Chapter 16
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
The road slips under us as we cruise west. Omar is leaning one arm on the open window, his head resting on the back of his seat.
Driving Jasper’s car feels like piloting a spaceship.
The steering is so responsive that one small jerk sideways would have us careening off this highway, but the ground feels smooth, and the engine is barely audible.
“Sick ride,” Omar said about an hour ago, once we’d turned the corner heading away from my parents’ house, and away from Jasper.
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” I said in return, then fell quiet, focusing on driving.
I think Omar got the picture because he hasn’t said much of anything since. For a while he closed his eyes and I wondered if he’d drifted off, if he was as sleep-deprived and stressed as I felt.
Driving in silence, I’m able to think back to the last time I headed out on the road like this, only then Jasper was in the driver’s seat.
We barely knew each other, had just discovered we were mates, and Jasper had me fairly convinced he wanted nothing to do with me.
But still I remember sitting in the passenger seat, watching his hand as it rested on the gearshift, thinking how close it was to my knee.
His other hand he’d kept wrapped around the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white.
I know now he was scared for my safety, that his biggest fear was losing me in the same way he lost his mother.
There was even that moment when we’d swerved off the road, driven off by a car heading in the opposite direction and refusing to turn.
In that moment I saw how scared Jasper was.
It was only the start of our journey together, his toward healing the wounds left by his mother’s death, and mine toward understanding what motivated him and kept him from opening up to me.
And of course, our journey toward realizing that we’re better off together.
Stronger. Happier. My stomach drops as I start to fear that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Should I have left Jasper right at this moment when he needs me more than ever?
Am I doing the right thing driving off and leaving him behind?
Will he be too worried about me to focus on running the pack and defending our people from Walter and the Axis Pack?
Half expecting myself to switch on the hand brake and swing the wheel wildly, performing a hairpin turn like I’ve seen in the movies, spinning us around in a cloud of burning rubber and panic, I decide instead to reach out to Jasper and see how he’s doing, but just as I’m about to use the mind-link Omar sits forward.
“I’ve been here,” he says, staring out his window. “Can you pull off?”
I take the next exit, and Omar directs me through some winding forest roads.
Pines stand in perfect lines, which makes me think we must be in some sort of plantation.
I wonder if this is where they get the trees for Christmas or harvest the scent for air fresheners.
We drive until we’re surrounded by green, and the road, which is carpeted in a thick layer of brown pine needles, becomes a dirt road.
“Just up here,” he says.
The trees open onto a small clearing where a stout building sits. A cabin of sorts, not wooden and rustic like Mitsuha’s in the Lunar Plane. This one is made with cinder blocks and corrugated iron. It looks more like a stable or a public toilet.
“What is this place?”
Omar has his hand on the door handle, ready to jump out.
“I stayed here a few years back when I was searching for the Sanc. Malachi, the guy who lives here, is a friend.”
“Someone lives here?” I hit the brake and turn off the engine. Omar has jumped out before the car is fully stationary.
“Malachi?” Omar calls, heading straight for the door.
I leap out and follow him.
Omar raps on the door. “Malachi, it’s your boy! You in there?”
No answer. Omar looks back at me a little puzzled but says, “He sleeps a lot, the old guy.” Then knocks again, harder. “Malachi?”
“Omar,” I say, having spotted the broken glass in the window, the lack of light coming from inside. “Look.”
Testing the waters, Omar turns the door handle slowly and the unlocked door swings open.
Inside it’s dark, a stale scent lies under the overwhelming smell of pine. The place is trashed. Sheets and clothes and papers strewn across the floor. A camping stove sits in pieces on its side, dishes and glassware are shattered over the concrete floor.
“Nah, man,” Omar says, both hands behind his head as he takes it in.
I lift my head and inhale through my nose. Under the pine and the stale musk is another scent, that of a rogue, and then under that, the lingering trace of something else. “Pack wolves have been here.”
Omar is shaking his head.
“Hey,” I say, moving to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe he got out.”
“Yeah,” Omar says, his headshaking turning to nods. “Yeah maybe.”
“He lived here a while, right?” I can tell from the depth of his scent, how it’s embedded in the brick and concrete.
“He knew this forest better than anyone.”
“So maybe he saw them coming and got out before they ransacked the place?”
“You think?”
I take another look around, see what else I can sense, see if my blood-wolf powers can latch on to any emotional distress.
“There’s no blood. If they found him, they didn’t hurt him here.”
Omar’s eyes are bugging out of his head, but I can tell he’s trying to work things through. To convince himself of a positive outcome.
“Where would he go if he was in trouble?”
“Same place we’re heading,” Omar says. “Rogue City.”
“So, let’s get there—and fast.”
Back in the car, I put my foot down even though I’m not used to driving this fast. Luckily, Jasper’s car handles the road with ease, and I find myself relaxing into this rocket-speed drive. Rogue City is about six hours from Stony Point on a good day. We need to get there faster.
This time Omar is the quiet one. He’s chewing the skin around his thumbnail, tapping his foot relentlessly.
“Tell me about him,” I say, glancing over, trying to distract him.
Omar removes his thumb from his mouth, glances my way then back at the road.
“He was just a good guy. Let me stay with him for a few nights. Said he’s been living in that shack for like forty years or something, ever since he left his pack.”
We’re not so far from the Elite Pack’s border that I can’t help wondering if maybe Malachi was once one of us.
“Why did he leave? Do you know?”
“He didn’t say. But he did mention having a mate once and losing her. I kind of figured he left because his grief was too big to stay.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, but he made a life for himself out there. It was simple, but he was at peace. He was funny too, told the best stories late at night. The forest was so quiet, but we laughed so loud we probably woke up every sleeping animal.”
He goes silent, chewing his bottom lip, then slams his fist on the dash, hard enough I’m scared he’s going to activate the airbag.
“There are good wolves out here,” he says. “Good wolves, just trying to live their lives and these pack wolves don’t care. They don’t care about anything. They just want to cause pain.”
“I know,” I say, and accelerate a little more.
It’s late afternoon when we arrive at Rogue City.
It appears all of a sudden, the towers of the disused silos rising over fields of corn.
We’ve made good time, but the day is quickly coming to a close.
And while I’ve learned a lot about rogues since the last time I was here, I’m still not keen on hanging around at night.
We park closer to the settlement than the time Jasper and I were here, back when we were trying to hide in case dangerous rogues spotted us.
“How long did you live here for?” I ask as we wander toward the big warehouse where I once saw the tents and squalid living conditions of the rogues holed up inside. “Back then?”
I gulp and Omar narrows his eyes at me. Maybe I shouldn’t be bringing up Omar’s history with the rogues who attacked us, who bear the tattoo of a wolf and lightning bolt. But then he quirks his mouth to the side, like he’s thinking.
“A year, maybe two. Time sort of didn’t really exist then. It wasn’t until we were made to . . . well, you know, invade your alpha’s summer home that I could get away.”
“I’m sorry.”
We wander farther into what must have once been a functioning farm. The warehouse off to one side has most of its windows smashed in, but that’s no different than the last time I was here.
“If this place was run by the rogues who were in Walter’s pocket, why do you think there’ll be anyone here who can help us? Wouldn’t they still work for him?”
“From what I heard, after the attack on your pack, the rogues in charge were captured and they lost control of their gang. I came back here on my way to the Sanc and it was different. A proper settlement. We’d made this place a home.”
We stop just outside the warehouse, on the concrete slab separating it from the silos.
Smeared on the largest tower is a ghastly black smudge.
The last time I was here it was painted with the rogues’ logo, the wolf and the lightning.
Those who lived here after the attack must have tried to clean it away.
Further proof that one type of rogue doesn’t speak for the whole.
Farther on sits the building where Aisha was held captive. It’s hard for me to think of this as anything but a barely held together shantytown. That’s when I realize something.
“If rogues made this place a real settlement,” I begin, “where are they all?”
Omar and I turn in circles, surveying the entire facility, I even extend my consciousness trying to find another wolf, but come up short.
We both take off running, first visiting the warehouse, which is a mess. The shredded remains of tents are piled in a blackened heap along with bedding and clothes.
“They burned it all,” I say, hoping that’s all they burned.
Next, we head over to the silos, where we find yet more evidence that rogues were living here, though not anymore. Behind one an orange pop-up tent still stands, flapping in the breeze. I glance inside and there’s nothing in there except a pair of children’s shoes, left behind.
“There’s no one here,” I say.
Omar lifts his head suddenly, nodding to the building where Aisha and Jasper and I fought off the rogues and escaped. “In there.”
I sniff at the breeze and realize what he’s talking about. The scent of a rogue is wafting toward us, subtle but still there. “He must be blocking me from sensing him,” I say.
Slowly now, we make our way inside, through the gaping roller door where Walter once parked his shining black town car.
It looks startlingly the same: a metal balcony running around the second floor, the hard concrete floor, even the desk and chair.
Omar moves to the middle of the room looking as uncomfortable as I feel.
Even though they left almost two years ago now, there is still a weird energy left over from the rebel rogues.
“There,” Omar says, pointing to a corner where a metal grill sits at an odd angle. It should be flush to the wall, some sort of ventilation shaft perhaps.
Stepping quietly, we wander over. I lean down to peer through the gaps in the grill. Sunlight shines brightly from the other end of a shaft, but it’s obscured by what appears to be a pile of old rags.
Then suddenly the rags move, and I realize what they are.
A rogue wolf.
Crazed and incensed, he comes at us. His fur is matted to his body, patches of mange are slick and glisten in the low light. His eyes glow yellow. Before we can back away, he snaps at the grill, exploding from it, coming right for us.