Six rules undying book 2, p.32
Six (Rules Undying Book 2), page 32
“I never thought of it that way,” Paige said.
“You had your first change really fast. It’s like you’re a shape-shifting savant.”
“Well, my guidance counselors always said that I was still searching for what I was truly good at. I never thought to bite a werewolf when I was applying for college.”
“Well, you didn’t have a traditional werewolf transformation. You had no one to help you and probably had the shit scared out of you.
That much adrenaline was like a nitrous boost. Throw in a little vampire blood, and boom!”
“I’m not superwoman,” Paige muttered. “I punch like a girl and don’t have any real desire to kick anyone’s ass, so what do I do?”
“If you’re interested in the recreational pharmaceutical industry, I’m always looking for talent,” Billy offered. He ran his finger along one of the lines in his book. That sent him diving to another tome. He showed Paige a drawing of a man in a mask howling at the moon.
“Joshua Two-Tails,” he read.
“Who was he?”
“He was the greatest skinwalker in all of the Arizona and New Mexico territories. Legend has it that he single-handedly kept the vampires out of the Wild West. If you listen to Irvine, he’s the werewolf that we’re all descended from, but there has never been any proof.”
“They say he always wore the pelt of a coyote, don’t they?”
Morgan asked.
“Well, that would explain one tail,” Billy said.
Paige peered closely at the drawing. Sure enough, under the pelt, there was the tip of another tail. “OK, so there was another werewolf with a tail,” Paige said.
“He was one hell of a werewolf, the kind of guy you could tell stories about,” Billy said.
“And if Irvine finds out that someone he’s bitten has a tail, he will spin that for all the recruits,” Morgan snarled. “If there is one thing Irvine likes, it’s a good story.”
“Irvine doesn’t know though,” Billy said. “And I’d keep it that way; the last thing we need is him getting ideas again.”
“Awesome—more people to hide from,” Paige sighed.
She ended up flopping on the bed, reading though some of Billy’s books while they quietly drove through the afternoon.
Eventually Sammy and Billy switched places at the wheel, but the other werewolf remained completely silent, snoozing on the sofa while Paige lay on the bed.
Morgan finally approached after they stopped just over the Colorado border. Billy and Sammy seemed to be intent on playing rock-paper-scissors in the rest stop parking lot. Morgan inched toward the bed so slowly, so cautiously, that Paige hopped to her feet to meet him in the middle of the cabin.
“When we get to Nevada, I should be able to get you some money and a fake ID. Bernard is crazy, but he’s better at computers and stuff than all of us—”
“And what will I do exactly?”
“Maybe you should go back to your vampire,” Morgan said, all but spitting out the last two words.
“Oh, I was waiting for this,” Paige growled. “You’re going to hold it against me that I screwed him—”
“Is that what you think?” Morgan growled back.
“What should I think?”
“You don’t know Irvine like we do. He’s already been reckless, and I’m afraid that he’ll see you as some sign from god that it’s time to fight the vampires again. I don’t know if crazy Ping-Pong is coming after us, and some ancient vampire is probably better able to protect you than a crazy accountant—”
“Wait, you’re not just jealous of Lorcan?’ she asked.
“That’s the vampire? Yes, I’m extremely jealous of him, but my jealousy isn’t worth your getting hurt.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
He took her hands. “I’m an idiot—”
“You are an idiot,” Paige said. “You’re a crazy idiot, but you mean well.”
He pulled her a little closer. She squeezed his hands and said,
“How about this for a novel idea? Why don’t I learn how to take care of myself, and we just figure the rest out as we go along? You are right though; at some point I do have to go back to my vampire. We have unfinished business, but we also have unfinished business as well, Mr. Wolfe.”
“We do?” he asked, confused.
She gave him a quick kiss. “You still owe me tacos.”
- 27 -
“You call that a hit?” Nadia asked.
Paige stared at her taped-up hands for a second too long, giving the purple-haired werewolf a chance to tackle her and drop her painfully on the mats.
“There is no time for confusion, Paige,” Nadia said as she jerked the smaller woman to her feet. “Your enemies will not wait for you to figure out what is going on.”
Nadia punched again, but this time Paige was able to slip to the side. The two of them danced around the ring, occasionally jabbing.
Nadia interrupted Paige’s brief moment of accomplishment by suddenly changing tactics and sweeping Paige’s leg out from under her. Paige yowled as Nadia’s knees dropped onto her sternum.
“No real enemy will ever fight fair. Don’t waste your time dancing when you should go for the kill.”
Paige responded by slashing her claws across Nadia’s face.
The amazon rolled away, and this time when Paige helped Nadia up, her bleeding face was actually sporting a grin.
“There is hope for you yet.”
Paige grabbed her aching chest. When she opened her eyes next, she found herself in the familiar surroundings of a Tennessee cookie-cutter apartment with white walls and beige carpets. She found herself propped up on a couch, with her old laptop still open on the coffee table.
She was staring at thumbnails of strange images, of people she’d only seen in grainy photos. The doorknob creaked terribly,
giving her just enough time to yank the flash drive out of her machine and toss it into the dark and scary nether region under her and Cal’s sofa.
“Stay here, Paige. Stay right here,” she ordered herself.
“Paige?” a weak little voice squeaked out.
“Cal?” she asked as she saw her giant of an ex stumbling into the living room. He carried a brown paper bag in his trembling arms, and his normally olive skin tone was bleached to ghoulish white.
“Paige, just stay calm,” he gasped. “Please, stay calm and don’t move.”
“Cal? What is—?”
“Follow the advice, and no one gets hurt,” a very calm, almost mechanical-sounding voice said. The source of the voice took one step to the left, so that Paige could clearly see the automatic pistol in his gloved hands.
“You’re—you’re—” Paige stammered as she saw slicked-back black hair, black shades, and a black suit.
“I’m perfectly capable of pulling this trigger. Memphis, Tennessee, is tenth in the entire country for deaths by murder, so it wouldn’t be too out of place to find two more victims, would it?” he said in a voice so even that it made Paige’s blood run cold. “You, big guy, put down your food and sit in that chair. You don’t look like you’re moving much, little lady, so let’s keep it that way.”
Cal set the bags on the table, but in his fear he ended up knocking one over and bright orange sauce spilled onto the carpet.
The stranger with the gun made a clucking noise with his tongue.
“Tikka Masala is bitch to get out of carpet,” he sighed. “Between the turmeric and the acid of the tomatoes, it’s going to take me a while.”
Cal and Paige exchanged looks as he stumbled into his chair.
Although Cal looked like he had a few inches and a hundred pounds on their intruder, something about the way the stranger moved made them both kowtow.
“I’ve seen you before,” Paige choked out. “You’re—”
“I was afraid that something like this would happen,” the stranger sighed. “I told my master that he’d gotten sloppy recently, but like all of his kind, he doesn’t listen to a lowly, little servant. Now
here is exactly what is going to happen. You are both going to sit here, be nice and quiet, and watch some TV. Now I already have Mr.
Wilkerson’s cellular phone in my possession. Where is yours, Miss Carmichael?”
Paige nodded toward the table.
“Very good. I hope you don’t mind if I hold on to it for just a little while,” he said as he slowly slid one hand over to grab it while the gun remained trained on Cal’s forehead. “So, I am about to do a bit of cleaning, and I would very much appreciate it if you gave me a hand, Miss Carmichael. Tell me exactly what your father told you, show me anything that he brought you, and then let me erase anything that might cause a bit of trouble from now on.”
“You’re Dr. Yoshida,” she stammered out as she got a good long look of his sculpted profile. “You work for them?”
“Dr. Yoshida? Of all my identities, that’s the one you were told about?” the stranger said with a snort of laughter.
“You work with my great-grandfather—” Paige gasped.
“Paige, what the hell are you talking about?” Cal asked as sweat poured from his bald head.
“It seems that dear Miss Carmichael’s father knows just enough to be dangerous to good people like you. I’m betting he’s gotten a whole bunch of half-information and spun it into some great conspiracy where evil creatures want to rule the world. Am I right?
That look in your eyes, Miss Carmichael, tells me that I’m right.”
As he moved the gun, his sleeve slid back just enough to show off a tattoo of circuitry on one arm. The stranger smiled. “My girlfriend always called me a robot,” he said. “It reminds me of her.
It’s so important to remember one’s humanity during times like this.”
“Oh god, he’s insane,” Cal whimpered as he trembled in his seat.
“Mr. Wilkerson, if you piss yourself and I have to clean it up, I will be extremely inclined to shoot you,” the stranger said. “Really, Miss Carmichael, you could do much better than him.”
“Are you going to talk all night, or get this over with?” Paige said, staring right at him.
The stranger smiled and pressed his ear. “Yes, I’m taking care of everything. It’s safe for you to come in,” he muttered.
Cal whimpered and shook in his seat, while Paige tried her best to move her broken body. No claws came to her rescue, and her aching bones refused to mend. The apartment door opened once more, and a ghost from Paige’s past walked right inside like he owned the place.
“Great-Grandpa Steve?” Paige choked out right before she woke up.
“Damn it,” Paige growled as she found herself back in the present stuffed onto a caravan bed with a snoring werewolf on either side. Billy and Sammy had taken it upon themselves to be the bread in a berserker sandwich, forcing Paige to squirm and untangle her tail just to escape.
She hopped over the passed-out pretty one, who rolled right over to take her old place, barely interrupting his machine-gun snuffling. The Winnebago drifted side to side, prompting her to hurry to the driver seat. She found Morgan up front, stifling a yawn as he captained the ship.
“How long have you been at this?” she asked.
He rubbed his eyes before pointedly steadying the wheel. “I don’t know; since Billy decided he was too stressed and smoked a blunt. Sammy needed the sleep, and you were sawing logs—”
“I don’t snore,” Paige protested.
“You’re right. You don’t snore; you make sounds that can wake the dead.”
“If you weren’t driving, I’d smack you,” Paige grumbled as she took the passenger seat. “Wow, Colorado is prettier than Nebraska.
Did I miss Denver?”
“You missed the highway cutting through Denver, yes, and the turn if you wanted to get to Aspen,” Morgan said. “In fact, if you had slept much longer, you’d have missed the state entirely.”
As if on cue, they passed a “Welcome to Utah, Life Elevated,”
sign on the right. As Paige settled back in her seat, she winced. She
pulled down her collar to reveal an angry bruise welling up right where phantom Nadia had planted her knees into her chest.
“You all right?” Morgan asked.
“Sometimes I have dreams that are really vivid and really violent,” she said, trying to lose her gaze in the early morning light. “I think I finally remembered something though. Something about what happened right after I was attacked—”
“Oh?”
“Morgan, you’ve followed my great-grandfather, right? You’re the one who sent the information to my dad,” Paige said. She rubbed her temple. “He came after me when I was just back after the hospital.”
“Vampires clean up after themselves. You’re lucky that you’re related to one and he did some sort of voodoo on you rather than just killing you.”
“I still feel like I’m missing something. My vampire was convinced that someone was after him and that I was a weapon of some sort.”
“From what I’ve heard about vampires, they believe that everything is about them,” Morgan muttered. “Maybe it really was just your great-grandfather cleaning up the mess. I never should have encouraged your father—”
“But when do coincidences become unbelievable?” Paige said.
“I mean, of all the vampires out there, why would you follow Great-Grandpa Steve? Why did you choose my dad? Why did all this happen coincidentally at the same time that Lorcan was in town to help open a restaurant?”
“I followed your great-grandfather because I got a tip from an informant, the same informant who sold me out to that creepy blond Asian dude and Ping Pong, the cupcake killer—”
“Exactly! We were both tipped off to meet Ivan the evil, who was selling us out to another vampire who wanted—”
“Werewolves,” Morgan finished. “That explains us being lured there, but—wait; Ivan was who my informant warned me about, and then he just shows up—”
“It’s like the pieces are there, but they’re scattered. The more I think about it and the more I learn, the less it makes sense. Ugh, I hate this feeling like I’m being toyed with, like we’re both—”
“Pawns,” Morgan offered. “How do you think I feel? I’ve spent five years chasing my own tail. I had money traced to dozens of shell companies. I had receipts, names, even photos—”
“The photos Dad sent me did come from you then. A lot of those photos were of the same psycho who showed up in my house.
He called my great-grandfather master—”
“So we have more connections. I knew if I told your dad just enough—”
“He was babbling about missing scientists and a missing nurse from Boston. One of the supposed missing scientists was the same crazy guy who’s shown up in California, in New York—”
“All vampire hot spots. You’re right; it’s weird.”
“And for some reason both my mom and I are missing memories from the week that my dad was in town.”
“Vampires can manipulate people. All they have to do is feed you their blood,” Morgan said. He made a rude gesture to a sedan that got impatient and zipped around the Winnebago.
“But he didn’t give me his blood!”
“How do you know that your memories are gone?”
“I remembered Lorcan giving me his blood.”
Morgan’s face stiffened slightly. “I bet you did,” he growled.
“Anyway, that was after you bit Irvine. Our kind is far more resistant to vampire tricks—”
“I had already bitten Irvine when they broke into my house!” she said. “It was the night I was back from the hospital—”
“Then maybe the infection was still setting in. You were probably feverish and delusional as well as terrified—”
“I was helpless—that’s what I was. I feel that way right now, and I’m sick of it. It’s a shame we’re already past Denver, or I’d go find my dad and give him a piece of my mind for starting all this.”
Morgan shifted uncomfortably in his seat and cleared his throat a little. He had started a nervous round of nods even before his lips were moving.
“What are you not telling me, Morgan?”
“Um, you father isn’t actually in Denver, Paige,” Morgan choked out. “He’s been hiding with Bernard in Nevada. I thought we should take you to him.”
“What did you just say?” Paige said slowly.
“In about eight hours or so, I’m going to take you to your dad.”
- 28 -
Exactly eight hours and twelve minutes later, the werewolf Winnebago puttered into the sleepy town of Searchlight, Nevada.
The big, brown vehicle skidded slightly onto a dirt parking lot, and the whole gang cheered as Billy declared, “Here we are, campers.”
Paige’s smile faded into a scowl as she peeked out the window to see just where the RV had landed. Morgan hung his head in shame.
“The Bust Stop, really?” she sighed as she saw pink neon legs virtually kicking at the late afternoon sun.
“It’s a perfectly legitimate business establishment, with the finest steak and eggs this side of Las Vegas,” Billy declared. “They also have, on average, two to three strippers under the age of forty. Let’s go!”
“Of course my dad would be at a strip club,” Paige muttered as she kicked at a pile of pebbles. “This is what he was doing while I was running for my life.”
“It’s a nice place, really,” Morgan said as he too shuffled in the dirt. His point was slightly undermined by a blotto biker flying out the door to go vomit in a cactus. A moment later a tall, broad-shouldered man sauntered out the door with a leather bag. He tossed it next to the cactus, careful to avoid the puddle.
“Well, if it isn’t the Haitian sensation,” Billy cried as he ran to give the bouncer a huge hug. “Wesley, our Morganator is all grown up and has a girlfriend!”
The bouncer gave a wave and glittering smile to Paige. His dazzling teeth matched his diamond studs and the shimmery gold
fabric of his designer pants.
“Morgan, come over here,” Wesley cried. “I’ve been worried sick with you off in the big city.”
