"Hannah." Someone was speaking my name, a hand cupping my shoulders were shaking hard enough that my head bounced against the hard packed dirt.
"Oh," I groaned, reaching back to shield the back of my neck. "What the hell?" I asked Skye, sudden recognition coming back to me all at once, both of our situation and the person that was trying to rouse me.
"You were having the nightmare again." She reached out and tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear, her eyes roaming my face with a concerning flash in her deep brown irises. The first night we were out here I had the same one, and it took her so off guard that she was convinced someone had found us and was murdering me. Filling her in wasn't something I could avoid, she deserved to know, and so that night I told her more of my story. Not it all, but enough that she knew of the vampire threat, and my suspicions of my father's involvement. I had a sense that Skye assumed my mate was back at my old clan, but she never ventured a guess on that one, and I didn't want to come clean about it all just yet. The news of Eli needed to come at the right time. Preferably when we weren't on the run from my father.
This was getting old, I thought to myself as I tried to shake off the dream, the constant nightmares were getting more intense, and this was the second time tonight that she had woken me up because of the noise. It was perilous of us as it was, no need to add the attention that my screaming brought us. "They are getting worse." Skye said it not as a question, but as a statement, one that we both knew was true.
"At least it's the same one." At this I sat up, shaking my hair out and stretching a little. The barn we were in wasn't as bad as some of the spots we had to crash in along the way up the coast, but tonight the temperature had dropped pretty significantly, leaving my limbs frozen and stiff. Running this much in my animal form was taking up most of my energy, leaving my human times feeling like they were suspended in molasses. Everything seemed slower, including my mind.
"We should reach the safe house by mid day, we've been lucky, making such good time." Skye was right about that, we had covered an immense distance in just about four days. Granted they were long days, spent more animal than human, but the time passed differently when I ran wolf. Not faster or slower per say, but I found my mind focusing on the moment, and not the past or future. Time, when spent floating in the present, was almost magical. It reminded of being a child, reveling in an invincible summer.
I nodded my understanding of what she had said, taking a second to stand by propping my hand up on the tractor behind me. It was hard not to laugh at the sight of us, dirty, disheveled, and donned in some old farmer's clothes that were hanging up to dry outside. We looked mental, though it was better than walking around naked all the time.
Taking the clothes had been Skye's idea, and it seemed she was full of ideas like that. It made her invaluable to me out here, making me quickly realize that without her I would be lost. She was full of helpful tips, ways to stay hidden from the world that didn't understand we existed.
"Do you think we should be worried that we haven't so much as seen another wolf at all yet?" The question was one that had been nagging me over the last two days, finally surfacing when I had an odd feeling this morning.
If my father was going to hunt after me, knowing that I would most likely head back towards home, then we should have seen someone. A tail at least, or a scout, if not even a direct attack to try and take me back. My father wouldn't want me out of the streets long, especially if he knew now that I was a wolf. Henry never did well with surprises, and even less with people that kept unpredictable natures.
Skye shrugged, but the tight set of her shoulders told me it was something that was bothering her as well. "I can't be sure, we are very fast, and all the careful measures we are taking could have slowed them down."
"You mean all that doubling back, and crossing streams wasn't just to torture me?" I smiled wryly, remembering how awful the first day running with her was. It made sense, but it was tough to endure. Skye rolled her eyes, a small smile playing on the corners of her lips. Not many of those moments existed between us.
There was something different about her out here, away from her clan, away from Liam. She was pensive, bordering on mopey most of them time. It was a different sort of pain, I knew it all too well, like giving in to an injury that had been bothering the body too long. I gave her the option to talk if she wanted to, but she declined. My instincts told me it was too fresh for her to deal with on top of everything else, and my own gratitude to Skye kept me silent as well.
"All that was to make sure they couldn't track us down in the first twelve hours Hannah, not for my enjoyment. Once we got that much distance and time on them, it would be near impossible to track us directly from home. My guess is they regrouped and are coming from a different angle, if at all. Let me ask you, how probable do you think it is that they would give up.? Would your own father really go this far to get you, or would this chase prove too much of a hassle?" Skye's idea caught me off guard.
"Out of all the possibly scenarios we talked about, I don't think failure is an option for Henry. He knows next to nothing about me, sadly, so for him to let me go would be too much of a risk since my actions are wholly unpredictable for him. Not with everything going on with the Drake's, and his probably involvement with the European coalition. They could see it as a sign of weakness, and any deals Henry had cooking would be dead in the water." I took a deep breath before continuing, hating every second I spent thinking about that damn clan I grew up in, and the wolves who sired me.
"Plus, I think it's personal now. He tried so hard to get my wolf to come out when I was younger, I knew he wanted nothing more than for me to be just like him. The disappointment in being human was such a sore spot for him, to get his hands on me now would be some kind of justice." Shivering I clutched at the flannel shirt and coverall's that I was wearing. Blaming it on the chill morning would be easy and untrue, it was the deep cold fear of that man that held me under the icy water. Skye was bending over, taking off the thick woolen socks that covered her feet, a sign that it was getting time to move on.
"If he gets to you, what can he do? The banishment is clan law," Skye muttered as she rearranged some of the hay bails to look like they did last night. We had discussed my father, how he thought, but mixing in laws and charters wouldn't do much to deter Henry.
"He would change the law, and if that wasn't something he thought he could pull off, then he would take me under force and create a new rule. Clan porter, though going through it's own changes, is still very old school in their thinking. It's one of the oldest founded clans in the America's, and some days it felt as if I was stuck in another century.
"Henry rules by absolute power, and fear. That fear keeps most from talking, or questioning things too much. He keeps them fat, and safe, and rich, and for the majority of them that is enough to follow blindly. On top of that, he is power hungry and greedy. That's why he is risking so much to ally with Europe. He was close to getting pushed out and retiring, and with Jameson mated and stable, my father was likely looking for a way to hold on a little longer." I couldn't read Skye's expression, but I thought it was somewhere between angry and incredulous. Not many people really knew what kind of man my father was. Henry had always been very adept at pleasing the crowds, and making the right relationships that would keep him in good public opinion.
"And you threaten all of that."
"I threaten it all," I told her. I threaten it all and then some, if you count what me mating with Elijah could mean. Just as the thought was on my lips, ready to be given voice and truth for the first time this trip, we heard their footfalls.
"How many?" I whispered quietly, using my lips to form the words enough that barely any sound escaped me. Wolves had extraordinary hearing, and I didn't want to tip our hand.
Skye held up three fingers in response, her feet silent as she ushered us towards a corner of the barn. Our feet, because of where we were and where we needed to go, led us almost running parallel to the barn doors. Surely if our footfalls were so silent, the frantic beating of my erratic heart could be heard for miles. As we got closer towards the doors, my ears picked up the sounds of the persons outside, their multiple footsteps seemed too confusing to my new hearing to detect anything important.
That was something else Skye was helping me with. The adjustment from normal human hearing to this cacophony of noises gave me daily migraines.
"Shift?" I asked, already starting the process of ridding myself of my coveralls, not wanting to leave the nice family here a pile of shredded clothing as a thanks. Skye nodded, going about taking her own things off. We stood shoulder to shoulder for another moment, breathing plumes of foggy air, our ears trained on the front doors like a cat.
"Wait for my signal," Skye said, returning to her stillness along side me. The noises were gaining strength, making it possible to distinguish that it was several males outside the doors. My mind was already spinning in possibilities when the barn entrance flew open, giving neither of us any warning, or any time to decide what to do. Three forms were silhouetted against the very newly rising sun, big and brawny in stature, but the contrast in lights and shadows prevented us from seeing their faces with any clarity.
Skye and I were hidden still, crouched low behind a farm machine of some kind.
"What do we do?" I asked her, my mouth so close to her ear it was impossible for anyone else to hear. Skye's response was to hold up a hand, motioning for me to wait, or to stop talking. Either way it seemed she was still deciding on a course of action.
"You heard voices? In this barn?" I heard one of the men say. His voice was deep but seemed light in manner, as if the phrase was more of a joke than anything else. Was this the voice of the humble farm hand? If there was anything in my life I felt certain of, it was that luck was never a friend of mine.
"I heard a woman's voice. It almost sounded like screaming, but by the time I got over here it was gone. I swear someone was talking in here, at the least making some pretty awful noises." This was met with some laughter, just verging on the side of mocking, and not friendly banter like before.
"Nick," one voice said, his tone indicating that he was serious. "Go see if you can find a light will you? A lantern or something." The man instantly sprung into motion, his feet pacing back and forth near the middle, probably searching for a pull lamp somewhere in the vast barn.
"Do you recognize them at all?" Skye asked me, taking advantage of all the noise they were making to speak the question to me. I shook my head, having already wracked my brain to see if their voices or names held any kind of memory for me. One thing was clear though, these weren't native farm workers.
"There is no light Mason," the man named Nick said, his voice sounding irritated at his lack of discovery. "If they are heading towards her little friend's old family land, like they think, why the hell are they all the way out this way?" Nick asked, sending both Skye and I spinning. This was going from manageable, to disastrous in a no time at all. Skye for her part didn't pale or look scared, her face simply transformed into something that almost scared even me. It was full of cruel hard determination.
"You don't know who they are?" Skye asked me again, her mind and my mind almost audibly searching for an answer in all this confusion.
"This is the last quadrant we have to search, based on the last sighting, if Paul here says he heard something like that then we have to search it completely before moving on. We cannot leave until we are sure. Nick you take the back left corner, Paul the back right. I'll start over by the tractor. Sweep towards the middle, and watch the doors." With that, Mason began to walk towards the opposite wall. Instead of being relieved that he was moving away from us, it was becoming clear he was going to find our little sleep nest. Anyone with a shred of common sense would realize that we had been there recently, very recently in fact. Skye's freshly worn socks were still draped over one of the hail bails.
"Shit," Skye said, her eyes flitting from where Mason was, to the front door. Her eyes were doing the same thing mine were, estimating the time and distance it would take us to shift and reach it. She held up her hand, counting down until we made a run for it. Likely, I mused, it was going to be the only opportunity we had without being spotted and losing our element of surprise.
The only break we seemed to be getting was that someone had knocked over a rack of metal tools, which held enough cover for us to speak quickly.
"Run towards the fields, I'll cover your back," Skye said, but I grabbed her arm before she could shift.
"I'll follow you," I said, though already she was shaking her head at me. "Skye, if they have guns, I can take the hits. You can't. I'll be right behind you." She looked ready to argue again, but the metallic noise we were enjoying had ceased. She held up three fingers, and then were a furry blur.
As it turns out, our costly conversation led to a blocked front door, sending Skye and myself jumping over various machinery and hey at a breakneck pace. I could only assume she was trying to disorient them in the low light, so I focused on looking for a way out of here.
My wolf senses were vastly different, and though I could manage with them based on some instinct, it was next to impossible for me to discern what the men were shouting. It wasn't of consequence to me at the moment, all I knew was that we needed to get towards an exit. Through the chaos I attempted to focus everything I had on Skye, and covering her best I could manage while we continued to run around. The men were shouting, though I couldn't discern anything other than their raised voices. It was curious, I thought when I was sprinting around the tractor, that they hadn't drawn weapons on us yet, but I quickly deduced that buckshot's in this part of the country would draw immediate attention.
One of the men, smelling like Mason, had tripped over one of the various rakes that lay littered in the barn just a few feet from us. He was splayed out on his back, arms flailing behind him to brace himself. I gave a low chortle towards Skye, facing my eyes towards the door. It was only being guarded by Nick now, his skittish eyes searching around the dim barn to figure out what was happening. Skye took of running right at him, but at the last second he pulled out a knife. It gleamed in a sliver of the sunrise, almost to the point of blinding. Skye didn't mind, I'm sure, since it gave her a nice advance notice of the oncoming attack. Instead of barreling right over him, which it looked from the start, she clamped her dexterous jaws right over his forearm.
The knife clattered to the packed dirt, and a howl later he was down. Skye took off running away from him, her head turned just for a moment to stare back at me before running full steam ahead towards the area we talked about earlier. It didn't take me long to follow.
"Stop!" I heard a man yell behind me, his voice bellowing and full of anger, almost to the point that his words were indistinguishable. I kept running ahead, closing the distance fast on Skye until she was just a few feet in front of me. Thankfully, I was just in time to cover her, as a barrage of bullets hit me.