Ch. 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
~Avery:
A few hours after waking up all disoriented in the car to realize Drake was alive, we were on foot heading to a corner store to buy a burner phone and some snacks. We had ditched the car, Drake adding tons of mud and such trying to cover the ‘scent’ as best we could, before we moved on. I still had a moderate amount of cash on me but we needed to be strategic about what we spent on now. Otherwise I’d need to use other means to get cash, and I really didn’t want to mess with my magic right now.
Drake held the door open for me as we made it to the corner, I walked up and down two aisles with him pretty much glued to my side. I stopped before the phones and gave him a small glare. My stance is firm. I don’t want to say anything aloud here about backing off - but dan dude - give a girl some space.
He looked back at me, mouth twisted like he wasn’t impressed with what I was signaling. He just brought his feet together, crossed his arms, and looked back at me.
Okay. Fine. Ugh. This man…
I turned back and picked up a phone then continued down and to the next aisle, snatching a bag of M&Ms.
“You are not getting that,” he scoffed, looking at the peanut butter flavor M&Ms in my hand.
I raised a brow at him, “I’ll get whatever I dan well please.”
The look on his face had me grinning all the way to the check stand. I put the items on the counter, checking once more that no one was around other than the checker.
“You’ll forget you saw us,” I began, letting just a touch of magic into my words. This easy going guy didn’t seem to need any more of it than the bare minimum. “Do your security cameras record? How long do they save?”
“Uh, I -,” he stumbles before saying, “They save up to 24 hours before they are deleted.”
A hand slammed down in front of me on the counter, making me lose my concentration. I felt my magic flicker and I grasped hold of it before it dropped all the way down.
“This too,” Drake grumbles.
I glance at what is in his hand and chuckle, “Really?”
He just looks back at me, totally serious.
“You will forget you saw us, you will go delete today’s recording and not remember doing so,” I commanded as the store clerk just stared back at me with dead eyes.
“Now grab your nonsense and let’s go,” I mumbled to Drake as I took my items off the counter, leaving behind enough for all three things.
Back outside we headed into a treeline to regroup so I could contact my fake ID connections. My steps hit some loose gravel accentuating how loud I already felt around Drake. Fumbling to open my candy I looked up to see Drake already smiling, popping his peanut M&Ms in his mouth one at a time, crunching each down with a dramatic first bite.
“So what was so funny about my choice exactly?” I ask him as I tear open the bag with my teeth.
“They’re just bad Reese’s Pieces. Peanut M&Ms are supreme,” he said simply, a mischievous crinkle to his eyes.
“Yeah I’m just not seeing the difference,” I quipped back, crunching an M&M dramatically in imitation.
The chuckle he let out had my heart soaring. I want to see that, hear that, all the time. I need more of that. The dark, sly, sarcastic, unsure guy letting go and laughing like this… I mean, I made him laugh like this - me.
Oh god I’m in trouble.
After our fourth hitchhiked ride we were right outside Ashley National Forest, meeting up with some shady young teen. She pulled up in a carpet cleaning van, did her thing and left, taking the very last of our cash. She’d been more expensive then I’d budgeted for, but she had us over a barrel, there was no other alternative I could find as fast.
“Tanner Winters. I mean - really? How would I ever pass as a ‘Tanner’?” Drake teased me, waving a hand at himself.
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied, waving him off. Holding back the total ga-ga way I wanted to just stare at him. “So… we need to figure out how we’re going to get some more cash. We need a place to stay before we cross the border tomorrow.”
“I mean, I could always do it Dane’s way…” he suggested with a shrug.
“Yeah, I don’t think we should be attracting attention like that,” I said back with an unimpressed tone.
I thought for a minute as we ate our individual candies.
“Well, it’s going to have to be me. And I know we’re in a hurry…” I noted his grim expression. “But I want to try to find the right person to take from… Do you know what I mean?”
He shifted his stance and let out a long exhale, “Yeah. I get it… But we need to find them now, we need to get some sleep and head out early… So how’s about taking an hour?”
“I can work with that,” I agreed. “Let’s start with a good place to find seedy characters - a bar.” I walked past him with an amused look.
“We met at a bar, Freckles,” Drake said dryly.
“I said what I said,” I sing-songy declared ahead, holding back laughter.
“A cheeky one,” A low voice that sounded something like Drake’s comment. “We like that.”
I looked back to see black eyes looking back at me with a predatory gaze that made me warm all over. Gulping all my rising feelings down, I just grinned and turned back once more, a little viciousness seeping through. I’m someone dangerous too, wolfie.
We found some generic scumbag with a penchant for wearing tacky expensive jewelry and showing off to women he tried to pick up. So I wasn’t all that surprised when he had a few hundred dollar’s worth of cash in his wallet. The next guy we found randomly. I didn’t really need anything else for now, but the moment he walked by with his blazing dark aura I knew what I needed to do. Total skeeze. Guy pretty much lived at the local strip club and harassed every one of those ladies.
So on top of taking his cash, I commanded him very specifically on how to change his ways. I’d never done anything like that before and I was still trying to wrap my head around it. I normally just blazed in, blood spilled, and I cured the world of another scourge - but was this something else? Was this something I could do more of? It was odd not having my magic move up and down like a flame, at the flick of a second. Instead it was like a buoy. It bobbed a little bit, but it didn’t feel… as wild? I don’t know how to explain it…
“What’s going on in there?” Drake said in a husky tone, examining my face closely.
“Nothing,” I dismissed.
I didn’t want to get into all of these differences with him. Not when he is supposedly the cause. Is this what that Goddess meant in that dream - that he could really be the key to controlling my magic? Could I really get to the point that it didn’t just consume me at the drop of a hat?
“Right…” he said, displeased, leaning back on his heels. He threw his small bag on the couch. “Well I’ll take the couch I guess.”
Jeez. That was different. Usually so full of quips and confidence, this was a very different Drake to look at.
Wordlessly I went to the bathroom to wash my face and change, and by the time I got back out he was still facing away from me.
I put the television on for some background noise and lie back in the bed trying to sort it all out again. Mates, a Goddess, these Lycaon, the changes in my magic - my control over it and new weird uses. It played like a trailer in my mind as I looked up at the ceiling, losing myself in the darkness and flickering light.
I woke up about three hours later, my head pounding. My neck hurts and I feel like I must’ve slept in some terrible position. I look over to see Drake sprawled on the couch, now totally on his back, one arm covering his face, a soft snore coming from him as his chest filled and exhaled. His weird attitude last night came back to me but my head hurt too much to spend much time thinking about it right now.
The room felt stuffy between some weird shift in Drake - and the strong heat in the motel room. I forced myself up to look for some relief. I first went to the thermostat to be shocked that it was set to in the high 70s. It had to be him, there’s no way a motel would pre-set to such a high temperature. How was he not sweating to death over there? How cold did he think I could get?
I rubbed my neck and shoulder trying to loosen whatever was giving me pain, to no avail. Remembering some pain medicine in my bag I walked over as quietly as I could and swallowed it down dry, fighting the gag that tried to fight it.
Air. I need air. I shoved my feet in my only pair of shoes, grabbed a jacket just in case, and ever so slowly opened the door. A few critters could be heard in the trees but other than that, the entire world was dark and quiet out here.
I moved down to the steps, sitting there, taking in deep breaths of the cold morning air. A shiver went through me and I pulled my jacket on before my head shot up.
My eyes narrowed. It seemed like an aura, a dark one, but just as quickly as it came into vision it disappeared. Maybe someone is passing by way out there?
Something didn’t sit right with me though. In that second I froze, realizing the area had gone totally silent, no critters anymore. If anything there should be more out as it got closer to sunrise. Hair stood on end and my internal alarm was blaring. I got up slowly, trying to move normally in case I was being watched. I needed to make my way back to the room, I needed to warn him.
Something sharp poked my back.
“Well, lass, you are one hard prey to catch,” a deep voice said behind me.
I opened my mouth to command, but he was lighting fast. A hand clamped over my mouth, with something there - a cloth maybe.
I tried not to breathe while I swung an elbow straight back, but to my distress, another figure was there, catching it mid-swing.
‘Drake!’ I screamed in my mind like he could hear me.
And I kept screaming in my mind until it all went dark.