CHAPTER 48

We crawled into the car, Bobby bitching the whole time about the blood we were getting on his seats. I hopped into the passenger seat and the pressure against my back suddenly reminded me that I was packing the Makarov. In general I wouldn't expect such a little gun to have much power, but with Marcus' modifications I wondered if a bullet would make it through a root ball.

"Buckle up buttercup," Bobby shouted over the sudden roar of the engine, before gunning it.

I raised a brow at him.

"Anything that can do that..." he gestured to the back seat where we had laid Darius. "I want to be a long ways away from that."

I couldn't help but agree, except it looked like my life had taken on a whole new load of complications.

*Dr. Thostchild. Your creator. Your father.*

Was it real? Or had the werejaguar just been fucking with me? But he knew the name Thostchild, which couldn't be coincidence. I'd searched the internet for any reference to the word and always came up blank. He wouldn't have just stumbled upon it.

"Where we going now? Back to Boston?" Bobby was slowing down at an intersection.

I thought about it, thought about everything. I had just faced a were that was far more powerful than I'd even thought possible, Darius was dying in the back seat and I was on the out with Anthony. Again.
I wasn't really in a great state of mind to make decisions. Unfortunately for me, there was no one to swoop in and make them for me.

"Yeah," I told him. I'd have to get Dr. Denise, because I didn't think he would make it without medical intervention. The problem was, where. We couldn't go to the ranch, not with the risk of Anthony pulling rank and making me a glorified prisoner. For the same reason we couldn't go to my apartment. Anthony knew where it was and I was certain he had men waiting for me.

Fuck my life right now.

Ok. I just needed to think.

Normally I would speak to my wolf about the situation. She'd become her own separate identity and often the only one I could talk to. I'd become rather reliant on her. Now, however, she was brooding in the dark recesses of my mind. The memory...or flashback...or whatever it was digging its claws deeper and deeper into her psyche. She needed space, some time to sort things out, and that left me alone in the driver's seat of my life.

I hadn't realized that I'd zoned out for so long. It was almost three hours later when I came back to myself.

"Know any place we can crash for a few days?" I asked Bobby.

Bobby gave me the side eye, his face turning red. "Look, the deal was a ride for a favor. This is already more than I signed on for. My back seat is totally ruined..."

I held up a finger. "Have you heard of Xactoshine?"

"This is serious!" he snarled. And yes, I knew it was, but there wasn't exactly anything I could do about it at the moment. I was just barely holding myself together.

A set of oncoming lights appeared in the distance, I closed my eyes against their brightness.

What was happening with my life? I'd wanted vengeance. Justice for my parents. There had been four scents present at the murder scene and all I had wanted was to find whoever they were and end them. Let them know there were consequences for taking the only two people in the world that I had loved. Now...now I didn't know what I wanted. Answers mostly, vengeance, but I couldn't do anything because I couldn't remember anything from before my parents had moved us to the valley. I had been too young to remember, my parents had always told me. It was a good thing, because we were starting a new life.

Except that I was beginning to understand I never really knew my parents. They never spoke of the time before, only that they had fled conflict and found me, orphaned while they were escaping. We'd become a family that day. So they said. But I was starting to wonder...all of this, everything was all tied together somehow, and the only thing I knew for sure was Thostchild. Had my parents somehow been involved in...whatever it was that was going on? I'd always assumed there had been a pack war, wherever they'd fled from. In my fantasies they'd belonged to different packs, forbidden from one another, and fled in order to live out their lives in love and peace.

The crushing and reassembling of my mental picture of them was like someone reached into my chest and crushed the remainder of who I thought I was, snuffing her out and leaving a hollow shell in her place.

"Raven?!..." was all Bobby got out before the car was flung sideways, spinning. He screamed a high pitched scream, eyes wide in panic.

I'd been so caught up in my distress I'd missed the scent that now permeated the air.

Fuck. Goddammit. I'd forgotten about the vampires.

We flew sideways, but our momentum was still driving forward. Grass and trees flew by while Bobby wrestled the steering wheel. The oncoming SUV that had hit us was screeching down the highway, rubber burning as it tried to turn tightly and come up behind us. I caught a glimpse of two men in the windshield, but didn't have time to see if either of them had been among the three that had attacked me in Boston.

The car bounced and rattled as Bobby straightened us out along the ditch, so we were running along the highway, before cranking the wheel and getting us back onto the pavement. The rear bumper caught on the pavement edge and peeled off in a mess of squealing sparks.

"Fuck," Bobby cursed, his foot moving to the breaks. I crossed my foot over to his side and stomped on the gas instead.

"What the fuck?" He screamed, obviously out of more clever vocabulary.

"Don't stop, they aren't going to quit just because we lost a bumper."

A gunshot rang out, breaking the back window. Bobby and I ducked in unison.

"Who the fuck are they?"

"Remember I mentioned Vampires?"

"Are you fucking serious right now?"

We swerved, desperately trying to avoid another shot. The vampires had learned something since our last encounter.

"Deadly serious," I told him.