by Juniper Hart
“Like animals?”
“I guess that’s a good comparison.”
Well that was unsettling.
“I think you’re a bad influence on me,” she said after a minute.
He gave an exhausted laugh before responding, “You know what? I agree with that.”
“So what’s the plan if your friend isn’t living there or if he doesn’t want to help us?”
“Unless you have a great plan up your sleeve, we try to figure it out as it comes. Now, let’s both get some sleep. I feel like I drank a handle of tequila last night, and you don’t look like you fared much better.”
“Hey!” she said with a façade of being offended.
Reuben laughed and squeezed her hand affectionately.
“Sleep well, Cara.”
She sighed, “I don’t think I’ll sleep well for a very long time… but thanks.”
4
The bus ride was relatively boring. The bus was old and somewhat dingy, with a tiny television way up at the front. It was switched onto the news, which called for people to watch for an ‘average height woman in her mid-twenties with green eyes and brown hair…and an above-average-height woman with black hair… as well as a large bear-like monster.’
According to the news, she was also heavily armed and her rouse of playing dead didn’t work. Well, it had been worth a shot.
Someone closer to the driver snorted. Cara couldn’t see them, but she heard him laugh quietly.
“Wonder what someone was smoking there.”
It had occurred to Cara that so many of those crazy news stories were, in fact, just enchantment. Maybe there was something to drugs opening the mind’s eye.
Beside her, Reuben stirred and opened his eyes. Then, he sniffed.
“Hey, I know where we are.” He looked out the window, then back at Cara. “How long have we been going?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a few hours?”
He stood up. “We have to get off here.”
“What? Here? Are you kidding me? But we haven’t reached our stop.”
“I know.”
He brushed past her, towards the front.
“Come with me. I know this area.”
She hesitated, but in the end, Cara knew Reuben had a plan and she trusted his instincts. She followed him towards the driver and past a couple rows of people that gave Reuben funny looks for what he was wearing. One young woman’s eyes shot open in impressed surprise when she saw Reuben move past her. Even in his ill-fitting clothes, he was strikingly handsome. The young woman must not have seen him when she came onto the bus. A tinge of jealously made Cara purposefully block her view.
Reuben approached the bus driver and said something. The guy acted a little surprised.
“Here? Only got a couple more miles until the next stop.”
Reuben nodded.
“Please. I know you don’t typically do this, but we need to get off the bus.”
The driver put on the blinker and pulled off the side of the road. Reuben thanked him and they got off onto the sidewalk.
“Thank you!” Cara said, waving as the doors closed.
The old driver smiled and nodded and got back onto the road, leaving Cara and Reuben standing in the middle of nowhere.
“I hope this was a smarter plan than it seems right now,” Cara muttered.
It was starting to get chilly, with a cold breeze wafting through the air. Her nipples hardened, which made it difficult for Reuben to take his eyes off her skimpy attire.
They walked into the center of a city with a fleet of cars driving by. Some people were looking at them with a confused look, like they might call the police. Reuben did look like he had spent most of the night taking hallucinogenic drugs. Meanwhile, Cara was limping badly. Apparently, Adrianna had gotten a good shot in with her whip, which Cara didn’t realize earlier from all the adrenaline pumping through her veins, blocking the pain.
She faked a weak smile at a teen walking by that appeared to enjoy her clothing choices.
“Nice…”
Cara quickly crossed her arms across her chest, and Reuben turned to the boy and growled, baring his werewolf fangs for a moment. The teen shrunk away meekly. Reuben’s large frame warded anybody who wanted to pick a fight, but paired with his animalistic fangs, he looked downright ferocious. Cara knew he had a sensitive side, but that was knowledge she liked to keep to herself.
“I know where we are,” he said, sniffing again. “There are other ways to get to our destination. It’s risky, but I don’t think we have much of a choice.”
They started towards a small lemonade stand, the kind with the huge fake lemons made out of molded plastic. A man was inside the stand with casual sunglasses on, smiling at each passerby. When the man saw Reuben, his eyes widened and he tried to bring down the steel screen that closed the stand. Reuben grabbed the door and pushed it back up. The guy manning the stand tried to push it down again, but Reuben just flexed, lifting the door and the man off the ground.
“Get away from me!” he hissed, putting all of his body weight into closing the screen.
Reuben just held it up.
“I know we didn’t really leave each other on the best of terms,” Reuben said with a steely tone in his voice. “But I mean you no harm.”
“You’re so popular,” Cara muttered sarcastically.
She faked a smile at another guy that was obviously wondering what the big scary guy was doing to the poor lemonade stand guy.
“They’re just… joking around,” she managed.
Joking around? Really? Weak, Cara, weak.
Reuben pushed the screen all the way up, making his shoulder bulge into a hard knot of muscle.
“We both know I’m going to win this,” he said. “I just want to talk.”
“Don’t make me shoot you, man. I still got the bullet!’
He kept holding the screen.
“C’mon, man… I didn’t want to do this, but you owe me,” pleaded Reuben.
The lemonade guy scowled and finally released the screen.
“Fine. Get in here.”
Cara was slightly giddy. She had always wanted to see what the inside of one of these stands looked like. Part of the child within her always wanted to flag them down and ask if she could climb inside.
So when the guy popped open the hatch, Cara couldn’t hide her smile.
“What are you so happy about?” Reuben asked with a frown.
“I’ve always wanted to get in one of these things!”
Cara soaked up the experience before entering the stand, spreading her arms, closing her eyes, and smelling the atmosphere. Cheaply made lemonade. She got some funny looks from a family passing by, but she didn’t care.
Someone whistled, evidently impressed with the effect of the cold air paired with her pajama top. Reuben popped his head out of the stand, and someone uttered a curse under their breath before looking away.
She stooped down to fit into the hatch, stepping inside.
She was completely, painfully underwhelmed.
The inside was packed. It felt like the inside of a small car, but with lemonade-making materials on all the walls in a bunch of cheap containers. Her imagination had always dreamed up something similar to a scene from Willy Wonka, but instead, it was dark and drab.
The owner was a human from the chest up, but below that, hairy goat legs were sticking out from his cargo shorts. He was handsome, in a bohemian sort of way, with long blond dreadlocks over his skinny shoulders. He looked like the sort of guy that would sell weed to college students, then get upset when he was arrested and claim the system was rigged.
Reuben shut the hatch and pulled the screen down, leaving them isolated from the outside world. He loomed over the goat man. At first, Cara thought he might be trying to intimidate him, but she soon realized that there was no chance all three of them could actually fit in the stand comfortably.
“What, you aren’t going to shake my hand?” the man asked, hol
ding out his hand for Reuben to shake. When Reuben didn’t immediately shake it, the guy scowled, “After all the shit you put me through, you’re just going to ignore my handshake?”
Reuben raised his right hand, showing that a couple of his fingers had been sliced off, making both Cara and the guy jump back in surprise. The jump made Cara hit some lemonade supplies behind her. Sugar fell off the shelf and shattered, finding a home between Cara’s bare toes. She didn’t know how she didn’t notice his missing body parts earlier.
“Uh…sorry,” she said.
“What the hell happened to your hand?” the man demanded.
“Adrianna cut them off,” Reuben said. “They’ll be healed in a couple more hours.”
The goat man’s eyes shot up.
“Adrianna? The merc?”
Reuben put his hand down. “Yeah. Listen Matt, we need to get to Austin. Think you could help us out? I’d consider us even.”
Matt thought about it, and then said, “I don’t want Adrianna showing up and asking me questions.”
“Tell her we forced you to open it up.”
Cara, meanwhile, was standing in the cramped space, butt and back pressed up against supplies with sugar between her toes, having literally no idea what was going on. Open what up? What was Reuben talking about? Did the guy have a car they could borrow or something? Maybe some money?
Rueben and Matt kept chatting. Matt looked Cara up and down, even pulling down his sunglasses to see her better.
“You working with humans now?”
“She’s not like the others.”
Matt folded his arms and conceded, “Fine. You go, but she stays here.”
“She goes with me. That’s final.” Reuben’s tone was strong. He was warning Matt to choose his next words wisely. “I told you, she’s not like the rest.”
Matt didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on Cara. She felt like she’d done something personally wrong. Pure hate. She almost apologized before she remembered she had done nothing wrong.
Matt grabbed one of the lemonade cups from the shelf that was full of some sort of liquid and took the lid off. Slowly, he poured a thin stream of it into the center of his closed stand. He started moving in a circle. When he got to Cara, he purposefully dug his goat hooves into her toes. She bit her lip, but didn’t say anything.
“Watch it, humie,” he growled under his breath, not quite loud enough for Reuben to hear.
She was pretty sure she should be offended. Humie? Was that an insult? It sure sounded like one.
After he’d completed the circle, the floor fizzled. The sugar near it rose into the air and vibrated there. After a moment, the sugar dropped down and a shape appeared in the floor in the shape of a circular door with a handle.
Matt grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.
Down below was a staircase. Cara could hear the sound of commotion from the gaping hole in the bottom of the stand.
“I’m about ninety percent sure that all laws of physics were just broken,” she said, peering into the hole.
Matt glared at Reuben. She had no doubt that if Reuben wasn’t there, Matt wouldn’t be acting so civil. The goat-like man scared her. She’d watch out for him if they ever crossed paths alone.
“Remember, wolf, after this, we’re even. You don’t show up. You don’t ask me for anything ever again. Understand?”
Reuben curled his lip. His fists were clenched, not conceding to Matt’s threats.
“I’ll consider us even. If Adrianna shows up, you tell her you turned us away.”
With that, Reuben stepped into the hole. Slowly, he descended.
“Cara, let’s go.”
Cara tentatively put one foot in. The inside of the lemonade stand was freezing cold except for a space heater off in the corner, but inside the hole was steaming hot. From her ankle up she was cold, but below, she was already starting to sweat. Matt was still staring at her, hands crossed.
“What are you waiting for, humie?”
She scowled at him and stepped inside.
5
After she’d stepped through the hole in the bottom of the lemonade stand, Matt closed the door from above. She caught one last glimpse before the door shut. It vanished into the ceiling of the room she had just walked into, making it look like the staircase they were descending led to a random ceiling.
“I don’t think Matt liked me,” she said as they kept slowly going down to a small, empty room far below.
“He hates all humans,” Reuben said, putting his right hand on the handrail.
His fingers were still growing back. She hadn’t known that was something he could do, but then again, he was always revealing new secrets. Everything was so new to Cara.
“Long, long story. He won’t do anything to you while I’m here.”
She didn’t have an answer. She honestly didn’t care about whatever Matt’s beef was with her or humankind in general, so she asked something she did care about.
“Where are we going?”
He stepped off the last step of the staircase and walked towards the door that led towards the commotion.
“You ask a lot of questions, Cara. You need to learn to just go with the flow.”
“Yeah… Go with the flow.”
Easier said than done. She just broke physics and had completely vanished from her world. She couldn’t hear the sound of cars, and after living in the city her entire life, she knew one thing – there was no place where the sound of traffic went away. Ever. Wherever they were, they weren’t near a bustling city anymore.
Reuben pulled open the door, and together, he and Cara walked through.
She inhaled sharply. There was a long train in the middle of what appeared to be an Industrial Revolution railroad. Swarms of enchanted creatures were minding their business, similar to her visit to the Enchanted Society. Her brain was having a hard time processing the creatures surrounding her, so she decided to imagine she was on the set of a movie, which helped her relax. Well, not really, but the movie set daydream did make her feel a little better. The sounds surrounding her were loud; the tremendous commotion bounced off the top of the tall cavern like it was designed for these types of acoustics.
Reuben walked straight for the train. People moved well out of his way. As big as he was, everyone just moved right around him.
“Cara, have you ever jumped a train before?”
“Did you honestly just ask me if I have ever jumped a train before?” she asked. “Is there any part of you that thinks that’s possible? It’s me, Reuben.”
He ruffled up her hair, which she hated and he knew she hated, but she let him do it anyway.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you how.”
She felt oddly claustrophobic. She was the only human there, which was painfully obvious. She saw someone that looked human, but when the guy turned, he had long spikes protruding from his back like a porcupine. Two huge creatures that looked like rhinos mixed with men looked down at her with disdain and said something in a different language.
She cleared her throat.
“Reuben, I, uh… I don’t think they’re okay with me being here. I’m drawing a lot of attention.”
Sensing her fear, Reuben stopped to draw her into a protective hug.
“Cara, I promise, we will get through this. Just stick by me and you will be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Reuben leaned down to kiss her, and Cara felt her worries dissipate. How did he do that to her? She felt almost peaceful – even though nothing about their current situation was peaceful.
The train’s horn blew.
“All aboard!” the conductor yelled. “All aboard!”
“Uh-oh,” Reuben said. “That’s not good. We have to catch that train. That means you have to run. Fast!”
Reuben grabbed Cara’s hand and she struggled to keep up.
“Can’t do that,” he said. “Only one of them comes through a day!”
Reuben wasn’t a graceful runner, but he didn’t need to be. Everyone dodged him, shrieking. Reuben jumped on the train and turned quickly to grab Cara’s hand to pull her on. Cara reached for his hand, but it was just out of grasp.
“Reuben!” She screamed frantically, terrified she would lose him.
Guards saw Cara and Reuben trying to jump on the train and chased after them.
“Stop!” the guards screamed. “You need to stop immediately!”
Who would actually heed those instructions? ‘Oh, sure, officer. I’ll just jump off and let you catch me,’ thought Cara.
How had she started doing this so often? She had never done anything illegal except smoke a joint once in college, and even then, she’d coughed her lungs out. Now, in the last week, she’d run from the law what, five times? Who knows? She’d lost count.
Her bare feet were throbbing in pain, as they still hadn’t found shoes. Her foot caught between the tracks for a brief second, twisting her ankle.
“Reuben, I can’t—”
Reuben jumped off the train and grabbed Cara before quickly throwing her over his shoulder. He briefly changed into his werewolf form and ran full force until he caught up with the caboose. He made one impressive leap onto the back of the train, grabbing on with his massive hands.
The train, evidently unaware of either Cara or Reuben, quickly picked up velocity. The powerful jerking motion of the train increasing its speed threw both Cara and Reuben onto the metal grill, with him on top of her.
“Reuben,” she said, trying to breathe. “I can’t breathe. You’re so heavy…”
He pushed himself off her body and flopped on the ground beside her. She tried to focus on breathing.
“We made it! I can’t believe we made it,” said Cara as she looked over at Reuben, her knight in shining armor.
