Page 26 of Sanctuary
A woman was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, doing something on her phone. The driver's seat was empty. Patton slunk around the side of the truck and hid underneath it for a moment, then dashed out and launched himself up into the back. Shifters in their wolf form tended to be taller and a little heavier than natural wolves--it made it easy to propel himself high enough to get his front paws over the tailgate and scrabble his way in among the tubs and bags and tied down furniture that filled the space.
Okay, maybe they weren’t the best choice after all—they look like they’re moving. But if they were at this gas station, coming from Idaho, he doubted that they were heading in his and Ori's chosen direction. But even if they were, they’d draw the Perseguir hunters away and give him and Ori a chance to lose themselves in the countryside again.
The woman must have heard the thump and frantic scratching of his claws against the steel of the vehicle. She glanced through the back window and her mouth fell open, then she yelled and banged on the window. The door of the truck flew open and the woman leaped out and stomped toward Patton. "Get down from there!" she screamed and bent to pick up a rock off the rough gravel of the parking lot.
Patton dropped the phone and made sure it disappeared deep down between a couple of boxes at the front. A sharp pain in his hip made him yelp, then a second rock hit him and he yelped again. He scrambled down off the other side and took off into the dusty dry surroundings, trying to get something between him and the woman. As he dodged around the corner of the gas station, he heard a man say, "What was that?" and the woman reply, "Stray dog jumped into the back of the truck. Can we go now?"
Patton had never before been so glad for the agouti-brown of his coat, so boring back home. He trotted off around one of the nearby buildings and then back to peer out at the world from a safe corner. The truck pulled slowly out of the lot, as if the people inside it weren’t sure where they were going, then —wonder of wonders—took the road back in the direction that Patton and Ori had come from. They were going west.
And shortly after, so did the rusty blue car from Perseguir pack.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F I V E
B ack where he’d left Ori behind, Patton changed into his human form, got dressed, and snuck quietly inside the shed. It looked deserted and the smell of mold and earth and gasoline hid any trace of Ori’s scent.
“Ori?” he whispered. The shed was quiet as death, except for the whirring of some insect on the window. Then, “Pat?” came Ori’s voice, quiet and shaken.
“It’s okay, they’re gone,” Patton assured him, and then all the junk he’d covered Ori with went flying and Ori was in his arms, half crying, half laughing as he hugged Patton like he could make the two of them one person. Patton held him close, breathing in Ori’s scent, grateful for these few moments. He knew that the moment couldn’t last, though—they needed to keep moving.
After a too, too brief passage of time, Patton kissed Ori’s temple and whispered, “We need to get going. Get out of town, hide somewhere. I had to get rid of the phone, put it in the bed of a truck heading back toward Perseguir.”
“They went after it?”
“Yeah.” He picked up their bags, slinging his backpack over one shoulder and then taking both his and Ori’s sack to lighten the load for Ori. “No, I’m carrying them. You’re beat. Come on.” He led Ori cautiously out of the shed, breathing a sigh of relief that no one was home to see them creeping out into the light, and started back in the direction of the gas station. He’d lost all the maps in the phone, but he thought he remembered the road numbers they had to follow.
The rest in the shed, brief as it had been, had done Ori a world of good. He strode along beside Patton with renewed determination, though Patton couldn’t miss the hitch in his step. “Where do we go next? I don’t know if we should stick to the highway anymore. The thing with the phone is only going to fool them so long.”
Patton glanced over at him and struggled a moment between the desire to make Ori rest and find out why he was limping, and the need to get them both safe away. In the end, safety won out. He could investigate Ori’s injuries later, once they were holed up again for the night. “You’re right. I was thinking about cutting cross-country, but all the maps were on the phone. I don’t know where we have to go or what landmarks we have to look for. I think I remember how to get there following the highway.” If they stuck to the roads, they’d be easy to find, but if they took the crow’s flight route to Mercy Hills, for damn sure they’d get lost. He held his breath and waited for Ori’s response. Ori did a good job of playing the simple omega, but Patton knew just how smart his friend was.
“Hmmm,” Ori said and frowned as they approached the gas station. “So, we can risk getting caught, or we can risk getting lost.”
“Pretty much.” Patton’s pace slowed and he stopped in front of the store. “The roads are surer for getting there on time, but we’ll have to hide harder.” Which would slow them down. He didn’t think he needed to explain that to Ori, with his sharp mind.
“We’re not on a schedule,” Ori said thoughtfully, but he frowned too, like he was trying to work out a problem that Patton wasn’t aware of. “I mean, I don’t want to take forever getting there, but if it takes a couple of weeks longer, as long as the food holds out, I don’t really care.”
“I can hunt for us,” Patton reminded him. “And you know plants.” He’d noticed Ori gathering as they walked, late season berries and plump roots ripped wholesale from the ground with hardly a missed beat.
“Some,” Ori agreed. “I don’t know if I’ll recognize much once we’re closer to Mercy Hills.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Patton said, determined to be optimistic. After all, they’d gotten over the walls, past the human guards, away from the pack, and they’d been gone a whole two days and no one had managed to really find them yet. They’d make it. And Ori’s fond smile made him feel like he could do anything. “You want to stop and get more water?”
“Let’s see if we can find house with an outside tap,” Ori suggested. “After all that, I don’t think it would be a good idea to let anyone see us.”
They managed to find another house where no one was home and filled their water jugs from a tap jutting out of the side, accomplished only after a fight with the hose attached to it. The battle left Patton with bruised and bleeding knuckles but Ori kissed them better, laughter shining in his eyes as he did it. Patton could only grin sheepishly and wonder if this was courting, and if he was doing it right. It kind of felt like Ori was courting him. Which made him feel weird, because he liked it, and he clearly remembered his Maw telling him that the more dominant one in a courting couple was always supposed to do the actual…courting. It was just the way it was.
He thought about it some more, then decided it was too complicated for him right now, and they set out once more on their journey.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S I X
T hey walked for a couple of hours, until it was almost too dark to see without changing their forms, then made camp for the night. Scrubby trees clustered against each other by the side of the road, a good screen against prying eyes. And if they stayed far enough back from the road, Patton thought they could even risk a small fire. It would be cheerful, and cooked food would be a good reward after the stress of the day. Ori once again looked at the end of his strength, though he hadn’t complained since the encounter in Bowie, and the light of the fire would let Patton look at that foot of his and see why he was limping.
He found them a low spot behind a relatively thick cluster of trees and dug out a pit in the center of the depression to put the fire in so it would be even harder to see from the road. “If you want to unpack, I’ll get some wood,” he said a little gruffly, hoping it would keep Ori from offering to help even with his sore foot, but Ori simply nodded and started to lay out their blankets.
“Don’t be long?” he said, glancing up a Patton.
“Just long enough to get some wood,” Patton assured him and then he jogged off into the trees to look for dried old branches on the ground, and to break a few new ones off the sturdier trees. It didn’t take him long to gather a good-sized armful, though he had to roam farther than he was comfortable with. But he had enough to get their fire started and he could go back for more once he had Ori settled in. His stomach took that moment to remind him that it would like to be settled in and looked after as well, so he picked up a few more branches, then headed back to their campsite.
He almost missed it in the dark, but Ori was humming quietly in among the trees and Patton followed his ears until he came out into the little clearing. “Here. Wood.”
