by Vremont, Ann
She complied and lifted Cruz’s head to look into his eyes.
"You’re here." He lifted his hand, tried to touch her check but didn't have the strength. "Why?"
"Dom didn’t exactly explain." She looked over her shoulder, moving out of the way as Dom approached with an IV bag and tube. "But I know he wouldn’t just take a customer’s car."
"Hold this up." He shoved the bag into her hand and grabbed Cruz’s right arm, quickly disinfecting it and starting the IV.
"What the hell is this all about?" She looked between them. "Did Lonnie do this?"
Dom snorted. "No. I’ll explain when there’s time."
His warning glance told Cruz to keep his mouth shut in the meantime. Dominic went into the kitchen, searching through the drawers until he came up with a roll of duct tape. Back out in the front room, he tore a long strip off, took the drip from Tamsyn and taped it by its top edge to the wall.
From the closet, he pulled out two sports duffels, tossed one at Tamsyn. "Take my room, just the basics." She got up and he grabbed her arm. "Pack fast."
He took the second duffel into Cruz’s room, ransacking the drawers, closet and under the bed before he moved into the bathroom. When he was done he went back into his room, punched a hole in the drywall and pulled out a metal lock box. Cruz knew it was full of cash--more than twenty grand.
Dominic handed off his full bag to Tamsyn and proceeded to finish filling the one she had started. Cracking the side of the desk top computer and removing the hard drive, he nodded at Cruz’s arm before looking at Tam.
"They teach you how to take one of those out yet?"
"Yeah, beginning of the semester."
"Good, finish him up for me." He went into the kitchen, grabbing the spare first aid kit. "Help him into his jacket."
"I’m good." Cruz gently brushed Tamsyn away after she had removed the IV and grabbed his jacket. He had no idea what the hell was going on, but he was sure it was his fault. He grabbed Dom’s arm. Glancing quickly in Tamsyn’s direction, he asked his brother, "Why?"
Dominic paled for an instant and then projected the answer into Cruz’s mind. They’re coming, Manito. Not for us. For her.
*****
The Ranchero had a matching cover over its bed. Cruz tossed the camping gear into the back. Tamsyn’s battered suitcase and school bag were already in there, along with the two duffels and the laptop from the garage’s office. He latched the lid and raised the bay door’s security mesh just as Dom came down the stairs, curls of smoke following him.
"You open the compressor caps?"
Cruz nodded. He had made sure nothing would blow and kill someone when the fire trucks arrived.
"Good, get in the car." Dom hit the bay door opener and then activated the garage’s emergency sprinklers. Upstairs, more than six years of their lives--the longest they'd ever stayed in one place--crackled and popped.
Dominic and Cruz piled into the Ranchero’s cab, where Tamsyn was already waiting. "Great, grand theft auto and arson."
"They’ll be looking for the tow truck, Tam, not for this, at least not today." Dominic whipped the Ranchero out of the garage, peeling rubber as they took off down the street.
"Manifold won’t hold much longer," Cruz warned. He glanced down, saw Tamsyn’s hands shaking in her lap. He put his hand down on top of hers and gently squeezed.
"We just need to make it out of Hoekstra -- up past Ajax and into the mountains." Dom checked the mirrors as he drove, searching for the flashing lights of a police car. Early morning, the surrounding businesses were closed and shuttered. It could be fifteen or more minutes before the fire was called in, but he couldn't risk their being seen.
Tamsyn looked to Cruz and then Dominic. "Then you’ll tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Tell you, yes." Dominic frowned, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. "Show you, too."
Cruz wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his heart rate accelerating at the import of Dom’s words. Whatever they were facing, one thing was certain -- Tamsyn would finally know who, and what, he was.
They drove on in apparent silence, but by the time they stopped in Ajax at a truck stop with Wi-Fi, Dominic had communicated everything to Cruz. He had awoken to find Cruz unconscious from the transfusion. He’d slapped a band-aid on Cruz’s arm and then decided an IV was needed. Stepping into the front room, his attention had been drawn immediately to the computer screen. Cruz’s website, left open, was running a video loop.
You told him to prove it, Manito. He did.
Cruz wanted to believe it was a fake, but the video Dominic had watched had perfectly followed the patterns and physiology of their transformation. From there, Dominic had responded -- the instant messages flying between them.
That smell Dominic had complained about, that he claimed poured off of Cruz for the last six months whenever Tamsyn was near or heavy in Cruz's thoughts, had been a beacon. The scent finally had found others like them who sensed it for what it was -- a male shifter in the presence of a female regressive.
A woman, almost like them, her body waiting for one final transformative phase.
Now all they had to do was convince Tamsyn and keep her safe.
They started that process about thirty miles out from the truck stop. Dom told her how someone had attacked him last night, leaving out the details on his attackers. She saw for herself the changes in Dom’s wounds. The sutures already had skin growing over them, leaving Dominic driving with one hand while he pulled the stitches out with the other.
She asked again if it was Lonnie.
"Promise not to freak, baby."
She smiled up at Cruz. He’d slipped and called her "baby" a couple of times on the drive already. Only it wasn’t a slip-up now. She knew how he felt, he didn’t have to hide it anymore. And she didn’t seem to mind.
Dominic drove the Ranchero a full loop around the truck stop, making sure he knew the pattern flows and way out in case they needed to make a quick escape. Satisfied, he parked the vehicle where it wasn’t visible from the road, sliding between two semi-trucks.
Dom looked across Tamsyn to Cruz. "Can’t do it inside."
Cruz nodded, noticing the way Dom had moved his hand up on the steering wheel and turned toward Tamsyn. He was ready to quiet her with gentle force if she went into hysterics.
Cruz put his hand on her thigh, let it rest there. "You know we don’t talk about where we come from or who our parents are, right?"
Nodding, she covered his hand with her own. "Just that you lost them when you were still a baby."
"Police found us wandering the desert -- figured at first that our parents were illegals and had died trying to cross the border with us. Only Dom’s English was perfect -- at least for a five-year-old. So they put us in foster care while they tried to find our parents."
"In the desert, just the two of you?" She reached up, caressed his cheek and then reached over to sympathetically squeeze Dominic’s arm.
Dominic continued the story. "We were in and out of homes for more than eleven years. Baby mills just in it for the money, alcoholics, abusers. At seventeen, I ran away and took Cruz with me. Not because of all that -- I could protect him from those people as long as no one knew the truth."
When Dom stopped, she looked to Cruz for explanation. "The truth about what?"
"What we are." Cruz nervously rubbed his hand along her leg. "You’re going to think we’re crazy, but what we are -- what attacked Dominic last night -- are shape shifters -- wolves."
She looked between the two of them, her lips moving without any sound until she finally looked back to Cruz. "So Dom stole a car, pulled me out of my house and set fire to your building because you two think you’re...werewolves?"
There was an undercoating of anger to her words. Cruz sighed, knowing that, for at least a few minutes, he would have to replace her anger with fear -- if not absolute terror.
"Tam, baby, just look down at my hand."
Scowling, she cast one
last glance at Dominic and the almost healed wound on his neck and then focused on the hand on her leg. Her lips compressed in growing fury.
Cruz closed his eyes, let his head fall onto Tamsyn’s shoulder. He didn’t want complete transformation -- couldn’t risk it in public in broad daylight no matter how cut off they seemed from view.
And he wouldn’t do that to her until he was sure she was ready.
Cruz willed the skin on his hand to coarsen and grow longer, felt the initial dizziness that came with a slow, partial transformation. Without seeing it, he knew what she was looking at--the lengthening of his fingers and nails, the joints growing fat, nails curving and thickening into claws that could eviscerate a human in one stroke.
Nothing like the oversized dog she had thrown her arms around last night. This was something else, an in-between phase of expansion before his form could contract into the wolf. He could stay like that, bring his whole body to that nightmare inducing shape and hold it, if he wanted to.
"Stop!"
Cruz snapped back, his hand once again human. Tamsyn was breathing hard and Cruz rooted around in the door compartment. The Ranchero’s owner had a bunch of brown lunch bags inside the car. They hadn’t asked him what it was for -- the smell of pot on his clothes had made it obvious.
"Breathe into this."
She took the bag, held it to her face, eyes pinched shut as she inhaled and exhaled. When she had stopped hyperventilating, she pulled the bag far enough away from her face to ask, "Okay, so why did Dom come and get me?"
Cruz couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to tell her that, if what Dom had learned was true, the monster that had just frightened her was inside her, too.
Dominic answered for him. "You’re like us."
She shook her head. "I’m happy to report you’re wrong on this one, Dominic."
Dominic nodded at Cruz, signaling that it was time to unlock the doors. "The restaurant has Wi-Fi. Just see what we’ve learned."
Cruz helped Tamsyn from the vehicle, not daring to meet her gaze. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her legs seemed wobbly, but she’d been crammed like a sardine between him and Dom for over three hours.
Standing, she leaned against him, her fists knotting his t-shirt as she buried her head against his shoulder and took a deep, shaky breath. He wrapped his arms around her, brought his lips to rest against her ear. Relief flooded him. She wasn't terrified of or disgusted by him -- not yet, anyway.
"You’re safe from me."
A little nod of faith he knew he hadn't earned and then she glanced across the vehicle’s roof to Dom. "You really believe I’m like you?"
Dom shut the door, left it unlocked for a quick escape. "Doesn’t matter if I do. The guys who attacked me last night believe it. You're not safe."
With those words hanging in the air between them, they entered the truck stop and found a corner booth, Tamsyn protectively tucked between the two men. Dom ordered while Cruz set up the laptop, probing the Wi-Fi system to see how well he could cloak their location if anyone was trying to track them. When he was satisfied with the security, he opened up his web site.
Tamsyn caught Cruz’s glance at her and realized he was trying to shield the video from her. "Let me see."
Dom nodded and Cruz angled the screen so all three of them could watch. Her hand dropped beneath the table, finding and wrapping around Cruz’s to squeeze as the guy on the video repeated the process she’d watched earlier but across his entire body before taking on the wolf form.
She let go of Cruz’s hand, blinked slowly, just once, and then slugged Cruz’s shoulder. "Last night at your apartment…"
Cruz swallowed, Dom released a rough snort. "Busted, Manito."
Nosing a bit of her hair out of the way, Cruz whispered in her ear, "I just needed a little…" He sniffed once before gently pulling the bottom of her earlobe into his mouth.
"Cool it," Dom growled and tried to refocus the two lovers on the screen in front of them. "This shit is real -- no Hollywood special effects."
They waited in silence while the waitress served their food and then Tamsyn pointed at the screen. "So what did this Bad Moon Rising guy tell you about me?"
"Here." Cruz reached across to call up the chat log. He started to run a finger down the text but she brushed his hand impatiently away.
"Dude’s a perv, why’s he want to know if we, uh…" She shifted in her seat and shoved a fry in her mouth, a blush heating her cheeks. She kept reading, leaving the question unfinished. "Or if I’d ever been pregnant?"
She pointed at the 3:50 am post by Bad Moon. "And here. He took five minutes before responding and didn’t really answer your question."
Dom looked at Cruz. "Lag?"
Cruz shook his head, pointing to the quick intervals between the other messages. "Not likely."
Tamsyn popped another fry into her mouth, chewing while she thought it through. "Only lag is this dude trying to come up with a lie."
She scrolled back and forth through the messages -- the exchange of questions, the answers and half-answers. "So he’s saying some women never change? They just keep passing the gene down the line. But he can’t even answer why or what brings it on?"
"He said the real research has only been going on for about a decade, that the technology hasn’t been available and everyone’s too scattered to get a real sample."
She stopped the cursor at the end of the chat log, highlighting the last thing Bad Moon had typed.
Get her to Sanctuary!
"Is that some kind of place?" she asked.
Dom shrugged while Cruz answered, "No place I’ve ever heard of."
Cruz closed the laptop up, shoved it back into the bag. His gaze wandered while they hurriedly finished their meal. He spotted and traced a bundle of wires that ran from behind the cashier’s carrel off to the nearest booth before disappearing into a black box attached to the wall.
"We need some food and water to take up with us." Dom looked at the bill. "Couple days' worth to be on the safe side."
Before they got up from the table, Cruz leaned in to whisper to Tamsyn and Dominic. "Dom, go slow paying the bill. Tamsyn, you think you can block me from the cashier's view?"
"With this body," Tamsyn snorted and gestured at her hips. "No problem."
With Dominic paying the bill, Cruz slipped into the booth next to the register. He had his chin planted in one palm, the perfect picture of boredom while his free hand popped the covering off the restaurant’s Wi-Fi hub. He risked a quick glance at the small plastic box, then coughed once to hide the sound of him sliding the secondary card from the hub and popping the cover back on.
Done.
The three of them casually made their way back to the Ranchero. Inside the cab, Cruz showed them what he’d taken.
"Won’t they know?" Tamsyn asked.
"Not until they fill up with people actually using the Wi-Fi and it tries to route some of the traffic to the second card. Even then, they’ll probably have to call a tech out. Which they won’t do until it fails at least a second time. Probably days before they realize it."
"But why?" This from Dom, who could take the shell of someone’s old Cougar and bring it back to rumbling, purring life, but couldn’t change the ink cartridge in his office printer.
Cruz laughed and tucked his stolen treasure into a plastic sleeve until he could hook it to the laptop. "Bro, out here, they’re essentially using pumped up air cards for the Wi-Fi. How else are we going to find out what -- and where -- Sanctuary is?"
*****
They stopped at a Wal-Mart superstore on their way out of Ajax. Cruz kept watch on Tamsyn, staying close enough to guard her but far enough away that she could shop without embarrassment for any of the things Dom hadn’t given her time to pack. When she was done, they met Dom at one of the self-check-out lanes. Dom had gone heavy on the water and protein and picked up two five gallon gas containers and a car battery.
Tamsyn watched them while they packed everything
into the back of the Ranchero. "Feels like we're shopping for the apocalypse."
"Let’s hope not." Dominic held a spray can in his hand and motioned Cruz to come over to him. "Don’t worry, Manito. It’s not bear spray."
Cruz scowled. "I don’t need bug spray either."
"Better cover your face."
"You’re kidding, right?"
Tamsyn leaned closer to Dominic and read the can he held. "Citronella?"
"Look, little brother, it’s this or five gallons of perfume."
Tamsyn turned to Cruz and took a deep breath. "I can’t smell what you’re talking about, Dominic."
"That’s because you’ve got ovaries...or because you haven’t changed yet. I don't know which it is, but he’s spiked five or six times between the restaurant and Wallie World. You so much as flip your hair or sigh and he spikes."
Cruz cleared his throat, his cheeks coloring as they both looked at him. "I’m standing right here, you know."
"Yes, you are." Dominic smiled, moving in with the can raised, his finger poised on the spray tip while Tamsyn took a few quick steps back from the danger zone.
Cruz groaned as Dominic started spraying. "This is so fucking humiliating."
"You might want to dry a few seconds." Can empty, Dominic tossed the keys to Cruz and climbed into the passenger side of the Ranchero.
Tamsyn went around to the driver’s side and took the middle spot on the bench seat. When Cruz finally slid into the cab, she pressed gently against him while she planted a kiss on his cheek.
"It’s not that bad." She put her hand on Cruz’s knee, only to have Dominic reach across and put it back in her lap.
"Yeah, but it’s not so good that it will hold up to you kissing and patting him."
She flicked a look at Dominic, her nose crinkling. "Kind of weird question, but if this is all because I’m ‘regressive’ or whatever, why don’t you get all smelly around me, Dom?"
Dominic laughed. "I don’t love you, Tam -- not like that."
Tamsyn’s gaze flicked to Cruz, her cheeks flushing the same shade as his. And then she looked back to Dominic, frowning. "But you were in love once. Is it possible that she--"
"No."
