calix's voice.

  "Usually not," Karen replied. "But I knew some of them by their first names."

  "Do you mind if I…?" I broke in.

  "Go ahead." Karen sat back on the bench.

  I closed my hand around the medallion, finding the coldness of the jade comforting. Also, the thought of Maria.

  "Where are you heading?" Calix asked, switching topics.

  "I'm heading back up north." Until I said it out loud, I wasn't sure. But that seemed like a good plan.

  "Hiding out?" Karen asked.

  "I don't ‘hide out,'" I retorted. "I simply make it hard for assholes to find me."

  Calix snorted. "It wasn't that hard."

  I grinned. "So you admit it?" The look on her face. I laughed out loud, then sobered. "Nah, I'm not hiding out. MONIKER can kiss my ass." I finished the last of my coffee and set the empty cup down on the table. "I'm going to go up north, stay with Randall and Lara until after the baby comes, make sure they stay safe from Black Mountain or MONIKER or any other asshole trying to get to me through them."

  "Fair enough." Calix shifted in her seat and met Karen's eyes, asking her a silent question.

  Karen too
k a breath and leaned forward. "Rick, Calix and I have a proposition for you."

  I grinned, not making any of a selection of juvenile responses. She rolled her eyes anyway and continued.

  "We're going independent, starting our own thing."

  "Choosing our own assholes to work with," Calix contributed.

  "And for," Karen added. "You interested?"

  I didn't even pretend I hadn't been waiting for them to ask. I extended my hand across the table to shake Karen's. "I'm in."

  "Great," Calix said, slapping me on the shoulder. Ow. "We can write off breakfast as a business expense."

  She grinned, and the shadow of my cousin, Markus, passed unexpectedly over my mind. Just another piece of my puzzle that didn't fit anymore.

  I shook it off. "So, ladies, where are you heading for vacation?"

  "California." Calix gave Karen one of those couple smiles. "Going to meet the Family."

  "Don't forget to invite me to the wedding."

  Karen rolled her eyes at me. "You'll be our ring bearer. We'll get you one of those cushions to wear and everything."

  The joke was at my expense, but I grinned anyway. Karen and Calix were family. They were pack. I was home.

  EPILOGUE

  The fire crackled and popped as the gray-haired woman stirred it back to life. Satisfied it wouldn't die yet, she stood the poker back in its stand and closed the grate against an errant spark.

  "Your meeting went well?" She settled herself back in a leather chair and picked up the book she'd been reading before her visitor interrupted.

  "Yes, ma'am." Markus tried to read the spine, but the title was written in Cyrillic, and he had no knowledge of the alphabet.

  She raised an eyebrow, inviting him to elaborate.

  "He wore a silver cuff." The large man tried to think of another way to describe it, but he didn't have the gift of eloquence, and the woman in front of him did not suffer fools gladly–or at all. "There was something else, underneath."

  "Explain." The tone of her voice was drier than the white wine in the glass at her elbow.

  "His scent had changed." Markus considered telling her of the shadow he had seen, the one that turned his bowels to ice and shrank his stomach in fear. No. Better not.

  The woman closed her eyes and rubbed her temple with her right thumb. "Go. I'll read your report."

  Markus nodded and turned to go. Her voice behind him stopped him in his tracks.

  "Wait."

  He turned.

  "Tell me…" The firelight sparked in her eyes, turning them incandescent in shades of brown and yellow, just for a moment. "My son–is he a threat to our plans?"

  Other Works

  The Rick Keller Project

  Cold Run

  Night Run (novella)

  Vegas Run

  Trial Run (novella) Coming soon!

  About the Author

  Rachel A. Brune graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts in May 2000, and was immediately plunged into the low-stakes world of entry-level executive assistant-ship. Her unexpected journey out of that world and into the military is chronicled in her self-published book Echoes and Premonitions. After five years as a combat journalist, including two tours in Iraq, and a brief stint as a columnist for her hometown newspaper, she attended graduate school at the University at Albany in NY, where she earned her MA in Political Communication, and her commission as a second lieutenant in the military police corps. Although her day job has taken in her in many strange, often twisted directions, Rachel continues to write and publish short fiction. She released her first novel, Soft Target, in early 2013.

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