Another Half

November 2011

Blade hated driving the van. She had to push down hard on the clutch to shift gears, the seats were torn with long claw scratches, it reeked of John’s blood, of Darryl’s semen, and, worst of all, it smelled of Hannah. Her thoughts strayed to how Hannah hadn’t had any problems driving the van, but that made her feel guilty along with disgusted.

If you want to blame someone, blame Nick. He’s the one that sent them after us. Also, no one forced them to look for us. We did what we had to do to save ourselves and protect Andy.

Talon spoke reason, of course, but Blade still felt terrible for orphaning a baby.

Talon shrugged. That is not our fault.

“How can you be so callous?” Blade asked out loud. “The baby lost both of her parents on the same day. We killed them! She’ll never know them.”

She was an unintended casualty. We killed her parents because we had to, not because we wanted to, or because it was fun, or because we were going to collect a bounty. Think about how bad we’d feel if something had happened to Andy or what his fate would’ve been if he’d been the one orphaned.

And that was the end of that conversation. At whatever cost, Andy was their priority.

Blade drove for hours just above the speed limit to put as much distance as she could between them and the town they had left without attracting any attention from law enforcement. Mercifully, Andy slept through the night. She stopped early the following day at a car wash run by humans, she filled the gas tank, took care of Andy’s needs, stuffed a granola bar in her mouth, and kept driving.

Blade had no idea how far Nick’s description of her and Andy had reached, so she changed her planned route and headed north trying to outrun anyone looking for them or the van. She had no way of knowing if anyone had found the bodies by now, so she kept driving as if they had until they reached a town in northern Minnesota, just a few miles from the Canadian border. She bought bleach at a convenience store, spilled it all over the van, and abandoned it deep in the woods outside the town and away from any farmhouses. Despite the biting cold, she walked the ten miles back into town, bundling up Andy with all the blankets she had and keeping him close to her body to keep him warm while juggling her bulky backpack and a heavy diaper bag. She stopped at a pharmacy to pick up scissors, hair dye, lipstick, and a pink shirt with a zebra pattern.

Two days later, she emerged from a cheap motel room as a pink-striped platinum blonde with a bad pixie haircut and wearing the pink shirt she had purchased. “I hate myself,” Blade muttered as she caught her reflection in a car dealer window.

Why you look like a feisty blonde, Talon said with a giggle. You should’ve bought the hot pink leopard skin press-ons I told you to complete the look.

Shut up, Talon.

Oh, come on. You’re the furthest thing from a pink-wearing feisty blonde, and Nick knows it. Isn’t that the point?

“My, my, you’re getting smart in your old age,” Blade murmured to Talon.

She heard her wolf laugh.

Keep hanging out with me and maybe you, too, can be smart and beautiful, Talon said. Although I could never pull off the blonde look. Shiny black for me…

A young man in a dark suit approached her. “Good mornin’, Miss…?”

“You can call me Linda. Linda Smith.” Blade reached to shake his hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Smith. What can I get for you today?”

“I’m looking to buy a reliable car,” Blade said with a broad pink lipstick smile. “Something not too old, but plenty reliable, but not too expensive, but not cheap, either, and something a little newer than older would be nice, y’know what I mean? Something just right. You have something in pink?”

Talon guffawed in the back of Blade’s head.

“Okay, I think I see where you’re coming from,” the young man said with a broad smile. If he was confused or frustrated, he hid it well. “Why don’t we take a look at what we got on the lot and we can go from there? Whaddaya say to that?”

“Y’know, mister, I think that’s the smartest thing I’ve heard all day.”

Two hours later, Blade walked out as the new owner of a nice gray Mercury Sable. Old but reliable, as Blade’s grandfather liked to say.

She drove around town long enough to acquire a new car seat and other essentials for Andy, as well as water and warmer clothes and shoes for both of them. For her personal needs, she included an inexpensive flute for the sparkling blackberry Moscato she added to her purchases. She had flirted with the idea of a Pinot Noir or a Sauvignon, but the truth was that she needed something a little sweet and innocent after the past few days. Afterward, she treated herself and Andy to a hearty meal at a diner. Andy sat on her lap, and Blade shared her mashed potatoes and gravy with him. He kicked his feet and flailed his arms in excitement.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma,” Andy babbled while she ate her steak.

Blade dropped her fork and knife. Talon gasped.

“Did he just call us…?”

Blade grabbed Andy and turned him around. She looked into his chubby little face.

“What did you just call me, Andy?”

Andy looked at her quizzically, and she stared at him. He gurgled at her, and his eyes briefly shined yellow before they dulled into their usual brown. Eventually, she turned him back around and kept feeding him.

“Awwww. I can hear his little wolf now. He’s a whiny little pup!”

Blade was relieved that Andy’s wolf had finally made an appearance. She wouldn’t have known what to do otherwise. Although rare, werewolves without an actual wolf did exist, but they usually became outcasts that were absorbed into human society.

What a sad way to live, Talon said, and Blade couldn’t agree more. She loved having a wolf.

The next few years would be interesting as Andy figured out the border between his wolf’s consciousness and his own. Then there would be the whole learning to control the shifting process. Of more urgent importance, though, was that Blade hadn’t thought about how she wanted Andy to address her. It was obvious that she needed to plan for that soon. He would have questions, and a lot of them were more complicated than learning how to shift.

By the time they had gotten back to the motel room, Blade had noticed that her diaper bag was getting lighter as a result of all her purchases. After pouring herself a glass of the blackberry Moscato she had been thinking about, she carefully took out the contents of the diaper bag and laid them out on the bed while Andy kicked about nearby.

She still had most of the twenty thousand dollars in cash her grandfather had left in his safe, and she hoped to make it through several months before making the call she didn’t want to make yet. She’d have to be more frugal.

Blade looked at the other items on the bed as she took another sip of the sparkling Moscato. Whoever murdered her grandfather had tried to break into his safe, of course, but it was impossible to get into that particular digital safe without a double set of combinations. She grimaced at the memory. The murderers obviously hadn’t known her grandfather well enough to know that it was the same set of numbers, but in reverse. Inputting Blade’s birthdate twice would have given them access to not just the money, but a large stack of fake I.D.s and passports for the entire Zamora family, several irreplaceable documents, and an interesting address out West. Blade had already burned all of her family’s fake documents; everything else came with her.

She leafed through her Canadian passport and looked out the window, up to the gray skies. She would have preferred to have gotten to her final destination by now but getting caught by those three wolves so soon after leaving Nick had spooked her.

“How the hell did those wolves find us so quickly?”

I think it was stupid dumb luck on their part mixed with bad luck on ours. We’ve been planning this for months; you did everything right, Talon said. We destroyed our old phone and its chip; the laptop is new. Maybe the one mistake we made is not killing the bastard?

“Yeah, but we’d be wanted for murder by now,” Blade said. “It wouldn’t have taken them long to figure out we killed him. A she-wolf killing her beta mate would have been grounds for a nationwide alert to all wolf packs. We’d never be free.”

Talon shrugged. He’s still looking for us. We can’t have him following us. We have to disappear.

Blade nodded in agreement. “I just wish I knew why he didn’t let us go. Our bond is broken,” she said softly. “I’m sure he felt it break.”

We would get bond back if we let them Mark us, Talon said with disgust, and if we Mark them.

Blade frowned. “You think that’s what they want?”

Nah. Marcus wanted his mate to be more uppity than a lowly omega. He told me I wasn’t good enough, too. Marcus is just as big a proud prick as Nick. They want to get rid of us is my guess.

Flurries started to fall outside, and Blade watched them float to the ground. It was getting colder and colder each day; they would have to leave soon if they wanted to avoid any incoming snowstorms. Fortunately, Thanksgiving was in a few days, and any traffic going through the border would help conceal their passage into the Great White North.

Blade refilled her flute and placed it on the nightstand, then took out her laptop from her backpack. She sat on the bed next to Andy and googled How to speak Canadian.