by Dean Murray
"So I've seen the living room, the armory, the weight room and the computer room. I think I've been in pretty much every room in your house, but I still haven't seen your bedroom. Do you have it hidden behind a secret passageway somewhere?"
Ash rolled his eyes at me which made me grin.
"No, actually you're sleeping in it. The futon in the study serves perfectly well for the couple of hours I need each night."
I opened my mouth to apologize for kicking him out of his own bed, but he shook his head.
"Kristin, it's not a big deal. Really. You need more sleep than I do, so it made the most sense to put you back there where you have half a chance of getting a decent night's sleep. This means that once I'm awake I can log on and get to work without disturbing you."
"We at least need to work out a shower schedule. Even if you are a superhero you'll still need the occasional shower."
His smile and nod was all the agreement I needed, but I noted it only with half my attention. I'd already started wondering how to ask him the logical question without touching a nerve.
"So you don't need much sleep. Is that a shape shifter thing or do you just go in for sleep deprivation?"
"Nope, it's a shape shifter thing. None of us need more than two or three hours' worth of sleep per night. We also seem to be able to function for longer blocks of time without sleep than normal humans. Still, there are limits and operating in an impaired state is a good way to get yourself killed."
"Which is why you stopped at a motel that first night. You needed sleep."
"Yes. I am sorry by the way for taping you up. It was the only way I could think of to keep you from calling the cops."
I shrugged. "It was a bit psycho at the time, but you were right. I was lying. I would have made a break for it the first chance I got."
"I know. When you can hear someone's heartbeat and smell their body temperature rising it's pretty easy to tell when they are lying."
That was the opening I needed.
"So what else should I know about you shape shifters to survive in your crazy world?"
"That's kind of a broad question. You already know quite a bit. Stay out of South America. It's a beautiful place with millions of really nice people and some amazing food, but you're much more likely to run into a real piece of work like Anton there than you are anywhere else."
I shook my head at the food reference, and Ash smiled and continued preparing lunch, which was looking decidedly Mexican.
"Physically you're going to be outclassed at every turn. With random muggers and the like it's pretty easy for me to give you the tools you need to come out on top, even with your bare hands. With the…unusual threats out there, you'll always be outclassed to some extent or another."
The tortillas that Ash pulled out of the freezer weren't homemade, but I could already feel my mouth starting to water.
"With shape shifters in some ways you've got a leg up. We're faster and stronger than you are before we shift, but that really gets amplified when we change forms. Since we're completely outclassed by another shape shifter who's changed forms if we haven't, most of us shift instinctively."
I could feel a thread starting to develop there.
"So if I'm fast I could take a shape shifter down before they shift, or as they shift."
"Exactly. It's a tricky proposition because you aren't always going to know what you're up against and you don't want to go around shooting people at the slightest provocation, but if you know what you're up against and they don't, you stand a chance."
The rice was already in the rice cooker and Ash had moved onto cutting up vegetables. He was fast, but I suspected it had more to do with a closet love of cooking than with his super human abilities.
"The other thing to remember with wolves at least is that the most powerful ones, the hybrids, sometimes manifest other abilities, and that can make them even more dangerous."
"What kind of abilities?"
"Short-term compulsion, healing so fast you can almost see the wounds disappear, the ability to enter someone's dreams. There really isn't any kind of rulebook there other than that the abilities tend to only bend the laws of physics a little rather than shattering them."
"So no laser beams from their eyes?"
"Correct, but spontaneous combustion from twenty or thirty feet away isn't outside of the realm of possibility."
I suppressed a shiver. "This isn't the kind of thing designed to give you a peaceful night's sleep."
Ash shrugged. "If you dwell too much on the bad things that could happen you'll go crazy either way. Shape shifters and vampires don't fundamentally change that equation. You just do what you can to make sure you're a lower-profile target, prepare as much as you can, and then hope for a bit of luck."
"OK, what about vampires? What should I know about them?"
"Shape shifters are dangerous, but it's a bit like anyone else. There are good ones and bad ones, and the good ones don't have any reason to hurt you. Vampires on the other hand were designed to be the top of the food chain. They feed on humans, so good, bad, either way you're still at risk from them."
"So pretty much just faster and stronger than normal humans, plus a permanent case of the blood munchies?"
I got a brief smile for my effort as Ash started cooking the vegetables.
"Pretty much, but you have to also add in the fact that they seem to develop abilities as they age, and nobody's ever been able to really pin down how long they live for."
"What, like they are immortal?"
I got another shrug.
"Personally I doubt it. Organic organisms aren't really designed to last forever. On the other hand, shape shifters have a life expectancy three to four times as long as your average human. It's not impossible that vampires could live for hundreds or even thousands of years. There does seem to be evidence though that the abilities vampires develop tend to become stronger with age."
"What kind of abilities?"
"Telekinesis, telepathy and pyrokinesis. For the most part they are of limited use, but I do have the occasional worry that I'll run up against a thousand-year-old vampire elder, if such a thing exists."
I felt my stomach knot up. It really wasn't the kind of thing that I should be dwelling on right now.
Chapter 10
I hadn't been kidding when I'd called Ash's gun room an armory. Not that I was an expert or anything, but he had weapons back there I'd never even heard of. To be honest I hadn't realized there were so many different kinds of guns in the world. Even crazier was that it seemed like there were almost as many different kinds of bullets as there were firearms.
Ash showed me bullets that were nearly six inches long and bigger around than my thumb. Others were so small in comparison that it was almost hard to believe they were capable of actually killing someone.
The guns ranged from small ones meant to be concealed in unlikely places to long rifles that I could barely pick up. Ash picked up a couple of the handguns and then handed me two boxes of ammunition and a couple of cylinders.
As we left the house I realized it was the first time that I'd been outside since arriving.
"Where are we going?"
"There's a ravine a little ways over that I use as my range."
"Doesn't shooting kind of announce the presence of your secret hideout?"
I got a serious eye-roll from him.
"You're holding nearly two thousand dollars' worth of sound suppressor there. It doesn't make the sound go away, but it reduces it substantially and also tends to make it into something people don't recognize as gunfire. I wouldn't do sustained practice with rifles out here, but we shouldn't have any problems when it comes to a couple of pistols."
The range turned out to only be ten minutes away. Ash efficiently put a number of paper plates up on various natural-looking stands and then ran me through gun safety one more time. Five minutes later the silencer had been screwed onto the end of the smaller gun and I was squeezing the trigg
er for the first time since I'd shot at Anton.
It was actually fun. I quickly got into the groove of things—firing off ten rounds and then pausing to let Ash critique my form. Apparently I was a natural. At least I thought I was until I managed to convince him to take a turn. He fired ten shots off so quickly they sounded like a machine gun and drilled a many-lobed hole in the center of one of the paper plates.
"Wow, you're really good!"
"I've been doing this for years. You're already doing really well for a beginner, and you'll get better as time goes on. Just remember that if you're actually in a position where you need to shoot someone you'll want to get the shots off quickly, but don't rush them so much that you miss altogether."
I nodded, and apparently had passed some test because Ash screwed the silencer onto the second gun.
"This is a nine millimeter. It's a little bigger and heavier of a bullet so you'll notice it has a bit more recoil, but it's nothing to be scared of. There's lots of debate out there around how big of a bullet you need to stop a person. Ultimately if you're packing with the intent of stopping someone like Anton you're going to want to carry something at least this heavy."
He was right, it did kick more than the other gun, but it was still doable and this time I focused on getting the shots off more quickly, squeezing the trigger each time the sights lined back up with the plate but not taking the time to try and hit the exact center.
I still wasn't anywhere near Ash's league, but I could tell I was getting better, and for the first time since Anton had pulled me out of the TacoHut I actually felt like I had a chance of protecting myself.
Ash let me shoot through a hundred rounds or so before calling an end to shooting practice.
"Good job. Are you ready to learn how to clean them?"
Clean them I did. Once I was done with that Ash started me in on knife fighting and then we finished the day off with more strength and flexibility training. I was so exhausted by the time he got done with me that I laboriously worked my way through dinner and then collapsed into bed for the third night in a row, too tired to carry on any kind of conversation, and fairly certain I was too tired to dream.
I was wrong. Shortly after I nodded off I found myself back inside the kitchen, sitting on one of the barstools as Ash set a cupcake in front of me and lit the single candle he'd scrounged up from somewhere.
It was the oddest dream I'd experienced yet. I could tell we were talking, could feel my mouth moving even, but I couldn't hear a thing. Instead of getting frustrated at my inability to hear, I chose to dwell on Ash. He looked the most relaxed I'd ever seen him. The jeans from our escape had been replaced with some kind of thick cargo pants and a skintight tee-shirt.
I must have managed to say something witty, because he smiled. I felt myself lean forward and take his hand. It was the kind of thing I'd never actually have the guts to do in real life, but I was doing it. I reveled in the feel of his skin against mine, but it had altered his mood for the worse. I said something else, but he was pulling back now. It was too late to salvage the situation.
He shook his head, and I opened my mouth to say one more thing when Anton kicked the door open. It should have been impossible. We'd gone days since our last encounter and covered thousands of miles. It was impossible, but he was there somehow, streaking across the room with inhuman speed.
Ash had produced a gun from somewhere, but as fast as he was, he only got one shot off before Anton was on him. I stumbled backwards, but there wasn't anything I could do. I didn't have a knife, a gun, or anything else that would give me even a chance of hurting Anton.
Anton threw Ash into the stainless steel refrigerator hard enough to crumple in the doors. Ash had a knife out before he hit the ground, but Anton was faster still. Two jagged streaks appeared on Anton's chest, but he had a knife too and it was sticking out of Ash's chest.
Ash looked up at me with those achingly beautiful gray eyes and I saw the pain in them balanced by a refusal to quit, but it didn't matter. Ash's will was the equal of anyone I'd ever met, but in this instance will wasn't enough. A heartbeat before the light in his eyes was extinguished I woke up sobbing.
Moving back into the real world left me disoriented, but even in my hysterical state I could feel Ash's arms around me.
"It's just a dream, Kristin. I'm here and I won't let anything happen to you."
I turned over and cried into his chest for nearly half an hour before I finally calmed down. It wasn't that I was scared, or at least not just that I'd been scared. I'd seen Ash die only seconds ago, and it had been even harder to deal with than I'd expected.
Even once I was awake and knew it had only been a dream I still couldn't shake the experience. It had been more vivid than any other dream I'd ever had and even though I knew I was over-reacting I just couldn't get all of the blood and violence out of my head.
As I finally got control of my breathing Ash blotted away the last of my tears with his hand.
"Are you going to be OK?"
"Yeah. I think so. How's that for overreacting? Some student I turned out to be."
Ash shook his head. "You've been through a lot and you weren't prepared or anticipating any of it. You're probably suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. You don't need to feel bad about any of it."
That made a lot more sense and I felt myself starting to relax back into his arms.
"Thanks for understanding."
His smile was barely visible in the soft light of the digital clock on the side table, but it made my insides jump.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really—not in any depth at least. It was another Anton dream and a pretty bad one. We weren't going to get away from him this time."
Ash pulled me closer and smoothed my hair down.
"We're relatively safe from him now."
"Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel better."
I managed to inject the sarcasm with enough playfulness to take some of the sting out. Honestly I was surprised I was up to sarcasm so quickly, but I guess it was my natural defense mechanism. Here, awake in Ash's arms, it was all starting to seem silly. There was no conceivable way for Anton to find us. We were out in the middle of nowhere and he'd have lost our trail several states back. We were safe.
"I just don't want to make light of your concerns. We've taken every precaution that I could think of. I won't say that it's impossible for him to find us, but the possibility is fairly remote."
I nodded, but I knew he was mostly just temporizing because that was his nature. He'd always keep an awareness of the fact that no matter how unlikely the odds were, there was still the possibility that his plans could not go off like he wanted them to. It was something I'd noticed already a couple of times in the last couple of days as he'd been training me.
Ash made as if to leave now that I'd calmed down, but I tightened my grip on him, wordlessly letting him know how much I wanted him to stay. Ash tried to hide it, but by now I knew that he was one of those genuinely good guys who just had a hard time not doing the right thing in any given situation.
It was possible he stayed with me until I fell back asleep, just because he knew I needed to be comforted, but I hoped it was because he wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him.
**
I'd expected Ash to be gone when I woke up, but he was still there, arms wrapped around me, when the morning light pulled me awake again.
"Good morning."
I spared a moment to hope that I didn't look too hideous and that my breath wasn't too bad before deciding he'd seen me in a worse state than this more than once while we'd been running away from Anton.
"Hi. Sorry that I lost it so bad last night."
"Don't worry about it. Like I said last night, you've been through a lot."
I hadn't realized it last night, but Ash was shirtless again. I felt my face heat up, but Ash rolled out of the bed before I could say anything.
"I'll leav
e you to get ready for the day. Let me know if you need anything."
Breakfast wasn't anything fancy, but Ash had a bowl, spoon, milk and some cold cereal out on the counter waiting for me when I exited his room.
"So what's with the blackout curtains?"
"Secrecy. If you want to keep your location hidden then turning on a light when it's dark outside is a really bad idea. For most of the house I didn't worry about it. My night vision is really good, so I can go from room to room without turning on the lights. Sometimes I like to read a book at night though so I put blackout curtains in my bedroom and in the study."
It was of course completely logical. I'd long since figured out that everything Ash did had a good reason behind it, but that didn't make it any less worthwhile to find out what those reasons were.
"What's the plan for today?"
"More theory. Then we'll do some target practice, more knife skills and then strength and flexibility."
"So essentially the same thing as yesterday?"
"Rome wasn't built in a day, Kristin, and compared to this that is a cakewalk."
Ash's smile took the sting out of the comment. I shook my head and then dug in and got started on my breakfast.
The range was the high point of the afternoon. I still had a long way to go, but I was legitimately getting better. I was far and away doing better with a firearm than a knife, but I consoled myself by remembering that I was very unlikely to ever come out on top in a knife fight regardless of how good I got. A gun apparently was still the great equalizer.
Still, as we finished running through the last set of attacks and counters with the plastic knives that Ash had dug up from somewhere, I found myself reluctant to hand him the prop.
"Is everything OK?"
"Yes. I mean no, but I'm just being silly. It felt really good to have a gun in my hand earlier. I thought it was because I'm getting better, but now that we're done with the knives the thought of giving even this useless thing back to you is leaving me feeling naked."
I'd half expected Ash to laugh at me, but instead he seemed to consider my words for several seconds before nodding.
