Page 61 of His Runaway Mate

Thankfully we are interrupted before he can play ‘here comes the airplane’ with the flesh of a human being. One of the lookouts comes scooting in with a great deal of exuberance.

“Regent hunters are out at the road,” the scout says. “Oh, hi, Nicky.”

I give a small wave from inside the crate. No point getting too dramatic about this. I am going to try to use my sway with them once my father goes out to do something psychotic. It won’t be long before he feels the need to hunt and kill. That is the one thing I know about him for sure.

“Run them off,” he says. “I’ll move the girl. Help me with her crate first.”

With the assistance of a guy who used to answer to me, my father loads my crate onto the back of an old pickup.

Forestry trails this deep are often not maintained and rarely drivable, but of course my father has found a way around that. Tracks have been cut into the bush from the back, and they run around the park and I guess probably eventually join up with a road somewhere nobody expects them to.

“Rex is going to find me,” I tell him as he starts strapping my crate down. “He won’t let me go.”

“What makes you so certain he cares that much about you?”

“I owe him for a new bed,” I deadpan.

My father laughs. “More than I needed to know, but I’m sure you’re right.”

“That’s not what I meant. You’re not going to be able to outrun Regent in this old bucket. He has helicopters.”

“Yes. And I am sure he deployed them when you first fled, and yet I am the one who has you, and you’ve killed someone. Forgive me if I don’t rate your overfunded pretty boy.”

He gets in the truck and starts driving. Behind us, I see the strays covering over the tracks with leaves and brush. They had this planned well enough that anybody who comes this way is going to think they’ve just found a camp of unhoused people.

But the wolves will smell better. They’ll know better. There’s no way…

My father turns the wheel hard right and into a riverbed where the river flows. This is going to be much harder to follow. But still, Rex will know if the track doesn’t continue on the other side that we had to go one way or the other.

He’s going to find me.

The rickety rocking of the crate going back and forth over the riverbed makes me feel ill. It goes on for what feels like miles. Then we get onto another path that eventually leads inside a tunnel. At first, I am afraid that my mad father has driven into a train tunnel. Then I realize it’s a mine, and that is not much better. In fact, I’m going to say it is worse. Train tunnels sometimes have a light at the end of them. Mines don’t. The further in we go, the deeper, darker, and more dangerous it is going to get.

He stops and pulls into a parking space carved out into the wall of the mountain. Then he comes around, tapping the side of the truck as if he’s in a very good mood.

He cranks the tailgate down and opens the gate. He lets me out and allows me to scramble from the crate. By now I am in such a state I barely feel like myself. In hours, he’s turned me from one kind of animal to another kind of animal.

“There’s a dozen scent misdirects between where we were and where we are now,” he informs me. “And if you try to get out of this place by yourself, I can guarantee you will be lost in the dark until the end of your days. So stay close, and behave yourself.”

“You live here?”

“I live everywhere,” he says. “And well you know it.”

The years have not been kind to my father. He was always mad and dangerous, but now he is mad and dangerous in a way that has a finality to it. I think he’s doing this because he knows he can’t keep doing it. I think he knows that the world he lives in now is not the same as the one he used to hunt in. There’s surveillance everywhere now. Everyone has phones. You can’t appear and disappear at will. You can’t move from place to place without being recognized. This is his last stand. Corrupting me is how he’ll solidify his legacy.

* * *

Rex

The hunt is coming to its inevitable conclusion. We are on her trail now, and there is no way we will lose it.

We come across a small pack of strays. They scatter as my wolves and I come through the trees, but every single one of them is brought down within moments. Nicky is not here, but I can smell her. Her scent is growing stronger. We are getting closer.

I catch the nearest one and pin him down, my jaws on his throat forcing him to take his human form as he properly submits.

“He’s got her,” the boy says, whining for his life as I barely hold myself back from slaying him on the spot. “He’s taken her to his den and he’s going to feed her the special meat.”

“Can we go one day without a cannibalism scandal?” Percy says. He’s one of my prime hunters, and he’s been on a lot of jobs where wolves have gone a little too wild. For him, this is just another Tuesday.