Keegan must have been smiling, I could hear it in his voice. “Let’s getinside.”
The front door opened and then closed again; I released the breath I had been holding. Wow. The druid hate with the pack was legit. Dammit, Mom, why couldn’t you have been asorcerer?
After closing the window, I padded quietly to the roof and peeked slowly over, relieved to find no one on the porch and the curtains pulledshut.
The next maneuver was going to hurt like hell. I needed to hang off the roof as much as I could and jump the rest of the way onto the crushed rocks while wearing only socks. I was betting on my regenerative healing thing still working, because my feet were going to bruise and be cut to shit. I gradually lowered myself down, increasingly aware of how inadequate my upper arm strength was. And as I was hanging from the roof’s edge with only about four feet left to the ground, I looked up at Logan’sroom.
I had to admit that leaving him felt wrong. My dragon was restless inside of me, probably because she knew Logan was safe. But when he found out what I actually was … I couldn’t bear to see the look on hisface.
I took one last deep breath and let go. I fell for longer than I thought, then my feet hit the hard-crushed gravel below and I had to bite down the whimper that wanted to leave my throat as pain shot up the pads of my feet and into my shins.Mother fricker, crap on fire!I bit my knuckle to release some of the tension that was making its way out of me, and just stood there for a minute letting the adrenaline pulse throughme.
When I finally felt calm enough, I began walking. It was the most painful walk I had ever taken, but with shifter hearing I didn’t dare put on my shoes. Shoes crunched. Bare sock feet were much easier to control noise. By the time I got to my car, I was sweating lightly from the pain. I was far enough from the house now that I put my shoes on. They hurt and I saw little droplets of blood through my socks, but I had to ignore it and just keep going. Luckily, my car had been parked farthest from the house, because I never went anywhere. Everyone else did the shopping, so I was able to throw it in neutral and push it back down the long driveway. Normally, pushing my car over forty feet might have me winded, but I felt fine. Supernatural perk Iguessed.
When I had pushed the car off into the road enough that I was sure the headlights wouldn’t light up the house, I jumped in and turned it on. The engine roared to life and I flinched, but the house stayed dark. I hit the road then, heading fast down the lane, thoughts racing through my head. I was a half dragon, half druid on the run from the only people who had ever promised to protectme.
Shit, it was a recipe for disaster, but so had been much oflife.
11
IKNEWI wouldn’t be able to use my credit cards once on the road or Eva could track me. Her guy had found my bank accounts with just my first and last legal name, so that was out. Instead, I went to the ATM in town and withdrew a thousand bucks, which was all it would let me. I could live off a grand for a long time. Long enough to get a fake ID with a new name and transfer the money into a new account. Worst case, I could take another one of my scales and try to sell it where I was going, but that was too risky, and a last-case scenario. I settled into the drive, putting on loud music to keep myself awake, and kept a bag of chips handy forsnacking.
* * *
Iwassix and a half hours into my drive to San Clemente, California, and had only about an hour left. But I was dozing off. It was like 4 AM and I was dead tired. Still, I kept thinking that the pack could be right behind me, assuming they could smell my trail or something crazy. Would it be so bad if they caught up tome?
I shook my head of those thoughts. Yes, it would, because I was everything they hated. No one wanted to swear their allegiance to a monster. I hit the pedal and kept driving. About five minutes passed and I started going over the bumps that were meant to wake up sleeping truckers. It was time to pull off and sleep a few hours. I was no good in thiscondition.
I pulled off the next exit and was pleased to see it was a well-lit and popular truck stop. As a seasoned car sleeper, I knew these places were a goldmine. They had food, hot showers, and security guards. I pulled my little SUV to the far back parking space and turned it off, slipping the keys into the cup holder. Making sure all of the doors were locked, I crawled into the back seat, where my sleeping bag and pillow were still spread out from the last time I’d slept in there. God, it felt like a lifetime ago I had been sleeping in the car. Before the fall … before …Logan…
Those green eyes seemed to look right through me. They were the last thing I thought of before I drifted off tosleep.
* * *
Iwas awokento the bright sunshine beating on my face and I bolted upright, heart in my throat, and stared at the clock: 9 A.M. I’d gotten five hours of sleep, but Logan and the pack could also be right on top of me. There were more of them, so they could sleep in shifts. If I was being honest with myself, I felt awful for leaving them like this; no doubt they were freaking out. But once Eva told them what I was and I changed my bank account, I knew they would settle back into their old ways, forget about me. I shouldered my backpack and then got out of the car, stretching my legs and neck. Car sleeping wasn’t the best for my back but it was safe, warm, andfree.
After having a quick shower and putting on fresh clothes, I stocked up on coffee and breakfast pastries. I needed to figure out a way to find a powerful sorcerer like Eva that could keep Eva and Danny from searching for me. Some kind of hidden spell. But that would require me knowing even one supernatural in San Clemente, and Ididn’t.
I opened the door to leave the gas station when I got a whiff of … dog … to my left. There were two young girls, maybe eighteen years old, smoking cigarettes, leaning up against the wall. It was hard to tell with the cigarette smoke, but they smelled like shifters. Wolf shifters. Like me. Or at least what I smelled like to them. As I passed, they locked eyes on me, nostrils flaring, and gave me a respectful nod. I nodded back but stopped. Maybe these girls would have my sorcerer contact. Or they were human and would think I wascrazy.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “Hey, girls. I’m from out of town and I need…” I paused, not able to bring myself to say it. What if my nose was wrong and they werehuman?
One of the girls, who had an obscene amount of glitter eye shadow and a nose ring, smiled wide. “You need a hook up? Sorcerer, shifter, ordruid?”
I must have looked shocked, because the girls both smiled at eachother.
“Sorcerer,” I told them. NO druidsplease.
The girl shrugged. “I don’t give information out for free yaknow.”
I tried to suppress a growl as I pulled out twenty bucks. Little hustlers. I didn’t want to contribute to their lung cancer foundation, but there was no sense in running from the pack if Eva could findme.
The girl snatched the twenty. “There’s a bar called Moon Dust. Ask for Jeanine. She’ll hook you up with whatever you need. She’s apureblood.”
Pureblood. That name made me sick, but I knew it meant that Jeanine was a powerful sorcerer and that’s what Ineeded.
“Thanks,” I told the girls, and headed to mycar.
Now I just needed to stay out of trouble until nightfall, find this sorcerer, and then I was home free. Back to my old life where no one would gethurt.
