Derik's Bane

"Dude, I am so going to make you eat your ears."



Dr. Gumming sighed. "Very well. Arthur's sect has its home base in Salem, Massachusetts. Go there. Smite your enemies. Have a hot fudge sundae. The end."



"Wait, wait, wait. If you knew all this was going to happen, why didn't you warn me? Why didn't you tell me about Arthur's Sect ten years ago?"



"Right. I see now that I have failed you. Because you certainly would have believed me and left at once for Salem."



"Might have," she mumbled.



"Don't you see, Sara? I had to wait until forces started moving in on you. It's the only way there would have been a chance of you believing me.



The sect would never have harmed you as an infant, because all the prophecies say you don't destroy the world until you're fully grown."



"Wait, wait," Derik protested. "So why not kill her when she was a baby? Save the world that way?"



"Because the sect can't use her if she's dead, stupid mongrel. And she's not so easy to kill, in case you forgot. Which wouldn't surprise me."



"But how do they use her to destroy the world? These Arthur guys?"



Dr. Cummings shrugged. "No one knows. Only that she is integral to the plot. Kill her as an infant, and who knows what will happen? Wait until she's fully-grown—very fully grown, Sara, time to lay off the bagels—and risk the world being destroyed. It's not an easy choice. Most of us decided to watch and wait. Now go away."



"It's not nice to kill old guys," Derik muttered under his breath. "It's not nice to kill old guys. It's not nice to—"



"All I could do was stick close, which I have, and now I'm done, and it's Miller time." Dr. Cummings clapped his hands sharply, making Sara and Derik jump. "Now go! Off to Salem. Good-bye."



Derik and Sara looked at each other, then shrugged in unison. "I'm game if you are," she said. "I don't want to walk into the hospital again and worry about Arthur's Chosen hurting bystanders."



"I'm going where you go."



"How touching," Dr. Cummings said. "I've approved your vacation request as of thirty seconds ago. I suggest you don't delay."



"Why?" Sara asked. "Is there something you're not telling us?"



"No, I'm just bored now. Good-bye."



"What a sweetheart," Derik muttered once they were on the other side of the door.



"Off to Massachusetts," Sara said, "dodging killers along the way, and with a werewolf bodyguard."



"Don't forget about the hot fudge sundaes."



13



"We can't go back to your place."



"Agreed. Besides, it would take about six hours of cleaning before the house was livable again. Thanks again, by the way."



Derik ignored her sarcasm. "And I sure can't show up at the mansion withyou." "Uh-huh. Err ... why is that, again?" "Because I was supposed to kill you, duh." "Don't say duh to me," she ordered. "I get enough of that from Dr. Cummings."



"Yeah, cripes, what a grouch. Guy's not afraid of anything, is he?" Derik said this in a tone of grudging admiration. "But anyway, about you—



I can hardly walk through the front door and say, 'hey, guys, here's Morgan Le Fay, didn't feel like killing her, what's for lunch?'"



Sara frowned. "So you're saying you're going to get into trouble for this?"



Derik stretched, wiggling in the driver's seat, then pulled into a convenience store parking lot. "Maybe. Kind of. Okay, yes."



"Derik, you can't—I mean, I appreciate you giving up your sacred holy mission of premeditated murder and all, but don't your kind banish Pack members for, like, teeny tiny reasons? Never mind huge reasons like not fulfilling your mission?"



"We have a group mentality," he explained. "So if you do something that hurts the group, or may possibly hurt the group, it's bye-bye time."



"So you—you can't go back?" Sara tried not to sound as horrified as she felt. She was lonely— well, alone—by circumstance. Her father had died the day she was born; her mother when she was a teenager. But Derik was deliberately giving up his family ... for her. It was touching. And cracked. "Not ever?"



He yawned, apparently unconcerned. "Well, I figure it's like this: Either you destroy the world, in which case, my alpha can't kick my ass, or you don't, in which case, my alpha will know I was right. Kind of a win/win for me."



"Except for the possible death of billions."



"Well, yeah. There's that."



"But you can never see your friends again?" Sara was having trouble letting this go. "Your family?"



"I was going to leave anyway. It was either that, or—anyway, I had to go."



"Well, thanks," she said doubtfully. "I— thanks. What are we doing here?"



"I'm starved."



"Again?"



"Hey, we don't all weigh a hundred pounds and have the metabolism of a fat monkey."



"Oh, very nice!" she snapped. "Well, as long as you're here, let me get my cash card, I'll grab some money."



His hand closed over hers, which was startling, to say the least. He was very warm. His hand dwarfed hers and, in the California sunlight, the hair on the back of his knuckles was reddish blond. She was fascinated to note that his index finger was exactly as long as his middle finger. "Nope."



She stared into his green, green eyes. "What, nope?"



"We're on the way to Salem, right? Chances are, there's gonna be some bad guys on our tail. Right?"



"What, you're asking me? Ten hours ago my biggest problem was finding a pair of panty hose that didn't have a run in them."



"So,you can't leave a money trail," he continued patiently. "No cash cards, no credit cards. And if you make a big bank withdrawal, my Pack's gonna know you're alive. They'll assume I'm dead, and then there's gonna be real trouble."



"How would they even know—never mind, don't tell me. We can't go across the country with no money," she pointed out.



"Yeah, yeah. I'm working on that one."



"What a relief," she said, getting out of the car and following him up the sidewalk. "Seriously. You have no idea."



"Aw, stick a sock in it. You—watch it." He grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the way just as a teenager came barreling through the door of the store. The kid stopped for a minute, utterly panicked, and they all heard the wail of sirens at the same time.



Well, probably not, Sara thought. Probably Derik heard them about a minute earlier. Aggravating man. And what happened when the moon rose? Whatthen? Did she really believe he was going to turn into a wolf and run around peeing on fire hydrants?



"Shit!" the teen cried, and started to dart around them. Derik stepped in his way—



"Don't do that," Sara said sharply. "He might have a gun."



"Hedoes have a gun," Derik replied, bored.



—and the teen suddenly thrust a paper bag at Sara, who tightened her grip around it purely by reflex.



They both watched the kid race out of the parking lot.



Sara opened the sack, which was bulging with twenties, tens, and fives. "Oh," she said. "Well. Um. I seem to have come into some untraceable cash for our trip."



Derik slapped the heel of his hand to his forehead, then shoved Sara back toward the car. "Let's get out of here before the cops come." He jumped into the convertible, fighting a grin. "You lucky bitch."



"So, we need another car."



"Okay," Sara said. They had left the Monterey city limits, and she had just finished counting the money. Eight hundred sixty-two dollars even. No change. "Um, why?"



"Because my Pack rented this one for me. They can track it. We have to leave it and find something on our own."



"Okay."



"So, do it."



"Dowhat?"



"You know. Work your hocus-pocus and wish us up a car."



"It doesn't work like that."



"The hell it doesn't."



"I don't have conscious control over it," she explained, trying—and failing—to smooth her hair out of her face. Convertibles were sexy and cool in the movies, but in real life you couldn't see for all the hair flying around. And she dreaded trying to pull a brush through the mess when they parked. Not that she had a brush. But still. "Heck, until you showed up, I didn't think I could do anything special at all. Except bowl," she added thoughtfully. "I'm great at that."



"Yeah, I bet those pins just happen to fall over for you all the time. Concentrate," he ordered. "We need ... an untraceable ... car."



"Stop . . . talking . . . like that."



He slapped the steering wheel with his palm. "Shit. Well, I guess I could steal one. . . except we'd have to do that at least every day or so."



"Why aren't we taking a plane? Isn't it a four-or five-day drive?"



"You want to show airport security your ID? Because I don't think that's, y'know, too cool. Which also lets out renting a car, and taking a train."



"Are there that many werewolves running around the country?"



"No. There's only about three hundred thousand of us, worldwide. But still. I think it's too important to take chances. I'd hate to fuck this up through bad luck, y'know? Not that you exactly have bad luck. But still. I'm not crazy about taking chances. Okay, I am, but not chances of this magnitude. Get it?"



"Hardly. And you can't ask any of your—um, your family—the Pack, or whatever you call it— for a car?"



"Well, I could, but I'd rather not take a chance on anything getting back to Michael—my alpha," he explained. "I'd risk spending a night or two with local Pack members, because my mission is top secret—"