Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Standing out in the California sunshine, I dug in my satchel, pushing past the debris of my wallet, camera, and a collection of fast food napkins before finding a pair of cheap black sunglasses, my keys caught on one of the legs.
I sighed when I put them on with one hand, my other hand weighing my keys.
I needed to go get my car.
Unless it had gotten towed, it was still outside the apartment complex, but there were a lot of ifs there.
Dieter might have scented me on it—I spent enough time in it that it probably reeked of me—and that could only mean I was walking into a trap.
A group of teenage girls was heading towards me on the sidewalk and at their pronounced stink eyes, I moved out of the way, stepping onto the curb, nearly in the bike lane.
One of them had long braids, and an easy smile when she turned back to her friends. I rolled my eyes upward and sighed. Acacia. The Summer Queen’s new interest. Another thing I had to deal with.
Shaking my shoulders until they weren’t up around my ears, I made a list.
1. Car
2. Find Professor Woolworth
3. Get paid
4. Find Acacia
5. Keep her out of fae hands
It would be foolish to go get my car without being sure whether Dieter knew it was mine, so I decided to go to Professor Woolworth first and then see if I could get my car later.
I looked at the bus routes in my phone and saw I could take a direct one to campus.
It might take me all day, but at least I could avoid Dieter.
Twenty minutes later, when four werewolves got onto the bus, I was rethinking that decision.
I wasn’t sure how they’d tracked me, or if it had just been bad luck and timing, but I was pretty sure I recognized them from my week of being stuck to Dieter like a tick behind his ear.
So, now it was me, four SoPa members and a bus full of civilians.
An older woman sat a row ahead of me, a crochet hook dancing in her fingers. A SoPa wolf sat in front of her, sprawling over both seats. Another took the seat behind her, leaning forward so he was well in her space. A third boxed her in, grabbing the handrail above her seat.
The fourth slouched in the seat across from her, his cell phone in hand.
They weren’t looking at me, so I wondered if it was just a coincidence.
Maybe I was reading too much into them taking the same bus as me.
For all I knew, they were college students.
Sure, college students without backpacks, books, or anything indicating they were on their way to class, but maybe they were bad college students.
The woman’s crochet hook slowed, and I saw her glance at the wolf penning her in, then back at the wolf behind her.
I didn’t need a wolf’s nose to know she was afraid.
She moved as though she was going to stand, and the wolf standing above her didn’t move, so she shrank back, pressing herself as close to the window as possible.
The bus squealed to a stop and someone else got on.
Dieter. He looked even more massive in the small aisle and he jerked his chin in the greeting common to men who think it looks cool because they watched too many gangster movies as children.
The wolves around the woman echoed the movement like a synchronized boy band whose only songs were, “I Don’t Deal With My Feelings Well” and “Scarface Was the Best, Right?”
Dieter stood in the aisle and all along the bus there was a slight shiver. I noticed more people beginning to get the nervous look of a rabbit who senses there’s a hawk nearby, even if it can’t see where. From his position in the middle of the aisle, up from me, Dieter smirked and met my eyes.
There were two options. I could ignore them and assume their implicit threat against the woman in front of me was just a show of force.
In that case, I’d ride the bus all the way to campus and get off there.
They’d get off, too, and we’d have our showdown surrounded by a student body already filming it for upload to the social media site of their choice.
The other option was clearly what they wanted. I’d get off now, and they’d leave the poor woman alone. She was glancing between the three of them now, her bag clutched to her chest. Trembling, she hunched her shoulders higher.
With a look out the window, I came up with a plan. We were close to Dieter’s wolf on the side. Close enough I knew my car was around the corner. If I could draw them off the bus, but then get to my car before they caught me, I’d have a chance of getting out of this mess without fighting.
Reaching up, I tugged on the pull cord and the bus pulled up at the next stop. Without a backwards glance, I trotted down the stairs at the back of the bus and exited. Once my feet were on the ground, I sprinted for my car.
I was the rabbit at a racetrack, and the greyhounds behind me were out for blood. The park from the day before was a blur to my left as I ran for my car, grabbing my keys out of my bag.
There weren’t any baseball games today, but the playground was filled with strollers and moms busy on their phones while their children reenacted Lord of the Flies. With the metal keys in hand, I reached out with my other hand, my satchel making the movement awkward.
Fae magic didn’t mix well with witchcraft, but if I needed to, I could throw up a passable shield.
I felt movement behind me, and spun, throwing up a shield with a shouted, “Aegis!”
The shifted werewolf slammed into it, the impact making a crackling sound like thin ice in winter. Both his bones and the shield gave, his face distorted from a broken cheekbone and the shield displaying its cracks in bright white light.
Reinforcing the spell with a request, I thickened the surrounding air. It wasn’t enough to stop something coming at full force, but it would slow any direct assaults. The air was unhappy at being forced into stillness, and I knew I could only hold it for a minute at most.
The wolf on the ground twitched, already recovering, and I rushed towards my car, unlocking it with a cheerful beep-beep.
I yanked at the door and slid inside, locking it before the door had even finished closing.
Jamming the keys into the ignition, I saw four people surrounding the car, just far enough away I couldn’t hit them with the door.
I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t approached me closer, and I twisted the keys, the engine choking to life.
Something heavy landed on the hood of my car, denting it and cutting short the assurance I’d get out of this alive.
Dieter, a demented grin stretching his mouth to reveal teeth that looked more wolf than human, crouched on my car.
Raising his fist, he slammed it into my windshield, cracks shooting out from where he impacted the glass. I scrambled for the door handle, unlocking it and falling out onto the street as he punched again, breaking through, his grasping fingers just missing my shirt.
“Get him,” he roared, and I crab walked backwards, my satchel tripping me up as I pushed myself upright and dodged around one of the wolves.
I reached out with my magic, shoving as much as I could into the sidewalk.
It turned to quicksand under the wolves’ feet as I convinced it staying solid wasn’t in its nature.
But the sidewalk was only a few inches deep, and they waded through, their strength and size playing to their advantage.
I reached the corner and made a hard right, the park within sight. There were trees at the park, and grass, and rocks. If I could get close enough to the baseball diamond, they would find themselves in the middle of a sandstorm.
At this point I would even take the risk of dragging a group of werewolf enforcers into the playground for the safety of a half-dozen moms with cellphones and the cops on speed dial.
There was a growl from too close behind me, and I reached down with my magic, feeling for earth or.
.. there. Water. A pipe burst at my request and water came straight up, slamming the wolf behind me backwards.
It soaked the sidewalk, gallons of it spraying up and then turning to steam as I convinced it our nice, balmy eighty-two degree day was hot enough to boil water.
It wouldn’t last, and the more water that came out, the more it resembled baby bath water, both in temperature and in pressure.
I glanced back and saw I now only had three pursuers, the other two still stuck in concrete.
Of the remaining three, one had been slammed into a car by the water, and another was moaning and clutching at his scalded face.
Dieter, face red and blistering, was gaining on me, though.
My hand touched the chain-link fence, about to swing myself into the gate, when he caught up, throwing his massive weight on top of me. He bore me down and I couldn’t move under his mass. Wrapping an arm around my neck, he held tight, as my vision began dotting from lack of oxygen.
No. I was not letting this steroidal excuse for a werewolf take me down. I dug my fingers into the dirt and felt for my magic.
Witches and alchemists rely on human magic, which is finite and dependent on the person. Some people have less and some have more, like Laurel. The only difference between the two is in how they practice their art.
Werewolves, vampires, and most other paranormals don’t practice magic, because they are magic.
Fae, though, we take the magic there is in the world and twist it to our will.
Sometimes that’s through cajoling and convincing, through manipulation and trickery, even bargaining with the beings and magic you want to use.
All of it takes a mix of your own innate magic and your own charisma.
I’ve seen fae with no innate magic, but enough charisma to seduce a whole monastery combat a fae with plenty of magic, but the charisma of a wet newspaper.