Derek
Derek nodded at the waitress who lifted her coffee pot questioningly. She topped off his mug, but didn’t stay and try to chat again, most likely because he’d seen the way she looked at his eye patch when she’d poured him the first one. He might’ve made it obvious that he didn’t want to talk, didn’t want the questions that were going to follow that sort of gaze.
He had come to the diner because there’d been afree wi-fisign on the window. This was… he squinted at the view outside. Shit, now he wasn’t even sure where he was anymore. Groaning, he went to Google Maps and let the site map his location. Okay, right, he was in northern Wyoming, because he’d wanted to check out a wolf pack that lived there, see if they’d heard anything, because Derek knew Cal had some loose ties to the place.
But he felt it in his bones already; Cal and his son weren’t here. It was a dead end, yet another one in the last nineteen months he’d spent searching.
At first, once he’d realized the Council wouldn’t give him any information—he still felt fucking betrayed by that—he’d spent months calling everyone he knew Cal had ever come into contact with. But no, the cat was gone, and now it was for Derek to find him and his tiny fox son.
Derek sipped his coffee and wondered where the fuck this sudden stubbornness had come from. He’d never been that kind of guy. He’d been resourceful and really good at talking his way out of trouble, hell, that was why he was here and not dead twenty-five years ago like he was supposed to be.
He watched the small town outside the diner window and wondered how it would be to have a home he’d chosen for himself. Part of him wanted to go to Oregon, to go check out the town he’d been ripped away from at seventeen when he’d seen something he shouldn’t have and freaked the fuck out.
He still remembered that night. He’d been driving home from his friend’s place. Damn, he’d been proud of his car. It was a piece of shit old station wagon, but he’d earned the money for it himself by doing odd jobs around his neighborhood and his parents were proud of him.
Around two miles from home, a few miles outside of town, when he’d hit that stretch of road in the middle of the farmlands that seemed endless, and called for more speed, he’d seen something… weird.
A car was coming toward him at an alarming speed which made Derek steer his onto the side of the road and slow to a crawl. It wasn’t unlikely that someone was driving drunk or high, because it was in the middle of nowhere and such a great spot to put your pedal to the metal. Besides, some of the teenagers came there to race one another on weekends.
But then he’d seen that the car was being chased by another one. Somehow, there was no doubt in his mind that was the case. And then first car was close enough that Derek could see the driver, a man. Their eyes met, and at the same exact time, a deer had jumped into the road from the field between them.
The man, horrified, slammed the brakes, his car swerved wildly as he lost control of the vehicle. It hit the back end of Derek’s station wagon and caused it to spin and slide halfway into the ditch.
When Derek’s car had stopped moving, he’d gotten out, and to his shock he saw the other car deep in the ditch, where it had hit the concrete culvert under the field’s access road.
Derek still remembered the panic he’d felt as he ran toward the car, and his confusion when he’d peered inside. The man wasn’t in the car. Instead, a fucking lion was in the driver’s seat, strapped in the seat belt.
Just as the car that had been chasing the man stopped behind Derek, the lion’s body twitched violently, and turned into a dead man.
The ping for an incoming text shook his from his memories. It was from an unknown number, but that wasn’t uncommon, neither was the fact that the whole text consisted of one word.
Finland.
It was time to do more research.
Since he’d been working for the council of shifters all his adult life, Derek knew a thing or two that ninety-eight percent of all other humans didn’t. That meant he could get information easier, even without help from the Council, because for some reason, they weren’t very forthcoming in his attempts at finding Cal.
Derek understood, though. He did. The privacy of shifters was of utmost importance to keep them hidden. Besides, he couldn’t tell themwhyhe was looking for Cal anyway. Hell, he wasn’t sure they would’ve given him details even if hehadtold them.
So there he was, sitting on a train somewhere in Finland, heading toward a small town somewhere near the Russian border in the east, and well, he felt a little bit lost.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t been in Finland before. No, in fact, he felt okay being in a new country where most people he’d spoken to on his way had immediately switched to English when they’d realized he couldn’t speak Finnish. He didn’t feel awkward like he had in some other countries he’d visited on his search.
The feeling of being lost came from the whole situation with Cal. He didn’t know how Cal was at the moment, but he could make some guesses. Especially with the Council being so secretive, something had to be amiss. Derek just hoped it wasn’t anything too bad, anything that couldn’t be fixed.
Somehow, he’d managed to snatch a spot in a two-person compartment. There was a full four-person one on the other side of the train car, but for some reason nobody joined Derek in his. He enjoyed the peace and quiet such as it was, and napped on and off for a couple of hours, then went to grab a bite to eat in the restaurant car.
He felt glad he didn’t have a headache. He’d gotten a lot of those in the last couple of years. Spending a lot of time on the computer brought that on easily, as did driving for extended periods. He still could do both, but he knew that eye strain was a reality he had to deal with now.
At the final station, he switched from the Inter City train into a slower regional train that was packed to the rafters, to his utter surprise. Derek managed to find a seat next to a young guy who was listening to music with his large, probably noise-canceling headphones.
Across the aisle from them was a four seats unit with two seats facing another two. They were occupied by a pregnant woman and her two little girls, and one very large bag.
At first, the little ones kept giving Derek funny looks, and the younger one even pointed at his face and asked their mom something. She seemed to have an honest discussion with her, because the girl then turned back to Derek, smiled at him, and began to bother her sister once more.
The mother gave Derek a smile, too, but it wasn’t one of those I’m-so-sorry-for-you ones he was so used to. Having a visible disability could be annoying as hell, but so far he hadn’t had any negative experiences here.
The girls were chatty and kept commenting on things they saw out the window, or so Derek thought based on the pointing and gesturing at their mother.
