“There was a Transformers night at Spook School. I liked that. And the Star Trek marathon.”
The green car behind us cut off a driver and passed another, and was suddenly speeding toward us. The windows on both sides came down. Something stuck out the passenger window. “Occam? Are we being followed?”
“See the little green car, do you?”
“And what might be a gun hanging out the passenger window.”
Occam took another turn, a hard left, across traffic, without the use of his blinker. Vehicles swerved to avoid us. Horns blew. Traffic on the four-lane road snarled. The green car behind us fishtailed trying to follow our turn.
We were in trouble.
“Call it in.”
I tightened my seat belt and pulled out my cell. I punched in 911 and, on the car’s computer, I pulled up a map and our GPS location. My heart pounded, my breath came fast and hard, cold as death in my lungs. Hands shaking, I gave the 911 operator our twenty and our situation. I asked for the sheriff’s department and the highway patrol. Then I re-called Rick and put him on speaker as it rang. “Rick, we’re in trouble,” I said as he answered.
The green car was gaining on us, despite the speed of the sportster. To Occam, I said, “Passenger window means they’ll shoot you first and take me down after we crash.”
“What?” Rick demanded.
Occam took a hard right, tires squealing, slinging me back and forth. I grunted, my breath catching. The seat belt strained my ribs on one side and the door bruised me on the other. On the car’s computer screen, the map showed us off into no roads at all. Green screen. And the condition of the street confirmed it. It hadn’t been paved in years. Occam put his foot flat to the floor. The small car’s engine roared. The road vibrated beneath us. Trees and pasture and a trailer park flew by. We passed a rusted truck so fast it was a blur. Rick was shouting. And suddenly I knew where we were. On a street bordering the property where the pond incident took place, coming at it from the other direction. One turn and we would be at the entrance. Why had Occam brought us here? And then I knew. Woods and hills and places to hide. I opened my one-day gobag and got out gear. Shoved it into pockets, telling Rick what was happening.
In the rearview, the green car followed us, far back, spinning out on the turn, the tires blowing black smoke. Occam cursed, but his eyes were glowing golden. His human half might be unhappy, but his cat was having fun.The full moon. We were close to the full moon. He wanted to be in the woods. We took a hard left and he accelerated on the straightaway, the car clearly built for speed. “Rick,” he growled and tossed his earbuds to the floor. “Nell, sugar. We’ll be running in the woods.”
“Woods?” Rick asked, his voice rising. “Where are you?”
“We’re at the pond,” I shouted to the cell.
Occam took the turn into the two-rut drive hard. The car tilted. Up on two wheels. Bounced back down. The landing hurt. The car made strange sounds. Occam laughed. Tires spat gravel and dust as it fishtailed down the dirt road. The sports car wasn’t made for dirt. We raced past the pond, past the tree where the wildlife camera had been mounted. Occam slung the car around the pond on no road at all, through mud I’m pretty sure we skated over, and into a small space behind the old, kudzu-covered buildings I had seen before. He braked so hard the car spun and bounced on its tires. My teeth clacked, and I bit my tongue.
Occam leaned across me to open my door. He stopped, his hand inches from the handle. “Nell?” he growled. His glowing eyes were latched onto my face. I tasted blood.
I whacked him on the head with my cell. He blinked and jerked away. “I bit my tongue, you damn cat. I am not dinner.”
Occam blinked again and the gold glow in his eyes began to mist away.
I glanced back and got a good look at the pond. It was different. Its surface was black and oily and... not just water. Not anymore. Though what it was I didn’t know. In the distance I heard a car coming down the dirt drive. “Out!” I opened my door and slid from the seat belt. “They’ll know we had to stop and they’ll have to get us fast and get out. Rick. Make sure help is on the way!” I wiped my nose and mouth with a wrist and tucked my cell into a pocket, still connected to Rick. I hoped. I pulled my service weapon.
Leaving the door open, I raced into the woods, full pockets banging on my sides. Occam followed and pulled even with me. Together we leaped a downed tree and sprinted into an area that was all pine, in rows. A false forest of nothing but lumber. The underbrush had been burned out over the summer, the trunks blackened with soot. There was no scrub, no place to hide.
“Nell?” Occam darted ahead and said. “This way. We need to get back to the road.”
“Why? What good would that do us? We need a place to hide, where we’uns are protected and they ain’t. Where we can shoot from and they can’t hit us.”
I opened my senses. I stopped and dropped to one knee, and rubbed the mouth blood on my wrist onto the ground. Offering it something of me. Knowing it was stupid, this close to the pond and the circular magics. I would never have done it except we were in danger and I had no time to do anything else. Behind us, the chasing engine roared and tires spun.
Through the smear of my blood, I pushed down. Sent a single tendril of consciousness into the earth. The forest was lazy and spoiled and sleepy, roots narrow and twisted. But blood calls to blood, and I felt the blood of deer, old and dried. Somewhere ahead, several deer had been gutted and the remains left to the forest scavengers. Close by was a boulder rounded up, big and humped and even more massive belowground.
Beneath the earth, something shimmered and shifted toward me. I broke away and stood quickly. “This way.” The car braked hard behind us.
We sprinted along an open area between trees, Occam on my trail. A door slammed behind us. Another. They were in the woods. I could feel their feet stomping on the ground as they ran. They would have weapons. Guns. “We have two choices,” I said, my voice low and breathy from the run. “A deer stand or some big rocks.”
“Three choices,” he replied, his voice guttural. I glanced his way to see his eyes were solid gold. There was a golden brown scruff on his cheeks and inch-long whiskers beside his nose. Occam was changing on the run, which I had never heard was even possible.
The rocks were visible just ahead. I aimed my body directly at them. Slowed and bent to pick up a stick. And then pounded up the boulders at a run, the glacier-smoothed stone making it a hard climb, on all fours, though Occam made it look graceful and easy. There was a crevice... there.
I halted, dropped flat, and used the stick to reach in and hook a rattler hibernating in the rocks. I threw it at the ground below me. Occam growled at the sight. I threw another one. And the last one. They hissed and spat and slithered away fast for cold snakes. I wiped my mouth again and put my bloodied wrist on the stone. There were no more snakes. I leaped into the crevice, which hid me perfectly, while giving me a good vantage to shoot from, about elbow high. But there was only room for one. “You said we had three choices, and no way am I sharing a hidey-hole with a werecat and me bleeding like a stuck pig.”
Occam chuffed. He was shirtless and his shoes were somewhere else, behind us. His feet were paw shaped.
