Bitch: Puncture (book 2)

I smelled her, she smelled amazing, my memory brought images of bright orange wildflowers. She was remembering something, somewhere in her mind, she was happy, excited. I was so glad that something was making her happy that my nose twitched in response. I didn’t get to smell her this way very often. Whatever she was thinking about was making her breathe faster.

Didn’t sound right for a dream. She was awake. My nose extended as close as I dared somehow willing her scent to reveal her secrets.

I was watching her. Her rib cage rising and falling rhythmically.

In a moment, she looked up at me... and the flowers wilted. There was suddenly an incredible sadness that just came off of her in waves.

I pulled my head back, nose down. Not wanting to smell this new feeling. I decided to clean. I always felt better after cleaning up.

I licked her, but she made a face and then lay her head back down.

Later, when I finished up, I began to lick her neck with the long slow strokes that seemed to comfort her. She was asleep so then I just kept right on licking. I licked down her back, her little nubbin tail, her flanks, her legs, her belly, her ribs, her forelegs, her weird shoulders and her neck. Then when I got to her face I licked very very gently, long slow licks with the grain of the hair. I wasn’t cleaning her, just letting her know I was here.

She twitched in her sleep. Her scent once again relaxed and happy. I surprised me how much her scent affected my moods, as if my heart was somehow tethered to hers.

I could smell her deep in my nose and taste her still on my tongue, that uniquely floral scent of hers warm and inviting. I lay down behind her. ‘Someday you’ll want to groom me too’, I imagined telling her with my imaginary human voice. I imagined it warm and filled with rusty gravel, an earthy counterpoint to hers. And in my fantasy she said, ‘Soon’ in that voice of hers like a dreamy echo in some far away hallway.

I nuzzled in and breathed deep. Her warmth slight but undeniable against my underbelly.

And then I smelled it. Something outside. No I imagined it. Arlene, the cat, leftovers from Natalie, He-Man and Dr. Broon. And of course her, but there was something else, outside. It circled quietly in the dead leaves, but I heard no sound. I held still and breathed slowly so as not to spook it.

And it was so quiet, for the first time in days my vision flickered. Could it be that my sight was coming back? I could see outside the minibus as if I was standing outside from a copse of trees uphill and to the west. It appeared on the grid map in my mind. I could see its threat assessment. I was considered a threat. We were targets on it’s list, but I was the reason why we were considered dangerous. I was the reason why we had a shoot-on-sight designation.

Pictures from traffic cams, bank teller machines, closed circuit cameras from the gas station all at quick access. Tables, estimates, tracking map data all available to me. It logged the minibus but the license plate was not visible, it was marked abandoned.

Then it was all gone. All the information just shut off again. And outside I couldn’t smell it anymore. And I couldn’t see anything more than what my eyes were seeing inside the minibus. The fading moonlight through the windows showed nothing more than the surfaces of the objects around me.

I did not dream it, I was sure of it.

I slowly crawled up to peek out the window towards the trees to the west. Something knew we were there. Something that knew us. I tried to place the memory of the scent but it was not one that I knew. Not one of the hunting dogs I was sure of it. This one had smelled different, something that I’d never hunted - so it’s smell wasn’t familiar. It flagged the minibus as abandoned even though the minibus had been in it’s direct line of sight. I brought the enhanced image up in my memory and saw that that the minibus had registered no life signatures within it. Somehow we’d been invisible for the moment, but how soon till it came back to do a more through search of the abandoned minibus. Or even just looked at it again from another angle, would the disguise hold?

What had we done to reveal our position? I’d let them cut out the chip they found. I could feel the stitches healing already. I sat and thought about who could know? Who could track us? Was there some new signal that I hadn’t been aware of... I felt guilt in my gut for the first time. If I’d just left her alone she would have been fine I thought, maybe after she made it to Seattle?

I couldn’t have just run into the forest further and further away till there was no way for them to track her back to there. In that same instant I knew that I wouldn’t be okay if she went still forever. My happiness now was practically dependent on her happy smells.

I remembered that death comes to all living things, but I knew it would hurt me if it came for her. It would hurt me so much that I wanted to be sure it took me first to I wouldn’t have to see it.

I knew the only way for her to be safe is to take away the one that they were tracking. The one they so desperately wanted to kill that we both had a target on our backs. A target that I had put there.

They had the money and what looked like all the time in the world to find me. It was just a matter of time and more dangerous for her than for me in the wild. They were just going to kill me as a failed rogue experiment. But her somehow I think Shen planned to torture her. He wanted her back, I could feel it in my gut. And I knew Stinger wanted his chance at her as well. He would never let her live, not after she’d bloodied him. I’d seen him torture of more than one of the dogs to death, when it failed to be effective.

To secure her freedom, I must break my own heart. I must leave her and draw them away.